.^t!- BV 4510 .Al C48 1865 v. 5 Church Association tracts ESTABLISHED 1865, /n>^ ^ To v/phold the Doctrines, Prinr.iples, and Order of the Imited \flfp^ch ^J§ i94v3i England and Ireland, and to counteract the efforts nowTba^ made ^\^ to pervert her teaching on essential points of the Cmn: faith, or assimilate her Services to those of the Chv/ri of Rome, and further to encov/rage concerted action for the advancement and progress of Spiritual Religion. Office — 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C. Secretary — Mr. Henry Miller. LIST OF PUBLICATIONS. The Secretaky will be happy to supply Members of the Associa- tion with a small number of any of the following numbered Tracts free for gratuitous circulation, and Non-Members at the prices marked against them. A set of the Tracts (1 to 300) bound in 6 volumes, at Is per vol., or post free 6s 9d ; in cloth at Is 6d per vol.. or post free 9s lOd. These form a complete Library on the Kitualistic Controversy, and should be in the hands of every Protestant Churchman. T B A C T S. VOL. I. No. 1 Must we Confess? By the Ven. Ai-chd. Taylor, d.d., ll.d.* 2 The Christian Priesthood. By the Ven. Archd. Taylor, D.D., LL.D.* 3 Prayers for the Dead. By the Ven. Archd. Taylor, d.d., ll.d.* 4 The Teaching of the Ritualists not the Teaching of the Church of England. f 5 Evening Communion. By the late Rev. Canon E. P. BlAKENEY, D.D., LL.D.* 6 Gospel Freedom and Priestly Tyranny. t 7 The Dogmatic Teaching of Bible Truths. By the late Rev. Canon Garbett, m.a.* 8 The Priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of His Members. What is it ? f 9 [ Will not he reprinted. See Tract 259.] 10 [Will not le reprinted. See Tract 259.] 11 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 12 The Falsification of History, especially in reference to the Reformation. By the late Rev. Dr. Boultbee.§ 13 [Out of print. Will not be reprinted.] 14 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 15 Episcopal Condemnations of Ritualism. t 16 Is there Popery in the Prayer Book, Historically considered ? By the late Rev. Dr. Boultbee.§ ** Id per dozen, or M per 100. i§ Sd per dozeu, or 4s per 100. tt 2(? per dozen, or Is per 100. i Sd per dozen, or 4s 6d per 100. * 3rf per dozen, or Is Orf per 100. II lOd per dozen, or 6s per 100, t 3d per dozen, or 'is per 100. f 2d each, or 12s per 100. t 5(Z per dozen, or 3s per 100. A single copy of any of the Tracts Id, unless otherwise stated. Wo. 17 The Relation of Soundness in the Faith to Spirituality in the Life. By the Ven. Archd. Richardson, m.a.j 18 Guilds. By the Rev. G. W. Weldon, m.a.§ 19 Spiritual and Evangelical Eeligion.— The best means for the Advancement of. By the Rev. Tai.bot A. L. Greaves.* 20 RituaUsm and Ritualism. Why some ought to be supported and some condemned. By the Ven. Archd. Richardson, M.A.f 21 Hymns Ancient and Modern, and their Romanizing Teaching. By the Rev. James Ormiston.|| 22 The " G-ainsaying of Core ? " By the Rev. Dr. WALLER.f 23 Incense. By the Rev. Helt H. Smith.* 24 The Bishop of Bath and Wells on the Ritualists.* 25 The Real Presence. By the Ven. Archd. Taylor, d.d., ll.d.* 26 The Counter-Reformation Movement and How to meet it. By the Rev. A. Baring-Gould, M.A.f 27 Voices of the Church of England on Auricular Confession. f 28 Confession and Forgiveness of Sins. By Rev. Dr. BARDSLEY.f 29 What Mean ye by this Service ? § 30 The Eastward Position. No. i. By the Rev. Canon Rtle.* [Late Bp. of Liverpool.] 31 Perilof Idolatry and Superfluous Decking of Churches* 32 Public Worship Regulation Act.§ 33 Distinctive Vestments. By the Rev. Canon Rtle.! [Late Bp. of Liverpool.] 34 Privy Council Judgment on Vestments.il 35 Eastward Position, Privy Council Judgment on.t 36 Wafer-Bread, Privy Council Judgment on.* 37 The Eastward Position. By the Rev. C. Dallas Marston, M.A.f 38 Vestments. By the late Leonard Rowe Valpt, Esq.f 39 The Iiord's Supper. A.D. 1674. (Illustrated.)* 40 Exeter Reredos Case. Judgment of the Privy Council. § 41 Address to Churchwardens -P. W. R. Act.* 42 The Errors of Ritualism have their source in the Unregenerate Human Heart. By the late Rev. C. J. Goodhart, m.a.* 43 The present Tactics of the Ritualists and how to meet them. By the Ven. Archd. Taylor, d.d., LL.D.f 44 {_Out of print. Will not be reprinted.'] 45 The Sacrificial Vestments, — Reasons Against. By the Rev. Canon R. P. Blakeney, d.d., ll.d.* 46 The Eastward Position, — Reasons Against. By the Rev. Canon R. P. Blakeney, d.d., ll.d.* 47 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 48 The Past Action of the Church Association, and the importance of maintaining it in increased efficiency in the future. By the Rev. G.' W. Weldon, m.a.|| 49 The Chiirch of England is Protestant. Historical Testimony. By I. P. Fleming, E.sq., m.a., d.c.l.^ 50 The Nature of Christian Worship. By the Rev. Canon Bell, m.a.§ 51 The Importance of the Issues at Stake in the Legal Proceedings of the Church Association. By the Rev.Dr. Bardslet.|| No. 52 Special Missions and Services ; their Advantages and Dangers. By the Ven. Archd. Richardson, M.A.f 63 Ritualism ; Extent of the Outbreak and Need of More Earnest Action on the Part of the Laity. By J. Bateman, Esq., F.R.S.* 64 Branch Associations— How best can their action be brought into closer connection with that of the Council. By Jasies Inskip, f^sq.f 65 Reasons for opposing Ritualism. By the Rev. Canon Rtle. D.D.* [Now Bp. of Liverpool.] 56 What do we owe to the Reformation? By the Rev. Canon Ryle, d.d. [Now Bp. of Liverpool.] 2d each, 6s per 100. 57 Absolution and Confession. The Mind of the Church of England as shown in the Homilies. f 58 [Out of -print. Will not he reprinted. See Tract 259.] 59 Chlirch Armour. By the Ven. Archd. Tatlor.+ 60 Ridsdale Judgment: Testimony it affords to the Protestant character of the Church ot England. By the Rev. G. W. Weldon.II VOL. II. 61 What practical course of action should now be taken to give effect to the various Judgments ? By Rev. Canon Rtle, d.d.§ [Bp. of Liverpool.] 62 Episcopal Responsibility. The advisability of the issue of Visitation Articles. By I. P. Fleming, Esq., m.a., d.c.l.|| 63 The Confessional, the best means of arousing and sustaining public opinion on the subject. By the Ven. Archd. Taylor, D.D.f 64 Theological instruction of candidates for the Ministry. By the Rev. Canon R. P. Blakenet, D.D.f 65 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 66 The Gown in the Pulpit. By the Rev. William Fleming, ll.b. H 67 Ritualism : A Romeward Movement.* 68 The Distinctive Principles of the Church of England. By the Rev. Canon Ryle, d.d.^ [Now Bp. of Liverpool.] 69 The Administration of the Law— The Present Aspect of, relative to Ecclesiastical Offences. By James Inskip, Esq.§ 70 Evangelical Churchmen True Churchmen. By the Rev. Dr Bardsley.|| 71 Church Architecture: its Proper Relation to Simple Christian Worship. By the late A. R. Pite, P'sq.§ 72 The Ritualistic Conspiracy— The True History of.t 73 Dean Burgon's Letter to Canon Gregory.§ 74 The Rights of the Laity— Existing Tendencies to encroach on. By I. P. Fleming, Esq., m.a., d.c.l.|| 75 Secret Societies. By the Rev. Hely Hutchinson Smith. m.a.|| 76 Evangelical Protestantism. The only sure means of resisting superstition and infidelity. By the Rev. Canon Clayton. § 77 The Rights of the Laity imperilled by the spread of Sacerdotalism and the Inaction of the Bishops. By Thomas Smelt, Esq.ll 78 Shall we go back to the Prayer Book of 1549 ?§ 79 Should the Church Association be dissolved or strengthened by those who value the English Reformation ?* 4 No. 80 Speech of J. M. Holt, Esq., at Willis's Rooms, 8th May, 1883.t 81 [_Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 82 The Reactionary andRetrograde Tendency of Ritualism Evidenced by the Proposed Recurrence to the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. By the Rev. Septimus Hobbs.j 83 The Secrets of Ritualism. By Rev. C H. Wainwright, m.a.§ 84 The Constitutional Settlement of Church and State. § S5 Ritualism Grows ; What Wext, and Next ? By Rev. J. W. Johnson, M.A.f 86 1686 and 1886. By The Rt. Hon. Lord Robert MoNTAQu.f 87 "Hearing Mass" versus "The Lord's Supper or Holy Com- munion." By J. T. ToMLiNSON.§ 88 The North Side of the Table. An Historical Enquiry as to the Origin and Meaning of the Fourth Rubric in the Communion Service. By J. T. Tomlinson.^ 89 Additional Evidence respecting the Ornaments Rubric of 1662. By J. T. Tomlinson. Part I.|| 90 The Advertisements of Queen Elizabeth. By J. T. ToMLINSON.t 91 Altar Lights: Their History and Meaning. By J. T. T0MLINS0N.il 92 The Mixed Chalice. By J. T. Tomlinson.! 93 Additional Evidence respecting the Ornaments Rubric of 1662. By J. T. Tomlinson. Part Il.f 94 The Doctrine of a ' Spiritual ' Presence as taught by the Ritualists. By J. T. Tomlinson.^ 95 Teaching of the Catechism as to the Lord's Supper. By J. T. Tomlinson.* 96 The Bishops' Veto. By J. T. Tomlinson.§ 97 Idols in the Church of God. By the Rev. T. J. GASTEE.t 98 The Misprinted Catechism, or the definition of " this word Sacrament " as now substituted by " privileged " Printers for that of the Church of England. By J. T. Tomlinson. || 99 Non-communicating Attendance at Holy Communion. The Opinion of Professors of Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge.* 100 ** The Priest and the Privy Council." Contains a reply to all the more usual misrepresentations of the Privy Council Judg- ments which are put forth from time to time by Ritualists. Price 4d. VOL. III. 101 Are Crucifixes in Churches Lawful ? f 102 Into their Hands. A plea for the old way of "Taking" the Bread at the Holy Communion. By J. T. Tomlin80N.§ 103 Ecclesiastical Prosecutions originated and advocated by the English Church Union.f 104 Jurisdiction of English Metropolitans. Judgment of Archbishop of Canterbury in the Lincoln Case.1[ 10.5 St. Paul's Reredos Case. Judgment on Bishops' Veto in Queen's Bench. ^ 106 A Defence of the Church Association. A reply to two Attacks by Sydney Gedge, Esq. (late m.p., Solicitor to the School Board), in the Churchman of May and Sept., 1889.^ 107 Mr. Jas. Parker's Attack upon the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council. By J. T. Tomlinson. § 108 Sheppard v. Bennett. Privy Council Judgment.^ No. 109 The Dean of Peterborough's Plan. Extracts from a Paper by Mr. Chancellor DinoiN.f 110 Folkestone RitualJudgment. .3(Z each. 111 The Threatened Revival of Canon Law in the Church of England. By .1. T. ToMUNsoN.t 112 Reservation of the Host. An Examination of the Reply of the C. H. 8. to the Hesolutious of the Upper Houses of Convocation 1885. By ,J. T. Tomlinson.§ ' 113 The Sarum Mass compared with the Communion Office of the First Prayer Bool^ of Edward VI. By J. T. Tomlin- 80N. Price -id. 114 Prosecutions for Ritual Observances. A Reply to the Dean of Canterbury. By the late Rev. Bishop Alford, v.d.^ 115 Declaration of the Church Association.* 116 The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.ff 117 Apostolic Succession.** 118 Lord Sandon on Sacerdotalism.ft 119 "What did our Reformers Teach ?tt 120 What Ritualism is! No. l.ft 121 What Ritualism is! No. 2.tt 122 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted,'\ 123 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 124 The Plan of the Campaign.ft 125 l^Out of print. Will not be reprinted.] 126 Prayers for the Dead. Extract from Homily XIX. Third Part.tt 127 Confession. The Bishop of Peterborough on.ff 128 Confession. Utterances of the Episcopal Bench on.* 129 Gown V. Surplice.* 130 Form of Prayer, for those interested in the Society's work.ff 131 [_Out of print. Will not bs reprinted.] 132 Lord Harrowby (the late) on Auricular Confession.* 133 Collect to be used in the Present Crisis. ft 134 Vestments— Condemnation of.ft 135 \_Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 136 The Eastward Position. No. 2. By the Rev. Canon Ryle, D.D.tf (Now Bp. of Liverpool.) 137 Vestments— Twelve Reasons against. By Rev. Canon Ryle, D.D.tf (Now Bp. of Liverpool.) 138 Church Hymnals. — The care in special need of Selection.ff 139 A High Church Clergyman on the Ritualists.ft 140 The Priesthood of Christ. By the Rev. Canon Ryle, D.D.ff (Now Bp. of Liverpool.) 141 P. P. P. Popery's Poetical Pioneer.ff 142 Bishop Wilberforce on Confession.** 143 Justice not Persecution. ft 144 The Dean of Chichester on Ritualism.ft 145 Lament of England's Church. By the late Very Rev. Dean H. Law.* 146 The Church Rights of Parishioners. By the late Rt. Hon. Lord CocKBiRN, C.J. ft 147 What do the Times require ? By the Rev. Canon Ryle, D.D.* (Now Bp. of Liverpool.) 6 No. 148 The Ornaments Rubric* 149 The Illegality of Crosses. Judgment in Marsters «. Durst.* 150 Proposal by the Chairman of the English Church Union to bring back the Liturgy of 1549. Speech bj the late Rev. Canon HoARE.ff 151 Holy Scripture versus the Eastward Position. ft 152 Dean Oakley's Correspondence with Prebendary Maedonald.tt 153 Crucifixes abolished under Queen Elizabeth.tt 154 King Edward VI. and his Altar Lights.ft 155 Luther's Bitualismft 156 Cross Bearers. By the late Miss HoLT.ft 157 The Candour of Lord Halifax.ft 158 The Eastward Position.* 159 The Work of the Church Association. By the Rev. Canon CHRISTOPHER.ff 160 The Three Eeligions. Which is yours? By theRev. J. B. WADDlNGTON.ft 161 Questions for the Laity. By the Rev. J. B. WADDiNGTON.ft 162 The Teaching of Ritualism ; and the Teaching of the Church of England. By the Rev. J. B. WADDiNGXON.ff 163 The Great Controversy : Which is the Channel of Salvation ? Faith ? or The Sacraments ? By the Rev. J. B. WADDlNGTON.ft VOL. IV. 164 The Placing of the Lord's Table. By J. T. Tomlinson. (Illustrated.)f 165 Additional Evidence respecting the Ornaments Rubric of 1662. By J. T. Tomlinson. Part Ill.f 166 An Appeal to the Laity to Oppose Ritualism. By the Rev. W. C. Magee, late Archbishop of York.ff 167 What did the Reformation do for me ? By the late Rev. John B. Mylius, m.a., Rector of Elmdon, Warwicks.f f 168 The Church and the Bible. By the late Rev. John B. Mylius, m.a., Rector of Elmdon, Warwicks.ft 169 The Lord's Supper, or the Mass ? (Illustrated.) By the Rev. W. Lancelot Holland, m.a.* 170 Church Teaching on the Lord's Supper. By the Rev. Charles H. H. Wright, d.d., PH.o.f 171 The New (?) Purgatory.* 172 The Bishops and the Ritualists. By W. Clayton Clayton, M.A.f 173 The Position of Ecclesiastical Affairs. By the late Rt. Honble. Lord EBURY.f f 174 The Inquiring Parishioner. By Rev. B. W. Stannus.* 175 Evening Communions. By the late Rev. C. H. Marriott.! 176 The Wonderful Iron Roomtt 177 The Coronation of Queen Victoria.t 178 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 179 Bishop Ellicott on the Church Association, ft 180 "The Liturgy and the Eastward Position." Illustrated by fifteen of the oldest known representations of the Lord's Supper. By J. T. ToMLiNSON-Tl 181 Sisterhoods in the Church of England, f No. 182 Canon Law. Keply of the Council of the Church Association to the " Rejoinder " of the E.C.U.|| 183 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 184 [Out of print. Will yiot he reprinted.] 185 Comments on the Lincoln Judgment.f 186 Opinions of the Press on the Lincoln Judgment.! 187 Ritualism Rampant in the Diocese of St. Albans. 188 Church Reform. By J. T. Tomlinson.* 189 Revival of Catholic Discipline.* 190 Temple Ritual and Christian Worship.! 191 Church Reform. By the Bishop of Liveki'00l.§ 192 The Chancels shall remain, &c. By J. T. Tomlinson.§ 19."^ Regeneration and Baptism. By lit. Rev. the Lord Bishop of LiVEUPOOL.f 194 Ritualism Rampant in East London. 195 " In the matter of moving the Lord's Table." Case and Opinion of Counsel. Price 6d. 196 " Religious Education and the Kilburn Sisterhood."! 197 [Out of print. Will not he reprinted.] 198 Bishop Geste and Dean Parrar on the 28th Article.tt 199 What is " Sacerdotalism "?tt VOL. V. 200 [Will not he reprinted as a numbered Tract.] 201 [Will not he reprinted as a numbered Tract. 202 A Review of " The Catholic Religion. A Manual of Instruc- tion for Churchmen. By the Rev. Vernon Stalky."* 203 "New Light" on the "Eastward Position."! 204 Martyrdom for Religion under Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth.* 205 Spiritual Equipment for Spiritual Work. By the Rev. T. Smith, M.A.f 206 Does Ritualism lead to Rome?* 207 Parsonolatry ; or, Why rise when Clergy and Choir enter the Church ?* 208 The Vain Vauntings of Dr. Vaughan.* 209 [Out of print. Will not he rejyrinted.] 210 The E. C. U. : Its Popish Character, &c.t+ 211 Purgatory Pickpurse.* 212 Viscount Halifax on the Papacy.ft 213 Incense.§ 214 Prayers for the Dead. By the Rev. Dr. Wright.^ 215 A Vital National Question.* 216 The Pope's Letter. A Declaration of the Church Association.* 217 [See Tract 268.] 218 The Invention of the Cross, old Facts with new Faces. (_Illustrated.^\ 219 Fashionable Torture Instrximents of the Ritualists ; or, the Gospel of Expiation. {lllustrated.)-f 220 Why we are called Protestants. (Illustrated.)* 221 Prayers for the Dead. {llhistrated.)-\-\ 222 Questions and Answers for English Church People.ft 8 No. 223 Modern Ritualism, Ancient Judaism.* 224 Candles, Crosses, Altars, Pictures: What do the Homilies say ?tt 225 The Holy Communion the Highest Act of Christian Worship. By the Rev. B. W. Stannus, M.A.ff 226 The Bishop of London's Fund.* 227 Plain Words about the Lord's Supper.tt 228 Church Reform. The Outlook for the Established Church of England. f 229 The Eucharist a Lay Sacrament.tt 230 Prayers for the Dead. ft 231 The Cowley Fathers, alias The Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley.* 232 The use of the term " Priest" in the Prayer Book.* 233 Old St. Paul's Cathedral and the Bible. (lllustrated.)-\-\ 234 The Bible and the Church. By the Ven. Archdeacon Taylor, D.D.f 235 The Archbishops' Reply to the Pope's Bull. What is to be done ?* 236 Some Criticisms by the Council of the Church Association on the " Answer " to Pope Leo made by Archbishops Maclagan and Teniple.f 237 A Word in season about Lent.ft 238 Convocation on Confession.ft 239 The Greek Church. Her Doctrines and Principles contrasted with those of the Church of England. Is Union desirable or possible ? A Lecture by the Rev. Joseph Bardslet, d.d.^ 240 Union with Oriental Churches. By the Rev. H. E. Fox, M.A.* 241 The Modern Confessional. (Elustrated.)-ff 242 Modern " Mass " in the Church of England. (Illus- trated.) ft 243 The Reunion Question as it regards Protestant Churches. By the late Rev. Talbot Greaves.* 244 Society of the Holy Cross. With List of Members. || :^45 Revelations of Anglican Monkery.§ •246 Society of St. John the Evangelist. The Cowley Fathers.! 247 Sacrilegious Ordinations by Members of the E.C.U.tt 248 " C. S. J." Companions of St. John.tt 240 Secret Societies in the Church of England.* 250 Manifesto and Appeal of the Church Association to the People of England.* VOL. VI. 251 Mass or Communion? Samples of Law-breaking under the oversight of Dr. Creighton, Bishop of London.^ 252 The Right Hon. Sir W. V. Harcourt, Bart., M.P., on The Action of the Bishops. t 253 The Confessional in the Church of England. (illustrated). ft 254 Latimer's Candle, (niwstratecl.)tt 255 Schools of Thought. Verses by Martin F. TupPEB.ft 256 Latimer's Light. Verses by Roger Primrose. ft 9 No. 257 The Primary Charge of the Archbishop of Canter- bury and the Recent Pastoral of the Archbishop of York on "Disputes in the Church" examined.il 258 The " Six Points " of the Ritualists; What do they mean ? t 259 Illegal Ritual in the Church of England. Being a list of unlawful practices, with extracts from the Judgments relatng to them ; and an Index, tid. each. 260 Reply by the Council of the C. A. to the Manifesto of the E. CU.f 261 The Universities' Mission to Central Africa. By the Rev. T. II. Sparshott.* 262 Ritualism Rampant in the Diocese of St. Albans.* 263 The Ecclesiastical Procedure Bill proposed by the two Archbishops in Convocation.! 204 The Bishops' Scheme for erecting themselves as Judges-t 265 The Danger of Manuals for the Young.§ 266 " The Society of the Charity of God."* 267 The Minister's Scarf, or the " Sacriflcer's " Stole— which ?* 268 Shall India bow to English Idols ? The S.P.G. in foreign parts: Is it worthy of Protestant support ? {Illustrated.) i 269 The Irish UniversityDiflaculty Explained? (Illus- trated). f-j- 270 The True Story of the Ornaments Rubric. By J. T. T0ML1NS0N.|| 271 "The Method of S. Sulpice;" a Review of "the Clergy and the Catechism.* 272 Canon MacCoU's Romancings about the Book of Common Prayer. f 273 What is Protestantism? By the Kev. T. H. SpARSHOTT.ft 274 The Church Reform League. Extract from a Paper by the Yen. Archdeacon Taylor, d.d. 275 The Lincoln Case. A Judgment four times revised since its delivery, tt 276 Disestablishment.t 277 Romanism in the Church of England. The absolute uselessness of Appealing to the Bishops.* 278 A Gross Scandal in the Diocese of York with the cognizance of the Archbishop.f 279 What is the Harm of bringing back the " Reservation of the Host " ?t 280 " The Church Discipline Bill, 1900."* 281 The Convocation Prayer against Popery in the Church of England.* 282 What the Ritualists say about the Protestant Par- liamentary Campaign. § 283 The Worship of the Host, as promulgated by Viscount Halifax, and the Reply of the Church Association. || 284 " Under the Form of Bread and Wine."t 285 Archdeacon Taylor on the Romanizing Movement.* 286 Convocations Bill and " Church Reform." * 287 Why was the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. rejected? t 10 No. 288 Sir Richard Jebb's Convocations Bill.* 289 The Church Association's many-sided work.** 290 The Statutory Declaration and the Coronation Oath.tt 291 Pasting Communion. 292 "Cardinal" Vaughan and the Royal Declaration against Popery, t 293 Rome's Clerical Recruits from the ranks of the English Church Union.* 294 The Bishop of Manchester's Twentieth Century Million Shilling Fund.* 295 The Protestant Succession to the Throne. An Attack upon the Last Legal Security.!! 296 The Value of Roman Catholic Pledges.!! 297 Plain Words on the Protestant Declaration made by the King of England. By the Rev. J. P. Watts.* 298 "Superstitious" and "Idolatrous."!! 299 A Gross Scandal in the Diocese of St. Albans. 300 The King's Protestant Declaration. By J. Horace R0UND.§ CLASSIFICATION OP THE FOREGOING TRACTS. ANTI-RITUALISTIC IN GENERAL. 4, 20, 26, 29, 42, 43, 53, 55, 67, 72, 73, 83, 85, 119, 120, 121, 124, 139, 144, 145, 152, 162, 166, 172, 176, 206, 207, 222, 254, 256. ANGLICAN ORDERS. Reply to Pope, 216, 235, 236, 247. ARCHITECTURE. 71, 101. BISHOPS. Condemn Ritualism, 15, 24, 67, 143, 238, 281. Duties or, 62, 172, 208, 252, 254, 255, 264, 277. CHURCH ASSOCIATION. Defence, 106, 113, 114, 159, 179, 260. Organisation, 48, 54, 63, 79, 80, 106, 159, 289. CHURCHWARDENS. 41. CHURCH REFORM. 173, 188, 191, 228, 263, 264, 274, 280, 286, 288 COMMUNION TABLE. Moving. 195. North Side, 88, 164, 177. Placing, 164, 195. COMMUNION. Evening, 5, 175. Easting, 222, 237, 291. Hearing Mass, 87, 99, 199, 242, 251. Reservation, 112, 257, 279. Coronation Oath and Declaration, 84, 177, 290, 292, 295,296, 297, 298, 300. DEVOTIONAL. 17, 19, 50, 130, 133, 160, 161, 16.3, 205, 237 DISESTABLISHMENT. 276. 11 DOCTRINAL. A Catechism, 59. Confession, 1, 27, 28, 57, 63, 127, 128, 132, 142, 222, 238, 241,253,271. Dogmatic Teaching, 6, 7, 64, 68, 70, 76, 115. JasTiFiCATiON BY Kaith, 174, 219, Priesthood, 2, 8, 117, 118, 140, 207, 229, 232, 267 Pdkgatory, 171,211. Regeneration and Baftism, 193. Sarum Mass, 113. Temple Ritual, 190, 223. The Dangkr of Manuals for the Young, 265, 271. The '• Gainsaying of Korah," 22. The Lord's Supper, 9^, 109, 170, 198, 225, 227, 242. The " Real " Presence, 25, 94. 102, 116, 169, 170, 198, 227, 242, 257, 283, 284. EDUCATION. 196,202, 265,269, 271. HISTORY. Falsification of, 12, 155, 204, 272. HOMILIES. 31, 57, 126, 224. HYMNALS. 2 , 138, 141, = LAWLESSNESS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 251, 252, 257, 264, 277, 278. LAITY, THE. 74, 77, 146. LEGAL STANDARDS. Abstracts of Legal Decisions, 34 (Vestments), 259. Boyd v. Philpotts, 40 (Reredos). Canon Law, 111, 182. Comments on Legal Decisions, 51, 60,61 (Ridsdale Judgment), 69. Jurisdiction op English Metropolitans, 104, 157. Marsters v. Durst, Judgment, 149 (Altar Cross). Purchas Judgment, 35 (Eastward Position), 36 (Wafers). P. W. R. Act, 32 ; Comments on, 41,280. Reredos, St. Paul's, 105. Revival of Catholic Discipline, 189. Ridsdale v. Clifton, 110. Sheppard v. Bennett, 106, 108. The Advertisements of Q. Elizabeth, 90, The Ecclesiastical Procedure Bill, 263, The Lincoln Judgment, 185, 275. Opinions of the Press, 186. The Misprinted Catechism, 98. The Veto, 96, 105, 280. MISSIONS. 52, 261, 268. PRAYER BOOK. Of 1549, 78, 82, 11.3, 150, 287. Ornaments Rubric, 89, 93, 109, 148, 165, 192, 270. Protestantism of, 16, 232, 272. PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD. 3, 126, 214, 221, 222, 230. PREACHING DRESS. 66, 129. PROTESTANTISM. 16, 49, 56, 84, 86, 147, 166, 167, 168, 172, 173, 176, 215, 220, 233, 234,254, 256, 273,281. PROTESTANTISM BEFORE POLITICS. 282. 12 PROSECUTIONS BY E.C.U. 103. RITUALISTIC PRACTICES. Altar Lights, 91, 154, 224, 258. Attacks on Privy Council, 100, 107. Crosses, 149, 156, 218, 224, 278. Eastward Position, 30, 37, 39, 46, 51, 136, 151, 158, 177, 180 203, 242, 258. Idols, 97, 153, 224. Incense, 23, 213, 258. Mixed Chalice, 92, 258. Parsonolatry, 207, 222. Vestments, 33, 34, 38, 45, 110, 134, 137, 258, 267. Wafer Bread, 258. RITUALISTIC SOCIETIES EXPOSED. Guilds and Secret Societies, 18, 75, 181, 210, 231, 244, 24.'), 246, 248, 249, 252, 253, 260, 266, 268, 274, 283, 284, 293. Ritualism Rampant, 187, 194, 226, 261, 262, 278, 294, 299. SACERDOTALISM. 199, 207, 232, 242. UNION With Rome, 212, 243, 260. With Greek Church, 239, 240. PROTESTANT BOOKLETS. I. A Talk with the Vicar. By the late Emily S. Holt.|1 II. The Crucifix at St. Paul's Cilht,strated).\\ III. Why are we Protestants ? By the late Emily S. Holt.§§ IV. Q,ueen Elizabeth's Crucifix. By J. T. Tomlinson.H V. The New Graven Images at St. Paul's Cathedral. B) the late Emily S. Holt. 11 PROTESTANT PICTURES. We are often asked for Protestant Pictures, suitable for framing for house decoration ; we have therefore arranged to supply the following. The]/ are all beautiful inctures of the highest order. Departure of the Pilgrim Fathers from Delft Haven 3 If X 231. John Knox administering the first Protestant Sacra- ment in Scotland. 28| x 2i. Beading the Bible in the Crypt of old St. Paul's. 27J x isf. Escape of a Huguenot Family after St. Bartholomew. 33 X 17i. Departure of the Mayflower. 34| x 18|. Cromwell and Milton. 25f x 20^. Cromwell's Protest against the Persecution of the Waldenses. 33 x 21. Any of the above engravings, post free, 15s. Caxton showing the first specimen of his printing to Edward IV. 36^ x 22. 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MOBUAN AND SON, PRINTERS, FLORAL STREET, COVENT GARDEN. Please send this on to a Friend. u vr in connection vcitb BADGE OF THE , ., ,^, in connection witb LEAGUE. 1. To maintain unimpaired "the Protestant Reformed Religion, established by law," and to defend it against all encroachments of Popery. 2. To spread sound Protestant Truth in the Church of England. 3. To unite in prayer for the increase of Spiritual Religion. 4. To co-operate with the Church Association in up- holding Reformation Principles; to educate me Young in Evangehcal Truth; and to disseminate sound and wholesome literature. 5. To secure the return of Protestant Candidates at Parliamentary Elections. —J- ^ffljztliodl^ of M^orkimig l\\^ ^jzagu^j. 1. The formation of Lodges in Towns and Villages. 2. Social gatherings in Drawing Rooms, School Rooms, or Gardens. 3. Public Meetings Lectures or Tea Meetings, to give information, report progress, and to confer. 4. Meetings for Prayer. 6. Classes for Instruction. 5. Distribution of Literature. 7. Obtaining Signatures to Petitions. .C^T^, ^letiutcs ©t lr)c ^keeterue, 1. Each Member of the League (male or female) shall pay One Shilling per annum. 2. Each Member of the League shall undertake to devote his (or her) best ability to maintain the Protestant Religion, and to secure the return of Protestant Candidates at Parliamentary Elections. 3. Each Member shall receive from the Council of the Church Association in London the Diploma of the League; and a Badge can be purchased. 4. Any six or more persons in a Town or Village may form a Lodge, and call a meeting to enrol Members. 5. The President and Vice-Presidents of a Lodge shall pay Two Shillings and Sixpence per annum. 6. Not less than one-half of the Subscriptions or Dona- tions received through a Lodge shall be remitted to London, the remainder being retained for local expenses. The Diplomas for Members of a Lodge will be forwarded from London on receipt (from the Lodge Secretary) of the half Subrcriptions and names and addresses. 7. Each Lodge shall be governed by a Committee elected annually by its Members, such Committee being responsible to the Council of the Church Association in London. 8. Every Lodge shall, if possible, hold two Pubhc Meetings or Lectures each year, and a special meeting of a Lodge shall be called whenever necessary, to con- sider any important matter referred to it by the London Council. g. Minutes of Meetings, and a Register of Members shall be kept by every Lodge, and a brief Report of work done and progress made should be forwarded each year to the London Council. i2 = ■" S if '^ © > « C ^ 1 3 a o ' '2 <» t/5 CO V -< »J O oc ^ - _r dr «e « 75 '2 O {/I 5 " JA 6JD S3 ^ ^ t& •■H «1 oc i ^ a <1 1- H W C2 g 8 i -^ 5 r;:, a * o Slant Refo Popery, a ry Electio] '■e 1 1 M a 3 n 1-1 1 ^ a; ^ o £ ^ o « '0 ^ 0) 1 fcID • •N i 4^ ^k^ § •IT «»^^K ' \ o ^ o .Co CO a- 2 E^ 3 ft 73 o h ►^ -« ^ *^ "9- 1,000,000 MEMBERS WANTED AT Is. EACH. How those who have done nothing at present can take part in obtaining the ONE MILLION members required. I. — By filling up the form on the other side and sending is at once to the Registrar, and obtaining the Diploma of Membership. 2. — By applying to the Registrar for Papers to distribute amongst their friends, and to enclose in letters. 3. — By getting as many persons as possible to become active and energetic workers for the League. This League will become an cuormous power for good if Protestauts Shrougliout the country will throw a little enthusiasm into it. In a scattered rural district, miles from a Town or Railway, one Member obtained 120 other Members for the League. Let Protestants rouse themselves and try to follow this excellent example. Every lover of his Country, and friend of Civil aud ilcligious Liberty, should join the League. In a Country district in Wales a lady obtained 123 Members. In a town where we had not before 6 Members of the Church Association, we obtained igo Members of the League. In a Seaport Town, one lady obtained over 100 Members. Who else will work for the Protestant Cause ? The Council awards the Special Silver Badge, with ribbon and clasp, to any person getting fifty Members in one year. Diploma sent on receipt of Is subsci'iption. Tlie prices of the Badges are as follows: Gold, 16^'; Silver, .5s; Enamel, 3s 6d; Copper-gilt, (jd. All information from The Registrar, Hekrt Miller, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London. U.B.^This is not a new Society, but a further development of the work of the Churcli Association for the purpose of enabling all Protestants to take a part in the great work which the Association Iihs in hand. 311th Thousand.] 4- Son, Prinfert, Floral .Street, '"Londati. A EEVIEWU^'^^^JS^ 0,v< OF Puiric^ ^1 A ogkal "THE CATHOLIC RELIGION," "A Manual of Instruction for Members of the English "Church. By the Rev. VERNON STALEY, Chaplain- " Priest op the House op Mercy, Clewer. With a "Prepace by the Rev. CANON CARTER."* This book aims at being the popular handbook of the Romaniz- ing school. The Church Times of March IGth, 1894, places it "at the head of" doctrinal works, and says it "has leaped into popularity at a bound." Printed on bad paper, everything in the "get up " has been sacrificed to cheapness, while some second-hand woodcuts lend to it a certain attractiveness. The plates are indeed very curious. The first shews the visible Church split up into five sections divided not only from one another, but from the Rock on which the Saviour is depicted : and, quite naturally, those nearest the spectator are shewn to have sunk lowest in a continuous descent below the Founder's level. With subtle irony the designer has committed the " Council of the Church House " (whose seal it is) to a confession that the actual Chui-ch does not in any way correspond to their pet theories respecting it. The stream of doctrine is pictured as split up into four separate " traditions," which act as so many dividing influences to separate the mutually excommunicated portions of " Christendom." If Canon Carter had had any sense of humour he would have suppressed this tell-tale frontispiece. Another second-hand print copies from Dean Stanley "s Memorials of Canterbury, the so-called Augustine's chair, overlooking the fact that Stanley, in the very passage there cited, says, " though not the very one in which Augustine sate, it no doubt represents the ancient episcopal throne in which after the fashion of the bishops of that time, he sate behind the altar (for that was its proper place, and there, as is well known, it once stood) with all his clergy round him, as may still be seen in several ancient churches abroad." This sentence, though relegated to excruciatingly small type, bears witness against the unprimitiveand uncatholic practice of Eastward celebration with back-to-the-people, as we shewed in our Tract 180 which gives, by the way, much better as well as more numerous illustrations at far less than the cost of Mr. Staley's manual. Some of the other illustrations, taken from Roman Catholic sources, shew the Virgin standing on the clouds of heaven w4th a dependent infant still in her custody, and under her tuition (p. 154), or else seated in the central place of honour under the descending Dove, surrounded * From the " Church Intelligencer,^' March, 1894. No. 202.] ,V\> by her court of atteiidant Apostles on the day of Pentecost, a circumstance not recorded by the writer of the '* Acts of the Apostles," whose silence gave but a freer hand to the " Catholic" artist who imagined this vain thing (p. 203). Four other pictures throw up the Virgin into prominence at the expense of the immature Saviour, as the central figure put forward for contemplation by nineteenth century Christians. Another (p. 244) shews the wafer surrounded by a halo, to indicate "Its" Divinity : while another repeats certain shameful blunders in the account of Bp. Parker's consecration, every detail of which contradicts the account given in Parker's own Register.* Parker was consecrated under the Ordinal of 1552, not under that of 1550 : the Register says he was clad in a surplice, so this picture arrays him in a cope. All the conse- crating bishops (save, Barlow) then wore simply "linen surplices," so this lying picture clothes them, in chasubles, or copes. Guest being a young man of forty-five is depicted as a stooping ancient of eighty. Miles Coverdale being near that age, is depicted as a middle-aged man of fifty. His " black gown " becomes in the picture a chasuble worn over a surplice. Scory also is clad in a chasuble instead of the " surplice " which alone is mentioned in the Register. Parker is kneeling down to answer questions which were in fact put to him standing erect. The Epistoler and Gospeller are aimlessly standing about without regard to their proper functions : while Parker is decorated with a big monk's cowl, as if to conceal the fact that he was but a secular priest. To crown all, an " altar " is shewn laden with two candlesticks of disproportionate bulk, displaying also a chalice (before even the commencement of the Communion Service), while Bp. Barlow sits sideways to the "altar " (apnd niensam in cathedra sedente) as if to shew off its imaginary frontal, which the artist has invented in ignorance that all "altars" had been carefully pulled down by the Royal Visitors long before Parker's consecration, and that Parker had himself been most active in that work. The " table" (expressly so called) is not said to have been against the East wall, but only Eastward in the Chapel, "ad orientem." It had no frontal, but only a "carpet" (tapetem) : and it had no candlesticks, for such things had been forbidden by Elizabeth's Injunctions of July, 1559, and when later introduced into the Royal Chapel, they created a hubbub throughout the whole realm, the echoes of which are given back in the despatches of foreign courts, so exceptional and phenomenal was the innovation then deemed. These pictures in short symbolise well the fraudulent character of the " history " and vouchers given in the text of Mr. Staley's manual. Closely connected, for instance, with that last named picture is the statement of Canon Carter in the Preface (p. viii) that the Lambeth Judgment rested the lawfulness of altar-lights on the Ornaments rubric. That is not only unwarranted, it is the * The Eegister at Lambeth is copied by photography in Bailey's " Defensio Ordinum," and is printed in Haddan, and (less accurately) in Cardwell's "Documentary Annals," and translated in Strypc's Tarkur, I. -113. 3 very reverse of the truth, Bp. King had publicly proclaimed in advance that his contention rested on this rubric, yet not one of his counsel could be induced to argue the question on that basis : nor did the Judges in either coui't so much as allude to it. Nay, more, the w^ater cruet, which this manual tells us (p. 298) was one of these ornaments, was forbidden by the Judgment itself to be used as " was in this Church of England in the second year of King Edward VI." Its use in the service was pronounced illegal, though tolerated if smuggled in hefore the service proper commenced. There is at p. 298 the old trick of substituting the " Use of the second year," for the "authority of Parliament in the second year " — two things diametrically opposed the one to the other. Mr. Staley tells us, the "ancient canon law, the Salisbury Missal, and other service books in use in the year referred to" shew what was intended in 1559, although in fact, both the books themselves and the ornaments used under them were removed with ignominy by the Royal Visitors sent out to enforce the Act of Uniformity which, as legislators, these same Visitors had just been parties to enacting. On like grounds, this manual no longer pretends to vindicate " two " altar lights, but depicts (p. 296) half a dozen caudle- flames on either side of a crucifix, flanked by four lighted stan- dards resting on the ground, as illustrating Mr. Staley's revised version of the alleged requii^ements of the " ornaments rubric." The account of the Reformation is altogether at variance with the known facts. It is represented as having been a mere change in money matters, and in appeals, but without any important doctrinal significance. The primacy of the Pope is admitted (p. 93), the worship of the host inculcated (p. 302, cf. 196, 255, 256), Purgatory (pp. 183, 185), and its correlative Masses for the Dead (pp. 252, 314) are recognised, the use of the " primitive " word " Mass " (pp. 253, cf. 3U2, 316) is defended, and also " the seven " sacraments (p. 238) of which Unction is mourned over as being "the lost pleiadof the Anglican firmament" (pp. 239, 274). Auricular confession and Penance are advocated (pp. 269, 319), the "Judicial" character of priestly absolution (p. 265) urged, and the invocation of Saints excused on the round- about pretext that God may be asked to let the saints intercede with Him on behalf of the person who is praying! (p. 211). Such is the "catholic" substitute for "coming boldly to the throne of grace " ! Many of Canon Knox Little's fallacies are repeated, such as the pretence that Ai-t. xxxi. does not relate to the Mass (p. 253), that a " real " presence of a body " under the form of bread," is not local (pp. 255, 256); that " do " means " oiTer " and that "Remembrance" means "memorial before God" (pp. 247, 248); and that a similar offering is now going on in heaven (p. 251). All these have been so recently dealt with in reviewing Canon Little,* that we need not discuss them afresh. Mr. Staley is never prevented from reproducing a fallacy by the mere fact of * See "Eeview of Canon Little's 'Answer to Archdeacon Farrar.'" Price M. (J. F. Sliaw.) 4 its having been oft refuted. He parades, for instance, a quotation from Clement of Rome (p. 29) which Bp. Lightfoot has repeatedly shewn to have no such meaning (See Lightfoot's Clement, p. 136, or his " Epistle to Philippians," p. 203). The reference to the " Angels " in the Revelation (p. 30) is similarly- disallowed by Lightfoot (Phil. p. 197), yet this also is polled once more to prove that "outside the Church there is neither warrant nor certainty of grace " (p. 48), that " ubi sacerdos, ibi Christus " (p. 18) and that " In no other way could the twofold presence of Christ and His Spirit be vouchsafed ' alway,' and ' for ever,' but to the successors of the Apostles, the bishops of the Church" (p. 36). In a like spirit, 1 Eliz. c. 1, sec. 36 is cited as authoritative (p. 119) without revealing the pertinent fact that it has long ago been repealed. The Canons of 1640 are described (p. 301) as " still in force," though even Bp. Stubbs declares them utterly invalid. It is asserted (p. 273) that " for Christian marriage, the benediction of a priest is required," which is contrary to the law of the Church of England, and even to the pre-Tridentine teaching of the Church of Rome. We are even told that no " official steps were taken to sever the connection of the Church of England with that of Rome" until the time of Elizabeth (p. 93), which is very odd considering that Cardinal Pole absolved the whole English Convocation kneeling on their bended knees before the repre- sentative of the " Holy Father " who regarded them as in open " schism." He tells us (p. 89) that " the Council of Trent did not meet, or put forth any decision, till the Reformation in its strongest movement was all over," a statement which, so far as it concerns this country, in replying to Canon Little, we proved to be utterly false. He tells us (p. 92) thai in 1534 Convocation " decided that the Popes had no more right given them by God over the kingdom than any other foreign bishop " — but he conceals the fact that the wily bishops were careful to limit this statement by the words " conferred on him by God in holy scripture,^' leaving it open to them to hold still, as some of them actually did, that by tradition the Pope retained a rightful claim to their allegiance. A facsimile of this important document is prefixed to the eighth volume of Townsend's edition of Poxe's Acts and Monuments, and the words " in sacra scriptura " are there carefully underlined. In his account of the " Calendar " Mr. Staley omits November 5th, though sanctioned by Convocation in 1661 5 but gives us instead the Feasts of Corpus Christi, and All Souls which commemorate respectively lying miracles of the Roman Church; and he liberally provides another for the " Falling asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary," which he thinks " may be of interest " (p. 334). The unfailing mark of falsehood forms the one " indelible character " of all these pseudo-" Catholic " productions, intended as they are to " lead the blind out of the way." To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at the price of 3d ijer dozen or Is W per 100. 5tli Thousand.] "KGW LIOHT" ON The "Eastward Position." > ♦ » ♦ < When Sir Robert Lighton ventured to tell the Birmingham Church Congress that the use of the Eastward position came in only in A.D. 1710, he was metaphorically trailing his coat through the Ritualistic Donnybrook. Yet not one of the followers of Viscount Halifax has been so obliging as to accept the challenge. It concerns them to do so ; because, if Sir Robert be right, their pretence to " historic continuity " is clean cut off as regards this " catholic practice." Up to the year 1662 it was clearly illegal to stand " before the table," because the rubric then directed the consecrator to "stand up" just where he was, viz. at " the north side of the table " ; and all the research of Ritualistic experts has failed to discover during the 17th century more than two men who were even accused of con- secrating Eastward. As far as the evidence goes, these two men did so in two churches only, viz. in Durham Cathedral and the Tower Church, Ipswich, for reasons peculiar to those two churches and only for a veiy limited period : their apologetic defence of their exceptional action showing that its illegality was undisputed even by themselves, though excused on grounds of local and physical convenience or necessity. Exceptio prohat regulam. Some private forms for Consecration of Churches contained in Oughton, have been carelessly adduced by Canon MacColl as instances of Eastward consecration. But when carefully scrutinised, these very instances disprove his contention. In each case the celebrant occupied his usual position in the Communion service at " the J^orth side or end of the table," though it is true the bishop himself knelt in front of it to "present" the title deeds, or communion plate, and to say that special and private prayer of " consecration " which related exclusively to the building and its furniture : such prayers. No. 203.] however, commonly preceded the Communion service proper, and in no case were they mixed up or identified with the authorised " Consecration Prayer " which relates to the bread and wine. Every High Churchman from the Reformation to the Restoration, Andrewes, Laud, Cosin, Wren (to single out leading representatives), consecrated on the North of the table, facing southwards. Heylin, the champion of the pai'ty, wrote in 1637 : " Where should the Minister stand to discharge his duty ? Not in the middle of the altar, as was appointed in the Liturgy of K. Edward, anno 1549. That was disliked and altered in the service book of 1552." (Antidotum Lincohiiense, I.-56.) The question arises, however, whether any change in this respect was intended to be made at the last revision in 1661. In other words, what was the cause of the alteration then made in the rubric before the Consecration Prayer ? The occasion w^as this. A new rubric had just been inserted before the " Prayer for the Church Militant," which directed the bread and wine to be placed on the Table during the service, immediately after the presentation of " the alms and oblations." This naturally led to the paten and chalice being placed in the middle of the table with the result that in some cases the ofl&ciating clergyman having to reach over his cushion and book from the end of the table to the middle of it would be awkwardly inconvenienced, and in this way unseemly accidents were likely to happen. The new direction, also given in 1661, to the officiating minister to place his hand upon the bread and wine, made it necessary to alter the language of the old rubric which ran, " Then the priest standing wp, shall say as followeth.'^ Under that rrabric (of 1552-1661), the minister having then no manual acts to perform, might either have faced the people,* or the table, during the prayer : but the fresh requirement of the manual acts necessitated his turning in all cases towards the table. We can trace the successive steps by which the old rubric (of 1552-61) was altered. In the " Durham Book " which contains the first stage of the 1661 Revision, the rubric was originally drawn. (*S'ee the photograph on page 5.) " When the priest hath so ordered the bread and tvine placed upon the table, as that he may with the more ease and decency take them into his hands, standing up he shall say, as followeth." At the next stage, it was seen that the words " standing up " came in too late, as the priest must already have stood up to * " Further, that the Minister in the use of the Communion and prayers thereof turn his face towards the people." (Hooper's Visitation Articles, 1551, No. 43.) 3 perform Mie act of " orderii)g " the oU^meuts. Those words were therefore erased, and to obviate the mechanical difficulty before alluded to, the words " standing before the table " were next inserted after the word " Priest." In this way the celebrant was ordered not only to rise from his knees, but to turn toward the table, and so to stand (not, "AT the table,'^ which might mean with his back to it, as in the Marriage service, but) " before the table," i.e. facing it, for the purpose of performing the newly required manual acts. The next step would be the erasing the words ''' placed upon the table," because a new rubric after the Offertory had directed the minister to place the elements on the table at that point of the service. Next, the word " ease " which has a sort of luxurious and personal flavour about it, was changed into " readiness " ; and the words ""take them into his hands " were also exchanged for the more explicit direction to " break the bread, and take the cup into his hands." Lastly, after the interlineated words " break the bread," the important words *' before the people " were inserted by a second or continued inter- lineation. This was doubtless done at the urgent request of the Puritans who made a great point of the act of breaking being seen by the people. This change was, in fact, one of the few " Savoy Concessions " made by the bishops to the Puritans. The latter had urged " that the manner of consecrating the elements may be made more explicit and express, and to that purpose those words be put into the rubric : "■ Then shall he pat his hand upon the bread and break it ; then shall he put his hand unto the cup." In the book which Baxter submitted to the Conference as a substitute for the Pi'ayer Book, he had written : " Then let the minister take the bread and break it in the sight of the people." The bishops conceded the request, and it figures accordingly as "No. 10" in the list of points yielded at the Savoy. (Cardwell, Hi^. Conferences, p. 363.) Indeed, the Welsh Prayer Book authorized by the Act of Uniformity renders — " standing at the table " and " in sight of the people :" and Duport's Greek version of 1665 dedicated to Abp. Sheldon has IvwTnov rdv Xaov. It is interesting to notice that the writing in the Durham Book shews that this was a distinct addition, and a iinal concession : the words " before the people " not having been inserted at the same time as " break the bread " : for at the time that alteration was made, the word " Cup " was also inserted (as part of it) over the line.* But the subsequent addition of " before the people" ran over this interlined word "Cup," which had then to be written afresh in the margin, where there was room for it. These facts, patent on the pages of Cosin's (" Du.rham ") book shew that "before the people" cannot mean, as some suppose, * This fact is concealed in Mr. Parker's inaccurate " History of the Revision," p. ccxiii., which also makes "break the bread" and " before the people " to form two separate half lines. publicly in tbe cburcli, as opposed to privately in the vestry, because the ordering of the act in this part of the service, of itself rendered the latter impossible."* That is to say, the side Rubric, " And here to break the bread," secures publicity for the rite ; and its equivalent appeared in Cosin's original draft of the Rubrics. Bearing in mind the above clues, the reader should examine the text of the Durham Book as reproduced in the following- reprint : only it must of course be understood that the erasure of the word " Cup" in the fifth line cannot be shewn in mere type; though the old English lines shew the original text, as it was at first proposed ; the square brackets indicate the erasures made subsequently by pen-strokes : the Italic type exhibits the newer insertions : and the final additions are given in Roman type- standing before y Table " mi^zn tl)e'i|rii0tAtatl) 00 axtitxzti i\f£ Breati ^ W^int, [placet! upon t!)c Cable as] tljat readijies ^e mag toft!) tfje moteACease] & break the Bread before the People & liEcencsAtake ti)£[ttt] into fjis fjantis, [stantitng up] ije sfjall sag, as folloinetb " :— By the courtesy and liberality of the Rev. H. E, Fox, M.A., of Durham, we have been enabled to reproduce on the opposite page a facsimile of the draft rubric in this first stage of its formation, by a photograph taken from the so-called " Cosin's book " at Durham. This book was minutely described in the Church Intelligencer, III. -129 : and we once more commend to the attention of Protestant ch urchmen the expediency of publishing a collation, page by page, of the Bodleian book, commonly called " Sancroft's book," side by side with this Durham book. If this were done carefully, churchmen would have access for the first time, to the original documents which shew what amendments were adopted and what were rejected at the last revision of the Prayer Book. When this has been done, it will be found, as Dr. Blakeney always said, that the last revision did not retrograde Romeward, as has been too hastily stated by sciolists. But to return to our subject. The above explanation might suffice for such churches as retained at the Restoration the lengthwise arrangement of their Comraunion tables. Yet it was probably with reference to the * Milton's Church Perple.ritie!> (J. F. Shaw), p. 180. still larger number of Churches in which the now dominant party preferred* to place their tables North and Sooth, that the new lan- guage as to " standing before the table " was designed. It would hardly otherwise have been needed, because the awkwardness to be obviated w ould arise only where the elements were placed t^ ofa beyond the reach of a Minister standing on the North of the Table. Where the table stood lengthwise, by simply " standing * Three of the Ordinaries required the table to be placed North and South under the Rubric of 1662 : viz. Wren, Lucy, and Pory. Appendix to Second Report Rit. Comm. pp. .557-ii, 615, 62.'i-ii. To whom may be added Bp. Cosin (Cosin Correspondence, ii.-190, of. Rit. Rep. App. 601.) See also the C. A. Tract, No. 88, pp. 23, 28. 6 ■op," he "Would have them already " before " him. Not so, however, in the other case. Wheatly and Nicholls, the earliest commentators on the Prayer Book who deal with this rubric, both of whom were high Churchmen, assign as the true meaning of the rubric, that the priest who up to that point had stood at the North side, might, before commencing the Consecration prayer, go " before the table " to " order the bread and wine " in such a way that " the manual acts " might after- wards be done "readily " by a celebrant standing in the customary position. Nicholls, the elder of the two writers, mentions the new (Ritualistic) theory as being then (in 1710) " queried by some " — alluding no doubt to the theories of John Johnson of Cranbrook, who first sought to explain the rubric in the Ritualistic sense. Johnson relied, however, merely on verbal and grammatical arguments, not at all upon any pretence of tradition or custom. As to usage we have an unexceptionable witness, in Brett, the Nonjuring bishop who revised the Liturgy for the use of his community in 1717, and explained* his own determination of the controversy which had been raised by Johnson. He said : — " The shorter or fewer alterations from the old order the better, because they will be the less shocking. Theeefoee in the first place I desire that the priest may still be directed to stand at the Worth side of the table, and not at the place which we at this time call before the table, that is at the west side with his back to the people. For I conceive such a position of the priest will be very shocking to them, who by this means will not only be hindered from seeing what the priest does when he consecrates (which, whilst I was in the public communion, I observed the people to be very fond of seeing), but they also cannot so much as hear (if the congregation be anything large)." Three considerations not mentioned by any of these writers, nor adduced in recent Ritual suits, ought to carry weight as being really " New Light." The first is the fact that in the MS. nnnexed to the Act of Uniformity, which is the standard text ot^ the Prayer Book, a serai-colon is placed after the earlier portion of the rubric. It stands thus : — " When the Priest, standing before the Table, hath so ordered the bread and wine, that he may with the more readines and decency breah the Bread before the people, and tahe the Cup into his hands ; he shall say the Prayer of Consecration as followeth. If the piivileged printers had followed the text of the book which they profess to reproduce, the above wording would have made John Johnson's theory impossible: the "standing before the table" having manifestly no relation to anything but the * Some letters of Dr. Brett. British Museum. " 39936. d. 1." p. 31. Ed. 1845. preliminary actions referred to parenthetically, as it were, quite apart from the direction to " say the Prayer of Conse- cration as followeth," which was simply retained from the older rubric. The second ray of " New Light," which has never yet been brought to the notice of any of the Judges, is that Pory, one of the leading Revisers of 1661, in his Visitation Articles of 1665, asked — "Have you in the chancel of your church or chappel a decent and convenient table for the celebration of the Holy Communion? Is it so set as directed in the Queen's Injunctions, in the place where the altar stood, and so as the priest at the time of consecration may stand before the table to order the bread and wine?" {British Museum, " 698 ^g 20.") That is the earliest known exposition, and it was given publicly by one of the Revisers in his official capacity as Ordinary. The third piece of hitherto buried evidence is from a volume in the Bodleian (" 8°. B. 299. B. S.") of Tracts varying in date from a.d. 1 704 to 1719, among which is the rare second edition of " Two letters [to Dr. Bisse] in defence of the English Liturgy and Reformation," by John Lewis, Vicar of Margate, 1717. At page 31 occurs this suggestive remark — * " Succession of Bishops being a note of the Church, the Holy Eucharist being a proper material propitiatory sacrifice, the necessity of private confession to a priest and of the sacerdotal absolution to forgiveness of sins, the independency of the Church, or the ecclesi- astical liberty, prayers for the dead, and railing at our great Refor- mers as Erastians, (fee, bidding prayers in the pulpit, consecrating the Holy Eucharist with back turned to the people, and such other whims lately introduced. These modern shibboleths of Churchmen as being contrary to the doctrines I have received, and those usages which have been in this Church, ever since I was a catechumen in it, I own, I have always expressed my dislike and abhorrence of." Lewis was a very able man and a learned writer, who, like Waterland, Wheatly, and others, engaged in controversy with John Johnson ; and his letter enables us to fix the date of the introduction of the "E. P." into the Church of England. Another corroborative proof of the then universally received understanding of this rubric is found in the fact noticed by Canon Simmons, viz. that the Eastward position is never once mentioned in the " Farewell Sermons," or other attacks upon the Prayer Book by the ejected Nonconformists in 1662 : nor * We are indebted to Canon Christopher and to the Rev. C. J. Casher, b.a., for verifying and correcting this extract wliicli we found among the papers of the late Dean Elliot. The British Museum has only the Jlr$t edition of Lewis' pamphlet. was this rubric ever mentioned among the desired " altera- tions " proposed by Morton, Baxter, and Bates on the part of the Protestant separatists during the negotiations for " a Comprehension " in 1668. (Sylvester's Reliquice Baxteriance, Pt. III., p. 33.) Baxter expressly says " this part of the Common Prayer is generally approved." {Christian Directory, 2. xxiv. 41.) This was just about the time when Wake, after- wards Abp., in defending the Church of England against Bossuet, said : " Instead of reading the service aloud would you have us turn our backs on the assembly, and whisper they know not what ? " (Bp. Gribson's Preservative, xii.-351.) J. T. TOMLINSON. To be obtained at the Office of the Chubch Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at the price of 5d per dozen or Ss per 100. 3rd Thousand.] &U3 UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH AND QUEEN MARY. g— ■ ' 'C ^- l ■— 3 - HE Parisli Magazine for Froc slcr, Saul, and WJaitminster of January, 1891, had an attack upon tlie Churcla Association for sending out its vans into sucli parishes as theirs. It tells us that the Yicar of Frocester is the Rev. W. Symonds, m.a., while the Rector of Saul is the Rev. R. Hall, m.a. And as Frocester comes topmost, "we may suppose that the teaching of this magazine emanates from the former of these gentlemen : though it may be that it is a joint production, and that Saul also is among the prophets. Anyhow these divines have the joint responsibility of putting before their people such state- ments as the following, which appears at page 3 : — " Tliey have painted on tlieir vans sundiy well-known names, of Hooper, Eidley, &c., put to death, under Queen Mary — per.sons witli whom tliey have about as much to do as they have witli Hannibal. To furbish up the controversies of 350 years ago has much the air of acting a play. But if we act a play, we should act it right. It is a disingenuous sanipHiiff of history to set forth the heroes of the Church Association as if they were the only persons put to death for their religion in Eeformation times. Those who suffered under Mary and Elizabeth were not far from being equal in number ; and a great part of the Eoman Catholic victims were hung, drawn, and quartered, and disembowelled while they were alive. It is our good fortune that such things have come to seem incredable." \sic\. The villagers who depend for their '^ sampling of history " upon these two Gloucestershire divines will naturally infer from the above statement that much greater cruelties were practised in the name of religion by Protestants than by the co-religionists of their Vicar : and thus they may come to No. 204.] hate the very name of " Reformation/' and aid their pastors in promoting the '^re-union of Christendom.'" Yet, inas- much as " no lie thrives," some of them may learn by-and- by that Elizabeth reigned forty-five years, while Mary only reigned five years, so that even though " religious " murders had been " equal in number " under Elizabeth as under Mary, that would still leave the title of " bloody '' to the elder sister. The discovery of that fact may lead them to inquire still further, and they will then find that for the first nineteen years of Elizabeth — a longer period, be it observed, than Mary's entire reign — not a single human being lost his life in England on any "religious" quarrel or pretext. They will naturally ask. What then could have led to such a change in Elizabeth^s policy ? They will then discover, in the words of Dr. Ingram,"'^ that — " With the reign of Elizabeth began, on the part of the Popes, a series of aggressions against England, which is without parallel in history, and which entailed the most disastrous consequences on the Eoraan Catholics of the kingdom. For upwards of thirty years, the Eoman Pontiff's directed all the moral and material resources at their command to the destruction of England, and her conquest by the King of Spain. During those long years they never rested a moment from their hostile attempts. Laying aside all pretence of acting as spiritual teachers, they took in their hands the temporal sword. They invaded English territories with their own troops; encouraged rebellions ; instigated conspiracies ; fomented civil wars ; taught that religion was to be restored by blood and violence ; preached crusades against England ; organised confederations of the * Catholic ' Powers against her; and despatched missionaries to teach the new faith, which was not the Catholic faith, but a corrupt compound of religion and treason." {England and Rome, Preface xiv.) And when comparing the two reigns we must remember that — " In Mary's reign, bishops, gentlemen, artisans, servants, women and boys were burned for opinions in speculative matters, without the least pretext of the violation of any civil duty, while in the reign of her successor' (Elizabeth) 'all classes of the laity were corrected for non-couforniity by a fine of twelve pence. If we remember that Elizabeth made no examination into conscience, but, at the most, required an outward conformity, and if we compare her conduct with that of contemporaneous sovereigns, we are constrained to acknow- ledge, that the compulsory uniformity of the reformed government of England was the most wonderful and sudden advance its HUMANITY EECOKDED IN HISTOEY." {Ibid. 223.) This comparative forbearance is the more striking if we * Ingram's England and Rome, p. 2G3. See Eeview of this work in Church Intelligencer, April, 1894, p. 63. 8 remember that not only renewed attempts at assassination, and repeated conspiracies directly fomented by the Pope, had threatened to overturn the English Government, but that — " In 1572, the whole reformed world was horrorstruck by the news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. For upwards of forty years, the Protestants of England had been heariajj of the burninf;, beheading, and burying alive of tens of thousands of dissidents from the lloman faith in the Netherlands by the Spaniards. The memory of their own persecution in the time of Mary was still fresh, and its revival was an ever-present terror before their eyes. They were well aware that the Pope and the Xing of Spain were plotting the invasion of their country, and the destruction of their institutions. They believed that the success of these plans would entail persecution upon them as severe as those in the Netherlands and in Spain. While they were in this state of mind, the news suddenly arrived that fifty thousand French Protestants had been shot, stabbed, and hacked to pieces at their own firesides by their countrymen, and that the homes of the victims had been polluted by every crime which attends the taking of a city by storm. But this was not all. It was known that the Pope had adopted the massacre ; that, on receiving information of it from the Cardinal of Lorrain, he had set apart a day of public thanks- giving to God the just avenger, and had published a bull of extraor- dinary indulgence to such as should pray for the heavenly assistance to the King and kingdom of France ; and that he and his cardinals Lad walked in procession from sanctuary to sanctuary to celebrate the great event. One thought flashed through the mind of all Pro- testants. AVas there then a universal plot among the Koman Catholics of Europe for the general murder and extermination of the Reformed?" The cruel punishment for treason (the infliction of which, as described in the Frocester MtKjazine, itself shews that " heresy ^^ was not in question, for that always involved burning) was imposed under an old statute of Edward III. passed when England was entirely Papal. Yet — " So anxious was Elizabeth's government to save these men, and to avoid the obloquy of their execution, that it drew up six questions, in their nature wholly civil, and entirely unconnected with faith or discipline. Speaking of these questions, a Eoman Catholic author, Charles Butler {English Catholics, I.-42!;)), said, in 1822: ' Among the six questions there is not one which the Catholics of the present time have not fully and unexceptionally answered in the oaths which they have taken in compliance with the Acts of the 18th, 31st, and 33rd years of his late Majesty's reign.' An answer to the effect that Elizabeth was their lawful queen, and that her subjects were not dispensed from their allegiance by the bull of Pius, would have saved them all, as it did actually save three of them, even after their con- viction. Cardinal Allen himself admitted that those who were put to death after their answers to the six queries suffered for maintaining the deposing power." [Ibid. 281.) The peril in wliicli England ^vas kept by Jesuit macliinationSj is well shewn from a speech of the Prime Minister^ Cecil, in the very last Parliament of Elizabeth. He said — "The King of Spain had put four thousand of his best expert soldiers into Ireland under a gaUant and hardy captain. . . His presence and cause of war there is to defend the Catholic cause — I mean, to tear her Majesty's suhjects from her; for, I may say, she hath no Catholic ohedient suhject there, because she standeth 'excommunicate' at this present by power of two bulls of this Pope's — by which her suhjects are absolved of their obedience. . . Remember that you do this^ro aris etfocis ; and for a prince that desireth all your prosperities . . not these five, or seven, or ten, but for three and forty years." (Patons British History and Papal Claims, I. -108.) Lastly, the inquirers will discover that the revival of "tlie controversies of 350 years ago" was not in any way due to the Church Association, but to the Tractarians, every one of whose arguments is taken directly from the writings of Bp. Gardiner, Harding the Jesuit, Thomas Aquinas, and other approved teachers of the Romish faith : while the answers now given to the Puseyites may similarly be all of them found in the writings of Cranmer, Jewel, Hooper, and the rest of "our heroes." Even villagers can see that an attack must have preceded a defence, that a reply implies a previous argument. The Church Association was not even founded until the English Church Union had been in existence for more than five years. It is the old fable of " The wolf and the lamb" over again. "We have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy (Papa) father's house." If Hooper and the rest are our " heroes," it follows that we have more to do with them than we have with " Hannibal." If there be any intelligence among the Gloucestershire villagers, they will refuse to follow guides so blind or so disloyal as the writers of some of their Parish Magazines have shewn til em selves to be, and they will continue to welcome an occasional visit from one of our Vans to dispel the fog and malaria into which "hireling shepherds" are seeking to lead their unhappy flocks. To be obtained at the OITice of the Ciurch Associatios, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at the price of Zd per dozen, or Is Cd per 100. 4th Thousand.] <# .<^^ .#^ #^.c# <^^ r <^^ )>^ BY Vicar of St. Helen's, York. 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C 1894. No. 205.] #frfft$al #tM(|)mfttt FOR #fr(tttal iiliirt< BY THOMAS SMITH, M.A., Vicar of St. Helen's, York. -G Tr^SiA^AAcrC:^! &- "warn " — as well as to "teach" — is a very important part of the work which has been committed to the ministers of Christ's Gospel. Before we were admitted to the office of Presbyter, we were solemnly reminded by the chief Pastor that we were going to undertake the duties of " Watchmen," and we were impressively exhorted to be faithful and diligent in dis- charging them. We must carefully and prayerfully strive to " discern the signs of the times " — reading them in the light which the teaching of God's Holy Word, and the guidance of God's Blessed Spirit cast upon them — and when we see the existence, or the approach of any special error or evil, we must plainly and loudly warn those whom it concerns, and urge them to use such precautions as will be likely to help to protect them from the mischief, and harm, and loss which threaten. There seems to exist in the present day, a very real, and a very great error, which widely prevails, greatly influences, and grievously misleads many professing Christians. I refer to a tendency to undervalue and ignore the spiritual element in personal religion, and almost — if not altogether — to eliminate and exclude it from the service which we ought to render to, and the work whicli we ought to do for, our Master Who is in heaven. A strong belief that this error does exist, and does work, leads me to feel bound to warn against it, and to present the opposite truth which alone can counteract it, as opportunity may allow and occasion require. And so, having accepted the invitation to address you to-day, I resolved that this should be the subject to which I would ask your attention — " Spiritual equipment for spiritual work." The word " equipment " is used in a wide sense, intended to include the very necessary preliminary of preparing and qualify- ing the worker himself for engaging in work for God, as well as furnishing him with what will fit him for it and aid him in it, and enable him to prosecute it with efficiency and success. Does it, to any of you, sound strangely — perhaps, even seem " a hard saying " — that preparing and qualifying the worker himself are needed ? Very often work is undertaken without any such thought occurring to the mind, and, wherever that is the case, there, at the very outset, the error already referred to, has a place. " What saith the Scripture ? " Remember those earnest words addressed by St. Paul to Timothy, when giving him directions for his guidance in his work. " Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine." First, "Thyself"; then, "the doctrine." First, see to " thyself ; " then, work for others. First, be right ; then, teach right. Remember, too, the grave charge which, on a very solemn occasion, our Blessed Master Himself gave to St. Peter, with reference to the life's work upon which he was about to enter : " When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." First, the work within thyself ; then, the work for others. First, have thine own heart right with God ; then, strive to bring others to know, and trust, and love, and serve Him. First.,\ie converted; then, try to help others. It is important that we shall clearly see how emphatically, and how impressively, God's Word pre- sents this view to us. "They that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you." "Abide in Me," the Saviour said, "and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine ; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me. He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit : for apart from Me ye can do nothing." The sinner, in his natural, unconverted, nnregenerate con- dition, has a double disqualification, and disability for serving and pleasing God. He is spiritually dead, and he is under con- demnation. So that, on both these accounts, he cannot render any service, or do any work, which God will regard, or receive, with favour. Even if he were able to will, or to do — still, there would not be any ground on which he could rest a hope that his work would be accepted or approved by God. But, when the sinner receives the Saviour, in the gracious and glorious offices in which He reveals Himself to us in the Blessed Gospel — receives Him really and truly, and faithfully, and heartily — receives Him, resting every hope for time and for eternity upon Him, and Him alone — then, that sinner is not only pardoned, but justified : not merely freed from condemnation, but " born again," by the regenerating influence and operation of the Holy Spirit. He is converted to God, united to Christ, inhabited by the Spirit. The previous disability and disqualification are removed. Now, he is "alive unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." He is "accepted in the beloved," and God approves and accepts his "bounden duty and service," for the Saviour's sake. Not only has he the powers, and capacities, and faculties of the living, which enable him to serve God — he is also " a vessel unto honour, sanctified and meet for the Master's use, and pre- pared unto every good work " — because he is now a spiritual person, made so by the spiritual life infused into him by the Holy Spirit Who dwells within. Thus, the first step towards the needful equipment for working for God, is taken by the Worher becoming spiritual. Then, it is very necessary to have a clear and correct appre- hension of the work which has to be done. We are considering " spiritual equipment for spiritual work." What is " spiritual work ? " In the mind of many Christians, the idea is strictly limited to such matters as are professedly and nominally connected with religion. If we had but Faith, that spiritual faculty which gives an insight into the invisible, we should see that every duty which 6 comes to us in the common course of our daily life has its spiritual aspect and its spiritual bearing. God says to us, " Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God," God tells us that we are daly and diligently to discharge the various relative duties which devolve upon us, " with good will doing service as to the Lord, and not " merely " unto men." God sets it before us as an object of aspiration, not so much to " do some great thing " for Him sometimes, or even often, as " that God in all things may be glorified " in us and by us. God bids us to regard as His appointment for us the ordinary work which comes to us, day by day, in the position in the world in which He has placed us. And He charges us to do that work, whatever it be, as to Him and for Him. It may itself seem very trifling and very humble. It may really be very human and very mundane ; but, when seen in its due relation to God, and done with direct reference to God, it assumes a character which it never had before. It acquires a spiritual significance, a spiritual interest, a spiritual importance ; and with the desire to do the allotted work well, and as it ought to be done, there also arises a profound sense of inability in self, and of the urgent need of help to "serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear." " Who is sufficient for these things ? We are not sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves," is quite as much an expression of human experience as it is a truth of Divine Revelation. And so is the cheering utterance which sounds so sweetly to the tried, and tempted, and troubled, bat trusting servant : " Our sufficiency is of God." It is a Divine supply, and it is surely given. " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above." And it is God the Holy Ghost Who administers God's " manifold gifts of grace," " dividing to every man severally as He will." So St. Paul prayed for the Ephesians that they might be ** strengthened with might by God's Spirit inwardly." There was the source from which their strength was to be drawn — the presence, the influence, the energy of the Holy Spirit within them — enlightening the understanding, convincing the reason, engaging the affections, subduing the will, and bringing the ■whole being into willing and loving submission and devotion to God. And not only did the Apostle thus pray for them, he also earnestly charged them to " be filled with the Spirit." They were to yield entirely to His influence, to submit themselves " wholly to His Holy "Will," and to follow His guidance " with full purpose and steadfastness of heart," And what God said by St. Paul to the Ephesians, He says quite as clearly to us now — " Be filled with the Spirit." Let Him take up His abode within us. Welcome Him to reign and rule there. Let the thoughts, feelings, aims, hopes, motives, methods, words, deeds be all submitted to Him and placed under His control. The Holy Spirit came into the world to be The Paraclete — The Helpei\ He is willing to be this to every one of us. Each one of us may, if we will, have this Divine Friend dwelling within us; always accessible, always available, always able and willing to attend to our appeal to Him, and to give to us just the help which, at any moment, we require ; by suggesting to us what we ought to do ; showing us how we ought to do it ; inclining and enabling us to follow His dii'ections ; and giving to us always strength according to our day, and grace suitable and suflficient for every " time of need." The " wisdom of God " to guide us ; the " power of God " to fortify us; the "strength of God " to sustain us ; the "peace of God " to comfort us ; the " love of God " to cheer us ; all this, and far more than all this — more than man's heart can conceive — is the " Spiritual equipment " which God places at our dis- posal, and, in His Holy Word, urges us diligently and faithfully to adopt and employ, for the warfare and the work to which He calls us. '^Be filled vfith. the Spirit." Not merely taught, or guided, or influenced by the Spirit. " Filled with the Spirit." Not endowed with these or those gifts and graces of the Spirit ; but endued with Him Himself. " Filled with the Spirit.^' That which is filled has no room for any additibn. If we were " filled with the Spirit," everytliing offensive to God and injurious to ourselves would be absolutely expelled and excluded from us. No selfish motives, no wrong principles, no impure desires, no low ambitions would ever have place within us. "Whilst all that is " honest and lovely, and of good report," would increase, and abound, and strengthen, and spread, both 8 in onr diaracter within, and also in our conduct towards those around us. What would our prayers be — we always " Praying in the Holy Ghost ? " What would onr study of God's Holy Word be to us, with the Holy Spirit always our Teacher ? What would Preaching and Hearing be, with the Holy Spirit always guiding and helping those who Preach, and opening and preparing the hearts and minds of those who Hear ? What would the Services in God's House be if all always worshipped " in Spirit and in Truth ? " What would our Communion with God be to us with nothing ever to disturb, or distract, or interfere ? Walking "in newness of life"; serving " in newness of spirit"; enriched with " the unsearchable riches of Christ ; " " filled with all the fulness of God;" our "Spiritual equipment" would surely be perfect and complete indeed ; and we should indeed be efficient and successful workers for God if we were always " filled with the Holy Ghost ; " always animated by Him, having His in-dwelling presence ; always actuated by Him, using His out-working power. Do you say that this is a high ideal ? Certainly it is ; and it ought to be. If we propose to ourselves a low ideal, our aim will be low, and our attainments and achievements will be lower still. If we erect for ourselves a high ideal, and our desires are sincere, our aim will be high, and God will bless our honest efforts to serve Him, by giving such success as He deems right, enabling us to please Him both in Will and Deed, and accepting with approval what we do for Him, for our dear Saviour's sake. But the selection of an ideal does not rest with us. God Himself sets one before us ; and this is how He presents it to us : " Be filled with the Spirit." "Ye see your calling, brethren." God help us all to " give diligence to make our calling and election sure," and always to " walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called ! " " Spirit of purity and grace, Our weakness, pitying, see ; O make our hearts Thy dwelling place, And filled with Thee ! " To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at the price of 5d per dozen, or 3s per 100 , 3rd Thousand.] p^wm eoDinrnnD rsxwniiiuiiiio caifluiipidio (s&ioiiijniiimtn oiimo/iiMiD (suniiraBizD ciuiiiiii^isjiiita aioHim asmm oxiaiuimiia: amnia: Does Ritualism Lead to Rome? HE long list of " Rome's recruits " publislied by the Editor of the Whitehall Review is the best answer to that question. But a few recent testimonies of the parties most immediately interested may be ■usefully strung together. The official organ of the English Church Union reports a speech by the Rev. Geoege Bayfield Robekts, a member of their Council, and Chairman of its Committee on Canon Law, as well as Chairman of the Clicltcnham Branch. Mr. Roberts is also a member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, and this is Avhat he said on December 17th, 1890 : — " They, as Catholics, looked to rc-uuion with those Churches of the East and West which, in their five ancient patriarchates, possessed the historical episcojwte, to re-union under the Primacy of him to whom the Fathers gave the Primacy — a Primacy affirmed moreover by two of those General Councils of the Church whose authority the Lambeth Conference had acknowledged — the Bishop of ' Old Eome.' Was this a rash statement ? At any rate, it was historically true, and was substantially the same as that to which Lord Halifax gave utterance at the Annual Meeting in London in 1885 — ' Peace among ourselves, peace with our separated brethren at home, the restoration of visible unity with the members of the Church abroad. East and West alike, but, above all, with the great Apostolic See of the West, which has done so much to guard the true faith in the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ and the rcahty of His life-giving Sacraments. These things surely should be our object — the object nearest our hearts.' " — E. C. U. Gazette, February, 1890, p. 45. Much about the same time the titular " Bishop," now " Cardinal " Vaughan, testified before the Roman " Catholic Truth Society" at Birmingham (July 2nd, 1890) to the efficient aid thus being rendered. He said : — " Not only had the attitude of the population changed, but the very No. 206.1 Establisliment whicli was set up in rivalry to the Catholic Church with a Eoyal supremacy triumphantly pitted against a Papal supre- macy — that very Establishment had changed its temper and attitude. Its bishops, ministers, and people were busily engaged in ignoring or denouncing those very Articles which tcere drawn up to be their eternal protest against the old religion. The sacramental power of orders, the need of jurisdiction, the Eeal Presence, the daily sacrifice, auricular confession, prayers and ofBces for the dead, belief in purgatory, the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints, religious vows, and the institution of monks and nuns — the very doctrines stamped in the Thirty-nine Articles as fond fables and blasphemous deceits — all these were now openly taught from a thousand ■pulpits within the Establishment, aud as heartily embraced by as many crowded congregations. Nay, more, the statue of the Blessed Virgin had been put up with honour over the principal side entrance to Westminster Abbey, and she had recently been enthroned under the great dome of St. Paul's. Though there were sixty thousand minis- ters and preachers throughout the land pledged by their profession to denounce the Catholic Church, they found the Archbishop of Canter- bury claiming with eager jealousy Catholic descent and ' continuity ' with the Church of St. Gregory, St. Augustine, St. Anselm, St. Tliomas, and St. Edmund. Societies were formed, tracts and books were written, and lectures were delivered all over the country to prove to the public that the past three hundred years had been a dismal mistake, and that the Church of England after all was not a Protestant Church, but the true hereditary Catholic Church and nothing less. Only the other day a diocesan school inspector of a ' great Protestant diocese ' instructed the children of a school he was examining that they were all to call themselves Catholics and not Protestants, and the rector of the parish, on hearing it with some little surprise, replied that he had not himself gone quite as far, but that he was perfectly prepared to follow suit. It was not the Catholic Church that had changed, but England. No impartial observer could contrast the England of the past with the England of to-day without declaring that the mind and heart and policy of the country had swung at least half-way round towards the Catholic Church. He did not say that half the people, or any considerable section of the people, were yet converted ; but he said that the decay of prejudice, the advance of truth, the change in sentiment and policy, and in faith and practice, ]usti6.ea them in saying that England was half-converted from what she was during the last three centuries— both within and withoiit the Establishment. If the progression of change went on at the same ratio during the next sixty years, England before the end of the next century might be practically [Eoman] Catholic again." The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, the organ of the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland, says (July, 1891) : — " There are two forces at work regarding the [R.] Catholicism of the country One is inside the Church, and the other outside it; one [R.] Catholic, the other Protestant, though Catholicizing. IVie Ritualists, and the Ritualists alone, are doing all that is being done among Protestants. How many parsons from Newman to Eivington have been converted by priests ? True, all have been received by priests. But how many have confessed their obligations to our sermons or our writincjs tliat we [R.] Catholic priests were in any degree answerable for their conversion? The [R,.] Catholicizing movement in the Establishment has not been the result of the missionary activity of the [R.] Catholic Church in England. It is true to say that convert priests receive more converts than others, but that is mainly on account of personal influence in certain non-Catholic quarters where we have no access, as well as having a keener grasp of difficulties which we never feel. Men who pass through the fire themselves are good guides. This external movement is of vast importance. At this hour Jive thousand Church of England clergymen are preaching from as many Protestant pulpits the [R.] Catholic faith (not, indeed, as faith,) to [R.] Catholicizing congregations, mueli more effectively, with less suspicion and more acceptance than we can ever hope to do. Protestant sisterhoods arc doing, we feel sure, the best they can under the circumstances to familiarize the Philistine with nuns — and that is miich. Protestant societies, like St. Margaret's, Westminster, furnish poor country missions (there are poor country Protestant missions, and city ones too,) with black vestments for requiems on All Souls'. This is, indeed, a matter for devout thankfulness. IVe could desire no better preparation for joining the [R.] Catholic Church than the Rittialists' preparatory school ; and the fact that from them we have secured the majority of our converts, strengthens us in our view of it." In the Jesuit magazine, The Month, for May, 1892, the late Rev. J. Morris, s.j., wrote : — " To the upper classes we have the easiest access, and there, more than elsewhere, our work is done for us by those who know not what they are doing. . . . Ritualists have accustomed the country to the look of our priests and of our nuns, of our altars and our vest- ments and our ceremonies, and they preach our doctrines. Their disregard of authority has enabled them to do what the old Tract- arians would have been driven out of the Church of England for doing. But the result is that the vast mass of Anglicans entertain very diS'erent feelings respecting our faith and practice from any that a short time ago could possibly have been anticipated. Let them go a little further, and they will convince the religious portion of the community that t!ie Reformation was a blunder and a sin." The Reverend Philip Fletcher, an ex-member of the English Church Union, is the founder of the " Society of Our Lady of Ransom," for the conversion of the Church of England; this Society has an organ. The Ransomer, in which on July 22nd, 1893, Mr. Vance-Packman (who describes himself as "Ex-organ- izing Secretary, English Church Union, Ex-editor of the Church lieview'") says : — " Ritualism, then, is a record of rank failure to attain the objects for which it ostensibly originated. It is true that it has made vigorous ixse of the few ti-aces of Catholic doctrine and usages still surviving in the Established Church. It has imitated, more or less closel}'. Catholic ritual, vestments, and architecture, and even dressed its ministers in the garb of i)riests. It has been the means of expending vast sums of money on the erection, restoration, and 4 omljellisliment of churclies. But lias this development of Ritualism in die Establishment satisfied souls, won the working classes, or last, but not least, stayed the stream of ' secessions to Rome ' ? Not one •svhit. I have never met a high Anglican who was contented with the condition of his Church. The vast multitudes of the poor, and the labouring men and women are more conspicuous than ever by their absence from the functions of Ritualism. And as to conversions, it is well known that nine out of every dozen are the direct result of Ritualistic training." Lastly we may cite the testimony of Professor St. George MlVART, F.R.S., who in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1893, writes (pp. 983-4) :— " I know nothing which seems at once so pathetic, and so absurdly grotesque, as for members of the Anglican Church to call themselves Catholics. For that Church, as I have often said, I have a sincere esteem. I owe to it much gratitude, and for many of its members I entertain most profound respect and admiration. Nevertheless, it is impossible for me to regard seriously its claims to be sacerdotal, sacramental, authoritative, traditional, and Catholic. I can understand young men, who have only known the Establishment of late years, being blind to the absurdity of such claims ; but that men, more than sixty, who know the thoroughly Protestant character of the Church of their boyhood, can seriously regard it as having any pretensions to Catholicity, passes my comprehension. " But these facts should not blind us to the good work the High Church party in the Establishment is doing. The English people are sadly inaccessible to the Catholic clergy on account of old habits and traditional prejudices, and modern Catholic worship is often strange and repellent to them. But the Ritualistic ministers of the Establish- ment can easily obtain a hearing, and succeed in scattering the good seed of Roman doctrine far and wide. We now frequently meet with devout practices which, forty years ago, were unheard of, save to be denounced and scouted outside the small Catholic body. But Ritualists are rapidly making the word Protestant to stink in the nostrils of their congregations, and causing them to regard it as a detestable form of belief. Thus, not only are our ancient Churches being renovated and decorated in the Roman spirit, and so prepared for us, but congregations to Jill them are being gathered together. The devout and noble-minded men who form the advance party, are preparing the May for a great increase of the [Roman] Catholic Church in England." To be obtained at the Office of the Ciiuncn Association, 14, Burkinshani Street, Strand, London, at the price of 3d i>er dozen or ]s Cd per 100. ISth. Thousand.] PARS ONOLA TRY: OR, Why Rise when Clergy and Choir enter the Church P -«^ •How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? " (John v.-44.) We ai'e all familiar with the premonitory symptoms of this now prevalent disease. Some fine Sunday while we are waitinj^ for the service to begin, two or three girls spring up suddenly from their seats, at the same time that the governess from the rectory, or the clergyman's wife or sister stands up apparently to receive two tiny choir boys who lead the " pro- cession " on its coming out of the vestry. Next Sunday, two or three more stragglers join the former group ; then a class or two out of the girls' school gets up awkwardly but 'well together' at a preconcerted signal, and soon after there appears in the Parish Magazine a paragraph like the following, which is taken from the May number of the " St. Nicholas-cum-St. Runwald Parish Magazine," published at Colchester. " With regard to the vexed question whether the congregation should stand or remain sitting when the choir and clergy enter, it can only be said that it is a matter which must be settled by each individual worshipper. It is said that standing at this time signifies •priest '-worship. It is true it does, if there be the spirit of priest- worship in the heart of the worshipper, but not otherwise. " To stand at the entrance of one who ministers before you in holy things, is a mark of honour to the ministerial ofiice, not to the man who holds it. And the N. T. teaching assigns the highest honour to the minister of God as such. " In these days, when ignorant prejudice often makes people fly ofi" at a tangent, it would be well for the difference accurately to be understood between Sacerdotalism {i.e. the spirit of the priestiood), and the honour due to Christ's Ambassador. " The Eector makes no request with regard to this comparatively trivial detail. But to come to the actual service, he has the request to make that the congregation will kneel in silent prayer, with the choir and clergy, at the beginning of the service ; and, that the con- gregation will remain in their seats until the choir has left the church." The effect of such advice is the reverse of ^ifying. One sees ihe folk drop down on their knees as if by ooncert, and peep out Ro. 207.] anxionsly to see wlicn the drill requires that they sliould rise again in a body, so that each may terminate his (or rather her) automatic devotion at the pi'ecise moment when the Minister is seen to rise. Can anybody believe that such a childish practice conduces to self-recollection, to entire self-forgotfulness, to real reverence as in the felt presence of the Almighty, in other words, to heartfelt prayer ? The most irreverent people in church are commonly those who cross themselves often, and curtsey elaborately and ostentatiously at all the places marked out for them in Ritualistic manuals. Some sit during the Psalms, others look about them during the prayers, are often quite oblivious when "the bag" goes its rounds, and apparently think of nothing but the effect they are producing on the less enlightened worshippers, who have had no such " catholic " training. The reasons assigned, or rather the ex- cuses offered for this sort of man-worship are various. Sometimes it is pretended that the standing up is not done in honour of the clergyman, but because his entrance (or rather, that of the fore- most choir-boys) " marks the commencement of Divine Service." The answer to that is plain. The statement is not true. How is God worshipped or served by the choir finding and taking their seats ? VVhy should private prayers be entered upon at all, if public worship, as alleged, has already " commenced " ? How can the rubric possibly be complied ynth which directs that ^^ At the hec/lnning of Morning Pra^'er" c^tain sentences are to be said, which in fact do not follow for some minutes after the procession is over ? Moreover this pretext won't cover the ridiculous practice of standing up when the choir file out of church in the very middle of the Communion service. That, at any rate, is not a "commencement of public worship;" it is rather a slinking away from public worship: communicants turning their backs on the Lord's table,' in despite of His com- mand, are nevertheless treated with solemn pomp and reverence by a whole congregation under such absurd pretexts as above cited ! Then, again, the " priest " cari'ies aloft out of the church the empty vessels which, it may be, he has ostentatiously washed up in public, after the service was over ; yet these disused vessels thus carried ki solemn procession are again greeted with like homage by the " ambassador's " party. Clearly here is more than meets the eye. It is not done in honour of " the beginning of Divine Service," nor of the "ambassador," nor even of the choir (who are commonly absent), but in honour of the " new tomb," in which the " faithful " are tanght to believe that the Bod}^ of Chi^ist has so recently lain. " Sacerdotalism " grows vaturalhj out of " ambassador "-worship. It is f'je to the Reverend Herbert Cooper, m.a., Rector of St. Nicl jas', Colchester, to say that he does not pretend that the whce ceremony is not in honour of himself. He avows that it is. But he seems in somewhat of a fog as to the meaning 3 of the word " ministering" in the N. T. "Ministering before'* the congregation, is a phrase unknown to tlie New Testament. It is essentially a "sacerdotal " idea. That is why we do find it in tbe Old Testament, but never in the New. The Gospel ministry is an ambassadorship not from man to Christ, but from Christ to men. Its especial place of " ministry " is not the read- ing-desk, but the pulpit. And if Mr. Cooper really believed in the theoiy wliich he pats forth, he would i-equire his pf^ople to stand while he dons his preaching dress, or rather returns to fulfil this distinctive " ministry of the New Testament." To feed the vanity of a man, to make him think highly of himself, no plan could be devised more likely to work mischief. The very word ministry, means service, not mastery. Is ic then a pi'udent thing to rise up whenever your servant approaches to fulfil his ministry ? Our Lord warned his candidates for the ministry again and again as to the danger of delighting in and e.xacting the "highest place," salutations in the market place, or the chief seats in the Synagogue, under the pretext that they were the servants of Him who said, " I am among you as he that serveth." Let any man read prayerfully siich passages as these and then ask himself if it be in accordance with the spirit of Christ that his "ambassadors" should go about urging people to stand up whenever they march in procession before delivering their Master's message. The contagion is having a very serious influence on the minds of thoughtful Churchmen. They do not regard the men who wish their congregations to stand when they enter the Church as the "Ministers of Christ," but rather as those who are endeavouring to "lord it over God's heritage." They know from bitter experience that many who hold the office of ministers in the Protestant Church of England are claiming to be priests entitled to come between the sinner and Christ. Can it be imagined that those who are aiming at following the Master's example, and slriving to be least of all and servants of all, would wish for such outward marks of honour ? How can any who are meeting a congregation of the Lord's sheep, and humbly looking to God for grace to feed them with the truth of His Word, wish to introduce such a practice ? The Rector of St. Nicholas' admits that priest-worship would be fulfilled and promoted by this practice " if there be the spirit of priest-worsliip in the heart of the worshipper." What is the worth of that suggestion ? One might as reasonably say that bowing down before images and seeming to worship them is not objectionable, because the spirit of idolatry viiglit conceivably be wanting in a well-educated infidel, or a Christian believer. But what then? The outward act is calculated and suitable to pi'omotc the superstition complained of, and can only be saved from that character by exceptional strength of the individual mind of the pei'son who for the time consents to *' bow down in the house of Rimmon." But can any blessing be expected by those who thus trifle with their convic- tions from a cowardly dread of appearing to be "singular"? It is a plain matter of fact, that wherever priestcraft has its perfect work, there these observances multiply ; where the minister thinks only how to abase himself, and to serve his fellow-men whose "servant" he desires to become for Christ's sake, there the minister is ever held in highest honour, his influence for good is gladly recognised, though no servile obsequiousness is shewn to him under the pretext that his "office " is one of a lordly kind The true way to " magnify his office," is to fulfil his " ministry," i.e. service ; not to be ever claiming for the office-bearer the worship of the congregation. On the other hand, the Ritualistic substitute is embodied in these words — " Having said your prayer upon entering, it is customary to rise and sit down at Matins, Evensong, and Litany, not, as at Holy Communion, to continue kneeling until the entry of the procession. Stand up on the entry of the clergy and choir, and remain standing until they have entered their seats in the chancel. Then kneel down. Stand during all processions," i.e. of these same functionaries. {Congregation in Church, p. 133.) Is this indeed "the highest honour" which the New Testament " assigns to the minister of God, as such " ? Let the reader examine for himself the teachings of that Book, and he will have a prophylactic against the contagion of " Parsonolatry." #^_ ^^y>-is>^7- S^^^S^^^.^^^ ^¥1 London : Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street, t^iblished by thp Church Association, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the pnce of 3a per dozen, or Is 6rf per 100. 17th Thousand.] 13.8.00, THE VAIN VAUNTINGS OF DR. VAUGHAN. A CALL to speak out has just been furnished to the Euglish bench of Bishops by the following circular- letter addressed to each member of the Episcopate : — Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C. October 26th, 1894. To The Right Honourable and most Reverend the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. My Lord Archbishop, The recent proclamation through the public Press by the head of the '' Italian Mission in England " as to the effect produced upon his mind by seeing the doctrines and practices of his own corrupt communion adopted freely without let or hindrance within the Established Church, calls for some suitable notice at the hands of its responsible rulers. In his Preston address, as reported in the Times, the " Cardinal Archbishop " said : — " The doctrines of the Catholic Church, which had been rejected and condemned as blasphemous, superstitious, and fond inventions, have been re-examined and taken back, one by one, until the Thirty-Nine Articles have been banished and buried as a rule of faith. The Real Presence, the sacrifice of the Mass, offered for the living and the dead — sometimes even in Latin — not unfrequent Reservation of the Sacrament, regular Auricular Confession, Extreme Unction, Purgatory, Prayers for the Dead, devotions to Our Lady, to her Immaculate Conception, the use of her Rosary, and the Invocation of Saints are doctrines taught and accepted with a growing desire and relish for them, in the Church of England, A Celibate clergy, the institution of Monks and Nuns under vows, Retreats for the clergy, Missions for the people, fasting and other penitential exercises — candles, lamps, incense, cruci- No. 208.] fixes, images of tlie Blessed Virgin, and the Saints held in honour, Stations of the cross, cassocks, cottas, Roman collars, birettas, copes, dalmatics, vestments, mitres, croziers, the adoption of an ornate Catholic ritual, and now recently, an elaborate display of the whole ceremonial of the Catholic Pontifical — all this speaks of a change and a movement towards the Church that would have appeared absolutely incredible at the beginning of this century/'' The minds of loyal Churchmen are overwhelmed with sorroAv and shame as they reflect that every word of this terrible indictment is literally true. The men wdio do these things have, every one, been selected and commissioned by the Bishops who possess in addition ample powers to with- draw their licences, to refuse them institution, or to inhibit them from wandering out of their own dioceses, as well as to serve with a monition any who introduce ornaments without a faculty. The Bishops are therefore responsible for the existing condition of things. It would indeed be a scandal if, when thus challenged by the Roman official, the collective Episcopate of the Church of England had no defence to make, no word of counsel to give, and no guidance to oS'er. Hitherto, scarcely a single Bishop on the bench has uttered so much as a word of warning, or publicly rebuked the Romanizing faction. On the contrary, judging from the distribution of Episcopal patronage, many of them apparently seek to foster the very evils over which, wath natural pride, the Roman Catholic *' Cardinal Arch- bishop " exults. The questions at stake are not mere quarrels about '' jurisdiction" as between rival ecclesiastics, or as to what is called " validity of Orders," but, as Hooker said three centuries ago, " We disayree about the nature of the veri/ essence of the medicine whereby Christ cureth our disease ; about the maimer of apjplying it, about the number and power of the means, lohich God requireth in us for the effectual applying thereof to our soul's comfort." If the Church of Rome be right in her teaching and practices, it follows that every one of the Pi'otestant Bishops 3 is in a state of unjustifiablu schism, and the obedience of Englishmen is due, as Dr. Vaughan alleges, to himself and the other delegates of a foreign Prelate. Many of the Bishops, including your Grace, have urared the formation of " Defence " Societies to stave ofE the danger of Disestablishment in Wales. But surely the previous question must arise — viz. What is the " religion " you propose to conserve ? Unless Justification by Faith " only," and the absolute sufficiency of the One Sacrifice for sins once offered, be clearly taught, and the direct action of the Holy Spirit upon the human soul, as well as the direct access of each individual soul to the Father (through Christ by the Spirit) be maiiitained, the Established Church becomes an oflTence, pernicious even to secular society from the example it is giving of dishonesty and breach of good faith on the part of its stipendiary officials. At the present moment the Bishops of the Church of England stand publicly challenged by the spokesman of the Roman community. The questions at stake are such as these — Is the Object of worship so exhibited in the bread and wine at Holy Communion as to be the recipient therein (or thereunder) of Divine honours ? Is Christ daily offered to the Father by the hands of sacrificing priests at earthly altars as a propitiation for sin ? We look to your Grace and to the Bishops of the Church of England to answer plainly such vital questions as these which underlie the wliole system and apparatus of " Ritualism " ; and it would be an uncharitable and unworthy abnegation and neglect of the duties of your high office to fail to speak out when men's minds are being distracted by the contradictions of their professional teachers. Since the Episcopal veto has been established, no Bishop has taken action in respect of lawless irregularities when formally brought under his notice. In other words, the Bishops neither make any attempt to fulfil the require- ments of their office, nor will they suffer others to do what they believe to be tlieir duty. The result is, that 4 when called upon to support "religious education" or to maintain the establishment of "religion," Churchmen are at a loss to know which of two contradictory systems their Lordships desire to build up. " If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle ? " On public grounds, therefore, I ask your Grace in the name of the Council of the Church Association to use your iufluence to put an end to the policy of inaction, and to stir up the minds of your brethren to some public deliverance which shall not speak with " stammering lips," nor seem to avoid the real issues at stake under the hollow pretext that Ritualism " means nothing," and that Churchmen should give money and do philanthropic work without troubling their minds as to doctrinal verities. The crisis has come, and it is now a time to speak out. Hoping that your Grace may be Divinely guided to take such action as may lead to the peace and prosperity of our beloved Church, I have the honour to remain, Your Grace's obedient servant, ALEX. W. COBHAM, Chairman. To be obtaiiit'd at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Straiul, London, at the price of 3(1 per dozen, or Is Gd per 100. 3rd Thousand.] The Gnglish (^hurch Union: Its Popish Character AND OPEN SYMPATHY WITH THE CHURCH OF THE INQUISITION. The English Cliurcli Union have addressed an official letter to " The Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Antolino Monescillo, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Churcli, Arch- bishop of Toledo/' expressing " profound distress " at the "recent action of the Ai'chbishop of Dublin in having presumed, without the sanction of Your Eminence and of the Bishops of your Province of Toledo, to consecrate a certain schismatic named Cabrera, at Madrid, to the Episcopate/' The letter goes on " solemnly to assure Your Eminence and the Bishops, clergy and faithful of the ancient and illustrious Church of Spain of our repudiation of the encouragement which the action we deplore has given to those who have withdrawn themselves from the communion and authority of their lawful pastors/' This letter is signed by Viscount Halifax, whose pre- decessor in Office, the Founder of the English Church Union, openly joined the Church of Rome. " The Ancient and Illustrious Church of Spain " indeed ! What Englishman can ever forget the story of the Armada, the conspiracies which convulsed England for half a century ; the " Spanish Fury " ; and the diabolical cruelties which led to the Revolution of the Netherlands, No. 210.] all alike done in the interests of the Papacy ? Who can forget the cruelties of the " Catholics " in South America, which has thenceforward been doomed to fall into utter bankruptcy and degradation, and is in the very rear of civilization ? The Church in Spain was the head-quarters of the iniquitous Inquisition, which tortured or burnt hundreds of thousands of human beings, and furnished to Mary of England some of her subtlest advisers for stamping out English Protestantism ! " the fearful blaze Of yon piled faggot's lurid light, Where writhing victims mock the sight, — The scorched limb shrivelling in its chains, — The hot blood parch'd in living veins, — The crackling nerve — the fearful knell Wrung out by that remorseless bell, — God ! that the worm whom Thou hast made Should thus his brother worm invade ! Count deeds like these good service done. And deem Thine eye looks smiling on ! ! " And have Englishmen fallen so low as to join m a movement which has for its ultimate object the establish- ment and recognition in this country of the massacring and torturing Church of Rome — that '^ancient and illustrious Church " from which the Providence of God delivered us four hundred years ago ? Let Englishmen mark that, by their own confession, the Ritualistic party are in full sympathy with that Church, and that this country will alone be to blame if it any longer submits to the pretensions of a party whose ultimate aim, though dissembled for the present, is the re-establishment in our midst of a "religion'^ based on priestcraft and superstition which has proved the sworn foe to liberty of thought and independence of action in all matters civil as well as ecclesiastical both in the Old World and the New, London : Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street, Published by the Church Association, and to be obtained at their office, 14, Buckingham Street, Sti'and, at the price of 2d per dozen or Is per 100. 29th Thousand.] 7.8.1900 IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. ?05-i UNDER the fostering protection o£ the Bishops, this money-making superstition is being actively I'evived. The Rev. R. A. Eden, Vicar of Okl St. Pancras', London, has issued the following notice : — " On the Twenty- sixth Sunday after Trinity [Nov. 18, 1895], with the permission of the Bishop of London, we hare arranged to hold the second of a series of Celebra- tions of the Holy Eucharist, to be offered annually (d.v.) in, Solemn CummemoratioH of the faithful dead, whose bodies are lying within our own Church or Churchyard, or have been buried in any of the other St. Pancras' Cemeteries." It will be remembered that Captain Cobham drew the attention of the Bp. of London to this illegal practice last year, (See correspondence in the Intei-ligexckr, February, 1894.) Dr. W. G. Knight-Bruce, Bp. of Mashonaland, officiated at the funeral of the late Canon Courtenay when a crucifix and lighted tapers were borne before the corpse. " In place of the Gloria the Eenuiem Aeternam was substituted." Lights were No. 211.] placed round the bitr, and " a series of low masses " were said, after one of wliicli " tlio celebrant censed the body, saying the ■usual [sic] prayers for the soul's repose." At St. Peter's, Vanxhall, says the Daily Telegraph (November 19th, 1894), nofetcer than ttvenfy-seven services have been observed over the body of the late vicar, the Rev. George William Herbert. At 11 o'clock a solemn requiem was celebrated by the Rev, F. E. Maturin, and prayers were oifered up for the repose of Mr. Herbert's soul. The ritual Avas of the most advanced and imposing character. At the conclusion of the service the burial office was said, as it had heen on Saturday afternoon. The Feast of All Souls (being recognised in the Kalendar of the Church of Rome), was observed by the " Guild of All Souls." At St. Alban's, Holborn, a Catafalque was erected and censed and the following absolution of the dead was pronounced — " Absolve, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the souls of Thy servants, that though dead to the world they may live to Thee, and whatsoever they had done amiss in their human conversation through the weakness of the flesh, do Thou, by the pardon of Thy most merciful kindness, drive away ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." The Rev. Edmund G. Wood, of Cambridge, a member of the Society of the Holy Cross, in his sermon said — " It was our fault if we did not learn in the school of mercy, but let us thank God that there is a school, though a painful one, in which such souls could learn hereafter. The merits of Christ reigned every- where, in Purgatory as well as on earth ; the glorious, merciful work which was done for Cliristian souls in Purgatory was done by the merits of Christ alone. Never let the objection weigh with them for a single moment that the Christian doctrine of Purgatory evacuated the merits of Christ. It did nothing of the kind ; on the contrary,, it extended them to the other world as well as to this ; and so we did well to intercede for the souls in Purgatory. Theirs was a blessed state, though one of pain." The same Divine preached on November 9th, 1894, at St. Clement's, Norwich, when the English Church Union issued a card of invitation announcing that " the Holy Eucharist would be ofcred on hchalf of the souls of the faithl'ul departed." Mr. Wood said— " Sin deserved punishment for its temporal aspect as well as for its eternal aspect. The temporal punishment of sin might be undergone in this life, as, for instance, the martyrs underwent it. Many had undergone it in this life % taking vengeance on self, and by real, genuine devotion to God, but this was not the life of the majority of Christians. The punishment for sin in its temporal aspect must be paid in this life or the life to come, and if in the life to come it must be paid in Purgatory, the place where God enabled us, through the merits of Christ, to pay the temporal portion of punishment not already paid in this life. It was our duty to pray to the Lord that through the merits of His own adorable sacrifice he would mercifully help them. Thank God there is a Purgatory ! exclaimed the preacher. In the mystery of prayer it was possible for us to aid these holy souls by asking God that he would hasten the admission of them to the joys of Paradise, and that the Blessed state of Purgatory might be exchanged for the joyous state of those who were beholding the face of God." Mr.Wansboi'ouglijthe celebrant, alone consumed the elements, attended by a couple of acolytes. At St. Mark's, Marylebone, on All Saints' Day, the Curate, the Rev. A. E. Briggs, preached up purgatory, saying that souls at death must go into purgatory to be cleansed. At the close of the sermon this divine himself lit four candles surrounding a bier, vrliile "Vespers for the dead" were sung. At the close of the service, pamphlets advocating purgatory were given away, one of which was sent to the Bisho^i of London, Invocation of Saints and fees for soul-masses, ai'e the natural accompaniments of this superstition, and the following letter which appeared in the Walxefield Herald, of November 17th, 1894, shews that " the plague is begun ": — " The TJiornhill Parish Magazine for this month, under the head of ' S. Andrew's, Netherton,' contains the following : — 'The Faithful Departed — The Holy Eucharist durin_£( this month, on the first three Fridays and on the last Saturday, will be ofTered at 8 o'clock for this object. Those who desire the prayers of the Church for their departed relations or friends should not fail to give in the names of those to he rememherecL' This is practically au adverLisomonfc of a professional Prayer for the dead, seeking to extend his connection. He unfortu- nately omits to publish testimonials from those whom he is supposed to benefit, as to any satisfactory results accruing to them from the practice. That is rather disappointing, but if it sbould check the demand for that article, he lias another line which he can offer, and he recommends it with 'a short quotation on the Invocation of Saints.' In it is said 'prayer with hope is well directed to all rational creatures, whether men or angels, whether in the body or out of the body ' — that is, either alive or dead. Good business that ! As a professional Prayer and up-to-date, he is quite prepared to pray to the dead or for the dead, whichever you like. Any saint or angel you may want to send a message to he will ring up — I mean he will call down — and any departed friend or relation about whose present condition you may be feeling anxious, he will undertake to do all that is necessary for. Wonderful man ! Clever man ! And as a result of the 'press notice' his business should extend so that he will have to get a stafi" of assistants as clever as himself to meet all demands — or he will be courteously invited to a certain Palace to explain both his words and his ways." To bu obtained at the OIHce of tlic Chukcii A.ssoriAiioN, 14, Buckiugli'iiii Street, Strand, London at tlic price of 3d per dozeu or Is Cd per 100. 4tli Thousand.] ON (Reunion voit^ t^t (papacy* Some surprise has been manifested, even by members of the English Church Union, that their President should have " ventured to approach the Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lord Antolino Monescillo, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church," to repudiate complicity with the action of the Irish Bishops in consecrating a Protestant bishop for Spain. But it is due to Viscount Halifax to say that he has acted quite consistently in thus advocating submission to the Pope. For many years his public utterances have had this for their keynote. Thus in 1880 he said — " There is one direction above all others towards which our eyes must ever be turning in the hope that at last it may please God to allow us to see the streaks of that dawning day which shall restore ns to visible communion with the rest of the Latin Church from which we have now been separated ever since the schism of the sixteenth century." — Meeting of the Societi/ for Promoting the Re-union of Christendom." (Keported in Church Times, May i4th, 1880, p. 320.) Again in 1885 — "There is an old saying in the north of England that the Catholic Faith was the first, and will be the last. It is a matter of great thank- fulness that prejudice and ignorance in regard to that Faith are being dispelled, and I am certain that the day will come, although we may not live to see it, when clergy and laity alike, realizing their true position, will no longer be ashamed to confess and, confessing, to practise, the precepts of the Catholic Faith." — Church Review, 1885, p. 283. To this end he urged them to labour and pray for "Union among ourselves, and the restoration of the visible unity with the members of the Church abroad, east and west alike, but No. 212.] above all tcith the great Apostolic See of the Jf est, with the holy Soman Church which hi^ done so much to guard tie true faiths — Times, June 11th, 1885. Or, as The Church Review reports it, "Union . . . especially with the great Latin Church from which we were separated by the sins of the sixteenth century." — Church Review, June 12th, 1885. In 1886 he said — " I desire to emphasise what I said last year." " If a central authority is good for the Anglican Communion, a central authority must be good for the Church at large . . . " Ought it [the Church of England] to remain on this earth Aceohalous, and with no common centre r Can we at least conceive anything more conducive to the unity of the Church than such a common centre, provided always that the principle of centralization be so accepted as not to infringe on the right of local jurisdiction. Certainly those who are willing to recognize an appeal from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Judicial Committee, need not scruple at an appeal to a Christian Bishop. Is there a single instructed Christian who would not prefer Leo. XIII. to the Privy- Council.^" — Speech at ttcenty-seventh Anniversary of M.C. U., May 26th, 1886. jE". C. U. Gazette, 1886, p. 242. And in 1887— " Why should not our abbeys, which were once the glory of England, be rebuilt? Why should not the wounds of Christendom be healed.^ Why should those who own a common Master and a common Faith remain apart .- "It has been objected to me of late that as I have earnestly advocated reunion with our separated brethren at home, so I have advocated the reunion of the Church of England with the Eoman See. I do most ardently desire it, and nothing shall make me unsay what I have said on the subject. How can we remain content in our state of isolation .^ " — £. C. U. Gazette, January, 1887, p. 15. It seemed a little ungrateful, therefore, in Cardinal Vaughan to write to this same Archbishop of Toledo — " This nobleman is not, and never was, a Catholic, but the chief of one of the sects of the Anglican Church, which claims for itself, with- out the smallest foundation, the name of the true Catholic Church." For, after all, are not both of these gentlemen labouring to the same end, the restoration of the Papacy to universal supremacy over the whole of Christendom ? London : Printed by G. Xorman i Son, Floral Street, Published by the Chcrch Association, and to be obtained at their office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 2J per dozen or Is per 100. 10th Thousand.] 7.S.1900 r^aERSE. Part I.— Illegal. F tbe "six points" of unlawful Ritual wliicli the later Tractarians set themselves to revive, the use of incense alone seems now to lag behind. The Churcli Times of September 7th, 1894, devotes a leader to urging its revival at Harvest Thanks- givings, observing that " the principle icould he conceded by even a very small use of it," and that "the British Harvest Festival-goer will think everything right on Harvest Festival day," and can be educated in this way to tolerate its habitual use. Four reasons are assigned for the proposed revival. The first is the alleged requirement of the rubric. " Incense was one of ' the ornaments of the Church ' in the second year of King Edward \1. ; and therefore its use is not only allowed, but is provided for in our present Prayer Book." It was, of course, a slip to speak of incense as an " ornament," and the leader-writer doubtless intended to refer to the censer. Yet it would be misleading to represent censers as in general use even in 154:8 : and quite untrue to say that they were authorised or even recognised by the First Prayer Book of Edward YI. That omission was the more marked because the Missals of Saram, Bangor, Herefoi'd, and York, had each provided for, and dii-ected the use of the censer ; so that the careful omission of any corresponding rubric in the Prayer Book of 1549, was emphasized by the statement in its Preface that the new " Order for Prayer" was — " More profitable, because here are left out many things whereof some be untrue, some uncertain, some vain and superstitious. It is also more commodious, both for the shortness thereof, and for the plainness of the order, and for that the rules be few and easy. Further- more by this order, the curate shall need none other books for their public service than this book and the Bible : by the means whereof the people sliall not be at so great charge for books, as in time past they have been." The Preface of 1549 went on to abolish all special local Uses No. 213.] and to say " from henceforth the whole Realm shall have but one Use." That " one Use " was prescribed within the covers of the Prayer Book itself, to the designed exclusion of all previous usages which were not expressly " retained " by it. The Venetian Ambassador, in May, 1551, describes tbe "Use" under the First Prayer Book as follows : — " They use bells and organs, but neither altars, nor images, nor [holy] water, nor incense, nor other Roman ceremonies . . . they dismiss the non- communicants from the choir." (Venetian State Papers, V., pp. 347, 353.) It should be remembered that altars had been removed before he wrote, under a Statutory Order of the Privy Council, dated November 23rd, 1550. We have nothing to do with the usages of the Second year of Edward, because these were not only superseded, but abolished by " Authority of Parliament in the second year," viz. the Act 2 & 3. Ed. VI., c. 1, which (in the last week of that year) supplanted all previously varying rites by the "one" uniform Protestant Liturgy of 1549, so that they became thenceforward illegal. The Ghurch Times has but repeated the old sleight-of-hand, by which the customs of 1548 (which were almost entirely Popish) are put to the front and palmed off instead of the " parlia- mentary " Prayer BooTi which swept them away : whereas the actual usages of 1548 rested upon no "Authority of Parliament" whatever. No censei*, and no use of incense in any form was recognised by the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., which is "the Authority of Parliament" referred to in our Ornaments rubric. The only " Ornaments of the Church " prescinbed or implied by that book were the " Lord's Table," the pulpit, the font, the Bible, the Prayer Book, the poor men's box, the paten, chalice, bell, corporas, oil-vessel, and pyx for conveying the wafer to sick folk at home. The chrysome, and the water cruet might, perhaps, also be included. But no room for a censer can be detected in that Liturgy. Even before the Reformation the use of incense had been quite rare and exceptional. It is not so much as mentioned by John De Burgh, in 1365, or by Myrc in 1420, nor in the Lay-foWs Mass hook, which was still earlier, nor in the Rationale prepared for Convocation by Bp. Gardiner in 1540. In the Surrey Inventories, published with great care by Mr. Tyssen, there is not a single censer: nor in the Lincolnshire Inventoi'ies, published by Mr. Peacock, a learned R. C. anti- quarian. " Nor is there any chai^ge for incense through long periods of years in some of the churchwardens' accounts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." It is clear therefore that incense was unpopular before the Reformation, whether on the ground of expense, or of its unpleasant odour, or of the associations with sanitation which even now link it irrevocably with pastilles and "ribbons of Bruges." Mr. Scudamore, the most learned of the Ritualists, is compelled by the evidence to admit that " the ritual use of incense is of course illegal, as it is not prescribed in the First Book of Edward." (Notitia Eucharistica, second edit. p. 143.) On this ground it was judicially condemned by Sir Robert Phillimore, and by Lord Penzance in a series of suits, and no appeal from their adverse judgments on this head has been so much as attempted. Indeed, everyone of the counsel employed by the E. C. U. in 1866 pronounced against its use, and this too on their own ex parte Case, prepared by their most learned expert. Their Opinion (published by the E. C. U. and also reprinted in the Appendix to the First Report of the Ritual Commission, p. 157), was as follows : — " We are of opinion that the burning of Incense in censers for censing persons or things in the course of the service is not lawful. We know no sufficient authority for using Incense in any other way." Robert Phillimore. James Hannen. C. G. Prideaux. " I am strongly of opinion that the burning of Incense in any way and for any purpose in the course of any of the services is unlawful. There is no direction that the oiBciating minister is to do such a thing ; and he may not authorize others to do it." J. Pare:er Deake. " I am of opinion that sufficient evidence as to the use of Incense under the Prayer Book of 1519 is not adduced in the Case to prevent my agreeing with the Queen's Advocate and Mr. Hannen that the burning of Incense in Censers for the purpose of censing persons or things is not lawful." J. Cutler. " I find myself unable to arrive at the conclusion that it is now lawful to use Incense in any part of the service." W. M. James. " We are of opinion that the burning of Incense is not now lawful." Wm. Bovill. J. D. Coleridge. Not one single lawyer gave a favourable Opinion, though invited to do so by the English Church Union, so that the continued advocacy of this clearly unlawful practice by the E.C.U. proves that they do not care twopence for law or order whenever these conflict with their Romanizing movement.* On the other hand, we have as an Official contemporary inter- pretation the facts that both in the Provinces of Canterbury and York censers were ordered by the Metropolitan in his Visitations, A.u. 1571 and 1576, to be destroyed as "relics and raonu- * The Rev. Morris Fuller, b.d., in a pamphlet j^ubHshed by Innes & Co., December, 1894, p. 04, has actuahy invented an imaginary judgment of the I'rivy Council in favour of Incense ! 4 ments of superstition and idolatry." (Grindal's Bemains, pp. 135, 159.) Bp. Jewel in the Homily On peril of Idolatry whicli was adopted by Convocation in the same Synod which put forth also the Thirty-nine Articles, described the " candlesticks, incense-ships," &c., of the Jewish temples as "things allowed of the Lord, luhen the priests offered sacrifices," but quotes St. Jerome as teaching this " sumptuousness amongst the Jews to be a figure to signify, and not an example to follow, and that those outward things were suffered for a time, until Christ our Lord came, who turneth all these outward things into spirit, faith, and truth." (Hom., Part III., p. 269, ed. S.P.C.K.. 8vo.) Bp. Jewel's marked rejection of the pre-Reformation ritual was indicated also by his censui-e in the same Homily of " this costly and manifold furniture of vestments OP late USED in the Church." And it is noteworthy that although Q. Elizabeth herself edited this Homily and made certain alterations in its wording after it left Convocation, she did not interfere with the Synodical censure of Incense-burning. (See the paper on the Second Book of Homilies, in Church Intelligencer, May, 1894, vol. XI., p. 75.) Hence we may fairly infer that as incense was never used in her own chapel after the restoration of Edward's Second Prayer Book, she could not have intended to restore it by the fraud- rubric of which she appears to have been the sole author. Still less could it be "retained" in 1661 when not a single censer had been left. Part II.— Unscriptural. The Church Times contends that incense " stands on scriptural authority" because " ordained by God Himself with minuteness of detail, surrounded by restrictions intended to elevate its sanctity and prohibit profanation and improper use." That argument, however, proves too much. It would prove indeed that every Ritualist should be excommunicated, or put to death ! for" God Himself" directed the precise ingredients which alone might be employed and Avhich wei'e to be lit only from the altar of burnt-offering in the outer court, no layman, under any pretext, venturing to burn a single grain of it. Exod. xxx.-33, 37 ; Num. xvi.-40. It was, moreover, to be burnt out of sight of the laity, in the holy place, and only once a year might it be taken within the Sanctuary proper, every inferior priest being at that time carefully excluded even from entrance into the Temple ! Offerings " for sin " were 7iot accompanied by incense burning. Many of these " minute details " were enforced under a death penalty, and every one of them is violated in Ritualistic churches. The argument might, therefore, be retorted with interest. If God prescribed " minute details " under the Old Testament, we miglit fairly have expected under the New Testament at least an equal care to prevent " profanation " if any such usage had been intended to continue. The leader-writer, however, claims that Malachi i.-ll is to the point — " Neither will I accept an offering at your hand. For from the risins; of the sun even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles ; and in every place Incense shall he offered unto my name, and a pure offering (mincka)." " Of no other offering has it ever been true, or can it ever be true that it has prevailed, or shall prevail, ' in every place ' and at all times ' from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same.' " Had this been the meaning of the passage it is quite certain that incense would have been burnt in "every" church as being the revealed will of God from the very earliest times. No Christian assembly could ever have been held any where without this inspired observance. And no room for doubt as to the litei'al obligation of so conspicuous a rite, if observed by all as sacred, could then have found an entrance. Yet some room for hesitation must have remained. For Daniel had prophesied no less clearly (ix.-27) that the Messiah should make the "sacrifice and the oblation (mincha) to cease." Jeremiah had, ijadeed, fore- told that "burning and kindling" would be the characteristics of gospel times (Jer. xxxiii.-18*), while Isaiah had predicted that the " mincha " would consist of the souls and bodies of living men (Isa. lxvi.-20). Were all these apparently contradictory state- ments to be taken literally ? At any rate, we find that Mai. i.-ll was not so taken by those nearest to Apostolic times. There was a remarkable consensus of opinion that this passage foretold the superiority of spiritual worship under the New Covenant to the " smolcy " sacrificial system of the Jews. Thus the very earliest notice of the passage, in the Didache, chapter 14, says : — "But on the Lord's Lord's-day do ye, having assembled, break bread and give thanks {Eiicharist'esate) after confessing your trans- * " When the word 'karpomata' was used (as in the Liturgy of St. James, pp. 222, 305), the knowledge must have died out that in the LXXit almost, invariably represents offerings made hy _fire." {Swainson's Greek Liturgies prcf. xxxis.) Wine never formed part of the " mincha " proper, being poured out as a Ubation, not drunk ; and it was added with the mincha only in the case of burnt oiJerings. The mincha was a mixture of oil, salt, and flour or meal, with a lump of frankincense on the top, which Mr. Sadler admits did not " resemble in the smallest degree " the elements of the eucharist destined solely for human food. No part of the " mincha" was ever eaten by the laity : but it was the name given to the Evening sacrifice (1 Kings xviii.- 29, 30 ; Dan. ix.-21 ; Psalm cxli.-2). See Vogau's 'True doctrine of the Eucharist, p. 352 ; Kurtz's Sacrificial icorship of the 0. T., p. 301 ; Smith's Diet, of Bible, Art. " Meat-offering." And "the time of the mincha " meant 4.30 P.M. See Kingdon's Fasting Comnntnion, p. 330. 6 • gressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let no one that liatli a dispute with his comrade assemble with you until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice be not profaned. For this is that which was spoken by the Lord : ' In every place and time bring me a pure sacrifice ; for I am a great King saith the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the Gentiles.' " Here it is noteworthy that the passage is not quoted exactly — the added words "and time" being evidence that Evening Communion was not then regarded as tabooed, while the omission of any mention of " incense " shews that the literal requirement of scent was not then supposed to have been a subject of Divine Revelation. It was the praise, and giving-of-thanks accompanying the administration of the Supper which constituted the "offering " of its "Eucharist," and (not the bread or wine) which formed this "pure offering."* Not one of the Fathers took the "incense" to be literal. Justin Martyr loosely applied the text Mai. i. -11, to "the Euchai-ist," as he did also the oblation of tine flour at the cleansing of the leper (Trypho. c. 41), but Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome quote the text as referring to the "rendering of glory, benediction, praise, and hymns" ; of "sincere prayer from a pure conscience," the "prayers of the saints," and "the wills of those who offered." The only one of the " ancient liturgies " which cites the passage, viz. the so-called Liturgy of 8. Mark understood the incense literally : but, as Mr. Drake observes, the only MS. of it extant is of the eleventh or twelfth century, and " we have absolutely not a tittle of evidence that, in its present form, it was ever used in any ante-Nicene church." He adds : " the occurrence of an isolated passage in the most perplexing of all Liturgies cannot be made the ground of serious argument " (Drake's Teaching of the Church during the first three centuries, p. 155.) On the other hand, we have the fact that the Liturgy of St. Clement, which has been changed least of any, does not recognise any use of incense. The so-called Apostolic Constitutions, contrast Judaism with Christianity as follows : — " He has in several ways changed baptism, sacrifice, the priesthood, and the Divine service, which was confined to one place, for instead of daily baptisms. He has given only one, which is that into His death. Instead of one tribe he has appointed that out of every nation the best should be appointed for a priesthood ; that not their bodies should be examined for blemishes, but their religion and their lives. Instead of a bloody sacrifice, he has appointed that reasonable and unbloody mystical one of his body and blood, which is performed to represent the Death of the Lord by symbols. Instead of the Divine service * See Waterland's Revieio of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, Ed. 1868, pp. 534, 540 and passim. It was edited by Bp. Jackson at the request of the two Archbishops, and published by the Clarendon Press. confined to one place, he lias commanded and appointed tliat He should be glorified from sunrisinj; to sunsetting in every place of his dominion." (Book Vl.-xxiii. and VII.-30.) When, at a later date and by successive interpolations, the use of incense had been introduced into the Liturgies it was nob Avith any reference to the prophecy of Malachi but as an altogether independent offering. For instance, in the Ordo Comvnuiis the priest and people say together — " The pure incense which the sons of the faithful church have offered to Thee to propitiate thij Godhead, receive in Thy gracious goodness . . so let the smell of our incense be grateful to Thee, and be Thou appeased therewith, O God of great mercy." {Littledale on Incense, p. 18.) In many cases it was offered to Christ himself, shewing that " the mediation of Christ " could not be the offering symbolised in these Liturgies. For example, the Armenian says — " O Lord Christ, in Thy presence we offer incense, a spiritual fra- grance full of sweetness. Eeceive it in the odour of sweetness at Thy celestial and immaterial altar of oblations, &c." {Littledale, p. 20.) Such man-made "offerings " were in no way connected either with the Altar-of-incense at Jerusalem, or with the prophecy of Malachi. It is claimed by the Church Times that incense was presented to Christ by the wise men. But how ? Not as commissioned " priests," nor by burning it in a censer lit " at the vestry gas- burner " as directed by the Birectorium Anglicanum : not by any ritual or sacrificial " offering " at all, but simply to symbolise their belief that Christ Himself (not the offerers) was the true Priest, entitled, therefore, to do what no layman might attemjit, viz. to burn incense before the Lord in His Temple and at the one unseen altar appi'opriated to that ritual use. That is why in Rev. viii.-3 the "Angel" of the Covenant (Mai. iii.-l) is represented as alone offering the incense, though the twenty-four elders bore " vials " (perhaps containing it ?) ready for the Master's use. The High priest alone might bring his censer within the veil. The " vials " (not the odours) were " the prayers of the saints," and their " odours " must therefore mean their resemblance to the mind of Chi'ist, if and when offered by Him " with" the incense which He alone was entitled to burn. Whenever the offering of incense took place, the One priest was always alone in this ministration, and no burning of it in the outer court might then be attempted. Nevertheless the Church Times persists — "The coming Incarnation was announced to Zacharias when 'his lot was to burn incense ' ; and the Angel* who delivered God's message did so 'standing on the right hand of the altar of incense.'" This illustrates well the value of "tradition." The message * The Roman Missal substitutes '• Michael " for Gabriel ! of the Angel to Zacliarias did not in any way relate to " the Incarnation," but to Zacharias' own son, "John the Baptist (Luke i.-13). On the altar of incense no " Body" of a victim was ever presented, no sin offei'ing was ever "offei-ed," and even the rare act of applying sacrificial " Blood " to its horns was only done by the High priest in person when quite alone in the Temple, and then, not by way op a sacrifice, but as the Sacramental application to it of the Atonement already wrought within the veil before the Mercy-seat itself. It follows that the symbolic teaching of Scripture in each of these instances is violated both in letter and spirit by the modern Eitualism. Part III.— Unprimitive. The langriage of the early Christian writers is inconsistent with any ceremonial employment of incense. Justin Martyr, a.d. 163, says: — "He has no need of streams of blood and libations and incense Whom we praise to the utmost of our power by the exercise of prayer and thanksgiving for all things." (Apol. c. 13.) Athenagoras, a.d. 177, alluding to the heathen, rites, says : — "The Creator and Father of the Universe does not require blood nor smoke, nor the sweet smell of flowers and incense." (Legatio. sec. 13.) Tertdllian, a.d. 198, arguing that Christian worship was not more unfavourable to public prosperity than that of the heathen, says : — " We buy certainly no frankincense ; if the Arabians complain of this, the Sabaeans will witness that more and more costly merchandise of theirs is lavished in the burials of Christians than in bui'ning incense to the gods." (Apol. c. xlii.) " I offer to Him a sacrifice which He Himself hath commanded, the prayer that procecdeth from a chaste body, from a soul that sinneth not, from a sanctified spirit — not the few grains of incense a farthing buys, tears of an Arabian tree," &c. (Apol. cap. xxx.) Clement of Alexandria, a.d. 215 — "As we have abandoned luxury in taste, so do we banish voluptuous- ness in sights and odours. . . If therefore they were to say that the Lord, the great High Priest, offers the incense of sweet smell to God, let them not suppose it to be this sacrifice and sweet smell ot' incense, but let them take it that the Lord offers on the altar, the acceptable gift of charity, the spiritual perfume." (Pedagogue, II. c. 8.) "The altar, then, that is with us here, the terrestrial one, is the 9 congregation of those who devote themselves to prayers, having as it were one common voice and one mind. . . . For the sacrifice of the Church is the word breatliing as incense from holy souls, the sacrifice and the whole mind being at the same time unveiled to God. And will they not believe us when wo say that the righteous soul is the truly sacred altar, and that incense arising from it is holy prayer? . . Wherefore we ought to offer to God sacrifices not costly, but such as He loves. And that compounded incense which is mentioned in the Law, is that which consists of many tongues and voices in prayer, or rather of different nations and natures, prepared by the gift vouch- safed in the dispensation ' for the unity of the faith,' and brought together in praises." {Miscellanies, Vll.-vi.) Arnobids, a.d. 298, speaking of the heathen employment of incense, says : — " Whence have you been able to learn that with good reason you think either that it should be given to the gods, or that it is pleasing to their fancy." (Adv. Gentes. c. vii.) Lactantius, a.d. 303 :— " Lest any think that victims or odours, or precious gifts are wanted by God . . this is the true sacrifice ; not that which is brought out of a box, but that which is brought out of the heart." (Epitome, c. 58.) " Incense and other perfumes should not be offered at the sacrifice of God.' forasmuch as ' these and the like do not accord with Him." (Inst. VI., c. XXV.) Eqsebius of C^esarea, a.d. 338 (as quoted by Dr. Littledale), ascribes to Constantine the words — "The Eucharist is a sacrifice of thanksgiving, where one needs not incense or a lighted pyre" and himself remarks — " It is not proper to burn incense or to sacrifice to God who is over all with any things that come of earth." {Bemonstratio Evangelica. III.) St. Augustine, a.d. 396 : — " We do not go to Arabia to seek for frankincense : nor do we rifle the packs of the greedy trader. God demands of us the sacrifice of praise." (Enarr. in Psalm xlix. sec. 21.) Canon Robertson, in his History of the Christian Church, (I. -354), shews how these heathen practices obtained an entrance. He says, " Multitudes were drawn into the Church by the conversion of the Emperor without any sufficient understanding of their new profession — with minds still possessed by heathen notions, and corrupted by the general depravation of heathen morality. The governors of the Church attempted to recommend the gospel to such converts by ceremonies which might rival those of the old religion, and so, it was hoped, might attract them to the true and saving essentials. But unhappily, Chris- tianity itself lost in the process, — not only being discredited by unworthy pi'ofessors, but becoming affected in its doctrines and practices by heathenism. Pagan usages were adopted, — the 10 burning of lamps or candles by day (which, even so latoly as the time of Lactantius, had been a subject of ridicule for Christian controversialists) — incense, lustrations and the like : and tbei'e was indeed too much foundation for the reproach with which the Manichean Faustus assailed the Church : — ' the sacrifices of the heathen you have turned into love-feasts ; their idols into martyrs, whom you worship with similar devotions ; you pro- pitiate the shades of the dead with wine and dainties ; the solemn days of the Gentiles you keep with them, as the Kalends and the Solstices : and certain it is that you have changed nothing from their manner of life.' " The only vouchers alleged by the advocates of Ritualism as belonging to the first four centuries are either mere rhetorical allusions to the symbolism of the Old Testament, or else com- paratively late forgeries or interpolations. Thus — (1) The so-called "Apostolic Canon " — " If any bishop or presbyter, contrary to the appointment of the Lord relatinf{ to the sacrifice, oifer upon the altar any other thing be it honey or milk ... let him be deposed, except new ears of corn and bunches of grapes in their season. But let it not be lawful for any- thing else to be offered at the altar than oil for the lamp, and incense at the time of the holy oblation." {Beveregii Pandects, i., p. 2.) On this, Scudamore observes (Notit. EiicharisHca, 2nd edit, p. 147)— " All after the word ' deposed ' has the appearance of an addition very awkwardly made, with the design of favouring a novel practice contrary to the spirit of the Canon as it originally stood." Dr. Littledale indeed states that the Arabic version " mentions that the incense was for use at the time of the Sacrament and prayers." This, however, is incorrect. It merely speaks of incense (for funeral and sanitary purposes) as being legitimately " offered at the time of the sacrament and prayers," just as money and other gifts are now presented in England as "obla- tions " at the offertory. For evidence of the spurious character of these sham "Apostolic " canons, see Whitaker's Bispusitiovs (Parker Soc), p. 41 ; Smith's Diet. Christian Antiquities, pp. 118, 831 ; Canon Jenkins on " the canons called Apostolical," p. 13 ; Krabbe's Essay on the Apostolic Constitations, New York, 1888, p. 487 ; and Church Intelligencer, VI. -51. (2) " A work once ascribed to Hippolytus, Bp. of Portas, A.D. 220, but now acknowledged to be spurious, is often quoted to the same effect. ' The churches lament with a great lamentation, because neither the oblation nor the burning of incense is performed.' The writer evidently intended only a figurative allusion to Jewish rites : and the work is a very worthless pro- duction of the r)th or 6th century." (Scudamore, Not. Euch., p. 148, quoting Tillemont, Dupin, and Combefis.) Mr. Scuda- 11 mm^e thinks it is based on a rlictorical passage in St. Basil, describing the tenth persecution — " There was no oblation, nor Incense, nor place of sacrifice " — words borrowed directly from the " Song of the three childi'cn," verse 15, even the Hellenistic word Kapirwa-at being retained. See above, foot note, p. 5. (;^) The so-called " ApostolIcal Constitdtions," Book II. -26, arc quoted for — " Let the widows and orphans be esteemed as representing (fi's Tinr(w) the altar [OtiaiaaTiipioi') of burnt-offering ; and let the virgins be honoured as representing the altar of incense and the incense itself."* Dr. Littledale tried to base an argument on the theory that Thusiasterion meant specifically the altar of incense ; that, how- ever, is not only contrary to the factf {Thusia never being used of incense in the LXX. or N.T.), but it would destroy the contrast intended to shew the superiority of "virginity," between the altar (of burnt-offering) in the oiiter court, and that (of incense) within the sanctuary. Bp. Lightfoot has shewn in his notes on Ignatius, Vol. II., i.-4-i, and ii.-913, that Thusiasterion was habitually used in this allusive and symbolic manner, not for the material altar, but for the precinct of the altar of hurnt- offerincj, which was also the " place of the congregation " or ecclesia. Thus he contrasts the Thusiasterion with the Naos, or inner shrine, where the altar of incense was, to which no layman ever had access. And he points out the direct resemblance between the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, sec. iv., and this very passage of the " Constitutions." The facts that no mention of censers occurs in these " Con- stitutions," and that the so-called " Liturgy of Clement," which they contain, has no reference to incense, also prove the metaphorical nature of the comparison. (4) A phrase is adduced from St. Ambrose of a similarly rhetorical character — " When we are heaping up the altars, and bringing the sacrifice." Dr. Littledale, overlooking the classical use of the word, fancied that "adolentibus" here meant burning incense. He forgot that Augustine was the disciple of Ambrose yet belonged to that African Church, which, as he himself admits, always lacked this " catholic " rite. Moreover, incense never was burned on Christian " altai-s," as his rendering would seem to imply. (5) St. Ephkem's Testament is quoted as an " incontestable proof" that St. Ambrose's words must be understood literally. Mr. Scudamore observes that the document is "a clumsy * Dr. Donaldson's translation in Clark's Antc-Niceue Lihranj, p. 59. t In Exod. XXX. -1, and Luke i.-ll, an exceptional use of Tliiii'iastcrion for the golden altar is explained by adding the words " of incense." 12 forgery." It begins, like all documents of the kind, in tlie first person : "I, Eplirem, am about to die," &c. ; but the impostor so far forgot himself as to break into a narrative more than once, and to continue it as a dying speech : " While the blessed man was with, tears giving dii-ections," &c. {Not. Euch.,-p. 151.) Claude de Vert and St. Thomas Aquinas held that incense was introduced at first on purely sanitary grounds. Even in the West, in the days of Charlemagne, the following benediction continued in use : — " May the Lord bless this incense to the extinction nf every noxious stench." The by-standers drew with their hands the smoke towards their nostrils and mouths for this purpose. (Burbidge, Liturgies, p. 94. Trevor on Eucharist, p. 166, 1st edit., or 288, 2nd edit.) Hiding one evil smell by another more powerful, such as the burning of brown paper, or plunging a hot iron into vinegar, were old-world prescriptions of the same class. Bat civilised communities may say of incense what the old lady said when asked if she used scent — "Thank you; I have no need of it." To be obtained at the Oflice of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham St. , Strand, AV.C, „ , at the price of Sd per dozen, or 4s Qd per lOoi 3rd Thousand.] Prayers for a^ ^ The Dead. Rev. C. H. H. WRIGHT, D.D., Ph.D., Bampton J.ecturer (1878), Donnellan Lecturer {Dublin, 1S80), late Grinfield Lecturer on the LXX in the Unii^ersity of Oxford, formerly Examiner in Hebrew, drcin the University of London ; External Examiner in Hebrew in the University of Wale-t; Clerical Superintendent of the Protectant lieformation Society. SECOND EDITION-REVISED AND ENLARGED 3Lonti0n : CHURCH ASSOCIATION, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C. Ko. 214.] FRICE TWOPENCE. CORRIGENDA On page 8, line 12, for third read fourth ,,21, for Testament read Testaments ,, 24, for 146 read 46 ,, 25, /or B.C. read A.D. ,, 41, /of xxii. read xii. PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD. Rev. C. H. H. WRIGHT, D.D., Ph.D. > • • » c- HE subject of Prayers for the Dead has now become one of considerable importance. The practice has, unfor- tunately, become common, and threatens to become still more so. Many things combine to invest that jiractice with special interest at the present day. Persons always take a deep interest in departed fi'iends ; and when someone has suddenly been removed by death, the thought mast naturally arise in every mind, where is the departed one ? That thought, too, in the case of those known not to have been religious, is often accompanied by an intense wish to help, if possible, the departed. Those accustomed to pray b}- name foi- beloved friends have experienced a longing desire still to continue their petitions for them at the throne of grace. It cannot be denied that pi'ayers for the dead are, in some respects, natural, if we believe on the one hand in the efficacy of prayer, and on the other hand in the dead being in a state of conscious existence. It is quite another question whether such a practice be warranted by the teaching of Scripture, or authorised by the Church of England. There is in the present day a widespread desire to get rid of the notion of any final place of punishment. Many look with sympathy upon the idea that there may be some place like purgatory, in which souls after being punished for a period, may be admitted into a state of happiness. The narrowness of Protestant theology is often condemned, and the liberality of Roman Catholic theologry lauded, by persons who are completely ignorant of the dogmatic teachings of the Church of Rome on the question of purgatory. Rome teaches that only the members of the true Church Avill be permitted to enter purgatory. According to Romish teaching, heretics cut off from the Church's communion on earth have ijo chance of being able to atone for their heresy in purgatorial flames. And, even in the case of those who die in outward connexion with " the Catholic Church," the gate of purgatory is, according to Romish teaching, inexorably closed against all who die in mortal sin, or, having committed such sin, have not obtained remission when on earth, R.emission of sin can, according to the dogmas of Rome, be at once obtained by a perfect repentance. But such true and complete repentance is taught to be a grace belonging only to saints of the first order. The faithful of a lower stamp must obtain remission of sins by recourse to the '' tribunal of penance," that is, by means of auricular confession and sacerdotal absolution, and through the- intercession of the Saints, &c. Hence the idea of a place after death of purgation and education, which some of the liberal divines of our day dream of, has little in common with the dogma of Purgatory as expounded by Romish theologians. But it is nevertheless true that the doctrine of some of our Broad Church divines has induced persons who have no sympathy with the Romish Church to look with favour upon the practice of praying for the dead. Moreover, all who, under the delusion or pretence of a. " Catholic revival," are engaged in the work of bringing back Roman Catholic practices and doctrines into the Church of England, find it necessary to revive this practice also, in ordei- that the power of the priest may be placed once more upon the basis on which it stood in the Middle Ages. A revival of the practice of praying for the dead tends to increase the revenues of the priesthood. Those taught to kneel before the priest as Christ's representative on earth, are led naturally to seek his intervention in rescuing departed friends from imaginary torments in the world beyond the grave. I. The Teacliinj of tie ClnircU of England. The authoritative teaching of the Church of England discourages, in the clearest manner, the practice. The Books of the Homilies were designed to be a popular exposition of Anglican doctrine. Those Homilies were drawn up to be read in churches, and are endorsed by Article XXXV. The Articles refer to the Homilies as setting forth " more fully," the teaching of the Church, as may be seen by reference to Article XT. ; and alfcliou^-li Article XXII., wliicli condemns the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, does not distinctly condemn all prayer for the dead, the teaching of the Homilies is perfectly clear and distinct on the subject. The Homily on Prayer (third part) states : " The Scripture doth acknowledge but two places after this life, the one proper to the elect and blessed of God, the other to the reprobate and damned souls ; as may well be gathered by the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. Which place St. Augustine [Lib. ii. Evang. QacE.^t., cap. 'i'S'\ expounding, saith in this wise: 'That which Abraham speaketh unto the rich man in Luke's Gospel, namely, that the just cannot go into those ])laces where the wicked are tormented, what other things doth it signify but only this, that the just, by reason of God's judgment, which may not be revoked, can shew no deed of mercy in helping them which after this life are cast into prison, until they pay the uttermost farthing f These words, as they confound the opinion of helping the dead by prayer, so they do clean confute and take away the vain error of purgatory, &c." After commenting further on that passage, and on Eccl. xi.-8, John iii.-36, together with Aiigustine Lib. Y.,IIypognost.; Chrysost. in Heb. ii., Horn. iv. ; Cyprian, contra Demetrianum, the Homily proceeds : " Let these and such other places be sufficient to take away the gross error of purgatory out of our heads ; neither let us dream any more that the souls of the dead are anything at all holpen by our prayers ; bat, as the Scripture teacheth us, let us think that the soul of man, passing out of the body, goeth straightways either to heaven or else to hell, whereof the one needeth no prayer, and the other is without redemption. " The only purgatory wherein we must trust to be saved is the death and blood of Christ ; which, if we apprehend with a true and steadfast faith, it purgeth and cleanseth us from all our sins. ... If this kind of purgation will not serve them, let them never hope to be released by other men's prayers. . . ." And the next paragi-aph commences with, " Let us not, there- fore, dream either of purgatory, or of prayer for the souls of them that be dead." Thus distinctly does the English Church in her Homilies, authorised by Article XXXV. as containing more complete expositions of her doctrines, reject not only purgatory, but also the practice of prayers for the dead. This no mere casual statement, no chance exposition of a particular text, but a formal statement of doctrine, which shews plainly what the Church intended to be understood by the references to '' Romish " prayers on behalf of the dead in Article XXII. and in Article XXXI. The teaching of Becon (chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer) is identical with that set forth in the Homilies. (See his remarks on The Articles of the Christian Religion, in his Prayers, &c., published by the Parker Society, p. 461 ; and in his Catechism, &c. p. 394.) Similar is the teaching of Bishop Jewel in the second portion of his Works, p. 743. (Parker Society's edition.) It should be borne in mind that those theologians took an important part in the drawing up the Church's formularies. Jewel's Apology of the Church of England is acknowledged by Canon XXX. (the canon referred to in the last rubric of the Order for the Public Baptism of Infants,) to be an authoritative statement of the Church's teaching. Such references could be indefinitely multiplied. It is,, therefore, unfair for Dr. Littledale and others to maintain that in the prayer for the Church militant in saying, "We also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear ; beseeching thee to give ^ts grace so to follow their good examples, that luith them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom," we pray for the departed dead as well as for ourselves. The very thought of prayer for the dead is excluded by the preceding words : " Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth." It is a bad cause, indeed, that seeks to distort simple phrases in such a manner. " The Bidding Prayer of the Canons of 1603 " and the form used " in the commemoration of Benefactors of the Universities," are equally free from any charge of praying for the dead. Prayers for the dead can be just as easily extracted from the phraseology of the Lord's Prayer ; and some have even ventured to go so far. But such arguments may well be left to their own self-refutation. II. Ancient Jeioish Opinion on the State of Souls after Death. It is a well-known fact that the Jews in the present day pray for the dead, and also that the practice has been in use for centuries. It is further affirmed that such prayers were commonly used in the synagogues of Palestine in our Lord's day, and consequently that Christ gave sanction to such prayers by His constant attendance at the Synagogue services — and hence it is argued that such prayers must be regarded as lawful, unless- shewn to be specially forbidden in the New Testament. Hence it is important to investigate what was the real opinion of the ancient Jews on that special subject. A little examina- tion into the matter will shew clearly that the assertion that praj'ers for the dead were used in the Synagogues of Palestine is an assertion entirely unsupported by evidence. It is agreed on all sides that tlie Old Testament books contain no reference to such prayers. But the theory is that such prayers were introduced after the Retuin from the Captivity in Babylon, when the Jews began to have more distinct views on the subject of the resurrection of the dead. Hence it is necessary to examine all the Jewish literature written at or after that period down to about one or two centuries after the Christian era. Besides the books included in the Old Testament there are some fourteen others enumerated in Article VI. of the Church of England, and commonly termed " The Apocrypha," namely, (I) 1 Esdras, (2) 2 Esdras, (3) Tobit, (4) Judith, (5) The Rest of Esther, (6)TheWisdomof Solomon, (7) Ecclesiasticus,(8)Baruch, with the Epistle of Jeremiah, (9) The Song of the Three Holy Children, (10) The History of Susanna, (11) Bel and the Dragon, (12) The Prayer of Manasses, (13) 1 Maccabees, and (14) 2 Mac- cabees. Of these it should be noted that No. 5, " The Rest of Esther " consists of additions to the Hebrew original found in the Greek (LXX) translation of that book ; while Nos. 9, 10, 11, are similar additions found in the Greek Version of Daniel. All these are regarded by the Church of Rome as inspired Scrip- ture, with three exceptions, namely, 1 and 2 Esdras (otherwise called 3 and 4 Esdras), and the Prayer of Manasses. Second or Fourth Esdras contains a remarkable passage in ch. vii., which vividly describes the rest into which the righteous enter at death, with the misery to which the wicked are condemned without any remedy. That passage, consisting* of some sixty-nine verses, is not in the Latin translation of 4 Esra found in the Vulgate edition. The passage was deliberately cut out of the Latin MS. now in the National Library of Paris ; but, being unquestionably genuine, it has been inserted in the Revised English Version of the Apocrypha. The late Professor Bensly of Cambridge discovered in Amiens in 1874 a Latin MS. which had the passage, and additional MSS. containing it have since come to light. No mention of the state of the dead occurs in the 1st Book of Esdras, or in the additions to Esther and Daniel, or in 1 Maccabees, or in the Prayer of Manasses. Leaving out of sight for the moment 2 Maccabees, there is no place in any of these works where the state of the dead is mentioned (incidentally or othei^wise) in which there is any reference made to prayer for the dead. On the contrary all those works (more or less explicitly) describe the state of the dead after death as final and irrevocable. Outside the books generally known as the " Apocrypha " there are several other early Jewish writings which teach sub- stantially the same doctrine of the righteous dead being in a state of blessed rest, and the wicked as undergoing eternal punishment. These additional books consist of (1 — 4) The Book of Enoch, which so-called book is composed of fragments, some larger, some smaller, of books composed under the name of that patriarch. A large poi'tion of that book is assigned to the date B.C. 170. Another portion termed'T/ie Similituil es" wa?. probably composed between n.c. 94 and B.C. 64. A third portion, belonging to an earlier date, contains one passage which speaks of the Day of Judgment, but it does not expressly speak of the state of the dead before that time. A third large portion, written between B.C. 134 and B.C. 94, several times speaks of the intermediate state, and is in general agreement with the opinions already mentioned. Not one of these /owr works allude to prayers for the dead. Next may be mentioned (5) The Psalter of Solomon, or The Psalms of the Pharisees, (6) The Books of the Sibyllines, (7) The Assumption of Moses, (8) The Apocalypse of Baruch, (9) The Testament of Job, (10) The Book of the Jubilees, and (11) The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, (12, 13) Third and Fourth Maccabees, (14) The Book of the Secrets of Enoch, (15) The Woi'ks of Philo Judteus, the great Jewish writer between A.D. 40 and a.d. 14G, and (16) Josephus, the Jewish historian (born B.C. 37), who outlived the destruction of Jerusalem and wrote the account of the terrible wars which culminated in that disaster. Not one of these books or writers knew anything of prayers for the dead, although all more or less directly speak of the state after death. The composition of these works may be roughly said to be between B.C. 100 and a.d. 120. Thus there are extant some twenty-six books of Jewish literature, of which all but three (leaving out of reckoning the additions to Esther and Daniel) speak more or less fully on points connected with the state after death. Only one of these, namely, 2 Maccabees, has been cited as affording evidence of prayers for the dead. III. The Second Book of Maccabees. The Second Book of Maccabees, from chapter ii.-19 to the end is professedly (see ver. 23) an epitome of the history of Jason of Gyrene. It may have been compiled as late as the Christian era. 2 Mace. xxii. speaks of the victories obtained by Judas Maccabeus over Timotheus and Gorgias, and then relates as follows : — Returning to the field of battle on the next day, Judas and his men collected the bodies of the Jews who had fallen on the field in order to bury them with their kinsmen in the sepulchres of their fathers. We quote from the Revised Version : " But under the garments of each one of the dead they found consecrated tokens of the idols of Jamnia ['Perhaps these werecon- secrated imagesof the idols' — MarginalnoteinRevised Version] which the Law forbids the Jews to have aught to do with ; and it became clear to all that it was for this cause that they had fallen. All therefore, blessing the works of the Lord, the righteous Judge, who maketh manifest the things that are hid, betook them- selves unto supplication, beseeching that the sin committed might wholly be blotted out. And the noble Judas exhorted the iinultitude to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they had seen before their eyes what things had come to pass because of the sin of them that had fallen. " And when he had made a collection man by man to the sum of two thousand drachmas of silver, he sent unto Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice for sin [or a ' sin offering.' The Greek is Trpoiraynytii/ irt^i anapriag Ovairiv. The Vulgate erroneously translates * to offer a sacrifice for the sins of the dead,' which is, however, a natural paraphrase from the Roman Catholic standpoint], doing therein right well and honourably, in that he took thought for a resurrection : for if he were not expecting that they that had fallen would rise again, it were superfluous and idle to pray for the dead. " V.-45. (And if /te did if, looking unto an honourable memorial of gratitude laid up for them that die in godliness, holy and godly was the thought). Wherefore he made the propitiation for them that had died, that they might be released from their sin." In reading^ this passage due care should be taken to distin- guish between the facts recorded by the writer of 2 Mace, and the i^eflections he makes thereon. The Maccabees by no means rigidly adhered to the teaching of the Law and the Prophets. It is questionable whether they had any real claim to the high- priesthood ; while their combination of the priestly and the kingly duty in one person, which was resorted to from political reasons, was a violation of the Mosaic Law, and gave just offence to the pious Israelites of that day. Hence the later Pharisees did not look with favour upon the Maccabaean heroes, while the Talmud and other Jewish writings rarely allude to them, and when they do, commend chiefly their father Mattathias.* If the narrative be really historical (and there are serious doubts on that point), it is plain that Judas Maccabeus looked upon the death of those who fell in battle as a judgment inflicted because of the sin of wearing those idolatrous charms. * See the able paper of Dr. M. Gaster on The Scroll of the Haxmonceans in The Transactions of the Niiitli International Congress of Orientalists, 1892, Vol. II. 10 That sin polluted tlie army of Israel in the same manner as the sin of Achan in the days of Joshua (Joshua vii.). Hence Judas was justly afraid of similar evil consequences, and sent to Jerusalem to offer a sin-offering on behalf of his army. This accounts for the fact that he made each man of the army (man by man) contribute towards the sin-oifering. But if it could be maintained that the sin-offering in question was really offered as an atonement for the dead, then that sin-offering' was offered without any authority derived from the Law of Moses, and was a novelty introduced for the special occasion. This would account for the anxiety of the writer to justify the' act, which justification he bases on the broadest and most general grounds. It should also be borne in mind that 2 Maccabees was, aS' noted, an epitome of the work of a Jew of Cyrene, who lived far away from Palestine. The compiler was also an Egyptian Jew, and the Egyptian Jews were chiefly schismatics. They had a rival temple erected B.C. 160 in Leontopolis, in the nome- of Heliopolis. That temple remained standing until after the destruction of Jerusalem, when it also was razed to the ground by order of the Romans. The High Priesthood connected with that temple was legitimate, for Onias IV., the first high-priest, was son of Onias III., high-priest at Jerusalem. The testimony of Egyptian Jews as to Palestinian practices cannot there- fore be accepted as conclusive unless confirmed from other sources. The passage in 2 Maccabees is always cited by Roman Catholic theologians as a text in proof of the existence of a purgatory after death. But no trace of such a place can be discovered in any Jewish teachings of that era. The writer of 2 Mace, may, possibly, have imagined that it was possible to rescue from the flames of Gehenna, or hell, the transgressors who had died for their country, although those " sinners against theix* own souls " bore on their persons the proofs of their idolatrous- practices. The writer of 2 Mace, in his own comments contra- dicts the facts which he records. For all those who were slain on that occasion were slain because of idolatry, and yet the writer speaks about theii' joyful resurrection, and of the " great favour laid up for those who died godly ! " In face of the strong evidence to the contrary which exists in ancient Jewish literature, we cannot consider the reflections made by the writer of 2 Mace, on the act of Judas Maccabeus as any satisfactory proof of the practice of prayers for the dead among the Jews of the Maccaba>an era. Moi-eover, even if Judas Maccabeus actually offered up such prayers, that innovation cannot be shewn to have formed any part of the synagogue service in Palestine. 11 IV". Jeivish Practice in Christian Times — Prayers and Inscriptions. We now turn to examine the further evidence adduced by Dean •uckock in favour of the Jewish practice op praters for the DEAD AT THE TIME OF OUR LoRD, which, in his view, satisfac- torily accounts for our Lord's silence on that subject. (1 ) His first argument is based upon the Jewish prayer known as the Kaddish. The Dean rapidly o-lides over that prayer as one would over treacherous ice. The prayer, which is in Aramaic, is no doubt of considerable antiquity, and a portion of it may be pre-Christian, although this latter point is by no means certain. As it lies before us in the original, the Kaddish " contains," as even Dean Luckock confesses, "no direct prayers for the dead," nor even a clear allusion to the dead, unless they are included under " all Israel." Dean Luckock maintains, however, that "indirect reference to their use is traceable in several portions of it." The ingenuity which can wring out prayers for the dead from passages in the Book of Common Prayer, which nobody for centuries ever interpreted in that light (the practice being condemned by the authorized Homilies read publicly in hundreds of churches), can invent "indirect refer- ences " anywhere. It is perfectly true, as Dr. Alexander McCaul pointed out in his Old Paths (English edition, p. 149), that later Jews have employed that ancient prayer as a prayer for a deceased parent, in the same manner as superstitious Christians have used the Ave il/a?-m as a pr-ayerfor the dead, although the latter address, as given in Luke i., is no prayer at all. The Jewish custom is thus referred to in Joreh Deah 376, cited by McCaul : — " Therefore the custom is for twelve months to repeat the prayer called Kaddish, and also to read the lesson in the prophets, and to pray the evening prayer at the goingj out of the Sabbath, for that is the hour when the souls return to liell [to Gehenna, for the Jews imagined that the lost souls got a relaxation from punishment on the Sabbath] ; but when the son prays and sanctifies in public, he redeems his father and mother from hell." The Jews in the Middle Ages were constantly adding, in a manner similar to the Christians, to their superstitious beliefs, misunderstanding allegories for facts, constructing thus " Jewish fables" (Titvis i.-14), and continually enlarging and embellishing their extensive Liturgies. Quotations from such media)val works are no proof of "practices in the days of our Lord." Dr. Luckock seems to have been led astray by misunder- standing some " conversations " he had with the late Dr. S. M. 12 Schiller-Szinessy, Reader in Talraudic literature in the Uni- versity of Cambridge. Dr. Schiller-Szinessy's Addresses pro- vided Dr. Luckock with important material for his argument. Scholars who have come in contact with Dr. Schiller-Szinessy have been obliged carefully to discriminate between his facts and his fancies. (2) There is not the slightest authority for the statement that the prayer for the dead, cited on p. 5S of Dr. Luckock's book from the Hasliarath Neshamofh, and used on the Day of Atonement, could have been in our Lord's mind when uttering "that part of His Sermon on the Mount which touches upon the subject of charity and almsgiving." The prayer in question does not go back even to the fifth century after Christ. (3) Dr. Luckock, in ten editions of his book After Death, has quoted in favour of his contention a number of old Jewish inscriptions, all centuries later than the Christian era, which, of course, need not be referred to here. The Aden inscription which is now in the British Museum, was assigned by the Dean in ten editions to B.C. 282. The date of that inscription is, however, a.d. 718. An error of one thousand years was rather a serious fault to make in such an argument. The error appeared in the first edition of Dr. Luckock's work, dated 1879, and kept its place in the ninth edition dated 1892, and even in a portion of the tenth edition. In all those editions the following note was added : — " For a full description of the epitaph by Dr. Schiller-Szinessy, see Plate xxiv. of Facsimiles of Ancient MSS., Oriental Series of the Palfeographic Society, part ii." But that series of Facsimiles was edited by the late Professor Dr. W.Wright, and under the plate itself are the words "Hebrew Inscription, A.D. 718, British Museum." On the top of the page of translation there stands the same statement, " British Museum, A.D. 718." But although Dr. Luckock referred to that folio volume, he never took the trouble to verify the i-efer- ence which Dr. Schiller-Szinessy had no doubt given him. Hence he fell into this mistake. And although in the "new edition " he has dropped all reference to this inscription, he has not, as he ought to have done, called attention to the mistake which had been made. Some correction ought to have been made in his Preface, for Dr. Luckock's book has been so popular as to find its way into the hands of thoiisands who will never see the last edition ; and even if they did, would not then understand the reason why that inscription was no longer referred to. This may suffice to shew on what " evidence " men of scholar- ship have been led to affirm that our Lord, by attending the synagogues of Galilee and Judaea, sanctioned the practice of " prayers for the dead " ! 13 V. Jewish Practice in Christian Times — Talmud, Midrash, ^'c. As Dr. Luckock and others have appealed, to the usage of the Jews in or about the time of our Lord, it is important to adduce passages from the Talmud and Midrash to shew the doctrine prevalent among the Jews of the early post- Christian period on the subject of the state of the dead. (1) Dr. Luckock, aided no doubt by Dr. Schiller-Szinessy (whose Addresses are quoted in defence of fantastical explana- tions of passages in our Lord's Sermon on the Mount), maintains that much light is thrown by the Siphre upon the meaning of the prayer offered up, in case of a murder committed by unknown persons, by the elders of the city nearest to the scene of the outrage. The prayer alluded to is as follows : — " Be merciful, Lord, unto Thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto Thy people of Israel's charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them " (Deut. xxi.-8). The Siphre or Midrash on the fourth and fifth books of Moses, which is probably as old as a.d. 180-200, gives the following quoted by Dr. Luckock (p. 60) : — " Forgive Thy people, that is, the living; whom Thou hast redeemed, that is, the dead, which shews that the dead also want an atonement." M. Israel Levi, in an article (written quite without any know- ledge of Dr. Luckock's work or the controversy concerning it) in the lievue des liltiides Juives (Juiilet-Septembre, 1894), on Ida Commivwration des dmes dans le Judaisme, has pointed out that the doctors of the Talmud understood that expiatory ceremony as intended to free the generation then present, not only from their own actual guilt, but from the guilt of former generations which lay on them from the day that Israel departed out of Egypt. It was a ceremony not for the dead, but only for the living. (2) In the Talmud the following account is given of the death of Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, who died shortly after the destruction of the Temple by Titus. Ben Zakkai re- organised the whole Jewish ecclesiastical arrangements, and modified the practices of the Law of Moses so as to adapt them to the supposed necessities of those times. For after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, there was no longer any Temple, or any lawful place of sacrifice. The Romans had put the Jewish priests to the sword. Ben Zakkai was the founder of a new religion in which prayers, and alms, and the study of the Law were substituted for the Mosaic ordinances, and in which the Rabbi, to some extent, took the place of the priest. Hence Ben Zakkai has been designated by Graetz the great Jewish his- torian of modern days, " the founder of Talmudic Judaism," 14 and his sentiments are of peculiar value upon the question before us. The incident vre quote is taken from Berachoth, 28b. When on his death-bed Rabban Johanan was visited by his scholars. He said to them, " If they were about to bring me before a king of flesh and blood, who to-day is, and to-morrow will be in his grave, even then I might weep. If he were angry with me, his anger is not eternal; and if he were to cast me into chains, his chains are not eternal ; and if he were to put me to death, his death would not be eternal ; I might appease him with words, or bribe him with riches. But now they are about to lead me before the King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He ! who liveth and abideth for everlasting ; and if He casts me into chains. His chains are eternal chains ; and if He kills me, it is everlasting death ; and I cannot appease Him with words, nor bribe Him with mammon. Nor is that all : there are before Him two ways ; one leads to the Garden of Eden, and one to Gehenna, and I know not which Avay they will conduct me to ; and shall I not weep ? " It is not necessary here, with the object here in view, to quote the conclusion of the story. But it is perfectly clear from what has been cited that R. Johanan regarded the judgment passed at death as final, and believed that no atonement could be looked for bej'^ond the grave. He had no idea that he might be helped in another world by the prayers of his scholars or friends whom he left behind on earth. No Puritan of the seventeenth century could have expressed himself on that point in clearer language than did the great " founder of Talmudic Judaism," who lived and taught contemporaneously with the great Apostle of the Gentiles. (3) The same teaching is set forth in the Pirke Aboth, the golden book of ancient Judaism, which is one of the tracts of the Talmud. We quote from the excellent English translation of Dr. Charles Taylor, Master of St. John's, Cambridge. In ch. iv.-23 we read, "R. Jacob said, This world is like a vestibule before the world to come ; prepai'e thyself at the vestibule that thou mayest be admitted into the hall. He used to say, Better is one hour of repentance and good works in this world than all the life of the world to come ; better is one hour of refreshment of spirit in the world to come than all the life of this world." Aboth, iv.-24. This passage is also quoted in several other tracts of the Talmud. The Rabbi Jacob here mentioned was one of the early Jewish Fathers, and entered into controversy with some of the great pupils of Rabbi Akiba. The latter was the great Rabbi who was the life and soul of that great upheaval against the Roman tyranny, of which the military genius was Bar Cochba. The doctrine underlying such sayings is identical, so far as it 15 ■goes, with the teachings of the Puritan theology. It lays down as a self-evident axiom that man must prepare in this world for the world to come, and rejects the idea that a partial repentance can be completed in the world beyond the grave. In the numerous sayings attributed to R. Akiba, there is not one which gives us a hint of the practice of prayers for the dead. A good summary of his teaching is given in Aboth, iii.-25. " He used to say, Everything is given on pledge; and the net [that is, of death (Eccl. ix.-12)] is cast over all the living. The office is open ; and the broker [the Lord of the world] gives credit [allows men freely to borrow, but recoi'ds what they have borrowed] ; and the ledger is open; and the hand writes ; and whosoever will borrow comes and borrows ; and the bailift's [that is, the angels of death] go round continually every day, who summon men to their doom, and exact from a man whether he wills or not : and they have whereon to lean [that is, they have knowledge of the actions of ■each, and God's law defining good and evil]; and the judgment is a judgment of truth. And everything is prepared for the Banquet," or the great feast provided for the just in the world to come. Thus the ancient Jewish teachers affirmed that the present life is the day of opportunity, and warned those for whose benefit they spoke or wrote, that if that opportunity be let slip it cannot be recalled. The punishments of the future world cannot be mitigated or evaded by the instrumentality of prayers offered up by friends on earth ; the enjoyments of the blessed are equally secure whether their names be remembered or forgotten on the earth below. Such is a small sample of the teaching prevalent in the days ■close to the time of our Lord's life on earth. The idea of prayers for the dead, and of an atonement for transgressors cut off in sin (if that idea existed at all), cannot have entered deeply into the popular theology when such were the sentiments of the leaders of thought in that day. It is quite true that later teachers (some of whose teaching is set forth in the Talmuds) occasionally taught that prayer had saved souls even from the flames of hell. Thus Moses was said to have rescued the descendants of Koi'ah, and David to have saved Absalom. All such legends of later days are no evidence whatever. It would be as unfair to quote the story of Pope Gregory having saved, by his prayers, the Emperor Trajan out of hell, as a proof that the Church of Rome did not believe in everlasting punishment. (4) We shall now give a more extended passage from the Midrash Rabba which sets forth the doctrine of a later age, but of an age in general harmony with the doctrine taught in the past. 16 The teachings of the Midrashim (or Expositions) are, however, not always consistent. The following is a free paraphrase of the comment on Eccl. i.-15. " That which is crooked cannot be made straight ; and that which is wanting cannot be num- bered." The Midrash, speaking on this, says there are un- righteous men in this world who have been companions together ; one of them, however, repents before his death, and the other does not. The former stands then on the side of the- company of the righteous, but the latter on the side of the company of the ungodly. The angodly man, seeing his former comrade among the righteous, exclaims. Is there then partiality shewn in this world beyond the grave, for this man was my comrade ? We have stolen together, we have together com- mitted robbery, and done all that was bad while in the world j and why does he stand in the congregation of the righteous, and I stand in the congregation of the wicked ? Then says one to him, Thoa fool, thy comrade saw thy shameful conduct and its bitter results, and sought to change his own conduct while in life, and therefore he has been granted the honour of forming part of the congregation of the righteous. Thou also liadst the chance given to thee, and hadst thou made use of it,, thou also wouldst have been placed in the congregation of the righteous. Let me then, says he to the angels, now go and do- repentance. Thou fool, they answer him, knowest thou not that the world beyond the grave is like the Sabbath, but the world from whence thou comest like the evening before the Sabbath ; and the man that has not made preparation, how can he feast on the Sabbath ? The world from whence thou comest is like the land, and this world like the sea ; the man who, while yet on land does not prepare the things necessary for his voyage, how can he partake of them when on the sea ? Th& world beyond the grave is like a wilderness, the world from which you have come like an inhabited country ; he that makes no preparation when in the inhabited country will not have the means of feeding when in the wilderness. He gnashes with his teeth and tears his flesh, and says, Let me not see in my punishment the reward of my comrade. Thou fool ! they reply to him, these are the arrangements of the Almighty that the righteou,s shall not come near tlie unrighteous, or the unrighteous near to the righteous. He then rends his clothes and tears his hair in depair. This passage may be sufficient to shew that the popular Jewish theology did not differ much from the picture drawn in Baxter s Saints' Best of the horrible state of the wicked. It is clear, if such were the prevalent views, that the Jewish theology of our Lord's day was not that " Broad Church " theology which some have described it to be. The idea that pardon may be 17 granted in another world, and that prayers ought to be offered up for the dead on earth, were both foreigu to the Synagogue teaching of our Lord's day. (5) In " Notes " which appeared in The Guardian, November 14th, 1894, a learned correspondent remarks : " In an able essay in the Revue des HJhides Juives, by M. Israel Levi, with the title of La Commemoration des dmes dans le Judaisme, this Rabbi sliews that the passages in the Talmud and the Midrash quoted to the effect that the dead also want an atonement have been misunderstood by modern commentators. [See ou.r remarks on the Siphre at p. 18.] One even quoted a Midrash which is, at present, lost. The Jewish funeral rite is very simple ; it consists chiefly in giving alms and in saying prayers, of which the one called the W^lp [the Kaddish] {sancti- Jicat, &c.) forms part, as well as the commemoration of the soul. If the former [i.e., pi-ayer for the dead] may be traced to the third century A.D., the latter [the commemoration of souls, at which public prayers were offered for deceased souls] cannot be found earlier than the twelfth century a.d., chiefly in the Prayer Books of the German rite. M. Levi is of opinion that it [the special day] was instituted after the great massacre by the Crusaders, and that it was simph/ an, imitation of the Catholic Church [the Italics ai-e our own]. He rightly observes that the ceremony of the commemoration of the souls which is pei'formed in the synagogues on feast days, and more especially on the Day of Atonement, was introduced into the Western synagogues, and there is no trace of it amongst the Jews who dwelt in the countries which were under the rule of Islam. The prayer for the repose of the soul (n^^ttJil) introduced in the Spanish rite is of later date than the commemoration." Such a statement, coming from a distinctly Jewish source, and. from a specialist of the first rank, ought to put an end to all appeal to the Jewish practice of prayers for the dead in the time of our Lord. (6) The honorific or complimentary wishes, " peace be upon so and so," constantly met with in mediaeval Jewish and Moham- medan writings, were not really regarded as "prayers." Every Old Testament saint, together with the Prophet of Islam himself and the Mohammedan saints, is honoured with such exclamations ; but there is not the slightest notion that such "prayers " were intended to procure for the persons mentioned any increase of bliss or escape from pain. Canon MacCoU, in alluding to such honorific exclamations, has ludicrously exag- gerated the " chain of evidence " as " demonstration." But the " evidence " so cried up is uttei'ly unworthy of the name. What has been said is sufficient to prove how unfounded is Dr. Littledale's assertion that "our Lord Jesus Christ as a Jew 18 must have frequently joined in the rite of Prayer for the Dead, and had it been in any way blameworthy, no doubt He or His apostles would have censured and forbidden it. There is no trace of such prohibition." There was indeed no need whatever for any such prohibition in the time of our Lord. For, except in the private opinion of the compiler of 2 Maccabees, there is not a trace of such prayers until centuries after Christ. On the question of the inscriptions in the catacombs at Rome over the tombs of Jews and Christians, and on Pagan inscrip- tions over the dead, as well as upon all the subjects briefly touched on in this pamphlet, we must refer for fuller information to our book on The Intermediate State and Prayers for the Dead examined in the Light of Scripture, and of ancient Jewish and Christian Literature. London: Nisbefc & Co., 21, Berners Street. 1900. Price 6s. VI. New Testament Texts adduced for Prayers for the Bead. We have now to survey the Biblical arguments adduced in support of the practice. There is no example of such prayers having been offered up by any one of the saints of the Old Testament, or by any one of the Apostles or accredited teachers mentioned in the New Testament. (1) The first passage which Dean Luckock adduces is Matt. xii.-31, 32, in which our Lord asserts that sin against the Holy Ghost " shall not be forgiven neither in this ^vorld nor in that which is to come." The Phainsees being unable to deny, as a matter of fact, the power of our Lord to cast out devils, ventured to ascribe the performance of those miracles to the power of Beelzebub. It was then our Lord uttered the solemn warning that blasphemy against the Son of Man would be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Ghost was unpardon- able. In other words, when men before whose eyes "the powers of the world to come " (Heb. vi.-5) had been vividly displayed, dai'ed to ascribe to Satan that which their hearts knew came from God, they were dangerously nigh committing a sin which was unpardonable. Dean Luckock unwarrantably asserts that the " natural con- clusion " to be drawn from our Lord's words is that "while some sins are forgiven in the lifetime of the sinner, there are others which admit of forgiveness after his death." From the latter category, sins against the Holy Ghost are of course excluded. Such might, indeed, be a " natural conclusion " had there been any general belief among the Jews that sins might be pardoned after death. But we have shewn that the very opposite was the current belief among the Jews. It has been 19 repeatedly proved by numerous citations made by Lightfoot in his Hone llebraiccc (which citations have been added to by Schbttgen, and in our days by Wiinsche), that the expression ^'this world" in the popular phraseology of that day meant " the times prior to Messiah's coming ; " and that by " the world to come " was meant " the times of the Messiah," who, it was believed, would introduce "the time of ref oi*mation " (Heb. ix.-lO). Dean Luckock gives this interpretation in a note, and has the candour there to observe that " in this sense the Apostle seems to speak, Heb. ii.-5 and vi.-5," — passages which we commend to the careful consideration of our readers. For in both of those passages the Apostle is speaking of the Messianic times, and of no other. But the correct explanation is stowed away in Dean Luckock's footnote on p. G8, while in his text he cites the exposition of Maimonides (born A..D. 1185, died 1204), i-emarking that " we are contented to shelter ourselves in this matter at least under his interjjretation." •On some points Maimonides' authority is conclusive, but on the question of phraseology used centuries before his day, and in face of the ai-ray of passages which can be cited on the •other side, his authority is of no weight whatever. (2) The next passage is the difficult text 1 Cor. xv.-29, concerning those who were "baptized for the dead." But if the existence of a practice of " vicarious bajitism for the dead " in the Corinthian Church were granted — a practice not con- tinued in the ages succeeding, and which St. Paul only refers to as an argumentum ad hominem, without any approval of it — how can such a reference be construed into an argument in favour of prayers for the dead? Verily "drowning men catch ■Sit straws." (3) The next text adduced is St. Paul's prayer for Onesi- phorus, 2 Tim. i. -16-18, "The Lord give mercy unto the house ■of Onesiphorus ; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed ■of my chain : But, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me. The Lord grant unto him, that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day : and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou knowest very well."' To which must be added that, among the salutations at the close of the same Epistle (2 Tim. iv.-19), is " Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus." The argument drawn from these texts in favour of prayers for the dead entirely depends upon whether Onesiphorus was dead or alive when Paul wrote. That he was alive is the judgment passed by such '' ti-adition " as is extant. St. Chrysostom states that Onesiphorus was at the time at Rome. Fabricius cites £1 tradition that, years afterwards, Onesiphorus was a bishop of Corone, in Messeuia. 20 The context, however, throws perhaps more light upon the matter ; St. Paul exhorts Timothy to firmness and fidelity, and reminds him that he knew that "all they which are in Asia be turned away from me, of whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes " (ver. 15). He then immediately refers to Onesiphorus and his house in the verses quoted, and resumes, " thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." The most natural conclusion to draw from the passage is that Onesiphorus himself was, at the time the Apostle wrote, among those who had "forsaken him," like Demas, under the influence of some misunderstanding, or by reason of timidity or sin, or, perhaps, beguiled by false teaching. St. Paul, however, could not forget the noble works which Onesiphorus had performed in days gone by, and while he gently hints at the gi-ief caused by the desertion of one once so valiant and devoted in his cause, prays that he may obtain mercy of the Lord in the great day. That the family of Onesiphorus were not involved in the defection of their chief member is probable from the salutation sent at the close of the epistle. It should also be distinctly noted that the mention of "the house of Onesiphorus," without Onesiphorus himself being separately mentioned, is no clear proof that Onesiphorus was excluded from the greeting. For there is a parallel (and it is the only parallel) in the mention made of " the household of Stephanas " (tov Sre^ava oTkov) in 1 Cor. i.-16. That phrase corresponds with tw ' Ovqcriffjopov oiW in 2 Tim. i.-16 and iv.-19, which "house" is alluded to under an equivalent expression (t-^v otKiav Src^ava) in 1 Cor. xvi.-15. But Stephanas himself was certainly included in the "house" or " household " mentioned in those two passages, while in 1 Cor. xvi.-17 he is stated to have been alive and with St. Paul. The utmost, therefore, that can be positively said with regard to Onesiphorus is that he may have been absent from his family at the time when St. Paul sent the greeting at the close of his 2nd Epistle to Timothy. There is, therefore, not a particle of proof that the prayer for Onesiphorus was a prayer for a dead man ; and the entire castle of cards erected on that solitary text comes toppling to the ground. (4) Dr. Luckock makes a desperate effort to prop up his argument by the bold assertion on p. 79: "The slightest acquaintance with the forms of prayer for the dead in the Primitive Liturgies will be enough to identify it [the prayer cf the Apostle] with the expressions in common use : this petition for mercy, and rest through mercy, being one of most frequent recurrence." These so-called " Primitive Liturgies " play a great part in the revived Romanistic theology of the English Church. 21 Whatever proofs are lacking from an examination of the writings of the New Testament, or the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, or of those Fathers immediately following, are conveniently supplied from those precious (we speak ironically) Liturgies. Dean Luckock has however to admit that the Liturgies in question are grossly interlarded with interpolations of a much later date. Their names, as "St. James'' and "St. Mark," are misnomers so far as authorship is concerned; the former indicating only that the liturgy was current in Palestine, the latter that it was current in Egypt. The shape in which they have come down to us was originally imprinted on them in the end of the fourth century. We have given a sketch of these "Primitive Liturgies " in our larger work, to which we must refer our readers. These " Liturgies " certainly contain a considerable amount of scriptural phraseology, often worked up into most unscriptural forms, as well as of other matter, partly ancient, partly modern. They were cast into their pi'esent shape by men of a strongly developed Kitualistic type in an age darkened with the smoke of the prevailing apostasy from Biblical simplicity ; and it would require the divining rod of a prophet to mark out what is true from what is false. And yet forsooth because the phraseology of St. Paul has been adopted in prayers for the dead — concerning which pi'ayers not a word is to be found in all the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, or in Justin Martyr, or until a con- siderably later date — such quotations are daringly adduced as evidence of the existence of that practice in earlier centuries, and as authoritative expositions of Apostolic language ! (5) Such are Dr. Luckock's Scripture proofs. Canon MacColl has not, in his work Here and Hereafter, ventured upon the task of Scripture proof. But the late Dr. R. F. Littledale, in his small four-page tract, cites qiiite a number of passages. The majority of them are sadly inappropriate. It is indefensible to write as follows : " We are also taught that death does not stop the work of God in the soul, but that it continues. So in Ps. Ixxxiv. we read, ' They Avill go from strength to strength, and unto the God of gods appeareth ever}- one of them in Zion.' And ' the path of the just is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day' (Prov. iv.-18). This agrees with St. Paul's words . . . [then follow the citations of Phil. i.-6, Phil. i.-lO, 1 Thess. v. -23, the paragraph closing with the remark] If St. Paul had held the modern notions on the subject, he would have pra3-ed merely that his converts might persevere till the day of their death." But Ps. Ixxxiv. only speaks of pilgrim bands going up to the ancient city of Jerusalem, and nothing more. Prov. iv.-18, has no reference to life after death. In the three N. T. passages cited, St. Paul refers to the life on this side the grave. He 22 lived in constant anticipation (as every man "filled with the Spirit" ought to do) of the second coming of the Master, although conscious, by teaching imparted to him from above, that the- coming of Lord Jesus Avould be preceded by an apostasy within the Church, of which he saw the first shadows on the wall. Almost all Dr. Littledale's proof-texts are of a similar character. It is only necessary here to notice his mistaken interpretation of Rev. vi.-lO. On it, and on Heb. xi.-40, he has- the following paragraph : — " Even those who are happy are only imperfectly so. The souls of the martyrs under the Heavenly Altar complain of delay, and are bidden to be patient (Rom. vi.-lO), and the Saints of the Old Testament cannot be made perfect till we join them (Heb. xi.-40)." (6) The passage in Rev. vi.-lO is, however, figurative, and not literal. It would be strange if the New Testament martyrs were, while awaiting the Second Advent, continually engaged in praying for vengeance, and in uttering intense longings for the punishment of their adversaries ! How different from the spirit exhibited by Christ, and by His first martyr Stephen ! But such is not the correct interpreta- tion of the passage. Under the Old Testament arrangements, the blood of the victims was poured round abou.t the base of the altar. Hence arose the Jewish idea that the blood of the prophets, and of sufferers for God, was lying under the altar, Avhich was considered to be, in some aspects, God's throne. Abel's blood that was shed is represented in Gen. iv. as crying unto God from the ground. The same thought was expressed by the Lord Jesus when he spoke of the blood of the prophets being required of the Jewish nation. His own blood, shed for sin, and to take away sin, " speaketh better things than that of Abel " (Heb. xii.-24). His blood cries out for mercy and not for vengeance. But the righteous blood shed on earth is repeatedly said in the Revelation to cry out for vengeance. The martyrs' blood has a voice — a voice which nothing can still — it does cry out for vengeance ; and the prayer of Rev. vi.-lO is represented in the following ver.ses (Rev. vi. -12-17) as answered in the horrors which attend the opening of the sixth seal. When the seventh seal is broken there is a solemn silence in heaven (Rev. viii.-l), during which we may suppose the Lamb that was slain begins the reading of the book which He has opened. The reading of that wonderful book of God's mysteries seems to be, as Yictorinus beautifully describes it, "the beginning of everlasting rest." (7) Dr. Littledale has too much sense to quote, as is often done, the celebrated passage in 1 Peter iii. -18-20, as a proof 23 text. But as that passage is constantly quoted, we cite a portion of what we have written elsewhere on the text : — The passage in question is supposed by many to refer to a preaching of Christ in the invisible world previous to His resur- rection. But the supposition is quite unnecessary. St. Peter plainly refers to a fact well known, and not to a. new fact then for the first time revealed to the Church of God. No preaching of Christ in the unseen world is anywhere else referred to in Scripture. By the spirit, in 1 Peter iii..l8, the personal Spirit of Christ is meant. The simple meaning of 1 Peter iii. -18-20, seems to be that Christ in His spirit, i.e., the pi*e-incarnate Word — whose " eternal spirit " is spoken of in Heb. ix.-14,* and often appeared in human form to the Patriarchs — went (comp. the expression "came down" in Genesis xi.-5-7) and preached to the sinners before the flood, in prison (the pinson of Gehenna, Isaiah xxiv. -21-23), because of their awful disobedience in the days of Noah, which brought the flood on the world. "The spirits in prison" can just as well mean "the spirits now in prison" (Rev. xx.-l-3, 7; Matt. V.-25 ; 2 Peter ii.-4 ; Jude 6) as "the spirits who were in prison," at the supposed time of Christ's preaching. Moreover, the dead to whom the Gospel is stated to have been preached in 1 Peter iv.-6, were believers who, like their Lord, suffered death for His sake, and were judged according to men " in the flesh." They were thus made " partakers of the sufferings of Christ" (1 Peter iv.-13) in order that they might be made alive " according to God," like Christ, "in the spirit." f (8) Very little information is afforded in Scripture concerning the state of departed spirits. That they are in a conscious state seems to be taught by our Lord's parable of the Rich man and Lazarus, and other passages ; that the righteous are in peace and " pi'esent with the Lord" is the teaching of St. Paul. Dr. Littledale is wholly mistaken in his quotation of Heb. xi.-40. That verse teaches that the saints who lived before Christ came]were not " made perfect," although they were " in peace " * Bp. Westcott in his Commentary on Hebrews well remarks : " In men the ' spirit ' is, as has been said, that by which they are capable of con- nexion with God. But in Christ, who did not cease to be the Son of God by becoming man, the ' spirit ' is to be regarded as the seat of His Personality in His human Nature. So far the irvtviia alwvinv [the 'eternal spirit'] included the limited irvtvua [' spirit '] of the Lord's humanity. This TTrivfici, haviug its own proper existence, was in perfect harmony with the TTt'tiifia ctlwviov." t In my volume of Biblical E.fsai/s, published by T. and T. Clark in 1886, a full explanation is given of the passage, with a discussion of the passages in Hernias, Clement of Alexandria, and other patristic writers. The fourth essay of that book Avas written in reply to Dean Plumptre's book on The Spirits in Prison. 24 -(Isa. lvii.-2), until the work of Christ was accomplished by His resurrection from the dead. Bat when Christ had, by His death and resuri'ection, opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, they who " without us " (" apai-t from us " as the R. V. preferably renders it) could "not be made perfect," became "just men made perfect.''' The passage in Heb. xii.-23 supplements in a most important manner what is said in Heb. xi.-40. VII. Conclusion. The unrighteous are hereafter to be judged for " the deeds done in the body, according to what they have done, whether it be good or bad." The Day of the Lord is the special day in which His righteous judgment will be openly pronounced ; and men will then, as far as we know, be condemned or acquitted for the deeds done on earth. There is not a verse in the Scriptures which suggests that the wicked may pass " from death unto life " in the interval between death and resurrection. Our Lord's parable of the Rich man and Lazarus (Luke xvi.- 19-31) leads us to believe that the wicked are now in punishment, and cannot pass from the place of punishment to a place of greater ease. The writers of the Old Testament had views of Sheol (i.e., ''''the Under-world "), or of Hades (i.e., " tlie Unseen"), \f\\ic\\ have been partially corrected by the clearer light of the New Testament. It may be, indeed, possible that even the revelation vouchsafed to us in the New Testament is only partial, and that more mercy than generally anticipated may be exhibited in the day of the Lord Jesus. While we protest against mediaeval crudities respecting the state after death (as wild as the false views which were then held concerning the resurrection, against which 1 Cor. xv. ought to have guarded the Church), we must protest also against the milder theories of a Broad Church School, who seem to have forgotten that they also possess no map of Hades, any more than their medii^val precursors. Let us " be still " where Scripture is silent. We are but in a state of probation; God will not permit us to lift the veil which He has drawn over the state beyond the grave. That Christ has " brought immortality to light through the Gospel " is most true ; and we have a ti-ust that will not fail us if we rely on His work and atonement. We may have hopes for others ; but all our hopes as regards the majority of mankind are mere specula- tions on a subject concerning which we possess no information. Whatever may be the feelings of "nature," neither in the Old nor in the New Testament is there the slightest warrant given for prayers for the dead. If such prayers were acceptable in God's sight, if they could have benefited those gone before, the voice "25 of God-inspired men for milleniums would not have preserved an absolute silence on the sabject. It may be well in conclusion to make a few remarks upon a statement now commonly made, namely, that the teaching of the Homily on Prayer, quoted on pp. 4, 5, viz., that souls who dep.art this life go either to heaven or hell is a serious theological error. The popular language made use of in that Homily was, oi course, adopted as a protest against the Romish doctrine concerning Pnrgator}^, then popularly designated as " the third place." Such an accommodation, however, to popular modes of expression was not intended to deny the Scriptural teaching that the place now occupied by the Blessed Dead is not the final resting-place which our Lord speaks of in His description of the Judgment in Matt. xxv.-34, as " the kingdom prepared for yf)u from the foundation of the world." Nor is the Paradise of the Blessed the " new heavens and the new earth " depicted in the visions of Rev. xxi. and xxii. Sheol ("the Under-world ") or Hades ("'the Unseen") is, as far as we know, the place for disembodied souls. It is divided into two receptacles — Paradise, or "Abraham's bosom" (Luke xvi.- 21), the place of the blessed dead (Luke xxiii.-43) ; and Gehenna (Mark ix.-43, 45, or, the Gehenna of fire, Mark ix.-47), Avhich is the receptacle of the lost souls, and is called Tartarus in the original of 2 Pet. ii.-4. The popular Protestant phraseology, however, may be de- fended as substantially correct by a reference to 2 Cor. xii.-2. St. Paul there speaks of " the third heaven " which is perhaps identical with '''■Paradise" (2 Cor. xii.-4). The object gained in speaking of the place of the blessed dead as " heaven " is to emphasize the doctrine taught even in pre-Christian times (in Wisdom iii.-l) that "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them " ; or, by the inspired prophet at an earlier age (Isaiah lvii.-2) " he entereth into peace," namely, the righteous, "who are taken away from the evil to come." This truth is set forth more plainly in the Apostle's words, " absent fi^om the body and present with the Lord" (2 Cor. v. -8, 9), for "there is therefore now no •condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. viii.-l). But if the blessed dead suffer no pain or punishment they need no prayers to be offered up for their repose by those who still belong to "the Church militant here on earth." It is too sadly apparent that those who talk of " recovering the doctrine of Paradise," " lost at the Reformation," use such language simply as a cloak under which to introduce again something akin to the doctrine of Purgator}^, and which is certain to harden at last into the teaching of Rome pure and simple. Paradise, which is mentioned only in three places of the New 26 Testament (namely Luke xxiii.-43, 2 Cor. xii.-4, and Rev. ii.-7) is a name frequently used by Jewish writers who lived before the days of Christ. It is always employed by them in the sense of a place of rest and enjoyment, and never in the sense of a place of instruction or training, where punishment, purgatorial or corrective, is made use of. It is a gross perversion of truth to hint that punishments may be inflicted in " the Paradise of God." It maybe useful also to note hei-e that there is no proof whatever that " the communion of saints " mentioned in the Creeds was understood in early ages to include intercourse with those beyond by means of prayer or intercession. Those who thus- interpret the phrase cannot give any proofs whatever in support of their assertions. This matter is discussed at some length in a special chapter in The Intermediate State on " the so-called test of Catholicity." Prayei's for the dead in the least objectionable form are na doubt to be met with in inscriptions of a.d. 192. Bvit false teaching was prevalent even in the Apostles' days. Hermas, who was probably as old as a.d. 180, taught that baptism was administered by the Apostles to persons after death. Yet he is- one of the "Apostolic Fathers." TertuUian was such an ascetic as to maintain, in direct contradiction to St. Paul in Rom. vii.-3,. that a second marriage was adultery. The teaching of the Fathers is deeply tinged with errors, and we must stand by the writings of the New Testament, and by none other, as authori- tative expositions of the true doctrines of Christianity. Prayers for the dead, we may admit, were at first not couched in an objectionable form. But the progress of error is always towards darkness, deeper and deeper. Hence we must protest with all our power against the introduction into our Church of prayers for the dead in any form whatever. The teachings- of Church history shew plainly " the depths of Satan " to which the practice leads. It is therefore our duty to protest against the " Form of Inter- cession ... on behalf of Her Majesty's Naval and Military Forces- now in South Africa," drawn up by the Archbishop of Canterbury and approved by the Privy Council, and issued (February 10th} by Eyre & Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty. 1900. At the said Privy Council there were present only the two Archbishops and one other peer ! The petition on, page 29 of that " Form " is — " For all those who have fallen in the true faith of Thy Holy Name — that they, with us, may enter into the rest which Thou hast prepared for them that believe in Thee ; Hear us, good Lord,'' is the fix'st attempt in the Church of England ofiicialJjr to bring in prayers for the dead, since the days of the 27 Reformation. It is an illegal attempt, and ought not to be allowed to pass in silence. If the Archbishops or Bishops are permitted to draw up prayers contrary to the teaching of the Articles and Homilies, we shall soon have the Mass and all its corruptions set forth '■ by authority." The Archbishops have, by this Form of Public Prayer, contradicted their own distinct utterances. For the Archbishop of York in his Pastoral (p. oO), issued in Advent, 1898, assorted that " No definite prayers for the dead can be allowed to find a place in any place in any service to be used within the walls of a consecrated church. On this point the Judgment of the Bishops of the Church has been unanimous, and must be unhesitatingly accepted." And the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Charge delivered at his First Visitation (London: Macmillan & Co. 18'J8), stated that (page 18) : " To pray for the dead is not forbidden by the New Testament, and it is not forbidden by the Church of England,* and our Ecclesiastical Courts accordingly have so decided it.f But while the Church of England nowhere forbids prayers for the departed, it nevertheless does not authorise the introduction of such prayers into our public worship except in the most cautious and guarded manner. J In our public worship we pray for ourselves, that we ' with all those that are departed in the true faith of God's holy Name may have perfect consummation and bliss both in body and soul in God's eternal and everlasting glory.' This is the model which we are bound to follow in our public worship. We ought to confine our- selves within the limits here indicated, for where we know so little it is a duty of reverence to let our words be few, lest perchance there may be something said which is inconsistent with that which God is doing, lest perchance we may be pretending to understand what is altogether hidden, lest perchance we induce others, in following our example, to be incautious, and to step beyond the limits which ought to confine all approaches to the very presence of God." It is surely matter of regret that His Grace did not take notice that in a much more recent case {Elphinstoiie v. Piuxhas, 1870) Sir R. J. Phillimore, Dean of the Arches, condemned the * But see what has been set forth pp. 4-6. t The case in which the matter came before an Ecclesiastical Court was that of Breeks v. Woolfreij before the Court of Arches in 1838 (not a Final Court of Appeal). The case is discussed in ch. xi. of our book on The Intermediate State, pp. 30811, where further authorities are given. The Dean of Arches, however, afiirmed in giving his decision that " the Church discouraged prayers for the dead." (See also Ch. Assoc. Tract, No. 230, on Bieek.s v. Woolfreij.) X On what authority can the Archbishop justify the exception made in this clause ? 28 giving notice of a " mortuary celebration," and also the introduction of a collect praying for a deceased person, as being distinctly " illegal " practices. (See Fourth Keport of the Ritual Commission, p. 246.) All moderate men in the Church of England ought to insist that the Arclibishops should keep within the limits of the law, and not be permitted to introduce into Public forms of prayer any doctrines whatever which are not explicitly set forth in the Articles or Book of Common Prayer, or the Homilies. This principle is distinctly laid down in the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, 1872, 35 & 3GVict., ch. 85. Until the Houses of Parliament alter that Act its principle must be adhered to. No Archbishops have any authority to overi-ide the Law of England. London : Printed by G. Nonuan & 8on, Floral Street, Covent Garden. Published by the Church AssociATioK, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at tha price of 2(1 each, or 12.< per 100. 8th Thousand.] 26.2.00 Protestant Publications for the Present Crisis. J5r J^ J^ POST FREE, Purgatory. Purgatory, The New (?) ... ... ... ... Id Purgatory, Pickpurse ... ... ... ... Id Prayers for the Dead. Prayers for the Dead, by Rev. Canon Girdlestone, d.d. 7d Prayers for the Dead, by the Rev. Dr. Wright ... 2|(Z Prayers for the Dead. Greeks r. Woolfrey ... ... Id Prayers for the Dead. Extract from Homily XIX. Third Part ... ... ... ... ... ... Id Church Reform. Church Reform, bj' the Bishop op Liverpool ... ... lid Church Reform, by J. T. ToMLiNSOX ... ... Id Church Reform League, by Archdeacon Taylor ... Id The Outlook for the Established Church of England ... Id Lord Halifax. Lord Halifax on the Papacy... ... ... ... \d Lord Halifax, The candour of ... ... ... Id Secret and Ritualistic Societies. Sisterhoods in the Church of England ... ... Id English Church Union ... ... ... ... Id The P]nglish Church Union, reasons for refusing to join ... Id The English Church Union, twelve reasons for opposing ic Id The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament ... ... Id Society for the Propagation of the Gospel ... ... It^ The Cowley Fathers ... ... ... ... Id Society of St. John the Evangelist ... ... ... Id Societ}- of the Holy Cross, with list of members ... l^d Companions of St. John ... ... ... ... Id Universities' Mission to Central Africa ... ... "id Secret Work of the Ritualists, with list of members ... 2^d PROTESTANT PUBLIC A TIONS— continued. Religious Education. The Kilbui'n Sisterhood The Church Extension Association The Danger of Manuals for the Young The Method of St. Sulpice ... . Six Points of Ritualism. "What do they mean ? True Story of the Ornaments Rubric... Altar Lights King Edward VI. and his Altar Lights Luther's Ritualism. . . Candles, Crosses, Altars, Pictures The Eastward Position (1) ... The Eastward Position (2) ... Holy Scripture v. Eastward Position ... Ridsdale Judgment on Eastward Position The Liturgy and Eastward Position ... Modern " Mass " in the Church of England Mixed Chalice Wafers, Privy Council Judgment on ... Vestments. Distinctive Sacrificial... Purchas Judgment... Ridsdale Judgment Incense. Incense, by the late Rev. Hely H. Smith Incense : Illegal, Unscriptnral, Unprimitive Reservation of ttie Host. A Reply to the C. B. S., by J. T. Tomlinson Prayer Book. Protestantism of, by Rev. Dyson Hague Forgotten Facts in, by J. T. Tomlixson The Liturg}^ and the Eastward Position The Chancels shall remain ... PCST FREB, Id Id .. l^d Id Id llid Hd Id Id Id Id Id Id Id 2kd Id Id Id Id Id Ud id Id Hd Ud Is lOd 5s Qd 2hd Ud The First Prayer Book of Edward and the Canon of the Mass 4hd The Confessional. The Bishop of Peterborough on The Episcopal Bench on Convocation on The Modern In the Church of England ... Reply to Canon Knox-Little on Id Id Id Id Id Id PRO TES TANT PUBLIC A T IONS— continued. Greek and Oriental Cliurcties. The Greek Church... Union with Oriental Churches Recent Proceedings of tfie Prelates. Ritualism Rampant in the Diocese of St. Albans Ritualism Rampant in East London ... Mass or Communion ? The Primary Charge of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pastoral of the Archbi.shop of York examined ... The Ecclesiastical Procedure Bill proposed by the two Archbishops in Convocation The Bishops' Scheme for erecting themselves as Judges... The Bishop of London's Fund The Lord's Supper. The Doctrine of a " Spiritual " Presence as taught by the Ritualists " Hearing Mass " ... Church Teaching on The Holy Communion the Highest Act of Christian Worship Modern "Mass" ... rOPT FHEE. ... 2kd Id Id & l^d Id ... 2^d Ud Id Id Id Id Ihd Id Id Id Miscellaneous. Tomlinson's Collected Tracts on Ritual. Cloth board.'! ... 2s 4:d Secret History of the Oxford Movement ... Is lOd & Is Ad Great Parliamentar}' Debate in 16-48 on the Lord's Supper 7d Lay Judges in Church Courts ... ... ... Is l\d Catholic Doctrine of Eucharistic Sacrifice Historic Grounds of the Lambeth Judgment Canon MacColTs Caricature of the Reformation ment " Canon MacColl's Romancings about the Book of Prayer Liberalism, in the Priests' Craft The Priest on His Throne ... Queen Elizabeth's Crucifix ... The Crucifix at St. Paul's The Church of P]ngland Almanack Guide to Ecclesiastical Law ... Protestant Songs ... Confirmation Memorial Card (13" X 10") Confirmation Cards {yer dozen) Church Intelligencer (monthly) Making Plain for All Time ... Setth Common 4d Id 6M Id S^d Id \U \\d Ghd & Ud ls2ld 2d M 3d Ud 7d CHURCH ASSOCIATION 14, Buc^inghan S treat, Strand, London. A VITAL NATIONAL QUESTION 1. Ood's estimate of a Promise made to Him. " "Wlien thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it. . . . Better is it that thou shouhlest not voav than tliat thou shouldest vow and not pay." — Eccl. v. 4, 5. 2. Our English Nation's estimate of a Promise. The Coronation Oath is directed by 1 Will, and Mary, c. 6, A.D. 1688 (confirmed by 12 & 13 Will. III. c. 2, sec. 2), " to be administered in this manner, that is to say : " The Archbishop or Bishop shall say— ' Will you solemnly promise and swear to f^'overn the people of England, and the Dominions thereto belonging, according to the Statutes in Parliament agreed on, and the Laws and Customs of the .same? ' " The King and Queen shall say — ' I .solemnly promise so to do. ' " The Archbishop or Bishop—' Will you to the utmost of your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all youi' judgments ? ' "King and Queen—' I will.' "Archbishop or Bishop— 'Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant Keformed Keligion Established by Law? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of this Realm, and to the Churches committeil to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them, or any of them ? ' " King and Queen—' All this I promise to do.' No. 215.] "After this the King and Queen, laying his and her hand upon the Holy Gospel, shall say — " King and Queen—' The things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep. So help me God.' " Then the King and Queen shall kiss the book." 3. The Church of England's estimate of a Promise at the ordination of her Priests. Bishop : " Will you then give your faithful diligence always so to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments, and the Discipline of Christ as the Lord hath commanded and as this CHURCH AND Realm hath received the same, according to the Commandments of God ; so that you may teach the people committed to your Care and Charge, with all diligence to keep and observe the same ? " Answer : " I will so do, by the help of the Lord." Bishop : "Will you be ready with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's Word ? " Answer : " I will, the Lord being my helper." Bishop: "Will you reverently obey your ordinary and other chief ministers ^into whom is committed the cluirge and government over you, following with a glad mind and will their godly admonitions, and submitting yourselves to their godly judgment ?" Answer: " I will so do, the Lord being my helper." At the Consecration of her Ai-chhishops and Bishops. Archbishop: "Are you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's Word, and both PRIVATELY and OPENLY TO CALL UPON AND ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO DO THE SAME ? " Answer : " I am ready, the Lord being my helper." Archbishop : " Will you maintain and set forward as much as shall lie in you quietness, love and peace among all men ; and such as be unquiet, disobedient, and criminous within your diocese, correct and punish according to such authority as you have by God's Word, and as to you shall be committed by the Ordinance of this Realm ? " Answer : " I will so do, by the help of God." 3 " Thirty-Nine Articles agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops and the whole clergy." What FOR ? "For the avoiding of Diversities of Opinions, and for tlic establishing of Consent toucliing true religion." 4. How the Eoman Catholics regard Churchmen who break their Promises. •'The doctrines of the Catholic Church, which had been rejected and condemned as blasi)licnious, superstitious, and fond inventions, have been re-examined and taken back, one by one, until the Thirty-Nine Articles have been banished and buried as a rule of faith. The Real Presence, the sacrifice of the Mass, oflered for the living and dead — sometimes even in Latin — not unfrerjuent Reservation of the Sacrament, regular Auricular Confession, Extreme Unction, Purgatory, Prayers for the Dead, devotions to Our Lady, to her Lnmaculate Conception, the use of her rosary, and the Invocation of Saints are doctrines taught and accepted with a growing desire and relish for them, in the Church of England. A Celibate clergy, the institution of Monks and Nuns under vows, Retreats for the clergy, missions for the people, fast- ing and other penitential exercises — candles, lamps, incense, crucifixes, images of the Blessed Virgin, and the saints held in honour, stations of the cross, cassocks, cottas, Roman collars, birettas, copes, dalmatics, vestments, mitres, croziers, the adoption of an ornate Catholic ritual, and now recently, an elaborate display of the whole ceremonial of the Catholic Pontifical— all this speaks of a change and a movement towards the Church that would have appeared absolutely incredible at the beginning of this century." — Cardinal Vaughan. 5. How the Bishops of the Church of England regard their Promises. The Bishop of Lincoln in an address to the Students of the Chancellor's Schools at Lincoln, said : — " The struggle was for the Sacerdotal character of the Christian Ministry, whether it came from below or above, whether it was ordained by man or of God." The Bishop of Winchester (Thorold) says, in his Pastoral of November 2nd, 1892 :— " If we expect toleration for ourselves we must give it to our neighbours, who do not deserve to be called Roman because they light candles, and mix the chalice, and tiu-n to the east. Nay, we must be prepared for being invited some day to give a good deal more. There have always been at least two currents of religious thought in the Church, and there always will continue to be ; and to try to drive out of the Church brethren who alarm or distress us, but who have a distinct riglit to be there, may provoke dangerous reprisals, and will but fatally retard the spiritual and vital duty which is the only sure way of maintaining the pure truth of God. "To me, indeed, it seems that there are far graver matters to think about than those portentous trifles on which so much needless acrimony and useful resources have been spent." 6. How the English Laity regard these Promises. We have strict and prompt obedience in the Army and Navy. If an officer in the Army were to appear on parade with an "irregular button" he would be reproved and obliged to comply with his officer's order to remove the same or leave the Army. What does it matter about "views," high, low, or broad, if the Bishops and Clergy do not keep their promises made at their Consecration and Ordination ? The question for tlie nation is this. Do these public men mean what they say ? If not, is there no way of securing that prompt and literal obedience IN THE CHURCH which we see in the Army and Navy ? Surely it is time for the Laity of this Country to arise and demand from our Rulers in the Church that line of conduct which they have solemnly promised to pursue. To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at the pries of Zd per dozen or Is 6ri per 100. 4tli Thousand. THE POPE'S LETTER TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. A DECLARATION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE Cburcb Hssociation. — cr~' '-iD ^ IS-' *">> — Whereas Pope Leo XIII. has addressed a letter to the people of England inviting them to pray to the Saints for unity with himself as the " Supreme Shepherd " of the Church of Christj the Council of the Church Association, speaking for thousands of loyal Members of the English Church, hereby declare that honest adherence to the fundamental constitu- tion and express principles of their own Church forbids them to entertain, even for a moment, the suggestion of corporate union with the apostate Komish system. They hold that their ministers are bound, by ordination vow, to " banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's Word,'' and nowhere is there such a combination of those doctrines as within the Roman Communion. They heartily assent to the thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and would put in the very forefront the Vlth of those Articles, which appeals to the sole authority of Holy No. 216.] Scripture in matters of faith and morals, as opposed to the adulterated traditions of the Italian or any other so-called. Church. They reiterate the statement of Article XXXVII., that "the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Keahn of England," and, as loyal British citizens, they utterly refuse to recognize hira as their Shepherd or Ruler. They proclaim, with Article XIX., that " the Church of Rome hath erred not only in living and manner of cere- monies, but also in matters of faith," and they decline to dishonour God by having fellowship with error. They assert, in the very words of Article XXII., that " the Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration as well of images, as of reliques, and also Invocation of saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God ; " and they, therefore, brand the Pope's invitation humbly to call upon St. Gregory, Augustine his disciple, St. Peter, St. George, and ' Mary the Holy Mother of God,' together with his assumed power to grant " Indulgences " and his concluding prayer to the Virgin Mary, as rank blasphemy against our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man; further, they reject with horror the heresy which designates the creature as mother of the Creator, and ventures to invest her with attributes which can be possessed and exei'cised by Deity alone. They cannot forget that our noble Reformers, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper and many others, strove even unto the death asrainst the awful doctrine of "the sacrifices of Masses in the which it was commonly said that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead " ; and, with Article XXXI., they pronounce tliern to be "blaspliemous fables and dangerous deceits " ; and they absolutely refuse to be partakers with Rome in the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, OP to join with, her in that "idolatry which is to be abhorred of all faithful Christians." They furthermore concur with the Homily for Whit- sunday (second part) that " the popes and prelates of Rome" are " worthily accounted among the number of false ]-*rophets and false Christs which deceived the world a long while. The Lord of heaven and earth defend us from their tyranny and pride that they never enter into His vineyard again. And may He of His great mercy so work in all men's hearts by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost that the comfortable Gospel of His Son Christ may be truly preached, truly received, and truly followed in all places, to the beating down of sin, death, the Pope, the devil, and all the kingdom of Antichrist." They still further repudiate the false assertion of the Letter that in the sixteenth century England "received a grievous wound" and was "bereft of the holy faith "; and, on the contrary, they most heartily thank God for the glorious Reformation by which their civil and religious liberties were won; and which (the Pope himself being witness) made this great nation the most Bible-respecting, Sabbath- keeping, truth-loving, moral and prosperous people in the whole of professing Christendom. And here they lay the charge of schism, separation, and strife at the door of the proud imposer of unscriptural conditions of communion. They remember how the occupants of the self-styled " Apostolic and Holy See " " made every 'prudent (?) effort to put an end " to the work of the Reformers. And while the memory of the Saints of Jesus who suffered by shameful plots^ by bloody massacres, in the horrible In- quisition and at the cruel stake remains, they will have no dishonourable peace with Rome. Tbey denounce before Almighty God and their country- men the treacherous action of persons calling themselves Members of the English Church, especially those holding official appointments in the same, who have unfaithfully introduced Romish practices into our Protestant Communion, and by coquetting with her whom Scripture designates " MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS," have induced the Pope to propose this unhallowed union with himself. And finally, they call upon all God-fearing and self-respecting Britons, at this serious crisis in the history of the Church and nation, to be true to their glorious past, and to secure for their children an equally glorious future, saying to them in the inspired words of the great Apostle, " Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.^' To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at the price of 3d per dozen, or Is 6d per 100. 5th Thousand.} THE INVENTION OF THE CEOSS, OLD FACTS WITH NEW FACES. . A CHAT BETWEEN TWO CHURCHMEN. Bv B. A. HEYWOD, m.a., Trinity College, Cambridge. 0h HEATHEN CAK CREECL 5. 01 CHRISTIAN CAKE. THE.CATACOMBS RQMf w Vv«7,' 7 MEX I CO. HEATHEN MEXICO 15. Tir HtATHEN CCVPT MEATMEN INDIA HEATHEN ECVPT Plate 1. 3. 218.] CHURCH ASSOCIATION, 14, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STEAND, LONDOx\ 1895. The Invention of the Cross OLD FACTS WITH NEW FACES. OME one invented the Cross, fo)', in the Prayer Book Calendar for May ord, I find the words, " Invention of the Cross," said Horace Jones to his friend Henry Lander. You must be tryins; to take me in, Jones. You know that the word invention there means fiiiding, and refers to the absurd so-called discovery of the three crosses of Calvary in the 4th century. You seem very careful, said Jones, that there should be no eiTor about the word invention, but you do not extend your interest to the word Crost<. What do you mean ? Of course a cross is a cross. It speaks for itself without requiring explanation. Nay, I do not agree with you. The word Cross does not occur in the original of the Scriptures. It is our translation of the Greek word Stauros, which means a stake or pole. Some- times we hear of accidents in the hunting field, of horses staked or impaled in leaping a fence, and some years ago ^Ir. Gladstone was very eloquent on the alleged atrocities in Bulgaria, when men Avere said to be spitted alive on a stake and left to die in fearful anguish. Just look at this picture (plate 2) of the old Assyrian .. ~~/ ~\z method of staking or impaling a man, - — ^r ^ — - and of mutilating him also. Haman was probably treated in the same Avay, for in the ancient Greek version of the Old Testament he is said to have been impaled, or, as we now call it, crucified. The Romans impaled the criminal by nailing him to the stake or cross. Plate 2. Do you mean, Jones, that our Lord's cross was only an upright stake ? I think so. It is expressly said he carried the stauros or stake (John xix. 17), and I feel we may be as much in error in supposing he was fixed to a cross such as we are accustomed to see in pictures, as if we were to imagine that the word carriages in Acts xxi. 15, " We took up our carriages," meant vehicles instead of baggage. Just look at plate 3, from Lipsius' book A.D. 1 005, Avhich gives us, as I believe, a far more correct idea of crucifixion than pictures generally do. Well, said Lander, I must say your view of a single stake agrees better with the idea of a tree (the word used in Acts V.30: X. 39: xiii. 29: Gal. iii. 13, and 1 Pet. ii. 2i) than the popular shape of the cross does. Do you think that the Romans, who crucified hundreds, and sometimes thousands at a time, would have wasted their labour on elaborate crosses ? The rough straight stake would best suit their purpose, but Avhatever was the shape of the Cross, its use as an ornament did not arise from the fact of the crucifixion of Jesus. How, then, did the Cross, as we have it, come into use amongst Christians ? The Cross, Lander, is of heathen origin. Many hundreds of years before the time of our Lord it Avas a religious symbol or per- sonal ornament amongst the heathen in all parts of the world. There have been found two hundred varieties of the heathen form of the Cross. Look at the plate 1. It contains several different i-epi'e- seutations, but only two of them are Christian. At the top is Sam si Vul, King of Assyria, ii.c. 825, with the ornament ff a cross on Lis breast. Look at No. 5, the cross-marked cake, offered to the heathen god, Bncchus, and notice also the heathen crosses Nos. 1, 2,3, G, 9, 12, 13, 14 and 15, and Plate 8. the Indian double triangle (No. 10), wliicli is often now introduced into our cliuiches. I see that the large central figure represents Diana. Yes. Compare her crescent cross and star with the like symbols on the so-called Christian ivpresentation of the Virgin Mary in plate 4, which is taken from the seal of Salisbury Cathedral Chapter. It is certainly strange. You cannot be surprised at the nominal success of the Jesuit Mission- aries in Mexico, when they merely sub- stituted the image of the Virgin Mary for another image, and thus supposed they had Christianized the people, though without requiring any change of heart. The Mexicans previously had a regular loriesthood, gorgeous temples and convents ; they had processions in which crosses, and even red crosses, were carried; and incense, floAvers and fruit offerings were employed in their worship. They practised confession to a priest, and they worshipped and afterwards ate a wafer god — an idol made of flour and honey, — and they always ate it fasting. They also venerated a black calf or bull, and adored a goddess mother with an infant son in her arms. The Christianity of the Jesuits seemed to the Mexicans only another phase of their own religion What are plates Nos. 5 and 6 ? The former represents the VI foul heathen goddess Astarte, r| and is taken from a coin in the '''^ British Museum ; the latter represents St. Margaret, the fabulous bride of Christ, and is taken from a representa- tion in St. George's Chapel, Westminster. Well, said Lander, the hea- then goddess and the Christian saint have indeed a strong " family likeness. As the symbol of the cross was so general and popular amongst heathen nations, it easily slipped into the Christian Church, as soon as Christianity became popular; but it is interesting to know that not a cross occui's in any Christian Plate 4. Plate Plate 6. ''w 6 monument of the first four centuries. As early as the close of the second century after Christ a Roman Christian, a highly educated man, in defending the truth against a heathen acquaintance wrote as follows: — "Crosses we neither worship nor wish for. You indeed who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses, perhaps, as parts of your gods. Your very standards as well as the banners and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses gilded and adorned ? " Did not the Emperor Constantine, A.n. 313, adopt the Cross ? No. He used the Greek monogram which meant Chi; the first letters of the word Christ (see jilate 7 for a copy r^^ of monogram). It is like an X the Greek letter Ch, ^Xv' (plate 11 ), and a, f e j^earSj later the mono- gram had disappeared (plate 12), making way foi- a pure heathen ci'oss with a winged imag'e of the Goddess Victory. ^^^^^ ^^' Ah ! would (said Lander) that we could get rid of the defilement which has been contracted by the Church during her growth ! The American Episcopal Church which is in full communion with our Church revised the Prayer Book in 1790, and made optional the use of the cross in baptism. Their rubinc runs thus : — '' If those who present the infant desire the sign of the cross to be omitted, although the Church knows no worthy cause of scruple concerning the same, yet in that case, the minister may omit that pai't of the above, which follows the immersion." And another Church in full communion with ns, Plate 10. Plate 12. the Church of Ireland, has ordered that there shall be no cross, ornamental or otherwise, on the Communion Table or on the covering thereof, and that a Cross shall not be erected or depicted on the wall or other structure behind the table. How sadly, too, does the use of Crosses, as ornaments, tend to unspiritiialise the mind, for cross-wearing is not the cross- bearing which our Lord requires ; He said, " If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me," Matt. xvi. 24. May we all be cross-bearers, but not ( ross-wearers, remembering that the Cross we are to bear is our own Cross, and that as for the Cross of Christ it must bear as. " I am crucified with Christ," wrote St. Paul in Gal. ii. 20. I quite agree with you, and Dr. Bonar's vei'ses seem very approjji'iate. 1 have copied some of them. I am crucified with Christ — With Him nailed upon the tree. Not the Cross then do I bear, But the Cross it beareth me. Solemn Cross on which I died, One with Him the crucified. Shall I call this glittering gem, Made for show and vanity; Shall I call this gaud a Cross — Cross of Him who died for me? Shall I deck myself with thee, Awful Cross of Calvary ? N Cross of man's device, I turn From thee to Himself, my Lord ; What can this symbolic gem Do for me ? What peace afford ? Shall I deck myself with thee, Awful Cross of Calvary ? I am crucified with Christ, Yet I live through Him who died : Shall that Cross of blood and woe Minister to human pride ? Shall I deck myself with thee. Awful Cross of Calvary ? For a further treatment of this suhject see Church Association Tracts, Nos. 97 and 15G. I'o be cbtaiiud at the Office of the CHURCH Association, 14, Uuckingham Street, Strand, London, at the price of 8d per dozen or -Is per lUU. 5th Thousand.] THE FASHIONABLE mm ? U fc^ll li i-1 PISl JS 151 I . ^ OF THE RITUALISTS; OR, The Gospel of "Expiation," CHURCH ASSOCIATION", 14, BUCKINGHAM STEEET, STEAND, LONDON, W.C. No 2ia] No. 214. Prayers for the Dead, by Dr. H. H. Weight. Price 2^d each. 211. Purgatory Pickpurse. Price Id each. 171. The New (P) Purgatory. Price Id each. 176. The Wonderful Iron Room. Price Id each. 197. Undoing the Work of the Reformation, by Dean Farrar. Price l^d each. 204. Martyrdom for Religion under Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. Price Id each. 199 What is Sacerdotalism 9 Price Id each. 200. A Review of Canon Knox-Little's Answer to Archdeacon Farrar. Price Id each. The above publications may be obtained at the prices named, post free, from the (Cfjiircf) ^ssoctation, 14, BUCKINGHAM STKEET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. a THE GOSPEL EX PI ATI ON." "Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God ? . . shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul r' ' Such has ever been the natural feeling of fallen man when ho has learned to " abhor himself," and to recognise his own vileness. Like Adam, he would fain " hide himself " from the face of an offended God. He feels that punishment is his due, and secretly hopes to buy off the Almighty by inflicting upon himself some bodily austerities. The Psalmist has taught us that " None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him : for the redemption of their soul •is costly, and must be let alone for ever" (Ps. xlix.-7, 8. R.V. Compai-e Prayer Book version). Nevertheless man naturally craves to be doing something toward " expiation." He cannot or rather will not, take in the blessed truth that eternal life is the free " gift " of God. The priests of Baal who hoped by cutting themselves with knives to melt the heart of Baal, and the Fakirs of India who maim and mutilate their own suffering bodies are but types of human nature, " always, among all men every- where " the same : samples of a truly " catholic " want of faith. Lord Halifax in the Lord^s Bay and Holy Eucharist urges that man-made expiation is an " essential element in all true worship," and that the worshipper must himself have a share in his own atonement. He says (p. 3) — "The obligations imposed on the Head apply also to the members, and the only difference between Him and them in this respect is* this: that He, by virtue of what He is, is able to do perfectly and completely what they, by reason of what they are, can only do imperfectly and incompletely" (p. 4). "We are bound to expiate, as far as we can, and thus fill up, both for ourselves and for others, in the words of St. Paul (sic) ' what remains of the sufferings of Christ.' " A remarkable exposition truly of Col. i.-24i. 4 On tliis view, Jeliovali, like Molocli, rejoices in the sufferings of his creatures, and all sorts of pagan practices flow out of such. a dishonouring conception of " the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." At our Sale of Work in May, 1895, were exhibited a number of "penitential articles" which are now being publicly sold in the shops, and for wliicli Ritualists are said to be even larger customers than the genuine and avowed Romanists. In thus acting they have the sanction of the personal example of Dr. Pusey himself, and of course of what are called Saints — such " saintsliip " turning largely on corporal austerities which imply that the laws of " Nature " are contrary to the Law of God ! It was a long time before this secret asceticism was allowed to leak out. To quote an able review of the Life of Pusey whicli appeared in the English Churchman of December 6tli, 1894— Plate 1. "Pusey adopted tlie principle of 'Reserve,' not only, in matters of doctrine, but^also in religious devotions. What a stir there would have been for instance, if in the year 1846 the world had known that he had adopted for himself one of the most degrading of the devotional practices of the Church of Rome — the use of the " Discipline," or the cat-o'-nine tails, for the good of his soul. There were others in the ranks of the early Tractarians who adopted it also, as may be seen in the Life of Father Faher, but it was kept as a profound secret from the Protestant public. Had the secret been then discovered, it would have gone a long way towards strengthening the opposition to Ritualism. There is a letter of Pusey's to the late Mr. J. B. Hope-Scott, published in the 'Memoirs' of that gentleman, asking him to obtain a ' Discipline ' daring his journey on the Continent, in the autumn of 1844. After read- ing this third volume of Puscy's Life there can be little doubt that he wished to use the ' Discipline ' on his own bare back : — " ' I see,' wrote Puscy to Hope-Scott, September 9th, 1844, 'in a spiritual wi-iter that even for such, corporal severities are not to be neglected, but so many of them are unsafe. I suspect the *' Discipline " to be one of the safest, and with internal humiliation the best. Could j-ou procure and send me one by 13. ? What was described to me was of a ve7-y sacred character; 5 cords, each Avith 5 knots, in me- mory of the 5 wounds of our Lord.' " (Memoirs of J. B,. Uope-Scolt, Vol. II., p. 52.) Here arc two samples of this " very sacred" knout. The first is the " Cdrd Discipline " (Plato 1). The second is a still more biting affair, the " Steel Discipline" (Plate 2). But to resume. The Life of Fuse]/ tells ns some sad things about his peni- tential disciplines. After all, perhaps, one of his . most severe penances was his first confession to a priest. Keblo was his Father Confessor, but it was not until 1846, or eight years after he had commenced to act as a Father Confessor, that Pusey practised himself what he had so long exhorted his disciples to undertake. To Keble he wrote : — . " I am a great coward about inflicting pain on myself, partly, I hope, from derangement of my nervous system ; hair cloth I know not how to make pain ; it is only symbolical, except when worn to an extent which seemed to wear me out. I have it on again, hy God's mercy. I would try to get some sharper sort I think I should like to bo bid to use the Discipline." {Life of Fusey, Vol. 111., p. 100.) Here is a portrait.of a "Hair Shirt" (Plate 3), made in a French convent, but sold over the connter of a London shop. A writer who signs himself " H. K.", in a leaflet published by Mr. Kcllj, of Castle Street, says : — "We do not know exactly what form of hair shirt -Dr; Pusey wore, hut here is one severer than some but not so severe as others. It is made of black horse-hair, and is so crocheted or knitted as to leave hard ridges. And all over it is covered with the ends of horse- hair. You wear it like an under vest. It costs one guinea. You can buy cheap hair shirts made of sackcloth, with horse-hair woven into their texture and bristling over their surface, for eight shillings. Or you can have shirts like this with sleeves. "All these penitential articles were bought in the ordinary way of business and without any disguise, by another minister. They were made by the nuns in French convents. The, gentleman who served the purchaser most courteously, and without- hesitation, answered riate 4. every question put to liini. He said that the English (Eoman) Catholics only bought sucli things to a slight extent. The 2^rincipal customers were English Ritualists, who sometimes bought them in large quantities. A member of the firm was then on the Continent visiting convents where tbey Avcre made. It was necessary to lay in a large stock for Lent. They had difficulty sometimes in supplying the demand. They would sell as much as ten pounds' worth to one customer." Plate 5. We are now-beino' taught that Penance is a "sacrament," and the Roman Confessors (by whose books their Anglican "apists" guide themselves), prescribe local tortures as part of the " satisfaction " for sin wiiicli it is their professional duty as Divine mediators to impose. Accordingly they have 'invented the "Single Wristlet" (Plate 4), or if the would-be " Saint " is exceptionally devout he may try Plate 6. the "Double Wristlet" (Plate 5) : while for others, there have been devised the following pat- tern of spiky " Anklet " (Plate G). These " articles of bigotry and virtue," as an auc- tioneer happily described some fancy goods which cam« under his hammer, may be had at fairly reasonable prices. Wrist- lets cost from Is 6d to 2s 6d : anklets, 10s 6d, large enough to wrap round your leg : or, a cincture to go round your waist for 16s. The chance that ib may not fit adds to the meritorious irksome- ness of the penance. You have but to " make blind eyes " at your wife or daughter going to con- fession, and these very methods may be going on in your own household and under your very nose. And free enlightened England is actually now furnishing the bond slaves over whom young priest- lings tyrannise in this fashion ! Reader, will yoio do nothing to counteract such a heathenisli caricaturing of " the gospel of the grace of God"? • To be obtained at tho OtBce of the Chukch Association, 14, Bucking- ham Street, Strand, London, at the price of 5(/ per dozen, or 3s per 100, 5tli Thousand.] WHY ARE WE CALLED PROTESTANTS? (By I>. Alcock, Author of ^' Crushed, yet Conquering," " The Spanish Brothers,'" S{c.) HE above picture represents a scene which took place in the Diet of Spires, on April I9th, 1529. That was nearly 370 years ago, but what was done then will never be forgotten as long as the world lasts. The princes and free cities that first embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, formed pare of the great Germanic Empire ; and at a- previous Diet of the Empire held at Spires in 1526, they had obtained a degree: of- liberty and toleration. Three years later, however, a second Diet was held at the same place, under the presidency of Ferdinand, brother of the Emperor Charles V. Ferdinand's influence, along with that of the absent Emperor, of the priests and of the Romish party, so far prevailed with the majority as to induce them, though not without difficulty, to pass a new decree abrogating the former No. 220.] one, seriously restricting the liberties of those who had already declared for the Refomiation, and leaving any who should hereafter do so exposed to relentless persecution. Thus overborne by numbers, the chiefs of the Reforming party, ere they left the place, presented to the Diet their solemn Protest. These are some of the words of this memorable document — " Seeing," they said, "that there is no sure doctrine but such as is comformable to the Word of God ; that the Lord forbids the teaching of any other doctrine ; that any difficult text ought to be explained by other and clearer texts ; and that this Holy Book is in all things necessary for the Christian easy of understanding, and calculated to scatter the darkness ; we are resolved, by the grace of God, to maintain the pure and exclusive teaching of His only Word, such as it is contained in the Biblical Books of the Old and New Testaments, without adding anything thereto that may be contrary to it. This Word is the only truth ; it is the sure rule of all doctrine and of all life, and can never fail or deceive us. He who builds on this foundation shall stand against all the powers of hell, whilst all the human vanities that are set up against it shall fall before the Face of God. " For these reasons we earnestly entreat you to weigh care- fully our gi^ievances and our motives. If you do not yield to our request, we protest . . . that we, for us and our people, neither consent nor adhere in any manner whatsoever to the proposed decree, in anything that is contrary to God, to His Holy Word, to our right conscience, to the salvation of our souls." It will be noticed that the principle involved in these words marks "a clear and definite dividing line in modern Christian thought." It places on the one side those who believe in the absolute authority of an ecclesiastical hierarchy ; and on the other, those who maintain the supreme authority of Holy Scripture, and the rights of the individual conscience. The pi'inces who signed the Protest of Spires were : the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Margrave of Brandenburgh, and the Prince of Anhalt. There were besides the Chancellor of Luneburgh, and the deputies of foui'teen free Imperial cities. The Elector of Saxony, John the Constant, who appears in the picture holding the Protest, was the most eminent of the princes, in character as well as in rank ; and he is especially interesting to us as one of the ancestors of our gracious Queen. I But it is not only because the actors in the scene engage our interest that we clierish the memory of the Protest of Spires. There is another reason. The princes and deputies who signed it were naturally called the protesting, or Protestant, princes and deputies ; and the name passed on to their followers, adherents, and sympathizers, and to those elsewhei'e who adopted their distinguishing principle - the supremacy of the Word of God. Thus it was that people who embraced the cause of the Reformation came everywhere to be called Protestaiv'ts. But it happened with this name, given first for a local and temporary reason, as long ago with another name, yet more famous in the history of the world : " At Antioch the disciples were first called" — probably in contempt and delusion — " Christians." The common instinct oF humanity accepted and adopted the name, as fitly and accurately expressing the truth; and those to whom it was given in i-idicule took it with joy as a title of honour. As with the word " Christian," so with the word "Protestant." For what is its true meaning and significance ? It is derived from the Latin word testis, of which the Greek equivalent is martyr, — theEnglish, m^ness; the termination being that of the present partici.ple in Latin, so that " testant " is simply witnessing. Testify, testimony, are other words from the same x-oot. Pro-testant ought derivatively to be witnessing for; but usage has rather appropriated "protest " to a witness against. The popular explanation of Protestant, "one who protests against the corruptions of Romanism," is therefore true, so far as it goes, but inadequate. It is inadequate, because in this case the positive aspect ought by no means to be lost sight of. Protestantism, considered as a mere negation of Romanism, is robbed of its living power. No ProtestaJit should ever forget that he is called — not first to witness against Rome — but first to witness for Christ, for the sanctity and authority of His written Word, for Truth, for Righteousness, for Liberty. Hel is to witness against Rome whenever — and so far as — Rome dishonours, denies, or makes void any one of these. It is a noble and a worthy name by which we are called. In its origin there is nothing to blush for : in its significance and its associations there is much to awaken high aspiration and holy thought. It links us of to-day — unworthy though we be — with the " great cloud of witnesses " that encompass the Church Militant; with Stephen, with Antipas, the martyrs of Christ ; with the " two witnesses " beheld in vision by the mystic seer of Patmos. Nay, it looks higher yet, for is not the very Captain of our Salvation styled the true and faithful Witness? Those who follow Him should indeed accept with joy a name that means witness. It may be added that the Greek form of the name has proved peculiarly — and sadly yet gloriously — appropriate to those who have protested against the errors of Rome ; since an innumerable company of martyr's have fulfilled the meaning we have attached to it in our own tongue, by sealing their testimony with their blood. Yet not with this will we conclude, but rather with the thought, that a name so honourable demands from those who bear it the fearless witness of the lip, and the yet more powerful witness of the life, against evil, falsehood and wrong in every form, and for truth, for righteousness, for Christ. London : Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street. Published by tlie Church AssociiTion and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street. Strand, at the price of 3d per dozen, or Is 6d per 100. 16th Thousand.] 26.7.1900. PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD. 4 IN THE PLACE WHERE THE TREE FALLETH, THERE IT SHALL BE." Eccks. xi. 3. Recently it was my sad lot to hear a clergyman in the Charch of England advocate from the pulpit prayers for the dead. Has it ever occuri-ed to you to think what this means ? Perhaps you may say you see no harm in it. Let us then carefully consider the matter. The Bible is God's Word, given us for our guidance. You will find no record thei'ein of any of God's servants praying for the dead, or any intimation that He desires us to pray for them. It is therefore a practice not only unwarranted by God, but calculated to produce in us a trust for salvation in the prayers of our surviving friends, or in those of priests ordained by man, rather than in the atonement made for sin by our Great High Priest Jesus Christ ; a practice whereby we both deceive ourselves and dishonour God. Again, — in order to pray for the dead without mockery, it must surely be for something we think would benefit them. What, then, can we ask God to do for them ? Just before the Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, He commanded His disciples to preach the Gospel to every creature, adding these remarkable words : — " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned." (Mark xvi.-16.) Here we have from the lips of Jesus Christ Himself, a plain description of our state after death. We see that it is one or other of two states into which our souls will pass, according to whether we have No. 221.] accepted, or rejected, the Gospel of Christ. If, therefore, our departed friends are saved, — for what can we ask God which can possibly add to a bliss which He tells us has never entered into the heart of man to conceive ? If they are lost, — of what possible avail can our prayers be to them, when we do not even know what would benefit them ? In praying for them we actually deny the truth of what the Lord Jesas Christ has told us, or, in other words, in praying for the dead we deny Christ. The practice of praying for the dead invariably disposes to a belief in the false doctrine of Purgatory, which is condemned in the Articles of the Church of England, as being " repugnant to the Word of God." This doctrine teaches that, after death, the souls of even the holiest persons, with but few exceptions, pass into a state called Purgatory, and are not admitted to Heaven until they have been purged by the fires or torments of Purgatory from certain sins, which, owing to the imperfection of human repentance, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ was not sufiicient to wash away. Consequently the priests are paid, oftentimes large sums of money, to pray that the souls of those in Purgatory may speedily be released from their torments, and may pass from thence into a state of everlasting joy. What an awful doctrine this is ! It is a direct denial of the all-sufficiency of Christ's atone- ment. God's Word says, " The blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin." (1 Johni.-7.) The priest says, — it does not. Jesus Christ says, " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." The priest says, — faith is not suf- ficient to save, until the soul has been cleansed in the fires of Purgatory. "Which will you believe, — God's Word, or that of the priest ? Let us, then, be careful to ponder well such teachings of man before accepting them, and to search God's Word diligently to see whether these things be so, lest we also come into condemnation. l^oiifloii: Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street, Covent Garden. Published by the Church Association, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street. Strand, London, at the price of 2d per dozen or Is per 100. 15th Thousand.] 1.5.19)0. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS FOR ENGLISH CHURCH PEOPLE OF THE DAY. 1. (Q.) Should I rise ivhen the Clergy and Choir enter and leave the Church f (A.) No. Because to do so is to give honour to men in the House of God, where He is Himself present, and should alone be thought of and honoured. 2. (Q.) Should I go to Confession ? (A.) No. Because no man can forgive sin, but God only ; for He alone can read the heart, and His grace comes to us only through the One Mediator, Jesus Christ, Who has bidden us go direct to Himself that we may have life, and have it more abundantly. Also, because the questions allowed and sometimes jjut in Auricular Confession, arc contrary to modesty and purity of mind. No. 222.] 3 (Q.) At what hour should I go to the Lord's Supper f (A.) At whatever hour your mind and time are most free from necessary earthly duties ; for God looks at the heart, and not at time, in our acts of worship. It was instituted by our Lord in the Evening, and the Primitive Church observed th^ same custom, until the edict of a heathen Emperor made it dangerous to continue the practice. 4. (Q.) What should I believe about the Church f (A.) That the one true universal Church is composed of all those who believe and trust in Christ Jesus as their Saviour, and who have been baptized into this faith. 5. (Q.) Should I 2^'>'Cby for the dead ? (A.) No. Because we have no warrant in Scrip- ture for so doing, and cannot even guess what their needs may be. We only know that no harm shall hurt those who have died, trusting in Jesus as their Saviour. London : Printed by G. Nonnan & Son, Floral Street, Cnvent Garden. Published by the CiuiRcn Association, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price ol' 2(i per dozen, or Is per 100. letli Thousand.! i.-..n.ii)00 ^edepn Rilu§lisn|, Pi^eieRfe Judaism. T has long oeen the fashion to speak of Ritualism as an advance towards the Truth, and as a step forward in religion ; but like most popular beliefs, this is a mistake, and a very dangerous one too. The party known as Ritualists in the Church of Eng- land, so far from going forward spiritually, which the true Gospel was meant, and is alone able to teach us to do, has gone back, and. is still trying to go further back, to the principles on which the Jewish Church and its worship was founded. They, i.e. the ritualists of our day, seem to forget that the reason for all the material outward show and special observances which made up the Jewish form of worship was fulfilled, or done with, when our Lord Jesus Christ had accomplished His mission on earth, by His death, resurrection, and ascension, and by sending the Holy Ghost to replace His bodily presence among men. Until these things were accompiisned it was necessary that He who was to fulfil them should be foreshewn to the people who expected Him, through a system of typical sacrifices No. 223.] 2 whicli tliey conld see ; and that their reverence in Divine worship should be maintained through outward observances ; because, as yet, the Jews had no idea of what their Messiah would be like ■when He appeared, nor had they any knowledge of what He was likely to teach them, nor understanding of religion as spiritual, and not material. The Jewish Church in our Lord's days was in the same position towards the Gospel that childhood is towards manhood. A child has to be taught through his eyes and ears, and to be guided and restrained by others, outwardly, because his under- standing is not able to take in the meaning of things, or to learn right and wrong in any other way : and the Jewdsh Church was in the same condition. Therefore, its teaching was mainly composed of what is called ritual ; and the reverence of the people for hidden mysteries was enforced, and impressed on them, by the distinctions made between themselves and the priests, who had the charge of these mysteries, but who had no more understanding concerning them than others. They proved this by their rejection of the Messiah when He came; when, instead of teaching the people to see in Him the Lamb of God, who was to fulfil the types to which they were accustomed in their temple sacrifices, they encouraged and stirred them up against Him, and finally bribed one of His own Apostles to betray Him to death. It is not difiicult to see why the Jewish priesthood thus rejected Him whose priests and ministers they were. Their pride, and natural love for show, and for power over the people, found vent and satisfaction in ritual and in the ceremonies and personal priestly adornments of the Jewish Church ; and they loved these too well to be willing to give them up. Little as they cared to learn or understand the Gospel taught by Christ, they heard enough of Him and His teaching to see that their own power and importance were endangered by it, and they clung to these rather than the Truth. Therefore, while still professing to keep charge of, and to reverence the mysteries (i.e. symbols) of the Jewish faith, as priests of God, they deliberately compassed the death of Him, of whom these mysteries were but the appointed type, and Who alone could explain and replace them with something better. That "something better" was the inward worship of God, without special regard to places, forms, or ceremonies — and in teaching this as the true worship of Grod, Who " is a Spirit," in His conversation at the well with the woman of Samaria, our Lord Jesus Christ shewed that the ritual worship of the Temple was no longer required by God, or necessary for man. But, notwithstanding this, is it not the case that we are still divided, like the Galatians, between Christian and Jewish ■worship ? For what else but a return to the Temple worship {destroyed hy God Himself through the iniraculotis rending of the Temple veil at the Crucifixion) is the ritualism of the great number of those clergy who seek thus to fix on themselves, and on imaginary mysteries in connection with them (like the Jewish priests of old) the attention and reverence of their congrega- tions, and thus distract both from their one only lawful object, " God," who " is a Spirit," and Who can only be worshij)ped spiritually and sincerely within ? It is evident indeed to all but themselves that the Church of England, as represented by the ritualists, is in the same mental position towards the Second Coming, that the Jewish priest- hood held towards the First. They are so occupied and absorbed in the eaiternals of the worship of God, that they are hardly less blind than the Jews themselves to the spiritual meaning of the Gospel taught by Christ. And is not this a dangerous condition ? If they cannot see or teach the Spirit of the Gospel, making it instead, as they do, a Gospel of outward forms and ceremonies, by the name of " The Church," are they likely to be prepared to accept or recognize the signs of that Second Coming, which will sweep away, as useless and unprofitable, whatever is not true in spirit ? As surely as God shewed His rejection of the Temple worship, when no longer needed as a type of that which had been fulfilled by the death of Christ Jesus, so surely will He destroy eventually, and with displeasure, all such Christian worship as depends for its existence on outside attractions of form, ceremonies, and music, and which is not founded in the hearts, and exemolified in the lives, of those who teach and follow it. Let us not go hack then, with lovers of ritualism, to an earlier and more ignorant stage of the world's history, but forward, as those who are nearing the end of this Dispensation, to a more and more spiritual insight into the hidden meaning of the words of Christ to the Samaritan woman (St. John iv. 21-25), and let us nofc, by rejecting His teaching in them, run the risk of being among those who, if not turning the House of God into a "house of merchandise," yet have turned, and do increasingly turn it, into a House of Earthly Show. To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C., at the price of Zd per dozen, or Is 6rf per 100. 4th Thousand.] (^ANDLES, CROSSES, ALTARS, PICTURES: WHAT DO THE HOMILIES SAY? Lighted Candles Crosses Altars No. 224 " In the day it needeth not, but was ever a proverb of foolishness to light a candle at noontime ; and in the night it availeth not to light a candle before the blind ; and God hath neither use nor honour thereof. Lactantius saith, ' Seemeth he therefore to be in his right mind which offereth up to the Giver of all light, the light of a wax candle ^ for a gift ? ' " — Homily against the Peril of Idolatry. "Where the devil is resident, and hath his plough going, then away with books and up with candles ; away with Bibles and up with beads ; away with the light of the Gospel and up with the light of candles, yea, at noon days." — Sermon by the martyred Bishop Latimer, when the Act of Uniformity passed the House of Lords. " All crosses to be utterly defaced, broken, and destroyed." — Archbidiop Grindal {called by Lord Bacon " the greatest predate of the land ") in his In- structions to Laity. " We are threatened with a revival of the follies of a bygone superstition. A suspicious predilection has been manifested for the emblem of the cross." ^ — Bishop Maltby in his Charge, 1841. ( " Churchwardens shall see that in their churches and chapels all altars be utterly taken down .... and that the altar stones be broken and bestowed to some common use." — Orders of Archbishop Grindal the Reformer. " I need not remind you of the remarks of Mr. Justice Willes in a recent case in which he censured even the Clerk of the Justices for using the word ' altar,' and having regard to the Judgment of the Privy Council in the case of Westerton v. Lidddl, I cannot allow a plea to be filed in this Court which calls the communion-table an 'altar.' If this case goes elsewhere, I should be blamed for allowing such a word to go from this Court." — The Worshipful Chancellor Christie, M.A., in the Consistory Court of Manchester, 1873. Pictures ' " But away for shame with these coloured cloaks of idolatry, of the books and scriptures of images and pictures to teach idiots, nay to make idiots and stark fools and beasts of Christians. " The New Testament of our Saviour Jesus Christ containing the Word of Life, is a more lively express and true image of our Saviour than all carved, graved, molten and painted in the world be." — Homily against the Peril of Idolatiy. NOTE. LiglltBd. Candles (unless for the purpose of simply giving light in a dark church) are illegal and have been condemned by the Privy Council and other Courts of this Realm. In Read v. The Bp. of Lincoln the bishop was acquitted by the Privy Council solely on the ground that the incumbent of the church was the party responsible for this breach of law. Stoles (though not Scarves) are illegal of whatever colour, and have been condemned by the Judgment of the Dean of Arches. NOTE. The Homilies of the Church of England are certain sermons appointed by authority to be read in Churches, and are declared by Article XXXV. to " contain a godly and wholesome doctrine," and are "to be read in Churches by the Ministers, diligently and distinctly, that they may be understanded of the people." 'J'o these Articles every Clergyman at his Ordination has subscribed. London : Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street ; Published by the Church As60ciation, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 2d per dozen or Is per 100. 37tli Thousand]. 1000-5.3.01. '' T he Holy Communion the Highest Act of Christian Worship/' REV. BEAUCHAMP STANNUS, M.A., Hector of Arrow. F this is true, how is it that this blessed ordinance is mentioned in only one of the twenty-one Epistles in the New Testament ? There are frequent re- ferences to Baptism, Justification, Sanctification, Redemption, Godliness, Offices of Christian Ministers, to the Second Advent, but we search in vain for any notice of this so-called "highest act of Christian worship " except in the first Epistle to the Corinthians ! Again, is the Lord's Supper in any sense an ' act of worship' ? By worship we understand something we offer to God, whereas in this Sacrament we do not give, on the contrary, we receive. Bread and wine, appointed by our Redeemer, are His gifts and offerings to us, not our gifts and offerings to Him. Matt. xxvi.-26, " As they were eating " (not fasting) " Jesus took bread and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples " (bread still) "and said, take, eat" (not "take, sacrifice "), " this is my Body which is given for you." The disciples expressed no surprise, they did not alter their posture to one of "worship." They understood "this is," to mean this represents, for "with- out a parable spake He not unto them." " The field is " (represents) "the world"; "I am the true vine," "the vino represents Me." " This do," i.e. " do what you see Mo doing, No. 225.] "in remembrance of Me." " Likewise also the cup after Supper saying, This cup is the 'New Testament in my blood which is shed for you." He speaks of the blood as already being shed, BO certain was it to be soon shed. " Drink ye all of it." They wei'e not merely lookers on, "They all drank of it." Here, again, was no woi'ship. All this took place in Jerusalem in an "upper room," not in the Temple ; there was no altar. " Behold," said the Saviour, "the hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me on the table." No change took place in the wine, for the disciples, being Jews, would not " driuk blood," which was forbidden in the Jewish, as afterwards in the Christian Church. Acts XV.-20. Our Blessed Lord " gave thanks." Therefore we, after His example, also, in our Communion Service give thanks, " with Angels and Archangels, and with all the Company of Heaven we laud and magnify Thy glorious name." " Glory be to God on high." " We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee." But man's praise is not the Lord's Supper : " In everything we give thanks." At an ordinary supper wo give thanks, we "say grace " ; but the food on the table, and not our thanks, is the supper. So in this Sacrament, the bread and wine, not our thanks, are the Lord's Supper when we feed by faith on the Body and Blood of Christ, deriving thus spiritual nourishment to our souls. This is well expressed by our Protestant and Reformed Church — " The benefits whereof we are partakers are the strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ as our bodies are by the bread and wine." And " the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was ordained for the continual remembrance of the Sacrifice of the Death of Christ " not to be an act of worship. As we have no altar and no sacri- ficing priest, we cannot have and do not need a commemorative Sacrifice, but we commemorate the one and only true Sacrifice, looking forward as well as backward, for " As often as ye eat this Bread and drink this Cup ye do shew the Lord's death till He come" London : Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street, Covent Garden. Published by the Church Association, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Bucldngham Street, Strand, at the price of M per dozen or Is per 100. HtU Thouaaud,] THE BISHOP OF LONDON'S FUND. How it helps the Romish Movement in the Church of England. (J — ■■ -jD ^^ Cj> — a — - TIE folly of supplying funds to " diocesan " societies without special inquiry as to their character and conduct is becoming more patent from day to day. While the correspondence columns of the Record are filled with apologies for " sacrificial " theories of the Eucharist, prayers for the dead, and non-communicant attendance (in plain English, the practice of "Hearing Mass"), individual clergy- men, popularly supposed to be connected with Evangelical movements, ai'e telling us that the " Eastward Position " and " altar lights " mean just nothing at all ! Nay more, a harmless Protestant symbol\s5m is indented for the nonce, to show how desirable even tl'ese practices may be. Thus we are told that the ER-o+i/WLrd Position merely indicates that the clergyman is t^.e foreman and spokesman of the congregation, at whose head he places himself as their mouthpiece. Be it so. Then why does not this professional Mediator adopt the same position at Evening Prayer or in the Commination and other " occasional Offices " ? If he really believed in the pretext assigned, logical consistency would ensure the " Eastward Position " quite apart fi^om the "altar" just as much as when standing "at" that piece of furniture. The Bishop of London, however, labours under no such delusion. After acting as " assessor " in the trial of Bp. King, he told his combined Rural Deaneries, in an address on the Lincoln Judgment, delivered January 30th, 1893, that " The Eastward Position represented not the Sovereign giving, but the subject offering — the sacrificial aspect. In the New Testament the former was the prominent idea, and the latter, though present [P], was subordinate. In early Christian times the latter rapidly grew into prominence, until it became almost the exclusive view. Thebe COULD BE NO DOUBT THAT THE EASTWARD POSITION AND THE SACRIFICIAL ASPECT WENT TOGETHEE." — Record, Feb. 3rd, 1893, p. 110. So, too, as to "Altar" Lights. It is now proved that the lamp which hung before the reserved wafer to attract to " It " the adoration of our Romanised forefathers was customarily one of the "two Lights" mentioned in that Injunction inl547of Edward VI. which was issued before Transubstantiation had been disavowed, and when a death penalty was inflicted (by the unrepealed Act No. 226.] [Continued on page 4.] Grants Voted for 1896, take J a < H H H H H H »' ^ H » H M H H H n H ft pj a -=! >■ ft] a > p^ ■<" a a a - *. «» P4 •* •H •• ^ •% «t ft ft ft' ft ft ft ft ft ft ft S ft ft ft ft ft' ft ft H B H H H H H ^ (4 p^' H M H » » » H H n* o Ph -^ a ai c3 l-s m PL,P- Go Oi.ogoooov.oooc:oo-isooooSg ^ M w CO (XI Q ^ : ! 'S "oS : : "cs "c3 • • fl a . 0) . •« -S . 1— t : =3 Isl : e^ p, 1 : r OlJ .1 : ■ ^ X! 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The Foui^th Council of Lateran, which ordered idolatrous worship to be paid to the Wafer as heing itself God, was the source of the usage of " altar lights " in this country, and was promulgated as English Canon Law, in the very same " Council of Oxford," upon which the advocates of these yellow, twink- ling, smoky flames rely for legal sanction. It is idle, therefore, to pretend that these "lights" are not designed to show that the Object of worship is localised behind the chandlery which is once more being burned " before the Sacrament." So, too, as to " Vestments." Not a single bishop, priest or deacon ever once wore these dresses under Elizabeth (when the fraud-rubric now known as the " Ornaments Rubric," but then printed without a7iy legal authority what- ever in her books of Common Prayer, was first issued), or under Charles II., when the rubric was enacted in its present form. The very notion that a " distinctive " dress belonged either to " the sacrificer," or to the rite itself as contrasted with baptism, preaching, or ordinary public worship, was expressly scouted by the Reformers in the Reformatio Legum (p. 19). (Cf. Card. Conf., p. 50). That Incense is illegal and unwarranted by Scripture under the Christian Dispensation we have demonstrated in Tract 213, and the "ceremonial " mixing of the_ ^^p ^as condemned even by the Lambeth " juds-es^" .-, "^^^ here we hav® ^ subsidy of nearly £12,000 .^y-ote^'^o ^he support of the -fi*i^^\ ""} ^^^ Mass, STia ^(?'^g]^ q£ ^-^e parishes thus supported exciudeuf^'^Th u given area that very teaching of the Gospel which Protestants and Evangelicals profess to value above all earthly things. Surely the following statement of facts must alarm the most apathetic, and rouse the most indolent to a sense of the great peril in which our Zion is now placed through the treachery of her own ofiicials. * * * Explanation of Notes. I. = Incense. E.p. = Eastward (or Back-to-the-People) Position, thus hiding the Manual Acts at Holy Communion, which is illegal in the Church of England. V. = Sacrificial Vestments. Imitated from the Church of Kome. M.c. = Mixed Chalice. A.I1. = " Altar " Lights, burned " before the Sacrament," though not required for the purpose of light. * Members of English Church Union. — Have an * attached to their names, which have been taken from the official English Church Union Directory for 1896. The Union is pledged to restoration of the Eastward Position, Popish Vestments, Lights in the Daytime, the Mixed Chalice, Incense, and Unleavened Bread. (Church Union Gazette, Vol. VI., p. 202.) Moreover, it officially advocated, in its Annual Keport for 1878, the " restoration of visible communion " with the Pope. ■f Members of Confraternity of Blessed Sacrament. — These are marked f The names are taken from its official Roll of Priests Associate for 1894. The chief objects of the C.B.S. are the propagation of belief in the Mass and the " Ileal " Presence, together with advocacy of Fasting Communion, Masses for the Dead, and the Eeserved Sacrament. (See the Manual of the Confraternity, and its monthly Intercession Paper.) To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckinghain Street, Strand, Loudon, at the price of Zd per doz., or Is 6d per 100. 2nd Thousand.] [15.9.96. Plain Words about the Lord's Suppen While this saci'ament, as ordained by Christ, has ever afforded believers unspeakable comfort, the Church of Rome has corrupted it into the idolatrous " Mass," and made of it not only a sham " sacrifice " but has martyred thousands for denying " transubstantiation," on the pretence that her priests can change the bread and wine into His body and blood. Other false teachers declare that He comes, in some mysterious manner, into the bread and wine upon the communion table. "We cannot believe such " blasphemous fables," for Scripture tells us that He ascended into Heaven, where He abideth until He shall return to judge the world. (Acts iii.-21. 1 Cor. xi.-26.) Not even the Pope of Rome can cause Him to descend before. Our best safeguard against all deceivers is the Scriptural teaching of our own Church, in the Catechism, Communion Service, Articles, &c. But let us first understand what a " sacrament " is. It is some earthly thing used as a "sign " to represent to our senses a spiritual grace, which is within us and is invisible ; as the baptismal water signifies cleansing by the Holy Ghost. Like prayer, the Lord's Supper is twofold. Bread for the mouth, words for the lips; but the heart must No. 227.] qnicken both. God disregards prayers that rise not from the heart. While we eat sacramental bread, we must feed on Christ ill our hearts, by faith, because faith is " the mean whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper." It is " verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful," but only by the faithful, for the wicked, and those without faith, are " in nowise partakers of Christ," although they eat and drink the sign or sacrament of His body and blood. God answered Hannah's prayer, although Eli reproved her for uttei'ing no words ; and so a sick person, who cannot "receive the sacrament with his mouth," can yet, by faith, "eat and drink the body and blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul's health." As we may eat the bread without feeding upon Christ ; or feed upon Him without eating the bread, it is certain that He is not in the bread ; since His body " is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an Heavenly and Spiritual manner." " If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there ; believe it not." Believe no teaching about any "real" presence of Christ within the bread or wine. His command was " This do in remembrance of Me." Only the absent need remembrance. As a likeness helps us to recollect a departed friend, so Christ appointed bread and wine to remind His Disciples of His body being crucified, and His blood being shed, in perfect and all-sufficient sacrifice. " As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till He come." His manhood abides in Heaven : His Godhead is present everywhere. " Lo, I am with you alway." Not more in church than in street or field ; but public worship specially prepares us to feel His presence. Attend then the " Heavenly feast " with deepest reverence, but without any superstitious awe, or dread. Holy Communion is not miraculous. " The Lord's table " is not an altar, for nothing is " sacrificed " upon it. . After consecration the " bread and wine remain still in their very natural substances," and though Ritualists may garnish them with flowers, candles, crosses, and incense, yet if not taken with faith, repentance, and thanksgiving, they are but " as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." (2 Kings xviii.-4.) R. E. D London : Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floi al Street. Publislied by the Church Associa noN, and to be obtained at tlieir Otttce, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 2rf per dozen, or Is per 100. 8tli Thousand.] CHURCH REFORM. The Outlook for the Established Church of England. [Reprinted, by apecial 2)ennissio!i, from the " Times,'' of September 8th, 1896.] HE attack upon the Established Church of England, to which the late Radical Bill for disestablishing the Church in Wales was avowedly a preliminary step, is suspended for a time. But the forces which directed it are not asleep. They are biding their time, waiting for the opportunity which, it is hoped, must come in the ordinary revolution of human affairs or with the shifting balance of political parties. That opportunity may come when the present Ministry has run its course, and the majority, now so irresistible, has been sapped, as majorities have been sapped before, by lapse of time and disappointed expectations and the ever- recurring desire for change. Or it may come suddenly, on some wave of popular opinion, carrying before it the natural reluctance of any Ministry to embark upon so difficult and complicated a question as the resettlement of an institution bound up for centuries with the history and the social life of England. Or — and this is the hope of most sober-minded persons who wish their country well — it may be postponed for many years, giving time for the Church, by ever-increasing zeal for her spiritual w^ork, by continued readiness to adapt herself to the changing conditions of human thought and society, and by her desire to reform, if only she is allowed to do so, the abuses and anomalies that disfigure her system, so to strengthen her hold upon the people of England as to weather every storm and stress of circumstance. There are some hopeful signs in the outlook. The democracy, to whose wishes Unionist or Separatist. Liberal or Conservative, alike must shape their ~ Ko. 2'2S.] ends, is not necessarily hostile to the Church. It may be — it probably is — indifferent, if not to religion itself, at any rate to the outward machinery for promoting it ; and the increasing poverty of the clergy is gradually diminishing those hopes of spoil to which Liberationists have so often made their strongest appeal. A campaign against capital, the wild schemes of Socialism, and its wilder dreams of equality of fortune and worldly position which can never be realized so long as Nature makes men unequal in ability and in character, seem more attractive nowadays to the working classes of this as of other countries, and it is at least possible that the cry of disestablish- ment, if raised by Radical statesmen in search of a policy, may fall flat. Even the tithepayer — the least open, as a rule, of any human beings to reason and the logic of facts — is beginning to have a dim idea that disestablishment and disendowment of the Church, "whoever pockets the money, will not put it into his, and that he may " go further and fare worse " than at present. Agricultural labourers, too, are better educated than they were, better able to think for themselves, and, therefore, less likely to believe the eloquent agitator who tells them that, if the parson is disestablished, they will get the money. And if farmers and labourers lose their personal and selfish interest in disestablish- ment, one powerful lever for effecting it will be gone. There is also ground for hope in the Church itself, in the greater earnestness and self-sacrifice of its ministers, in the disappear- ance of much of the torpor, sloth, and worldliness which have been in years now past its deserved reproach. The more the Church does its duty the less ground have its' enemies to blaspheme ; the less reason can they allege for crippling its power to do good. But there are grave dangers ahead — political, social, and religious. The Church has still to fear the attacks of Radicals and Nonconformists from without ; it has still more to fear dissension within, and a catastrophe which the combined forces of Radicalism and Nonconformity have failed to effect may at last be brought about by sacerdotalism — by the foes of the Church's own household. This word " sacerdotalism " must be understood in its widest sense as a convenient term to express that general drift of opinion among the clergy of the Established Church which is widening and accentuating the breach between them and the laity, and so far, in the opinion of many, preparing the Avay for disestablishment. Let us, however, consider these three heads of possible danger in the order stated above. [After discussing the political and social dangers to the Estab- lishment, the writer proceeds to consider the dangers from within in the following terms : — ] ***** More serious for the Established Church are the dangers from within. The "unhappy divisions" among Church people, which apparently make it difficult for them to come to an agreement even upon so vital a question as the religious teaching of the young, cannot but discredit the Chui"ch iu the e3^es of practical men. Whenever its position as the Estab- lished Church of the nation is seriously threatened, it is inevitable that a Church so divided against itself on important points of doctrine and practice will forfeit some of the sympathy which it might otherwise have claimed. Nor can it, we fear, be said that the clergy of the Established Church are holding their own with the present generation. Their social position is admittedly not what it was. The decline in her worldly pi'ospects, and the opening of so many other careers, or means of earning a livelihood, to the sons of the gentry and upper middle classes, have deprived the Church of some of the best material for her service. And, though it may be good to have relieved the ministry of some who formerly entei'ed it from purely worldly motives, the substitution of "literates" and others from a lower stratum of society, however much in earnest such men be for the spiritual side of their calling, is not calciilated to increase the influence of the Church in the country. Intellectually, too, the clergy are, it is to be feared, dropping behind. The average level of culture in general, and of insight into theological questions in particular, among the laity has distinctly risen. But have the clergy kept pace with the rise ? Do we not hear on all hands complaints of want of reading and study, of crude and ill-informed pulpit treatment of questions with which many of their hearers have, at least, an intelligent acquaintance and look for help, too often in vain, from their spiritual guides ? Is not this, with the educated classes at any rate, one cause of that increasing disinclination to attend Church services, which is an admitted fact ? Anotber reason Avliy, as niauy think, tlie clergy of the Establishment are in danger of losing touch with the laity is their increasing drift to what has already been alluded to under the convenient term " sacerdotalism " — that is to say, a tendency to magnify the clerical office, and to accentuate and widen the diffei'ence between clergy and laity until they move in almost a different plane of thought and action. I wish to speak with the utmost respect of the " High Church " party as a whole. Everyone must recognise their efforts during the past fifty years to put new life into dry bones, to raise the standard of clerical life and duty, to improve and beautify Divine worship. The Tractarian revival, no less than the Evangelical revival before it, has stamped its mark for good upon the Church and people of this country. But every such movement has its errors and excesses almost in proportion to, perhaps even as a consequence of, its earnestness and its success. And the extreme into which this particular religious movement sometimes di'ifts is for many good reasons abhorrent to English- men. Anything approaching to or savouring of Romanism will always have a cold reception among us ; and nothing is more likely to lessen the influence of the Church of England upon the nation at large than the idea that she wishes to imitate or adopt the doctrines and practices of Rome. That some handle to such an idea is given by the less judicious of her members is beyond dispute. The ostentatious assumption of tlie title of " priest," harmless in itself and even justiflable by the language of the Prayer Book, is unfortunate from the special associations of that word with the clergy of the Church of Rome, and with the ideas embodied in such a term as " priestcraft." More serious than this is the adoption, by some of the more extreme Ritualistic clergy, of terms and practices that were deliberately abandoned at the Reformation, and are contrary to the letter or spirit, or both, of the Prayer Book. The term "Mass," now openly used in some churches; the "reserva- tion " of the consecrated elements at Holy Communion ; the teaching about "fasting Communion" and "non-communicating attendance " — these are samples of innovations which, whether forbidden or not by the language of the Reformed Prayer Book, are contrary to its spirit ; the insistence upon which provokes uneasy suspicions in the minds of steady-going English Church- men. Nothing is here implied as to eitlicr the theological importance of such points or the motives of those Avho insist upon them. All that is meant is that the growing tendency of which such things are a sign, as straws show the direction of the wind, is a danger in the path of the Established Church that may one day be the cause of its political overthroAV. From that overthrow the Church may rise, like Antceus, from the ground, with fresh strength. Some of its friends think so ; some of its enemies say so, making believe that they would chastise it for its good. But sui-ely the true friends of the Church, who see the work that it is doing and yet may do, would prefer to avert the fall. But how is the fall to be averted ? How is the Church of England to become so strong in herself and in the affections of the people as to be unassailable by the forces arrayed against her ? The Church has had rude w^arnings ; how is she to profit by them ? The two remedies that seem to find most favour with Church people are Church defence and Church reform. Church defence has the advantage of episcopal sanction and parochial organisation. Its idea is to organise committees in every diocese, ai'chdeaconry, rural deanery, and parish for the purpose of disseminating information about the history and work of the Church and her claims to the endowments which she possesses. Lectures, literature, and leaflets for distribution are to be the chief modtis operandi. All these are no doubt useful. Lectures on Church history will give much-needed information to those who can and will attend them. Books, if only people will read and remember them, should enlighten many ignoi'ant minds and refute many ignorant statements. Above all, short, simple, and telling leaflets scattered broadcast over the country are (as the Liberation Society well knows) an effective means of propagating opinion. But a literary and historical campaign will not carry the war far. When pro- posals to disestablish and disendow the Church become a question of practical politics, perhaps amid all the excitement of a general election, the cause of Church defence will need other weapons than pens and notebooks. It must be strengthened, by Church work and by Church reform. The work of tlie Church, it goes without saying, may be its passport to the good-will of tens of thousands of citizens who seldom read and to whom liistory does not appeal. And Cliurcli reform on proper lines might allay the misgivings of would-be defenders of the Church, v/lio hesitate to take an active part in schemes for the defence of the Establishment because of abuses which they cannot defend. An earnest layman, asked to join a committee for Church defence, may conceivably ask — " What do you wish to defend ? The Establishment as it is ? Shall we then be committed to approval of inelastic rubrics, preventing the adaptation of worship to changed times and fresh ideas ? To the system of clerical freehold in benefices, hindering the removal of scandals and the exercise of proper discipline over the officers of the Church ? To the abuses of patronage and the virtual barter of the cure of souls ? To a so-called repre- sentative assembly of the Church, which has no power but that of talk, and in which the representation of the parochial clergy is little better than a farce ? To the practical exclusion of the laity from all voice in the choice of their ministers and the conduct of their worship ? " It may, indeed, be said that one indispensable preliminary — some would say, the only possible preliminary — to Church defence is Church reform. And it may be that those are right who hold that the Church has only two alternatives before it in the coming years — disestablishment or reform. The importance of Church reform has always been recognised by the enemies of the Church. They are more active and determined in opposing than the professed friends of the Church are in promoting any measure which comes before Parliament for the remedy of Church abuses. They wish to prevent Church reform for the same reason that they Avish for disendowment — viz. to humble the prestige and diminish the efiiciency of the Church ; so that when the time comes for delivering their final attack they may not find the position strengthened. Despite, however, the opposition of foes and the indifference of friends, the cause of Church I'eform seems to be attracting increased attention among Chui'chmen. Many of them recog- nise, perhaps better than the ofiicial heads of the Church, that they must put their shoulders to the wheel and help themselves. They cannot trust any Minister or aay Government to play the part of Hercules and lift the waggon from the mire. Church reform, accordingly, is to occupy an important place in the delibei*ations of iUo forthcoming Church Congress at Shrews- bury, two meetings being assigned to the discussion of Church patronage and the position of the laity. Another sign of increased attention to this subject is the formation of a " Church Reform League," non-political in character and embracing Churchmen of all schools of thought, inaugurated in November last at the Church House, Westminster. This body has recently issued a pamphlet, in which, after reciting the terms of the first clause of Magna Charta — "that the English Church be free and have its rights whole and its liberties unimpaired " — the principles of reform advocated by the league are set forth under the following heads : — (1) Self- government of the Church. — That, saving the supremacy of the Crown, and subject in legislation to the veto of Parliament, the Church should have freedom for self-government by means of reformed Houses of Convocation, which shall be thoroughly representative. (2) Position of the Laity. — That the laity have tlie principal share in the administration of finance, a real con- trol in the appointing of their pastors, and in matters of administration a concurrent voice with the clergy. (3) Dis- cipline. — That all ministers and Church officers be removable by disciplinary process, benefices being made tenable only daring the adequate performance of the duties. (4) Patronage. — That all transfers by sale of next presentations and advowsons be made illegal, but that where patronage is transferred to a diocesan trust reasonable compensation should be given. (5) Finance. — That a diocesan trust be established in each diocese to receive and administer diocesan and parochial endowments on lines similar to those of the Ecclesiastical Commission. This, it will be admitted, is a comprehensive scheme of reform. Some of its provisions — those especially relating to patronage and finance — would command general approval in principle, though recent experience shows that with regard to patronage there may be difficulty in carrying principles into practice- The question of the position of the laity is in this scheme complicated, and might conceivably he u-reclced, by proposed restriction to communicants ; while that of discipline is taken into somewhat speculative regions by the suggestion of a '' godly discipline " for the laity. No Bishop or Church dignitary as yet lends his name to the League. The need for reform is naturally less apparent to highly-placed and well-paid officials, many of whom remain nnaffected by the fall in tithes and other sources of clerical income, and most of whom may be excused for feeling that in their sphere of Church work things are ordered for the best. Bishops, no doubt, are right to be cautious before committing themselves. They have a difficult part to play, and everyone is ready to find fault with them. But some expression of general sympathy with Church reform would not have committed them, and might strengthen the hands of those who desire to bring it about ; and it would increase public confidence in the Episco- pate by showing that at least they are alive to the fact that some reform is needed. Only one — the youngest but not the least able occupant of the Bench, the Bishop of Rochester — has authorised the League to print a letter from him of general sympathy with its aims and objects. Bishop Talbot has moved too much in other than purely ecclesiastical circles not to be aware of and to sympathise with much that is being said and thought upon this subject, nor, on the other hand, is he likely to be unduly sanguine of immediate results. " You have a long road (he says) to travel and a hard task to accomplish." But, if at the end of the road lies peace and permanence for the Church established in these realms, the labour will have its full reward, nor with such an object can any of it be thrown away. All well-wishers to the Established Church, all who would dislike to see her made the sport of political experiments or the prey of sectarian jealousy, will rejoice to see willingness on the part of the Church to reform herself, and facilities accorded to her for doing it. CHURCH REFORM.— The Position of the Laity, by the Rt, Rev. the Lord Bp. of Liverpool. Price, post free, one penny. CHURCH REFORM.— The Position of the Laity, by J. T. ToMLiNSON, Esq. Price, post free, one penny. To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at the price of 6d per dozen, or 3s per 100. 2nd Thoiisand.l The Eucharist A Lay Sacrament. HE following letter from the Rev. Joseph Foxley, M.A., Rector of Carlton, Worksop, appeared in the Methodist Times of October 10th, 1896. As Mr. Foxley is by no means a " Low Churchman " it is interesting as a sign of reaction from mediaevalism. He writes : — "The Pontiff has decided that no Anglican clergyman can, as such, celebrate a valid Eucharist. But if he had studied the Bible as carefully as he seems to have studied some parts of the Prayer Book he might have found that what he says of the Anglican clergy is true also of the Latin and Oriental clergy, and of all Christian ministers whatsoever. For the Eucharist, in its origin and essence, is not clerical, but lay, not ecclesias- tical, but domestic. Our Lord Himself celebrated as a layman. ' For He of whom these things are said belongeth to another tribe, from which no man gave attendance at the altar.' The Temple was still standing, and all its ritual was in full force till the next day, when the rent veil signified that ' the priest- hood was changed.' To this day every Friday evening, the eve of the Sabbath, and on the eves of the Passover and other great festivals, every pious Jew gathers his family together at a table, takes and blesses and partakes of wine and bread, and distributes to those who are present, as an act of thanksgiving for creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. Our Lord, it seems, found this simple devotion of the household in regular use, expected it to continue (' as oft as ye drink it '), and enriched it with a new and nobler purpose. As such we find it among the first converts at Jerusalem. They continued steadfastly with one accord in the Temple, but broke bread at home. Our translators wrote ' from house to house,' thinking, No. 229.1 perhaps, that the apostles went round to the various houses of their converts for lack of more convenient places, and celebrated the Eucharist for group after group till all had received. But the more natural interpretation is that each head of a household continued to bless, partake, and distribute after his conversion as he had done before, only that to the customary Eucharist of creation he now joined a Eucharist of redemption. The act was priestly, no doubt. But it was the priesthood of laymen, the royal and universal priesthood of the chosen people. Before the Acts of the Apostles closes, the Eucharist has passed from the Christian home to the Christian synagogue, from the hoase to the church, from the family of nature to the household of grace. Of this momentous change we have neither history nor explanation. At Corinth all is in confusion ; apparently every man celebrated for himself ; certainly St. Paul gives no hint in his reproof that there was a certain order of persons without whose intervention the Eucharist would not be valid. At Troas all is orderly, and the Apostle himself celebrates. In the absence of all information it is to be presumed that for the sake of decency and oi'der someone had to preside in the assembly, and that such president for the time being did for the Church what the father or elder brother had done in the house — blessed, received, and distributed the Eucharist. He became a priest because he presided. He did not preside because he was a priest. The act was primarily episcopal, and only secondarily sacerdotal. Its essence lay in the decency and order of the congregation, not in the transformation of the bread and wine. And here our reformers stumbled. Instead of replacing the celebrant beyond the Lord's table, facing the people, according to the primitive custom, and, indeed, the custom of the first thousand years, they thought they had sufficiently uprooted mediiwval superstition by placing him at the north side, a position at once inconvenient and unmeaning, and therefore, as it has turned out, of unstable equilibrium. As late as Tertulllan's time laymen celebrated the Eucharist in the absence of clergy, and there can be no reasonable doubt that a lay Eucharist is just as valid at the present day as a lay baptism. Neither sacrament should be administered by a layman if a clei'pynian can be had. But that is not because the clergyman's ministration possesses some occult spiritual efficacy which the layman's does not, but that all things may be done decently and in order. If Mr. Wesley had taken this line instead of the other, is it not conceivable that his great societies might have been kept closer to the parish churches ? The question would then have been a Church question. He made it, as Newman made it, and as the PontitF makes it, a question of ministry." London : Printed by G.Noi man & Son, Floral Street. Published by the Church Association, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 2d per dozen, or Is per 100. 4th Thousand.] PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD. BREEKS V. WOOLFREY. (T^KsD '^ Q t -j ""0 .HE following extract from The Rock of November Gth, 1896, gives a useful reply to a pert statement so often made that the Judgment in Breeks v. Woolfrey proves the law- fuhiess of the practice of praying for the dead : — *' Breeks v. Woolfrey was the case of a Roman Catholic widow, who naturally embodied her Church's teaching on the tomb- stone of husband in Carisbrooke Churchyard. The Dean of the Arches (Sir H. J. Fust) held that to embody this Roman theory on a tombstone ' would not subject the party to ecclesi- astical censure.' But he was very far from saying that the practice is ' authorised.' On the contrary, he stated that * there was not any express prohibition of prayers for the dead, nor any notion that they implied a necessary belief in the doctrine of purgatory, though, in consequence of professors of the Romish religion taking advantage of the practice as an argument to support their own doctrine of purgatory, it was thought proper that the form of prayer should be altered, and those prayers omitted in the public service of the Church as not No. 230.] being enjoined (which is admitted) or sanctioned hy any warranty of Scripture. The authorities seem to go no further than this — to show that the Church discouraged prayers for the dead, but did not prohibit them ' {Brodrich and Fremantle, p. 359). From the mere lawyer's point of view, no doubt it is true that ' to uphold a doctrine not expressly prohibited is not illegal,' but no doctrine is 'authorised' by its merely ceasing to be ' illegal.' The Church of England has in numberless instances, carefully expunged such prayers from her service books, and has taught in her Homily on Prayer that we are not to ' dream any more that the souls of the dead are anything at all holpen by our prayers. . . . Let us not, therefore, dream either of Purgatory or of prayer for the souls of them that be dead,' thus condemning both alike. It is not the function of a book of devotions to denounce or prohibit false teaching ; a true revision and reform of a Liturgy consists in simply striking out the eliminated and rejected practices, which in this way cease to be ' authorised.' Fornication and lying are not ' illegal,' but they are not on that account to be regarded as ' authorised ' by the laws of England. That ' there is nothing in the Prayer Book on the subject of praying for the dead ' (any more than on the worship of Mary or of Juno) is quite true ; but that very fact demonstrates the ' unauthorised ' character of all such unwarranted beliefs and practices. As to the quotation from the Apocrypha, our Sixth Article points out that the Church ' doth not apply them to establish any doctrine,' and Dr. C. H. H, Wright has shewn that the writer in Maccabees does not even vouch for the contempor&ry prac- tice. (See Wright's Prayers for tJie Dead, published at twopence, by the Church Association.)" London : Printed by G. Xorman & Son, Floral Street. Published by theCnuRcn Association and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 2d per dozen, or Is per 100. 9th Thousand.] 23.2.00. THE COWLEY FATHERS, ALIAS THE SOCIETY OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, COWLEY. The following report of a lecture on the above subject, delivered by Mr. W. Walsh at Brighton, is taken from the English Chwclimmi of November ISth, 1896 :— "The lecturer called attention to the exhortations of the Bible to ' beware of false prophets,' who come in sheep's clothing, and he urged his hearers to treat the Cowley Fatliers as the Bereans treated St. Paul. They would not believe even an Apostle, until, by the exercise of their private judgment, they had ' searched the Scriptures daily whether those things wci'e so.' The ' Cowley Fathers ' were also known as the ' Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley,' and had been in existence many years. At one time they were members of the Secret Society of the Holy Cross, but they are no longer allowed to belong to that Society. The Cowley Fathers teach many things which are without warrant in the wi'itten Word of God: (1) Their dis- tinction between mortal and venial sin is of this kind. Father Maturin teaches in his Confession and Ahsohition that while ' mortal sin ' ' destroys the soul's union with Christ ' and ' alienates the soul from God ' yet there ' are many sins which have not these disastrous consequences ' (p. 16). (2) Their ideas of the Monastic and Conventual Life are without Scriptural warrant. These ' Fathers ' are all bound by perpetual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (see statement of Rev. T. A. Lacey, Tablet, No. 231.] November 7th, 1896, p. 746), and are in reality, not so much Monks, as an Order of Friars. The Church of England turned all Friars and Monks out of the Church at the Reformation, and she nowhere recognises them now. ' Father Benson,' who for many years was the Superior of the Cowley Fathers, wrote an introduc- tion to a book entitled. The Beligious Life Portrayed for the Use of Sisters of Mercy. In this book the Ritualistic Sister is told that ' she is no more her own, but God's ; and she must obey her Superiors for God's sake, yielding herself as wax, to he moulded unresistingly ' (p. 13). After, perhaps, giving a large fortune to the Convent, she is told : ' Accept the food set before you, as though given out of mere charity, and however coarse and uninviting it may be, reflect that you do not deserve even that ' (Ibid., p. 33). (3) The Cowley Fathers' love for Roman ways is seen in many directions. At a meeting of the congrega- tion of St. Alban's, Holborn, held last summer, ' Father Maturin ' said : — ' I am Irish, I love Ireland, and all things Celtic, and, as a consequence, all things Roman ' (Church Times, Jane 26th, 1896, p. 731). Surely, if that be so, he ought to go at once to where he may have ' all things Roman ' with a comfort- able conscience. (4) Their love for Popish penitential practices is vpithout scriptural authority. In their Exposition of the Beatitudes, we are told that ' Guided by the same Holy Spirit which led Jesus up into the wilderness some have exceeded in silence, some in fasting and abstinence, some in the use of sharper sufferings, some in watching, some in blind and ready obedience ..... some have sought the lonely cavern, some have raised the exposed pillar ' (p. 19). Does the last item, asked the lecturei', refer to such practices as those of ' St. Simon Stylites,' who is said to have erected ' a pillar,' and then sat on top of it for twenty years, without once coming down again ? And is not the ' hlind and ready obedience ' of these Cowley Fathers the same as that of the Jesuit Order ? (5) The exaltation of the clergy by the Cowley Fathers is worthy of notice, and is also without warrant in the Bible. In their Exposition of the Beatitudes we read that the priests 'are peacemakers under Him, who carry on this work for Him, applying the precious Blood to the souls of men by the Sacraments for the remission of sins ' (p. 31). This same book also teaches that ' The priest is permitted to share certain sorrows of Christ in which the layman has no part ' (Ibid., p. 32) ; and that priests ' have been made partakers in a chosen way of the priesthood of His only begotten Son ' (Ibid., p. 83). (6) The Cowley Fathers love images. In their Catechism of the Creed and Commandments, published by them at Calcutta, for the nse of converts from idolatry, occurs the following question and answer : — ' Is it right to keep an image or picture of Jesus Christ? Yes; -if we do not worship it' (p. 33). In this Catechism these Fathers print the Ten Com- mandments in the abbreviated form common in Roman Catholic countries, and in order to prevent their converts knowing the truth, they have added to the Word of God, for in it the Second Commandment I'eads thus : — ' Thou shalt not worship Idols ^ (Ibid., p. 33). It will be observed that they omit altogether that portion of the Commandment which forbids the making and bowing down to images, and in order to deceive their deluded followers they are guilty of the forgery of God's Word by adding to it the word ' Idols.' (7) Their objection to controversy is noteworthy, and proves ihat they are afraid of argument. In their book on Parochial Missions, we read : — ' It is a fault, then, in preaching to be too argumentative. Argument provokes rejoinder; it chills the affections ; and, above all, it hides the simple dignity and enfeebles the true power of the ambassador of Jesus Christ and representa- tive of His Church ' (p. 75). It seems that, according to their \iew, men are to believe whatever the preacher says, though he gives little or no argument in proof of his assertions. To give reasons would lessen the ' dignity ' and the ' power ' of the priest, whose motto seems to be ' shut your eyes, and open your mouths, and take what I will give you.' (8) The Cowley Fathers promote the abominable Confessional. In their pamphlet entitled Suggestions for the Coiidvct of a Mission, we read : — ' The clei"gy must be prepared to hear confessions at all 4 times during a Mission, from morning to night. Those persons who have attended the Instruction Classes in Church will not in general need any further instruction in private before making their confession. . . Illiterate people ivill always require the help of the priest to question them ' (p. 7). The clergy are recommended by the Cowley Fathers in this pamphlet to consult the notorious Priest in Absolution for * further advice as to hearing con- fessions ' (p. 8) . This is the indecent book which Lord Redesdale exposed in the House of Lords in 1877, and of which the late Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Tait) declared that it was a disgrace to the community (Times, June 15th, 1877). In 'Father Maturin's ' Confession and Absolution it is taught that confession to a priest ' is the one covenanted and assured way of receiving forgiveness in the Christian Church ' (p. 32) ; and that ' the Absolution which you have received is the flowing forth to you, from the Cross of Jesus, of God's full, free, pardoning grace ' {Ibid., p. 62). Those who go to the^Confessional are urged by him to keep secret all that passes between them and the priest. 'You should be most careful,' writes 'Father Maturin,' ' never to speak to others of your Confessions, even if it were only to tell them what good advice you received ' (Ibid., p. 63). At the close of his book, he gives a set of ' Questions on the Ten Command- ments ' (pp. 69-77), for the help of those who propose going to Confession. Some of those on the Seventh Commandment he (Mr. Walsh) dared not read to a mixed audience. In conclusion, the lecturer urged his hearers to keep their children away from the influence of these Cowley Fathers, and to withdraw them from attendance at Ritualistic churches." To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at tlie price of 3d per dozen or Is 6d per 100. 4tli Thousand.! THE USE OF THE TERM "PRIEST" IN THE PRAYER BOOK. T is sometimes carelessly alleged that the essential meaning of the word " priest " is " one who olTtTS sacrifice." That, however, is contrary to fact. Any good dictionary taken at random will dissipate this fable. The idea of sacrifice was not involved in the etymology of the word, and the later association of " priest " with sacrifice sprang out of the accidental union in the same person of two separate offices. It is matter for regret that the translators of the Old Testa- ment used the word "priest," to render the Hebrew "cohen." " The original meaning of the woi'd ' cohen,' (says Canon R. B. Girdlestone in his excellent Sijnonyms of the Old Tesfamevt, page 383) is lost in obscurity. In 1 Kings iv.-S the Authorised version renders it 'principal officer' (compare the marginal rendering of vei-se 2) ; in 2 Sam. viii.-18, and xx.-2G it has been rendered 'chief ruler' (mai-gin, 'princes'). David's own sons were thus designated, but it seems impossible now to decide what duties were involved under this name. In Job xii.-19 it is rendered ' princes.' The French and other .nations which have translated the word ' Sacriticer,' have made a mistake, because it is not the business of the priest to sacrifice. The pen-pie are the sacrificers, i.e. slayers of the victim ; whilst the priests, accord- ing to the Levitical system, sprinkled the blood of atonement on the altar, and turned the pieces into fragrant smoke ; and this they did as the i-epresentatives of the mercy of God. It need hardly be said that no process answering to this peculiar rite is exercised by the Christian ministry." Dean Plumptre remarks, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible (II. -925), that " the history of language presents few stranger facts than those connected with these woi'ds. Priest, our only equivalent for Iliereus, comes to us from the word which was chosen because it excluded the idea of a sacerdotal character. Bishop has narrowly escaped a like perversion, occurring, as it constantly does, in VVycdiffe's version as the translation of Archiere7ts (e.g., John xviii.-15, Heb. viii.-l.)" Wyclifl'e used " priest " correctly in such passages as Acts xiv.-23, 1 Tim. v. -17 : not so much translating, as transferring the original word. The best excuse that can be offered for the translatoi-s of the Bible is that there was no single English word which would exactly hit off the peculiar function of a sacrificing priest. The people " offered ' ' and "presented " their off ei-ings, so that there was no word left to discriminate exclusively the peculiar function of the professional miuistrant. To have repeated the two words "sacrificing priest" every time that "cohen" recuri-ed might No. 232] have proved wearisome and awkward; but the iinfortunate result tas been to create a confusion in the minds of the Bible- reading Protestants between the Levitical priest and the Christian presbyter. Let the blame, however, be thrown on the right shoulders : for the compilers of the Liturgy used the word "priest" in its strict sense as the abbreviated form of " presbyter " ; whereas the translators of the Old Testament applied it in a restricted meaning which was not proper to the word itself. We propose to illustrate this by a few exti'acts from the writings of the leading translators of the English Bible, and the chief Apologists for the English Prayer Book when both had just been recently issued. Ttndale rightly claims the foremost place, and he candidly admits that priest was not the rightful translation of the Hebrew word cohen. He says : — " There is a word in Latin sacerdos, in Greek hiebeds, in Hebrew Cohan, that is minister, an officer, a sacrificer, or priest ; as Aaron was a priest, and sacrificed for the people, and was a mediator between God and them. And in the English should it have had some other name than priest. But Antichrist hath deceived us with unknown and strange terms, to bring us into confusion and superstitious blindness. Of that manner is Christ a priest for ever, and all we priests through him, and need no more of any such priest on earth, to be a mean for us unto God. For Christ hath brought us into the inner temple, within the veil or forehang-ing, and unto the mercy-stool of God, and hath coupled us unto God ; where we offer, every man for himself, the desires and petitions of his heart, and sacrifice and kill the lusts and appetites of his flesh, with prayer, fastina", and all manner godly living. Another word is there in Greek, called presbyter, in Latin senior, in English an Elder, and is nothing but an officer to teach, and not to be a mediator between God and us." (Doctrinal Treatises, page 25o.) Fdlke, in his Defence of the English Translations of the Bible (page 109, cf. pp. 242, 248), replied to his Romish adversary : — • " You corruptly translate sacerdos and presbyter always as though they were all one, a priest, as though the Holy Ghost had made that distinction in vain, or that there were no differ- ence between the priesthood of the New Testament and the Old. The name of the priest, according to the original derivation from presbyter, we do not refuse ; but according to the common acception for a sacrificer, we cannot take it, when it is spoken of the ministry of the New Testament. And although many of the ancient Fathers have abusively confounded the terms of sacerdos and presbyter, yet that is no warrant for us to translate the Scripture, and to confound that which we see manifestly the Spirit of God hath distinguished . . . Neither is presbyter by ecclesiastical use so appropriated to signify a priest, that you •would always translate it so in tlie Old Testament, wliere your Vulp^ar translator useth it for a name of office and government, and not for priests at any time." Indeed this was freely admitted by the other side. It is not generally known that Harding the Jesuit published a partial reply to Jewel's celebrated "Apology" at Louvain, in 1567, cum privilegw. There is a copy of this rare work in the British Museum bearing the lengthy title — A rejoinder to M. Jewel's replie against the sacrifice of the Mass. In which the doctrine of the Answere to the xvii Article of the Challenge is defended, and further proved, and all that this repbj containeth against the sacrifice is clearly confuted and disproved by Thomas Harding, Doctor of divinitie. On page 13 of this work Harding says : — " I am constrained by the Replie to make a distinction between these two terms sacerdos and presbyter by which the persons of the highest order in the Church be called, and in our English tongue there want two distinct terms correspondent with them, the name of priest serving to both, as common use hath received; I will for a few leaves, that my talk may be more distinct and better perceived, use the term sacrificer for the Latin sacerdos, and the term priest for the word presbyter. ^^ Archbishop Whitgift in defending the Prayer Book against Cartwright, said : — " The name of priest need not be so odious unto you as you would seem to make it. I suppose it cometh of this word •presbyter, not of sacerdos ; and then the matter is not great . . The learned and best of our English v/riters, such I mean as write in these our days, translate this word presbyter .so : and the very woi'd itself, as it is used in our English tongue, sound erli the word presbyter. As heretofore use hath made it to be taken for a sacriticer, so will use now alter that signification, and make it to be taken for a minister of the Gospel. But it is mere vanity to contend for the name when we agree of the thing : the name may be used, and not used, without any great offence." (Works, lli..-SbO-i. Compare II.-31I.) HooiiKR supported the same contention by urging — " As for the people when they hear the name it draweth no more their minds to any cogitation of .sacrifice, that the name of a Senator or Alderman causeth them to think upon old age or to imagine that everyone so termed must needs be ancient because years were respected in the first nomination of both. Wherefore to pass by the name, let them use what dialect they will, whether we call it a Priesthood, a Presbytership. or a Ministry it skilleth not; although in truth the word presbyter doth seem more fit, and in propriety of speech more agreeable than pj'iest with the drift of the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ . . . The Holy Ghost throughout the body of the New Testa- ment making so much mention of them doth not anywhere call them priests. The prophet Esay, I grant, doth ; but in such sort as tbe ancient Fatliei's, by Avay of analogy." (Eccl. Polity, ed. Keble, 11.-471.) BuLLiNGFCR, in his " Decades," sanctioned by convocatiou, explains this "analogy." " It appeareth that the ministers of the New Testament, for a certain likeness which they have with ministers of the Old Testament, of ecclesiastical writers are called priests ; for as they did the service in the tabernacle, so these also, after their manner and fashion, minister to the Church of God. For otherwise the Latin word (sacerdos) is derived of holy things, and signifieth a minister of holy things; a man, I say, dedicated and consecrated unto God to do holy things. And holy things are not only sacrifices, but what things soever come under the name of religion ; from which we do not exclude the laws themselves and holy doctrine. In the Old Testament we read that David's sons were called priests, not that they were ministers of holy things (for it was not lawful for them, which came of the tribe of Judah, to serve the tabernacle, but only to the Levites) ; but because they, living under the goveiniment and discipline of priests, did learn good sciences and holy divinity." {Fifth Decad., Sermon III.) Even Mr. Scudamore, the learned Ritualist, admits that — " It is evident, both from its derivation and history, that the name of priest was not originally associated with the idea of sacrifice. In strictness it is not applicable to the sacrificing officers of the Jewish or heathen temples; but our language was destitute of a word properly desci'iptive of their function, and we naturally extended to them the name of office assigned to those who discharge an analogous duty in the Church of Christ. "We called them presbyters or priests, and thenceforth, attaching the idea of sacrifice to the word, lost sight of its oi'iginal Christian meaning." (Notitia Eucharistica, page 186.) Nevertheless we must always bear in mind, to quote the words of Dr. Blakeney,that"the word priest denotes simply a presbyter, and it is necessary to prefix the word sacrificing to it in the designation of one who bears the office in a Romish sense. Our Church does this, when she speaks in the Homily of a " sacri- ficing priest." Let us be careful to do likewise. At the last revision of the Prayer Book, the clergy subscribed in four separate bodies, representing the two houses of both the Convocations. Each of these described the Ordinal now in use as "the form and manner of ordaining and consecrating bishops, presbyters, and deacons." The book thus subscribed is now part of the Act of Uniformity, and thus furnishes the most authoritative declaration possible of the meaning of the Church of England. Loudon: Printed by G.Norman & Son, Floral Street. Published by the Church AssociAriON, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 3d per dozen, or Is id per 100. 4tli Thousand.] OLD ST. PAUL'6 CATHEDRAL AND THE BIBLE, g"HE sergeant-at-arms arrived at Cambridge to make search for English New Testaments. " God be praised," says Foxe, '' tlie books were conveyed away from the thirty suspected rooms." He found, therefoie, no books, but carried off to London Dr. JJarnes, Avho had greatly otibnded the Cardinal (Wolsey) by speaking against his golden shoes and scarlet gloves. He was made to bear a faggot at St. Paul's Cross, and, for the time, was so far compelled, by fear and bad advisers, as to abjure what he had said, rather than burnj though he was burnt, sixteen years afterwards. Shall we try and fancy St. Paul's and its neighbourhood at the era of the Reformation ? We must shut our eyes, and bid the present mighty dome vanish away. There is a Gothic cathedral in its place, whose bold and elegant spire seems to pierce the sky. It is worthily called "a famous building," and ai'ose in the middle of the twelfth century, over the ruins of a still older church, which had been bui-nt in the first year of King Stephen, at a time when boys stole apples out of the orchards in Paternoster Row and Ivy Lane. This original church had been built by Ethelbert, in GlC, again on the ruins of a temple raised to Diana, in the time of the Romans, whose funeral urns have been found in the churchyard; so that we stem scarcely able to go back to the time when there was not a temple raised for worship, pagan or Christian, on this spot. The St. Paul's of the Reformation looked down, as now, from the top of Ludgate Hill, upon the smaller churches, and on the rich convents within the City's bounds — on St. Bartholomew's, in Smithfield • on the Grey Friars, in Newgate Street ; on the Black Friars, the White Friars, the Austin Friars, and the Crutched Friars, from whose monasteries issued the men in sad-coloured robes, who might be seen in every street mingling No. 233.] with the gayer multitude. People were accustomed, in those days to meet in St. Paul's Cathedral to transact their business. The serjeant-at-law, iu his scarlet robe, white furred hood and coif on his head, gave his advices to his clients there. Each Serjeant had his pillar in St. Paul's, and made his notes upon his knee ; and the old church was often the scene of most riotous conflict. Thus it also was when Bishop Courtenay had cited WicklifFe to defend himself in this cathedral, which was densely crowded by the people. Lord Percy and John of Gaunt could scarcely secure an avenue of entrance for the reformer : these were his avowed friends, and Courtenay began to quarrel with them. Wickliffe was a silent spectator, John of Gaunt claiming for him a seat, Courtenay saying he should not sit there — "each party so excelling," says the quaint old John Foxe, " in bawling and railing, threatening and menacing, that, without doing anything, the council was broken up before nine of the clock." We must show you another scene in St. Paul's. On Sunday, February 11th, 1526, there was to be seen Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, in the pulpit, set to preach against Luther and Dr. Barnes ; and there sat Wolsey, in all his glory, on a scaffold at the top of the stairs, among abbots and priors, and mitred bishops, in gowns of satin and damask, and Wolsey in his robes of purple, with his golden shoes and scarlet gloves — all beneath a canopy of cloth of gold. Before the pulpit, within the rails, stood great baskets full of books — the books gathered up from the search in London, Oxford, and Cambridge — ready to be burnt in the great fire before the crucifix at the north gate of St. Paul's. After the sermon, the heretics were to go three times round the blazing fire, with a faggot on their backs, and were to cast in the books. Thus Testament after Testament was consumed, angels and men looking on at the deed. Burnet, the historian, says : — " This burning had a hateful appearance in it ; and the people thence concluded that their Church and those books taught different things, whereby their desire of reading the New Testament was increased." This was a day to which Wolsey had looked forward for three years. The preacher, Fisher, announced to the people how many days of pardon and indulgence were accorded to all those who were present at that sermon, and afterwards the cardinal and all the bishops went home to dinner. On May 4th, 1530, another scene of burning Bibles also took place under Wolsey's eye. He had begun to bum Luther's books, at Paul's Cross, in 1521. Three burnings, therefore, were witnessed on this spot, which has been called " the Thermopylae of the Reformation." (7??/ permission of the Rev. C. Bullock, D.D.) London : Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street. Published by the Church Association, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 2d per dozen, or Is per 100. 5th Thousand.] 4.7.1901. '^^''r'a-'S •'.'i^s^rr' ii'X •/; '.'r'l/ ' STii- i Si ' ^m^ V- //.?.-y.Tyra^ £^^ "THE BIBLE AND THE CHURCH," BY THE VEN. ARCHDEACON TAYLOR, D.D. HE question for consideration is the h'ue relation of the Bible to the Church, and. the Church to the Bible. By the Bible, we understand "God's Word written"; and by the Church, the visible body of professing Christians. The subject lies at the root of most of the controversies at the present day. The subject is not new. At the Reformation, the first question was "The Rule of Faith : what is it r " and the judge of the meaning of that rule — " Is it the Church, or the individual conscience ? " The Church of Rome maintains that we get the Bible from her; that she alone can tell us its "canon," guarantee its connect translation, and give us the certain interpretation. The Ritualists are not far behind ; their claims are sub- stantially the same. For example, in The Manual of the Catholic Religion, by Rev. V. Staley (under the auspices of Canon Carter), we are told that " the Bible is the Child of the Church," for— " 1. The Church wrote the inspired books which form the Bible." (Even the Romanists do not go so far as this.) " 2. The Church separated the inspired books from other writings ; in other words, determined the canon. "3. The Church alone can rightly interpret the Bible." The Jewish Church, it is said, wrote the Old Testament, and the Christian Church wrote the New Testament; This is simply and absolutely untrue. The Church never wrote a word of either the one or the other. The books of the Old Testament Avere written by holy men of God, who were inspired by the Holy Ghost to do so, and they gave them to the Church of their age for their permanent instruction and for No. 234.] preservation. To them were committed the Oracles of God. But the prophets were not the Church, nor did the Church write any one of the Oracles. The Church could not do so. The Church was a company of men and women, and it is beyond the power of any company to write a book. The individual prophets, who each wrote the separate books, did so without any authorisation of the Church, but delivered the Message, whether spoken or written, by the expi'ess command of God. So far from the Church writing the books, its membei^s mocked, mis- used, persecuted, and killed the prophets whom God sent to them. The Bible is " God's Word written," but in many cases it was first spoken, and then it, or the substance of it, was written, sometimes by the express command of God, sometimes by the secret inspiration of the Spirit. The Pentateuch was written by Moses. Again and again we read, "God spake to Moses." "Write thou these words; for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee." — Exod. xxvii.-l, vide also Deut. xxvii.-3 ; xxxi. -19-24 ; Numb. xxxiii.-2. As for the Psalms, David says : " The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was on my tongue." Our Lord testifies the same — " How, then, doth David in spirit, or by the Spirit, call Him Lord?" &c. Nearly all the prophetic writings of the Old Testament begin with this formula: "The word of the Lord came to Isaiah," Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, &o. And to some we find an express command to "write," though such was by no means always necessary. The secret inspiration was quite sufficient. The New Testament was not written by the Church, but by inspired apostles and prophets to the Churches, and for the Churches. For it is ridiculous to speak of "The Church," as if there was only one visible Church in the Apostolic age. We read of the Churches of Galatia, Asia, and Judea ; of Philippi, Colosse, Rome, and Corinth. The visible Christian Church never wrote a line of it. The apostles and proiahets of the new dispensation were the organs, as it were, of the new revelation, and the subjects of a supernatural inspiration ; and, under the influence of the latter, they wrote the former — -vide Eph. iii.-3-5, "How that by revelation He made known to me the mystery, which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit." And again he says, " God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit .... which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual." — 1 Cor. ii.-10-13. It is absurd, therefore, to say that the Bible is the Child of the Church. If for the woi'd "Bible" we used the expression " the AVord of God," its falsehood woiiki be manifest. The " Church " proper, the faithful, are built on Christ by faith. But "Faith Cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." — Rom. X.-17. Preaching, hearing, believing is the order of experience, so tliat the Church is rather the child of the Word than the Word the child of the Church. Thus Paul, " In Christ Jesus 1 have begotten you through the Gospel" (1 Peter iv.-lo). Thus James, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth " (Jas. i.-lS). Thus Peter, " Born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever " (1 Peter i.-23). As Thomas Rogers, the Reformer, who wrote the first commentary on the Thirty-nine Articles, says : " The Word is before the Church both for time and for authority. For time, because God's Word is the seed; the faithful are the corn and the children. . . . For authority, also, because the voice of the Church is the voice of man, who hath erred and may err from the truth ; but the voice of the Word is God's voice, who cannot deceive nor be deceived." Nor is it accurate to say, as many do, that the Church Avas before the Bible. Such a statement is misleading ; for it suggests that the Church is independent of, and superior to, the Bible, whereas two-thirds, at least, of the Bible — viz., the Old Testament — was written four hundred yeai'S before the Christian Church was in existence. And as for the New Testa- ment, it was written by the same inspired men who laid the foundations of the Church, and was written — all but St. John's writings— within thirty years from the day of Pentecost, when the Church was first formally set up on the foundation of faith in Christ crucified, risen, and exalted. For that short period only was the early infant community without the written Word of the New Testament, but they had the personal teaching of inspired apostles and prophets. And, even then, heresies and schisms divided the Church — vide Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, and the Epistles of Peter, James, and Jude. Luke wrote " in order that the early converts might know the certainty of the things wherein they had been instructed"; and Peter that, " after his decease, his followers might have his teaching always in remembrance." Later on, whilst John still lived. Antichrists abounded and false teachers ; the Churches of Asia were corrupt, and the mystei-y of iniquity, which had begun thirty years before, had grown apace. As to the canon of Holy Scripture — i.e. the Books which are to be regarded as inspired, it does not depend in anywise on any decision of the Church ; nor do we receive it on the authority of any Council, but on the historic fact that the Books of the New Testament are quoted by an unbroken succession of Clii'istian writers going back from the present day to the very era when the Books were wi'itten. Every one of the Books of the New Testament is quoted l)y the writers of the third and second centuries, and several of them even in the latter half of the first — Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Theophilus, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Clement of Rome, the last a contempo- rary of St. Paul. We have the same evidence that the Council of Carthage had in a.d. 397 — and are quite as competent as they were, perhaps, even more so, to pronounce upon the canon of Holy Scripture. The Council of Carthage gave no authority whatever to the Scriptures, nor are we indebted to it nor to any Church under heaven for our knowledge of the canon. We get the canon as we get any other historical fact — b}- exami- nation of historical evidence. As to the Church alone being able rightly to interpret the Bible, I would simply ask — What Church ? Is it the Church of England or the Church of Rome ? For they interpret Matt. xvi.-18, 19, "Thou art Peter," and xxvi.-26-28, "This is My body," in directly opposite senses. The Church of Rome makes the one teach the Papal Supremacy, the Church of England denies it. The Church of Rome makes the other teach " Tran- substantiation," the Church of England rejects it. Who is to decide between the teaching of these two Churches ? If it be said we are to hold with the Church of England, I ask further — Is it the Church of England now, or as she taught before the Reformation '? These are awkward questions. The Rev. R. L. Ottley, Principal of Pusey House, in his pamphlet The Bible in the CJmrch, tells us that Christ is represented in the world by a Church or Society Avhich existed long before there was a Christian Bible, and it is the visible guardian of the revelation made by Christ. The object of this statement seems to be the same set forth more plainly in "The Catholic Religion" — viz. that the Church is prior in time, and superior in authority, to the New Testament. Substitute for the expression " New Testament " the " Word of God," spoken by the apostles, and the fallacy is perceived. The unwritten Word was before the Church, as some time necessarily elapsed before it could be written ; but before the apostles passed away they wrote the Word and left it for the instruction and guidance of the Church. As to the Church being the representative of Christ, no doubt it ought so to be, and its true members in some measure are ; but we here find the usual confusion between the true Church and the professed. These are by no means identical. Ritualists and Romanists seem always to lose sight of the weighty distinction expressed by Hooker : " For lack of diligent observing the difference, first between the Church of God mystical and visible, then between the visible sound and corrupt, sometimes more, sometimes less, the oversights are neither few nor light that have been committed." Nothing can be more fatal than confusion of this kind, and yet nothing is more common than to find Romanists and others coolly taking the promises and privileges that belong exclusively to the Church mystical, the true and only Bride of Christ, and apply them to a mere branch of the visible Church, vv^hich is at best only a mixed body of good and bad : to which, as such, no promises belong at all; and which is too often a mixed multitude of mere professors, steeped in ignorance and sin, superstition and idolatry. The AVord of God written is a thousandfold better representation of Christ than any Church, however pure. It is the absolutely pure and perfect I'epresentation of Jesus, the unspotted mirror of Divine truth and goodness. 2. The Church and the Bible do not "co-exist in the world as two authorities mutually corroborative of each other, and, so far as individual interpretation of each is concei'ned, mutually corrective of each other." The Bible may, and does, where its lessons are obeyed, correct the Church, but the Church cannot correct the Bible ; and it is, in my mind, very improper language, if not blasphemy, to make such an assertion. Thei'e is a profound difference between the two — the Bible is absolutely perfect ; the Church, mixed, impei-fect, erring, and fallible. 3. Mr. Ottley says the Church is necessary, in order, first, to impart to her children "the right point of view," and then impress on them the importance of the private study of Scripture. But are we sure that the Church always gives us " the right point of view " ? In the fourth and fifth centuries the point of view varied very much, not only with bishops, priests and churches, but even with Councils; sometimes Arian, sometimes orthodox — now Apollinarian, and again Nestorian, not long after Eutychian. Or, to come lower down, what was "the point of vieAv " at the Council of Constance (a.d. 1414), which declared that Councils Avei'e above Popes, and straight- way deposed three, and elected another ? Or of the Vatican Council in 1870, which declared the personal Infallibility of the Pope under certain circumstances, his superiority to Councils, and his judgments ex cathedra, irreformable ? One more case. What was "the point of view " of the Church of England in the reign of Henry VIII. , and in that of Edward VI., or in that of Mary, and then of Elizabeth Y What was "the point of view" of Cranmer and Ridley, who suffered for denying Transubstantiation, the Real Presence, and the Mass, and that of many clergy of the Church now ? What a strange and uncertain thing is this "point of view," so necessary, according to the Principal of Pusey House, in order to enable us to understand the Bible arig-ht ! 4. He quotes Hooker, that " the autliority of laau is, if we mark it, the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of Scripture. The Scripture could not teach us the things that are of God, unless vi'e did credit men who have taught us that the words of Scripture do signify these things." This seems to put the authority of man, i.e. of the Church, before the Scripture, but another quotation from Hooker will be useful to the laght apprehension of the subject and the relation of one to the other. He says : — " Scripture indeed teacheth us things above Nature, things which our I'eason by itself could not reach unto. Yet these things also we believe, knowing by reason that the Scripture is the Word of God." Here the riglit note is struck. "We do not receive the Scripture merely, or chiefly, on the authority of the Church, but on the authority of reason. "Reason," says Bishop Butler, "is the only faculty we have wherewith to judge of the evidence or meaning of revelation." This is a noble principle, a foundation truth. It ought to be Avritten large, in letters of gold, and, better still, on the tablets of the memoiy and in the convictions of the intellect. We believe the Bible to be the Word of God, because we have good reason so to do. The historical evidence of its miracles, especially of the resurrection of Christ, the great foundation fact on which the Gospel rests ; the fulfilment of its prophecies, of whicli reason can judge ; the scheme of the Gospel itself, which carries its own evidence as the power of God to salvation, and bearing the stamp of its Divine wisdom, in the characters of holiness, wisdom, truth, goodness, and power, which are emblazoned on its every page; its marvellous effects on individuals and on nations wliere its pi^inciples are embraced and obeyed — all these declare the Bible self- evidential; and absolutely independent of all Church, or human autliority. It proclaims its Divine original as do the works of Creation. No doubt, as Hooker says, " the first ouhvard motive leading men so to esteem of the Scriptures is the authority of God's Church. . . . Afterwards, the more "sve bestow our labour in reading or hearing the mysteries thereof, the more we find that the thing itself doth answer our received opinion concerning it, so that the former inducement, prevailing somcAvhat with us before, dotli now much more prevail, when the very thing hath ministered further reason. . . . The ancieiit fathers were often constrained to maintain the authority of the Books by arguments, such as unbelievers themselves must needs think reasonable. . . . Wherefore, if I believe the Gospel, yet is reason of singular use, for that it confirmeth me in these my beliefs the more ; if I do not as yet believe, nevertheless, to bring me into the number of believers, except reason did somewhat helj) and were an instru- ment which God doth use unto such purposes, what should it boot to dispute with godless persons for their conversion ? " It might be said with more truth that the authority of our parents is the first outward motive which induces us to believe the Bible to be the Word of God, but afterwards the evidence of its truth. The first outward inducement is one thing, the ultimate reason is another. So of interpretation. Hooker ui'ges the necessity of reason thus: "Between true and false constructions, the difference reason must shew. Can Christian men perform that which Peter requireth at their hands ? Is it possible that they should both believe and be able, without the use of reason, to ' render a reason of their belief ' ? A reason sound and sufficient to answer them that demand it, be they of the same faith with us or enemies thereto ? " 5. Mr. Ottley admits that Scripture is "the ultimate criterion of the Chui'ch's teaching " on matters of faith ; but he pleads hard for the guidance of the Church and its tradition of doctrine. We do not, as he implies, " reject, in the search after truth, the aid of the Church of Christ," but we know that all visible churches are liable to err, and have erred, even in things pertaining to God, and therefore we requii'e proof to be supplied from the Scripture that her teaching is according thereto. We do not feel "encouraged to put ourselves under the guidance of the Church so far as it extends," but only as far as it is in accordance with the Word of God. We admit that we should be " careful not to exaggerate the diversities of teaching which l^revail Avithin particular portions of the Church," but we cannot consent to class amongst " minor points of faith and practice," as he does, or seems to, " the Invocation of Saints, Transubstan- tiation, and the temporal claims of the Papacy " (p. 38). But to draw to a conclusion. The Church of England, in Articles XIX., XX., and XXL, places the due relation of the Bible and the Church plainly before her membei's : — "The .visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached and the Sacraments be duly administered, according to Christ's ordin- ance." This gives us a definition of what the visible Church, or any branch of it, ought to be, certainly not what it always is de facto. For the Article proceeds : — " As the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith." That is, in effect, the whole visible Christian Church, for all was included under this fourfold patriarchate division. Again : — " The Church hath power to decree rites and cere- monies, and authority in matters of faith." Yes ; authority to declare her judgment thereon, yet not an absolute nor an infallible authority. Her authority is limited. For she " may not ordain anything contrary to Grod's Wox'd written j " nor make the Scripture contradict itself, nor, beside the same, require anything to be believed as an article of faith. Her office is to bear witness to the Holy Scripture, i.e. to the fact that such and such books have ever been regarded by her as Divine or sacred from the beginning; and she is carefully to preserve the same and keep them from corruption, and spread abroad their sacred truths. But all this gives her no authority over it, or its interpretation, or its readers. The visible Church ought to be the pillar and ground of the truth, and so far as it is pure and true it is so ; but, alas ! it is not always so. It has too often been the pillar of false doctrines, the fountain and foundation of error, the buttress of superstition and idolatry. And to pass from particular Chui'ches to General Councils, composed of, it may be, hundreds of bishops from many churches. " When they be gathered together, forasmuch as they be an assembly of men whereof all be not governed by the Word and Spirit of God, they may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining to God. Wherefore things ordained by them have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared ' with truth ' that they are taken from the Word of God." Six hundred bishops at the Vatican Council in 1870 declared the Pope infallible. Did that make him so ? Lastly, we admit that the Church has a commission and an authority to teach ; but she is also bound to prove to the satisfaction of all reasonable men that her teaching is in strict accordance with the infallible Word of God. Her commission does not go beyond that given to the apostles : " Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you " — viz. those things we have recorded by the pen of inspiration in the New Testament, and nowhere else. She may not go beyond the Word of the Lord, less or more. We do not admit the co-equal claim of so-called Apostolic or Ecclesiastical traditions. " The Bible, and the Bible only, is " — or, perhaps more accurately, contains — "the Religion of Protestants." To be obtaineil at tlie Office of the Churoh Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, Loncloi), at the price of 5rf per doz., or 3s jier 100. 2nd Thousand.] THE ARCHBISHOPS' REPLY TO THE POPE'S BULL WHAT IS TO BE DONE? fUR cause lias been betrayed by our rulers; our rights and liberties have been one after another taken away ; the blessings of the lleformation have been filched from us; the Word of God has been despised and man's authoi'ity put in its place ; " another Gospel " instead of the pure Gospel of Christ has been preached from our pulpits ; our faithful pastors and witnesses have been ill-treated and suppressed ; altars decked with candles, crosses and crucifixes, have been set up in our churches ; priests paid with Protestant money have been dressing themselves in Komish vest- ments and performing all sorts of superstitious antics while offering "the Sacrifice of the Mass ;" our children, wives and daughters have been coaxed, lured, bribed, and even compelled to attend private confession and to tell all their secrets into the ears of designing vicars and curates ; even the " Protestant religion established by law," which our Queen herself is pledged by oath to defend, has been abused to bring back the Popery that tortured and burned our forefathers, taxed and robbed the Nation, took away rightful freedom, and quenched the clear light of Holy Scripture : and loyal English Churchmen have looked on for years at this amazing spectacle and asked again and again, " What is to be done ? " We have hoped against hope that the bishops would take the matter in hand and vigorously rid the Church of this reproach. We knew that they had promised to the people and to God that they would, " with all faithful diligence, banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's Word, and privately No. 235.] and openly call upon and encourage others to the same;'' and we thonglit that at length the conscience of these bishops might begin to move them to do what they had so solemnly undertaken. But instead of that, we have seen them (with a few noble exceptions) encom'aging Romanism, promoting law-breakers, giving the cold shoulder to true ministers, treating the respectful remonstrances of pious laymen with insolence or contempt, and busily forging the old fetters for this great and free people. And now all hope that the bishops as a body will do their duty has been completely taken away. The two Archbishops, of Canterbury and York, have put foi^th a letter professing to "answer" the Bull of the Pope about English Orders. In this letter the Archbishops claim for the clergy of our Church the title and office of sacrificing priests, although the principal work of the English Reformation was to substitute teaching ministers for sacrificing priests ; although every mention of offering sacrifices to God was taken out from the Ordination Services ; although these " sacrifices of Masses " for the living and the dead are called in our Article " blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits," and although all worship addressed to the sacramental Bread or Wine is said to be " Idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians." In this letter they claim for our clergy the right to hear confessions and to forgive sin, although they know very well that private confession has produced the most abominable immorality, has made the people the abject slaves of the priests, and put a fellow sinner between the seeking soul and Christ. In this letter they have foi'saken the very ground upon which our Reformers stood, they have given up the grand appeal to God's Word as the end of all strife, and we see them wallowing in what our Homily calls " the stinking puddles of men's traditions." In this letter they consent to the Romish doctrine of seven sacraments instead of holding fast by our docti'ine of " two only, that is to say Baptism and the Supper of the Lord." In this letter tliey call the Pope "our brotlier," "our veueraLle brother," "our most venerable brother," and they call the Roman system " a sister-church of Christ " ; although in our homily for Whitsuntide, it is said " that the Popes of Rome are worthily accounted among the number of false Christs and false Prophets which deceived the world for a long while," and a prayer is offered that "the comfortable Gospel " of the Son of God may be " truly preached, truly received, and truly followed in all places, to the beating down of sin, death, the pope, the devil, and all the kingdom of antichrist." The question is asked, " Where is the Spirit of Truth ? " and the answer given is, " If it be possible to be there where the true Church is not, then is it at Rome." And, our Articles further declare that the Church of Rome " has erred not only in living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.^' Much more might be extracted from the Archbishops' letter to show that the grand old banner of English Protestantism has been hauled down ; that the battlements of truth and righteousnesss which were so painfully raised by our forefathers amid sorrow and suffering, tears and torture, blood and fire, have been disgracefully deserted; and that our holy cause has been miserably betrayed by the very men who are pledged and paid to defend it. But at least we have learned one important lesson from this unfaithful letter. We have found out that we need expect nothing from our present Archbishops : they are only the puppets of the Romanizing sect, they are no longer true pastors of the whole Church of England. Consequently we are in a better position to face and answer the question, " What is to be done ?" Let us inform all whom it may concern that either the present methods must be speedily changed, idolatries and corruptions must be purged away, false teachers must be restrained, the Word of God must be upheld. Archbishops and Bishops must either do their duty or make way for othei's who will; or else Protestant Churchmen will be reluctantly compelled to take a different view of the question of disestablishment and disendowment of a Church which will have ceased to represent them. The crisis is grave, the responsibility is great. Before God we dai-e not continue to trifle with idolatry and false- hood. Our duty to our country forbids us to support with public money the men who are bringing back the old degrading bondage. The simple claims of truth and honesty require us to see that the Reformed Church be not used to undo the work of the Reformation. The powerful plea of parental love urges us to save our children from the galling tyranny of corrupt superstition and the withering blight of dreary unbelief. When we have put our hand to the plough we must not look back ; we must pursue our course with the glorious courage of our martyrs, with the dogged determination of our puritan forefathers. Surely the time for hesitation, for vain regrets, for false hopes in false leaders, for guilty compliance with error has passed : the time for action has come. "From the least of them, even unto the greatest of them, every one is given to covetousness ; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly saying, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace. . . Thus, saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see and ask for the old paths, where is the good way and walk therein and ye shall find rest for your souls." Heney Miller, Secretary. Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London. April, 1897. All commmiicatioiis should be addressed to the Secretary. Subscriptions and Donations are earnestly appealed for. London : Printed by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street. Published by the Church Association, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 3d per dozfn, or Is M. ppr 100. 3rd Thousand.] Some Criticisms by tiie Council of ttie Cfiurcfi Association on THE " ANSWER " TO POPE LEO MADE BY ARCHBISHOPS MACLAGAN AND TEMPLE. THE Bull of Pope Leo, denying the validity of the orders of tlie English clergy, hardly necessitated any official reply. It contained merely the opinion of the bishop of Rome, after consultation with the leading lights of his own communion, who had been privately invited by Viscount Halifax and other English notabilities to give his opinion on their case. They are clearly the persons who ought to " make reply. ^' The judgment of the bishop of Rome was that the English Ordinal neither professed, nor was intended, to create the persons ordained under it '^ sacrificing priests " : that it only professed, and was intended, to make them (non-sacrificing) presbyters. That judgment was, so far at least, perfectly sound, and its force is in no way weakened by the " answer " of the two English Archbishops. They address themselves to two points only, viz. What was the practice of the Roman Church at the Reformation, and what was (and is) the " intention " of the Church of England as shewn in her Ordinal ? The former of these two questions scarcely interests any- body who is not a servile imitator of Rome. What can it matter to us what the practice of Rome was ? It was her "practice" to burn those who did not take part in her idolatries, or publicly profess her heresies : and that " practice " was so utterly bad that no man is allowed now to minister in the Church of England without first declaring that the No. 236.] " Church of Eome hath erred in matters of faith." If her faith be unsound, what matters her '^ practice " : and it certainly looks a little odd, to say the least, that two of the bishops of a Church, which in its Homilies calls the Pope "Antichrist," and in its Canons of 1606 " argued him plainly to be the Man of Sin mentioned by the apostle " [Cardwell's 8ynodalia, p. 379], should be desirous of wooing him as their " venerable brother " to recognise their own claims to wield powers like his ! However, if the point be worth arguing, this " Answer " seems both feeble and inadequate as regards the practice of the Marian bishops in ignoring Anglican ordinations. For it is admitted that Cardinal Pole held " the accustomed form " (in the sense of his Church) to be nothing less than that of the decree of Eugenius IV., which made 'Hhe delivery of the instruments " {i.e. a paten with wafers and a cup with wine in it) to constitute the essential " matter" of the " sacrament of Orders." That being the case, every Presbyter ordained under the Edwardian Ordinal of 1552 had, on Pole's shewing, to be ordained afresh. It is argued that no records remain of the deprivation of any- body for nullity of orders. But that may be explained by many considerations. First, a large proportion of the Edwardian clergy had fled to the continent to save their lives. Next, by far the greater number of those who were deprived by the Royal Commissioners and the " Ordinaries" had been deprived before Pole's legatine powers came into full play. Moreover, the registers are so miserably defective that their silence goes for nothing as evidence. And the pretext of " marriage " served as a much more tangible ground for deprivation than the details of a twice altered service which might have been difficult to substantiate. Hence many who would have been certainly deprived on other grounds, as, for example, for " heresy," were dealt with on this single plea in preference to any other ; a vicar's wife being a tangible corpus delicti which could be readily produced in court and vouched for by scores of witnesses. Lastly, it must be remembered that there was then a great dearth of clergy, and so long as the actual incumbents conformed^ Pole inight well occupy himself with matters more urgent of which his hands were then very full. Negative evidence, to be of value, must be exhaustive, whereas in this case it is extremely scanty. On the other hand, we have the positive facts that Edwardian priests were, in fact, re-ordained, and that certain Edwardian bishops were degraded and otherwise dealt with as being mere priests and not bishops at all. All that the two Archbishops are able to claim (p. 3) is that Pole's " practice scarcely agreed with his opinion." That, of course, may be very bad for Po)e, but it cannot weaken the eS'ect of his officially published Legatine Con- stitution, which is in evidence, while his personal oversights and neglects are matters of conjecture, and concern only his own conscience. But the really important portion of the " Answer*' is that which deals with the "intention" of our own Church. The Archbishops say at the outset (pp. 3, 32) that " the whole character of the changes made by us is explained by the determination of our Fathers to go back to the Lord and the Apostles." That is most true : and that is precisely the reason why any claim to offer sacrifice or to minister at an altar was struck out by " our Fathers " from the unreformed Pontificals. Unhappily this " Answer " does not seek to imitate " our Fathers " by going to the same source. On the contrary, the teaching of the New Testament is ignored throughout, and we have instead copious citations from Italian and French writers Avhose theories arc treated as being of moment in this grave question ! The Pope stated his charge with admirable clearness. As quoted in the " Reply " (p. 30), he urged that — " In the whole Ordinal not only is there no clear [aperta] mention of the sacrifice, of consecration, of the sacerdutium, aud of the power of consecrating aud offering sacrifice, but every trace of these things . . was deliberately removed and struck out." These words, strangely enough, are complained of by the Archbishops, though no one who will take the trouble to test the changes actually made at the Reformation in the Ordination Service can fail to see that they are but a simple statement of facts. Yet the "Reply'^ says the words "are in one way untrue, and in another very likely to mislead the reader." For that " rude reply " the only pretext is that a " con- secration " of bishops is spoken of in our Ordinal. But what an unworthy quibble ! And what a humiliation to the Church of England that two of her bishops should condescend thus to " palter in a double sense " with sacred subjects and words. After much beating about the bush, the Archbishops have to take refuge in a suggestion that sacrificial powers " can be conveyed implicitly " (p. 36) — that is, without that ''open mention ^^ (mentio aperta) which the Pope denied to exist in our Ordinal. They claim (p. 41) that " Hippolytus, and Victor, and Leo, and Gelasius have some of them said nothing about the power of offering the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ," in their respective forms of Ordination. Be it so. Then why accuse the Pope of misrepresentation when he merely stated what is a fact about the silence of our own formularies ? Nay, the Archbishops themselves urge that there is no apostolic form of ordination (p. 8). "It is impossible to find any tradition on the subject coming from our Lord or His Apostles " ; and no form of Ordination, they tell us (p. 31), is catholic — " there is certainly no one catholic rite.'^ Such being the case, is it not a little monstrous to suppose that the Church could assume or invent for itself a power to offer sacrifice which the primitive Ordinals knew nothing of, and did not even profess to convey ; — nay, more, which had been deliberately expunged from the Ordinal of their own Church, as being " blasphemously " untrue. The remarkable thing is that while the Pope and Cardinal Vaughan tell us plainly what their doctrine of "Eucharistic sacrifice " is, nobody on earth can make out what Arch- bishops Temple and Maclagan hold on this matter. They begin by promising on page 8 to " make plain for all time our [that is their own] doctrine about holy orders." This should be an easy matter seeing that they have narrowed the inquiry to what is the " intention " of the Church as to the offering of sacrifice. But it turns out, first, that nobody knows what is the " full and essential form " of this mysterious business. Nearly nineteen centuries have elapsed since the Institution of the Supper, yet, according to these divines (p. 17) "up to the present day a debate is still going on as to its full and essential form/' Truly that is a wonderful thing, that Christ should be supposed to have instituted in his Church, what the Pope calls "a power of offering the true body and blood of the Lord " in place of the minutely revealed sacrifices of the older dispensation, yet that His Church to this day cannot tell what is the " essential form " of this imaginary transaction ! The Archbishops say (p. 18) — " We truly teach the doctrine of Eucharistic sacrifice " — which of course is very reassuring, but what " the " doctrine is cannot be gathered. They tell us — " It is not a nude commemoration of the sacrifice of the Cross " — a definition which is merely negative and moreover is utterly ambiguous. Ridley, who denied " the real presence " and who substituted tables for altars lost men sliould dream of sacrifice when they should come to partake of sacraments, also disclaimed this word "nude.'' He said : " It is not a nude figure of the Body. Christ is present in his mysteries" (Workf!, pp. 2o8, 322, 464.) So far, the Archbishops have told us nothing. They add — " But we think it suflicient in the liturg}^ which wc use in celebrating the holy Eucharist — while lilting up our liearts to the Lord [on the table?], and when now consecrating the gifts alreadj/ offered that they may become [P] to us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ^ to signify the sacrifice which is offered at that point of the service in such terms as these " (p. 18). Before considering the " terms," observe that the phrase " become " is substituted for the language of the Prayer Book; whereas the " ut nobis fiat" of the Sarum Missal had been twice altered in order to prevent this very perver- sion of the Church of Englaud^s doctrine. Bp. Bonner and Bp. Day each pointed out in the Great Parliamentary Debate on the First Prayer Book that its words came short of the " ut tiat nobis " oi" the Sarum Missal ; yet when Gardiner sought to graft " sacrificial " notions upon that reformed language, even the modified " he unto us'' of the First Prayer Book was removed, and has no longer any place iu " the liturgy which we use." Can it be that the two Archbishops stooped to deceive the Pope by persuading him that '^ become unto us" is now authorised language in our Church ? In the next place it is to be noted that in the above quoted sentence two separate offerings seem to be spoken of, or rather hinted at. The first, of gifts 7tMConsecrated i the second, of something (called a "sacrifice") at the "point" of the consecration prayer. As to the former, no such offering was instituted by Christ, nor is it permitted by the law of the Church of England. The alms are directed to be "presented" as well as " placed " — but the bread and wine may not be so " presented " : and this restriction was imposed by Convocation as a deliberate rejection of an alternative form in which Bp. Cosin and others had proposed to direct these gifts to be " offered up." What right, then, have any number of Archbishops to misrepresent the teaching of their own Prayer Book ? As to the later "offering," they go on to say — " We continue a perpetual memory of tlie precious death of Christ, who is our advocate with the Father, and the propitiation for our sins, according to his precept, until His coming again. For first we offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving : " On which phrase they append a footnote — " That is, a Eucharistic sacrifice like the peace-ofEerings and thauk- offcrings of the Old Testament." Everybody knows that these were burned with fire on a brazen altar and were called " sacrifices and offerings " on that very account : the portion which alone was eaten being never ijlaccd wpon the " altar,'' nor "offered'' by the priests, but eaten by laymen, at some after time, iu a place apart. What foundation is there in the New Testament for such notions as these ? Could peace-offerings and thank-offerings " like " the Jewish, rest upon any other foundation than that of an express revelation, in which the thing ofi'ered, the place of offering, and the I'itual to be observed wei^e all alike minutely prescribed ? The sacrificial meal might have some points of resemblance to '^' the Christian passover": but the peaco-o^ermr/s- and thank-offering.'^, as such, have no single point of resemblance. No Jew ever mocked (jod by jiretending to ''offnr" something to Him and then consuming the whole himself. But the Archbishops proceed — " Then next we plead and represent before the Father the sacrifice of the Cross, and by it [by what ? the ' repi-esentation ' P or, ' the Cross'?] we confidently entreat remission of sins and all other benefits of the Lord's /lai-sio?? for all the whole Cliurch." But there is nothing '^sacrificial" in that. The Death and Passion are quite distinct from our " pleading " of it : while the notion of a dramatic representation " before the Father" is foreign to the inspired record of the Institution. " And lastly, we offer the sacrifice of ourselves to the Creator of all things which we have alreadj' signified bj the oblation of his creatures." Self-surrender is no doubt rightly termed an " offering ; " but, from its nature, it neither requires nor admits any "priest" or "altar" for its mediatorial presentation, save the Lord Jesus Christ; and it is not in any way restricted or peculiar to the sacramental action. " This whole action, in which the people has necessarily to take its part with the priest, we are accustomed to call the Eucharistic sacrifice." The " we " all through this pamphlet must mean the two individual writers, for certainly the Church of England has never used such language to describe the " whole action." .Now can anybody make out from the above description, what is the thing which Archbishop Temple supposes to be offered to God on the " altar," or what is the act by which Archbishop Maclagan supposes the priest to offer this thing to God ? These dignitaries, who set out by promising "to make plain for all time what their doctrine" is, leave us only a confused conglomeration of words, mixing up things entiiely distinct in kind, without so much as claiming to deduce from Scripture any warrant for a theory which is as completely absent from our formularies, as it is from the New Testament. Can anyone who reads Leviticus 8 believe that God superseded all those rites by a new sacrificial offering made by professional priests without so much as a hint of the fact being disclosed, and without this pi'etended "power of offering sacrifice" finding mention in any one Ordinal until the darkest of the dark ages. Instead of " plain teaching," the Archbishops are careful to darken counsel by these obscure words — "The relation which unites the sacrifice of the eternal Priest and the \_shc, which ?] sacrifice of the Church, which in some way are certainly one, ought in our opinion to be avoided rather than pressed into prominence." A lame ending truly^ for a sham revelation ! Space forbids further analysis. But we must protest against the unfair use made in this " Reply " of documents which have no sort of Church authority in order to bolster up the personal views of two Archbishops. For example, " the Latin Prayer Book of 1560," — the absolutely worthless and unauthorised character of which is exposed, in detail, in our Tract 112, — the use of ''sacerdos" in the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Articles of Religion, in both of which it signifies merely a Mass-priest""^; and the translation made in 1665, and dedicated by a private individual to that eminent divine. Archbishop Sheldon. Can our " spiritual " leaders wish to " make the blind go out of the way " by palming off such '' evidence " upon Viscount Halifax's "infallible" referee? It is a calamity as well as a humiliation to the Church of England to be so misrepre- sented by unbidden partisans. " Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis." * See 13 Eliz. c. 12. On any other view " deacons" must be reputed to be included, which would make " sacerdos " merely a generic term for the whole clergy, as equivalent to " minister." Alex. W. Cobham, Chairman. Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London. April, 1897. All commiinications for the fhiircli Association should he addressed to tlie Secretary, Henry Miller, as above. Snhseriptions and Donations are earnestly appealed for. Til be obtaiiipfl at the Ofiico of the Chuecti Association, 14, liiiel.iiigliam Stiret, Strand, Loiulou, at the price of M per dozen or Ss per 100. 4th Thousand.] A WORD IN SEASON ABOUT LENT. Reprinted from, the " English Churchman. -*- HE following admirable letter to the parishioners and congregation of St. Peter's, Thetford, has been published by the Rector — the Rev. J. P. Watts — in his parochial magazine, Home Words. The teaching and counsel contained in the pastoral are so sound and to the point that we reproduce the paper at length, hoping that its large circulation at this season will tend to neutralize the mischievous and superstitious follies which are being propagated by the Ritualistic clergy. Mr. Watts ■writes : — My Dear Friends, — It is the solemn responsibility of every true pastor to give plain warnings to his flock if he sees any pitfalls lying in their path, and over which there is any possi- bility of their stumbling. There is one snare which I am convinced has been deeply laid by the great enemy of souls, and so carefully wrapped up in the garb of truth that many unwary souls are entrapped. This season of the year, before Easter, bears the Ecclesiastical name of Lent, and it is a very common thing to hear in so many Church circles that during this time one ought to practise a more ascetic life, to go through so many more religious ceremonies than is necessary at other seasons, to be more strict in one's religious fervour, to be less attached to the world, to dwell much on the necessity of repentance, to practise many acts of self-denial, to be more regular in our attendance at God's house, to be more systematic in Bible-reading and prayer, and alms-giving. All this is so far right ; but the poison which is so often very deftly inserted is that all this is confined to Lent, and that these things may be relaxed after Easter is over. I have before me some rules for the observance of Lent that were actually written in the parish magazine of a town that I know, which make one smile and at the same time feel very sad that the devil's poison had so far infected professing Christians in this age. If a consecrated life is what God expects of us in Lent, He expects the same none the less, out of Lent. If a worldly atmosphere around one's life is altogether grieving to Him, and harmful to our spiritual welfare in Lent, just the same is true out of Lent. If I need to be reminded in Lent of the condition on which alone I can be a true disciple of Christ, viz., " to deny oueself and take up the cross daily and follow" Him (Luke ix.-2o), I cannot find a single word in the Bible to lead me to think for one moment that that condition lasts for but six weeks of the year. If it is wrong to be worldly in life, and to take No. 237.] parf. in what is acknowledged to belong to the scenes of the world iu Lent, I am quite sure that the Word of God equally condemns this at all other times. His commands, "Be not conformed to this world" (Rom. xii.-2), and "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world ; if any man love the woi'ld, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John ii.-15), have no limit of time attached to them. His plain word to every professed Christian is, " Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing" (2 Cor. vi.-17). If I need an acquaintance with God's Word in Lent, and time for communion with Him in prayer, I need all this the rest of the year equally the same. This is the poison that the devil so stealthily keeps in the back- gi'ound while he presents to us the need of more reality in our Christian life, that in Lent only or mainly need these things to be particularly dwelt upon. We may be extraordinarily religious while Lent lasts, with the full approbation of the devil, so long as we think we can relax the reins on Easter Monday. It is a common thing to hear about the " solemn Lenten season " ; and that what is quite allowable at other times is " harmful " now. But God's Word never talks like this, and that Word alone is our guide as to our daily life and walk. It very plainly says that what is harmful to the soul at any time is harmful always. St. Paul had to mourn over this religion of the flesh in some of his converts in Galatia and Colosse. In no measured terms he denounced these things, and exhorted them to " stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Gal. v.-l). "Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances . . . after the command- ments and doctrines of men ? Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh " (Col, ii.- 2C-23). And the Lord Jesus himself said about the Pharisees, who were the religionists of His day : " Well did Esaias prophesy of you saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips ; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" (Matt. xv.-7-9). I do earnestly pray that everyone belonging to St. Peter's congregation and parish may be kept from any false ideas of what God requires of us, and that not only in Lent, but all through the year, we may be ready to say with David's servants, " Thy servants are ready to do whatsoever my Lord the King shall appoint" (2 Sam. xv.-15).— Your faithful Friend and Pastor, J. p. Watts. London : Printed hyG. Normau & Sou, Floral Street. Published by the Church Associa noN, and t/1 bo obtained at their Offiee, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of Cd per dozen, or Is per 100. 4th Thou.sand.] CONVOCATION ON CONFESSION. jHE following report of the Committee of the Upper House of Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, being a Coni- niitice of the whole House, appointed on the 9th of May, to consider and report on tlie teaching of the Church (jf England on the subject of Confession, was laid on the table on July 25th, 1873, by his Grace the Archbishop : — *' In the matter of Confession, the Church of England holds fast those principles which are set forth in Holy Sciipture, which were professed by the Primitive Church, and which were re-affirmed at the English Reformation. The Church of England, in the 25th Article, affirms that penance is not to be counted for a Sacrament of the Gospel; and, as judged by her formularies, knows no such words as ' sacramental confession.' Grounding her doctrine on Holy Scripture, she distinctly declares the full and entire forgiveness of sins, through the blood of Jesus Christ, to those who bewail their own sinfulness, confess themselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment of life, and turn with true faith unto Him. It is the desire of the Church that by this way and means all her children should find peace. In this spirit the forms of Confession and Absolution are set forth in her public services. Yet, for the relief of troubled consciences, she has made special provision in two exceptional cases. *'(!.) In the case of those who cannot quiet their No. 238.] own consciences previous to receiving the Holy Communion, but require further comfort or counsel, the minister is directed to say, ' Let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned Minister of God's Word, and open his grief; that by the ministry of God's holy Word he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice.' Nevertheless, it is to be noted that for such a case no form of absolution has been prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer ; and, further, that the Rubric in the first Prayer Book of 1549, which sanctions a particular form of absolution, has been withdrawn from all subsequent editions of the said Book. *' (2.) In the order for the Visitation of the Sick, it is directed that the sick man may be moved to make a special confession of his sins if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter; but in such case absolution is only to be given when the sick man shall humbly and heartily desire it. The special provision, however, does not authorize the ministers of the Church to require from any who may repair to them to open their grief in a particular or detailed examination of all their sins, or to require private confession as a condition previous to receiving the Holy Communion, or to enjoin or even encourage any practice of habitual confession to a priest, or to teach that such practice or habitual confession, or the being subject to what has been termed the direction of a priest, is a condition of attaining to the highest spiritual life." — Chronicles of Convocation, Vol. V., p. 558. London : PrintedbyG. Norman* Son, Floral Street. Published by theCHDBCB Association, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 2d per dozen, or 1» per 100. Qih. Thousand.] THE GBEEK CHURCH, HER DOCTRINES AND PRINCIPLES CONTRASTED WITH THOSE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. IS UNION DESIRABLE, OR POSSIBLE? A LECTURE DELIVERED BY THE REV. JOSEPH BARDSLEY, D.D., LATE VICAR OF BRADFORP. WITH EXTRACTS FROM J, Sermon bu llje Jisljop of (Slouasttr anb gristol. THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. LONDON : CHURCH ASSOCIATION, 14, BUCKINGHAM STREET, STRAND. 1897. Pbicj: Twopence. No. 239. [The passages in square brackets have been added to Dr. Bardsley's lecture.^ THE GREEK CHURCH, HER DOCTRINES AND PRINCIPLES CONTRASTED WITH THOSE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. IS UNION DESIRABLE, OR POSSIBLE ? ANY efforts have been made in the past to bring about a union between the Eastern and the Western Churches. The last effort, I think, of any import- ance was made in 1848, soon after Pope Pius IX. took possession of the Papal chair. He addressed an official communication to " The Easterns," imploring them, and I may almost say commanding them, to return to the one fold, and acknowledge the headship of the Church as connected with the throne of St. Peter. A letter penned in this style was not altogether likely to secure the ends for which it was written, and the foiir great Patriarchs — of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem wrote back to the Bishop of Rome, in tei'ms not more amiable than those in which they had been addressed, giving the Pope at the same time to understand that Satan had been permitted for purposes best known to the Almighty to introduce many heresies into the Church of God ; two of these they named, — Arianism as the heresy of the ancient Church, and Popery as the heresy of modern times. So terminated the last effort on the part of Rome to bring about a re-union between these two great Churches.* [Since this lecture was delivered, the Reply of the bishops of " the great Church at Constantinople " to the papal encyclical of Leo XIII. has been published, rebuking the Pope for denying the cuj) to the laity, and for attributing consecration of the elements to the utterance of the words " this is my body," also for teaching the Immaculate Conception, and the personal supremacy and infallibility of the Pope, all of which are rejected on the grounds of both Scripture and tradition : reminding him that " The papal church from the twelfth century downwards has invented and heaped together in the * For a full account of this correspondence see Neale's History of the Las: em Church, Part II., p. 1192, Ac. 4 person of the Pope, as one singularly privileged, a multitude of innovations concerning purgatorial fire, a superabundance of the virtues of the saints, and the distribution of them to those who need them, and the like."*] Efforts have also been made in former times to effect a union between our own Church and the Greek Church, or the Eastern Churches generally. But is union with the Greek Church, as that Church at present exists, either desirable, or possible ? — It seems to me that if we regard the terms of the " prayer for all sorts and conditions of men," and then look at the doctrine of the Greek Church, with her superstitious ritual, or at the moral condition of her clergy and laity, we shall find such union not only to be undesirable, but more than that, absolutely impossible. Let us first briefly inquire what are the doctrinal differences between the Greek Church and the Reformed Church of this country. We begin, where I think we must always begin in such matters, by endeavouring briefly to state what are the Standards of the two Churches, because it is obvious that if we are not agreed upon the standards of appeal in matters of doctrine and practice, there is but little prospect of our arriving at the same conclusions. The Greek Church holds that tradition is of equal authority with the Holy Scriptures in matters of doctrine and practice. She teaches that the Scriptures are to be received " according to the doctrines and interpretation of the Catholic Church," and these are declared to be " an authority not inferior to that of the Scriptures themselves." The Catechism of Peter Mogilas, [the Metropolitan of Kieff,] which was revised by the four Patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem, and several other Bishops and Divines in 1643, declares that " All articles of faith owe their authority and acceptation partly to the sacred Scriptures, partly to ecclesias- tical tradition and the doctrine of the Councils and the holy Fathers." Now is this the teaching of the Church of England? Does the Church of England make the traditions of the Church, and the teachings of the Fathers of co-ordinate and co-equal authority with the Scriptures ? In the sixth Article, on the sufficiency of Holy Scripture, it is declared that nothing is required to be believed as necessary to salvation but what " may be proved," — not by tradition, but — " by the Holy Scripture." Then again, in the eighth Article, when she speaks of the three Ci-eeds, does she say they are to be believed and received because they have been handed down by the traditions of the Church ? No, but because they can be thoroughly " proved by most certain warrants of Holy [* " Answer of the great Church of Constantinople," published by Fargie, 20, Cross Street, Manchester.] Scripture.^' When she speaks on the subject of General Councils, — and if there be any means by which the Church can express her deliberate convictions and make them binding it is through a General Council, — what does the C'hurch of J'^ngland say ? " They viay err and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God," so that the things they may decree, the article goes on to say, as " necessary to salvation " cannot be made binding, " unless it may be declared that they are taken out of Holy Scripture." When the Church of England condemns the worship of images and of relics, the invocation of saints and other Romish doctrines, why does she reject them ? Because they are " grounded upon no warranty of Scripture but are rather repugnant to the Word of God." When the Church of England gives us to understand that prayers are to be said in the language of the people, and condemns the opposite practice, whilst she appeals to " the custom of the Primitive Church," she first declares that the Romish practice "is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God." When, speaking of ceremonies — and it is the only case in the thirty-nine Articles where the word tradition occurs — she says : " It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like," and " they may bo changed according to the diversities of countries, times and men's manners," she adds, " so that nothing be ordained against God's Word." There is another place where our Church does mention tradition, and in refei'ence to doctrine. It is in the first homily, which, like the rest, contains a " godly and wholesome doctrine," as every clergyman has solemnly affirmed. In that homily she bids her niemljers to " search diligently for the tvell of life in the books of the Old and the Neio Testament, and not run to the stinking puddles of men's traditions." When a tradesman told Tyndale that with every desire to assist him as a fi'iend, the laity ought to receive the teaching of God's Word as expounded by the doctors, he replied, " Here are in your shop twenty pieces of stuff of different lengths, and here is the yardstick, will yoa measure the yardstick by the stuff, or the stuff by the yard- stick ? " Tyndale added, the Word of God is the universal standard. This is the teaching of our Church, and on this cardinal point some great change must take place before there can be any real union between her and the Greek Church. The Sacraments. Here, too, we discover great and irreconcilable differences between the two Churches. Christians may be comprehended nnder three divisions : Sacramental or Sacerdotal, Rationalistic,, and Evangelical. The members of the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches come under the iirst of these divisions ; not that we in the Church of England underrate the value of the- sacraments ; we believe them, to be precious means of grace when administered and received according to the teaching of our Church. The Greek Church holds in common with the Church of Rome, that there are seven sacraments or mysteries. Does the Church of England agree with her ? She teaches distinctly in the twenty-fifth Article that "there are tioo Sacra- ments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Loi'd. Those five commonly called Sacraments, that is to say. Confirmation, Orders, Penance, Matrimony and Extreme Unction, are not to be counted for Sacraments of the Gospel, being such as have grown partly of the corrupt following of the Apostles." These are the words of the Church of England. Let me now invite attention to the teaching of the Greek Church on the two Sacraments, held in common between us ; and also on her " Sacrament of Penance." The ceremonies, used in the administration of the Sacraments in the Greek Church are so numerous, the rites so complicated, that it would take us almost till midnight to go through the various Ritualistic forms to be found in the Greek liturgies. In reference to Baptism we learn that the day on which the child is born, the priest visits the house, and offers up prayers on behalf of the mother and child. On the eighth day the child is taken to church to be named by the priest ; this is a distinct service of itself ; but the child is not yet admitted into the Church of God. On the fortieth day the mother, Avho is supposed to be well enough, takes the child, accompanied by the sponsor, to the church, and then it is received into the Church. Next comes the further ceremony of making the child a catechumen, which chiefly consists in "exorcising" the devil from the child. Three prayers at least are so headed, and a fourth would probably come under the same description. The priest having done this blows upon the child's mouth, forehead, and chest.* He also tells the sponsor, after declaring that he has renounced Satan, to blow and spit upon him. Again, in connection with the administration of this sacrament, oil is mingled with the water, and the priest pours it upon the water three times in the form of a cross. The oil is applied in the figure of a cross to the child's forehead, feet, back, breast, and hands. Various prayers or sentences are said, deemed emi- nently suitable to characterise each act. In connection with the Coptic Church, the sign of the cross in exorcising the devil from a child is used thirty-seven times. Then folloAvs another ceremony called the Saci'ament of the Chrism, corresponding to Confirmation in the Western Church. Here, again, the process of anointing is repeated ; all the members of the body, forehead, * See King's Bites and Ceremonies of the Greek Church in Rtissia, pp. 189 to 220. eyes, nostrils, mouth, breast, liands, feet — are auoiuted. And as though these were not suOicient, the chihl is taken to church once more after eight days, and tlio priest undresses it, washes it, cuts oif some of the hair crosswise from its head in four places, as near the crown as possible, folds it up in a piece of wax and casts it into the font ; and this confers on the child, in the Russian Church, the privilege of membership. This account gives but a slight notion of the complicated ceremonies connected with Baptism. I must say a few words about the making of the chrism or holy ointment. You will find a long service connected with this. It takes place once a year, and the proceedings occupy a long time. Dr. King enumerates twenty-thi'ee ingredients of which the ointment is composed.* The ceremony begins on Monday in Passion week, and terminates on the Thursday, and during the whole of that time this precious compound is boiling in a large cauldron, night and day, the deacons with long rods stirring it up. Every ingredient has to receive the episcopal blessing and be sprinkled with holy water before it finds its way into the cauldron ; at the end of the fourth day, priest after priest having in succession been repeating the whole of the Gospels, from the beginning of St. Matthew to the end of St. John, as often as is necessary — they are not allowed to stop for a moment — the bishop blesses the contents by making over them a sign of the cross ; and they are then placed in sacred vessels and conveyed to the several towns in the patriarchate. I think that this brief statement will indicate at least something of what I meant when I represented the system of the Greek Church as a sacramental or sacerdotal one. The extent to which a belief in the efficacy of external ordinances is held in the Greek Church, or at least in some of its branches, is really extraordinary. Dean Stanley, in his book on The Eastern Church,\ quotes a writer who gives a summary of the moral code of the Abyssinian biunch of the Greek Church, and I find it there recorded that it is the opinion of every member of that Church that every sin is pardoned the moment the kiss of the pilgrim is imprinted on the stones of Jerusalem, and that the iDody is purified by kissing the hand of the priest. The Lord's Supper. In the teaching of the Greek Church on the Lord's Supper and on the so-called Sacrament of Penance, we see her sacra- mental system strongly developed. Dean Stanley has given a summary of the doctrines of the Greek Church drawn to present them in a guise as little forbidding as possible to the minds of his Protestant readers. It is clear, however, from his * King, p. 424. t P- 14. statement that, in a modified form at least, the Greek Church holds Prayers for the Dead, Purgatory, Mariolatry, Invocation of Saints, and Trausubstantiation. " Prayers for the Dead," he says, " exist, but no elaborate hierarchical system has been built upon their performance ; " he states that " A general expectation prevails that by some unknown process the souls of the sinful will be purified before they pass into the Divine presence ; but this has never been consolidated into a doctrine of purgatory." In the most precise, definite, and distinct terms, the doctrine of Transubstantiation is afiirmed in the Greek Church. Dr. King, writing of the Russian Church, — and I quote him, for I am not aware that any one denies that he is a reliable authority, — says that, in the oath every bishop now takes at his consecra- tion he absolutely swears that " he believes and understands that the transubstantiation of the body and blood of Christ in the holy supper, as taught hj the Eastern and ancient Russian doctors, is effected by the influence and operation of the Holy Ghost, when the bishop or priest invokes God the Father in these words, ' And make this bread the precious body of thy Christ.' "* Can anything be more precise ? But let us take the statement from the Greek confession of 1643. " The bread verily is changed into that body itself of the Lord which was born in Bethlehem, of her who is ever Virgin, was baptized in the Jordan, suffered, was buried, rose again, has ascended, sitteth on the right hand of the Father, Avill finally come in the clouds of heaven; but the wine is changed and transubstantiated into the true blood itself of the Lord, which flowed from him when hanging upon the cross for the life of the world." Surely our twenty-eighth Article declares otherwise. It says that it " cannot be proved by Holy Writ but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions." [Adoration of the Host. In the Confessio Orthodoxa, sanctioned in 1643, we are taught that : — " Since the siihstaiice of bread is changed into the substance of the Holy Body, and the substance of the wine is changed into the sub- stance of the precious blood : therefore we ought to honour and ADOEE the Holy Eucharist as our Saviour Jesus Christ himself." The Confession of Dositheus, adopted by the Council of Jerusalem in 1672, is even more explicit : — " The Body and Blood of the Lord in the Sacrament of the Eucharist * The Ilastern Church, p. 12. [See the article " Does theEussian Church teach Transubstantiation? " in the Church Intelligencer for May, 1897.] 9 ou^ht to be supcriatively honoured aud worshipped witli Latria. For tlie worship of tlie Holy Trinity and of the Body and Blood of the Lord is the same."] The Consecrated Elements a Sacuieice eor Sin. The Gi-eek Clmrcli teaches that after the consecration prayer, the sacred elements are oft'ered up as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead. "Also," I quote from the Confession of the Synod of Jerusalem, " that it is a true and propitiatory sacritice which is offered for all the faithful, both for the living and the dead." I ask again, does the Church of England teach that in the Lord's Supper the priest offers up the consecrated elements as a sacrifice for the sins of the living and dead ? The late Archdeacon Wilberforce tells us that by the changes made in the Prayer Book of L552, " The service was divested of its sacrificial character, and no longer bore witness, as in early times, to the great event which is transacted at the altar."* In the Homily on the Lord's Supper, which contains a " godly and wholesome doctrine," and I may add as " necessary for these times " as when it was written — in that homily we are told : " For this is to stick fast to Christ's promise made in His institution, to make Christ thine own, to apply His merits unto thyself. Herein thou ueedest no other man's help, no other sacrifice or oblation, no sacrificing 'priest, no mass, no means established by mans i7ivention." And again we read, " We must take heed lest of the memory it be made a sacrifice; lest of a communion it be made a private eating." " Take heed ; " if the Church said so in those days, certainly we ought to " take heed " in our dsijs ! Reception by the wicked. I find, again, the Greek Church teaches that the wicked receive the body of Christ in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper : " Also the body itself aud the most pure blood is distributed and is introduced into the mouth and stomach of the communicants whether holy or unholy, save only that remission of sins and life ai'c imparted to the holy and worthy, but damnation and eternal punishment accrue to the unholy and unworthy." These are the words of a Synod held at Jerusalem iu 1672. Does the Church of England teach that doctrine ? Li the twenty-ninth Article she says that the wicked when they receive the sacrament are in " no loise partakers of Christ." She tells us that they " carnally and visibly press with their teeth the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ, but rather to their condemnation do * The Doctrine of tlie Holy Eucharist, 2nd edition, p. 379. 10 eat and drink the sign or sacrament of so great a thing." Can language be more definite ? Bishop Jewel was not only the chief reviser of our Articles in 1571, but he wrote the Apology, which was sanctioned by Convocation in the following year. In his work on the Sacrament he asks : What is the difference between the sacrament of the Lord's body, and the body of Christ ? And then he answers — " A sacrament is a figure or token : the body of Christ is figured or tokened. The sacrament-bread is bread, it is not the body of Christ : the body of Christ is flesh, it is no bread. The bread is beneath : the body is above. The bread is on the table : the body is in heaven. The bread is in the mouth -. the body is in the heart. . . . The sacrament is eaten as well of the wicked as of the faithful : the hody is only eaten of the faithful. The sacrament may be eaten unto judgment, the body cannot be eaten but unto salvation. Without the sacrament we maybe saved : but without the body of Christ we have no salvation."* Or to use the words of the great Hooker, " The real presence of Christ's most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament, "t The Table an Altar, the Minister a Sacrificing Priest. The Greek Church teaches that the sacrifice must he offered iip on an altar, and by a sacrificing priest: " No man can administer this mystery, however urgent may be the necessity, unless lawfully created a priest, whence the priest must take care that wherever the service is offered there be an altar, or at the least a consecrated table-cloth or carpet, available, without which it is most improper to offer the unbloody sacrifice." There is nothing which moi-e clearly indicates the teaching of the Church of England, than the history of the use of that word " altar " in connection with the Reformation. It is found in the first Prayer Book of King Edward VI., 1549. In the following year Bishop Ridley tells us why altars were to be removed, viz. to " move and turn the simple from the old superstitious opinions of the Popish Mass, and to the right use of the Lord's Supper." In 1551, a royal injunction was issued to " pluck down the altars" and to have tables put in their places, and because Bishop Day refused to obey that injunction he was sent to the Fleet. I name this in order to show that the Reformers deemed it a matter of importance that we should have no altar, but simply a communion table. In 1552 the Prayer Book was revised, and wherever the word "altar" occurred it was expunged, and the word "table" substituted in its place. In the Communion Service we have the words " table," " Lord's table," or "holy table," to the number of eleven times, but the * Jeivel, 2n(l Portion, p. 1121, Parker Society. f Book V., oh. Ixvii. 6. 11 word a Itar never occurs once, from the beginning of the Prayer Book to the end. The further histoiy of the use of the word " altar" is interesting and most insti^victive. Queen Mary succeeded to the throne ; slie had the tables sweptaway from the churches, and stone altars erected in their stead ; it was with reference to this proceeding that Cranmer's chaplain, Thomas Becon, wrote : " Heretofore we were taught to beat down the idohitrous and heathenish altars which Antichrist of Rome, intending to set up a new priesthood and a strange sacrifice for sin, com- manded to be built up." An Archbishop, four Bishops, over twenty clergymen, some 220 or 230 laymen went to the stake in the course of five and a half years rather than aekiiowledge that the communion table was an altar, and that in the Lord's Supper the real body and blood of our Saviour were offered up for the sins of the living and the dead. What took place on the accession of Queen Elizabeth ? The Reformers implored Her Majesty that in memory of her brother, and of the holy men who died at the stake during her sister's reign, she would have the altars removed and the communion tables restored. The Queen complied with this request, and the altars were once more swept away. Queen Elizabeth's Advertisements required that in every church the churchwardens should provide a table, to be set upon a " frame." Why, we ask, a table upon a "frame"? Why? but to meet the provisions of the fourth rubric, which requires that the table " shall stand in the body of the church or in the chancel," as convenience may suggest. The object of these directions was to have a table ivhich should he a rupvahle article; and that one rubric alone deals a fatal blow against that mass of superstition which has of late years gathered round our chancels. It shows that our Church declines to recognise the notion of any special sacredness attaching to the chancel, as contrasted with other parts of the church. Moreover in 1571, a Synod was held — a Synod to which Ritualists often refer ; one of the Canons of which required that the communion table in all our churches shall be of " joiner's work." Why of "joiner's work"? Because an altar is of "mason's work." Harding, in his controversy with Jewel, chargred the Reformers with havinc thrown down the altars of God. Jewel replied that there could be no more heresy m tearing down superstitious ^valls, than in burning communion tables, in the use of which they had Christ himself as an undoubted example, as well as ancient Catholic Fathers. May I just caution our friends never to call the Lord's table an " altar." We have a table, and a table is for a feast ; but we have nO' altar because we have not a sacrifice. What has much surprised me is, that gentlemen generally so designate the Lord's table when speaking of the subject of marriage. They talk about " leading the bride to the altar." In my j udgment that is far from 12 complimentaiy. Why, an altar is for sacrifice ! But, seriously, I do strongly urge on all grounds, and especially in the interest of Protestant truth, that you should never misrepresent the Church of England by misnaming the Lord's table. It is the Lord's table, or the Communion table, but an altar it is not. If we have no sacrifice and no altar, a sacrificing priest would be altogether out of place. I shall be told we have the word '■' priest " in the Prayer Book, but I am also aware that Dr. Hook — and lie was not a Low Churchman — tells us the word is simply an abbreviated form of presbyter. Archbishop Whitgif t, in reply to Dr. Cartwriffht, the Puritan, said : " The name of priest need not be so odious to you as you would seem to make it ; I suppose it Cometh of this v/ or d presbyter, and not sacerdos ; " and this is the explanation also of Archbishop Whately in his Bampton Lectures. I am not aware that there can be any difference of opinion on the subject. People speak very often in such a way as to make it appear that the word priest as used by the English Church means the same thing with the word priest used in reference to the ministers of the Church of Rome — saying, for example, the priest offers sacrifice, the prietit celebrates mai'riage, the priest does this or that, but such use of the word does not affect the word itself. It is an abbreviated form of presbyter, nothing else. I was asked once whether I meant to say that we have not got the word sacerdos in the Latin of the Thirty-first Article. I replied, " Certainly ; but the priest of the Church of Rome is spoken of, not the minister of the Church of England." And that very article it is which condemns the sacrifices of masses, and denounces them as "blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits." Confession and Absolution. We inquire what is the teaching of the two Churches about the sacrament of penance ? The doctrine of the Greek Church is precisely the same as that of the Church of Rome. You have only to read the form of confession given by Dean Waddington in his History of the Greek Ghurch,* where he quotes from the ritual of the Greek Church, and you will see that it is demanded by the priest addressing the penitent that he shall not conceal anything, and that if he does, he will incur a double sin instead of receiving a healing medicine. The Greek Church also provides a form of absolution : " I, an unworthy priest, by the power committed unto me, do pardon and absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Eather, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghnst."t I am told the Church of England holds the same doctrine with regard to Auricular =•■• Pages 24, 25. t King, p. 23. i:] Confession, and has a similar form of absolution. Mr. Chairman, the Confessiunal makes a priest more than man, arid the ijenitent less than a man. It exalts the priest almost to the very throne of God, and it renders the penitent a culprit or criminal at his bar. We are told by Ur. King that tlie Greek Church is after all not so bad as the iioman in this respect, because the confession is supposed to be made to God himself, or to His angel, who is present. The priest says : " 13ehold, the angel of the Lord standeth by to receive thy confession from thy mouth." Dean Waddington, and no one will accuse him of misrepre- senting the Greek Church, says this only makes the matter worse than in the Roman Church, because the torture by which it extorts the secrets of the culprit's heart is the more perfect: the supposed presence of the angel only makes the affair more terrible. But then we are told the Church of England holds this doctrine. I ask where ? Perhaps some will say in the Visitation of the Sick. That is, in any case, exceptional. There is not a word about systematic private confession, nor is the confession in any way demanded. It is for the sick man and the dying man, whose "conscience is troubled with some weighty matter." Supposing I were to go to Dr. Pusey to make confession, and ask him as a minister of the Church of England, in what form he would give me his absolution, which of our formularies would he adopt ? The form prescribed in the Service for the Visitation of the Sick ? No ; for, thank God, I am not " sick." Two other forms remain, but one of these, that in the daily service is declaratory, and the other, that in the Communion service, is precatory. Some may refer me to the exhortation, which speaks of " the benefit of absolution." There is not a word abotU auricular confession there. Let any one compare those words with the passage in the first Prayer Book of King Edward, and he will see that our reformers intended to abolish auricular confession. In the one case it is : " let him come to me or some other discreet and learned minister of God's Word;" and in the other, the first of King Edward, " let him come to me or some other discreet and learned priest taught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and grief secretly.'" Now it is : " and open his grief." In the former it is : " that he may receive comfort and absolution" from "the ministers of God and the Church." Now it is : " that he may receive the benefit of absolution," through " the ministry of God's holy loord." In the former case, the first of Edward, those who adopted auricular confession were not to complain of those who did not use it, and -who were " satisfied with their humble confession to God, and the general confession to the Church." Where are these words now? Why, they are gone. When they were in use there was a short rubric in the Service for the Visitation of the Sick, Avhich stated that " the 14 same form of absolution shall he used in all private confessions ; " when, however, the words which authorised the penitent to use " the auricular and secret confession to the priest," were expunged from the Exhortation, then the direction to use this form of absolution, after private confession, was also expunged. Here we see perfect consistency ; as long as auricular confession was sanctioned, a form of absolution was provided ; but when she ceased to exhort men to practise auricular confession, she no longer provided a form of absolution for such occasions. Further, we have a homilv upon the subject, which all the clergy — at any rate those who are beneficed — have declared to contain a " godly and wholesome doctrine." I will give you an extract : — " It is most evident and plain that this auricular confession hath not his warrant from God, else it had not been lawful for Nectarius, Bishop of Constantinople, upon a just occasion to have it put down. For when anything ordained of God is by the lewdness of man abused, the abuse ought to be taken away, and the thing itself suffered to remain. Moreover, these are Augustine's words : ' What have I to do with men that they should hear my confession as though they were able to heal my diseases ? A curious sort of men to know another man's life, and slothful to correct and amend their own. Why do they seek to hear of me what I am, who will not hear of thee what they are ? And how can they tell when they hear of myself whether I tell the truth or not ; since no mortal man knoweth what is in man, but the spirit of man which is in him ? ' Augustine would not have written thus if auricular confession had been used in his time. Being, therefore, not led with the conscience thereof, let us with fear and trembling, and with a true contrite heart use that kind of confession God doth commaad in His word; and then doubtless as He is faithful aud righteous He will forgive us our sins and make us clean from all wickedness." It then proceeds: "It is against the true Christian liherty that any man should be hound to the numbering of his sins, as it has been used heretofore in the time of blindness and ignorance."* In 1562 Archbishop Parker approved of a paper which was intended to be brought before Convocation, in which it was recommended that confidential intercourse should take place between minister and people, but it is probable that Archbisliop Parker dreaded the possibility of the occasion being used for auricular confession, and, therefore, the paper was not intro- duced ; still it clearly serves to show what were the views of the reformers. Among other matters it lays down that every person old enough to communicate should be required to offer himself to his parson, vicar, or curate for examination ; but it concludes with these remarkable words — " ivhat priest or minister soever, under colour hereof, shall practise atiricular confession, shall he deprived of all his livings, and deposed from the ministry."t * Homily on Repentance. f Cardwell's Hynodalia, p. 512. 15 Use of Pictures in the Greek Churcu. Dean Stanley says in his Eastern Church : " No veneration of relics or images in the West can convey any adequate notion of the veneration for pictures in Russia. It is the main support and stay of their religious faith and practice;" and he quotes an eminent writer who says of a whole army that " there is not a single man but carries in his knapsack a gaudy picture within a simple cover, with which he never parts, and whenever he halts he sets it up on a piece of wood and ivorshlps it." * It makes not the slightest difference whether the picture be exquisitely painted or an unsightly daub. Platon, a former metropolitan of Moscow, states that his Church intends to do no more tlian to stir up the mind of the spectator to the imitation of the virtues of those represented by the picture. He does not, however, deny but that this reverencing of pictures may be turned into " the most abominable sin of idolatry." This is too often the result. That the theory of the learned and the practice of the ignorant are widely different, is strikingly expressed by Dr. King : — " the images and saints of the learned are the gods of the vulgar, who cannot salve their idolatry with refinement and distinction, but adore with their heart what they behold with their eyes." Let us consider the difference between the Greek Church and our own in this matter. We have a homily against idolatry, which deals with both pictures and images : " It is- impossible that images of God, Christ, or His saints can be suffered (especially in temples or churches) any while or space without worshipping of them ; and that idolatry which is most abominable before God, cannot possibly be escaped and avoided without the abolishing and destruction of images and pictures in temples and churches, for that idolatry is to images an inseparable accident, so that images in churches and idolatry go always both together, and that, therefore, the one cannot be- avoided except the other." Our Church further declares that the whole of Christendom for seven or eight hundred years before the Reformation was sunk in idolatry, including the J]ast as well as the West, the clergy and laity. Again, the Greek Church sanctions the invocation of saints : and the Prayers addressed to the Virgin Mary are quite as strong as those employed in the Church of Rome. I will cite one prayer from the Office of the Holy Oil : " Give ear unto the prayers of thy servants, thou most pure ; assuage the evils which befal us, and deliver us from all affliction ; for thou only art our firm and sui'e refuge, and thy protection will we seek; let not us be ashamed who call upon thee, but gi-ant the prayers of those who faithfully invoke thee. Hail, Sovereign Lady, who art the * The Eastern Church, by Dean Stanley, pp. 362-3. 16 help, the joy, the protection of all, and the salvation of our souls." * The Bishop of Winchester,' in his charge in 1866, declared that U7iion with the Church of Rome tvas impossible, partly" on the ground that she sanctioned Mariolatry : and Dr. Newman, in a letter to Dr. Pussy, has undertaken to prove that the Greek Church is more vulnerable on this point than the Church of Rome. [Mariolatrt. The present-day teaching of the Greek Church, as to what Abp. Maclagan calls Mary's " true place in the scheme of salvation," is shewn by the language of its daily Offices, some of which have been translated by Lady Lechmere in her Synopsis and others by Mr. Shann, of Kidderminster, in his Euchology. Mr. Birkbeck, who accompanied Abp. Maclagan to Russia, has called attention to these prayers, which he greatly admires, in a series of articles in the Guardian for 1891-2. A few extracts from these " orthodox " (?) formularies will be of interest: — " Comfort of the afflicted, Remedy of the sick, Virgin Mother of God, save all thy people, and keep them in peace, preserve them in quietness, thou only succour of believers" {St/nopsis, p. 105). " Mistress, hear the prayer of thy servants, and deliver those who are in want and affliction." " All my hope I place in thee, Mother of God, keep me under thy protection " (p. 111). " Having confidence in thy immeasurable assistance. I hasten to place myself under thy protection, and bow my knee, O Mistress, and pray thee, do not overlook me, wretched and miserable as I am, Thou who dost preside over the Christian World . . . for thou art our Intercessor before God, a sure wall and protection " (p. 112). " The grave and gate of death could not retain the Mother of God who is unceasing in jjrayers and a strong trust in intercessions. For He that dwelt ia the Ever Virgin hath taken away to life her who was the Mother of Life " (p. 208). In Mr. Shann's book which is dedicated to the Chaplain of the Russian Embassy, the Virgin is styled "Heaven" (p. 108), " the chosen Guide " (p. Ill), " Queen of all the Avorld " (p. 196), "the Heavenly Gate" (p. 364), "Throne of the cherubim" (p. 446), &c., &G. Here are some samples : — " O Lord, if we had not thy saints to pray for us, and thy goodness so merciful to us, how could we dare, O Saviour, to sing to Thee." " O Mother of God, to thee do I approach on account of the multitude of my transgressions desiring salvation. Visit thou my ailing soul, and beseech thy Son, our God, to grant me remission of the evil I have wrought, tor thou art the blessed one. O most holy Mother of God, forsake me not during the course of my life, give me aot over to the intercession of man, but thyself protect and have mercy * King's Greek Church, p. 333. 17 upon mo : all my trust do 1 place in thee, O Mother of God, keep me under tliy protection" {Eacholot^j/, p. 7G). "O thou virgin, spotless, uudeiiled, incorruptible, most cliaste and pure. Lady, Bride of (lod . . . who art the hope of the liopeless . . . and the refuge of all Christians . . . and using thy Maternal influence with thy Sou . . . beseech Him to open to me the loving tenderness of ilis grace . . . And at the hour of my death preserve my miserable soul, and drive far from it all dark visions of evil demons. Deliver me in the terrible day of judgment from everlasting punishment, and make me an inheritor of the unspeakable glory of thv Son, our God"^ (P- 77). "O Mother of God, we make our boast in thee, and have thee as mediatress with God. Stretch forth thy matchles.s hand, and over- come our foes : send to thy servants help from the holy place " (p. lOi). " The hope and mediatres.s and refuge of Christians, tlie wall that cannot be overthrown, the harbour of the helpless, unagitated by storms art thou, O most pure bearer of God, but in saving the world by thy ceaseless intercessions, remember us also, O all-celebrated Virgin " (p. 115). " O Lady, propitiate Him who was born of thee towards me " (p. 223). " Since we have not daring on account of our many sins, do thou. O God-bearing Virgin, pray Him that Mas l)orn of thee, for the Mother's prayer availeth much to procure the Jjord's clemency " (p. 301). " Thy Mother, O Christ, we bring unto Thee as mediatress " (p. 38). "To-day we hold a joyful feast, being shadowed by thy presence, O Mother of God, and looking on thy most pure Icon liumbly say — Cover up with thine honourable protection, and deliver us from all evil, praying thy son Christ our God, to save our souls " (p. 438). " To-day the Virgin is present in the Church, and with the companies of the saints invisibly prayeth unto God for us " (p. 438). Pope Leo XIII., in his encyclical of Sept. 5th, 1895, admits that the self-stj-led "Orthodox Church" fairly outvies Rome herself in thi.s form of idolatry. He said : — " A fresh motive allows us to hope that Mary will listen with favour to the prayers that We shall address to her on behalf of the dissentient nations, namely, the great merits that those Churches have had in respect of her, particularly those of the East. Thei/ have greatly contrihuted to spread her worship. Within their bosom her glory has found supporters and defenders, powerful by their authority and by their writings, panegyrists remarkable for the ardour and at the same time the sweetness of their eloquence. . . . " Everyone knows that a great number of her holy images, coming from the East, after various circumstances, have been transported to the West and to Italy in particular ; our fathers received them with great reverence, and paid them splendid honour, and their descendants are endeavouring to encircle these sacred images with the same devotion."] Apocryphal Saints. We find that some of the Greek saints are commemorated for the most extraordinary reasons. At page 806 of Neale's History of the Holy Eastern Church he speaks of one branch as having in 18 its calendar five or six saints for every day in tlie year. One, an emperor of Ethiopia, was honoured because he never died ; Eusebius was exalted to the position of a saint because an angel took him to heaven where he remained seven years ; Aaron, we are told, obtained tlie honour because in time of sickness he caused roasted figs to fly into his mouth ; John, because he extracted a serpent from the womb of a princess ; and, strange to say, Pilate figures among the saints ; the reason assigned is simply this, that in attesting his conviction that Jesus was a just man, he took water and washed his hands. One is almost disposed to say that if Pilate is found amongst the saints, who ought to be excluded ? Superstitious Practices. In addition to what has already been said, I will name two things, the Benediction of the Waters and tlie Miracle of the Greek Fire. The whole Church, from the Emperor downwards, bishops, priests, and laity, take part, at least all by their pre- sence on the occasion, in sanctifying the waters on Januaiy 6th. Having been sanctified, and sprinkled on the soldiers and those gathered round the Jordan, as it is called, the people take the water to their homes as " a remedy not only for spiritual but for natural infirmities." They have a curious practice, that night, says Dr. King, of crossing their window shutters and doors lest the evil spirits that have been chased by the bene- diction of the waters should enter their houses. Another miracle peculiar to the Greek Church — is that of the holy fire — which is practised every year in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This takes place in Easter week, and Dean Stanley, in his Sinai and Palestine, declares that the proceedings, previous to the manifestation, can only be com- pared to the noisy scene of a nomination at Guildhall. He ,says that, " considering the time and place, and the professed intention of the miracle, it is the most offensive delusion to be found in the whole world." Dean Waddington, who witnessed the scene, describes it as probably the greatest imposture practised by the impudence of any priesthood on the credulity of any people. Thousands, ho states, are gathered within the Church, and during the awful interval before the coming of the fire from heaven the multitudes are engaged in leaping on each other's shoulders, building themselves into pyramids, hanging by their heels naked or half naked ; amid shoutings and yellings which baffle description. At last the bishop or priest appears upon the scene and enters the small chapel. Soon afterwai-ds a glimmering is observed in the orifices of the holy chapel, and the shout announcing this event is the prelude to an exhibition of madness surpassing all that had preceded. In but a very few seconds the place is ablaze with light comnuinicated from the chapel to every spectator who carries a candle, and this light they believe has in the first instance miraculously descended from heaven; and so strong is the conviction of the people in the genuineness of the miracle that they boldly declare the fire will not burn them, and should it do so, maintain the innocence of the holy flame by saying that God has permitted it to hurt them because they have failed to confess some sin. This is one of the practices of a Church with Avhich we are told union is desirable ; a Church we have seen to be corrupt in its doctrine, superstitious in its usages, and which does not hesitate to stoop to the practice of gross impostures and lying wonders. Moral Condition ov thk Gkeek Church. What is the moral condition of the members of the Eastern communities, communities I say, for of the Greek Church there are fourteen divisions at least ? According to Mr. Arthur Arnold, in an able article in the Quarterly of 1868, these sections of the Greek Church are distinguished for their intense hatred and detestation of each other. And what does this writer say of the moral condition of their members ? " The young and unmarried Greek is seldom, if ever, what we should call well-conducted ; he is not immoral because in truth he has no morals whatsoever, and when the time for marriage comes he quits a career of profligacy as easily and with as little effort or feeling of shock as when first he entered on it. He has no remorse for the ill-spent past .and no self-laudation for the well-spent present in these matters. He has no subjective conscience, and often, thanks to his clergy, very little objective." " 0/ the unmarried clergy or monks, from whose ranks the higher ecclesiastical dignitaries are as a rule selected, ' least said is soonest mended.'' In no respect can one say any good of them. The non-celibatary or parish priests, though gene- rally boorish and ignorant to the last degree, are on the whole hard working and honest men ; a better sort of peasants." He then sums up the moral creed of the Greek Church in these words : " In its moral aspect the Greek religion is a great enfranchisement from all restraint, united with an intense, a raor6 than Byzantine hatred of Latinism and Latins, summing up all in one great commandment, 'Thou shalt deceive thy fellow and hate everyone else.' " Perhaps the friends of the Greek Church will say that this is the testimony of one of whose views they do not approve, who is himself untrustworthy. What says Dean Stanley ? In his book on the Eastern Church, at page 13, speaking of the Ethiopian Church, he writes, " the fatal division between religion and morality which disfigures to so large an extent the rest of Oriental Christianity, is seen in its most striking form in the 20 usages of Ahyssinia.^' What! "fatal division between religion and morality ; " I was not aware there could be such a thing. " Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their afflictions, and to keep himself tmspoUed from the world." Dr. Hook in his Dictiovanj contrasts the condition of the clergy of the Greek Church in olden times with that of the clergy of tbe same Chiirch at the present day, and he says that " now nothing but wretchedness, ignorance, and poverty are visible amongst them." He further states that from the highest d.ignitary to the lowest their existence is almost entirely kept iip by simony. " The patriarch of Constantinople assumes the honourable title of Universal Patriarch, and as he purchases his com- mission of the Grand Seignior, it may be easily supposed that he makes a tyrannical and simoniacal use of a privilege which he himself holds by simony." " The secular priests not having any settled and competent living are obliged to subsist by simoniacal practices " ; and he quotes Ricaut, an eminent authority, to show that no one can procure absolution for his sins, be admitted to confession, have his children baptized, get married, obtain an excommunication against his adversary, or receive holy communion in sickness, without paying down a valuable consideration. The priests, he adds, too often make "the best markets they can, and fix a price on their spiritual commodities in proportion to the devotion or abilities of their respective customers." Mr. Marsden, in his book on The Christian Churches, speaking of the Russian Church, which, be it remembered, comprises four-fifths of the whole Greek Church, says: "The priests of inferior order — the village curates — are universally despised even by the poor. Their ignorance is extreme, and their servility and avarice proverbial. It is not uncommon to see a priest who has been publicly Avhipped like a miserable vagabond perform his religious services a few hours after, before the parish which witnessed his disgrace." Is a Church which tolerates such a state of things one with which we are to seek union ? Are %oe to ignore the five million intelligent, and excellent Nonconformists of our own country, as the promoters of this union movement would have us do, in order to seek union with the corrupt Greek Church ? I will merely add the testimony of Dean Waddington, because his words bear upon this very point, the possibility of union. He writes : — "When I speak of the regeneration of this Church I never imagine the possibility of its conversion or of its union with the Church of England or any other reformed Church. I only supposed such an improvement in its doctrine and ])ractice, and especially in its practice, as will remove its grossest scandals and most hurtful abuses, and make it respectable not only in the eyes of 21 Protestants, bat also in the opinion of the most enlightened of its own members." Can anything be stronger ? I for one cannot understand how any intelligent member of the Church of England can talk of union with the Greek Church in its present condition being desirable, or even possible. [Greek Infallibility. The Bishop of Coventry observes : — " There is yet another hindrance which does not appear on the surface, but which grows more and more formidable to our apprehensions the closer we are brought together. This is the Eastern doctrine of the infallibility of the Church. The Eastern churchman holds that God made His revelation to His Church, and that that revelation is contained in Holy Scripture, and expounded by the Seven CEcumenical Councils. So far, we should have no quarrel with him, except with i-espect to the so-called Seventh Council. But he is not content with this. He is not satisfied with arguing a posteriori that the expositions of the faith by the genuine councils are Infallibly, or quite certainly, true, but he maintains a priori that they must have been so, owing to a gift of infallibility existing in the Church, and finding expression in its mouth-pieces the QEcumenical Councils. Nor is this all ; for he holds that this gift of infallibility does not depend on the unity of Christendom, that it did not, therefore, fall into abeyance at the disruption of East and West, that it exists still. But where does it exist ? Not, certainly, in the Latin Church, which the Oriental Church has formally denounced as the apostasy of the latter days ; not in the Old Catholics or Anglicans, whom it regards as holding much orthodox doctrine, but mixed with error ; still less in the Lutherans and Calvinists, or Eastern schismatical communions. There remains only the Orthodox communion, which alone is supposed to preserve the traditions and the powers of the Church of the first eight centuries. This communion consists of the local Churches of Constantinople, Russia, Greece, Roumania, Bul- garia, Servia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro. The representa- tives of these Churches, therefore, might form a council, which would be equally venerable with the Councils of Nicsea, Con- stantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, the decrees of which would be infallible. Nay, more, that infallibility exists at present in the Church diffusive (thus locally limited to the Oriental Communion), and prevents it from having fallen in the past, or falling in the present or the future, into any dogmatic error whatever. " It is needless to point out what an obstacle the frame of mind thus engendered must present to efforts towards reunion. Other communions may come and rest under the shadow of the Orthodox Church, and may accept orthodoxy from her, but she 22 can make no change — neither in the doctrine of saint worship, nor the practice of Icon worship, nor the theory of the Seven Councils, nor anything else. She is already the ideal Church ; she cannot change herself, and she cannot accept other Ch arches to her communion except on the condition of their conform- ing to her model. How is this difficulty to be overcome ? I know not, except by the Oriental Church becoming taught of God that infallibility is to be found in His revelation to men, not in the men for whom that revelation has been made."] APPENDIX. When the question of intercommunion with the Greek Church was about to occupy the attention of Convocation, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol preached in his cathedral a sermon of December 5th, 1875, from which the following is an extract : — " I am of course alluding to that Church, or, perhaps, to speak more exactly, those orthodox Churches, which, for the sake of convenience, I will henceforth speak of under the single title of the Eastern Church. The leading doctrinal differences between that venerable Church and our own mother Church of England it shall now be my care briefly to set before you in the present sermon. And there is great need for such an attempt as the present. It seems now more than ever necessary that we should endeavour to realise those doctrinal differences, and to estimate the width of that chasm that separates the distinctive teaching of our Reformed Church from that of these ancient and unreformed Churches of the East. There is verily great need ; for it seems scarcely doubtful that ere long the question of inter- communion will be pressed earnestly upon us, and that efforts will be made to establish such relations between the Church of England and the Eastern Church as ' shall enable the members of the one Church to join, without censure, in the sacraments and offices of the other Church.' Such, indeed, are nearly the exact words of a resolution appended to the last Report of a Committee of the Convocation of this province ; and such the sentiments that are entertained at the present time by many earnest and devoted members of the Church of England. And that these things will shortly come before us in their gravest and most serious form there now seems no reason to doubt. Already we have been assured publicly that the members of one of our Church societies will take steps to bring before Convocation the precarious resolutions (I wish to use the kindest word) recently passed at Bonn relative to the great clause in the Nicene Creed. The whole question of our doctrinal relations with the Eastern Church will necessarily follow ; and at a very critical time in the history of the Church of England, with increasing demands made upon us by Nonconformity, and with serious divisions among ourselves, we shall probably be forced into discussions which cannot but aggravate existing difficulties, and still more widely separate the two great parties which now divide the Established Church of this land. For let this be seriously borne in mind, that if calm and dispassionate investigation convince us that, in several vital and fundamental questions — such as the infallibility of the Church, the co-ordinate authority 23 of tradition with the authority of the Scriptures, justification by works, invocation of the saints, worship of imat^es, transubstantiation, and the so-called sacrament of penance — the teaching of the Eastern Church is either identical with, or dangerously near to, the false teaching of the Church of Rome — if, in one word, that vital principle on which we meditated last month, the unconditioned access of the believing and repenting sinner to Christ, is nearly as much obscured in the Eastern Church as it is in the Church of Rome — then all efforts of intercommunion that may be made by one party will be determinately opposed by the other, and the attempt, as it will be deemed by many, to pass towards Rome by way of Greece, will create among us dissensions more serious and threatening than we have yet experienced, even in these sad times of anarchy and division. . . . " Very dear is unity to the faithful ; very dear is intercommunion to yearning and loving hearts ; but dearer still is evangelical truth, the truth as it is in Christ Jesus ; and to this alone can we make our appeal — this only is our unerring and ultimate guide. We ask then — does the Eastern Church acknowledge one Mediator and one only ? Is the access to that Mediator free and uncon- ditioned to every truly repenting and believing soul ? Is the Book of Life open, and is it declared to be all-sufficient, or does it need tradition to support it and authority to explain it ? " And, last of all — and perhaps most vital question of all — is ' the whole- some doctrine that man is justified by faith only ' the teaching of this ancient Church, or does it falter where to falter is verily to place in jeopardy salvation itself ? Alas ! What answer can we make ? Four confessions of faith we can appeal to, and of these only one answers these questions in any degree as our Prayer Book and Articles answer them; and that one confession — the confession of the learned, humble, patient, and persecuted Cyrill Lucar — was promptly condemned by two Synods and by the two confessions of faith that were connected with them — the two confessions that may properly be deemed the most authoritative documents of the Eastern Church since the days of the Western Reformation. What do we gather from these documents in reference to the four fundamental questions that have just been specified ? This, and certainly this — first, that the Eastern Church plainly does acknowledge other mediators in the persons of the Saints — ' We invoke the mediation of the Saints,' says the first of these confessions of faith, ' as being the friends of God.' Secondly, that the access to our Lord is dependent upon the sacrament of penance, and on priestly absolution, as clearly, though, it may be, not as minutely, as in the Church of Rome. Thirdly, that though in the Russian Church there is a knowledge of the Scriptures far beyond that which is found in Roman Catholic countries, yet that in the rest of the Eastern Church the Bible (at any rate in the dialect of the people) is not an open book, and further, that it is not that on which alone the faith is based. The faith, says the confession I have referred to, is based on these two things — the written Word and tradition ; the blessed book is insufiicient without the voice of the teaching and interpreting Church. " Lastly, in regard of the doctrine of justification, nothing is more distinctly brought out than this — that faith is not that by which alone man is justified. Faith, in the Eastern Church, is a receptive principle, rather than that which energises and appropriates. No words can be more painfully clear than those of the Synod of Jerusalem — ' To say that faith does the work of a hand (the very simile of our own Hooker) and layeth hold of the righteousness of Christ, and maketh it our own unto salvation, we hold to be ' — mark these uncompromising words — ' far from all religion.' What now can we say ? Is it not clear that the four cardinal questions are answered in substantially the same way as they are answered by the Church of Rome, and that, at any rate in regard to these primary and vital truths, the teaching of the Greek Church is nothing less — to use the most charitable and guarded expression — than imperfectly developed Romanism ? Differences there are between the 24 two Churches— clear, patent, and practical — but they are differences more in details than principles, and in the stage of development rather than in the direction of it. The Church of Rome is restless, aggressive, and innovating : the Eastern Church is stationary, conservative, and retrospective — it saith, ' The old is better.' Innovation and novelties are, with the Eastern Church, synonymous with heresies and falsehood ; but the primitive tradition appealed to has lost its purity, the ideal is dimmed by superstitions, the orthodoxy so often made boast of is stifE, mediffival, and scholastic. Differences there are between the Churches, but in all vital doctrines, in all those fundamental principles — such as the sacerdotal and sacramental — which closely affect Christian life and personal salvation, there is substantial identity. Each Church rests upon the co-ordinately justifying nature' of good works ; each Church maintains transubstantiation ; each Church teaches the necessity of sacramental confession and priestly absolution. Each Church stands distinctly opposed to the current and tenor of the teaching of the Reformed Church of England in all these vitally important particulars. What then, finally, are we to say in reference to that yearning for inter- communion with the Eastern Church to which I have already alluded ? God forbid that we should judge hardly those who are seeking to bring those who love and adore our common Lord into closer union ; God forbid that we should coldly turn aside from brotherly movements, or look with a suspicious eye on those charitable efforts that are now being made by the pure and the holy to bring nearer together the members of the flock of Christ that have been scattered in the dark and cloudy day of human history. This be far from us. Still, let us not be carried away by feelings and sympathies into positions that are spiritually untenable. If there be so much of vital and fundamental doctrine that is substantially identical in the teaching of the Eastern Church and the teaching of the Church of Rome, then, if we seek an inter-communion in offices and sacra- ments with the former Church, we must be prepared to go further, and, at least, tolerate the thought in reference to the latter. If we can overlook, for ' the sake of unity, fundamental differences between ourselves and the Eastern Church, how can we consistently stand apart and maintain our attitude of protest against the Church of Rome ? It is idle to urge that the circumstances are different, and that the Romish Church in this island is a schismatical community that has invaded the rights of an ancient and national Church, and has thus rendered inter-communion impossible. It is true ; but it does not affect the question. Our forefathers protested against error and corruption as well as against tyranny and usurpation. Our truceless war with Rome has ever ultimately rested on the conviction that Rome has adulterated the truth, and has, in many things, preached another Gospel. Can we logically maintain that conviction while we advocate inter-communion with a Church, in which, in reference to vital and essential doctrine, the truth has been almost equally adulterated ? Let us then, as a Church, make no compromising overtures ; let us stand distinctly apart from all doctrinal complications ; let us not modify our formularies, nor make alterations in our creeds. Yet, let us fail not, as individuals, to extend every brotherly sympathy to our fellow Christians in a Church that may have before it a blessed and eventful future." SEE ALSO Union with Oriental Churches. By the Rev. H. E. Fox. 3d per dozen, or Is 6d per 100. The Archbishops' Reply to the Pope's Bull. "Wliat is to be done ? 3d per dozen, or Is 6(/ per 100. Some Criticisms by the Church Association on the Archbishops' Reply to the Pope. 5d per dozen, or 3s per 100. To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14,Buckingham 8treet,8trand London, at the price of 2d each, or 12s per 100. is|^^^gE^^f5E^^f5E^^fg5^^^^^gg^^^as^^^5E^^^^^g^]% i ^m^^i^mm^^^^ mm^smm\mm\mm\mmm\m\mm[mmwElA\^SM 1 as I I ICnian nritlj -^ An Address delivered at the Church Congress, Norwich, 1895, By the Rev. H. E. Fox. the Churcli of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith." " Union, solid and permanent, can be based only on the common acknowledgment of truth."* The authority of each of these quotations — one ancient, the other modern — is too high to be questioned by any member of this Congress. They vpould go far to answer the question what constitutes a hindrance to Christian unity, if Article XIX. stated specifically what extent of error created a breach of communion ; or if his Grace of Canterbury defined what measure of common truth is sufficient for union. Neither authority having made this clear, it would ill become me to obtrude my private opinion. I therefore, as briefly as possible, review facts which have come under my personal observation, but are more or less limited to the Churches of Palestine. Theoretically, the hope of union may seem easier in the case of Eastern Churches than in that of Rome. In the former no rigid Tridentine Creed blocks our path ; no false decretals and no Papal claims have to be explained away ; and no rule of faith required, which robs with one hand what it offers with the other. So far as I know the Greek churches put no hindrance to the circulation of Holy Scripture, and Greek theologians would, I imagine, accept the Canonical Scriptures as the sole ultimate Court of Appeal, subject in some cases to the first seven General Councils, in others to less. * Archbishop Benson. No. 240.J But when all allowance has been made for this, the practical difficulties which remain are neither few nor small. They range themselves in two kinds. Those which exist on our side, and those which exist on the other. I take the latter first. I. A total disinclination, or rather indifference, on the part of Eastern Churches to union with the "Western. Greek ecclesi- astics are almost always courteous and sometimes even friendly towards Protestants. But their sympathy generally ends with an obvious willingness to receive gifts of money, or presents of Communion-plate, or at the least the flattery of well-meaning but ill-informed Anglicans. So entirely satisfied is the great body of clergy with their own position, and so ignorant of ours, that I do not believe there is the faintest general wish either to join us or for us to join them. And the latter could only be conceived of by them on the terms of our unconditional surrender. II. But there is not only a non volumus but a non possumus. To the orthodox Greek Church, certainly, and probably to the others, we are ecclesiastically worse than schismatics, and our Sacraments and Orders are at least doubtful. It matters not that we accept theirs. I am informed that the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem admits the rite of Chrism to be a form of laying-on of hands, and therefore, in his view, an equivalent for Confirmation. No one will question the kindness which prompts such tolerance, but many will doubt the wisdom of a concession which is not likely to lead to the smallest reciprocity beyond a few empty compliments from the Patriarch. For so rigidly narrow is the Oriental theory that before even my Right Reverend Friend could be allowed to perform any ministerial act in an Eastern church he must, perhaps, be rebaptized (with trine immersion and Chrism), and also be reordained. There are, of course, doctrinal difficulties with regard to the Nicene Creed too well known to need further reference. III. The third difficulty, which must be hinted at rather than explained, is political. The Greek Orthodox Church, at least in Palestine, is a big Russian machine, run for Russian interests and with Russian capital. It would not be prudent to make public all I know, but I am within the mark in saying that the policy which rules at present is not one which welcomes the increase of English influence in the East. But let it be assumed that for the sake of the sacred cause of unity the historic Church of England is willing to seek admis- sion for her members to one of the Oriental Churches. The question would then arise at which of the closed doors should she knock ? There are at least a dozen, and those who dwell behind them are as much at variance with one another as they are with us. But by a further stretch of imagination let it be assumed that this is only a matter of detail. No sooner should we have passed the threshold of any one of the Eastern Churches than we should find ourselves required to accept doctrines and adopt practices which to the instincts of the average Bible- taught Briton seem to be as far removed from primitive and Catholic truth as they are fatal to true piety or morality. The liturgies of these Churches abound in prayers, addressed to the Virgin Mary and departed saints. The doctrine of Purgatory and its natural corollaries, masses for the dead, and indulgences, are distinctly inculcated. A theory of the Lord's Supper, even coarser in its materialism than that of Rome, is illustrated by a ritual which, however attractive to the aesthetic eye, is intensely painful to those brought up to love the noble simplicity of our English order. A sacerdotal system is maintained which our greatest modern theologian has taught us finds no place in the Kingdom of God. The fundamental error of every fallen Church, the substi- tution of salvation by works for the covenant of grace, pervades their theory and practice. To many, also, it may seem that the existing condition of the great body of Eastern clergy offers a hindrance to union all but insuperable. Simony is universal. Sins which cannot be named are common in the convents. The pre-Reformation nunneries were innocent beside those of Palestine. Ignorant, avaricious, and indolent, however, as the majority of Oriental ecclesiastics notoriously are, it is not fair to judge Churches by the vices of their officials ; the less so as there are here and there noble exceptions, who would hail a reformation, even though their hands and tongues are tied by the selfish despotism of their rulers. But when a Church by the pablic acts of its highest officers, accepted by the great mass of its members, commits itself to gross and profane superstitions, a graver difficulty arises. The annual ceremony of the Hcly Fire in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a case in point. The casual tourist, who goes to gaze at this extraordinary spectacle as he does at the devil-dances of Ceylon, or the dervishes of Cairo, i^ not expected to have much sense of reverence or shame. But to the devout Christian, who realizes that tens of thousands of intensely earnest worshippers have been taught to believe that this act means the visible descent of the Holy Ghost, and conveys an eternal blessing to all who have witnessed it, there comes an unspeakably awful sense that for the chief actors it has been little less than the sin against the Holy One Himself. It is true that in private the Patriai'ch and his priests may deny any claim to have wi'ought a miracle. But the very denial condemns them ; for it is equally true that they dare not say as much in public, nor will they utter a single word to dispel a delusion which perhaps as much for '4 political as for personal reasons is far too profitable to be destroyed. Rome, to her credit, has long ceased to have any complicity with this monstroas survival of Pagan fire-worship. But so long as the Orthodox Greek Church maintains it, how is it possible that a loyal English Churchman can wish for union or commit himself by word or act which can be understood to imply approval of a Church which has departed so far from Apostolic faith and order ? Let every allowance be made for difference of race, feeling, and education. Let us not judge others who have been brought up under hereditary influences diverse from our own by Western modes of thought. Let us deal with them to the full extent of Christian charity. There still remains a gulf between the reformed and unreformed churches which no sophistry and no compromise are able to close. To shut one's eyes to facts is neither charity nor common sense. If union is to come there must first come a return ta Scriptural truth. This will never come till that truth has been firmly but lovingly brought to bear upon the erring. But, after all, what is the unity men are talking about ? Do we all know what we mean ? Are not many of us dreamers of a dream which, if we were awake, we should heartily pray might ever remain a dream, and nothing more ? The only unity for which we have any warrant to pray is the unity of the Spirit ; and the fashion of the unity is not an earthly conformity, but the oneness in which the Holy Father and the Eternal Son ever abide. The more we agree in accepting this truth, the more practical and the less visionary will be our talk about the unity of the Church. There is an anecdote recorded of one of my distinguished predecessors at Salisbury Square, which relates that there was ushered into his office one day a reverend gentleman in monastic garb, who with sincere earnestness besought him to join some association for prayer that all Christians might be more united among themselves. Mr. Venn listened patiently to the proposal, and then quietly observed, " Don't you think, my dear Sir, that it would be much more likely to lead to a satisfactory result if we were all to pray and strive first to be more closely united to our Lord Jesus Christ ? The rest would soon follow." See also " The Greek Church, her doctrines and principles contrasted with those of the Church of England." By the late Rev. Joseph Bakdsley, d.d. Price 2^d, post free. — " The Archbishops' Reply to the Pope's Bull. What is to be done?" 3d per doz., Is M per 100. — "Some Criticisms by the Church Association on the Archbishops' Answer to the Pope," 5d per doz., 3s per 100. To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand. London, W.C., at the price of 3d per dozen or Is 6d per 100. 4th Thousand.] THE MODERN CONFESSIONAL IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [liy kiui pcuiussiuu ot i^idiici-) Peek, Esq] " 1 would have great respect paid in Confession to your Confessor, for . . we ought to look upon . even though they may at them as Angels . No. 241.] cimes betray that they are human, and have human infirmities, and perhaps ask curious questions which are not part of the Confession, such as your name, what penances or virtues you practise, what are your temptations, &c. I Avould have you answer."' — PTJSEY'S advice to Sisters, in Manual for Confessors, p. 190. "It is a sad sight to see Confessors giving their whole morning to young women devotees . . this is not hearing confessions for God's sake, but for one's own." — PUSEY, Manual tot Coyifessors, p. 108. '' You may pervert this sacrament . . into a subtle means of feeding evil passions and sin in your own mind." — PTJSEY'S advice to the Confessor, in Manual, p. 102. " You seem to me to be habitually assuming the place and doing the work of a Roman confessoi", and not that of an English clergyman. Now I so firmly believe that of all the curses of Popery this is the crowning curse that I cannot allow voluntarily, within my charge, the continuance of any ministry that is infected "by it."— Bp. S. WILBERFORCE to Dr. PUSEY (Life, 11.-90;. " The experience of many a wound of the soul made worse, and many a fallen Confessor warn us that the instrument is able to kill as well as cure, and that it often wounds the hand of the untrained or unholy practitioner." — Charge of DR. GOTT, Bishop of Truro, 1897, p. 97. " He had known three clergymen who had prac- tised this teaching of habitual confession as a duty, who had fallen into habits of immorality with women who came to them for guidance. . . A discreet Confessor ! Is it possible that discretion can be a quality of every young clergyman ? " — ARCHDEACON ALLEN'S Speech in Convocation, July 4th, 1877. London : Printed byG. Norman & Son, Floral Street. Published by the Church Associatiok, and to be obtained at their Office, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand at the price of 2d per dozen, or Is per 100. 112tli Thousand.] 5000— s. 2.01. ^mM^^!^mi^im\^m^^w\ •i^5w^+ 5^ ■^ ^ +; a; "^ cc III ^ -^ a c o t. 2 o; =« c o « •5 Ji^ i; c'?^-^'^ c S »- f-i C D CO ^ -^ "tr O S 2 &, rt c r^ m ~ ,, O o * '^ q " 'Ti -ki •:;3 -j; -^ a; C C ^ « "^ C 3;; jj J. a; j- 9 5 ■^'C^'5^=^^:^'5£^-^^'5S;^^^<^^ 2 ► -^. T* .^^ -C *-■ ^ -=^ o o ? X,. -^i-J.! " MASS V "LORD'S SUPPER/' GOD'S MINISTER IS REPRESENTED BY THE GOSPEL TO BB AN AMBASSADOR FOR CHRIST TO KECONCILE MEN TO GOD, Uffei'iiig TO His people Means of Grace IN A SACBAMENT: HENCE LIKE A " Wise Steward " at His Master's Table HE DISTRIBUTES The ''Broken" Loaf d; Outpoured Wine AT THE EUGHARISTIC FEAST SHOWING THAT BY THE SIN-OFFERING FINISHED And Accepted 1800 years ago, GOD ANr> MAN ARE NOW IN "HOLY COMMUNION." THE STEWARD THEREFORE Taltes the Bead of tlie Supper-Table MINISTERING TO HIS MASTER'S GUESTS Whom He bids to the Covenant "Feast" of the New Testament, And " serves " {like his Lord) at the " Lord's Table." BY THE "OTHER" GOSPEL TO BE AN AMBASSADOR TO GOD TO RECONCILE GOD TO MEN, Appeasing God's Wrath by offering FOR THEM A SACRIFICE: HENCE LIKE A Jewish or Heathen Priest HE OFFERS UP T'lie Magically re-produced Body Mi this is not by Christ's institution z therefore it is neither necessary, nor yet of the essence." But a more puzzling question is next discussed, viz. : '* In ■what sense is there an offering in the Consecration ? " Siiarez places it in the destruction of the bread : De Lugo in the lower condition which Christ assumes by becoming edible \sic\ : Lessius in the sepai-ation of the "body" and "blood," because separation of these would naturally lead to death : Franzelin in the loss of all the functions and natural properties of humanity: Vasquez in the representation of a death : Bossuet, Scavini, and Billot in a symbolic immolation : but Br. Lacey himself concludes that the sacrificing-priest by putting on the altar the "Body" and "Blood" as sacramentally separate "signifies His death consummated on the cross by the shedding of blood and proffers it to God in worship, and as a propitiation for sixs." It will be seen that all this is pure undiluted Romanism, based on the vain imaginings of R. C. theologians, and only valuable for its rejection of certain theories about " the Prayer of Oblation," and as to a reproduction of some " oblation " imagined to be taking place now in heaven, of which Mr. Lacey said — " The High Priest of the Old Law used to enter in once a year into the Holy places that he might cleanse cr expiate the sanctuary, and tabernacle, and altar : under which covenant thenceforward daily sacrifices might go on iu the same place throughout the year. Therefore, if you take your stand on this analogy, it will follow that other sacrifices must be offered continually day by day in the Church, which is compared with the outer sanctuary, after the eternal expiation of Christ." He thinks, too, that in the Revelation it is still doubtful " whether the Apostle proposes the thinj^s in the heavens as patterns for church worship, or borrows his imagexy from the customary worship then iu vogue." * „ * The NEXT Chapter was held at St. Lucy's Home, Gloucester, on August 10th, when Br. Gorman forwarded a resolution from the St. Thomas Aquinas local Chapter — " That it is desirable that brethren who enter Religion should not withdraw from the Society ; and that if they are compelled to do so on. entering the Noviciate, arrangements should be made for restoring them to their place on the Roll in the event of their not being professed, and that in any case, theii" names should remain on the Roll as a supplemental list." Here we have the Romish conception of Monkery as constituting " religion," and the jealousy which makes rival "Masters " afraid of any divided allegiance in their "subjects." The East Midland Branch resolved — " That this Chapter holds it is most undesirable for Catholic clergy to agitate for the permissive use of the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. Rider — This Chapter hopes the subject may be introduced at a Chapter or Synod of the Society." This is interesting as shewing how unreal is the agitation of Lord Halifax for legalising the First Prayer Book. Even The Church Times complains of its many defects ; among thcni being that " Elevation is forbidden, it is made to appear that the use of the General Confession may be regarded as equivalent to the Sacrament of Penance, and there is no provision for the ablutions, or even the consumption of what is left of the sacred elements." I^ay, it is even left open whether the communicants need to kneel at reception. Compared with tlic standard of the S. S. C, the First Prayer Book is almost Ultra-Protestant: Lord Halifax values it only as a half-way house on the return journey to Rome. Two papers Avere then read by Br. G. Bayfield Roberts and the Rev. Edmund Wood, of Cambridge, the Canon-law experts of the E. C. U., insisting that the Fathers give " No support to the Anglican View," and that marriage with a deceased wife's sister is not forhidden by the Lata or Word of God, as Dr. Pusey -contended, but only by Canon Law. This is just Rome's con- tention, because it enables the Pope to dispense [for cash] with an obstacle merely ecclesiastical. Br. Wood said " Queen Mary was legitimate and Elizabeth a bastard." Another Romish principle was advocated by Br. Greatheed, ■who, under pretext of " modesty of conscience," read a joaper — " On what grounds (or under what conditions) are we justified in assuming the judgments of our own cousciencc to be correct, when our opinion differs from that of persons presumably as well informed -as ourselves ? " That is the old Jesuit doctrine of " probabilism " by wliich the dupe is led on to obey his Superior against his conscience on the ground that older, and wiser, and "holier" men think that what to him is sin, is lawful, if done in " holy obedience." The Master announced that ''he had just started a weekly paper in Plymouth whicli was given away free. This would sbortly pay its way, as people would be ready to advertize if the distribution of a certain number could be guaranteed. The 'insides' of magazines are all bad." Br. Denny (Mr. Lacey's colleague) " urged the importance of school managers seeing that proper books were used in their schools, and stated that he hoped a new and satisfactory book would be published early next year." * At the September Synod, lield September 14th and 15tli, 189-, at St. Mary ^Magdalene's, Munster Square, " Solemn Mass was sung," with " Sermon by Br. Ommaney." A resolution "That Brethren be requested and dcsii-cd to abstain from smoking after the refection at Synod " was lost. the moTcrs presumably regarding it as a Protestant form of using incense. A little liglit is thrown on the recent row about Hymns Ancient and Modern. lb seems that Messrs. Coles, Mason and Whittaker had reported, criticising some expressions about the saints. " They seem to have examined every hymn which contained reference to the departed, and objected to the Limbus Patrum, the Beatific Vision and Purgatory as unscriptural. Father Benson [of the Cowley Brotherhood] insists on the reteutioa of the hymns which were attacked, although his reasons were not satisfactory." The Master said : " We must fight for Hymns Ancient and Modern : " and a Dr. Mortimer, " from America, " said Hymns- Ancient and Modern " would be given up if these changes were made." We all know how The CImrch Times lent its aid. Sa the Romish hymns are not to be parted with. Br. Stallard read a paper on Baptism, declaring that " union "with Chinst does not necessitate the immediate gii't of the Holy Spirit." He did not quote in this connection 1 Coi*. xii.-13 or- John iii.-5. This very curious paper is part of a movement to erect Confirmation into a " Sacrament," partly to magnify the Bishop's Office with a view to Diocesan papacy ; partly to abate the scandal arising from " Regenerate " reprobates ; partly ta approximate to Rome with a view to an early " Reunion." It was followed by a laudatory puff of Thomas Aquinas, the- logical father of modern Romanism. Br. Hutton said, "The- new Manuals of Catholic Philosophy, by the Jesuit Fathers, profess to follow S. Thomas' teaching, and are valuable to English students." Br. Milner announced that his Organist had arranged the " Hail! Mary" as an anthem. We learn, too, incidentally, that Mr. Knott of 26, Brooke Street, Holborn, does the binding for the Society. * * * On the second day of the Synod, Br. Lacey attacked the Thirty-nine Articles. He said, "Two Provinces' \_i.e. Canter- bury and York Convocations] ' cannot define the Faith . . . The Thirty-nine Articles are a disciplinary measure [' forty stripes save one'?] setting forth the propositions which we are forbidden to impugn." Br. Turner said thej " contain a set of opinions, some of which are certain, some doubtful, as more or less I'GCcived. "We have to ascertain the value and nature of each proposition. We assent to them as an opinion. Tlio opening of Art. VI. shews itself that it is not 'De Fide,' because it is not itself in Holy Scripture." It would be hard to beat the Jesuitry of these statements. "Reverend" and "spiritual persons" get possession of "livings " by subscribing their unfeigned assent and consent to Articles which they afterwards describe in such language as the above ! Nobody ever contended that subscription to the Articles was necessary to salvation, so that the sneer of Br. Turner is beside the mark. But the gem of Romanising sophistry is perhaps the paper of Br. Sanderson. He said : — " The concluding statement of Art. 28, according to traditional use, has not been taken to forbid Reservation, neither does it condemn the special practices of Adoration (such as Procession and Exposition), nor say that they are wicked or superstitious. Though these practices were not delivered explicitly at the time of the Institution, yet we must consider that they were contained implicitly in our Lord's com- mand. If we take the words of Art. 28 as prohibitive, we must at once give up and cause our people to give up the bended knee after Consecration ; we must alter our method of giving Communion, and let the people sit round the Altar, and help themselves to its Holy Food. . . . Procession, Exposition, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament having been decreed by the Church [.sic] took such a firm hold on the devout minds of the faithful, that they remained popular up to the present day, not only in churches of the Latin Rite, but also in those of the English. . . . We are agreed as to the desirability and legality of Reserving; we already carry the Holy Sacrament about ; lift It up; expose It ; worship It ; and use It for blessing the people, when giving* Communion. Why not at other times? * This explains the mysterious antics of the " sacrificing sorcerers " who make crosses over tlie head of the communicant with the vessels. Tliey do not, liowever, "deliver the cup into their liands," which, they say, is " a good plan, as preparatory to, or as next to, the refusing the Cup." [See Bp. Kingdon's Fasting Communion, p. 88.) Hence too, it is the Wafer only that is reserved for the sick {see The CmjKCH Intelligencer, XIV. -177), because the denial of the cup would help forward "Eeunion " with Rome. 8 Wliat more stimulating to the devotion of those people of leisure who can remain in prayer after the Mass is done, than for the priest to unlock the Tabernacle door; draw aside its veils; expose the Ciborium within ; kneel on the step below the Altar ; and lead his people in adoring acts of love and reparation ? This is that simple function, known as the simple exposition of the Blessed Sacrament ; a function which many know from experimental knowledge is power- ful in making people realise the reality of our Saviour's adorable Presence." Br. Turner said, " The reasons given in the Catechism for the ordination of the Lord's Supper include worship and support, but do not specify all the reasons . . . the very fact of the CON'TINUAL reservation of the Blessed Sacrament is a continual remembrance, and the faithful follow it with all outward acts, vv^hich arise from the highest aspirations of love " — in other words, they worship the wafer as God ! The Master said, " In the Western Church devotion is towards the Presence in the Blessed Sacrament without neglecting pictures. If we were to treat the Blessed Sacra- ment as the Easterns do, it would certainly tend to irreverence." Having thus decided in favour of Rome as to idolatry, the next subject was "Absolution." Br. Swallow and Br. Turner were the leading pundits, and their papers were addressed to the alleged right of the Confessor to i^ake up past offences which had already heen absolved : though Br. Swallow evidently felt that this was rather risky, because, " While thus to recall a past sin may be helpful to some who are devout, clear- headed and well-instructed — there are many who do not fall under these heads, who would feel it an unreality thus to recall the past. With these, therefore, if we insist on their so doing, we shall only defeat our object and give rise to a sense of irritation on their part," That is a very suggestive revelation. The priest's absolution is so unreal that he may rake up the "forgiven " sin, and make it " matter " for absolution in order to humiliate and subdue his unfortunate " subject." But the patient may feel some *' irritation " at finding his quack medicine, which professed to have wrought an infallible cure, needing to be paid for over again as for an unsubdued disease. The slavery of the Confessional is well brought out in these secret caucuses of the "miserable comforters." The readers of the papei's all advocated the Roman practice of rubbing in old sores. Thus they hope to subjugate the victim and make him thankful to accept any penance or buy himself off at the Confessor's own price. Lehmkul and Gury, and other R. C. casuists, were quoted glibly: and when Br. Suckling ventured to " speak against the custom which prevails amongst the Romans of bx^inging up some past sin in Confession," the Master replied: "The practice is almost universal amongst the Romans. We find great difficulty in being certain about the contrition of our penitents ; and there is great danger of its becoming merely formal. The habit of confessing some former mortal sin has become so universal, that we ought to learn something fi'om it." But the cheated laity, who fancied that the absolution had blotted out their " former " ti^ansgression, are not unlikely to turn against their oppressors, so that the vaulting ambition of the " Master " may o'erleap itself. " Br. Sanderson asked whether The Priest in Absolution could be supplied ?" " Br. Ommaney suggested the study of the a'ules laid down in the ' Ordo minisstrandi sacramentum Pcenitentiae ' in The Bittiale Eomanum " : and " the Master thought a Tract based upon these rules would be useful." *** At the Chapter held at St. Matthew's, Westminster, on October 13th, Br. Corrance wrote " explaining that in his speech on Reservation, at the Synod, he had not intended to condemn the cultus of the icons of the Saints in the Greek Church. He wished there was more of that kind of devotion amongst ourselves. He only wished to shew that in the West, especially amongst Roman Catholics, the proportion of the faith was better observed, the cultus of the Saints being sub- ordinated to that of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament." A proposal to visit the Shrine of St. Edmund the Confessor fell through, as the Abbey closed too early. On the question put — "Are we teaching our people to come to Mass ?" Br. Pearkea 10 read a paper, complaining of the statement that "Mass was abolished at the Reformation," and that " the Sacrifice of the Mass as an Act of worship [is] not sufficiently tanght." Among cures suggested, he proposed, " Invite them to come quite close to the Altar." " Mass with special intention often helps them — a death, or a boy going to school, a marriage in the family, &c." He even suggested a dress rehearsal, the "priest to dress and go through the prayers and ceremonies of the Mass, after Evensong on Sunday " ! The Master said, " Whatever had been the past of the parish, the people don't come. He himself had tried everything, and yet had not succeeded." Something like a row took place at this " Chapter," when it was found that five candidates had been blackballed. The Master said that " for the first time in his life he felt ashamed of being a member." Br. Marshall asked a question about promises made as a condition of presentation to a benefice. The Master said that " such a promise was simouiacal." That is very suggestive. A patron stipulates for a certain promise, and the S. S. C. proceeds to whitewash the priest, who breaks his word, by assuring him that " it is simoniacal " to keep it. At Salisbury there is to be a new Branch " under the Invo- cation of St. Aldhelm, with Br, Fisher as local Vicar, and Br. Knapp as Treasurer and Secretary." Br. Fisher "wants Catholic Schoolmaster and Infant Schoolmistress for Cran- borne." " The Pax was given and the Chapter closed." The November Chapter was to be held on November 9th, at St. Mary Magdalene, Munster Square — " Mass at 8 a.m.," and an address by " Br. Lord Bishop of Zanzibar." Br. H. W. North having died, " Brethi^en are reminded of their obligation (Stat. II. sec. 9) to say Mass as soon as possible for the repose of our deceased brother." One can well imagine that a deceased brother, who had been mixed up with these secret conspiracies, would be a good deal lacking in " repose " and in great need of a " refrigerium," a Newman called it. Yet such are the men who are nowadays selected for missionary bishoprics, and who bask in the smiles of our Salisbury- Gladstone bishops. 11 Roll op the S, S. C. Aleock, P. C, C. of Knowle, Eristol. Amps, J. H., Warden o£ the London Diocesan Penitentiary. Anderson, J. K., K. of Mary Tavy, Tavistock. Anwyl, O. E., Chap, of St. Cat- herine's Home, Ventnor, Islo of Wight. Asher, A. P.,C. of St. Augustine, Stepney. Atkins, Baker, Barber, E.H., Chap. H.M. Prison, Warwick. Barber, li. W., V. of Thurston, Bury St. Edmunds. Barrett, S. A. J., C.-in-charge of St. Ann, Bridgeton, Glasgow. Barrett, T. S., 11. of Teversall, Mansfield. Barrett, W. C, Chap. oE All Saints' Convalescent Home, Eastbourne. Bartleet, L. B., Scaynes Hill, Hay ward's Heath. Baverstock, A. H. (Probationer), C. of Evesham. Baylay, A. M. Y. (Vicar), V. of Thurgarton, Southwell. Beal, S. G. (Vicar), li. of Komald- kirk, Darlington. Bell, P., C. of Fishponds, Bristol. Bell, G. L., E. of Drumlithie, Fourdoun, Scotland. Bennett, S. H., V. of St. Mary, Bishopshill Junior, York. Berry, C. H., C. of Broadstairs, Kent. Bingham, T., C. of St. Mark, Philadelphia. Binuey, Birkmyre, N. Y., V. of St. Simon's, Bristol. Blackwell, W. H., V. of Charlton, Marlborough. Bleaden, W. H., V. of St. Mary Magdalene, Paddiugtou. Branscombe, H. S., IMiiior Canon of Chester Cathedral. Brereton, J. L., V, of St. Peter, Baruslev- Bridge, Alfred Chas., C. of St. Michael, Kensington. Briggs, A. E., V. otE. Markham, Tuxford, Newark. Brown, C, V. of Verwood, Salis- bury. Buckham, F. H., R. of Tiptree, Kelvedon. Bucknall, M. A., C. of Plympton St. M., Devon. Bullock, J. F. W., R. of Pad- winter, Saffron Waldeii. Burton, A., V. of Stetchworth, Newmarket. Carter, J. D., St. Mary's Ch., Aberdeen Vic, Poplar, E. Carter, T. T., Warden of House of Mercy, Clewer. Cary, H. L. M., C. of St. John the Divine, Kennington. Chadwick, A., Cinderhills, Mir- field, Yorks. Chadwick, T. H., V. of Bole, Gainsborough. Chaplin, VV.; V. of Staveley, Kendal. Chase, C. R. (Mastek), V. of All Saints, Plymouth. Child, VV. H., V. of St. James, Plymouth. Church, S. C, Instow, North Devon. Churchyard, O., V. of St. Mat- thew, Newcastle-on-Tv^ue. Clark, P. N., E. of West Tofts, Norfolk, Clark, T. H., V. of Heybridge, Maldon, Essex. Clarke, C. H., V. of St. Mary, Hayiing Inland, Portsmouih. Clarke, S. E., V. of St. Matthew, Burnley. Cocks, A. E. C. (Vicar), V. of St. Bartholomew, liiigiiton. 12 •Coles, 'Cope, •Corrance, H. C, R. of AY. Bei-i:; holt, Colchester. Cowan, E. D. 11., Warden of St Lucy's Home, Gloucester. Cow gill, Harry, V. of Shireoaks Worksop. ■Cox, F. A., C. of All Saints, Ply mouth. Croft, H. L., C. of St. Barnabas Holbeck, Leeds. Crombie, E. J., C of Cowley St John, Oxford. Crouch, Wm. (Secretary), V. of Gamlingay, Sandy. Crymes, C. H., 4, Delamere Cres- cent, Paddington, W. Currey, E. H. S., Y. of St. Luke, Derby. Dale, A. M., Y. of Sneinton, Nottingham. De Castro, F. W., E. of Arley, Coventry. Denny, E., Y. of Kempley, Glou- cestershire. Dew, E.. All Souls, Hastings. Dixon, Horace Henry, St. ]\Iar- garet'.s, llkley, Y'orks. Dixon, J., C. of St. Mary Mag- dalene, Paddington. (Secre- tary, C.B.S.) Dowdeswell, E. E., Y. of Bushley, Tewkesbur3^ Drake, H., St. Bernard's Mon- astery, Cheltenham. D urn ford, Dyson, C, V. of Great Barlow, Chesterfield. Edwardes, H., St. Mark's Place, Wolverhampton. Eldridge, J. A., V. of Bishop Wilton. York. Elsdon, T. C. (Treasurer), C. of St. Gabriel, Bounds Green, N. Embry, James, C. of St. John the Baptist, Penzance. Etherington, Francis McDonald (Probationer), C. of St. Jude, Whitechapel. iEvans, H. M., V. of St. Michael, Shereditch. Feather stonhaugh, W. E., of Edmundbyers, Blackhill, Dur- ham. Fielding, G. F. M., Y. of St. George, Emu Bay, Tasmania. Filmer,'J.H.. C.ofEoath, Cardiff. Firman, S., Y. of St. James the Less, Liverpool. Fisher, C, Fisher, F. IL, Y, of Cranborne, Salisbury. Foote, J. A., Beckenham, Kent. Forster, H., C. of All Hallows on the Walls, Exeter. Foyster, H. C. B., C. of St. Peter, Barusley. Frith, Herbert Chas. (Proba- tioner), C. of St. Mary Mair- dalene, Munster Square, ]N^.W. Giraud, E. E. (Foreign Sec- retary), C. of St. Matthew, Westminster, S.W. Godwin, Yery Eev. E. H., Dean St. John's Pro-Cathedral, of Umtata (Dep. S.P.G.). Goldring, A., Y. of Halwell, Devon. Gorman, W. T., C. of St. Luke, ISTew Chesterton, Cambridge. Gottwaltz, H. B., 4, Queen Anne's Houses, Bideford. Graham, Leslie Geo., C. of St. Ga- briel Mission, Govan, Glasgow. Greatheed, S., Yilla Hope, Weston Eoad, Bath. Green, E., C. of St. Philip, Clerkenwell, London. Grepe, H. W., C. of St. Luke, Middlestowu, Wakefield. Gresham, L., C. of St. Gabriel, Glasgow. Griffin, J. E., 5, Grange Park, Ealing. Griffith, C. H., C. of St. John, Clevedon. Gurney, F., Heathfield House, Bovey Tracey. Devon. Guyer, Brett, C. of Cowley St. John, Oxford. Hall, Hamilton, G. C, V. of St. Luke, Middlestown, Wakefield. 13 Harding, Harvey, F.. Has^reU, Ed. Wm., R. of St. Columba, Lonniay, Aberdeen. Hatherly, H. B., C. of Christ Church, Southwark. Hatt, C. T., C. of St^ Cuthbert, PhilbeachGardcns,Kensin£;ton. Hatton, J. E., C. of Christ Church, Belper. Heath, E., Y. of St. Mary Mag- dalene, Brighton. Henly, O. P. (Assist. Secretary), Wolverton St. Mary, Stony Stratford. Hcphcr, C, C. of Holy Trinity, Ilkeston. Hcurtley, Hill, E. C, E. of Panfield, Brain- tree. Hinde, H. F., V. of Church of the Annii7iciation, Brighton. Hipwell, J., iv. of Elniswell, Bury St. Edmunds. Hollingworth, H., V. of East Molesey, Kingston-on-Thames. Howell, H. ^y.l C. of St. Faith, Stoke jN"eTvington. Hudson, Ernest Eoberts, C. of St. Peter, Plymouth. Hiime, W., Trinity College, Oxford. Huntley, Cecil, Hutton, E. E., Chap, of St. Mar- garet's Convent, East Grin- Hydes,'T. A., C. of St. Saviour, Walthamstow. Irving, F. F., The English Mission, Urmi, Persia. Jacobson, A. C. B., C. of St. Matthias, Sneinton, Notting- ham. James, A. C. T., Bury, Hunting- don. Jcrvois, W. H. H., V. of St. Mary Magdalene, Munster Square, N.W. Jesson, H., V. of St. Peter, West Bromwich. Jillings, W. J., Margaret Villa, Palace Eoad, Bounds Green, ]X. Jones,C. G., St. Martin's Eectory,. Worcester. Jones, G. A., V. of St. Marv'.s, Cardiff. Jones, Lewis, V. of Cadoxton, Neath. Karran, W. J., C. of St. Luke, Chesterton. Cambridge. Kemp, G. G., E. of Eawrcth, Chelmsford. Kempe, J. W., HockliflTc Eectory, Leighton Buzzard. Kempson. F. C, M.n., C. of St> Marv-the-Less, Cambridge. Kendall, T. S., E. of Holsworthy, Devon. Kilburn, E. E., C. of St. Ives,. Hunts. Kingdon, E., C. of St. Augustine, Stepney. Kingsley, Basil H. (Probationer), C. of St. Peter, Plymouth. Knapp, C. F. C, Woodland* Parsonage, Cranbourue. Kynaston, J. E., C. of St. Anne, Derby. Lacey, T. A., V. of Madinglcy, Cambridge. Landon, H. E., C. of Little Heath, Eomford. Lang, H. C, V. of All Saints, Southend. Larchin, Norman, C. of St. Mary Magdalene, Brighton. Lawson, Geoffrey (Probationer), C. of St. Mary Magdalene, Munster Square, N.W. Lebombo, Bishop ot (W. E. Smyth) . Lee, Edwin Maywood O'llara, C. of St. Catharine, Eothcr- hithe. Leeper, H. H., C. of St. Peter, Plymouth. Long, C. N., C. of All Saints, Small Heath, Birmingham. Longridge, J., Y. of St. Clement, City Eoad, London. McDougall, A. B., Organising Secretary ofAdditional Curates' Society for Diocese of i>;ith and WeUs. 14 McDowell, J. K.,C. of St. Mat- thew, Sheffield. Maitland, E. W., C. of St. Martm, Worcester. Maiden, H. E., C. of St. Saviour, Luton. Maiden, A. W. E. P., Bloemfon- tein. Mnltby, E. S., 7G, Queen's Eoad, Dalston. Malton, W. H. C, V. of St. Matthias, Sneinton, NoLting- Lam. Marshall, T. Outram, Organisins; Secretary of the English Church Union. Massiah, T. P., 25, Vaughan Avenue, Doncaster, C. of Hensall-cum-Heck. Mather, E. PL V., C. of St. Bartholomew, Brighton. Matthews. F., E. of Eothesay, Scotland. Mayne, W. J., V. of Poulton, Gloucestershire. Micilethwiute, A. J., V. of St. Luke, Chesterton, Cambridge. Milner, H. S., C. of Streatham, S.W. Mirrielees, Wm. (Probationer), C. of St. Thomas, Eegent Street, W. Molyneux, Murray, iN^icholas, G-. D., V. of St. . Stephen, Clewer. JN^icoUe, F. G. S., C. of All Saints, Plymouth. Korgate. C. F., 7, Northumber- land Terrace, "West Hoe, Ply- mouth. North, Oliver. E.B.,V. of Whitwell, Isle of Wight. Ommanney, G. C, V. of St. Matthew, Sheffield. Otton, G. W., C. of St. Martin, Salisbury. PauUey, F. E., C. of St. Paul, Swindon. Pearce, F. W., C. of St. Mary, Balham. Pearce, T. N., V. cf H.Ascension, Hyde. Pearkes, F., 8, Nelson Square, Blaekfriars, S.E. Pearkes, W. A., C. of St. Ives, Hunts. Pelham, A. Thursby, E. of Cound, Shrewsbury. Penrice, C. J.. C of St. Mary Magdalene, Paddineton. Phillips, W., C. of St. Ethelburga, Bishopsgate, London. Pollock, H. A., C. of St. Peter's, London Docks. Pollock, L. A., Chap, of St. Chad, Stuffynwood, Mansfield. Poole, A., E. of Laindon Hills, Essex. Porter, Potts, Powell, Preedy, T., Wemyss Castle, Fife- shire, N.B. Preston, C. M., V. of Warcop, Penrith. Price, S. J., V. of St. Ives, Hunts. Prince, H. E., Domestic Chap, to Earl of Scarborough. Prodgers, C. H., C. of Carlton-in- the- Willows, Nottingham. Puckle, T. J., C. of St. Luke, Chesterton, Cambridge. Eam, E., Vicar of St. John the Baptist, Timberhill, Norwich. Eeynolds, Eichards, M. J. B., 17, Wesley Street, Liverpool. Eichards, E. H., Howden, Yorks., C. of Handsworth, Sheffield. Eintoul, C. E., C. of St. Philip, N ewcastle-ou-Tyne. Eoberts, G. B. Bayfield (Vicar), V. of Elmstone, Cheltenham. Eobinson, G., V. of Ulgham, Morpeth. Eosa, H., C. of St. Catherine, Eotherhithe. Euddock, M. E., V. of Ardeley, Stevenage. Eumann, W. B., C. of St. Anne, Hoxton. 15 Hussell, C. R, V. of Lcnton, Grantham. Ruston, M. E., Church House, Caldecote, Biggleswade. Sanderson,.!. E. (Ccreraoniarius), V. of Alderholt, Salisbury. Scliolfield, J. F., E. of St. Michael, Edinburgh. Schofield, H.H., Scott, W. J., V. of St. Saviour, Upper Sunbury, Middlesex. Sellon, W. S., E. of Kettlebaston, Ipswich. Shaw, Shebbeare, E. E., C. of Annun- ciation, Brighton. Shipton, C. P'., C. of St. Thomas, Stamford Hill. Simpson, Henry Edgington (Pro- bationer), C. of St. Matthew, Westminster. Sirr.Wm. (Probationer), Camden Town Vicarage, N.W. Smith, B. H. P., C. of Holy Trinity, Harrow Green. Smith, C. J. E., Y. of Bromham, Bedford. Smith, D. G. F., Jan. P. C. of St. Paul, Liverpool. Smith, H. B., E. of Wymering, Portsmouth. Spooner, C, V. of Dean, Kim- bolton. Stallard, A. G., V. of St. Stephen, Devonport. Street, Ernest (Probationer), 31, Compton Avenue, Brigh- ton. Strudwick, C. H., C. of St. Mary, Ilkeston. Suckling, E. A. J., Y. of St. Alban, Holborn, London. Swallow, J. E., Chap. Hor- bury House of Mercy, Wake- field. Swire, S., Y. of St. Thomas, Huddersfield. Symonds, JI., Y. of Thornton, Leicester. Ta-lis, E. E., Y. of Denby, Huddersfield. Theiwall, Thompson, H. N., Y. of St. .Tohn the Baptist, The Brook, Liver- pool. Tiarks, Tottenham, E., E. of Thurning, (bundle. Townson, Traill, E. E. W. (Probationer), C. of St. Margai'et, Aberdeen. Trevelyan, J.C, Y. of St. Saviour, Luton. Trevelyan, W. B., Y. of St. Matthew, Westminster. Trower, Tugman, E. A.. Y. of Newton, in Cleveland, Yorks. Turner, C. F. G., E. of Coveney. Tyldeslev, Underhiil, E., Y. of St. Thomas', Toxteth, Liverpool. Utterson, F., Y. of St. Anne, Derby. Yowler, A. N., C. of St. Michael, Shoreditch. Waiuwright, L. S., Y. of St. Peter, London Docks. Waldram, Eeginald A. J. M. (Probationer), C. of St. Benet, Kentish Town. Walker, E. T. M., C. of St. Peter, London Docks. Wallace, C. E. J, C. of St. Clement, City Eoad, E.C. Wallace, C. S., Y. of Church of Ascension, Lavender Hill, S.W. Wallop, Hon. A. G. E., Xassau, Bahamas. Walters, J. Y., E. of Cherhill, Calne. Ward, J. W., C. of St. Mary the Yirgin, Cardiff. Ware, F. L., Y. of St. Mary, Edmonton. Wason, L. S., C. of Elmswell, Bury St. Edmunds. Watts, T. J., South Eirkby, Wakefield. Weber, E. P., C. of Welling- borough. Weekes, Walter, C. of St. Matthew, Sheffii Id. TG VVeekes, W. H., C. of St. Peter, Devizes. "Weston, White, C. H., C. of St. -Tolin the Evangelist, Miles Platting;. Whytehead, E. Y., Y. of Camp- sail, Doncaster. Wicks, C. E., C. of All Saints, Middlesboroiigh. Wilkins, C, C.^ of St. Thomas, Toxteth Park, Liverpool. Wilkinson, H. B., E. of Chels- worth, Ipswich. AVillett, F., Cudwells, Lindlicld, Hayward's Heath. Williams, A., Y. of Devoran, Falmouth. Williams, E. P., C. of St. Mary Magdalene, Paddington. Williams, H., P. of Ufford, Woodbridge. Williams, K. W., Y. of Minster- ley, Shrevi^sbury. "Williamson, •Willmott, Herbert Henry, E. of Eivenhall, Wilham. •■VViUoiighby, F., C. of Park Gate, Eotherham. Wilmot, F. E. W., Y. of Burbage, Euxton. Wiltshire, C. J., C.of St. Stephen, Lewisham. Wix, Cyril Poynder (Pro- bationer), E. of Witehampton, Wimborue. Wonnaeott, W. H., C. of St. John's, Bovey Tracey. Wood, Edmund Gr. de Salis, Y. of St. Clement, Cambridge. Woollcombe, T. C, C. of Eoath, Cardiff. Wynell-MayoTV, A., Y. of Dunster. Zanzibar, Bishop of (Yicar), (Wm. Eichardson). in^omii^^ated at octobee Chaptee, 1897. To Hie Order of Brethren. Haswell, Ed. Wm.] Eoss, Hy. I All in pre- James, A. C. T. [ vie Dew, Eoderick. > k'ious list. To Hie Order of Pr oh alio n era. Stokes, Fred. Wm., 87, London Eoad, Brighton, C. of St. Barnabas, Hove. Kenrick, Hy. Wm. Gordon, 231, Blackfriars Eoad, S.E. Passmore, Thos. Hy., 21, Blom- field Street, W. Hart, Herbt. Leslie, St. Catha- rine's, Burnley. Wigan, Hugh Jno. Geo., 13, Bartlemas Eoad, Oxford, C. of Cowley St. John. ■To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buclcingham Street, Strand. Loudou, at the price of I'Jd per dozen, or 6s per 100. Sth Thousand,] REVELATIONS OF ANGLICAN MONKERY. HE publication of the Acta of the Society of the Holy Cross in The Church Intelligencer of January, 1898, has led to the imprisonment of a monk of the Order of St. Benedict ! Not th at the paper in question had anything to do with the case, but by prosecuting this monk his brother monks hoped to arrest inconvenient revelations which their "Brother," they feared, seemed likely to make. The story of the theft of certain books from Canon Deedes, of Brighton, is told in full by The Sussex Daily News, and may be read in The Rock and English Church- man. During the course of the proceedings, it came to light that a monastery exists at " the Priory, 45, Glengall Road, Isle of Dogs," of which the head is Mr. Benjamin Fernlie Carlyle, known "in religion" as "Brother Aelred " or "Aeldred." He is said to have as another alias " Cyprian 'Vugustine," and to be working in the Church of England parish of St. John's ; and that the Vicarage of Lower Guiting is also used as one of its houses, under the fancy title of the " S. Bernard's Monastery, Cheltenham." A copy of the " Rule of our most holy Father St. Benedict " was shewn to these gentlemen in court, and ac- knowledged as being binding on them, with its vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, and its prohibition of the free use of the bath, and of " The vice of private ownership." The genuine Order of S. Benedict, as is well knowo, furnishes controver- sialists like Dr. Gasquet, who attack and assail the principles of the Reformation, and the character of the Protestant Church of England. The Judge, as reported in The Sussex Daily News No. 245.] of February 15th, said " He thought they were rules promul- gated recently, and under the authority of the Archbishop" ! The work is published by Burns and Gates, the well-known R. C. publishers. Mr. Drake (alias "Father Anselm") arrived in England from St. John's, Newfoundland, last year, has since been at St. Margaret's, Anfield, Liverpool, the " Hostel of God," 82, The Chase, Clapham Common, and is at present acting as curate to "Father Green" (also a member of the Order), the incumbent of Lower Guiting, Cheltenham. Mr. Drake, it seems, is not only, like the prisoner, connected with this Order of S. Benedict and with the E. C. U. (of which the prisoner was also an associate), but of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Cross Society, the Society of the Holy Rosary, the Guild of All Souls, and apparently of the Alcuin Club. The difficulty with which these facts were elicited will be seen from the following bit of the cross-examination in the police court : — Q. You are known as " Father Anselm ? " A. Yes. Q. Are you a member of the Church of England ? A. I said that I was a clergyman. Q. I asked you if you were a member of the Church of England? The Magistrate : Surely we are not going to have a theological discussion. I am not going to allow it. Mr. Hall : Here is a man as witness, on whom, I say, the whole of the prosecution rests. I want to test the credit of the witness. Surely this is no theological question ? Witness : I am a member of the Church of England. Q. Are you a member of the Society of the Holy Cross ? A. You can ?ay so. The Clerk : Why don't you answer? Mr. Eichards : He did. The Clerk : He did not. Q. Are you a member of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacra- ment? A. I am. Q. Are you also a member of the English Church Union ? A. Yes. Q. Also of the Society of the Holy Eosary ? A. Yes. 3 Q. Is tliis the Rosary of tlio Socio Lj ? (a crucifix, witli a siring of beads, produced.) A. I can't say. I can't say that tho Society has that Rosary. Q. Come, sir. A. I don't understand the question. Q. Do you mean to say that the Society does not use a Rosary ? A. I suppose they do. I don't know that they use that Rosari/. Q. I ask if this is one of tho Rosaries supplied to the members of the Society. A. How can I possibly tell ? Q. Are you a member of the Confraternity of our Lady of Perpetual Healthy A, I have never heard of the Society. Q. Not? A. I have heard of a Society something like it. Q. What name have you heard of like it ? A. There are sevei-al Societies in Europe I have heard of like it. I can't remember their names. *Q. Do you belong to any such Society ? A. No. Q. To anything like it ? A. No. Q. Are'you a member of tho Society of St. Osmund? A. There is no such Society. It has a different name now. Mr. Richards : This is a Society for publishing books connected with the/' Use of Salisbury." Everybody can belong to it. Q. Are you a member of the Guild of All Souls ? A. Yes. Q. Are you connected with the Society to which the prisoner belongs — The Order of St. Benedict ? A. I am a member of the Order of St. Benedict. Q. Do you conform to the rules of "our most Holy Father, St. Benedict " ? That is the volume of rules (produced) to which you conform ? A. That is so. Q. I want you to tell me this. You were down at Lower Guiting, acting as Curate to the Rev. Mr. Green? Some arrangement was entered into by which the Priory at the Isle of Dogs was transferred for a time to your place at Lower Guiting. A. I have nothing to do with the private concerns of the Societ}'. I believe it is going to be the Rectory. Q. Is this the address, " St. Bernard's Monastery, Lower Guiting." Is that the Vicarage ? A. It is to be the Rectory. The present Pope in his Encyclical, published in The Catholic Times, September 13th, 1895, explains the value and importance of the Rosaiy. He said — " It was particularly pleasing to observe how, amongst the many forms of this devotion, that excellent method of prayer, the Eosary of Mary, was coming more extensively into use and favour. It was, as he had said, particularly pleasing, because if he had earnestly endeavoured to promote the devotion of the Hosary, he well recognised how benignly the Heavenly Queen, whose assistance was invoked, had responded to his wishes, and he trusted she would shew her clemency in such a way as to relieve the anxieties which future days might bring. But he particularly relied on the Rosary for more fruitful assistance in extending the kingdom of Christ. More than once he had proclaimed that the object with which he was eagerly concerned at present was the reconciling of the dissentient Nations to the Church." The hesitation of the witness to describe himself as a member of the Church of England was not unnatural : and one of the letters stolen fi-om the prisoner (for he too was the subject of an act of plundering) throws such a remarkable light upon this point that one regi'ets it was not brought oui in evidence. The letter, which is dated August 2nd. 1897, is addressed to Rose (the prisoner) as " Dear Brother Alban " — ho was also known in "religion" as "Brother Oswald" — and it ran as follows — " I have heard nothing of the rumour to which you refer about Mr. , of St. , and when just now I asked my brother curate about it, he knew nothing. I think it very probable that rumour has been, as so often, exaggerated into fact. It is quite certain that he had not been received on Saturday {unless he had a dispensation to continve his ?cor^- in the Anglican Church)." The writer adds, "I think the allegiance of many of our brethren to the Anglican com- munion has been severely strained, and that there must be a serious leakage, but I am not at all behind the scenes." The writer of this letter is a member of the English Church Union, and his testimony to the rottenness of the " allegiance " of his " Anglican brethren,'' and his significant hint that their work could be "continued" as before, even after secession, under cover of a " dispensation " shews the need for sucli close quoi-tioning as Mr. Drake was subjected to. Can any imagination, however vivid, piL-turo ;i more coinplolu betrayal of the Church of Eiiglaiitl than the facts above disclosed. Here are clergymen already uuder solemn vov^^s to teach the religion of the Thirty- nine Articles, yet servilely copying the i^eculiarities of the Roman Church, turning their parsonages into " cells " for the reception of sham monks, and we might add, closing the Sunday School, and erecting confessionals without any faculty, though, we are thankful to add, the villagers at Lower Guiting stay away from their Parish Church now that it is transformed into a Mass-House. But what can the Bishop of Gloucester, to whom some at least of these clergy have been " presented," be about all this time ? At the Assizes it was elicited with ditiiculty that 'the issue of the warrant against Rose (the larcenous monk) was the direct consequence of his having insisted on having his papers restored to him when his " cell " Avas broken oi)en and his papers purloined by the "Brethren." The following are the shorthand writer's notes shewing this : — Mr. Marshall Hall: On the 11th January j'ou were threalcued with legal proceedings. On that did you write to Canou Deedes and ask him to issue criminal process against liosc H Witness : I have never written to Canon Dcedes in my life. Mr. Marshall Hall: Did Green write? IV^itncss : He may have done. Mr. Marshall Hall : Had you any share in the burden of it ? Witness : I do not quite understand you. I was interested in it. Mr. Marshall Hall : Did you in any way suggest that the best way to answer the writ issued against you was to have this young fellow arrested on a charge of stealing books from Canon Deedes ? Witness : That is putting it in rather an awkward way. The writ was issued against me for these documents, and my solicitor advised mc I nmst tell Brother Aeldred [Carlylc] he could not return tho books to Canon Dcedes until this writ was done with. We wrote to Canon Deedes and told him that If he tuished to secure his property he must take action against the prisoner. Mr. Marshall Hall: Did you write the letter? Witness : No. Mr. Marshall Hall : You saw the letter and knew what was in it ? Witness : I copied it out. Mr. Marshall Hall: Have you a copy now? G Witness: No. Mr. Marshall Hall : Cau you tell me the date of it, or about tlie date, if you cannot say exactly ? Witness : I think it was about the 12t]i or 13tli Januaiy. Mr. Marshall Hall : That was two days after the solicitors had written threatening you with proceedings, and one day before the writ was issued. Cau I take it from you that the purport of that letter was to advise Canou Deedes to take proceedings to recover his books ? Witness: Yes. Mr. Marshall Hall: Did you mention the words "criminal proceedings " ? Witness : I believe I did. I had been to Scotland Yard, and they said nothing could be done before a warrant was issued for the arrest of the prisoner. Mr. Marshall Hall: Was any letter written by Mr. Green? Witness : Yes. Mr. Marshall Hall : Did you see it .^ Witness: No. He told me he had written on the Monday following. Mr. Marshall Hall : It may be a coincidence or not that two days after the writ was issued against you this man was arrested on a warrant ? Witness : It was not a coincidence. Mr. Marshall Hall : It was a consequence ? Witness : Yes. Brother Alban's (aUas Oswald's) pajjei-s were raided under the direct commands of the Sujjei-ior, as we gatliei' from the following : — Mr. Marshall Hall : Did you write a letter which was shown to Canon Deedes and then sent to Fathers Green and Drake ? Witness : Yes. Mr. Marshall Hall : At that time Drake and Green were, to a certain extent, amenable to your orders ? Witness : More or less. Mr. Marshall Hall: You were in the place of Superior.' Witness : The Ordination was pending. Mr. Drake's (" Father Anselm's ") account of the mattei- corresponds : 3Ir. Marshall Hall: You had an authority from the Superior of the Order, Mr. Carlylc, to search the cell and you were acting under that authority ? Witness : Yes. Mr. 3Ia)'shall Hall: Haviag searched it what riglit did you think you had to the documeats there or to make use o£ them ? Witness : None, that I know of. Mr. Marshall Hall : Do you believe in the comruuuity of posscisiou which is part of the Order ? Witness : I do not beUeve one luombcv has a right to go into the cell of another. 3£r. Marshall Hall: Do you suggest that no momber has any individual right to any property at all ? Witness : Not M hen he is fully professed. Mr. Marshall Hall: Not even a pen? Witness : That may be so. Mr. Marshall Hall : Is your pocket handkerchief your own? Witness : No (laughter). Mr. Marshall Hall : I only wanted to know how far that doctrine went. Having got possession of these documents out of the eel), what did you do with that letter ? Witness: I said I would keep it safe until it was wanted. Having found Mr. Miller's private letter of November IGth, addressed to Rose at his parent's residence, and replying to an offer in writing, by Rose, of certain S. S. C. Ada, which lie professed to be selling on behalf of a friend, Mr. Drake sent copies of this stolen letter to every official of the S. S. C. The Rev. Outran! Marshall, organizing secretary of the E.C.U., may therefore have received a copy, and The Church Times paragraph apparently emanated from that body, if wc may judge from the following : — Witness : I heard the day before the letter was going to be pub- lished and I went round to The Church Times office to see if I was in time to stop it. 2Ir. Marshall Hall : Who told you it was going to be published ? Witness : I believe the Secretary of the English Church Union [Col. Hardy] had been to see the paper about it and I heard from him they were going to publish it. Thus a private letter known to be stolen, and in no way relating to the theft of Canon Deedes' property, was published in the interests of the S. S. C. and E.G. U., and with the knowledge and connivance of officials of those Romanizing bodies. When the Rev. Herbert Di'ake expressed his horror to find "traitors iu the camp," he reminds one of the old dialogue between 8 Pot and Kettle. Why, the whole " camp " was a camp of " traitors " ! "Quis tulerit Gracchos de scditione querentes." Who can stand a Church of England parson pveteiiding to be a Monk and a Mass-priest, yet shocked to find himself held up to light bj a "brother" in his own real colours ? But it may be said, What has the Church Association to do with all this ? To understand that, we must put out of our minds the facts which were disclosed at the trial ; for none of them were known or even suspected when in September last Mr. Rose called at the office to offer the Acta for sale. The printed documents of all secret societies are of interest to others, and come into the market from time to time owing to deaths, removals, change of convictions, or even accidental losses. Mr. Hose represented himself as having been a zealous Ritualist, but as disgusted with some extravagancies such as the celebration of Mass in Latin at Lower Guiting. He evi- dently ]5ossessed considerable familiarity with the literature of the " Rits.," and talked Huently and plausibly of their affairs. He was not known to be a " monk " nor dressed like one. If, as is alleged, he deceived his fellow-inmates at the " Monastery," and Canon Deedes of the E. C. U. (who was for nine years a member of the S. S. C.) is it strange that he should have been trusted as being the honest agent of some S. S. C. man (his "executors, administrators, or assigns") who did not care to iet Lis name appear in the transaction ? As a fact, we get hond Jide offers of such things from time to time. However, Mr. Miller took no notice of Rose's offer until he received from hitn a second communication, in writing, in response to which he named a price he was willing to give. The Acta were purchased, and the substance of them appeared in the IxTELLiGENCEii for January, 1898. When the lock of Rose's " cell " was opened, as Mr. Drake explains, with a key taken from another door, Rose's papers and letters of every kind were rifled, and carried off ; and he affirms that papers necessai'y for his defence were made away with. When anyone quits the ranks of the priest- party, whose secession may prove dangerous to them, it is customary to trump up charges affecting his moral character. Father Chiniquy, and Father McCabe whose confessional experi- ences appear in Tjie Church Intelligencer, XV.-41, are instances of this " Catholic practice." Rose alleged that the charge of 9 thoffc was purely " got up " to discredit his testimony, and it certainly seemed that he was being unfairly attacked for having given information to the other side. Meantime he had himself consulted Mr. Girdlestone, who for many yoai's had not been acting as the solicitor of the Association ; and without consult- ing us, a writ was issued by Rose to procure the i^estoration of liis stolen papers. After haggling through their solicitor, the Revs. Green and Drake at length sent back part of Rose's papers to " The Priory," where, however, they were at once opened and scattered about by some person or persons unknov/n, many of them, it is believed, being lost or wilfully destroyed. Prima facie, this was an attempt to crush a man by means which were hardly less dishonest than the ott'ence with which he was being charged ; and as Mr. Richards, the counsel for the prosecution, who frequently appears as counsel for the E. C. U., said " he would give the Church Association credit so far, that, having got the prisoner into a mess, they Avere trying to get him out of it." There is tinith as well as falsehood in that suggestion. Until Rose had been tried no evidence against him was known to exist, whereas it was known that he was being unfaii-ly handicapped, both by the loss of his papers, and by being arrested on a warrant. The facts disclosed on the trial were revelations of the monastic life and conduct such as could not have been anticipated by the outside world, and the trial has incidentally brought to light not mei^ely the un worthiness of Rose, but the thoroughly advanced Romanism which is tolerated by our bishops, and encouraged in our Theological Seminaries. Mr. Justice Grantham by whom the case wastr-ied was so well known to be a vcr}'- High Churchman, that the counsel for the prisoner struggled hard to get him sent to the Sessions. The summing up, which was in aggravation of the prisoner's oft'ence, contained the following remarks, which though not supported by anything in the evidence were naturally seized upon by The ( 'htirch Timefi and Church lievieio. His Lordship said — " When they found that members of the Church Association were trafficking with a spy, and inducing a member of this Society to betray their secrets, the Church Association and the solicitor of the Church Association must not be surprised if tlie view taken of their fonduct was unfavourable. There could be no doubt that they were trafficking with a man whom they knew was a member of this Societi/' 10 and buyinor of him what were supposed to be the secrets of the Society. Dealing with the facts of the case, he said the jury had nothing to do with fights between the E.C.IT. and the Church Associa- tion. They had only to do with the conduct of one Society, for the whole of the defence was the defence of the Church Association. The Church Association's solicitor was defending the prisoner. The Church Association's s,olicltor issued the writ against Mr. Drate. . . . The interposition of the Church Association was most unfortunate. It seemed to him they were responsible, he would not say for the prisoner's taking the books, but for his taking the other things he sold. They had got him in tow, as was shewn by the letter of November 16th. He was then still a member of the Society, and they were buying these things from him, and it was they who threatened the proceedings. They wanted to get the letter, and any other documents the prisoner had. They did not like Mr. Drake having them in his possession. It was they who issued the writ on December 11th, with the name oE Mr. Glrdlestone on the back of it for the return of the plaintiff's goods and documents, or their value, and damages for detention." So grave a misconeeption led Mr. Miller, Avho was present, to address to his Lordship the following letter : — Church Association, 14, Buckixgha:^! Street, Strand, W.C. My Loed, London, Fehruanj l^th, 1S9S. Under the advice of Counsel, I write to your Lordship to state that I was in Court yesterday, and having regard to your Lordship's remarks about the Church Association, I ask permission to state as follows : — 1. Your Lordsliip says: "It was the Church Association who issued the writ on December 11th." I reply — The writ was issued by Eose, without the advice, approval, or knowledge of the Church Association, who in no way instigated that action. 2. Your Lordship says: — "The Oiurch Association's solicitor issued the writ against Drake." I reply— Mr. Girdlestone has not been the solicitor to the Church Association fol* many years past, and it was only when Eose was arrested and protested his innocence of the charge that the Church Association instructed Mr. Girdlestone, who was already acting for Eose, to secure him a fair trial. 3. Your Lordship says: — "There could be no doubt the Church Association were trafficking Avith a man whom they knew was a mem- ber of this Society (S.S.C), and buying of him what were supposed to be the secrets of the Society." I reply that Eose was not a member of the S.S.C, and could not be, as he was a layman. At the time that he offered and I purchased the papers, I did not even know that he was a monk or a member of the E.C.U., and I knew of no 11 reason to doubt his honesty. I now see that like the friends of his own party I have been grievously deceived. The Holy Cross Papers referred to by your Lordship, and which I bought, have not been the subject of any litigation, and there has at present been no proof that they were stolen. I have the honour to remain, Your Lordship's obedient Servant, Heney Miller, Secretary. The Right Hon. Sir W. Grantham. And next day from the bench the Judge made the following statement (February 14th) : — " I have had a letter in reference to a case tried, a day or two ago, the case of the prisoner. Rose, called ' the Monk.' It was said in Court that he was defended by the solicitor, Mr. Girdlestone, the solicitor for the Church Association, and I, of course, accepted that statement. I found his name was in a book which was brought forward on the part of the prisoner to shew that the witnesses for the prosecution were professing members of the Church of England, whereas they were really members of the Church of Eome, namely the rules of St. Benedict. Mr. Grirdlestone's name was in that book, and it confirmed, it seemed to me, the statement made in open Court, that Mr. Girdlestone was the solicitor to the Church Association, and I naturally therefore assumed that to be true, and I made some remarks which were certainly not very complimentary to the Church Association, on the fact that their solicitor was acting on behalf of Eose, and was acting on the writ which they issued (Mr. Girdlestone issued on behalf of Eose) against, I think, Mr. Drake, one of the clergymen. Well, this letter is from the Secretary of the Church Association, who says : " My Lord, under the advice of Counsel, I write to your Lordship to state that I was in Court yesterday, and having regard to your Lordship's remarks, &c." He goes on to say that the writ was issued by Eose without the advice or knowledge of the Church Association, who in no way initiated that action. It was stated that Mr. Girdlestone was the solicitor for the Church Associa- tion, and as he issued the writ, I assumed he did so as the solicitor of the Church Association, who wanted to take proceedings against Mr. Drake and the Canon, I forget his name — no, not Deedes — the head man, Carlyle. He says Mr. Girdlestone has not been the solicitor for the Church Association for many years past, and it was only when Eose was arrested and protested his innocence of the charge that the Church Association instructed Mr. Girdlestone, who was already acting for Eose, to secm'e him a fair trial. On the statement that the Church Association were trafficking with a man they knew to be a member of the Holy Cross Society, he says : 12 " E-ose was not a member of the Society, and could not be so, as be was a layman." "At tbe time," be says, "I offered to purcbase tbe papers I did not know be was a monk, or a member of tbe E.C.U., and I knew of no reason to doubt bis statements ; I now see tbat like tbose of bis own party I'bave been deceiv^ed." I assumed tbat he did know tbat be belonged to tbat Society at tbat time. As be certainly did deceive tbe members of tbe E.C.U. and of tbis Society, be may have deceived tbem. Furtber be says : " tbe Holy Cross Society's papers referred to bad not been tbe subject of litigation, and tbere was no evidence that they bad been stolen." Tbe evidence in Court sbewed tbat tbey bad been stolen, practically stolen, for tbey were obtained surreptitiously. I bave no otber observation to make, but I tbink it is only due to state tbat I accept Mr. Miller's statement as to wbat be says about Mr. Girdlestone being tbeir solicitor, and in otber matters. I do not wisb it to go fortb tbat I bave done injus- tice to tbe Cburcb Association or anyone else." To wbich Mr. Miller replied : Chubch Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C. London, Febmary 18th, 1898 . My Loed, I beg to be allowed to tbank your Lordsbip for tbe generous and prompt manner in wbicb you withdrew tbe charges against tbis Association, wbicb, through a misunderstanding, you were led to make in giving judgment in tbe case of tbe " Queen v. Rose." May I just mention that so far from " trafficking with a spy," E.ose's offer was originally made on tbe 29th September, when be called at my office, and in my absence proposed to sell some of tbe "Acta" of the Holy Cross Society, which he was offering on behalf of "a friend." Of tbat proposal I took no notice whatever ; but on the lOtb November Rose wrote referring to bis former visit, and saying tbat his " friend " would take any reasonable price. Not till then did I entertain tbe proposal which he pushed upon me, without any seeking on my part. At tbe time of your Lordship's remarks, when giving judgment, I felt very much iaclined to ask permission to go into tbe witness box and make a statement, but I thought it would be quite irregular, and perhaps would be displeasing to your Lordship. I have tbe honour to remain, Your Lordship's obedient Servant, {Signed) Heney Millee, The Eight Hon. Sir W. Grantham, Secretary. The Assize Court, Lewes. To be obtained at the Office of the CnnRCH Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, at the price of 8ci per dozen, or 4s M per 100. 4tli Thousand.] a s. s. J. Er SOCIETY OF ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST. THE COWLEY FATHERS. X OTHER of the most active Romanising Secret Societies, is the Sociehj of St. John the Evangelist, commonly known as the Cowley Fathers, who sock to introduce the Confessional into parishes under the guise of holding "Missions." The list of Associates is here published for the first time, but is complete only up to the year 1896. Lay-associates are required " to communicate with special intention on certain feasts " : to "communicate if possible, every week, and on the greater festivals, /as^mg ": "when the conscience is troubled, to make confession to a priest as soon as conveniently may be " : " to avoid attendance at all places of worship inconsistent with the discipline of the Church of England." When admitted, the Superior "grants the spiritual partak- ing in all prayers, alms, and other good thijigs v?hich are done among us," and gives him a cord to wear, which is " blessed " by the Superior. The higher grades of the Order shroud themselves in mystery : but the following account of them taken from Mr. Walsh's Lecture before the Church Association in 1896, will give some idea of their modes and motives. " At one time they were members of the Secret Society of the Holy Cross, but they are no longer allowed to belong to that Society. The Cowley Fathers teach many things unwarranted by the Word of God : " (1) Their distinction between mortal and venial sin is of this kind. Father Maturin teaches in his Confession and Absolution that while ' mortal sin ' ' destroys the soul's union with. Christ ' and ' alienates the soul from God ' yet there ' are many sins which have not these disastrous consequences.' No. 246.] " (2) The ' Fathers ' are all bound by perpetual vows of poverty, ' chastity,' and obedience, and are in reality, not so much Monks, as Friars. ' Father Benson,' who for many years was the Superior of the Cowley Fathers, wrote an introduction to a book entitled The Religious Life Portrayed for the Use of Sisters of Mercy, in which the ' Sister ' is told that 'she is no more her own, but Grod's ; and she must obey her Superiors for God's sake, yielding herself as wax, to he moulded unresistingly.^ After, perhaps, giving a large fortune to the Convent, she is told : ' Accept the food set before you, as though given out of mere charity, and however coarse or uninviting it may be, reflect that you do not deserve even that.' " (3) The Cowley Fathers' love for Roman ways is seen in many directions. At a meeting of the congregation of St. Alban's, Holborn, held in the summer of 1896, ' Father Maturin ' said : — ' I am Irish, I love Ireland, and all things Celtic, and, as a consequence, all things Roman.' '' (4) Their love for Popish penances. In their Exposition of the Beatitudes, we are told that ' Gruided by the same Holy Spirit which led Jesus into the wilderness . . . some have exceeded in silence, some in fasting and abstinence, some in the use of sharper sufferings, some in watching, sorne in blind and ready obedience .... some have sought the lonely cavern, some have raised the exposed pillar.' Does this refer to such practices as those of ' St. Simon Stylites,' who is said to have erected ' a pillar,' and then sat on top of it for twenty years, without once coming down again ? Is not the ' blind and ready obedience ' of these Cowley Fathers the same as that of the Jesuits ? " (5) The exaltation of the clergy. In their Exposition of the Beatitudes we read that priests ' are peacemakers under Him, who carry on this work for Him, applying the precious Blood to the souls of men by the Sacraments for the remission of sins.' This same book teaches that ' The priest is permitted to share certain sorrows of Christ in which the layman has no part ;' and that priests ' have been made partakers in a chosen way of the priesthood of His only begotten Son.' " (6) The Cowley Fathers love images. In a Catechism of the Creed and Commandments, published by them at Calcutta, the Ten Commandments are printed in tlie abbreviated form common in Roman Catholic countries, and in order to prevent their converts knowing the truth, they have added to the Word of God, for the Second Commandment reads thus : — ' Thou shalt not worship Idols.'' It will be observed that they omit that portion which forbids the making and bowing down to images, and are guilty of a forgery of God's Word by adding to it the word ' Idols.' " (7) Their objection to controversy. In their book on Parochial Missions, we read : — ' It is a fault, then, in preaching to be too argumentative. Argument provokes rejoinder ; it cbills the affections ; a7id, ahove all, it hides the simple dignity and enfeebles the true power of the ambassador of Jesus Christ and representative of His Church.' According to this view, men are to believe whatever the preacher says, though he gives little or no argument in proof. To give reasons might lessen the ' dignity ' and the ' power ' of the priest, whose motto seems to be ' shut your eyes, and open your mouths, and take what I will give you.' " (8) The Cowley Fathers promote the abominable Con- fessional. In their pamphlet entitled S^iggestions for the Conduct of a Mission, we read : — ' The clergy must be prepared to hear confessions at all times during a mission, from morning to night. Those persons who have attended the Instruc- tion Classes in Church will not in general need any further instruction in private before making their confession. Illiterate people ivill always require the help of the priest to question them.^ The clergy are recommended in this pamphlet to consult the notorious Priest in Absolution for ' further advice as to hearing confessions.' This is the indecent book which Lord Redesdale exposed in the House of Lords in 1877, and of which a late Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Tait) declared that it was a disgrace to the community. In Father Maturin's ' Con- 4 fessiou aud. Absolution ' it is taught that confession to a priest ' is the one covenanted and assured way of receiving forgiveness in the Christian Church ; ' and that ' the Absolution which you have received is the flowing forth to you, from the Cross of Jesus, of God's full, free, pardoning grace.' Those who go to the Confessional are urged to keep secret all that passes. ' You should be most careful,' writes Father Maturin, ' never to speak to others of your Confessions, even if it were only to tell them what good advice you received.' At the close of his book, he gives a set of ' Questions on the Ten Command- ments,' for the help of those who propose going to Confession. Some of those on the Seventh Commandment Mr. Walsh dared not read to a mixed audience." To Father Page, the present head of this Society, Bp. Creigh- ton wrote as follows : — FuLHAM P.VLACE, May 25th, 1897. My DEAR Father Page — I willingly give my consent to the proposal of the Society of St. John the Evangelist to open a house in the diocese of London. The work of the Church is so heavy and its responsibility is so great in this vast popu- lation, that such help as your Society can render to the parochial system will, I am sure, be heartily welcomed, and I trust by God's blessing will prove most useful. — Yours truly, M. London. A site in Dartmouth Street, Westminster, has been already obtained for buildings which will contain " cells for about twenty-five visitors during retreats and a chapel, having separate access from the outside and seating about 140 ])ei*sons, to be used for retreats, meditations, instructions, lectuies, and other special purposes of the Mission." The Guardian, in reporting this (Nov. 24th, 1897), says it will " provide the Fathers with a house where the regular rule and life of the community, the daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist, and the recitation of the Divine Oifice, can be duly observed as in the mother house at Oxford." i^ssociiitcs of the Sacictn of 1896. |oIjn th ^buitgeltst, Bombay. Rt. Rev. Louis George Mylne, Bishoj) of Corea, Rt. Rev. Chas. John Corfe, Bishop of ... Bombay ... Seoul, Corea Priests. Athawale, Narayan Vishnu Bailey, Thomas Hoklen ... Barrett, Tufnell Samuel . . Barrett, William Carter ... Bathe, Anthony Beale, James ... Behbington, John Henry ... Ben Oilel, Maxwell Mochlufl" Bevan, William Henry R. Blagden, Canon Henry Blake, William Henry Bradnack, Arthur W. Bratt, Arthur J. Browne, AVilliam Henry ... Bryan, Edward Henry . . Bull, Henry Power Callaway, Canon Godfrey Carlyon, Hubert Edward Carmichael, James S. Carter, James Drnmmond Chase, Charles Rose Christie, Francis William Christie, Henry Charles ... Clark, Thomas Humphris Clark, Paul Newbury Coit, C. W. ... Cooke, John Roper Coope, Frank Egerton Cox, J. Charles Curtis, Charles J. Daniel, Charles Andrew ... Davenport, John Metcalf De Winton, Frederic Henry Drake, Herbert Dunlop, Henry Beachcroft Dunnett, Arthur William ... Huhli, India Croivlc Mansfield Richmond, Surrey Fridaythorpe Duns, Scotland Littlchampton U.S.A. Phokoane, S. Africa Slough Tanjore, S. India Tydd St. Mary ■ ■ Hiiddersficld Urmi, Persia Selby Downham, Ely Kafiraria, Africa Harlesden Province of Quebec, Canada Poplar Plymouth Aberdeen Brighton Heybridge, Maldon . . . West Tofts, Mundford U.SA. Doivnham, Ely ... Eastbourne Holdenby, Northants Savannah, Ga., U.S.A. ... Dartmouth Nevj Brunswick Colombo, Ceylon Folkestone ... Crowboi'otigh Badulla, Ceylon Dutton, Cliarles Adolphus Eastgate, Cliarles Edwanl Ellis, Thomas ... Filmer, John T. Francis, Joseph M. Geare, John Holwell Godden, Arthur J. Gore-Browne, Wilfrid Hallett, Cyril Hastinf^s, Francis Henry Hedley, William Hill, John Reuben Holland, Frederick Arthur Holmes, Canon Ernest Edward Howis, Charles William Image, Cecil d'Enville Isaac, Edward Whitmore Ives, Robert James Jackson, Henry Marshall Jenner, William Edouin ... Kettle, Alfred Cooke Kimball, Charles M. Knowles, Canon J. H. Lane, Fred Holding Langridge, Albert Henry Laurie, Albert Ernest Leary, Philip Herbert Lewis, Daniel Ley, Robert Gerald Lord, James Henry McLaughlin, Chas. Walter Maddox, John Mortimer Margoschis, Arthur Mason, James Maturin, Francis Edward Mitchell-Innes, Reginald J. S. Moat, Francis Davis Moffett, George Herbert Mountain, Jacob Murdoch, Canon Alexander Drimmie Murray, James Arthur Nicholas, George D. Noel, Frederic Augustus Douglas Norton, William Alfred ... Olphert, John Page, Walter Sylvester ... Payne, Alfred Keighlcy Ramsgate liangoon, Burma Roath, Cardiff Japan Milton, Dclairaie, U.S.A. Sawyerpuram, S. India Darlington Becclnvood, Slough Stratford -on- A von Folkestone Banda, India Cuddesdon ... Chelmsford Trinidad, W.I. Worcester Roath, Cardiff ... Pau, France Poona, India Canada Eric, Pa. U.S.A. New York, U.S.A. . . . North Rode, Cheshire Vauxhall ... Edinburgh Notting Hill Mcrthyr Tydfil Kaffraria, Africa, Bombay London Bury Nazareth, S. Indict Leicester London ... Edinbiirgh St. Helier, Jersey Neio York, U.S.A. Deddington, Oxford ... Edinburgh Nagjnir, India Clewer London Redruth Moville Londonderry Nassau, Bahamas Baldersby Thirsk Payne, C. A. Prime, Augustus Rawson, W. Ignatius Suell Kede, Wyllys Reeve, Edwanl John Rickard, Thomas Rivington, John Alfred ... Rivington, Cecil Stanstiehl Robinson, Aug. Gossage Romestin, Augustus H. E. de Ruck, George Sanders, Henry J. M. Scotcher, David Fortington Sharpe, Charles Henry ... Simpson, James Small, Richard Smart, Robert P. Smeaton, Reginald'Gordon Willies Smith, Charles Pressly ... Smith, Charles Sydney ... Smith, J. Stewart Sugden, Edward Summers, James F. Sweet, Charles F. Taylor, Alfred Charles ... Thrupp, Herbert Inglis St. John Titcombe, John Charles ... Traill, R. Trenholme, Edward Craig Trevelyan, John Charles ... Tyrwhitt, Cecil Booth Valentine, Henry Tristam Waghorn, Arthur Charles Wallop, Hon. Arthur George E. Walters, John Vodin Watkins, Oscar Dan Wilkin, Sydney W. Wentworth Williams, Henry Charles Williamson, F. P. Woodward, Herbert Willoughby Xaba, John J. Yates, W. Lincoln ...Brighton, Mass., U.S.A. Metheringham Baltimore, U.S.A. Fleetwood Rangoon, Burma Littlehampton ... Huhli, India Whitby Kelvedon ... Milton, Kent Fulham Malvern Link Longhope, Gloucester Charlottctown P.E.I. Lytton, Br. Columbia Capetoivn ... Kingsbridge Oban Sydney, New South Wales Kansas City, Mo., U.S.A. Coupar Angus, N.B. Newport, Mon. Presque Isle, Maine, U.S.A. Clifton Musbury Woodbi-idgc, Suffolk ... Insch, N.B. Canada ... Luton, Beds Cauldon St. Paul's Walden Newfou7idland Burgh, Lines. Cherhill, Calne. Alahabad, India Cairo, Egypt ... Dalston Lavender Hill Magila, Zanzibar Kaffraria Worleston Adams, W. F. Archer, Leslie Warner 3Laijmnx. Nev; York, U.S.A. Dcvenport Ashdown, William ... ... ... ... London Bird, George... ... ... ... Sheivsbury \sic\ Boon, Charles ... ... ... .. ... Wisbech Caldwell, W. M. .. ... .. Washington, U.S.A. Cottrell, John Albert ... ... ... ... Liverpool Craister, Thomas L. . . ... ... ... Kaffraria Dodson, Richard Ball ... ... ... Brighton Downing, L. T. P. .. ... Philadelphia Fisher, E. R. ... ... ... ... St. Aug. Canterbury Ford, Frank A. ... ... ... ... London Frith, Herbert C. ... ... ... Westminster Grey, A. H. . ... ... ... Blocmfotitein Gardner, David ... .. .. ... Poona, India Halifax, Right Hon. Viscount . . ... Hickelton, Doncaster Hay, John Stuart ... ... ... Croydon Hodgson, W. ... ... ... .. Clapham Common Johnston, David William, F.R.c R ... ... ... Edinburgh Kearney, Henry E. ... ... ... Lichfield Levett, Basil ... ... ... ... ... London North, Herbert G. ... ... .. North Woolioich Ponsonby, Hon. Gerald .. . ... ... London Quin, Henry Robert . . ... St. Aug. Canterbury Sharman, Arthur . . ... ... Leicester Sheryer, Daniel ... ... ... ... Plunistead Thorpe, Arthur Robison ... ... ... Halifao' Turner, J. Beresf ord ... ... ... ... Southampton Vick, Harry William ... . ... Ipswich Willimott, John S. ... ... ... . Chippenham Willmott, Edgar Thomas ... Capetown Wilkins, Robert George ... Wlloughby, S. Oborn ... ... ... . Plymouth Yioung, William Milner Neville ... ... ... Lincoln Associates are requested to apply to the Father Superior in case of a New Cord or Manual being required; also to inform him of any change of address. All those who object to this teaching in the Church of England, should support the Chdkch Association, 14, Bncking- hani Street, Strand, London. To be obtained at the Oflice of the Church Association, 14, Buckingliam Street, Strand, London, at the price of 5d per dozen, or 3s per 100. Sacrilegious Ordinations by riembers of the E. C. U. HE English Church Union does not call itself a secret society, yet it is largely officered by members of secret Societies, such as the C. B. S. and S. S. 0. ; it refuses to allow its list of members to be purchased by the public; and it keeps back from the knowledge of its own members various important doings which are not so much as mentioned in its official Gazette. One may search it in vain for any mention of the Eeport of a Committee appointed on December Gth, 1881, to investigate the re- ordination of a Deacon by another member of the E. C. U who was then acting as a clergyman of the Church of England, though he had been secretly " consecrated " a " bishop " by some Jansenist prelate, or other " wandering star," and who on his death-bed openly sought " reconciliation " with the Church of Rome. This very curious Report has never been published and is a sample of the way in which the ministry of the Church of England is infested with parasites of foreign origin and alien sympathies through the treachery or inaction of our own Bishops. Another reputed "Bishop" of the same "Order of Corporate Reunion " is Dr. F. G. Lee of Lambeth to whose papal and mariolatrous teaching the attention of Dr. Davidson, his diocesan, was repeatedly drawn, but who nevertheless enjoys complete immunity under Episcopal protection. Parkstone Church is notorious for its wafer-worship, the incumbent (Canon Dugmore, M. E. C. U.) being a member of the C. B. S., and its East window shewing a Lamb upon an altar as if in caricature of the Revelation v. -6, which it thus delibe- rately misrepresents. It is obvious that the worship paid by the congregation to the consecrated wafer when Mr. Elphinston- Robertson, as described in this Report, " officiated in that church as a priest "must be accounted mere idolatry, even on Mr. Dugmore's own principles. The reiteration of Orders is accounted sacrilege by the E. C. U. itself, and a more scandal- ously flagrant act of " schism " cannot be imagined than the conduct of these sham ordainers and sham ordinees who remain in the ministry of a Church the validity of whose commissioa to the Ministry they thus explicitly repudiate. No. 247.J For a fuller account of this " Order of Corporate Reunion " our readers must refer to Mr. Walsh's Secret History of the Oxford Movement, -wliei'e it will be seen that Dr. F. G. Lee himself claims to have membei's of his " Order " in every diocese, and another ex-member of the English Church Union, the Rev. Philip Fletcher, states that the number of clergy who have thus been re-ordained amounts to no fewer than eight hundred ! Yet Bishops who eagerly require the replacement of a flower pot if removed without a faculty, and who " charge " with vigour against Evening Communions, have no word to say against this traitorous conspiracy which throws contempt on the office with which they have been entrusted on behalf of the Protestant Church of this Nation ! It seems that Mr. Robertson produced a parchment Certificate of his Letters of alleged Priest's Orders, of which the notarially attested copy is subjoined : — Ego T. W. Mossman, Sanctse Theologige Professor, Divina miseri- cordia Ecclesise Dei Sacerdos mensis Augusti die trigesimo, 1879, ordinavi fratrem meum in Christo dilectum Johanem Elphinston Robertson, Presbyterum secundum ritum Catholicum. Ita Testor Thomas Wimbekley Mossman, D.D. Eccles. Cath. Ep. In Confirmationem affixi Sigillum meum A. S. MDCCCLXXXI.L. S. Die Mens. Novemb. XII. I. George Henry Brooks, of Doctor's Commons, in the City of Loudou, Notary Public, by Royal Authority duly admitted and sworn, do hereby certify and attest that the above writing contains a true Copy of an original Parchment Document and a Seal, purporting to be the true and original Letters of Orders of the Reverend John Elphinston- Robertson, Clerk, the said writing having been carefully examined and collated by me, with the said original Parchment Document, and found to agree therewith, on the Seven- eenth day of December, One thousand eight hundred and eighty-one. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my Hand and official Seal, at Doctors' Commons aforesaid, this Thirteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and eighty-two. GEORGE H. BROOKS, Notary PuhUe. London : PriiiteJ by G. Norman & Son, Floral Street. Published by the Church Associatioh, and to be obtained at their Olftce, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, at the price of 2d per dozen, or Is per 100. 3rd Thousand.] "C. 5. J." (COMPANIONS OF ST. JOHN.) f HILB the S. S. C. and C. B. S. represent the inner circle of our ecclesiastical Fenianism, the C. S. J. (Companions of St. John) may be regarded as its recruiting agency. Public attention was first called to it, we belidve, in The Times of April 6, 1896, when its founder, the Rev. E. J. Heriz-Smith, m.a., Fellow of Pembroke, received a certain amount of notice. It professes to be open to Dissenters, and as its Manual now lying before us explains " C S. J. is not puritanical or ' pi.' It means to be as jolly as possible," and in support of this profession of " Jollity " it quotes the words " these things write we unto you that your joy may be filled full " ! That is a noteworthy sample of Scriptural exegesis. Another is the amended quotation of a familiar text, " the blood of Jesus Christ (in Absolution) cleanseth from all sin " ! The promoters say that while theirs is not a secret Society " it is vulgarized and spoiled by publicity." In 1896 there were " about 1200 members." Each undertakes " unless excused " to wear the C.S.J, monogram always, for watch-chain, pin, or otherwise: or to wear a long " Liberty " sash of any artistic colour which the wearer or the Circle may choose, at tennis, &c., or over a white waistcoat : or to use paper stamped with the C. S. J. monogram : " the colours " being dark blue, gold and white for sash, tie, and riband. These rules have since been modified. But it will be seen that the programme is sufficiently "jolly" to attract the most frivolous ; and it is added " there shall always be festivities of some kind " four times a year, " as well as at all other possible times." But each member is pledged to " get in another man at the end of six months, and to look after him when he is in: " and " not to leave C. S. J. without three months' written notice countersigned by their sjwnsors.'^ It is obvious that this last provision may make it No. 248.] impossible to get out of the circle when a young fellow has once entered it. The Dissenting member, if there be one, is required "to do some definitely church work," to practice " fasting and abstinence on Fridays and other days," to read such spiritual books as Scupoli's Spiritual Combat, or S. Francis de Sales' Devout Life ; to (a) " Communicate regularly at an EARLY celebration of the Holy Communion, (6) to be present at a late celebration every Sunday, (c) to attend the Holy Communion on (certain) week-days, remembering the C. S.J." Thus the Dissenting neophyte will learn the habit of " hearing mass " and of " directing his intention " onore Romano. Romanizing manuals of devotion are pressed, such as Prynne's Eucharistic Manual, Pollock's Plain Guide, &c., and he is directed " to learn Church teaching by reading some book like Mason's Faith of the Gospel, Sadler's Church Doctrine, or Staley's Catholic Beligion." The object proposed is to '* make righteous, doing good deeds," and to cultivate " fides formata," a phrase of evil omen in theology. It will be seen that this lay society is simply a net spread for catching Protestants at the Univer- sities, and educating them in sacerdotal views of religion. The organization is by simply grouping multiples of seven members into a " circle " governed by its own " Vice-master " : seven such Vice-masters elect the Master, and appeals lie from the Master to " the Dean " who has made for himself this rule, "The present 'Dean' shall appoint his successor: in default of and after which, succeediug Deans shall be nominated by the Atrchbishop of Canterbury for the time being, if he be willing to nominate." The manual does not mention, what is nevertheless the fact, that these sash-wearers are known to the undergraduates by the less imposing title of " Belly-banders." From the correspondence which followed The Times' leader above referred to, we learn that candidates had their hands tied and had to kneel with bandaged eyes at a table where vows were exacted to obey the Supei^ior, and never to mention any matter relating to the Society except to a member of the C.S.J. To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C., at the price oX2d per dozen or Is per 100. 3rd Thousand.] SECRET SOCIETIES In the Church of England. HEN political society is found to be undermined and disintegrated by seditious persons banded together to overthrow the existing order^ we all recognise that the Nation is in " a parlous state." But that a Church professing to take the New Testament for its charter should have become stealthily and silently honeycombed by lawless and traitor- ous " Confraternities," " Sodalities," " Brotherhoods/' and '' Guilds/' hiding from the light like so many Carbonari, is a yet more portentous omen. Yet such is, in sober fact, the condition of the Church of England of to-day. Ministers of religion, who scruple forsooth at the received faith of the English Church as not " Catholic " or "objective" (i.e., external) enough for their acceptance, are found breaking every pledge and violating every engagement into which they entered at their ordination, and yet retain the emoluments and abuse the position which they received and still hold only on the faith of their imrecalled subscription to our Protestant formularies. In the present number of The Church Intelligencer (January, 1898) will be found some account of several Socie- ties, each of which has its shibboleths and pass-words, but all are bent on the restoration of the doctrines and practices which our forefathers designated as " Popery." The Brighton trial, if it did nothing else, brought to light the fact that there are Church of England parsons who crave after the worst abuses of Eome, imitating and seeking to reproduce the asceticism and the false ideals of mediaeval Christianity. The revival of monkery means to bring back the sham "poverty " which heaped up wealth, and worldly and political power, till ecclesiastics had Avell nigh become the owners of the land, and the landlords of the entire English Nation. Their " chastity " was a by- word and a mockeiy to the worldly, while it proved a snare and No. 249.] an artificial occasion of sin to others. Their " obedience " like the " corban " mentioned in the Gospel was a rejection of the natural duties assigned by Providence and the wilful substitution of bondage to a fellow sinner whose behests must be blindly obeyed even when tbey extend to the com- mission of acts whicb " secular" persons would deem wrong. True, tbis playing at being " Monks " has its ridiculous side. Mr. Carlyle was evidently conscious that nobody had ever admitted bim into any " Order," yet while masquerading as " Tlie Superior" he was obliged to admit, when pressed, that he is not so much as a " full member," and that, "ecclesiastically, he supposed ho was a Novice ! " For, on the sacerdotal theory, nobody but a bishop could receive his vows or confer the needful authority. Hence in reply to the question, " Some negotiations are pending between you and the Archbishop of Canterbury ?" Mr. Carlyle could only answer, " I have written to the Archbishop." That statement makes the matter increasingly serious. If our Primates, not content with telling Pope Leo that they too, like himself, are genuine " sacrificers," and with giving worthless " Dispensations " from the imaginary obligations of a Canon Law now happily defunct among us, are really about to reintroduce the plague of Monastic Vows, the Secret Societies will gain immense powers for mischief, and will assuredly wreck the Established Church. But for the trial just ended at the Lewes Assizes, these facts would not have been brought to light. The prisoner Eose did not mention the " Benedictines," nor profess to be a " Monk " when he offered on behalf of a " friend '' to sell some Acta of the S. S. C. His letter to Mr. Miller was as follows : — Peivate. Oveb Whitacbe, BiBMINGHAM. My Deae Sie, _ 1897, Nov. lOtlu I called at your office during the Congress week, but was not able to see you as you were at Nottingham. A friend of mine has become possessed of the S. S. C. Acta for July, August and October, also the full report of the September Synod of the S. S. C, all for this year. The latter contains a complete list of members. He is willing to sell these if a reasonable price were offered. I thought I could not do better than report the thing to you. I am. Faithfully yours, (Signed) Noethbeook; Eose. H. Miller, Esq. To which Mr. Miller replied : Chukcii Association, 14, Buckingham Street. Dbae Sie, November likh, 1897. Thank you for your letter which I liavc not been able to answer until now. Your first offer of S. S. C. Acta I did not care for. It is not easy to judge the value of the Eeport of the Synod without seeing it, as the contents of these documents vary. I should be willing to offer you a guinea or 25s for it, and if you post it to me I will send you a remittance by return. Yours truly, Heney Milleb, Secretary. Had the two clergymen, who call themselves (among' other aliases) '' Father Green " and " Father Anselm/' not broken into Rose's room (which they call a "ctfll'^) and taken possession of his books, letters, and papers, we should never have even heard of the existence of a nest of sham "Benedictines" finding its home in an English parsonage ; we should not have seen an English clergy- man avowing himself a devotee of the " Holy Kosary," and exhibiting under cross-examination that peculiar causistry which secrecy developes and needs for its conceal- ments. In publishing Mr. Miller's letter, by the way, The Church Times was guilty of contempt of court, for its restoration was already the subject of a suit and was made immediately afterwards in obedience to the writ issued against Mr. Drake. Its publication shews, however, that so far from " inducing " Rose to do anything, that letter was merely a conditional acceptance of an offer which had been twice over spontaneously made by Rose himself. As to his being a " spy " or revealing their secrets, it was obvious that Rose could not be a member of the S. S. C. which consists only of "priests," and the very existence of the "monastery " was not then so much as suspected. Again, we owe to this exposure the evidence that "Dispensations" to hold office in the Protestant Establish- ment (oven though they deem it heretical), and the practice of getting " valid " Orders from apocryphal " bishops " while still posturing before the world as men owing their institution and deriving their " jurisdiction " from bishops of the Establishment, who in profession, at least, are Protestants (however inconsistent may be their actual conduct), are facts recognised in the inner circle of our Ecclesiastical Fenians. These unwelcome revelations throw a lurid light upon the demoralisation into which causistry and the Confessional are dragging down a large section of the clergy. The Judge wlio tried the case^ by his unexampled severity in giving three years' penal servitude to a very young man convicted for the first time of simple larceny, has naturally excited a good deal of comment, and will give rise to yet more. But the animus shewn against the Church Association was entirely unwarranted by anything in the evidence ; and the apology which the Judge offered next day (see Church Intelligencer^ XV.-37), but partially atones for the irrelevant excursus in which he had mis- takenly indulged. It is clear that Canon Deedes, who had acted with great and generous forbearance^ would never have initiated a criminal prosecution, except as a means of shielding his Monkish friends from the exposure which they dreaded. On January 15th, Father Green wrote to Canon Deedes, saying : " Unless you take proceedings against him," Eose could proceed '' against us for searching his cell.'^ There- upon Canon Deedes writes to Eose's mother, "I was obliged to place the case in my solicitor's hands last Thursday, in consequence of your son's prosecution of Messrs. Green and I)rake." That tells the whole story. It was to prevent the publication of compromising docu- ments by the restoration to Eose of his own private letters, that Canon Deedes was stirred up by the " Monks " to lodge him, as quickly as might be, in gaol. When, under pressure of a warrant, the restoration was promised by Mr. Drake's solicitor, Eose wrote on January 15th appointing the 17th for receiving back his stolen property, and the writ for his committal was applied for on that very day. A card, which bears the postmark January 17th, was written meantime to Eose asking him to postpone his call till Tuesday, January 18th. The animus here was so obvious and the discredit attaching to testimony from partisans so thorough-going in their methods, led the Council to decide that the accused, who was penniless and who protested his innocence, should have at least a fair trial. His proved guilt may well fill us with sorrowful sympathy with his parents at the evil influences which have been the ruin of their son ; but, for all that, the letting in of daylight into the dark places of these " Secret Societies " must be reckoned as no small gain, and as making for the health and restoration to sanity of even the backsliders themselves. To be obtained at the OfRce of the Chdrch Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Straud, London, at the price of 3d per dozen, or Is Gd per hundred. 3rd Thousand.] MANIFESTO AND APPEAL OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CHURCH ASSOCIATION TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND. HE rapid rate at wliicli the Cliurcli of England is being Romanised is at last making itself felt. Debates in Parliament and in Convocation have but reflected the general stir in the hearts of Englishmen, as shewn by crowded and enthusiastic public meetings in every quarter of the metropolis and in most of our principal towns. Bishops have been constrained to admit that Secret Societies are at the bottom of the trouble, and that serious doctrinal error lies under the heathenish ceremonial -vvhich is being copied from old Rome. Even the leaders of the Ritualists themselves allow that lawlessness and will-wor- ship are rife everywhere, and that the law of this land and of the Church as " Established by law " is now openly and impudently violated by its paid servants and official guardians. To crown all, the idolatrous worship of the consecrated Wafer as being God, and the pretended " offering " it to God to " take aAvay sins " is again brought back under its old name of '' Ulc Mass," and little children are being marched, often in procession, from the schools to the churches to " Hear Mass," and are taught to lisp the praises of an idol of bread under the pretence of providing them out of your rates and taxes with " Religious education." How long will the British Nation tolerate such inroads of priest-craft and superstition ? But, first, let us think who is to blame for this condition of things. It is now more than half a century ago that the movement in favour of Roman doctrine began to tako shape at Oxford under the leadership of Newman. Its success was such that not only did it give to Rome two English cardinals and several hundreds of clergy and leading laymen (whose names are all printed in Rome's Recruits) but the English Church Union Avas established to protect from the bishops and from the law, any clergyman who got into trouble. The bishops were afraid to enforce No. 250.] the law when confronted with an oi'gauis:.^d body^ which chiimed; moreover, that the very meaning ot" the law was open to doubt. To protect the bishops from such pressure and to ascertain for them the true construction of the Acts of Parliament by which the Protestant religion had been established by law, the Church Assodation Avas formed : and the then Archbishop of Canterbury assured the Council that if the law were but clearly ascertained, the bishops would do their duty in seeing it obeyed. This the bishops could then easily have done : not only because the offenders were few and unpopular, but because public opinion would have supported them in any needful exercise of that discipline which they are all sworn to " minister. ^^ At a cost of over £80,000, and of years of effort, the Church Association established the Protestant contention in reference to no fewer than sixty-one points : and even when by incessant agitation some of these were for a second time re-heard, the findings were in the main upheld by the Supreme Court. Unhappily, the priest-party set . them- selves to bring both the law and the judges into contempt, and resorted to all sorts of misrepresentation in" order to destroy the moral weight of the judicial condemnation under which they laboured. Men like Lords tSelborne, (jairns, Hatherley, and Kingsdowai, were accused of ignor- ance and incompetency, because, forsooth, only a bishop, or other ecclesiastic, was sacred enough to decide as to the dress a ministering clergyman might wear, or the number of candles he might burn. Laymen, however learned or devout, might not presume to judge of what were termed " spiritual^' matters, that is, matters affecting clergymen. A Koyal Commission reported that the illegal ritual ought to be restrained, and Parliament passed the Public Worship Act with the express purpose of carrying out the Report of that Commission. But unhappily the bishops, as has been recently admitted by Abp. Temple, con- spired together to " \eio'' (as it is called) any attempt on the part of the laity to make the clergy fulfil the solemn contract made when they entered the ministry. The law- breakers soon found that they might safely indulge in any extravagance, because the bishop's veto would shield them in so doing. One great reason of this wa? that the Prime Ministers, by whose advice the bishops are appointed, and to whom they look for ]jromotion, were themselves partisans of the " Priest-party/' Here, however, let ns remember that those really to blaiuo arc the electors of tbc United Kijigcloni. For every voter has it in his pijwcr to help to determine who sliali be Prime Minister, and therefore, indircctl}', who shall be made bishops. Had Protestants, iri-espcctive of sect or party, been in deej) earnest, they would long' ago have compelled the Prime Minister of the day to altwr the style of his uominations. The only force to whicli a politician must bow is the voting power Avielded by the Commons of England. And this responsibility you cannot shake off, whether you will hear or whether you will forbear. The future destinies of England lie with the voters. Your child)-en are being indoctrinated with lying superstitions all intended to increase the power of the priest. Your wives and your daughters are being trained to come to the " new curate^' as the guide of their thoughts, feelings and conduct. Your homes will henceforth be under the divided mastery of the "spiritual" director who in the name of God issues his own commands to minds brought up under his Jesuitical training, and incajjable of judging as yet between the true and the false. To place the foot of the priest in the stirrup of that saddle in which he hopes to ride you liereafter witli his " spiritual " bit and bridle, is a matter which concerns, therefore, your deepest interests, it aflects your most sacred relationships, it governs, in short, your inmost life. The w^hole endowments, fabrics, prestige and machinery of the ancient Established Church are in the hands of the clergy, the ])arish church is even called their " freehold,'^ and the education of the young is almost exclusively theirs. Yet the clergy are themselves being trained in colleges largely manned by members of the Secret Societies : the bishops select for their examining chaplains men who are themselves soaked in Romish superstitions, and is it any wonder that this poisoning of the Avells should produce sickness and death in the very hospital of which these men were appointed to be the trusted physicians '' These charges may well seem to you most grave. They are so. We ask you, therefore, to verify them by carefully i-eading the Indictment which we have drawn up, shewing how- deeply the living bishops are themselves the fountain and source of the corruption which is everywhere fermenting like leaven. Yet Englishmen are now asked to hand over the Church cdahlU-Jicd hij law exclusively to these bishops, that is, to the very men who have betrayed her and to whose bad faith the miserable condition of the Church of England is now mainly due ! They want you to help them to bring back the old bondage of clerical courts, to administer laws made by the clergy alone, and. in their interests exclusively. They seek to get rid of any appeal to the Crown, i.e., to the law of thelmtdas administered in the Queen' s courts hy the Queeii's judges, in order that in ecclesiastical matters both '^ priests" and laymen may once more be judged only by " Priests," as though they were more holy and more inspired than other men. In this nineteenth century will you consent to revert to the condition of things which existed in the ninth or the fifteenth centuries ? You are yet masters of the situation. Your votes are yet those oi free men, not as it is in Ireland. We invite you to help the Church Association in con- solidating the Protestant vote. In making this Appeal to the People of England, the Church Association does not address itself either to their passions or their prejudices. It stands upon the broad platform of justice and truth. Behind us lie the stirring incidents of our National history : before us sounds the simple and riublime call of Duty. Great men, whose names are indelibly enshrined in our annals and will be remembered as long as the English language is spoken, have handed down a sacred trust to us which we dare not falsify or neglect. Words could not describe the baseness of the men who would suffer their children to be robbed of their rightful heritage and our country to be subjected to its former bondage. The crisis calls for immediate and decisive action. Let us worthily respond to that calb and may God defend the right ! The reader of tin's ]japcr is carneHly requested to send some help to carry on and, increase all the good work which is heing done hy the Church Association. 8id)scriptions and Donations may he forwarded to the Secretary, Henry Miller, at the Office, 14, Buchingham Street, Strand, London. To be obtained at the Office of the Church Association, 14, Buckingham Street, Strand, London, W.C, at the price of Sri per dozen, or Is 6ri per 100. 25th'Thousand.] Pr'nceton Theological Seminary Libi 1 1012 01234 3044 jlfO^