ANGLICAN CHURCHES. 



11 



complainants, they giving security for costs. The 

 bill further provided that if judgment be ob- 

 tained inhibition should follow immediately, ex- 

 cept the offender give a written undertaking to 

 discontinue the offense or offenses complained 

 of. Failing such undertaking within three 

 months, inhibition should result upon three judg- 

 ments obtained against the same person within 

 five years. An appeal to her Majesty in Council 

 was given, and all power of imprisonment was 

 abolished by the bill. 



At a meeting held at the Church House, Jan. 

 11, under the auspices of the National Protestant 

 Church Union, a memorial which had already 

 been signed by many peers, members of Parlia- 

 ment, and clergymen, was adopted for presenta- 

 tion to the Queen. It affirmed that certain of 

 the clergy had been engaged in the avowed pur- 

 pose of undoing the work of the Reformation, 

 and that mediaeval doctrines and practices which 

 have no place in the formularies of the Church 

 had been introduced, and appealed to her Majes- 

 ty to take steps to correct the evils complained 

 of and prevent the reimposition of the sacerdotal 

 yoke. (This memorial, signed uy 3,900 Church- 

 men, of whom 31 were peers, 50 members of the 

 House of Commons, 2,000 justices of the peace, 

 and 1,300 clergy, was presented to the Queen 

 on March 9.) A resolution adopted by the meet- 

 ing declared that the persistent efforts widely 

 made "to bring back into the Church of Eng- 

 land doctrines and practices which had been 

 deliberately rejected at the Reformation, and 

 were identified with the Church of Rome, con- 

 stitute grave danger, both to the country and 

 to the Protestant reformed religion established 

 by law." Another resolution suggested that 

 should the bishops prove unable, by an exercise 

 of the powers already intrusted to them, to 

 remedy these evils, recourse should be had to 

 further legislation. At a meeting of about 10,000 

 persons held in Albert Hall, London, under the 

 auspices of the Church Association and about 50 

 other general and local Protestant societies, a 

 demand was made for the application of the 

 present laws to the suppression of lawless ritual- 

 ism, and for new legislation to compel obedience 

 to the law by removing the veto of the bishops 

 and giving the laity free access to the courts of 

 the realm. Notice was also taken of a book 

 entitled The Secret History of the Oxford Move- 

 ment as an offensive one, describing practices to 

 which the attention of the Queen and Parlia- 

 ment should be given. At this meeting Lord 

 Overtoun suggested that in the act of union 

 England had pledged itself to Scotland to main- 

 tain forever the Protestant religion, and that 

 Scotland would insist upon England fulfilling its 

 part of the contract. 



A conference of Churchmen was held April 28, 

 the Bishop of Hereford presiding, for the pur- 

 pose of forming a common basis of action be- 

 tween moderate High Churchmen, Broad Church- 

 men, and Evangelicals. Co-operation was pledged 

 in maintaining by all lawful means the Protes- 

 tant and comprehensive character of the Church, 

 and in guarding " the great heritage of religious 

 freedom and progress secured to the English 

 people at the Reformation." The real presence 

 believed in was declared to be purely spiritual, 

 and no other to be recognized in the formularies 

 of the Church. The doctrine of the ritualists 

 was denounced as unscriptural and materialistic, 

 and their ritual as hardly, if at all, distinguish- 

 able from the Roman mass. Opposition was 

 pledged to the introduction of habitual confes- 

 sion to a priest and to the doctrine of the confes- 



sion, and the bishops were appealed to to prevent 

 clergymen from taking advantage of their posi- 

 tions to teach it, as well as to prohibit the reser- 

 vation of the sacrament. The meeting expressed 

 the opinion that the final determination of eccle- 

 siastical cases should continue to rest with her 

 Majesty in Privy Council, and declared opposition 

 to the pretension put forth by some of the clergy 

 that the law of the Church in spiritual matters 

 is to be authoritatively interpreted by the cler- 

 ical order alone. A representative committee was 

 appointed to carry out the objects of this move- 

 ment. 



A resolution was adopted at the conversazione 

 of the Church Association in May expressing 

 astonishment and alarm at the failure of the 

 archbishops and bishops to take action and at 

 their inadequate treatment of the whole question. 



A Ladies' League for the Defense of the Re- 

 formed Faith of the Church was formed in May. 

 It saw the chief danger of the Church in the 

 teachings rather than practices of ritualism, and, 

 disclaiming all partisan or political views, pur- 

 posed to approach the great questions at issue 

 from the religious side and by educational means. 



Letters of Sir William Harcourt. An im- 

 portant feature in the controversy was the pub- 

 lication in the Times of London of a series of 

 letters by Sir William Harcourt, dealing with the 

 various aspects of the discussion, and giving 

 prominence to legal points involved in it. In 

 the first of these letters the writer criticised the 

 proposal made by the archbishops to have dis- 

 puted cases argued before them personally or by 

 counsel as insufficient, because such a course 

 would deal only with questions of rubric and not 

 of doctrine; because the decisions of the arch- 

 bishops would have no binding power; and be- 

 cause the cases, having to be carried there by 

 the bishops, would probably never get before the 

 archbishops. In a second letter he marked out 

 a line of action to be taken in dealing with law- 

 less clergy. His plan was first to ascertain the 

 facts and to establish the real nature and extent 

 of the operations of the " Catholic revival " by 

 obtaining specific statements from each parish of 

 what practices were in use which had been de- 

 clared illegal by the courts or condemned by the 

 bishops; by the establishment in each diocese 

 of a regular organization for obtaining trust- 

 worthy reports on these, and then pressing these 

 reports on the attention of the bishop, and de- 

 manding his action, or, in the alternative, liberty 

 to proceed. The plan also contemplated that 

 the diocesan organization should secure reports 

 not only on the services in churches, but also 

 on the publications circulated among congrega- 

 tions, and especially among children of the 

 Church schools. 



Claims of the Ritualists. At a meeting con- 

 nected with the anniversary festival of the Eng- 

 lish Church Union, Feb. 23, the Rev. T. O. Mar- 

 shall, organizing secretary, spoke of the situation 

 as being the case of the Church being governed 

 by the man in the street by public opinion 

 *' but they could not submit to that." The 

 Rev. G. Bayfield Roberts, vicar of Gloucester, 

 said " they wanted it to be remembered that they 

 were the Catholic Church of England, and if 

 the assertion of that principle was dependent on 

 bringing the bishops out of the House of Lords 

 and bringing about disestablishment and dis- 

 endowment, then in God's name let the bishops 

 go out of the House of Lords; let disestablish- 

 ment and what they called disendowment . . . 

 come; but let them still hold true to the Church 

 of Christ." 



