ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



11 



responsibility, was it not partly due to the fact that 

 the authorities of the Church had done so little ? 

 The need of authorized prayers for the faithful 

 departed and the reservation of the blessed sacra- 

 ment for the communion of the sick, the duty of 

 restoring the last unction, the obligation of main- 

 taining the duty of Christian marriage at all risks 

 when had these been put forward by authorities 

 of the English Church for the last thirty years ex- 

 cept by Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury f It was not 

 necessary that every detail of the service should be 

 referred to the bishop, or that authority should 

 make itself felt to the same extent as in the Roman 

 Catholic communion. Canon Gore advised circum- 

 spection and care to remove every cause of blame 

 from among themselves. They could not forever 

 acquiesce in the present situation ; but history em- 

 phatically taught that there was no way to lose 

 liberty like that of allowing themselves illegitimate 

 license. The Rev. A. J. Suckling, of St. Alban's, 

 Holborn, held that by altering anything while 

 brutal and barbarous interference was going on 

 they would play into the hands of those who were 

 doing their utmost to drive them out of the Church. 

 It would be an admission that they regarded ritual 

 as a kind of play, while it was most serious as an 

 exponent of doctrine. They could not help the 

 bishops by giving in. A resolution, moved by the 

 Dean of Rochester, was carried without dissent : 

 " That this union is prepared to give all possible 

 ;upport to the lawful authority of the bishops as 

 ordinaries in the settlement of liturgical difficulties, 

 humbly confiding that, as members of the Catholic 

 episcopate, they will impose nothing on the con- 

 sciences of the clergy and laity which is contrary 

 to the teaching and practices of the whole Catholic 

 Church of Christ. That the Union will give legal 

 and all other assistance in its power to incumbents 

 and congregations in all necessary efforts to protect 

 the celebration of the holy eucharist and the serv- 

 ices of the Church from profanity and sacrilege. 

 That it must not be supposed that members of the 

 Union and other loyal Churchmen, because they 

 have not resorted to prosecutions, disturbances, or 

 brawling in church, do not feel most keenly the 

 omissions and deviations from the Book ( of Common 

 Prayer and the novel practices which have been 

 allowed to grow up in a Protestant or Latitudi- 

 nariari direction during the present century, as well 

 as the denial of the services to which they have a 

 right, or that they are not often aggrieved and 

 driven away from their parish churches thereby." 



Declarations of Bishops. The controversy 

 oncerning ritual was referred to by most of the 

 ishops in official addresses or charges, or in special 

 ommunications to the clergy of their several dio- 

 eses. Many of them uttered specific instructions 

 >ncerning proper ritual or admonitions against ex- 

 ss. 



The Bishop of London sent letters to the clergy 

 of his diocese informing them that any additional 

 service used should conform entirely to the spirit 

 and intention of the Prayer Book, and in all cases 

 should be submitted to his sanction ; that such serv- 

 ices, when used, should be separated by a distinct 

 interval from the services appointed in the Prayer 

 Book, and should be announced as additional; they 

 should consist of psalms, lessons, and prayers taken 

 from the Prayer Book adapted for special classes, 

 such as services for children, or for men and women, 

 or members of parochial guilds or organizations, or 

 they should be intercessions for special purposes, 

 such as missions, or temperance, or the like. 



The Bishop of Liverpool issued a circular specifi- 

 cally mentioning a number of ritualistic practices 

 not authorized by the Prayer Book, and requesting 

 ministers to abstain from them. The practices speci- 



fied are : The use of incense ; the use of lighted can- 

 dles in or near the communion table when not re- 

 quired for the purpose of giving light ; the use of 

 sacrificial vestments at the holy communion ; the 

 use of catechisms for children* directly teaching 

 " Mariolatry " ; the use of prayers for the dead at 

 holy communion, not enjoined in the Book of 

 Common Prayer and expressly excluded from the 

 second book of Edward VI; the requirement of 

 habitual auricular confession from communicants, 

 as a condition precedent to communion, or as tend- 

 ing to promote the highest spiritual life, which was 

 expressly condemned by the Lambeth Conference 

 in 1878 ; the use of the " reserved sacrament " for 

 invalids, which was condemned by the twenty- 

 eighth article of the communion rubric ; the public 

 celebration of the Lord's Supper with less than 

 three persons to communicate with the priest ; and 

 the use of the word " mass " in giving notice of 

 the holy communion. 



The Bishop of Hereford made a distinction be- 

 tween the ritual of reverent devotion and that which 

 was symbolical of unsound doctrine. That which 

 spread sacerdotal and sacramental theories had no 

 basis in the New Testament. He deprecated the 

 disposition to introduce new ceremonies into the 

 service, which were almost always imitations of 

 some Roman Catholic practice, and strongly depre- 

 cated habitual confession as involving the risk of an 

 unnatural sentiment, dangerous to the moral and 

 spiritual nature. As to the method of dealing with 

 these excesses, he thought no wise bishop would re- 

 sort to prosecutions till every other effort had 

 failed. 



The Bishop of Lichfield in September instructed 

 the clei-gy of his diocese that : 



" 1. The prescribed offices in the Book of Common 

 Prayer should be said as ordered without omissions 

 or additions, except such as are allowed under the 

 act of uniformity amendment act, or as might be 

 lawfully authorized from time to time by the bishop 

 of the diocese. 



"2. Audible interpolations in the communion 

 service are illegal. 



" 3. The reservation of the blessed sacrament for 

 the purpose of adoration is neither legal nor primi- 

 tive. Its reservation for administration to the sick 

 is primitive, but is not legal. 



' 4. The ceremonial use of incense in the pre- 

 scribed services of the Church is illegal. 



"5. The holy communion should not be cele- 

 brated unless the number of persons to communi- 

 cate with the priest required by their Church is 

 assured. 



" 6. Prayers for the dead should be after the 

 primitive model, and in entire accordance with the 

 spirit of the Book of Common Prayer. 



" 7. The observance of saints' days and holy days 

 besides those for which a collect, epistle, and gospel 

 were provided in the Book of Common Prayer should 

 be limited to those in the Prayer-Book calendar. 



"8. No additional services should be held in the 

 church without the permission of the bishop. 



" 9. The invocation of saints is illegal. 



" 10. It is not lawful to impose any conditions on 

 the baptized antecedent to their presentation for 

 confirmation, nor on the confirmed antecedent to 

 their reception of holy communion, which are not 

 imposed by any order contained in the Book of 

 Common Prayer." 



The bishop declared that the only right and reas- 

 onable course for the sake of order and in justice to 

 the laity was to keep to the Prayer Book ; that the 

 test of reality of worship is righteousness of life in 

 this world ; and the test of the efficiency of the min- 

 istrations of the clergy was the moral standard of 

 their parishioners. 



