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ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



dent which may lead us into a position differing 

 but little from that against which the Church 

 rightly protested three hundred years ago. Sec- 

 ondly, we protest against your Grace's attempt to 

 foist upon the Church, as her rule of ceremonial, 

 a penal act of Parliament passed in days of regal 

 autocracy, and intended to meet circumstances 

 entirely different from those of to-day. And we 

 are the more aggrieved because we were led to sup- 

 pose that your Grace had intended to investigate 

 the question upon the principles of Catholic law 

 and custom and liturgical science, and not upon 

 the construction of the alleged law of the state." 



Tin- Duke of Newcastle and Lord Edward Spen- 

 cer Churchill spoke in support of the protest. 

 The archbishop, replying to the addresses of these 

 gentlemen, began with a reference to the closing 

 sentence of the paper, saying he was quite certain 

 that it would be impossible to quote any words 

 of his that could fairly be said to convey the 

 impression mentioned there as held by the pro- 

 t enters. "I gave no one to suppose," he said, 

 " that I intended to investigate the question upon 

 any other principles but the principles, as I under- 

 stood them, of obedience to the law of the Church 

 itself, and particularly of obedience to the law of 

 the Church of England." He then reviewed the 

 reasoning of the opinion, the grounds on which it 

 was based, and the method of procedure adopted, 

 justifying the course of the archbishops in reach- 

 ing it, and intimated that the opinion need not 

 be taken as a command to obey unless the bishops 

 enforce it upon their clergy. " It is left tor the 

 bishops to call upon the clergy to take this opin- 

 ion, but if they do not. choose to act in this way 

 that, of course, would set the clergy in that dio- 

 cese perfectly free from obedience to that opinion. 

 The clergy may very fairly say in that case, ' My 

 bishop does not call upon me to obey this opinion, 

 therefore I am not bound by it,' but there is not 

 a word in the opinion which shows the smallest 

 desire to set aside the separate opinion of the 

 separate bishops in their various dioceses. It ap- 

 pears to me to be not quite borne out by any 

 arguments that have been put before me, though 

 some of the arguments that have been put before 

 me do really express something more than is in 

 the protest. 



The Bishop of London, in his primary charge 

 to the clergy of his diocese, delivered in St. Paul's 

 Cathedral, Feb. 21, reviewed the principal ques- 

 tions in controversy as to their history and their 

 significance. He took into account the motives 

 of the reformers of the sixteenth century in intro- 

 ducing the changes they made in the Prayer Book, 

 the differences in the thought and custom and 

 conditions of that time and of the present, and 

 the motives and purposes by which the partisans 

 of both sides of the present controversy were 

 animated. As to the questions concerning the 

 holy communion, the bishop affirmed that the 

 reformers in the later years of Henry VIII avow- 

 edly pursued the object of turning the mass into 

 a communion, their purpose being to get rid of 

 the abuses which had grown up around the idea 

 and practice of the mass. The further changes 

 made in the second Prayer Book of Edward VI 

 were prompted by a doubt whether the first 

 Prayer Book had adequately succeeded in this 

 object. On this ground it was thought wise to 

 drop the word mass in the second book, and to 

 incorporate a condemnation of the mass in the 

 Articles of l">r>3. "This is the object which the 

 church of England has ever pursued, to make 

 the holy communion a service for the people to 

 which they came prepared to receive the gifts of 

 grace in the way which Jesus had appointed. 



Our own time has seen a fuller accomplishment 

 of that object than any previous period has wit- 

 nessed. ... It is greatly to be regretted that this 

 advance toward the due appreciation of the mind 

 of the Church should be checked by anything 

 which even remotely suggests a desire to return 

 to that perception of the holy communion which 

 was so pernicious." The bishop traced the origin 

 of " fasting communion " to the customs of the 

 sixteenth century, when the hours for meals were 

 so fixed that it was most convenient to attend 

 the communion service before the midday meal. 

 Customs " were not meant to be burdens to gener- 

 ations whose habits of life had changed.'' 



The position of the Church of England on con- 

 fession was that it was left to every man's dis- 

 cretion. It was not to be enjoined, still less was 

 it to be enforced, by the clergy. Every one was 

 advised to try and quiet his own conscience first, 

 and if he needed further help he might seek it 

 at his own responsibility. " The Church does not 

 impose confession as a discipline; it recommends, 

 in the first place, confession to Almighty God; 

 it reserves private confession for cases where a 

 man is unable to quiet his own conscience. No 

 teaching should be given by the clergy which 

 does not"state all these facts." Further, the Bish- 

 op of London wrote, Feb. 26, to a correspondent 

 who inquired of him : " Confession is a private and 

 personal matter. There is no service provided for 

 it except in the case of the sick. If any one seeks 

 a clergyman's counsel and advice, he does so of 

 his own free will. A clergyman is called ' a min- 

 ister of God's Word.' He can only minister that 

 Word, and his advice, in whatever form it is given, 

 must rest on that, and that only." 



At the annual meeting of the Protestant Alli- 

 ance, April 25, resolutions were adopted express- 

 ing the belief that the revival of the mass, auricu- 

 lar confession, and other Roman Catholic prac- 

 tices was disastrous to the spiritual and moral 

 welfare of the people; pledging the meeting to 

 uphold the scriptural principles of the Reforma- 

 tion as the only effective guarantee of religious 

 and civil freedom; and approving the endeavor 

 of the Alliance to organize Protestant electors so 

 as to return members of Parliament pledged to 

 support legislation for the maintenance of those 

 principles. Other resolutions expressed alarm at 

 the continued lawlessness of a large section of the 

 Anglican clergy and the culpable neglect of duty 

 on the part of the authorities of the Established 

 Church, as well as the delay of the Government 

 in fulfilling their pledges to introduce a measure 

 for the compulsory discontinuance of " Romish " 

 practices; recording a renewed determination to 

 continue the agitation against the illegalities com- 

 plained of until they shall be effectually dealt 

 with ; and declaring that " in view of the increas- 

 ing efforts of papal propagandists to restore the 

 pre-eminence of sacerdotal authority in this coun- , 

 try, the toleration of priestly interference in any 

 measure with the affairs of the state is incon- 

 sistent with civil and religious freedom." 



In A Further Indictment of the Bishops and of 

 the Government (issued in April), the Church 

 Association maintained that the bishops had con- 

 tinued to aid and abet lawlessness in the Church 

 of England. Members of the English Church 

 Union and of the Confraternity of the Blessed 

 Sacrament had during the past year received pro- 

 motion at the hands of the Archbishops of Can- 

 terbury and York and the Bishops of London, 

 Durham, Winchester, Bangor, Chichester, Ely, 

 Exeter, Carlisle, Gloucester, Lichfield, Lincoln, 

 Llandaff, Newcastle, Oxford, Peterborough, Roch- 

 ester, St. Albans, Salisbury, Worcester, and Truro. 





