L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N 1VER.S1TY 
 
 or ILLl NOIS
 
 THE POSITION AND PARTIES OF THE 
 ENGLISH CHURCH 
 
 PASTOEAL LETTEB 
 
 TO 
 
 THE CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE OF WINCHESTER 
 
 BY 
 EDWAED HAROLD 
 
 BISHOr OF WINCHESTER 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 
 
 1875 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 PASTOEAL LETTEE. 
 
 Reverend Brethren, 
 
 I have not held a visitation this year; first, 
 because I thought that I had much to learn concern- 
 ing my new and most extensive Diocese ; and secondly, 
 because I intended to have asked both clergy and 
 laity to meet me this autumn in Diocesan Conference. 
 I have been hindered from making this request by the 
 rapidity with which the scheme for constituting a new 
 Bishopric has been carried forward in Parliament. I 
 have already said much, both in private and public, 
 about this impending change. Let me speak very briefly 
 of it now. I have always advocated some increase in the 
 English Episcopate. When my eminent predecessor. 
 Bishop Wilberforce, was taken away from us, I at- 
 tended the first meeting in London for raising a monu- 
 ment to his memory ; and I then said that I should 
 have advocated strongly the formation of a See of 
 South London, but that I found so many of his per- 
 sonal friends holding the opinion that he himself, if he 
 had been living, would not have consented to give up 
 that part of liis jurisdiction. I knew that this was 
 true ; and so I acquiesced in a different scheme. I 
 was not then Bishop of Winchester. No sooner was I 
 
 B
 
 2 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 publicly named for translatiou tlian persons of weight 
 and influence in South London communicated with me 
 on this very subject. Earnest hopes w^ere expressed 
 that I would make some sacrifice to found a South 
 London Bishopric, it being urged that no one, even of 
 superhuman powers, could rightly administer the Dio- 
 cese of Winchester, with South London at one end of 
 it, and the Channel Islands on the coast of Normandy 
 at the other. From that time forth I thought anxiously 
 how I could promote this wished-for sub-division. I 
 first proposed to give up Farnham Castle, hoping that 
 its sale would realize a sum of money equal, or nearly 
 equal, to the founding of a Bishopric, I was diverted 
 from this thought, first, by being assured that Farn- 
 ham would not produce nearly so large a sum as I had 
 expected ; secondly, by the thought that it was built 
 700 years ago by the then Bishop, Henry de Blois, 
 brother of King Stephen, and had been the Episcopal 
 residence ever since ; and thirdly, by the unexpected 
 discovery that property in St. James's Square had in- 
 creased so greatly in value as to make Winchester 
 House worth, perhaps, £70,000 or £80,000. 
 
 I wished originally for a Bishopric of South Lon- 
 don only, with St. Saviour's, Southwark, as its Cathe- 
 dral.^ It would be long to tell how many different 
 schemes were thought of and discussed in Committee 
 and in conference with the Secretary of State, to whose 
 
 ' I have still the conviction that \vhat we want is two London 
 dioceses ; but the Thames should not be the line of demarcation. 
 The difficulty of effecting this is very great, for it is important that 
 the ancient See of London should embrace not only St. Paul's and 
 the Mansion House, but Buckingham Palace and the Houses of 
 Parliament, which form the true centre of the present metropolis. 
 
 /^\ 
 % J
 
 Pastoral Letter. 3 
 
 kindness the whole Church owes much. At last it 
 was thought that the scheme, finally brouglit into Par- 
 liament, though not perfect in itself, was the best that 
 could now be devised. The result is that, when money 
 enough is raised, South London, with its suburbs in 
 East and Mid-Surrey, and the portion of the present 
 Diocese of Eochester (a very small portion) now lying 
 in Kent, will become a separate Diocese, considerable in 
 population, but territorially very small, and so, pro- 
 bably, one of the most workable Dioceses in England. 
 I cannot leave this subject without saying once more, 
 what I have often said before, how deeply I shall feel — 
 if I ever live to see and experience it — my separation 
 from the portion of my present Diocese which I 
 shall then lose. I knew little or nothing of it when I 
 first thought of the division. I know a great deal of 
 it now ; and I have experienced so much of kindness 
 and co-operation, both from laymen and clergymen 
 belonging to it, that I am sometimes almost tempted to 
 regret that I sacrificed personal friendships to public 
 interests. But I w^ill rather hope and pray that what- 
 ever seems privately painful may be blessed to public 
 good. 
 
 And now let me turn from important matters, as 
 affecting a single and more than a single Diocese, to 
 matters still more important, as affecting the whole 
 Church and the religious interests of millions now living 
 and yet unborn. 
 
 We are standing, it can scarcely be doubted, on the 
 threshold of a future history full of change in Chiu-ch 
 and State, in politics and religion. All Christendom is 
 moved ; and, strange to say, even religions outside of 
 Christendom are moved too. It seems as if a wave of 
 
 B 2
 
 4 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 new thought and excited action were passing over the 
 world. Men who live in snch a time have much need 
 of wisdom and self-control and disinterestedness, if they 
 are to do their part towards making the future blessed 
 and prosperous, instead of disastrous and evil ; and 
 none can need these qualities so much as the clergy, 
 who should be the pilots and directors of religious 
 thought in a troubled sea of change and doubt. If, 
 at similar crises in history — theEeformation, for instance 
 — all those who thought and acted on either side had 
 been more candid, and more temperate, and more true, 
 there would be far less danger now, and a far brighter 
 horizon for the future. No one can read wisely and 
 thoughtfully the records of such times without many a 
 pang of sorrow that men's passions checked improve- 
 ments on the one hand, and marred them on the other. 
 Are we not by such examples forewarned ? and should 
 we not be forearmed? 
 
 The Church of Christ from the earliest times has 
 had in many w^ays the same elements of good and evil, 
 so the same dangers and the same hopes as now. That 
 Church, from its first foundation, was in one sense an 
 absolute monarchy, because Christ is its King, and the 
 reign of the Omnipotent must be unlimited. But, as 
 regards its human organisation, it was so constructed 
 as to combine order and united action with all just 
 freedom of thought and will. If these two elements 
 of orderly union and fair freedom had been allowed to 
 work harmoniously together, the Church would have 
 been, what its Founder willed it to be — a kingdom sub- 
 ordinate to its King and wisely regulating its citizens. 
 But the Church had a strange struggle from the first. 
 Its victories were its dangers. It took captive the
 
 Pastoral Letter. 5 
 
 worlds of Judaism and of heathenism and of heathen 
 philosophy around it ; and they in their turn tried to 
 corrupt the Cliristianity which had subdued them. 
 Jews and heathens and philosophers assumed the name 
 and profession of Christians, witliout renouncing either 
 the opinions or the practices of the past. Freedom of 
 thought ran riot, and order and unity seemed likely to 
 be lost. When Gnostics and Ebionites and Manicheans 
 and Arians, claiming to be Christians, were subverting 
 Christianity, we cannot wonder that the rulers of the 
 Church magnified, and even exaggerated, the import- 
 ance of unity and order and discipline, and that, in their 
 fears of sucli heresy as, in fact, meant heathenism, they 
 should have encouraged the growth of powers incon- 
 sistent with constitutional freedom. At one time even 
 the greatest fathers of the Church called in the strono- 
 hand of the Emperor to control the heretics ; and then, 
 finding the sword two-edged and quite as likely to be 
 directed against truth as against error, they turned 
 towards another authority, which was apparently spi- 
 ritual, which had never sympathised with undue 
 license of thought, and which seemed able to unite all 
 true believers round one common centre, and to offer 
 a powerful resistance to the common enemy. Human 
 wisdom could scarcely have foreseen the danger of 
 this course. At all events, more pressing dangers were 
 at hand. It is hard to picture to ourselves, in its full 
 colours, the condition of Christianity in the fifth cen- 
 tury from Christ. It had, perhaps, established itself in 
 the convictions of the civilized world as the true reli- 
 gion ; but it had not interpenetrated society with its 
 principles. The Eoman Empire was not even half 
 converted. It had followed the lead of its Emperor
 
 f) Pastoral Letter. 
 
 and placed the cross upon the crown ; but the cruelty 
 and the violence and tlie lust and the luxur}- of the 
 Lower Empire seemed unabated, if not actually on the 
 increase. The light which had streamed into it made 
 only the darkness visible. Then came the Gothic tribes, 
 with all the fiei'ceness of a rude race overwhelming an 
 effeminate civilization. And it looked as if the Church 
 coidd only hold its own, and win its Master's way, by 
 forming itself into the closest possible corporation, 
 organising itself under a human head, and fostering 
 those societies of ascetic devotees, who, themselves 
 fighting against all the evils of a corrupt nature within, 
 could offer a refuo;e in their secluded homes from the 
 lust and the tyranny and the cruelty of the world 
 without; nay, even fi-om the worldly conformity of the 
 Church itself in the profligate city and the Imperial 
 Court. It is difficult now to see how all the evils of 
 the Middle Ages could have been encountered by Chris- 
 tianity if we could eliminate from history monasticism 
 and the Pope ; and yet they appear, even in their 
 earhest development, excrescences upon the Church, 
 inconsistent with its truest principles, and naturally 
 productive of dangers and corruptions. He, who guides 
 all things, permits many tilings not wholly accordant 
 with His wiU, and yet guides them still — guides them to 
 good — until at length, through the fidler development 
 of evil within them, they, perhaps, become only instru- 
 ments of ill. The Papacy and the monastic orders 
 seemed to promise security for order and orthodoxy 
 and Christian union. In the end they subverted all. 
 Pressing to excess the claims of order, they suppressed 
 to excess the claims of free thought. It was inevitable 
 that free thought so bound down should at length burst
 
 Pastoral Letter. 7 
 
 its bonds; hence all those divisions of Christendom, to 
 which the Church of Eome points as the disgrace of 
 the Eeformation, but which are in truth the fruits of 
 the Papacy. I must apologise for seeming to write an 
 historical essay, when I am professing to offer words of 
 counsel and warning. I am inchned to think that a 
 general survey of the past may help towards the 
 solution of questions for the future. 
 
 The Papacy, even of the Middle Ages, was the 
 extreme development of one important element of the 
 Church of Christ — the element of unity and order. I 
 will not linger on the many efforts to resist this extreme 
 development, which, made from time to time by states- 
 men and Churchmen alike, finally culminated in what 
 is called the Eeformation. The Eeformation was the 
 consequence of a common feeling of wrong, a common 
 yearning for freedom and truth; but it was multiform 
 in its development. The Lutheran and the Anglican 
 Eeformations were conceived in a conservative spirit ; 
 the one assuming the attitude of protest when unable 
 to effect reform ; the other reforming without subvert- 
 ing the national Church, which had existed even before 
 the nation itself. The Swiss Eeformation was of a 
 widely different character — Zwinglius throwing down all 
 ancient landmarks and rejecting all ancient institutions ; 
 and then the genius of Calvin, building up a wholly new 
 edifice, based on new principles and hedged in with 
 new fences. The distinction is so important to our- 
 selves that I dwell on it for a moment. The Lutherans 
 desired to reform the German Church, eradicating its 
 corruptions, but retaining its constitution. If they 
 could have carried tlieir princes and their bishops with 
 them, they would probably, under the guidance of
 
 8 Paatoral Letter. 
 
 Melauchtbon, have effected a true Reformation. As it 
 was, they seceded, with the thought of remaining sepa- 
 rate till such reformation might be possible, and, at the 
 same time, they put forth a solemn Protest against the 
 corruptions which they could not remove. The Eng- 
 lish was a true Reformation. Some may think it defec- 
 tive and others excessive ; but it was not secession, it 
 was not destruction, it was not revolution — it was reform. 
 It took a long time to effect. Its work went through 
 many reigns, beginning with Henry VIII., and certainly 
 not perfected till Charles II. It retained all funda- 
 mental doctrines, it respected all ancient formularies, 
 it changed no ancient constitution. It had the same 
 creeds, the same clergy, even the same services — trans- 
 lated and purged, but not abolished — the same Church 
 courts, the same Church laws. There was but one 
 thing which it absolutely swept away, viz. the usurped 
 supremacy of the Pope, and its natural consequences. 
 I am not asserting that the work was all well done, and 
 that there were no defects and no excesses — different 
 men will take differing views of this — I merely maiijtain 
 that this was the principle of Eeformation in England. 
 So it was viewed by the bishops and clergy of the time, 
 whom we commonly call Eeformers ; so it was viewed and 
 treated by the statesmen, by the sovereigns, by the laws 
 of the land ^ ; so even was it viewed by the Pope him- 
 
 ^ 'It is certain that no English ruler, no English Parliament, 
 thought of setting up a new Church, but simply of reforming the 
 existing English Church. Nothing was further from the mind of 
 either Henry VIII. or of Elizabeth than the thought that either of 
 them was doing anything new. Neither of them ever thought for a 
 moment of establishing a ncAv Church, or of establishing anything 
 at all. In their own eyes they were not establishing, but reforming ; 
 ihey were neither pulling down nor setting up, but simply putting
 
 Padoral Letter. 9 
 
 self, who would have tolerated the changes in faith and 
 worship in the reign of Elizabeth, if only the Queen 
 and people would have acknowledged his supremacy. 
 
 The Swiss Eeformation, though called by the same 
 name as the English, was essentially unlike it. It was 
 probably a blessing to England, though it has been cast 
 as a reproach, that there was no one great master-mind 
 among her reforming clergy, such as Luther or Calvin. 
 Matters, therefore, worked here more slowly and more 
 safely. Calvin saw clearly the difficulty of the Swiss 
 position. He was prepared for radical changes ; but 
 he was not ready to go all lengths with the rationalism 
 of Zwinglius, and he knew that no religion could stand 
 without close organisation and strong restraints. The 
 organisation of the Ancient Church was not possible to 
 him, as it was to the Enghsh. The rejection of the 
 Papal absolutism had left the restraints of law feeble 
 and helpless. So Calvin elaborated from his own fertile 
 brain a new system, which was to be the substitute for 
 and the rival of the old Cathohc system, whether cor- 
 rupted or reformed. He organised a great repubhc, 
 binding it together by a strong republican government, 
 and restraining — I had almost said enslaving — con- 
 sciences, not by the power of the priest, not merely by a 
 belief in the unlimited sovereignty of God, but by a blind 
 submission to that sovereignty, though exercised so as 
 
 to rights. . . . There was uo one act called " The Reforma- 
 tion " ; the Reformation was the gradual result of a long scries of 
 acts. There was no one moment, no one Act of Parliament, when 
 and by which a Church was " established " ; still less was there any 
 act by which one Church was "disestablished," and another Church 
 " established " in its place.' — Disestablishment and Disendowment, 
 by E. A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D. — a learned and interesting 
 pamphlet.
 
 10 Padoral Letter. 
 
 to be apparently (though, of course, only apparently) 
 arbitrary, tyrannical, and unjust. There can be no real 
 question but that Calvinism, whether as a system of 
 theology or as a system of Church government, was 
 utterly unknown in early times. No trace of anything 
 like it can be found in the first foiu- centimes after Christ. 
 In the fifth century a great tliinker introduced from 
 heathen into Christian philosophy a behef in the irre- 
 spective predestination of souls to eternal bliss or to 
 eternal woe ; but this belief in the hands of St. Augustine 
 was subordinated to Church teaching and to Church 
 authority. Thenceforth, indeed, Predestinariauism 
 became popular among Christians ; and men who, in 
 modern phraseology, w^ere among the highest Church- 
 men of the Middle Ages, were Angus tinians of the 
 straitest sect. Calvin made this special doctrine the foun- 
 dation of his elaborate system, squared everything to fit 
 it, and rejected everything that would not square with 
 it. And along with it he established a system of Pres- 
 byterian government, though he himself acknowledged 
 that he would have had bishops if it had been possible. 
 It was a great experiment, a masterpiece of ecclesias- 
 tical policy ; and to a marvellous degree it has succeeded. 
 Doubtless, the Calvinistic ' Eeformation ' was a move, 
 and a very extensive move, in the direction of free 
 thought; but it was clear to Calvin that free thought 
 required strong curbs and heavy restraints ; and so the 
 system of Calvinism was, and still is, as exclusive, and 
 in some respects as restrictive, as the system of Eo- 
 manism itself. It was, probably, the rebomid from its 
 exclusiveness which caused the Socinianism and the 
 Eationalism whicli first arose in Switzerland, and which 
 still extensively prevail there.
 
 Pastoral Letter. 1 1 
 
 We well know how much this system influenced 
 earnest men in England in the reigns of Edward, Eliza- 
 beth, and the first Stuarts. It was apparently the 
 strongest, boldest countermove to Popery. At first all 
 (or almost all) who aimed at Eeformation naturally 
 sympathised with all the opponents of Eome. Eoman- 
 ism, the power of the Pope, and the rising powers of the 
 Jesuits, constituted the common danger ; and all who 
 opposed the common danger seemed to be friends. 
 Then the Marian exiles taking refuge among the Swiss 
 brought back to England Swiss theology, and sowed it 
 broadcast among the people, at a time when horror of 
 the Marian persecutions, dread of Philip's invasions, 
 and indignation against Papal conspiracies, had created 
 a panic — cruel, alas, as it was timid — on the subject of 
 Eomanism. The Puritans, who owe their origin to 
 this, well deserve our respectful remembrance. There 
 was much that was noble and spirited in tlieir sturdy 
 independence ; in their resistance to tyranny, whether 
 civil or ecclesiastical ; in their stern, simple habits of 
 life and faith. But they were as intolerant as those to 
 whom they were opposed, whether Papists or Anglicans. 
 People had not learned at that time that it was possible 
 to tolerate either doctrines or practices, without wholly 
 agreeing with them. The question really was, in the 
 reigns of Ehzabeth, James I., and Charles I., whether 
 the English Church, reformed but preserved, should 
 continue the Church of the nation, or whether it sliould 
 be rejected in favour of Puritanism {i.e. Calvinistic 
 Presbyterianism) on the one hand, or Eomanism on the 
 other. 
 
 The Eebellion and the Eevolution were the results 
 of this fierce struggle. Since those great events the
 
 12 PaaLoral Letter. 
 
 English Church has had professedly within its bosom, 
 what it had always had with less formal acknowledg- 
 ment, two great schools of religious thought. They 
 have been permitted to work side by side, not struggling 
 for the absolute supremacy of the one to the utter ex- 
 tinction of the other, but acknowledged as necessary 
 factors of the great National Church, It may be diffi- 
 cult to define exactly the relative positions of the two 
 schools in all cases, for the various ' revivals ' in the one 
 direction or the other have been marked by various 
 characteristics ; but we may say generally, though not 
 universally, that the one school has taken the side of 
 order, the other craved for greater fireedom of action ; 
 that the one has upheld Episcopal, the other has at 
 least sympathised with Presbyterian, government ; that 
 the one has esteemed highly the Christian Sacraments, 
 the other has laid most stress upon preaching the 
 Word ; that the one has been favourable to the higher 
 adornment of Divine service, the other has been con- 
 tent with barer walls and simpler ceremonies ; that the 
 one has given more thought to the training of the 
 young, the other has relied most on converting the 
 adult smner ; that the one has been more devoted to 
 pastoral labom', the other more zealous for public 
 preaching and for foreign missions ; that the one has 
 produced nearly all our theological hterature, the other 
 has contributed chiefly to devotional and practical 
 writings ; that the one has made much of corporate 
 life, the other has given its chief thoughts to personal 
 religion ; that the one looks back -svith sympathy and 
 respect to Christian antiquity, feeling that in all its 
 changes the Church has still had one stream of life 
 running through its history, the other has, for the most
 
 Pastoral Letter. 1 3 
 
 part, shrunk from identifying the present with the 
 former conditions of Christianity, beheving that for 
 centuries it existed only in the Bible, and could be 
 scarcely found in the organised societies of the world ; 
 that, once more, the one has dwelt much on repentance 
 for sin and striving after holiness, the other has more 
 cheered the penitent with the thought of pardon pur- 
 chased and blessedness assured. 
 
 I am aware that the above does not characterise 
 all members of either school, and that there are many 
 other distinctions and differences which have frequently 
 arisen ; but I believe that the two chief schools in the 
 English Church have generally, though not universally, 
 exhibited these distinguishing characteristics. We may 
 have our closest sympathies with one or with the other ; 
 but no one who thinks seriously can doubt that, when 
 they have worked quietly together, the presence of both 
 has been a blessing to the Church. The mistake of the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the determi- 
 nation of those in power, on whichever side they 
 might be, that only one school should exist, or at all 
 events should prevail, and that the other must succumb 
 or secede. The true principle of a Church should be 
 that union of order and free thought of which I spoke 
 at first, permitting within all reasonable limits differ- 
 ences of sentiment such as must exist wliere men truly 
 think at all ; not breaking unity of communion because 
 of variety of thought or even of usage, but yet main- 
 taining in all cases fundamental truth, and that out- 
 ward order without which no human society can 
 prevail and prosper. So permitted, variety rather con- 
 tributes to strength than engenders weakness ; the 
 variety itself stirs up, not to hatred, but to emulation
 
 14 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 in good works ; and the danger of stagnation, immi- 
 nent where all think exactly alike, is warded off by 
 the watchfulness of one school over the deficiencies or 
 excesses of the other. Unhappily, in such a state of 
 things, stagnation is too often the only home for peace, 
 and whenever zeal revives conflict revives with it. 
 There are, indeed, those who say that the English 
 Church holds within its bosom two different religions, 
 two different faiths. Surely this is untrue. If we look 
 back on our past history, and at the tenets and prac- 
 tices of both schools, there may have been, perhaps, 
 in each of them some things to deplore, erat quod 
 tollere velles, but in both of them there has been much 
 to esteem ; and though there may be at times points of 
 important difference, surely they cannot be compared 
 with the many points of agreement, or rather with the 
 great fundamental agreement in the deep verities of 
 the Christian faith. Can men be said to belong to two 
 different religions, when both classes accept the same 
 Scriptures as the authoritative rule of faitli ; both be- 
 lieve in the same mysterious, infinitely holy, infinitely 
 merciful Triune God, loving Father, redeeming Saviour, 
 sanctifying Spirit ; both acknowledge the same corrup- 
 tion of our nature, the same redemption and restoration, 
 through the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ ; both 
 join in the same public prayers, partake of the same 
 appointed Sacraments ; both look for the same Judg- 
 ment, both believe in the same immortality, both ex- 
 pect the same rest in Paradise, both hope for the same 
 home in Heaven ? Differences, doubtless, exist, which 
 zealous and sometimes desio;nino; men fan into a flame 
 of discord ; but the deep unity in those great points of 
 rommon faith is infinitely greater than any differences
 
 Pastoral Letter. 15 
 
 of detail or of ceremonial can be. Is it not, then, 
 wise and right to endure the diversity in subordinates, 
 in thankfulness for unity in essentials ? What can be 
 hoped for from intolerance or extravagance ? On each 
 side of us, no doubt, there are two great human sys- 
 tems of doctrine and of discipline, gigantic efforts of 
 human device. The Eoman system was a masterpiece 
 in its own way, built up gradually, almost impercepti- 
 bly ; sometimes with entire honesty of purpose, from 
 the hope of suppressing threatened dangers to the 
 faith ; sometimes with a strong desire in the master 
 builders to aggrandise power and authority over the 
 kingdoms and the consciences of men. The system of 
 Calvin was also a masterpiece ; a tower of strength 
 built over against the fortress of the Papacy ; meant to 
 hold its. own against the Papacy, and, perhaps, to destroy 
 it. It, too, in all that was peculiar to it, was purely 
 human ; not gradually worked out in the lapse of ages, 
 but sprung full-grown in a single generation, full-armed 
 from a single brain. The natural result to us in the 
 Church of England of pressing our own differences to 
 a crisis will be to throw rehgious men on the one side 
 into the arms of one human system, on the other into 
 the arms of the opposite ; systems to which we may 
 willingly give all the credit that belongs to them, but 
 which can never have on us the claims of our true 
 mother, the ancient Apostolic Church of England, 
 brought here, perhaps, by Apostles in Apostolic times ; 
 growing with our national growth ; feeding year by year 
 our national life ; the source of our national greatness ; 
 the author of our national civilisation ; not untinged in 
 times past with errors which overspread all Christen- 
 dom, but waking to a sense of their evil, and casting
 
 16 Pastoral Lefier. 
 
 off the errors without losing historic faith or historic 
 life.^ Let us remember, too, that the Ultramontane 
 Eomanism of the present day is very different from the 
 better forms of mediaeval Christianity, and that we 
 cannot recall the earnest, vigorous, severe spirit of Cal- 
 vinism in its days of youth. It can be only in the most 
 corrupt development of Eomanism, and in a degenerate 
 form of the extreme opposite, that we can find a 
 refuge if we leave or lose the home which we have 
 now. We need not be insensible to the desires for 
 union, on the one hand with Continental Churches, on 
 the other wdth the JSToncoiiformist bodies at home. No 
 holier desire can well animate Christian hearts. If I 
 may speak of myself — and a Bishop may surely speak 
 heart to heart with either clergy or laity of his diocese 
 — I believe that through hfe I have laboui^ed for no 
 one thing so earnestly as for the union of the Churches 
 of Christ. But of this I am very sure, that it will be 
 a mistake of the most fatal character if we attempt 
 either corporate union, or even concession tending to 
 union, with the Churches of Eoman obedience, whilst 
 boimd down to that obedience by tlie Vatican decrees, 
 
 * I, perhaps, appear to have overlooked the fact that there are 
 three religious schools amongsst us, and that the third, commonly 
 now called the ' Broad ' school, is increasing in strength. I have by 
 no means forgotten this. I hope that there is a due place in English 
 Churchmanship, not only for men of the old school of latitude 
 divines, like Whichcote and Henry More, but for the modern school 
 of enquiring thought, represented by Dr. Arnold, Professor Maurice, 
 and others whom we may well honour and esteem. We need never 
 check honest enquiry, so it be reverent and sincere. Still, I think 
 vrhat I have said in the text is true, that most religiovs men will, if 
 driven from Anglicanism, take refuge in one of the schools I -have 
 spoken of, not in free enqiiiry ; though many men will be driven 
 into Scepticism, Rationalism, Pantheism, Atheism.
 
 Pastoral Letter. lY 
 
 and before they have gone through internal reform and 
 have obtained spiritual freedom, such as we ourselves 
 did at the Keformation, or such as the Old Catholics 
 are striving for now. We may hope and pray and 
 labour for peace ; but it must not be by a sacrifice of 
 purity. On the other hand, I cannot believe in what 
 is called an Evangelical alliance, much as I can sym- 
 pathise with the spirit that gave rise to it. The very 
 word ' alliance ' seems to indicate an acknowledgment 
 that we do not care for ' unity.' Independent nations, 
 which cannot possibly unite, make treaties of alliance ; 
 but the Church should be one in Christ.- Let us do 
 all we can to remove defects in our own system, and 
 to exhibit its excellence for satisfying all spiritual wants. 
 Let us act with all brotherly kindness to those who do 
 not see as we see nor wholly walk with us. Let us 
 work steadily and honestly in our own fi.elds of labour, 
 opening the bosom of the Church wide to receive all 
 that will take refuge in its folds ; but let us not ignore 
 our differences ; let us not concede that our own position 
 is an usurped one, that we are not the ancient Church 
 of this land, but merely one of the many sects which 
 sprang up two centuries ago, and so, by throwing down 
 the ancient landmarks, make all hopes of future unity 
 impossible.'^ 
 
 ' I rejoice to find in the Charge just delivered by the Bishop of 
 Peterborough the same thoughts as my own on this subject, in 
 almost the same words, though I need hardly say that neither of us 
 could have seen each other's writings. 
 
 ' There are points in which we are at cne with the Koman 
 Catholics, and points in which we are at one with the Nonconformist 
 communions; and it is most desirable to make the most of those 
 points of contact as being so many hopes of union ; but we should do 
 well, too, to look boldly at our points of fundamental difference. 
 
 C
 
 18 Pastoral [.eiier. 
 
 And, as regards our action at home, if it be desir- 
 able that the great National Church should continue to 
 hold within it two or three great schools of thought — 
 which, when it ceases to hold, it will cease to be the 
 National Church and become at best but a privileged 
 sect — then surely two things should be borne in mind : 
 First, we must allow each school fair latitude, fair 
 freedom of thought and action, not readily troubled 
 even if at times, especially in reactionary or exciting 
 periods, any school should develope extreme partizans or 
 extreme practices. We must remember that the wisest 
 of men will have unwise followers, and must be fairly 
 tolerant of unwisdom and extravagance. But, next, 
 we must try to keep all schools, especially our own (if 
 we belong to one) reasonably within those limits which 
 are absolutely needful for the preservation of order 
 and unity among members of the same body. Free 
 thought and united action must be constantly kept in 
 view. Only a sect can exist without freedom, and a 
 Church will become a wnlderness if it loses order. 
 
 Anglicans believe the Church to be a great human society, composed 
 of visible elements, under an invisible King. Eomanists believe the 
 Chm'ch to be a great human society, composed of visible elements, 
 under a visible King. Nonconformists and many foreign Protestants 
 believe the Church not to be a visible human society at all, but an 
 invisible company, known only to God, imder an invisible King. 
 Anglicans and Eomanists believe in a Body ; Nonconformists believe 
 only in a Spirit. Anglicans and Nonconformists equally acknow- 
 ledge no Head but Christ. Romanists believe in an infallible head 
 on earth. We may willingly hope that there may still be funda- 
 mental unity in faith, but there cannot be unity in work. 
 
 There has of late grown up a new distinction between England 
 and Rome which is very significant. In olden times the controversy 
 constantly was as to which could most truly claim antiquity in its 
 favour. Roth, of course, appealed to Scripture; but both, too, ap-
 
 PaMoral Letter. 19 
 
 Let me venture, then, to suggest some principles 
 which may tend to these ends. I am thankful that 
 other warning voices besides my own^ have lately been 
 raised asjainst the forming; and uniting with societies 
 for propagating the opinions of one party and prose- 
 cuting those of the opposite. Only ill can come of 
 such unions, though good men may have lent them- 
 selves to them. 
 
 Let me speak next of the use of certain words, 
 which by misuse become badges of party and often 
 the sources and supports of erroneous thinking and 
 teaching. It is, probably, famihar to all of us that the 
 constant use of certain words of Scripture in the sense 
 attributed to them by special schools or sects is calcu- 
 lated to obscure the meaning of Christian truth. Often, 
 where the sense is itself good, it is not the sense in 
 which a sacred writer has used it. The conventional 
 use of words in religion and theology is to be avoided 
 
 pealed to the primitive interpretation of Scripture and the light 
 which primitive practice shed upon Scripture. England still does 
 this ; but Cardinal Manning, the mouthpiece o£ Kome in this 
 country, says that ' the appeal to antiquity is both a treason and a 
 heresy. It is a treason because it rejects the Divine voice of this 
 hour, and a heresy because it denies that voice to be Divine.' — 
 {Temporal Mission of the TTolii Ghosf, p. 220.) And ngain : 'The 
 appeal from the living voice of the Church to any tribunal wlL-it- 
 soever, human history included, is an act of private judgment and 
 a treason, because that living voice is supreme ; and to appeal from 
 that supreme voice is also a heresy, because that voice by Divine 
 assistance is infidlible.' — (Letter to the Dai/>/ Telegraph, Oct. 8, 
 1875, signed ' Henry Edward Card. Archbishop of Westminster.') 
 I am greatly mi.«taken if Vincentius Lirinensis and the Church of 
 his day — let alone Irenaius, Tertullian, &c. — woiild not have pro- 
 uounced these sayings to be traitorous and heretical. 
 
 ' See the Charge of the Bishoj) oi Llandaff (1875), and his 
 speech in Convocation in July 1875.
 
 20 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 to the utmost ; and Archbishop Whately justly ob- 
 served that theological formularies ought never to be 
 worded in Scriptural language, lest people, finding the 
 words of their accustomed formularies occurring in the 
 Scriptures, should suppose, without reflection, that the 
 sense of the formulary was also of necessity the sense 
 of the Scriptures. 
 
 To apply this principle to our present controversies ; 
 it is much to be deplored that words are used, and 
 often pressed by one party, which convey a very 
 different significance to the ears of the other party. In 
 a controversy which raged some quarter of a century 
 back the two schools in the Church quarrelled over 
 the term ' regenerate ' in baptism, greatly because they 
 attached two different meanings to it. Is not the same 
 true now about such words as ' Eeal Presence,' ' Sacri- 
 fice,' 'Altar,' 'Priest'? Probably no one in the 
 English Church, when he claims to hold the ' Eeal 
 Presence ' in the Eucharist, means that the consecrated 
 bread and wine have literally become the natural 
 Body and Blood of the Lord. Yet persons on the 
 other side in controversy understand that this is 
 meant ; and, indeed, language has been sometimes used 
 as if the speaker or the writer desired to be so under- 
 stood. Again, when the phrase ' Eucharistic Sacrifice ' 
 is adopted, and in relation to this the holy table is 
 called ' altar,' and the ministering presbyter ' a priest,' 
 there are many who simply understand by ' sacrifice ' 
 the slaying of a victim and offering the slain victim to 
 God ; by ' altar,' the place on which the dying and 
 bleeding victim is placed ; and by ' priest,' the person 
 who slays the victim and then offers up the body and 
 sprinkles the blood. There are many, again, who
 
 Pastoral Letter. 21 
 
 understand the words ' Eucharistic Sacrifice ' to mean 
 of necessity that the Sacrifice of Christ upon the 
 Cross was but partial and insufficient, not in any 
 way ' full, perfect, and sufficient,' unless supplemented 
 by the sacrifice ' offered day by day continually ' in the 
 Eucharist by the priest. The unexplained use, there- 
 fore, of these phrases gives constant offence to many 
 that hear them. Probably the word ' sacrifice ' of the 
 Holy Communion is used by many persons who do not 
 altogether agree among themselves as to what they 
 mean by it. The Fathers, undoubtedly, from very early 
 times, spoke of ' offering,' and of the sacrijicium incru- 
 entum as apphcable to the Holy Eucharist ; but there 
 has been much difference of opinion as to the sense 
 in which these terms were used ; and there is, 
 indeed, every degree of significance attributable to 
 them — even from the simply Zwinglian commemora- 
 tion of the great sacrifice up to the highest Eoman 
 belief, that the elements have been changed into the 
 very crucified Body of Christ, and are offered afresh 
 by the priest each time the mass is celebrated. I can- 
 not help thinking that the rule of charity should make 
 us careful to explain our language when we use that 
 which may thus be misinterpreted. 
 
 Tliere is another set of phrases which are used in- 
 accurately, and often offensively. I mean the words 
 ' Catholic,' ' Protestant,' ' Eeformation,' and the like. As 
 to the two last, I have already observed that the English, 
 the Lutheran, the Swiss, and the Socinian Reformations, 
 though called by the same name, were in truth vastly 
 different events in history. The Lutheran was dis- 
 tinctly a protest against that which it was unable to 
 remedy. Therefore, as it is well known, the Lutherans
 
 22 I'a.^tdral Letter. 
 
 were the true Protestants ; and were, till of late, exclu- 
 sively called so by German historians. It may not be 
 vitally important, but it seems to me very desirable, 
 that, when w^e speak of the ' Eeformation,' we should 
 speak definitely and explicitly. The principles of the 
 Swiss Eeformation were not tlie principles of the Lu- 
 theran Eeformation, nor were the principles of either 
 of them the principles of tJie EngUsh Eeformation. 
 Much has been said about the word ' Protestant,' and 
 it would be well if it could be confined to its original 
 meaning ; but this has, perhaps, become well nigh im- 
 possible. Properly, neither the Swiss nor the English 
 are Protestants. The Lutherans protested against what 
 they could not remedy. They protested against the arbi- 
 trary conduct of their rulers, civil and ecclesiastical, who 
 would not let them reform the religion of the land. 
 The Calvinists, on the contrary, not only reformed but 
 subverted the Church in Switzerland, and substituted a 
 w^holly new condition of faith and discipline in the can- 
 tons where they bore sway. They had, therefore, 
 nothing to protest against. They had got the victory, 
 and could not complain. In England, again, tlie Church 
 and the nation, by a conjoint act, ejected the Papal 
 domination, and ' set to rig;hts ' the relis;ion of the land. 
 It w^as not for English Churchmen, who accepted the 
 Eeformation, but for those who were attached to the 
 Papacy, to protest then ; and protest they did, often and 
 in good earnest, against the new learning and the reform 
 of the faith, and the dethronement of the Pope. The 
 true ' Protestants ' in England were the Papists, not the 
 Anglicans. Still, in modern times, the word ' Pro- 
 testant ' is so constantly used of those who agree to re- 
 ject the authority of Eome that it is well nigh useless
 
 Pastoral Letter. 23 
 
 to attempt to restrict it to its historical sense ; and, as 
 the Lutherans acted wisely and temperately when they 
 protested against the injustice of the Pope and the 
 Emperor, I do not see why we should hesitate in such 
 matters to throw in our lot with them. It may be wrong, 
 indeed, to confound in one common name Anglicans, 
 Scandinavians, Lutlierans, Calvinists, Zwinglians, Soci- 
 nians, and all the offshoots from any and all of them ; 
 but it is true that they all have this in common, that 
 they reject the power of the Pope and the corruptions 
 which that power has fostered and preserved. Some of 
 them have worse errors ; but they have rejected these. 
 But the w^ord ' Catliolic ' is of far more conse- 
 quence ; and it seems to me that, on every account, 
 accuracy in the use of it ought conscientiously to be 
 aimed at. It may be impossible to prevent writers in 
 newspapers from applying it exclusively to members of 
 the Church of Eome, it may be difficult to teach other 
 people that it is not applicable equally to all Christian 
 sects of whatever colour or creed ; but every well- 
 educated man ought to know that such applications are 
 historically inaccurate, and that the inaccuracy is mis- 
 chievous. I need not say to you, my reverend brethren, 
 that for many centuries in the history of the Christian 
 faith, the name ' Catholic ' was held in the highest 
 esteem ; that it did not convey the thought of com- 
 munion with the Church of Eome, nor, on the other 
 hand, did it embrace all who professed and called them- 
 selves Christians ; but that it designated that great body 
 which continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine 
 and fellowship, in contradistinction to those who, by 
 schism, or heresy, or unbelief, cut tliemselves off from 
 the main body of the Church. As applied, therefore,
 
 24 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 to a Church iu any nation or city or district, it meant 
 the sound and orthodox Church there. Until the 
 Bishop of Eome, by usurping an authority which was 
 not his due, divided Christendom, first into East and 
 West, and then into numberless sects and denominations, 
 there was one great communion throughout the world, 
 holding the same faith, governed by the same laws, par- 
 taking of the same sacraments. It was, therefore, called 
 Catholic ; whilst schisms and heresies, being local and 
 partial, were un-Cathohc. For Enghsh Churchmen, 
 therefore, to admit that tlie Eoman communion is the 
 Catholic Church is distinctly to acknowledge that we 
 ourselves are either schismatics or heretics. The 
 Catholic Church of the land is the ancient, orthodox, 
 Apostohc Church there. If we understand our position 
 aright, we claim that the JSTational English Church is 
 that ancient Catholic, Apostolic, orthodox Church in 
 England ; and, with no feeling of disrespect either to 
 members of a foreign communion or to those who have 
 left the bosom of our own true mother, we ought not 
 to concede to them the title of Catholics. It is an 
 ancient, venerated name, to which the saints of early 
 days attached the utmost consequence ; and to use it 
 carelessly is to be careless of our birthright. 
 
 And, again, if the ancient Church of a nation main- 
 taining the ancient faith and order of the Apostles be 
 the Catholic Church in that nation, then every member 
 of that Church is a Catholic. It is a misuse of terms 
 for a certain section of the Church to call itself the 
 Catholic party, to speak of Catholics and Protestants as 
 distinct elements in the same Church, to call certain 
 practices Catholic and others Protestant. If the English 
 Church be Catholic, its members are CathoKcs, and its
 
 Pastoral Letter. 25 
 
 practices are Catholic practices. No doubt some of its 
 members will sympathise more with primitive, others 
 more with mecliasval, others more with modern, others 
 even with heretical or schismatical principles ; but, so 
 long as they remain members of a Catholic Church, 
 they are Catholics, and the principles and practices 
 of a Catholic Church are Catholic principles and 
 practices. 
 
 I may seem to be dwelling on trifles, making too 
 much of names and words ; but words are the great 
 symbols of thought ; little words have often done great 
 deeds ; and once, as we all know, the least of all letters 
 settled the greatest controversy that ever shook the 
 Church of Christ. Every conscientious Christian ought 
 to watch and to protest against careless or ignorant or 
 arrogant misuse of reUgious words. And few things, as 
 I think, have more tended to aggravate our differences 
 of late than sucli misuse, sometimes even than the 
 right use rashly obtruded and unexplained. 
 
 But there are other symbols, even more conspicuous, 
 though, perhaps, not more influential, than words, which 
 occupy chief attention and cause greatest perplexity 
 now. The use or disuse of special garments, the points 
 of the compass to wliich the ministering presbyter may 
 turn, threaten, as tliey have done before, the peace, 
 perhaps the national existence, of the Church. I may 
 fail to say anything which can help in this busy ques- 
 tion ; but T would at least try to contribute some few 
 words for peace. As I have just protested against a 
 careless ignorant or irritating use of words, and also 
 against their use in an unsound and unhistorical signi- 
 ficance, so I would now protest against an exaggerated 
 and unreal significance being attached to dresses or
 
 26 Pastoral Leiier. 
 
 ornaments or attitudes. It is true that one party has 
 claimed to wear special vestments and to worship in an 
 eastward direction, because they attach a doctrinal sig- 
 nificance to these usages ; and then the opposite party 
 has insisted on holding them to this principle ; and so 
 things in themselves indifferent have become watch- 
 words of two hostile camps. It is certain that originally 
 neither an eastward position nor what are called Eu- 
 charistic vestments had any such significance at all. 
 The doctrine supposed to be symbolized is the doctrine 
 of sacrifice ; but, if we go back to Jewish times, the 
 priest did not stand at the broad side of the Jewish altar 
 facing east, for the altar was four-square, having no one 
 side broader than the other ; it was not fixed against a 
 wall, but stood free in the Temple. The priest may have 
 looked sometimes east, but if so he would have faced 
 the people who were worshipping westward ; but he 
 quite as probably looked northward or southward or 
 westward when he offered sacrifice to the Lord. Nor 
 was it in his most gorgeous vestments that the High 
 Priest offered the great sacrifice. On the day of Atone- 
 ment he went in even to the most holy place, and 
 there sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice ; but it was 
 specially prescribed that it should be in his humblest 
 guise, in the simple white dress common to all the 
 priesthood. The other most important sacrifice was 
 the Passover ; for the slaying of which no priest's in- 
 tervention was prescribed ; and though in later times 
 tlie ministry of the tribe of Levi was sought for, it was 
 without special dress or elaborate ceremonial. If we 
 look to the earlier as:es of the Christian faith, it is 
 doubtful whether the bishop or ])resbyter did not more 
 frequently face westward than eastward ; and it is most
 
 PiLbtoral Letter. 27 
 
 probable that the bishops, priests, and deacons in the 
 first five centiu'ies wore only white. (' Si, in administra- 
 tione sacrificiorum Candida veste processerint.' — Hieron, 
 c. Pelag. lib. i. c. 9.) The chasuble was, indeed, an eccle- 
 siastical vestment as early as the sixth century, but as 
 late as the ninth it belonged equally to all classes of 
 clergy, including all the minor orders, and was by no 
 means a distinctively priestly or sacrificial dress. (' Casula 
 pertinet generaliter ad omnes clericos.' — Amalarius De 
 Eccles. Offic. 1. ii. c. 19. Amalarius wrote early in 
 the ninth century.) The utmost, then, that can be said 
 for the symbolism of the chasuble and the eastward 
 position is that a feeling grew up in the Middle Ages 
 in favour of them both in the ministration of Holy 
 Communion ; and that so by degrees their use as 
 Eucharistic was adopted in the Church. It is im- 
 possible, with such a history, that they can properly or 
 essentially have any sacramental or sacrificial signifi- 
 cance. If, at any period, or under any circumstances, 
 customs so growing up were thought inexpedient by the 
 Church authorities, it could not but be lawful to dis- 
 continue and to interdict their use ; and to insist on 
 them as essential, or to resist them as in themselves 
 doctrinally erroneous, is inconsistent alike with reason 
 and with charity. 
 
 And there are important practical reasons why, 
 instead of forcing a doctrinal significance on these 
 usages, we should try to detach them from it as much 
 as possible. It is certain that those to whom we owe 
 the present state of our formularies protested against 
 the assigning im])ortance or symbolical significance to 
 similar acts. They even said that ceremonies, dresses, 
 attitudes, were unimportant in themselves, and only
 
 28 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 valuable as serving to promote order and maintain 
 unity. ^ I have reason to know that there are many, 
 both clergy and laity, in the present day, who would 
 like the use of a distinctive vestment at Holy Com- 
 munion, not because they desire to symbolize some 
 special doctrine, but because they look on that sacra- 
 ment as the most sacred of Christian ordinances, inti- 
 mately connected with their faith in the Great High 
 Priest and His atoning sacrifice, bringing them into 
 closest spiritual communion with Him who is the 
 Food of their souls ; and therefore they would wish 
 peculiar honour to be attributed to the rite. In like 
 manner, I know that there are many who would prefer 
 the eastward position of the minister, not because they 
 consider such position suited to a sacrificing priest, but for 
 the same reason that the bishops m 1661 favoured it, viz. 
 because, when we all pray to God, w^e should all look 
 tlie same way, and rather avoid the appearance of ad- 
 dressing one another. At the time of Holy Communion 
 it has generally been believed that the whole congrega- 
 tion pleads before God the merits of the one great 
 Sacrifice once offered on the Cross, and therefore it has 
 been thought that the priest should lead them in prayer, 
 and not turn to them as in exhortation.'^ Others, again, 
 
 ' See, for instances, the so-called * Black Rubric' at the end of 
 the Communion Office, Canon XXX., and ' The Answer of the 
 Bishops to the Exceptions of the Ministers.' — Cardwell, Conferences, 
 pp. 335, seq. esp. pp. 348-351. 
 
 ^ ' Minister's Turning. — The minister's turning to the people is 
 not most convenient throughout the whole ministration. When he 
 speaks to them, as in Lessons, Absolution, and Benediction, it is con- 
 venient that he turn to them. When he speaks for them to God it 
 is fit that they should all turn another way, as the ancient Church 
 ever did, the reasons of which you may see Aug. lib. 2, De Ser. 
 Dom. in ^fonte.'' — Cardwell, Confei'ences^ p. 353.
 
 Pastoral Letter. 29 
 
 liave the feeling that the eastward was the position 
 generally observed in earlier times, that, not being 
 necessarily superstitious, it need not have been changed, 
 and that every continental communion of Christians (ex- 
 cepting only the Calvinists) uses the eastward position and 
 some distinctive dress ; and they do not like to be dis- 
 sociated in practice from all of these. Whether such per- 
 sons are right or wrong, their feelings and opinions are 
 consistent w^ith the truest loyalty to the English Eefor- 
 mation, and they ought not to be forced to attach a 
 significance to practices which they do not themselves 
 attach to them, and which those practices do not neces- 
 sarily involve. 
 
 But, above all, I deprecate the fastening a significance 
 on insignificant rites for the following reason : if one 
 party maintains that eastward celebration (for instance) 
 means sacrifice, and the other party nails them down 
 to their position, we cannot escape a most disastrous 
 schism. It seems admitted by the highest legal autho- 
 rities that the meaning of the rubrics on this latter point 
 is yet not finally ascertained. If one party maintains 
 that the doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice is of the 
 essence of Christianity, whilst the other holds that it is 
 essentially anti-Christian (and, alas ! this is no exagge- 
 ration of what is said on either side) ; and if both 
 maintain that this is symbolized by consecrating to the 
 east, then it appears inevitable that if the final judg- 
 ment decides that the eastward position is unlawful, 
 one party must secede, and it is impossible to tell how 
 many earnest men it will carry away wnth it ; if, on the 
 contrary, the eastward position is decided to be the only 
 legal position, then the other party must secede, unless, 
 indeed, it can obtain a repeal of the rubric — a result
 
 30 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 which must slioke the whole fabric of tlie Eno'lish 
 Church to its foundations, because it will unsettle that 
 principle of comprehension which has kept us together 
 for now two centuries and a quarter. Let us agree that 
 neither vestments nor attitude have in themselves any 
 doctrinal meaning whatever — and this is the only 
 common-sense view of the matter, the only view that 
 can be taken by reasonable men — and the result of an 
 adverse decision to either party will then be painful, 
 but cannot be destructive. Hopes may for a time be 
 ruined, but ' impavidos ferient ruinas.' 
 
 I have been led on to speaking of Courts and Judg- 
 ments. One difficulty in the way of settlement and 
 peace is the objection urged to the constitutic^n and the 
 impartiality of the Courts. Judges are human, and I 
 am not concerned to defend them or their judgments 
 as perfect ; but it is absolutely necessary that there 
 should be some mode of ascertaming the meaning of 
 laws which are confessedly obscure ; and I believe 
 it would be impossible to find a tribunal which would 
 be wholly free fi'om blame and acceptable to all 
 men. The Prayer Book itself sends doubters and dis- 
 puters to the Bishop ; but extreme parties on either 
 side have found some excuse for refusing to abide by 
 the judgment either of the Bishop of any single 
 diocese, or of the collective voice of the English epis- 
 copate. In the case of a great National Church — a 
 Church which from very early days has been identified 
 with the nation, and the nation witli it — there must be 
 some difficulty in deciding as to the constitution of 
 Courts which shall fairly represent the Church and the 
 nation and faudy satisfy the claims and the wants of 
 both. A Court composed wholly of ecclesiastics would.
 
 Pastoral Letter. 31 
 
 probably, inspire no confidence in the laity. It is 
 doubtful whether it would give full confidence to the 
 clergy. Ecclesiastics might be the best informed on the 
 significance of ecclesiastical language ; but there would 
 be a general suspicion that they were influenced by 
 theological bias to the one side or to the other. An 
 ecclesiastical synod, again, is a legislative, not a judi- 
 cial body ; and, though synods of bishops may in early 
 times have acted as final Courts of Appeal, no body like 
 our present Convocation has ever had such functions 
 assigned to it, nor could it adequately discharge them. 
 There seems no alternative but either a mixed Court 
 of judges and bishops — such as the present Judicial 
 Committee of Privy Council — or a lay Court, pure and 
 simple, with, perhaps, the advice of episcopal assessors 
 or theological experts. None of these can be perfect ; 
 but the decision of imperfect Courts is incomparably 
 better than the anarchy of self-will. No doubt, even 
 great lawyers are liable to misunderstand and misinter- 
 pret theological language ; perhaps they have done so 
 in certain cases already. No doubt, the .proverbial 
 impartiality of our judges is greatly tried when ques- 
 tions which involve either political or religious party 
 come before them. No one can help having some 
 political and some religious bias, be he who he may ; ^ 
 and, therefore, imperceptibly the most incorrupt of j udges 
 may be influenced either by preconceived opinions or 
 by desire to prevent mischief, whether to Church or 
 State. To say this is only to say that it is human to 
 
 • I believe that this is true even of a Jew or a Mahommedan 
 or an atheist living in England. Keligion and religious practices so 
 affect all social questions that those Avho have no religion are yet 
 under the influence of religious party.
 
 32 Pastoral Ldter. 
 
 err. But a Court must be human ; and, probably, there 
 are no men who will weigh words so carefully and 
 impartially as well-trained lawyers. Moreover, we 
 must remember that, as all religious questions likely to 
 come before the Courts involve civil rights and civil 
 penalties, it is impossible to remove them from the 
 review of the great Courts of law. Even if the Church 
 were disestablished, and her own internal Courts were 
 constituted of ecclesiastics only, every cause decided by 
 such ecclesiastical Courts, if it affected the property or 
 civil rights of individuals, must be open to appeal to 
 the Courts of the nation. It seems to me, therefore, 
 that our only wisdom is to use all constitutional means 
 of obtaining the best and most impartial Courts con- 
 ceivable ; but not to refuse obedience to the Courts that 
 be, because tliey may have the imperfection which 
 adheres to all that is earthly. The two questions which 
 have most agitated men's minds — and which may again 
 come under the review of the Courts — are the Eastward 
 Position and the Eucharistic Vestments, of which I have 
 been speaking. Nothing can be more mischievous than 
 for one who may have to act as a judge to appear first 
 as a partizan or an advocate ; and as, even under the 
 new law, a bishop retains some of his judicial func- 
 tions, I shall try to be as colourless as possible in what 
 I have to say ; but I should be glad to contribute what 
 little I may towards the fair consideration of these two 
 busy questions. 
 
 1. The Eastward Position of the Celebrant. — The 
 subject has been so largely discussed on all sides that 
 I have little to offer except in the way of friendly 
 criticism on what has been said by others. There is 
 no doubt but that many of the clergy have been thrown
 
 Pastoral Leifer. -33 
 
 into grout perplexity by the supposed conflict of senti- 
 ment in the Mackonochie and the Purchas Judmieuts. 
 The Learned Judges in the former case pronounced that 
 the words ' standing before the table,' applied to the 
 whole Prayer of Consecration, and that therefore Mr. 
 Mackonochie offended by kneeling. It seemed to follow 
 of necessity that he would have equally offended if he 
 had stood anywhere but ' before the table.'' Yet the 
 Judges in the case of Hebbert v. Purchas decided that 
 this applied only to posture and not to position, and 
 that consecration must take place at the north side, or 
 north end, looking southward. It has not unnaturally 
 puzzled very learned as well as very simple brains to 
 reconcile these two dicta ; and a very high authority 
 in the law has even declared that they are irreconcile- 
 able. I confess that I am of that opinion myself. I 
 have never seen how to reconcile the reasons for the 
 two Judgments, though I can easily believe that both 
 Judgments may be correct. I say I can easily believe 
 — I do not venture to say that I am sure — for I think 
 the question still a tangled and difficult question ; and 
 I do not think that all which "has been written on it 
 has fully solved its intricacies. There is one point, 
 however, to which I wish particularly to call attention, 
 because I understand that persons on both sides think 
 that it throws great light on the whole subject, and 
 will, perhaps, in tlie end unravel all its entanglements. 
 It is said that when the present rubric before the 
 Prayer of Consecration was drawn up very few holy 
 tables stood as they do now, viz. north and south, but 
 that they stood mostly in tlie body of tlie cliurch east 
 and west. Hence it is tliouglit that ' before the table ' 
 meant both at tlie nortli side and facing south, and 
 
 D
 
 34 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 yet at the same time facing the centre of the broad 
 side of the table. And, curiously enough, the advocates 
 of opposite sides, e.g. the Dean of Bristol, Canon Trevor, 
 and Mr. Morton Shaw, in very able arguments, contend 
 that this fact will decide the question in their own 
 favour respectively. I believe that distinguished lawyers 
 have agreed in this opinion, and I know that it has 
 weighed with persons in very high position and of the 
 highest intellectual eminence. I shrink fi'om express- 
 ing strong dissent from an opinion so supported ; but 
 I have no manner of doubt that it is incorrect. I will 
 give my reasons for saying so, and I am open to con- 
 viction if they can be shown to be unsound. 
 
 The rubric at the beginning of the Communion 
 Service stood in 1549 as follows : — 
 
 ' The priest, standing humbly afore the midst of the 
 altar, shall say the Lord's Prayer, with this Collect.' 
 
 No one doubts that ' afore the midst of the altar ' 
 here meant in the centre of the west side facing east. 
 
 In 1552, and ever since to this day, the rubric has 
 stood as follows : — 
 
 ' The table, having at the Communion time a fair 
 white linen cloth upon it, shall stand in the body of the 
 church or in the chancel, where Morning Prayer and 
 Evening Prayer be appointed to be said. And the 
 priest, standing at the north side of the table, shall say 
 the Lord's Prayer, with this Collect following.'^ 
 
 The changes thus introduced were obviously 
 these : — 
 
 First. The name is changed from altar to table.^ 
 
 ' In our present rubric there is added * the people kneeling.' 
 ^ This, it is said, was done in consequence of the remonstrance 
 of Hooper.
 
 Pastoral Letter. 35 
 
 Secondhj. A white cloth is to be placed upon it. 
 Thirdly. It is (at communion time) to stand either 
 
 in the chancel or in the body of the cliurch,^ 
 
 and is, therefore, to be moveable, not fixed to 
 
 the east wall. 
 Fourthly. Tlie priest, instead of standing ' afore ' 
 
 it, is to stand at its ' north side.' 
 To my mind the fact that ' afore ' is changed into 
 ' north side,' of itself proves that they are not conver- 
 tible terms ; bnt the point of chief importance to be 
 noticed is this, that though there is a direction to place 
 the holy table either in the chancel or in the nave 
 (so clearly implying that it shall be moveable, like a 
 table, not like an altar) yet neither here nor ever after- 
 wards, by rubric, canon, or Act of Parliament, was there 
 any injunction whatever by which the table, which had 
 always stood north and south, should be turned round 
 through an angle of 90° and stand east and west. If 
 there ever was such injunction, I have overlooked it, 
 and have tried to find it in vain. The custom was 
 universal that the altar or table should stand with its 
 ends to the north and south, with its longer sides to the 
 east and west. The only effect of theEubric of 1552,^ 
 and of any subsequent legal inj mictions that I can find, 
 was to make it moveable and to place it, sometimes in 
 the chancel, sometimes (when more convenient to com- 
 municants) in the nave ; but no hint is given that it 
 should be twisted half-way round. The effect was, no 
 
 ' Reading-desks had not yet obtained, and the whole service 
 was said at the Communion-table. 
 
 ^ Let it be observed that the meaning of ' north side ' in the 
 Rubric of 1552 must rule the meaning in all subsequent rubrics, 
 and it can hardly be contended tliat in 1552 holy tables had already 
 been turned east and west.
 
 36 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 doubt, to give it a ' table-wise ' iu coiitradistiiictiou to 
 an ' altar-wise ' position ; for it was only ' altar- wise ' 
 according to mediseval custom when it stood at the east 
 end, and was fastened immoveably to the ground or to 
 the wall. But, I think, there can be no reasonable 
 doubt that in the year 1552, when first the Second 
 Service Book of Edward VI. came into use, all the holy 
 tables were standmg north and south; that when they 
 were first removed they were simply moved forward, re- 
 taining the same position relatively to the points of the 
 compass ; and that if the priest stood ' afore ' the table 
 he could not stand at the north of it, and if he stood at the 
 north of it he could not stand ' afore ' it.^ By degrees, 
 no doubt, and while Puritan opinions were rapidly 
 gaining ground through the reigns of Elizabeth, James 
 I., and Chatles L, the holy table being removed into 
 the nave and the nave becomino- crowded with large 
 pews, the custom grew up of tiurning the table east and 
 w'est, both to accommodate it to its place in the church, 
 and to make it look less and less like an altar. By de- 
 grees, probably, this altered position relatively to the 
 points of the compass came to be called the ' table- 
 wise ' in distinction to the ' altar-wise ' position ; and at 
 length we find the most Puritan-minded bishop of the 
 seventeenth century, Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, in 
 1627, instructing one of his clergy that the table was 
 to stand * table-wise,' by wliich he meant east and west, 
 
 • Of course, we are all aware of the difficulty of calling the end 
 of a table a ' side.' I confess I see no solution of it but by admitting 
 that the rev iseis used ' side ' equally of what we now call 'ends.' 
 A mathematician would now speak of the four ' sides ' of a rect- 
 angle or other parallelogram, whether the sides were equal or un- 
 equal ; and the Scotch Prayer Book did undoubtedly identify north 
 bide with north end. The holy tables in those days, too, were more 
 nearly square than they are now.
 
 Pastoral Letter. 37 
 
 and the clergyman at the north side of it — not ' aUar- 
 wise' and the clergyman at the north end of it.^ Had 
 Bishop Williams any legal autliority for saying this ? 
 Even if the Eoyal Commissioners who removed the altars 
 and substituted tables for them had always placed them 
 table-wise (and I doubt if there be proof of this), still 
 many such acts were performed with no sufficient 
 authority of law. It requires proof that the action 
 and language of one arbitrary prelate is of more 
 weight than the language of another, living at the 
 same time, of higher rank and greater influence ; and 
 it is undoubted that Archbishop Laud, in the Scotch 
 Prayer Book, explained north side by north end. It 
 appears to me that there is no manner of doubt but 
 that the meaning of the Eubric of 1552 was that, when 
 the table was moved forward from the wall to the 
 middle of the chancel, it should be moved as anyone 
 would naturally move it, not altering its orientation, 
 but carrying it simply in its original position ; and that 
 when it was moved into the nave it should be placed 
 just before the chancel screen or chancel steps, at the 
 east of the nave, still with the same orientation, and 
 just as, I am told, is the custom now in many of the 
 Lutheran churches on the Continent. 
 
 The Injunctions of Elizabeth are exactly to the 
 same effect as the Eubric of 1552, only still more 
 favourable to the view which I am taking. ' The holy 
 table' is to be 'set in the place where the altar stood' 
 . . . . ' and so to stand, saving when the Communion of 
 the Sacrament is to be distributed ; at which time the? 
 same shall be so placed in good sort within the chancel, 
 as whereby the minister may be more conveniently 
 heard of the communicants in his prayer and ministra- 
 
 ' ' North side or end.'
 
 38 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 tions, and tlie communicants also more conveniently 
 and in some number communicate with the said minis- 
 ter. And after the Communion is done, trom time to 
 time the said holy table be placed where it stood 
 before.'^ When the table was placed against the wall, 
 without doubt it stood north and south. It was moved 
 forward from that position farther westward in the 
 chancel when necessary, and then moved back to it 
 again. Why should the injunction mean that on every 
 such occasion it was not only to be moved forward, 
 but also to be twisted round ? I am the more con- 
 vinced that there was no authority for this, from the 
 fact that of the many able and learned writers and 
 speakers, who maintain that the legal position was the 
 east and west position, not one has referred to any one 
 authoritative document in its favoitr. The only ap- 
 proach to authorities are the private injunction of 
 Williams, the great opponent of Laud, who was sure to 
 take the view favoured by the Puritans, and the order 
 of Parliament in 1640, that every Bishop should 'take 
 care that the communion-table in every church in his 
 Diocese do stand decently in the ancient ^j»/ac^ where 
 it ought to be by the law, and as it hath done the 
 greater part of the threescore years last past,' ^ Even 
 this order of Parliament says nothing, whatever it may 
 mean, as to the orientation of the Holy Table ; and it 
 only speaks of the practice which it enjoins as of nearly 
 sixty years' prevalence, whereas the original rubric of 
 Edward's Second Prayer Book was nearly ninety years 
 older. 
 
 ' Cardwell Boc. Ann. vol. i. p. 201. 
 
 ' Second Report of Ritual Commissioners (556;, quoted by the 
 Dean of Bristol, p. 27-
 
 Pastoral Letter. 39 
 
 I maintain, then, that there neitlier is nor ever has 
 been any authority for placing the table east and west, 
 though the custom of so placing it prevailed very gene- 
 rally at the time when Williams tried to enforce it, and 
 when the Laudian bishops equally tried to break 
 through it. 
 
 When we come near to the time of the last revi- 
 sion, what do we find ? We find, first of all, Laud, 
 supported by the Order in Council of 1633 and tlie 
 Canons of 1640 (cap. 7), trying his utmost to restore 
 the tables to their ancient position at the east end. 
 The Laudian prelates stood, and encouraged others to 
 stand, at the north end, and, in the Scotch Prayer 
 Book, explained 7iortli side to mean no7'th end. To 
 what extent they succeeded it is not possible to say. 
 One difficulty they appear to have encountered, viz. 
 that in many churches the chancels had been pulled 
 down, though, perhaps, the chief destruction of this 
 kind may have been done during the Commonwealth.' 
 When the Rebellion came, of course, everything was 
 upset, and the churches and services came to the hands 
 of the revisers of 1662 in a state of chaotic confusion. 
 But this cannot possibly be doubted, viz. that the 
 bishops, who drew up the rubric concerning the position 
 of the celebrant before the Prayer of Consecration, as 
 much desired and as fully intended that the original 
 position of the table {i.e. north and south, against the 
 
 ' Bishop Wren says on the words of the rubric to the Com- 
 munion office : ' Those words, or in the chancel xoheve Morning and 
 Evening Prayer he appointed to he said, are very ambiguous. Many 
 churches have now no chancels; and in the most that have, thongli 
 the desk for reading the px'ayers doth stand in the body of the 
 church, yet they use to go into the chancel to receive the Coiu- 
 muniou.'- -Bishop Jacobaou's Fragineniari/ Kluslralions, p. 7-1.
 
 40 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 east wall of the chancel) should be restored, as did 
 their predecessors, the Laudian prelates. Such a 
 restoration was, no doubt, but very slowly effected ; 
 but is it conceivable that, whereas Laud and others 
 had been steadily striving to restore the ancient posi- 
 tion of the holy table, and whereas the bishops of 
 the reign of Charles II. (many of them having pre- 
 viously co-operated with Laud) equally desked that 
 til at restoration should be carried on, yet that those 
 very bishops should have worded their new and most 
 important rubric, concerning the position of the cele- 
 brant, in such a manner that it should correspond only 
 with that position of the holy table which they de- 
 sired to alter, which position, too, had never been given 
 to it by rubric, canon, or statute ? Surely it was im- 
 possible. If their new rubric had been applicable only 
 to the east and west (or, as it had come to be called, the 
 ' table-wise ') position of the holy table, then that 
 rubric would have not onl}' given new sanction to that 
 position, but would have fastened that position for 
 ever on the Church. 
 
 That the Caroline Bishops would never have done 
 tliis is infallibly certain. The history of this rubric 
 itself further establishes the certainty. Whatever the 
 rubric may mean, it undoubtedly had reference to 
 what had passed in the reign of Charles I. Laud and 
 Wren had then been accused of consecrating eastward, 
 with their backs to the people ; and tlie defence set up 
 was that persons of small stature could not conve- 
 niently consecrate the elements and reach the sacred 
 vessels from the north end of the table. Laud, no 
 doubt, intended that some rule should be enacted which 
 would provide for standing in front of the table, at
 
 Pastoral Letter. 41 
 
 least to arrange tlie vessels and break the bread. The 
 words of his MS. notes are : ' The presbyter who con- 
 secrates shall stand in the midst before the altar, that 
 he may with the more ease and decency nse both his 
 hands, which he cannot so conveniently do standing at 
 the north side (end) of it.'^ And Wren's proposal for 
 the new rubric was : ' Then the priest, standing before 
 the table, shall so order and set the bread and wine 
 that, while he is pronouncing the following Collect, he 
 may readily take the bread and break it, and also take 
 the cup, to pour into it (if he pour it not before), and 
 then he shall say. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, 
 who of thy tender mercy didst give, &c.' ^ 
 
 There can be no doubt that these two essays at a 
 rubric were rude draughts of that which was finally 
 agreed on by the Caroline revisers. I do not say that 
 the draughts af(d tlie rubric as it finally appeared 
 necessarily enjoined the same thing ; but they clearly 
 were modifications the one of the other, and whatever 
 was meant by the ' midst before the altar ' and ' before 
 the table ' in these draughts was also meant by 'before 
 the table' in the Rubric of 1G62. I conclude that in 
 the rubrics of our present Prayer Book the north side 
 always meant what we now call the north end, and 
 that ' standing before the table ' meant standing on the 
 west side of the table, between the table and the 
 people.^ 
 
 • Laud's MS. Notes, Lamb MS. 1,020, quoted hy Canon 
 Trevor, Disputed Rubrics^ p. 72. 
 
 * Bishop Jacobson's Fragmentarif Illustrations, p. 81. 
 
 ^ Since tliese pages have been prepared for the press. Archdeacon 
 Harrison has kindly sent me his Charge to the Archdeaconry of 
 Maidstone in 1875. lie enters at great length into the question of 
 the orientation of the holy table and the meaning of the words
 
 42 Padoral Letter. 
 
 Whether the words ' standing before the table ' 
 were intended to apply only to the time necessary for 
 arranging the vessels, or to the saying of the whole 
 Prayer of Consecration, is a wholly different question, 
 and a very hard question to solve. It is possible that 
 the revisers of 1662 may have intended to carry out 
 the proposals of Laud and Wren, and to direct that the 
 minister should stand before the table throughout the 
 Prayer, and so break the bread coram 'po'pulo^ ' before 
 the people.' It is, on the other hand, possible that they 
 may have intended to obviate the objections which had 
 been urged against the north-side position (viz. that it 
 was inconvenient to reach from the north of the table 
 to the centre), by ordering that, for the purpose of 
 arranging the vessels, and for that purpose only, the 
 priest should stand ' before the table,' and then return 
 to the north end as before. It appears, however, that 
 this is the only alternative. No third meaning can pos- 
 sibly have been attached to tlieii' words by those who 
 framed this much-vexed rubric. 
 
 Men who look at the question from either extreme 
 side appear to attach so much importance to it that 
 those who take a moderate and middle course may 
 well desire, when a well-defended case has been 
 thoroughly heard and considered, that the decision may 
 leave it open and give no triumph to either party. 
 But I would once more earnestly plead that no one 
 
 ' before the table,' and proves conclusively, though by somewhat 
 different arguments, the very same position which I have taken in 
 the text. One cogent argument of his is derived from the Mamage 
 Service, where the man and the woman are to kneel ' before the Lord's 
 table,' i.e. obviously betweeen the holy table and the congregation. 
 A like conclusion is drawn from the rubric in the Coronation Ser- 
 vice, where the Sovereign is to stand ' before the altar.'
 
 Pastoral Letter. 43 
 
 should attach to the eastward position any doctrinal 
 significance whatever. My own impression is, that if 
 accidental usage had not given a bias to the two schools 
 of thought in favour of one or other of these positions, 
 the north-side position would be really the more suited 
 of the two to symbolise both sacrifice and sacerdotalism. 
 It is more likely to have been the position of the priest 
 in the Jewish Temple ; and as it turns the priest 
 neither to the people as addressing them, nor in the 
 same direction with them as leading them in prayer, 
 it seems to separate him especially from them, and so 
 to give him more the character of one belonging to a 
 peculiar caste than any other position that could be 
 chosen. So, surely, decency, propriety, and convenience, 
 not deep doctrinal significance, ought to be sought for 
 in such a case as this. 
 
 2. The ' Ornaments Rubric' presents greater and 
 more numerous difficulties than that which concerns the 
 position of the celebrant; and the various judgments and 
 interpretations have, not unnaturally, puzzled enquirers. 
 At first sight the history seems very simple. The 
 First Prayer Book of Edward VI., in the rubric before 
 the Communion Service, ordered that the priest should 
 wear ' a white albe, plain, with a vestment or cope.' 
 In another rubric at the end of the whole Book it 
 directed a surplice for ordinary services, witli hoods in 
 cathedral and collegiate churches. In this latter 
 rubric also the bishop was enjoined at Holy Com- 
 munion or ' any other public ministration,' to have 
 ' upon him, beside his rochette, a surplice or albe and 
 a cope or vestment, and also his pastoral stiiff in his 
 hand, or else borne or holden by his chaplain.' 
 
 The Second Service Book, in 1552, swept this all
 
 44 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 away. In this it was said, in the rubric at the beginning 
 of the Order for Morning and Evening Prayer : ' And 
 here it is to be noted that the minister at the tune of 
 the Communion, and at all other times of his min- 
 istration, shall use neither alb, vestment, nor cope, 
 but, being archbishop or bishop, he shall have and 
 wear a rochet; and being a. priest or deacon, he shall 
 have and wear a surplice only.' As the Service Book 
 of 1552 superseded that of 1549, so it, in its turn, was 
 swept away on the accession of Queen Mary. When 
 Ehzabeth came to the throne it was debated whether 
 to revive the First or the Second Service Book of 
 Edward VI. The Queen was thought to have desired 
 the First; but finding this not acceptable to the feeling 
 of the country, then beginning to run strongly towards 
 Puritanism, she, and those about her, consented to 
 the revival of the Second Service Book, yet with cer- 
 tain modifications which would make it less Zwinglian. 
 Accordingly, in the first year of Elizabeth, 1559, an Act 
 of Uniformity was passed, repealing the Statute of 1st of 
 Mary, by which Edward's Second Service Book had been 
 suppressed, and enjoining the use of the said Service 
 Book from the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, 
 ' with the alterations and additions therein added and 
 appointed by this Statute.' These alterations and addi- 
 tions are then specified ; and at the end of the Act it is 
 added : ' Provided always and be it enacted. That such 
 ornaments of the church, and of the ministers thereof, 
 shall be retained and be in use as was in this Church 
 of England, by the authority of Parliament, in the 
 second year of the reign of King Edward VI., until 
 other order shall be taken by authority of the Queen's 
 Majesty, with the advice of her Commissioners a])-
 
 Pastoral Letter. 45 
 
 pointed and authorised under the Great Seal of Eng- 
 land for causes ecclesiastical, or of the Metropolitan of 
 this realm.' 
 
 There can be no doubt, now, that the ornaments 
 both of the church and the minister here referred to 
 were those prescribed in the Prayer Book of 1549.^ 
 Tills Act, therefore, repealed the Eubric of 1552. The 
 particular ornaments clause was, in fact, one of those 
 ' alterations and additions added ' (to the Second Prayer 
 Book), ' and appointed by this Statute.' ^ 
 
 It is observed that this Act does not enjoin the use 
 of the ornaments of 1549, but says, 'they shall be re- 
 tained and be in use' And some have thought that the 
 meaning of these words was that they should not be 
 wholly swept away and forbidden, as by the Eubric of 
 1552, but that tlieir retention and use should still be 
 lawful, though not compulsory ; and this view is very 
 consistent with the known desire of the Queen to be 
 permitted by law to retain in her own chapels, and 
 perhaps elsewhere also, some ceremonies and orna- 
 ments not generally accepted in the Church.^ How- 
 
 ' Tliis has been repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court of 
 Appeal, especially in the case Liddell v. Westerton. 
 
 2 It has been said by some {e.g. Canon Trevor) that this Act, by 
 reviving the second Service Book, revived its Ornament Rubric ; but 
 as the provisional clause of the Act of Uniformity, and the sub- 
 sequent rubric of Elizabeth's Prayer Book, is an entire alteration of 
 the rubric in Edward's Second Service Book, it is not a revival 
 but in truth a repeal of the rubric. 
 
 ^ This view of the intention of the rubric, and of the provisional 
 clause in the Act of Uniformity, is strongly confirmed by the letter 
 quoted (though apparently with a different intention) by the Com- 
 mittee of Council in the case of Hebbert v. Purchas. Sandys, 
 afterwards Archbishop of York, one of the revisers of the Prayer- 
 book, writes to Archbishop Parker : ' Our gloss upon this text is
 
 46 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 ever, the rubric in the new Prayer Book, which was 
 put forth immediately after the passing of this Act, and 
 which had the Act of Parhament attaclied to it, not 
 satisfied with the words ' shall be retained and be in 
 use,' enjomed that the minister should ' use such orna- 
 ments, &c.' 
 
 It has been much debated whether the Queen, 
 advised by her Council or by the Archbisliop, ever 
 modified this important clause in the Act of Uniformity, 
 and so, too, the rubric of the Service Book of 1559. It 
 has, at last, been ruled in the Purchas case by the 
 Judicial Committee of Privy Council, that the Advertise- 
 ments of 1564 (or, as others say, of 1566) contain that 
 ' order taken by authority of the Queen's Majesty' which 
 modified the rule of the Act of Uniformity and Eubric 
 of 1559. 
 
 The words of the 'Advertisements ' to this efiectare 
 as follow : — 
 
 ' Item, In the administration of the Holy Commu- 
 nion in cathedral and collegiate churches the principal 
 minister shall use a cope with Gospeller and Epistoler 
 agreably : and at all other prayer to be sayde at that 
 Communion-table to use no copes, but surplesses. 
 
 ' Item, that the deane and prebendaries weare a sur- 
 plesse with a silke hoode in the quyer ; and when they 
 
 that we shall not be forced to i;se them (i.e. the ornaments), but 
 that others in the meantime shall not convey them away, but that 
 they shall remain for the Queen.' — (Biirnet, Reformation^ vol. ii., 
 Records, p. 332. See Brookes' Privy Council Judgments, p. 1C9.) 
 This is exactly accordant with the natural meaning of the words * shall 
 be retained and be in use : ' and it seems to be the interpretation of 
 our present rubric given by the Committee of Council in Liddell v. 
 Westerton. Their words are ' may be used still.' — (Brookes' Six 
 Judf/mejits, j). 53.) See below, pp. 53, 55.
 
 Pastoral Letter. 47 
 
 })reach in tlie cathedrall or collegiate churche to wear 
 their hoode.' — (Cardwell, Documentary Annals., vol, i., 
 p. 291.) 
 
 In another part we find the injunction : 'Archbishops 
 and Bishops to use and continue the accustomed dress 
 of their order.' 
 
 The Prayer Book of James I., issued in 1604, re- 
 tained the Ornaments Eubric in the same form as in the 
 Prayer Book of Elizabeth, unaffected by the Advertise- 
 ments ; but in the Canons, passed by Convocation in 
 the same year, and ratified by Eoyal consent, tlie 24th 
 Canon enjoins the use of the cope in cathedrals, 
 ' according to the Advertisements published Anno 
 7 Elizabeth ' (thereby apparently recognising the autho- 
 rity of the said Advertisements and of the Eubric of 
 1559, as modified by the Advertisements); and Canon 
 58 enjoins, that ' every minister saying the public 
 prayers, or ministering the Sacraments or other rites 
 of the Church, shall wear a decent or comely surplice 
 with sleeves, to be provided at the charge of the 
 parish.' 
 
 There is reason to think that from that time to the 
 Great Eebellion there was no return to the use of the 
 albe, vestment, &c.,as originally enjoined by the Prayer 
 Book of 1549, provisionally 'retained' by the Act of 
 Uniformity, and prescribed for use by the Prayer Book 
 of 1559. 
 
 We come, now, to the time of the last revision in 
 1661-1662, which is really the turning point in the 
 whole controversy. The great difiiculty in arriving at 
 a true interpretation of the language then used depends 
 on a cause which was operating more or less througli- 
 out the whole of the Eeformation period, viz. that there
 
 48 PdHtoml Letter. 
 
 were two parties struggling for their own views and 
 wishes ; one in favour of considerable ceremony in 
 public worship, the other earnest for the barest possible 
 simplicity. All the way through the High Church 
 party, however represented, would have retained some- 
 thing more than the surplice ; all the way through the 
 Puritan party would have swept away every ornament, 
 whether of the church or minister, surplice and all. 
 The Puritans, as is natural with a besieging force, 
 directed their attacks on what they thought the weakest 
 point, viz. the copes, vestments, &c., fully hoping to 
 involve the surplice also in the general clean sweep of 
 ornaments and ceremonies. The High Church party, 
 on the other side, defended the surplice, which they 
 felt to be the ultimate aim of Puritan onslaught, 
 and said as little as they could about those things 
 which they knew to be more easily exposed to 
 popidar dislike. It has been said that we ought not 
 to attribute such tactics to Christian prelates. It may 
 be so ; but, when men so truly admirable as Baxter 
 adopted the covert, not to say crooked, policy of the 
 Puritans, we need not wonder that men so excellent as 
 Sanderson and his colleagues made their moves in the 
 hke fashion of masked batteries. Neither side were 
 willing to let the opposite party see their hands. 
 
 The Piu-itans evidently thought that the Ornaments 
 Rubric of 1559, retained in 1604, notwithstanding Ad- 
 vertisements of Ehzabeth and Canon of James I., might 
 be held to legalise copes and vestments ; and they hoped 
 by repealing it to sweep away surphces too. In the 
 Objections of the Ministers, it is urged, under the ' 18th 
 general objection,' that significant ceremonies are not 
 within the powei- of the Church authority to ordain, as
 
 Pastoral Leiter. 49 
 
 they do not come under the rule of doing ' all things 
 decently, orderly, and to edification ; ' and they specify 
 the surplice, the cross in baptism, and kneeling at com- 
 munion, alleging that for a hundred years thase had 
 been the fountain of evils and dissensions. When they 
 descend to particulars and deal with particular rubrics, 
 they say concerning the Ornaments Eubric : ' Forasmuch 
 as this rubrick seemeth to bring back tlie cope,albe, &c., 
 and other vestments forbidden by the Common Prayer 
 Book, 5 and 6 Edward VI., and so our reasons alleged 
 against ceremonies under our 18th General Exception, 
 we desire it may be wholly left out.' — (Cardwell, Con- 
 ferences, p. 314.) 
 
 The Bishops answered the 18th General Exception 
 (p. 345-350) by defending the right of imposing 
 significant ceremonies, urging that it belonged to the 
 rulers of the Church, and did not interfere with Christ's 
 Supreme Eoyalty. They then particularise for defence, 
 as the objectors had singled out for attack, the cross, 
 the kneeling, and the surplice ; saying, concerning the 
 surplice : ' Eeason and experience teach that decent 
 ornaments and habits preserve reverence, and are held, 
 therefore, necessary to the solemnity of royal acts, and 
 acts of justice, and why not as well to the solemnity of 
 religious worship ? And in particular no habit more 
 suitable than white linen, which resembles purity and 
 beauty, wherein angels have appeared (Rev. xv.) ; fit 
 for those whom the Scripture calls angels ; and this 
 habit was ancient. — Chrys. Ho. 60, ad po. Antioch' 
 (Cardwell, p. 350.) 
 
 This was the Bishop's general defence of dresses and 
 ornaments, but especially of the surplice. When they 
 come to the particular objection to the Ornaments 
 
 E
 
 50 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 Eubric, they decline to enter on the question of copes, 
 vestments, &c. ; but simply refer to their general de- 
 fence of ceremonies against the 18th General Exception, 
 thus : ' 2. Eub. 2. For the reasons given in our answer 
 to the 18th general, whither you refer us, we think it 
 fit that the rubric continue as it is ' (p. 351). 
 
 The rubric, however, did not continue as it was. It 
 had stood unaltered from 1559, but now the revisers 
 adopt the express words of the Statute (not of the 
 Eubric) of 1559, omitting all allusion to modification 
 by Eoyal authority, but inserting after * ministers 
 thereof the words, 'at all times of their ministration.' 
 The concluding part of the rubric, therefore, stood, 
 and still stands, thus : ' And here it is to be noted that 
 such ornaments of the Church and of the ministers 
 thereof, at all times of their ministration, shall be re- 
 tained and be in use as were in this Church of England 
 hj authority of Parliament in the second year of the 
 reign of King Edward the Sixth.' 
 
 This is the whole of the history. What did it 
 mean ? Did the rubric intend to take us back simply 
 to the Act of Uniformity of 1559, without the clause 
 empowering the Sovereign to take fresh order for 
 modifying it ? This is certainly its most natural mean- 
 ing. Did ' shall be retained and be in use ' mean, 
 ' shall be lawful but not obligatory,' as might have been 
 its meaning in the said Act of Uniformity ? or did the 
 words mean to refer to the Act of Uniformity, as 
 modified by the Advertisements of 1566 and by the 
 Canons of 1604? and if so, why was no hint of such 
 modification given ? And, lastly, did ' retained ' refer 
 to the more ancient usage allowed in 1549, the second 
 year of Edward VI., or did it only concern such rem-
 
 Pastoral Letter. 51 
 
 nants of those usages, if any, as had survived the 
 various changes under Edward VI. and Mary and the 
 gradual advance of Puritanism and the recent destruc- 
 tion of all habits and ornaments during the Common- 
 wealth ? These, and especially the last, are most per- 
 plexing problems. On the one hand, it is said that 
 that cannot be retained which has long ceased to exist ; 
 and that, therefore, when the ornaments of 2 Edward 
 VI. are required as to be retained, it must mean such as 
 had survived till 1662 {i.e. only the surplice, and the cope 
 in cathedrals). On the other hand, it is urged that 
 ' retained,' whether in Ehzabeth's Act of Uniformity or 
 in the Eubric of 1662, could not have referred to orna- 
 ments or dresses then in actual use ; for at Elizabeth's 
 accession the dresses, &c., c.f 1549 had been abolished 
 by the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI., and all 
 post-Eeformation dresses and ornaments had been super- 
 seded by the Eomish or mediaeval ornaments during 
 the reign of Mary ; and in 1662, on the accession of 
 Charles II., the constant advance and ultimate success 
 of Puritanism had swept away all the ornaments of the 
 church and minister, whether Edwardian or Eliza- 
 bethan. There was, in fact, a mere blank, a tabula rasa.^ 
 to be filled up according to the new injunctions, what- 
 soever they might be. If, therefore, the rubric en- 
 joined that only those of the Edwardian vestments 
 which had survived all the changes were to be retained, 
 the injunction meant nothing at all, for there was 
 nothing to retain. 
 
 Next comes the question of contemporary exposi- 
 tion, the hght to be thrown on the subject by usage 
 immediately following on the enacting of a law. Great 
 weight has naturally been attached to this. If a law 
 
 E 2
 
 52 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 be passed of doubtful interpretation, the mode of carry- 
 ing it out at the time of its enactment must be very 
 important in ehicidating its intention. If this be con- 
 ceded, it must be conceded also that, as vestments, 
 albes, and tunicles were not in use (or but very rarely 
 in use) in the reign of Charles II., the rubric could 
 not have been intended to enforce them. It is urged, 
 in reply, that the Eubric of 1662 may have been in- 
 tended, not to enforce, but to permit these dresses ; that 
 contemporaneous exposition in common law, or even, 
 in many cases, of ecclesiastical law, is of very different 
 weight from the same exposition in the case of a 
 rubric which had been the battle-field of a hundred 
 years ; which itself was passed amid conflict and dissent ; 
 which, perhaps, could only be passed in a slightly am- 
 biguous form ; which it would have been madness to 
 enforce, its very existence having caused the secession 
 of a large body of the objecting clergy and laity. 
 
 With all these difficulties, it can cause no great 
 wonder that there has been no great unanimity in in- 
 terpreting the much-vexed rubric. Bishop Cosin, a 
 very eminent Caroline divine, and one of the revisers 
 of 1662 — likely, therefore, to have understood the drift 
 of the rubric — is cited as holding that it enjoined 
 copes, vestments, &c. Bishop Phillpotts, one of the 
 acutest of modern expositors, pronounced the vest- 
 ments legal and, under certain conditions, obhgatory. 
 Dr. Archibald Stephens, in his learned notes to the 
 Prayer Book, says the same. The Judges of the Eccle- 
 siastical Courts,^ especially of the Court of Arches, have, 
 I believe, always ruled in the same direction. The 
 ultimate decision, of course, rests with the Queen in 
 
 * Dr. Lushington, Sir Jolm Dodson, Sir R. Phillimore.
 
 Pastoral Letter. 53 
 
 Council, and it has been thought that even the dicta of 
 the Judicial Committee have been inconsistent and con- 
 tradictory. Let us see whether this be so. 
 
 In the year 1857 a very elaborate Judgment was 
 given (in the cases of Liddell v. Westertdn and Liddell 
 V. Beal) by a large and very learned Judicial Committee, 
 consisting of Lord Chancellor Cranworth, Lord Wens- 
 leydale, Mr. Pemberton Leigh, Sir J. Patteson, Sir W. 
 H. Maule, with Archbishop Sumner, and Bishop Tait. 
 The words of the Judgment are very emphatic : 
 ' The Eubric to the Prayer Book of Jan. 1, 1604, 
 adopts the language of the Eubric of Ehzabeth. The 
 Eubric to the present Prayer Book adopts the language 
 of the Statute of Elizabeth. But they all obviously 
 mean the same thing, that the same dres.ses and the 
 same utensils or articles which were used under the 
 First Prayer Book of Edward VL may be used still.' 
 (Brookes' Six Judgments, p. 53.) 
 
 It was not unnatural, therefore, that thenceforth 
 those who wished for the vestments should have con- 
 sidered the case to be decided in their favour ; nor was 
 it very wonderful that the Dean of the Arches (Sir E. 
 Phillimore) should have considered himself bound, not 
 only by what he thought ' the plain words of the 
 Statute,' but by the construction they had received 
 from the Privy Council, ' to pronounce that the orna- 
 ments of the minister mentioned in the First Prayer 
 Book of Edward VI. are those to which the present 
 rubric referred ; ' and that ' they are, for ministers 
 below the order of bishops, and when officiating at the 
 Communion Service, cope, vestment or chasuble, surplice, 
 alb, and tunicle ; in all other services the surplice only.
 
 54 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 except that in cathedral churches and colleges the 
 academical hood may also be worn.' 
 
 This was in the case of (Elphinstone, afterwards) 
 Hebbert v. Purchas. The appeal lay to the Privy 
 Comicil, and the Lords who heard the appeal were 
 Lord Chancellor Hatherley, Lord Chelmsford, Arch- 
 bishop Thomson, and Bishop Jackson. The Judgment 
 was delivered by Lord Hatherley, one of the most 
 upright Judges that ever rose to high position at the 
 Bar and Bench. It reversed the decision of Sir E. 
 Phihimore, and virtually the decisions of Dr. Lushington 
 and Sir J. Dodson. Some think that it reversed the 
 decisions of the Judgment of the Privy Council itself 
 in the case of Liddell v. Westerton, as quoted above. 
 Was it so? 
 
 Of course, the obiter dicta of Judges, or the rea- 
 sons which they assign for their decisions, do not form 
 a part of their Judgment. I presume that a Judgment 
 may hold good, and even be a good Judgment, although 
 the reasons assigned for it may have been all unsound 
 reasons. And on this principle we must remember that 
 the decision in the Purchas case against the ornaments 
 of the minister does not conflict with the decision in the 
 Liddell case, which decreed that the ornaments of the 
 church were those of the second year of Edward VL 
 It is, however, objected that the dictum of the Judges 
 in the Liddell v. Westerton case was very emphatic ; 
 that it was repeated and adopted by the Committee of 
 Council in the case of Martin v. Mackonochie (see 
 Brookes, p. 127), and that it very expressly includes 
 ' dresses,' ruling that ' the same dresses and the same 
 utensils or articles which were used under the First 
 Prayer Book of Edward VL, may still be used,' The
 
 Pastoral Letter. 55 
 
 ground on which the Judgment is based is thus accu- 
 rately laid down ; and the words are very carefully 
 chosen, apparently on the principle to which I have 
 drawn special attention, viz. that the expression ' re- 
 tained and be in use ' gave permission to the retention 
 of the dresses and ornaments, rather than enforced 
 their use : ' may still be used.' Such ruling, it is fairly 
 contended, cannot be esteemed a mere obiter dictum ; 
 it is the very ground and basis of the Judgment. Still, 
 the Committee of Council in Hebbert v. Purchas has 
 ruled that this is good of ornaments of the church, but 
 not good of ornaments of the minister. 
 
 I presume that this ruling may be true, even though 
 the Caroline divines intended to bring back the whole 
 of the Eubric of 1549, and though the very learned 
 Committee in the case of Liddell v. Westerton may 
 have so interpreted their intention and have framed 
 their Judgment accordingly ; and that for these reasons. 
 The Caroline divines may have intended to make the 
 use of the ornaments of 1549 allowable, but may have 
 failed to word the rubric so as to effect tlieir intention. 
 Many an Act of Parliament does not make the law 
 which its framers desired to make, even when it has 
 been draughted by skilful lawyers. And, again, the 
 Judges in the case of Liddell v. Westerton may have 
 fully satisfied themselves that the Ornaments Eubric of 
 1662 re-enacted the Eubric of 1549, of which there 
 can be no reasonable doubt ; but, not being concerned 
 with the ornaments of the minister, but only with the 
 ornaments of the church, tliey may have been satisfied 
 to enunciate this general fact, without troubling them- 
 selves further to inquire whether that portion of the 
 rubric which concerns the dress of the minister was
 
 56 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 revived wholly and simply, or whether it was revived in 
 its modified and conditioned form. Accordingly, they 
 laid it down generally that the *same dresses and the 
 same utensils or articles which were used under the 
 First Prayer Book of Edward VI. may be used still ; ' 
 but they applied this general nde only to the orna- 
 ments of the church. The Committee of Council, in 
 Hebbert v. Purchas, say, in effect : ' This general rule 
 is undoubtedly true ; but the former Committee did 
 not enter upon the consideration of one portion of the 
 rubric which, in our judgment, must have been revived 
 in its modified, not in its original form.' The Orna- 
 ment Kubrics of 1549 concern three things — the dress 
 of the priest, the dress of the bishop, and the orna- 
 ments of the church. Now, the Advertisements of 
 Elizabeth did not touch the ornaments of the church at 
 all ; therefore, clearly, the rubrics of 1549 are revived 
 pure and simple as regards them. The dress of the 
 bishop was but slightly touched, it being only said that 
 bishops shall ' use and continue the accustomed dress 
 of their order,' whatever that may mean. But the 
 dress of the priest at Holy Communion, and in his 
 ordinary ministrations, was dealt with by the Advertise- 
 ments ; and so, according to the decision in the Purchas 
 case, the Eubric of 1549, when revived in 1662, could 
 only as regards the priest's dress be revived in the form 
 modified by the Advertisements. I should shrink from 
 expressing any definite opinion on these Judgments. 
 Questions of this kind are purely legal questions, and 
 emmently such as should be decided by a legal tribunal. 
 The intention, indeed, of those who framed the Eubric 
 of 1662 is at least as much a question for divines and 
 historians a? for lawyers, An unprejudiced mind, long
 
 Pastoral Letter. 57 
 
 familiar with the controversies and theological literature 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, may be more 
 able to form a sound opinion on this subject than any 
 committee of lawyers, however learned. I am not sure 
 that the very training of a legal mind does not some- 
 what disqualify for such enquiries. But, as to the 
 legal effect of words once written down and passed into 
 a statute, it is obviously necessary to accept the ruhng 
 of legal tribunals. The tribmials which have sat 
 on this special rubric have fully acknowledged tlie 
 great difficulty of interpreting it ; and, as the last deci- 
 sion was on an undefended case, it is possible that the 
 question may still be revived ; but, however that may 
 be, we can have no liope of peace except by accepting 
 decisions made after full enquiry by those best qualified 
 to judge. Many would have been thankful if Convo- 
 cation could have initiated lemslation which should 
 interpret the disputed rubrics so as to give no positive 
 victory to either of the parties which have been 
 struggling for ascendancy diu-ing three centuries. On 
 many accounts this was impossible. An attempt to 
 alter, or so to modify as virtually to alter, the Orna- 
 ments Eubric, or that concerning the position of the 
 celebrant, would probably have issued in a rupture 
 within the Church, or a rupture between Parhament 
 and Convocation. We can, therefore, only wait for final 
 interpretation and then abide by it. 
 
 Yet we cannot be insensible to the importance of 
 the ultimate issue. Whenever one of the great parties in 
 the Church has triumphed, not by persuasion but by 
 legal compulsion, the Church has fearfully suffered. 
 The triumph of Puritanism in the time of the Common- 
 wealth overthrew the Church. The triumph of the
 
 58 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 High Church party at the Eestoration turned Noncon- 
 formists into Dissenters. Soon after came the secession 
 of the Non-jurors. Each one of these left tlie Church 
 weaker against its enemies without, with less of life and 
 energy and holiness within. At present, scarcely any de- 
 cision can be arrived at, which will not be a severe blow 
 to one or other of the extreme parties, and a distress to 
 many more moderate and more reasonable men. It is 
 quite possible to anticipate a decision which may greatly 
 trouble all. It is certainly conceivable that, when the 
 questions have been thoroughly discussed and counsel 
 fully heard on every side, the final judgment may be 
 that the vestments are legal and the eastward position 
 illegal. Is there anybody whom this would not wound, 
 except, indeed, those who are determined to attach no 
 importance, doctrinally or otherwise, to attitudes and 
 dresses ? High Chiu'chmen would be pained at finding 
 the position, which they beHeve to be primitive and 
 well-nigh universal, forbidden and proscribed ; Low 
 Churchmen would be scandahzed by the sanction given 
 to vestments which they have been used to identify 
 with the worst errors of Rome. 
 
 Is it too late to reconsider our position and mode- 
 rate our passions ? We are in imminent danger of a 
 ruptm'e as great as those of the seventeenth centurj'-) 
 but with much less reason for it. 
 
 With much less reason for it. Without question, 
 on both sides there are a few men of extreme opinions 
 and extreme practices ; but, from the experience derived 
 from acquaintance with two very different dioceses, I 
 can say with confidence that the great body of the 
 clergy are more sober and moderate in their views, and 
 have really more sympathy with one another, than in
 
 Pastoral Letter. 59 
 
 almost any period of our past history — certainly, than in 
 any period of active life and zeal. The so-called 
 Evangelical clergy are, in general, far more attached 
 and intelligent Churchmen than those of a past gene- 
 ration, and in this respect quite unlike the Puritans of 
 the seventeenth century. The High Church clergy are 
 incomparably more agreed with their Evangelical breth- 
 ren on many points of faith and practice than the High 
 Churchmen in the period of the Stuarts. Evangelicals 
 are anxious for decency and order and even beauty of 
 Church oruament and service, and ready to obey 
 Church authority. High Churchmen have none of that 
 Pelagian element iu their theology, from the charge of 
 Avhicli so great a teacher as Jeremie Taylor was not ex- 
 empted. If you listen to many a High Church teacher 
 now on the doctrine of human sin or of the atoning 
 sacrifice of Christ, you would say that there was nothing 
 to choose between his teaching and that of William 
 Wilberforce or Henry Venn or Charles Simeon, except 
 that it was somewhat more practically pointed — like 
 Baxter rather than Eomaine. Can there be no peace 
 between such as these? And let us remember that a 
 disruption will not rest with a few extreme men only. 
 It will shake the building like a house of cards ; you 
 cannot tell which next will fall. 
 
 And, again, is there so much to complain of? Is it 
 not true that each school in its turn has gained a 
 victory ? The one school could not have desired more 
 latitude than was allowed it by the Gorham Judg 
 ment. The doctrine of the English Eeformation could 
 scarcely have been more emphatically denied than 
 it w^as by Mr. Gorharii. The opposite school has had 
 as great a victory in the acquittal of Mr. Bennett for
 
 60 Pastoral Letter, 
 
 language as strong on the Eucliarist as Mr. Gorham's 
 was in the other direction on Holy Baptism. The 
 Broad Churchmen have been acquitted in the persons 
 of Dr. Wilhams and Mr. Wilson, and can liave no right 
 to complain of persecution or intolerance. Without 
 question, the decisions have been more stringent in 
 matters of ceremonial ; but that, perhaps, is not un- 
 natural. It is easier in general to weigh a rubric than 
 to interpret an article of faith. It is said to be the 
 legal heresy, that men may tliink and even speak as 
 they list, but that they must worship in fetters. For 
 my own part I should like to see fair liberty of prophe- 
 sying, within the lawful limits of the primitive faith, 
 and fair freedom of worship so far as is consistent with 
 freedom to people as well as priests ; but I do think that 
 tlie distinction is true as between preaching and minis- 
 tering. A clergyman in teaching must be allowed to 
 speak his own thoughts and convictions, or he stammers 
 in a foreign tongue. No one is forced to follow all he 
 says, if his sayings seem unfounded in Scripture and in- 
 consistent with the doctrines of the faith. A clergyman 
 ministering ministers as the Coryphaeus, the fugleman, 
 the leader of the people. He speaks, not to them, but 
 for them. He acts as their leader and mouthpiece. 
 It must be painful to a parish if the words or the 
 actions of their presbyter in prayer be foreign to their 
 feelings and convictions. And a layman must join in 
 the services of the Church, or be a dissentient and 
 seceder. Hence, there seems a natural reason why the 
 ceremonial service of the Church should be somewhat 
 more strictly guarded from the idiosyncracy of the 
 minister than his utterances from the pulpit or in the 
 parish and the school. Every clergyman, indeed, has a
 
 Pastoral Letter. 61 
 
 full right to all the ft'eedom which the Church allows 
 him in prayer as much as in preaching ; but in the one 
 case it is more naturally restricted than in the other. 
 Even in things lawful I doubt if one man ought to 
 change forms of service and worship, till he can carry 
 a willing people with him ; and by people I mean 
 parish, not congregation only. 
 
 I have dwelt at excessive length on all these points. 
 I can but recur to that with which I began, pleading 
 for patience, endurance, and charity. Surely reasonable 
 men on either side will acknowledge the debt which is 
 due to the opposite side. I believe that every wise 
 man on the High Church side will feel how deep is our 
 obligation to those who, when a spirit of slumber and 
 worldly forgetfulness had so crept over the land that 
 it was hard to distinguish Christian theology from 
 Deistical indifference, raised the standard of faith in 
 Christ crucified and won back the wanderers to the 
 fresh pastures of the Gospel of God. The Evangelicals 
 will, surely, not deny that in all periods of our history 
 those High Churchmen, who have been fi*om time to 
 time suspected and accused of sympathy with Eoman- 
 ism, have not only been the great thinkers and writers 
 in theology and Christian faith — such as Hooker and 
 Pearson and Butler and Bull and Waterland — but 
 have left us the strongest and most enduring defences 
 of the Reformed faith against the assaults of Eo- 
 man and Jesuit error. Let me name Hooker, 
 Andrewes, Ussher, Bramhall, Jeremie Taylor, Cosin, 
 Sanderson, Hammond, Leslie, Bull, Beveridge, Bar- 
 row, Stilliugfleet, Wake, even Laud himself There 
 have been no more successful combatants on the 
 side of the Reformation anywhere ; in England they
 
 62 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 stand quite alone ; but they were all writers of the so- 
 called High Church school of belief.^ Yet, with all 
 these reasons for union, we hear from one extreme 
 party threats of a large secession unless their voices 
 prevail ; whilst from the other we have threats of 
 throwing themselves into the cry for disestablishment. 
 It would be well if both would reflect that a large se- 
 cession would involve disestablishment, and that con- 
 versely disestabhshment would carry mth it disrup- 
 tion. A bishop is supposed to dread disestabhshment, 
 because it would be likely to reduce his social posi- 
 tion and to diminish his wealth. I do not on this 
 account dread it in the least. I believe that no one 
 would really gain by disestablishment so much as a 
 Bishop. If my feehngs were only for the aggrandise- 
 ment of my order, I should work for disestablishment 
 to-morrow. I do, indeed, deprecate disestabhshment, 
 but for very different reasons. Disestablishment w^ould 
 be a revolution of so extensive a nature that it 
 could not but carry other revolutions with it. No one 
 institution has been so strongly interwoven into our 
 national hfe as the National Chm^ch. For at least 
 
 ' My revered friend Bishop Thirlwall seems to have claimed 
 Jeremie Taylor as a ' Broad Churchman.' I always hesitate to 
 express any dissent from the judgment of so great a man ; but it 
 seems to me very clear indeed that Jeremie Taylor was only Broad 
 because he was a many-sided man, and because in an intolerant age 
 he pleaded for toleration. In the modern and technical sense of 
 the word he was no more a ' Broad Churchman ' than Ussher was a 
 Low Churchman. Ussher is supposed to have been a strong Cal- 
 vinist, on the strength of his having written Ussher's Catechism. 
 It is doubtful whether the book is his at all. If it be, it was a very 
 early and crude production, and in his controversy with Rome he 
 assumes the definite position of strict Anglicanism, or, as it is called, 
 Anglo-Catholicism.
 
 Pastoral Letter. 63 
 
 1,200 j'ears the Church has been as much England as 
 the State has been. Notwithstanding the great changes 
 from the time of Augustine to the time of Ansehu, 
 and then to the time of Cranmer, and still again to 
 our own time, yet no national institution has changed 
 so little as the Church. There was a time when Eng- 
 land had no sinsfle Sovereis^n, when it had no true Par- 
 liament, when all the relations of noble to peasant, 
 governor to governed, man to man, were utterly unlike 
 what they are now ; but the relation of the Church to 
 the people, amidst all corruptions and reforms, has 
 ever been substantially the same. I am certain that 
 you cannot rend the Church out of the national life 
 without shaking every other institution to its base. As 
 I am a loyal subject to my Sovereign, and as I believe 
 in the liberty of an English citizen, I do not wish to 
 see the English Church cease to be part of the English 
 Constitution. I am prepared, if Providence so orders 
 it, to accept a Eepublican Government and a Dis- 
 established Church. I think the Church politically 
 would then be far stronger than it is now ; but I do 
 not think the nation would be happier, I feel sure it 
 would not be so free, I fear it would be less religious. 
 The extreme schools who wish for all this would be 
 far less hkely to find toleration for themselves when 
 they had had their will. I confidently expect, if I live 
 to see disestablishment, that I shall see, after some 
 throes and struggles, the Church settling down again 
 on its true basis as a reformed Catholic member of the 
 one great Body, its more sound and moderate adherents 
 being strong in tlie ascendant ; but I know that it will 
 be obliged to entrench itself more firmly than hereto- 
 fore, and that therefore it must narrow its borders; that
 
 04 Pastoral Letter. 
 
 so il" will inevitably become more exclusive, throwing 
 off the stragglers from either side. Thus those who 
 are compassing the disestablishment of the Church are 
 really working for their own exclusion from its pale. 
 
 Again, though the Church by disestablishment would 
 probably become more exclusive, I do not see that it 
 would be certainly more united. Its first danger 
 would be utter disruption — a division into three distinct 
 and discordant sects. If, as I should hope, it were to 
 escape this, it would still contain within itself the ele- 
 ments which at present foster its divisions; and neither 
 the American nor the Irish disestablished Church offer 
 us a very encouraging picture of union. The same 
 causes work amongst them that are at work amongst 
 ourselves; and they produce the same results. 
 
 Lastly, whatever evils there may be in our parochial 
 system, the good immensely overbalances the evil; and 
 disestablishment would destroy all this. In the towns, 
 perhaps, the parocliial system is weak, but in our country 
 villages the country clergyman forms a centre round 
 which all gathers and circulates ; a man of education, 
 sympathising alike with rich and poor ; in some instances 
 almost the only civilising power in the place; with a 
 modest independence that need not truckle to power, 
 and which at the same time prevents him from merely 
 courting popular favour. He may, no doubt, have 
 some temptation to indolence and self-indulgence, and 
 there are too many that yield to this ; he may live in 
 a narrow sphere and so may see but in a narrow circle ; 
 he may, in some cases, be wholly unfitted for his calling; 
 but I doubt whether, on the whole, any Church or 
 nation has ever produced a more moral, religious, 
 honest, and conscientious body of men, lay or clerical,
 
 Pastoral Letter. 65 
 
 than the Enghsh country clergymen at this time. Dis- 
 estabhshment would inevitably sweep all this away. 
 The town clergy would very likely be richer and, 
 perhaps, more eificient than they are at present ; but 
 the resident, educated, often refined, country rector 
 would soon cease out of the land. It would not be 
 possible to provide endowments which would maintain 
 such men amongst us ; and, unhappily, we know that 
 men must live if we want them to work. How country 
 villages and moorland hamlets could be Christianised, 
 when all this had passed away, no prophecy can tell. All 
 depends on it at the present time. Even the irregular 
 agency of Wesleyans and Dissenters holds on to it, like 
 ivy on an oak. Lop down the tree and you will lose 
 the verdure. 
 
 To recur once more to disruption and secession, 
 threatened so freely from the right hand and the 
 left ; first of all, ' to whom shall we go ? ' I do not 
 believe that 'Evangelicals' are prepared to join any 
 sect of Dissenters, nor that ' Eitualists ' are disposed to 
 submit themselves to Eome. The fate of Free Churches 
 is to weaken by secession the influence of their own 
 school, and to strengthen the o[)posite school, and then 
 gradually to fade away. A Free Church of England, 
 as a secession and as distinct from the great National 
 Church, is quite sure to fail. ' Our streugth,' the 
 strength of both parties, 'is to sit still.' Fair tole- 
 rance of one for the other, and j^iir effort by lawful 
 persuasion and Christian argument to increase the 
 influence of our own convictions and sentiments; this 
 is the constitutional, the wise, and the successful way 
 of working in such a society as our own. Every other 
 brings mischief on that society, and mostly ruin on the 
 
 F
 
 06 Pdstoral Letter. 
 
 workers of mischief. We have plenty of enemies with- 
 out, watchino- to widen the breach between us. Alas ! 
 that we should liave to call fellow-Christians our 
 enemies. But it is certain that Eomanists, political 
 Dissenters, and secularists of all sorts, are united, 
 if in nothing else, at least in this — that they joy 
 over our disunion, and that they lose no occasion 
 for exaggerating its magnitude, and ^for trying to 
 increase it. They, at least, all think that they can 
 weaken us by destroying our national existence. I 
 believe they are mistaken. I believe that England's 
 Churcli is much deeper in England's heart than they 
 suppose. Notwithstanding our divisions, notwithstand- 
 ing our excesses, see how the people gather round us, 
 crowd our churches, give freely of their wealth, give 
 largely of their labour, which is more than wealth ; 
 see how even our communicants daily multiply where 
 those who minister Communion give it freely and 
 fully. Yes, wherever there is earnest zeal, even when 
 there lacks much wisdom with the zeal, laymen always 
 are to be found supporting and honouring their 
 churches and their clergy ; and, if once the Church 
 was shaken off by the State, there can be no doubt that 
 with still greater readiness and with more educated 
 intelligence the nation would rise up in defence and for 
 the mdntenance of that ancient House which has been 
 the home of Christian and loving hearts in England since 
 first Christian faith and Christian hope were sown in 
 the midst of it. I do not think Eomanism or Non- 
 conformity would gain by what they think would be 
 our ruin. Infidelity and indifference would gain, not 
 Christian Dissent of any type. But, surely, we ought not 
 to i)lay into their hands and help their tactics. Deeply 
 
 I
 
 Pastoral Letter. 67 
 
 do I sympcithise, on the one hand, with that devoted love 
 for the ancient traditions of the faith, with that warm 
 attachment for the Cathohc integrity of the Churcli's 
 body, which is the watchword of one school amongst us. 
 Deeply do I sympathise, on the other, with that love 
 of purity in doctrine which is zealous for the honour 
 of our Lord and King, refusing to permit any fellow- 
 ship in His great redeeming labour either to Saints 
 or to saintliness, to powers without or to powers within 
 ourselves. True Catholic piety and true Evangelical 
 purity are, I am very sure, compatible with each other. 
 Only, let us look largely at both, not narrowly and ex- 
 clusively on one alone. The Church, the Sacraments, 
 the apostolic ministry, set forth, exalt, and enthrone 
 Jesus Christ, sole Saviour, Head and King. There is 
 none other name under heaven which the Church of 
 God proclaims to the world as that by whicli it can be 
 saved. Let us not rend the seamless coat, nor even 
 cast lots on it whose it shall be. It is the one piiceless 
 heritage of Christians, and it is held as an undivided 
 whole by the Church of Christ. 
 
 I am, Eeverend Brethren, 
 
 Your afiectionate Brother and 
 
 Chief Pastor in Christ, 
 
 E. H. WINTON. 
 
 Faunham Castle: Ociuhvr \S7^j. 
 
 I.ONUOX : I'ltlNTKD 1!Y 
 
 SI-OTTISWUUUIC AXU Co., NKW-s'l HKKT Sl^rAKE 
 AXL) I'AKLIAJIKXT STKKET