ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



1564; the interpolation of the word "only" 

 in the copies quoted in the reports ; the asser- 

 tion that surplice and alb were not worn " con- 

 currently " according to any known use ; the 

 assertion that Bishop Cosi'n held a visitation in 

 1687, fifteen years after his death, etc. Deci- 

 sions based on such statements, they will urge, 

 only bring the law into contempt. 



The General Conference of Anglican Bishops 

 which met at Lambeth in July, 1878, appoint- 

 ed a committee "to consider the relations 

 between the Old Catholics and others who 

 have separated themselves from the Roman 

 Communion. To this committee the Arch- 

 bishop of Canterbury referred a petition 

 which he had received from the dissident 

 French ecclesiastic M. Loyson, praying for 

 official recognition of the Old Catholics by the 

 Anglican Episcopate. Bishop Eden, Primus of 

 Scotland, as chairman of this committee, in 

 the latter part of 1878, addressed a letter to M. 

 Loyson, saying that, in conjunction with the 

 Bishop of Edinburgh, he would so far recog- 

 nize his mission as to give it a provisional 

 oversight. Under ordinary circumstances, he 

 said, the English Episcopate must have de- 

 clined the request ; but the times were not 

 ordinary, and the conduct of the Church of 

 Rome in issuing the recent Vatican decrees 

 seemed to the bishops to justify a departure 

 from their customary usage, and to authorize 

 them to recognize a principle of yet higher 

 obligation than that of church order. It would 

 be impossible, however, for the bishops to 

 pledge themselves to the administration of 

 episcopal functions in the mission until they 

 had become acquainted with the proposed rit- 

 ual and order of the Church ; and they could 

 then do so only in the event of the ritual " in 

 its language and ceremonies containing nothing 

 inconsistent with the Word of God, with the 

 principles enunciated in our formularies, with 

 the prerogatives of the One Divine head of the 

 Church, or with the One Mediator between 

 God and man, the Man Christ Jesus." (See 

 OLD CATHOLICS.) 



The case of the appeals of Lord Penzance, 

 Dean of Arches, and of Mr. James Martin, the 

 promoter of the suit of Martin vs, Mackono- 

 chie, against a judgment of the Lord Chief 

 Justice making absolute a rule obtained on be- 

 half of the Rev. Alexander H. Mackonochie, 

 restraining all further proceedings in the suit, 

 came before the High Court of Appeal in 

 March. The proceedings against Mr. Mac- 

 konochie in the Court of Arches had lasted 

 for four years, when in June, 1878, he was 

 sentenced by Lord Penzance to three years' 

 suspension from his benefice. A rule was ob- 

 tained in the Queen's Bench for a prohibition, 

 based on the ground that the monition which 

 had been inflicted upon the appellant previous 

 to his suspension was a sentence covering all 

 the penalty awarded, and ended the case ; that 

 any further penalty must result from a new 

 trial, and the sentence of suspension to which 



the Court appealed against had proceeded could 

 not be imposed without such new trial. In 

 August, 1878, the prohibition was made abso- 

 lute. The Solicitor-General, who appeared for 

 Lord Penzance, in advocating the appeal, ar- 

 gued that the common-law courts had no au- 

 thority over the ecclesiastical courts, support- 

 ing his position by citations from old writers 

 on the subject when the authority of the spir- 

 itual courts was admittedly independent. The 

 case was decided, June 28th, in favor of the 

 appellants, three of the judges giving opinions 

 in favor of reversing, two of sustaining the 

 decision of the Court of Queen's Bench. Lord 

 Chief Justice Coleridge, in giving his judg- 

 ment, reviewed all the circumstances of the 

 case, and expounded the ecclesiastical laws 

 and usages by which such cases as that before 

 the Court were governed. lie held that, both 

 on the ground of reason and on the authorities 

 he had looked into, such a monition as the one 

 in question was perfectly allowable in a Court 

 Christian, and that disobedience to such a mo- 

 nition might subject the offender to some form 

 of punishment. It seemed to him that in this 

 case suspension was warranted by the law and 

 the practices of the ecclesiastical courts. The 

 steps taken in this case were, to his mind, 

 right; but, if he thought they were wrong, his 

 conclusions as to the law and usage would be 

 the same. He could not see the hardship of 

 an officer of the Church being obliged to obey 

 the law of his society, after the law had been 

 declared to him by the highest authority in 

 the country. He thought that Lord Penzance 

 had not done more than he was called upon to 

 do, and no more than what the practice of his 

 Court justified, and he thought that that prac- 

 tice was not contrary to the Church Discipline 

 Act. On the 15th of November Lord Pen- 

 zance, in the Court of Arches, ordered the en- 

 forcement of the writ of prohibition which he 

 had issued against Mr. Mackonochie in June, 

 1878, the operation of which had been sus- 

 pended during the pendency of the appeals on 

 the case. The writ involved a suspension of 

 the ecclesiastical functions of Mr. Mackonochie 

 for three years, beginning with the 23d of No- 

 vember. "While granting it, Lord Penzance 

 said that he would be willing to hear any ap- 

 plication for a relaxation of sentence founded 

 on a promise to obey the law. The Council of 

 the Church Union determined on a policy of 

 resistance to the judgment. 



A prosecution was instituted against the 

 Bishop of Oxford in January, requiring him 

 to show cause why he should not institute 

 proceedings of inquiry into charges which had 

 been made under the Church Discipline Act 

 against the Rev. Thomas T. Carter, rector of 

 the parish of Clemer, for adopting ritualistic 

 practices in worship. The Bishop appeared in 

 person, February 27th, in the Court of Queen's 

 Bench, and pleaded that the Church Discipline 

 Act could not intend that he should be deprived 

 of his right of discretion to grant or refuse a 



