I E) RARY 
 OF THE 
 U N IVLR5 ITY 
 or ILLI NOIS
 
 /; 
 
 "THE COUNTER REFORMATION" 
 "MOVEMENT," 
 
 AND 
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR THE SOLUTION OF 
 PRESENT DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 A REPLT 
 
 TO 
 
 Clje pastoral iCetter 
 
 OF 
 
 THE RIGHT REV. 
 
 LOED BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL. 
 
 BY 
 
 LAY MEMBERS OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH UNION 
 IN HIS DIOCESE. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 THE CHURCH PRINTING COMPANY, 
 
 II, BURLEIGH-STREET, STRAND. 
 
 Price 6d.y by post jd.
 
 TO 
 
 The Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 
 
 We beg to assure your Lordship that it is with the 
 utmost regret that we trespass on your Lordship's time 
 and attention, already overburdened by subjects of anxiety 
 and importance. We should have preferred to have 
 followed in silence what we believe to be our duty ; but 
 the expressions directed against us, in a sermon preached 
 by your Lordship at S. Philip's Church at Bristol on the 
 17th of last December, which, if they had not been reite- 
 rated, might have been left unnoticed, have been repeated 
 and emphasized with such marked publicity in your Pastoral 
 Letter, lately issued, that, from the great pain caused by 
 those remarks to very many persons, who are among the 
 most loyal Churchpeople in the diocese, we feel bound 
 on their and on our own account to address to your 
 Lordship this letter, if not of remonstrance at least of 
 explanation. 
 
 Your Lordship's charges against us are very severe. 
 You speak of two great and increasing societies in the 
 Church of England. There is reason to believe that one 
 of the two thus anonymously indicated is the Church 
 Association. By a special reference to a resolution lately 
 passed by the Church Union, we recognize the other. 
 Your Lordship charges us who are members of that 
 Union with being " disobedient to the plain law of the 
 land;" that we oppose "the law of the country, though 
 
 B 2
 
 pronounced by the Court of the Archbishop ; " that our 
 movement is " deliberate opposition to the Royal Supre- 
 macy," and further that it is a " counter Reformation 
 movement ; " that our " opinions are plainly incompa- 
 tible with the leading principles of the Reformation," 
 against the clear '^decisions of law," and "simply un- 
 veiled rebellion." 
 
 Those are hard words. It is easier to wound than to 
 heal. Your Lordship attributes to us principles that 
 would disgrace a gentleman, and much more so a faithful 
 Churchman: "disloyalty," "disobedience," "rebellion." 
 To " designate " what we as true and loyal Churchmen 
 do, to the best of our ability and knowledge, as our duty 
 to the Queen, the Church, and the country, as a " counter- 
 Reformation movement " can only be understood as an 
 opinion founded on most insufficient acquaintance with 
 facts ; imputing to us (what is odious to English honesty) 
 sinister and unfaithful motives, in a manner and degree 
 which we could hardly have expected from the hands 
 of our " Father in God." What we desire is recon- 
 ciliation and unity ; but how are they to be obtained if 
 such a course as this is pursued ? 
 
 We are deeply grieved that on any ground your Lord- 
 ship should feel justified in charging us with disobedience, 
 whose Union has for its sole objects the maintenance of 
 obedience to the doctrine and discipline of the Church, 
 the vindication of her rights, and the encouragement and 
 support of those who suffer in her behalf. The attitude 
 which we, as true and loyal members of the Church of 
 England, have felt bound to assume is most painful to 
 
 -UIUC ,
 
 ourselves, and is very generally misunderstood by those 
 around us. Your Lordship's special and public denuncia- 
 tion of us only adds to the general misapprehension, 
 inciting against us the distrust and antagonism of 
 our brother Churchpeople. Your words are indeed 
 eminently calculated to arouse and to foster the prejudices 
 of that vast majority of persons who, from various causes, 
 are ignorant of the rights, the bearings, and the history 
 of the subject ; or through the pressure of various occu- 
 pations, through misconception, through antipathy or 
 contempt, are impatient of the disturbance of their minds 
 by the advances of more earnest men, whose conduct they 
 resent as inconvenient and troublesome, and whose re- 
 course to the authority of definite Church principles, as 
 distinguished from the easy self-complacency of senti- 
 mental religion, they naturally dislike and reject. 
 
 We acknowledge and regret that some words and acts 
 of persons aroused to indignation by the offence and injury 
 publicly offered to what in conscience they held most 
 sacred, and exasperated by a sense of injustice dressed up 
 in the garb of religion and law, may have been chargeable 
 with vehemence and indiscretion ; and that occasional 
 language in journals or other publications may have been 
 calculated to arouse prejudice and opposition. 
 
 We might have expected that your Lordship's discri- 
 mination would have sufficed to perceive that all such as 
 this is but the impulsive vehemence that comes to the 
 surface, arresting all attention, like the froth of a seething 
 cauldron which evidences the intensity of the heat below ; 
 or like one gaudy spot upon the subdued colouring of
 
 some grand picture, which wounds the sight, but testifies 
 to the truth and dignity of the rest. 
 
 We cannot be responsible for such accidents, too com- 
 mon in all matters of controversy, social, political, or 
 religious, neither do we seek excuse in the conduct 
 fully equalled by the other side ; but we could have 
 hoped that your Lordship, in your capacity of Father in 
 God and pastor of a large and miscellaneous flock, which 
 is held together by such and so many ties of " the Faith" in 
 which all agree, would have aided towards conciliation and 
 unity, on the lines of the Church's own plain language, 
 rather than have added, by the weight of your high 
 office, to the already too complicated difficulties and mis- 
 conceptions under which we suffer. 
 
 I. 
 
 Your Lordship's charges against us practically resolve 
 themselves into two, disobedience and revolution. Parlia- 
 ment is proverbially all- mighty in the power of declaring 
 the law of the land. Our conduct with respect to that 
 ^' clear law of the land " which your Lordship stigmatizes 
 as disobedience, is in this case grounded upon our con- 
 viction that we are already hound to the obedience of a 
 pre-existing law^ which is still in force, founded on the 
 most powerful guarantees that can be given by a State, 
 and which have never been formally repealed. By that 
 law and those guarantees a perfectly harmonious union of 
 Church and State was secured — and by regard to them 
 such union might continue peacefully and with mutual 
 benefit — but the course of modern legislation, in relation
 
 to the Church, has simply ignored and superseded them, 
 disregarding her liberties and annulling her rights. 
 
 The juncture at which we have arrived is an anomaly. 
 We believe in the Church's Divine commission, as declared 
 in her Scriptures and embodied in her creed. Holding 
 this belief, and regarding with reverence those contracts 
 by which the Church of England received its legal Esta- 
 blishment in relation to the State, we are unable to 
 reconcile it with our duty to Church or State to tolerate 
 that offence against justice committed by the civil power 
 in assuming authority to deal peremptorily with the rights 
 and liberties of the Church, contrary to the spirit of those 
 contracts. 
 
 Your Lordship must be aware that of all the charges 
 that can be made against faithful men, no one could be 
 so keenly felt as that of disloyalty to the Crown. Your 
 Lordship has published this charge against us ; and the 
 grievance is all the more severe because in your " Address 
 to the Clergy and Laity " of your diocese you declare our 
 ^^ attitude " of disloyalty to be " deliberate." 
 
 In answer to so grave a charge, we acknowledge with 
 unhesitating and hearty loyalty that the rightful Sovereign 
 of these realms is ''under God the only Supreme Governor" 
 of the Church, " quantum per Christi legem licet," and 
 *' Defender of the Faith " — that her Majesty is in that 
 sense "supreme as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical 
 things or causes as temporal " — and further, in loyal obe- 
 dience to that supremacy and in vindication of that inalien- 
 able right, we protest that the High Court of Parlia- 
 ment is not so. We regard the supremacy of the Crown
 
 8 
 
 in Church and in State as "just parallel to each other; 
 and that such are the rights of each, as guaranteed by the 
 Constitution, that the Sovereign has no power to make 
 statutes without the Parliament, so can it not act in 
 spiritual causes without the Church," but " as godly princes 
 and Christian emperors always had allowed them, viz., to 
 rule all sorts in all causes " — " in causes spiritual hj judges 
 of the spirituality and causes temporal by temporal judge^^ 
 
 We are perfectly aware that, upon such a subject as this, 
 it would be futile to appeal against the bias of modern 
 opinion even to the most venerable documents. In 
 addressing your Lordship, however, it may be less vain to 
 refer to their words to corroborate our assertion, that the 
 very charters and statutes on which all English rights and 
 liberties in Church or State are founded afErm the prin- 
 ciple for which we contend. " Let the Church maintain 
 her own judgments " are the words of a mixed council of 
 Saxon laymen and clergy in the seventh century. The 
 same, only stronger and more detailed, is declared in the 
 Constitutions of Clarendon and in Magna Charta, " Quod 
 Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit, et habeat jura sua Integra et 
 libertates suas illsesas." 
 
 We refrain from troubling your Lordship with the 
 very numerous instances available to prove the subject of 
 our contention ; but passing over all others, we beg your 
 attention to the following from the middle of the sixteenth 
 century to our own time. In the preamble of the statute 
 24 Henry VIII. 12, it is stated "of this Realm of Eng- 
 land" that " the body spiritual whereof having power, 
 when any cause of the law divine happened to come in
 
 question, or of spiritual learning, then it was declared 
 interpreted and showed by that part of the said body 
 politic called the Spiritualty, now being usually called 
 * the English Church,' which always hath been reputed 
 and found of that sort, that both for knowledge, integrity, 
 and sufficiency of number it hath been always thought, 
 and is also at this hour^ sufficient and ??ieet of itself without 
 the intermeddling of any exterior persons, to declare and 
 determine all such doubts^ and to administer all such offices 
 and duties as to their rooms spiritual shall appertain." 
 
 In the ^'Bill of Rights" (a.d. 1689), although the 
 special reference is to the tyranny of imposing laws on the 
 Church without either her consultation or consent in the 
 previous reign, the appeal is made to all past constitutional 
 history in these words : " The Lords Spiritual, Temporal, 
 and Commons .... being now assembled in full and 
 free representation of this nation .... do in the first 
 place, as their ancestors in like case have usually done, for 
 the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and 
 liberties, declare that the Commission for erecting the late 
 Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all 
 other Commissions and Courts of like nature, are illegal 
 and pernicious." 
 
 As we approach our own time, in the reign of Queen 
 Anne, in a case affecting the rights of the Church in her 
 own affairs, the principal judges and law officers of the 
 Crown decided thus : "All our law books which speak of 
 this subject mention a jurisdiction in matters of heresy and 
 condemnation of heretics as proper to be exercised in Con- 
 vocation, and none of them that we find make any doubt 
 thereof."
 
 10 
 
 "We could remind your Lordship of many passages to 
 similar effect from our greatest authors, but two quota- 
 tions will suffice from men whose words are always 
 founded upon knowledge. In Hooker's ^' Ecclesiastical 
 Polity " we read : " Of this most certain we are, that our 
 laws do neither suffer a spiritual court to entertain those 
 causes which by the law are civil, nor yet if the matters 
 be indeed spiritual a mere civil court to give judgment of 
 it." In Barrow's Sermon No. 57 we find his assertion that 
 ^'the power of managing ecclesiastical matters did, 
 according to primitive usage, wholly reside in spiritual 
 guides." 
 
 This great principle, that the jurisdictions of the Crown 
 in matters ecclesiastical and civil are alien and distinct, is 
 most clearly defined in the Royal Declaration prefixed to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles in our present Prayer Book, 
 agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of both 
 provinces and the whole clergy in the Convocation holden 
 at London, &:c., to this effect : " We (her Majesty) are 
 Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and that 
 if any difference arise about the external policy, concern- 
 ing the Injunctions, Canons, and other Constitutions whatso- 
 ever thereto belonging, the clergy in Convocation is to 
 order and settle them, having first obtained under our 
 broad seal leave to do so," &c., &c. 
 
 Seeing all this to be the case as corroborated by 
 numerous authorities, it appears to us difficult to reconcile 
 consistently the words of the Coronation Oath with the 
 Royal Assent given of late years to the establishment 
 of Ecclesiastical Courts entirely by the power of Parlia-
 
 11 
 
 ment, without consultation with or consent of the Church ; 
 though assuredly the constitution of such courts, about 
 which there arose very great " difference " indeed, could 
 only belong to or be classed with those " Constitutions 
 whatsoever thereto belonging" of her Royal Declaration. 
 And further, it is inconsistent with what was long since 
 wisely laid down as defining the Royal Supremacy, that it 
 was '' furnished by the goodness and sufferance of 
 
 Almighty God with plenary whole and entire power 
 
 and jurisdiction, to render and yield justice and final de- 
 termination to all manner of persons in all matters, de- 
 bates, and contentions in causes spiritual by judges 
 
 of the spirituality, and causes temporal by temporal 
 judges." 
 
 Neglecting the golden maxim, " Let the Church be 
 free to maintain her own judgments," which echoes from 
 long past centuries, and lies at the root of all the records 
 and testimonies to the constitutional rights of the Church 
 of England, modern legislation, with most ill-advised 
 policy and presumption, and {froh piidor /) aided by many 
 of the Bishops themselves, listening neither to warning 
 nor entreaty, though urged and oft-repeated, has brought 
 the Church to a momentous crisis. The just supremacy 
 of the Crown has been superseded by the unwarrantable 
 supremacy of a secular Parliament. 
 
 There was a most wise and constitutional course long 
 since prescribed by one of England's greatest jurists — 
 and unless it be too late we should do well to revert to it. 
 Sir Edward Coke thus wrote — " Certain it is that this 
 kingdom hath been best governed, and peace and quiet
 
 12 
 
 preserved, when both parties, that is when the justices of 
 the temporal courts and the ecclesiastical judges, have 
 kept themselves within their proper jurisdictions, without 
 encroaching or usurping one upon another ; and when 
 such encroachments and usurpations have been made, 
 they have been the seeds of great trouble and incon- 
 venience." 
 
 If ever the warning of a wise man proved a prophecy, 
 it has indeed done so here. The present crisis is 
 simply pictured in those words. 
 
 The trouble now brought on the Church is very much 
 due to her own supineness, or rather to her freedom from 
 suspicion. The offence which awoke her was the abolition 
 of the Court of Delegates in 1833, and the substitution 
 of the Court of Privy Council as the resort of final appeal 
 on ecclesiastical and spiritual causes. The abolition and 
 reconstruction of that Court of Final Appeal was no doubt 
 very desirable. The fault was in the absence of principle 
 and the injury and injustice committed. Your Lordship 
 will remember the fatal blunder immediately discovered 
 in this "encroachment and usurpation" of "temporal 
 judges,"and the civil authority tampering with the Church's 
 most vital interests. So grave was it as to draw even 
 from Lord Brougham the apology, "He could not help 
 thinking that the Judicial Committee of Privy Council 
 had been framed without the expectation of questions like 
 that. It was created for the consideration of a totally 
 different class of cases." Your Lordship will also re- 
 member the cobbling device employed to remedy that 
 offensive blunder — viz., that at least one of the three
 
 13 
 
 Bishops who were sworn of the Privy Council should, on 
 such occasions, be summoned to attend the meeting — a 
 blind to give a quasi-religious aspect to that Court, by its 
 origin and component members essentially secular, a 
 pretext to silence the awakening remonstrances of Church- 
 men, a clever scheme " to put a graver face on proceed- 
 ings which would otherwise carry their own condemnation 
 on their very front." 
 
 Such has been the course of legislation for more than 
 thirty years past, which has arrived at its climax in the 
 Public Worship Regulation Act, and the Court which it 
 has established. And this worldly policy has been abetted 
 by those who by profession assert the agency of the 
 Divine Spirit in the Church, but in practice distrust it, 
 supplying in its place the arm of the State, and the 
 gospel of Parliamentary opinion. This is the policy which 
 we, as Churchpeople, are commanded to accept with 
 grateful obedience, to value as the product of our greatest 
 statesmen, and to entrust to its result even the most 
 sacred functions that the Church of Christ could be ever 
 called upon to submit to the judgment of an earthly 
 tribunal — the Final Court of Appeal ! 
 
 Let this plain truth be grasped and the shock is 
 inevitable. Is there no period at which opposition is justi- 
 fiable, even when the extraordinary nature of the circum- 
 stances drive it beyond its ordinary course ? Have we not 
 for years past warned and protested in vain that the 
 result of such a system of legislation, such a perversion of 
 the Royal Supremacy, by advice of its highest council, 
 out of its equitable course, must end in a calamitous crisis ?
 
 14 
 
 We can only regard the whole system as a miscarriage of 
 justice, because its birth was fouled by the violation of the 
 compact the most sacred in its object and the most 
 venerable in its antiquity ever made by a State — viz., 
 that by which " spiritual and ecclesiastical questions shall 
 be restrained to spiritual or ecclesiastical arbitrament." 
 
 To allay apprehension it has been repeatedly proclaimed 
 in and out of court that this lay Court of Final Appeal in 
 spiritual and ecclesiastical causes "has no jurisdiction or 
 authority to settle matters of faith." Lord Campbell's 
 definition of its powers was that " the Judicial Committee 
 is merely a court of construction." We do not doubt 
 tne integrity of those who make these assertions, but we 
 are not children to he blinded by them. The sacred 
 language of the Church was not composed to be submitted 
 to the interpretations of legal sophistry, be it ever so 
 honourable in its intention. One Bishop had the courage 
 to warn the House of Lords as to the result, viz. : " That 
 the judges of our courts of civil law (who form the 
 Court of Final Appeal), thoroughly acquainted with the 
 whole system of English jurisprudence, are perfectly 
 competent to give decisions which are looked upon as 
 faithful and true expositions of the law, and so it may be 
 that those who are set to administer the law do in some 
 cases make it. So in cases of doctrine the judges who are 
 ultimately to decide them, may by degrees alter and modify 
 the laws which relate to them. But then they are not 
 versed in divinity " ! And on another occasion he said : 
 " Every decision of a point of doctrine by the Judicial 
 Committee would form, as in other courts of final appeal,
 
 15 
 
 a precedent. Such precedents settle or modify the law, and 
 at last become law themselves. Thus a Supreme Court of 
 Justice may, in some sense, not only administer but make 
 laws. Can it give any decision upon a question which 
 turns upon a point of doctrine without affecting to some 
 extent the doctrine itself, as one which is insisted upon or 
 not by the Church ? Who does not see that a succession 
 of such judgments would injure the character of the 
 Church of England as a teacher and maintainer of the 
 truth?" 
 
 One instance alone will be sufficient to illustrate this 
 simple and innocent "interpretation of doctrine" by the 
 Church's only Court of Final Appeal. Two priests of the 
 Church of England, charged with the publication of 
 heretical doctrines, had been rightly condemned in the 
 Archbishop's true Court of Arches. They appealed, and 
 the Final Court of the Judicial Committee acquitted the 
 appellants, and thereby legalized the doctrines, whereupon 
 the Lords Spiritual in the Upper House of Convocation 
 passed at once a resolution repudiating the judgment by 
 condemning the book — such being the sort of treatment 
 naturally to be expected from a court of appeal so 
 constituted, and such the kind of obedience that it should 
 receive! 
 
 We submit to your Lordship the simple fact that there 
 is no security. 
 
 It is a new doctrine, indeed, that a man should go to 
 his solicitor for the '-'- interpretation " of his creed ! And 
 such is precisely the case now that the Church is referred 
 to a lay court of law (with a Bishop or two so attached
 
 16 
 
 to it that, as in the case just mentioned, the court pooh- 
 poohed its Episcopal assessors) to " interpret " its faith, its 
 formularies, its ritual, and its articles. Cuique in sua arte 
 credendum would have been a safer principle. To 
 '•''interpret'' in such a case is simply ultimately to compel. 
 There is no need of interpretation where there is no 
 controversy, but a statute has declared that " the Church 
 hath authority in controversies of faith," and consequently 
 even on the low principle (adopted for its judgment in a 
 late very important case by the Final Appeal Court) that 
 "omission is prohibition," the State hath not so. But 
 this court, unfitted, whether by experience or by faith, to 
 deal with ecclesiastical subjects, does really and practically 
 decide the Church's doctrines ; and there can be no 
 possible security that erroneous doctrines (so difficult to 
 meet on the principles of legal evidence that we conceive 
 your Lordship would rather labour against them in silence 
 than drag them for dissection and, as we have seen, for 
 contempt before a public lay court of law) might not rise 
 irresistibly against you and against the whole Church. 
 Thus heresy and false doctrine would spring from their 
 position of toleration by necessity, to the rampant 
 arrogance obtained through warrant and sanction of law. 
 The practical result of all this " clear and declared law 
 of the land " would be such as we conceive that even your 
 Lordship would lament. Principiis obsta would have 
 been a more righteous motto. We must repeat that 
 there is no possible security that such a court should not 
 (as it has done on several occasions) declare by " interpre- 
 tation" that a vital doctrine of the "Catholic Faith,"
 
 17 
 
 which '-before all things it is necessary" that we hold, 
 was left open by the Church. Your Lordship, as a 
 theologian, has a wider field for judgment than is available 
 on such occasions for a lawyer's treatment. You have 
 the sacred Scriptures and the Canons and Councils of the 
 undivided Church as your grammars to interpret the 
 Church's formularies. You know well that such a 
 doctrine is not left open and undecided. If it were so, the 
 Church's voice and the divinity of her mission would be a 
 mere delusive mockery. Your Lordship is sworn to 
 "banish and drive away all erroneous doctrines contrary 
 to God's Word," but by the '-'- clear law of the land^^ a 
 judgment is passed which, under the veil of interpretation, 
 authorizes the priests and teachers of the Church to 
 publish heresy, and obedience to that would simply be to 
 abjure your ordination oath. 
 
 Factum valet. Let the insult and the injury of the 
 past be a sufficient warning to all the faithful. There 
 is no security for the faith of the Church, because the 
 authority of her Courts is not that derived from the 
 rightful Royal Supremacy exercised " under God," but 
 of the Sovereign in Council " by authority of Parliament." 
 Against this we protest. 
 
 Of all this, the Court just established by the '' Public 
 Worship Regulation Act " is truly the natural sequel and 
 culmination. Its injustice is that it was passed by 
 Parliament alone, and thrust on the acceptance of the laity 
 and clergy of the Church whether they would or not, solely 
 ^'' by authority of Parliament^'' and contrary to the remon- 
 strance of the Lower House of Convocation. By that
 
 18 
 
 authority the Courts of the Church have been entirely- 
 revolutionized. A Court (Lord Penzance's) such as has 
 never been known before in the annals of England has 
 been imposed upon us by secular authority. Over it 
 and in it, by the words of that statute, the two Arch- 
 bishops have power to act as never did they before. If 
 that Court were indeed the true '' Court of Arches of 
 the Archbishop " it needed no new Act of Parliament to 
 establish it. But an act of the Temporalty has constituted 
 this Church Court de novo ; and the Judge whom, by 
 the expressed authority of that Act alone, the two Arch- 
 bishops ^' may appoint from time to time " over it (with 
 the chance of their disagreement, when "her Majesty" 
 would appoint him, with the only qualification of his 
 being a barrister of ten years' standing) is authorized to 
 pronounce judgment on the most vital points of Church 
 history, doctrine, and ritual, and whose fiat all Churchmen 
 are commanded at their peril to obey. This Court is, 
 without quibble or sophistication, de jure and de facto a 
 novel establishment of an origin, a character, and extent 
 of jurisdiction totally new, unheard of in the history of 
 England and the English Church until created and 
 enforced by the Public Worship Regulation Act. The 
 true " Court of Arches " as it has existed (whether with 
 a cleric or layman acting in it as Judge-assessor of the 
 Archbishop for centuries past) was, outside the diocese 
 of Canterbury, qualified alone to adjudicate upon appeals 
 from the other dioceses in that province. This new 
 Court has a totally different office and jurisdiction. It is 
 become a court of first instance, not only in that diocese
 
 19 
 
 of Canterbury, but with powers, granted to it by the 
 secular Parliament alone, to exercise that authority over 
 every diocese in both provinces of the kingdom. 
 
 The gravamen sent to the Upper House of Convocation 
 of Canterbury by a very learned member of the Lower 
 House, after the passing of that Act of Parliament and 
 the erection of Lord Penzance's Court, so ably expresses 
 our own views that we venture to recall it to your 
 Lordship's memory: "This gravamen showeth that the 
 undersigned expresses his deep sorrow at the passing of 
 the Public Worship Regulation Act, which constitutes, on 
 principles hitherto unknown to our Church, a new 
 judicial office for the hearing and determining certain 
 causes which have ever formed an essential part of the 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction, viz., those which affect the 
 public Services of the Church. He submits that this 
 provision will have the effect in certain cases of depriving 
 the Metropolitans of their immemorial appellate powers, 
 and, what is far more important, of superseding those 
 powers of the Bishops which have always belonged to 
 their office from Apostolic times. And, further, that 
 this measure was passed in Parliament without any 
 reference to or communication with the synods of the 
 clergy, and in so rapid a manner as to give them no 
 opportunity for deliberate examination of that fundamental 
 principle of ecclesiastical polity which the measure 
 involves. The undersigned, therefore, prays their Lord- 
 ships the Bishops to use their influence to procure the 
 postponement of this part at least of the Public Worship 
 Regulation Act for another year, in order that the clergy 
 c 2
 
 20 
 
 in Convocation may have an opportunity for the considera- 
 tion of this important measure." 
 
 To oppose such a continuous course of legislation by 
 what are called the authorized and constitutional methods 
 appears at last to be vain. We, and that multitude of 
 persons who, outside the mere roll of our Union, 
 sympathize with us, have for many years past petitioned 
 Parliament and appealed to Convocation, and have taken 
 every so-called legitimate means of protest and warning as 
 to the inevitable result of this ill-advised and as we Church- 
 people consider unfaithful course. But the aggression 
 has been too strong, the ignorance and indifference of the 
 world outside too great, and the hold of those in high 
 places has been too powerful for any mere appeal to that 
 liberality and generous treatment which in all other 
 matters, and with respect to all other classes of persons, are 
 the noble characteristics of national feeling in England. 
 
 Rightly or mistakenly, we believe it to be our duty to 
 God and to His Church to act as we do. We repudiate 
 the charge of disobedience for reasons stated and corro- 
 borated in this letter. We are obedient to the law which 
 we hold sacred. 
 
 We have never made objection to " State interference 
 and State control " in all temporal and civil matters in 
 relation to the Church rightly understood. On the con- 
 trary, we hold the union to be of utmost value to Church 
 and State, mutually and reciprocally. Our doctrine as to 
 all such matters as transgress those natural and equitable 
 limits is plain — namely this, that "on many subjects the 
 State is incompetent to legislate without the consent of
 
 21 
 
 the Church, and in others it is tyrannical and unwise to 
 do so." 
 
 But we see the precedents of Parliamentary interference 
 in such subjects year after year increasing, and one 
 precedent is allowed to corroborate another. Rightly or 
 mistakenly, therefore, we believe the result of such a 
 system to be that there do exist now two parallel but 
 conflicting principles of the "declared law of the land" 
 in relation to Church matters. We have to choose, so 
 we remain in our former obedience, because we believe in 
 the existence of those prior obligations, and that by 
 fidelity to them we are best serving our mother the 
 Church in her rights, and the Queen in the rightful 
 exercise of her supremacy. 
 
 Your Lordship quotes against us the Apostolic injunction 
 to obey " magistrates and the powers that be, for they 
 are ordained of God." But we cannot allow its appli- 
 cation to us in the present instance, and that for the 
 plainest reasons. The same Apostle interpreted his own 
 words as applicable only and of course to such powers 
 acting within their due and equitable jurisdiction. They 
 transgressed their proper function by interference with 
 matters of faith and conscience^ so at once he disobeyed 
 them all and " resisted unto death." Had there been no 
 legitimate^ yes, and even meritorious resistance " to magis- 
 trates and powers that be, for they are ordained of God," 
 there had been no Christian martyrs, no, nor even 
 Christianity itself.
 
 22 
 
 11. 
 
 But your Lordship's second charge against us is 
 ^' simply unveiled rebellion," and you designate our 
 actions as a " counter Reformation movement." The 
 mere word ^'Ritualism " has been quite enough hitherto 
 to excite and to pervert public opinion for party purposes, 
 and an association which exists only by and for the 
 prosecution of its fellow Churchpeople has made effective 
 use of it. Your Lordship has kindly and wisely omitted 
 all use of that word, so we refer to it no further than to 
 regret its misuse by others, who fail to comprehend that 
 Ritualism is in fact only a thing of degree, and that 
 ritual is as absolutely an indispensable ingredient in the 
 conduct of Divine Service, " decently and in order," in the 
 humblest Dissenting chapel as in a Mahometan 
 mosque or Roman Catholic cathedral — that its value 
 before God and its estimation by ourselves is only so far 
 as it is expressive of order, reverence, and devotion. It is 
 the best available means of embodying and perpetuating 
 from age to age the unity of that order and reverence in 
 public worship of assembled multitudes, as distinct from 
 the entire freedom of private devotion. And it is valuable 
 to instruct the ignorant, to support the attention of the 
 weak, to impress the irreverent, and, when it is complete 
 and regular, it is the safest means to prevent sacrilege, or 
 the conceits of private taste and judgment. 
 
 But your Lordship charges us with counter Reformation 
 movement. Against such an imputation we emphatically 
 but very respectfully remonstrate. As scholars we know 
 the Reformation in history. As Churchpeople we know
 
 23 
 
 and understand It best by the formularies and rubrics of 
 the Church. If there is any definite meaning in words, 
 your Lordship's adopted "designation" can only be 
 understood as charging us with "deliberate" intention to 
 reverse the action of the English Reformation. Any such 
 conduct would, in simple fact, be nothing short of bringing 
 back the Church to all the corruptions in religion which 
 characterized the previous period. We very respectfully 
 declare that nothing could well be more opposite to our 
 principles than this grave charge thus published to the 
 world against us. We bless God for the freedom from 
 those corruptions. We bless God that the Reformation 
 of the Church in our country, in clearing off its burdens 
 and disfigurements, has loyally maintained it in unbroken 
 unity with the only one Holy Catholic Church that can 
 exist in the world, and which was, in ages long before, 
 established here in the hearts of the people by the good 
 will of God. 
 
 The annals of the Reformation have been presented to 
 the world with every variety of interested purpose and 
 ingenuity of political and religious partizanship. We 
 have only, in this instance, to do with the principles and 
 results of the English Reformation, as we know them by 
 the formularies and Ritual order of the Church of 
 England. These do most truly represent to us the 
 Reformation as we know it by results. It is these very 
 identical results, and nothing short and nothing beyond 
 them, that we of this Church Union labour to maintain. 
 The aspect of the Reformation, thus clear of partizanship, 
 as exhibited in our Prayer Book, is that in defence of 
 which our so-called " movement " is directed.
 
 24 
 
 We are faithful and devoted members of the Church, 
 and if our action deserves to be characterized in any way 
 as a movement, it may be so in two distinct directions, 
 viz. — I St, against pre-Reformation corruptions of the 
 pure Catholic Faith of the undivided Church ; and, 2nd, 
 against that lawlessness of private judgment, and confusion 
 of all definite principles of faith, by which the unhappy 
 introduction of elements of the foreign, as distinguished 
 from the national English Reformation, destroyed all 
 unanimity of action, marred the peace of the Church, and 
 was indeed the fom et origo of our present complications 
 and distress. 
 
 It would indeed be easy to show to your Lordship the 
 real ^'counter Reformation movement" which revels 
 miserably and powerfully all around us. It is the very 
 opposite to that which your Lordship has thus designated. 
 That "counter" movement is indeed hydra-headed. 
 
 It is conspicuous in the low tone of policy adopted by 
 some of the Church's most influential authorities, which is 
 the secret and true source of that distrust and disgust 
 which is loosening the loyalty even of the best and most 
 earnest Churchmen, That " counter movement " began in 
 early Reformation days to disfigure the true National 
 Reformation, by the importation from abroad of the 
 foreign principle of Puritanism, which spread like a fungus 
 over the land, has eaten into the very heart of all Church 
 principles, and has ended in depriving the Church of that 
 great multitude which now forms the body of the 
 Nonconformists. 
 
 It was seen a hundred years ago in the cold lethargy 
 of Erastianism within the Church which ultimately drove
 
 25 
 
 out that righteous priest John Wesley. The Reforma- 
 tion had secured to the Church a system and method (as 
 of old) for the conduct of devotion. Wesley adopted that 
 method, and was scouted as Methodist, and Sacramen- 
 tarian, because of his weekly celebration of the Eucharist. 
 It would have been well indeed if the Bishops and those 
 in authority had had the sense to perceive the depth and 
 importance of the religious movement of their day, based 
 as it was and designed by its founder to be carried 
 out upon the truest Church principles. But they failed, 
 as others unhappily have done since, to seize the golden 
 opportunity in time^ and, by adopting it, to lead that great 
 movement of the Church's life. They blindly adopted a 
 policy which has lost to the Church millions, to be grieved 
 over too late. 
 
 May their inconsistency not do so again I 
 But indeed there has been a ^'counter Reformation 
 movement " along the whole line. The English Reforma- 
 tion refused again and again the principles and models of 
 continental Protestantism. It maintained the Catholic 
 Faith clear and complete, the Sacramental system and the 
 Apostolical Succession. It enjoined the use of the 
 Athanasian Creed in public. It ordered the plain declara- 
 tion to be made immediately after Baptism, ^' l^ow this 
 child is regenerate." It perpetuated the cycle of the fasts 
 and festivals of the ancient Church. It declared the 
 right principle of Church courts. It restricted the Holy 
 Communion to the Morning Service; and to mark its 
 special sanctity, it ordered in simplest language that 
 certain things should be " retained " at its celebration. 
 It did much more in the same direction, which we need
 
 2Q 
 
 not specify ; nor is further comment necessary than this, 
 that the work of the Reformation, so far as we know it 
 by its results in the Church of England, was conducted 
 on the lines of the Catholic Faith alone ; and to maintain 
 the Church without break of continuity, and to clear her 
 of the disfigurements of Popery, it rejected the novelties 
 and negations of Protestantism, though pressed hard upon 
 her, and took as her modeKfor authority in faith and 
 practice the undivided Church of the first four centuries. 
 
 But we are held forth to the distrust and condemnation 
 of our brother Churchpeople because our " opinions are 
 plainly incompatible with the leading principles of the 
 Reformation." Why, what are those principles if they 
 be not those which we have enumerated ? Those are in 
 truth the very notes and shining beacons of the English 
 Reformation. And we, of all people in your Lordship's 
 diocese, who are the most resolute to maintain those very 
 principles, neither more nor less, to keep them as the 
 rule of public worship and the guide of private life, 
 are thus rewarded for fidelity, and loaded with imputa- 
 tions by our Bishop ! 
 
 But is it possible that your Lordship can still have in 
 your mind the old bugbear of Rome ? If so let us plainly 
 tell your Lordship, that if the word Protestant may be 
 for once restricted to its only rightful sense — viz., that of 
 repudiation of Papal interference and renunciation of 
 Popish corruptions — then indeed your Lordship has few 
 such resolute Protestants in your diocese as ourselves. 
 Protestants In any other sense we could not be ; for, 
 were we so, we should truly then be actors in your 
 Lordship's " counter Reformation movement."
 
 27 
 
 In the Catholic Church alone can there be any security 
 for the continuance of orthodoxy. She alone has authority 
 and power as the guardian of the Faith — for she is a 
 Divine corporation, instituted for that special purpose. 
 We know the Church of England to be the Catholic 
 Church in England; and therefore we do reject Pro- 
 testantism, because, from its essential principle of inde- 
 pendence and glorification of individual opinion, it can 
 offer no possible security. 
 
 The picture presented by Protestantism in the world 
 
 at the present time is enough for all who have eyes to 
 
 see. In Germany, outside the limited body of the true 
 
 old Lutherans, all is chaotic. It has rejected the religion 
 
 of Christianity but retains its morality : it has dropped 
 
 into Deism, or sunk into materialistic philosophy. In 
 
 France matters are much the same, but without that 
 
 backbone of certain articles of faith and practice of the 
 
 ancient Church which are the stay of the old Lutherans 
 
 of Germany. In Switzerland the Church of Zuinglius 
 
 has dropped down to what might have been expected of 
 
 it, when we remember that even in its earliest days 
 
 Luther called its clergy " the ministers of Satan," and 
 
 not long after, " the ingenuity of Bucer enabled him to 
 
 frame a creed which each party, construing the words 
 
 in his own sense, might sign " ! ! In Geneva the Church 
 
 of Calvin has sunk, as might logically have been forecast, 
 
 into Socinianism. In Italy true Church reform has been 
 
 several times nobly begun, but it has been crushed. 
 
 There is a movement in Italy now, but " Protestantism" 
 
 is in the great bulk of the people simple infidelity. At 
 
 home we see its inevitable results plainly enough in infi-
 
 28 
 
 delity and every species of disorder, and last and most 
 conspicuously in that grievous multitude of schisms, sects, 
 and heresies which are the scars that seam the face of 
 English Christianity. 
 
 But does your Lordship suppose that Churchmen who 
 value the Church more than aught else on earth — men, 
 whether lay or clergy, and numbered by multitudes 
 beyond the limits of our Union — are made of such stuff 
 as to sit still and see the Church insulted even at the 
 instigation of her own authorities ? That a Parliament, 
 professedly non-Christian — a body of men of all religions 
 and of none, whose business is business and not religion, 
 elected by a population including the Church's greatest 
 enemies, a mixed crowd of good and bad, believers and 
 blasphemers — should have been set in inotion to discuss 
 and to decide a scheme for the Regulation of the Public 
 Worship of the Church of Christy and that even by the 
 Archbishops themselves ! It would be incredible were it 
 not a fact of history ! 
 
 In conclusion, with respect to present difficulties, we 
 cannot believe it hard to remedy them, if only the true 
 lines of the Church be followed, and in a manner so free 
 from speciality or partizanship as to command concurrence. 
 To prevent misapprehension we must be understood, in 
 the frequent reference to Convocation in this letter, that 
 we in no manner refer to that body as though it were a 
 " Court," for which it is most manifestly unfitted. What 
 we desire is, that the Sovereign, in the rightful exercise 
 of her supremacy, should be advised by representative 
 bodies of the Church in ecclesiastical and spiritual 
 matters. The laity {but let it be the laity ^ and not a hetero-
 
 29 
 
 geneous Parliament) would act in such a case (not /«, of 
 course, but) with Convocation, or at least some accepted 
 representation of the clergy. We believe that this would 
 satisfactorily bridge the difficulty, and thus confirm the 
 earliest recorded synod of the Church of England, that she 
 should be " free to maintain her own judgments." 
 
 The union of Church and State can only be restored 
 to confidence by the honourable acknowledgment o^ mutual 
 duties and distinct jurisdictions — the supremacy of the 
 Sovereign being the "broad seal" of their common 
 benefits. 
 
 God grant that this union be not dissolved ; but if it 
 be so, the very prime cause and consummation of so great 
 a calamity will have been the destruction of the constitutional 
 balance of Church and State by Parliamentary interference. 
 And great will be the responsibility of those Prelates who 
 have counselled and aided this invasion of the secular 
 Parliament into the proper functions and rights of the 
 Church of England, to her ultimate desolation. 
 
 We have the honour to be 
 Your Lordship's 
 
 Most loyal and humble servants, 
 
 Lay Members of the Church Union 
 
 in the diocese of 
 
 Gloucester and Bristol. 
 
 March 12, 1877. 
 Printed by the Church Printing Company, 11, Burleigh-st., Strand, W.C.
 
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