22 



ANGLICAN CHUECHES. 



lenso was served in England with a copy of 

 the decree of deposition. He had already 

 issued a letter to his diocese, in which he dis- 

 putes the power claimed by the hishops of 

 South Africa to depose him from office. His 

 friends in England collected a fund to enable 

 him to plead his cause before the English 

 courts. The first proceedings were commenced 

 before the judicial committee of the Privy 

 Council on Juno 23d. On December 14, the 

 appeal of Bishop Colenso came on for a hear- " 

 ing, the judges being the Lord Chancellor, 

 Sir Stephen Lushington, the Master of the 

 Eolls, Lord Kingsdown, and Lord Cranworth. 

 At the end of the year the sentence had not 

 yet been delivered.* 



The famous case of the "Essays and Ee- 

 views " was ultimately decided by the judicial 

 committee of the Privy Council. The case 

 came up upon an appeal of Dr. Williams and 

 Mr. Wilson, two of the writers of the "Essays 

 and Reviews," from the sentence. of the Court 

 of Arches, by which they had been deprived 

 for one year of their benefices. The Privy 

 Council, the highest judicial court of the coun- 

 try, declared the holding and publishing of the 

 views contained in the essays of Dr. Williams 

 and Mr. Wilson not to be inconsistent with the 

 rule of faith in the Church of England, and 

 therefore reversed the sentence of the Court of 

 Arches. The judgment was delivered by the 

 Lord Chancellor, who stated that the Arch- 

 bishops of Canterbury and York differed from 

 the rest of the committee as to the charge with 

 reference to the inspiration of Scripture. In 

 order to neutralize the decision of the Privy 

 Council, on the 25th of February a committee 

 of leading theologians of both the High and 

 Low Church parties issued the " Oxford Dec- 

 laration," declaring their belief that the 

 Church of England teaches that the Bible not 

 only contains but is the Word of God, and that 

 the punishment of the wicked is, equally with 

 the life of the righteous, everlasting. The 

 declaration was signed by more than 11,000 

 clergymen of the Established Church, and 

 called forth similar declarations from the 

 bishops and clergy of the Anglican churches in 

 the British provinces of North America and the 

 United States. 



. The latter is as follows : 



"We, the undersigned, Bishops and Clergymen of 

 the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 

 States of America, hold it to be our bounden duty 

 to the Church of England and Ireland, and to the 

 souls of men, to declare our firm belief that the said 

 Church, in common with our own and the whole 

 Catholic Church, maintains, without reserve or quali- 

 fication, the Inspiration and Divine Authority of the 

 whole Canonical Scriptures, as not only containing 

 but being the Word of God ; and further teaches, 

 in the words of our Blessed Lord, that the " punish- 

 ment" of the "cursed," equally with the " life" of 

 the " righteous," is everlasting. 



This declaration was signed by the Bishops 

 of Connecticut, Vermont, Kentucky, Ohio, 



* See Annual Cyclopedia for 1868, p. 12. 



Wisconsin, Michigan, Western New York, Del 

 aware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine 

 Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, New York, New Jer 

 sey, Minnesota, the Northwest, the Assistant 

 Bishops of Connecticut and Ohio, and Bisho] 

 Southgate, demissionary Bishop. 



The Convocation of Canterbury, in the ses- 

 sion commencing on the 21st of June, passed a 

 " synodical " condemnation of the volume of 

 the "Essays and Eeviews," as containing teach- 

 ings contrary to the doctrine received by the 

 united Church of England and Ireland, in com- 

 mon with the whole Catholic Church of Christ. 

 The resolution was adopted in the House of 

 Bishops by all votes against two, and in the 

 lower house by 39 to 19. 



This act of "synodical" condemnation called 

 forth a very interesting debate in the English 

 Parliament, in the course of which the Lord 

 Chancellor was very severe upon rights of the 

 Convocation. He called the synodical con- 

 demnation a violation of the law of England, 

 according to which "the crown is the fountain 

 of all jurisdiction, ecclesiastical and spiritual 

 as well as temporal, and he warned the bishop 

 not to trespass in future upon the prerogatives 

 of the crown." 



In December, an address signed by 137,000 

 lay members of the Church of England, was 

 presented to the Archbishops of Canterbury 

 and York, for their pastoral letters in support 

 of the doctrines involved in the decision of the 

 judicial committee of the Privy Council. 



The attempted establishment of the Benedic- 

 tine Order in the Church of England, by 

 Brother Ignatius,* continued to produce great 

 excitement. Brother Ignatius during the year 

 preached and lectured in London, York, Leeds, 

 Newcastle, and other large cities, and found in 

 all these places a great deal of sympathy. He 

 also made his appearance at the Church Con- 

 gress of Bristol, where it required, however, an 

 appeal from the President to the Congress to 

 secure him a hearing. The practices of this 

 new Anglican Order are entirely in conformity 

 with those of Eoman Catholic monasteries. 

 The holy water is used at the entrance into the 

 church : the entire mass is reestablished ; the 

 the veneration of the Virgin Mary, including 

 the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, is 

 adopted; and pilgrimages are revived. The 

 number of monks has not considerably in- 

 creased, and most of the bishops have forbid- 

 den the clergy of their dioceses to admit brother 

 Ignatius to their pulpits. Toward the close of 

 the year another attempt of establishing a mo- 

 nastic order was made at Leeds. 



Annual " Church Congresses " may now be re- 

 garded as permanent institutions in the Church 

 of England, like the German and Scandinavian 

 Church Diets, and the Catholic Congresses of 

 Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. That of 

 1864 was held at Bristol, and it seems to have 

 rivalled the success of the preceding meetings 



* See Annual Cyclopaedia for 1S63, p. 13. 



