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 L I E> RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 m^^w
 
 A 
 
 LORD SELBORNE'S LETTER 
 
 TO "THE TIMES" 
 
 AND AN ANSWER PARAGRAPH BY PARAGRAPH 
 
 BY A LAYMAN. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 BASIL MONTAGU PICKERING, 
 
 196, Piccadilly. 
 
 1874.
 
 TO THE EIGHT HONOURABLE 
 LORD SELBORNE. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 |T has been so long the privilege of 
 Englishmen to malign the second order 
 of the clergy, that I should not have 
 disputed your right to this indulgence, 
 had you not included the laity, or a portion of the 
 laity, in your indictment ; but as you have included 
 the laity in your accusation, you have of course 
 unmuzzled them, and, as one of them, I beg to make 
 the following strictures on your letter, and its mode 
 of publication. It presented itself to the world in 
 the columns of a newspaper, favoured with a fore- 
 knowledge of the Archbishops' bill, the words by 
 which it is uitroduced, and the first words of your 
 letter, being these, — 
 
 '^ An Enghsli Presbyter '^ asks us to publish the following 
 letter from Lord Selborne on the Public Worship Regulatioa
 
 Bill, and states that he has Lord Selborne's authority for 
 doing so : — 
 
 " I am sorry for the great uneasiness manifested by yourself 
 and so many others of the clergy about the Archbishop's Bill, 
 which makes me doubt whether, if it passes, more harm or good 
 will be done." 
 
 Now, my Lord, do you mean to tell me that any 
 real living English Presbyter wrote to you previous 
 to June 13th, and that this was your reply to his 
 letter ; and further, that your letter so dispelled all 
 his anxieties and doubts that he forwarded it, after 
 asking your permission so to do, to The Times? I 
 find it very difficult to credit this view of the case. 
 Your letter, my Lord, bears evident marks of having 
 been written not only after the withdrawal of the 
 Bishop of Peterborough's amendments, but of having 
 been written after the 16th of June: read the first 
 paragraph, and that this is the fact is pretty clear. 
 I will call this disingenuousness. (Blot 1.) 
 
 " But at the same time I am unable to understand, or, at least, 
 to reconcile with what I have been accustomed to think Church 
 principles, the objections of principle made to it, and I cannot 
 but anticipate very evil consequences in the not improbable event 
 of the success of the opposition offered to it. The Bill — I am not 
 speaking of it as it would stand if the Bishop of Peterborough's 
 amendment were adopted — will, if it passes, be merely a measure 
 for shortening and simplifying to a certain extent the legal 
 procedure in a certain class of cases now cognizable under the 
 present cumbrous procedure of the Ecclesiastical Courts." 
 
 In this paragraph you beg the question, for you 
 know, or ought to know, that, on occasions agreeable 
 to some of the bishops, they have heretofore declared 
 that they granted letters of request under the fear 
 and dread of a mandamus from the Queen's Bench, 

 
 that in other words the bishop had no power but to 
 proceed where there was a complainant. Now, 
 under this new Act, if a parishioner of St. Paul's, 
 Covent Garden, should apply that the four daily 
 services for which there is a special endowment, be 
 performed, the bishop may screen the delinquent 
 receiver of the endowment under any plea which he 
 is ingenious enough to invent ; so it is not a measure 
 of simplifjdng proceedings, but of stultifying pro- 
 ceedings. (Blot 2.). 
 
 " It creates no new offence, but is founded solely upon the 
 ecclesiastical law as now contained in the Prayer-book, Rubrics, 
 and Canons agreed to by the Convocation of the Church above 
 200 years ago. The procedure which it proposes to alter in the 
 cases with which it deals is one prescribed by an Act of Parliament 
 passed during the present reign, upon the suggestion, as this 
 would be, of the Bishops of the day. All such enactments as to 
 procedure in ecclesiastical causes have, from the Reformation 
 downwards, been made by Parliament. They necessarily must 
 be so made, from the very nature of coercive jurisdiction in an 
 Established Church, and they have always, as far as I am aware, 
 been made without its being thought necessary to consult the 
 Convocations of the Clergy about them. There is no doubt, both 
 on general principles and according to the best constitutional 
 precedents, that alterations in the Articles or Liturgy, &c., ought 
 not to be attempted without the concurrence of the Synods of the 
 Church ; but, as I have said publicly, I am not aware that a right 
 to be consulted on questions concerning only the legal methods 
 of enforcing the ecclesiastical law has ever before been claimed 
 on behalf of Convocation ; and, if so, such a claim cannot now be 
 admitted consistently with the existing settlement of the relations 
 between Church and State described by the term ' Establishment.* 
 How, therefore, any part of the substance of Church discipline 
 or of the rights of the clergy can be affected by the proposed 
 legislation is not to me apparent, unless, indeed, it is contended 
 that the clergy have a vested interest in the continuance of 
 technical and formal impediments to the execation of the laws of 
 the Church. If that is meant, it is a proposition with which I am 
 unable, either as a citizen or as a Churchman, to agree. I must
 
 6 
 
 honestly say that there is something repugnant to my sense, even 
 of morality, in a claim on the part of a large body of the clergy 
 to be at liberty to disregard at their discretion the laws of the 
 Church." 
 
 To the proposition that there is something repug- 
 nant to morality in a claim of a part of the clergy to 
 be at liberty to disregard, at their discretion, the 
 laws of the Church, I cordially agree ; and, therefore, 
 I ask that provisions in any Public Worship Bill may 
 be inserted, to compel the bishops to obey the law of 
 the Church and State in the performance of confir- 
 mation, in the marriage service, in the communion 
 service, at a consecration of a bishop, and at all 
 other times of their ministrations. It is very dis- 
 creditable to their pretended love of obedience that 
 the bishops have left themselves entirely free from 
 the operation of this new sovereign remedy for law- 
 lessness; were it necessary I could furnish a long 
 list of their own errors in defect and act 
 
 "... especially in matters which, unlike questions of faith 
 and morals, Sbve juris positivV* 
 
 So, my Lord, matters of faith, and a creed the 
 expression of the faith, may, according to your 
 Lordship, who has not "unlearnt the old sort of 
 churchman ship," be left juris non positive while the 
 Ritual symbolising the creed must be juris positivi. 
 Surely our Saviour's reproof is good for this propo- 
 sition, " Ye fools and blind, whether is greater, the 
 gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift ; the Throne, 
 or He that sitteth thereon ; " the ceremonial, or 
 the creed that sanctifies the ceremonial? (Blot 3.) 
 
 " I have always been used to think that the principles as to 
 Church order and organization, and episcopal authority inculcated
 
 7 
 
 in (e. g,) the Epistles of Ignatius were Catholic ; but, if so, what 
 is to be thought of the catholicity of a party which for the sake 
 of having its own way in matters of form and ceremony sets 
 those principles aside, and, at least by its popular organs, pours 
 open contempt upon them ? You think that the Bishops may 
 perhaps have been too much influenced by certain secular news- 
 papers. But do none of the clergy of this school, and of the lay- 
 men whose minds on ecclesiastical questions have been formed 
 by them, give their countenance to other newspapers, the spirit 
 and tone of which savours at least as much of those things 
 which Christians renounce at their Baptism ? " 
 
 So, my Lord, you, Protestant as you profess to be, 
 judge the Epistles of Ignatius, Catholic, but put a 
 Popish construction on them. I think you would 
 find it difficult to give a valid reason why you do 
 not turn Papist at once, holding such opinions as 
 you profess ; for the all-important issue between the 
 English Church and the Roman is that the Roman 
 claims an absolute despotic power for her chief 
 bishop, while the English Church protests that he has 
 only a constitutional power : better by far to have one 
 grand despot of some ancient power and prestige than 
 to be burdened with the infalhble decisions of twenty- 
 eight little Popelings. If, however, the bishops had 
 governed according to the law, you would have no cause 
 of complaint that any Ritualistic organ had poured 
 contempt on their Lordships ; but their Lordships as 
 a body have unfortunately rendered it impossible to 
 respect their persons, how great soever may be our re- 
 spect for their office. What, my Lord, should you think 
 of a lawyer who told you that he grounded his decision 
 in any particular case upon the (supposititious) fact 
 that no such document as Magna Charta ever existed ? 
 You would laugh him to scorn. Now this is just the
 
 8 
 
 position ; for the Ritualists have heard ad nauseam ^i\i2iX 
 their Lordships in this, that, and the other, are guided 
 by the decision of Liddell v, Westerton, the first 
 decision affecting Ritual ; and this first Ritual decision 
 is grounded upon a statement as ridiculous as false, 
 and as easy to be disproved as the statement 
 imagined regarding Magna Charta. The decision 
 and argument of the judges is founded on the suppo- 
 sition that no prayer of consecration existed in the 
 Book of Common Prayer as revised in 1552. The 
 fact that there was such a prayer, and that it is 
 identical with the prayer now in use with the excep- 
 tion of one irrelevant word^ is a truism known to every 
 tiro in English ecclesiastical history. If the Arch- 
 bishop and the Privy Council had ruled that the moon 
 was a green cheese, it would have been more possible 
 to believe them, than to believe this their present 
 statement ; for the moon is not within reach, but copies 
 of the 1552 Book can be handled and read. Bishop 
 Tait having, as assessor, allowed the Privy Council 
 to stultify itself in this gross manner, he or his 
 minions forge a new decree, one equally false but not 
 quite so palpable, and this forgery he or they try to 
 palm off on the public, under Bishop Tait's name and 
 authority, as the actual decree of the court.^ (Blot 4.) 
 
 *' I should have supposed that, if anything were clear, these 
 propositions were so — first, that the regulation of rites and cere- 
 monies in the Church and the interpretation of the laws of the 
 Church relating to them belong to public authority and not to 
 private judgment ; and, secondly, that deviations from the law 
 
 * The word alluded to is " humbly." 
 
 ^ Vide Tait Brodrick and Freeman tie's Privy Council Cases, p. 147.
 
 9 
 
 of the Church on such matters, whether bj way of defect or of 
 excess, which may be excusable and imiocent by the plea of 
 custom, or of the honest exercise of private judgment on points 
 not clearly determined by public authority, cease to be innocent 
 or excusable when they are unequivocally forbidden by that 
 authority. Nor am I able to understand how, without strange 
 self-deceit, any men can acknowledge these truths with their lips 
 and yet refuse practically to act upon them, because, as it would 
 seem, the whole working system of ecclesiastical law and public 
 authority under which they actually live is in some way contrary 
 to their notions of what ecclesiastical law and public authority 
 ought to be, and is, therefore, dispensed with by their private 
 judgment as not binding on their consciences. The necessary 
 consequence of allowing such a claim of ritual independence by 
 individual clergymen is to let in a flood of unlimited licence in 
 the direction both of Lati^tudinarianism and of E/Omanism ; 
 Romanism itself, in a Church whose position can only be justified 
 if E/omanism is wrong, being a form, and not the least mischievous 
 form, of Latitudinarianism." 
 
 You will see by what I have said above that your 
 '' unequivocally forbidden," when brought to the 
 test of fact and truth, become very equivocally 
 forbidden, and that there is a little ground for 
 repudiating the ''ecclesiastical law" under which we 
 live when that law declares there is no Prayer of 
 Consecration in a book in which there is a Prayer of 
 Consecration, and when to cover this lie the author 
 or authors of it descend to forgery. (Blot 5.) 
 
 " By whatever real or apparent zeal and piety, in either teachers 
 or disciples, such licence may be for a time accompanied, its 
 tendency is disorganizing and destructive ; and I think there is 
 very great reason to apprehend that it may promote in the long 
 run those developments of scepticism and infidelity which, as a 
 matter of fact, have been concurrent with its growth." 
 
 Here, my Lord, your facts and your chronology 
 are again at fault. Are you prepared to prove that 
 Hume, Gibbon, Tom Paine, Darwin the elder,
 
 10 
 
 Thelwall, Cobbett, Carlile, Shelley, and Keats, were 
 
 "concurrent with the growth of Ritualism:" nay, 
 
 rather were they not the offspring and offshoot of 
 
 Hoadleyism and Hickeringillism, and were not 
 
 Hoadley and Hickeringill the very prototypes of 
 
 Archbishop Tait and Dean Stanley? (Blot 6.) 
 
 " It has proceeded already, to mention one point only, so far 
 as to substitute in some churclies the sacrifice of the Mass with an 
 ostentatious imitation of Romish usages for Holy Communion." 
 
 Here, my Lord, you are either for your standing 
 and position in the world most remarkably ignorant, or 
 else this passage is a most unworthy piece of clap-trap. 
 
 You accuse the Ritualists of substituting the 
 Sacrifice of the Mass for Holy Communion ; do you 
 mean that your late vicar, the Rev. Eardley Wilmot 
 at All Souls, had a larger number of communications 
 in a year than had the vicar of All Saints in the same 
 neighbourhood in the same time (I will not ask you even 
 to make allowance for the fact that All Souls Church 
 would hold twice as many people, or thereabouts, 
 as All Saints) ? You must know, or can easily 
 know, that such was not the case. Then if you are 
 not talking about the number of communicants and 
 frequency of communions, pray may I ask how you 
 would substitute Lord Selborne for the man formerly 
 known as Sir Roundell Palmer ? I think you could 
 not make a substitution, you could change the name 
 but you could not alter the individual. 
 
 So we take the Reformers of 1549 and they say 
 that, " The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Com- 
 munion is commonly called the Masse." ^ The Par- 
 
 » Vide The Book of Common Prayer, 1st edit., Ed. VI. 1549.
 
 11 
 
 liament of that day (a professedly Christian one) 
 declared that the book containing this statement was 
 drawn up and made by the aid of the Holy Ghost. 
 They also repeat the same words in their act of 
 uniformity; see the clause relating to services in 
 college chapels where especial mention is made of 
 '' The Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass." ^ 
 The 1552 Reformers, generally supposed to be the 
 most ante-Roman of all the Prayer Book revisers, do 
 not protest against this language ; they declare that 
 they adopt it, and that the book issued in 1549 is "a 
 very Godly order," " agreeable to the Word of God, 
 and the Primitive Church, very comfortable to all 
 good people, desiring to live in Christian Conversa- 
 tion, and most profitable;" and they further go on 
 to say that the people who refuse it are followers of 
 " their own sensuality," and are living " wilfully and 
 damnably before Almighty God," and that they alter 
 it only because of these contentious people who "live 
 without knowledge or due fear of God." 
 
 Therefore your charge resolves itself into a charge 
 that Ritualists have substituted Lord Selborne for 
 Lord Selborne ; unless you are at issue with the 
 Reformers of 1549 and the revisers of 1552, who 
 declare that Holy Communion and the Mass are one 
 and the same thing. If they speak truly substitution 
 is impossible. (Blot 7.) 
 
 Then as to " ostentatious imitation of Romish 
 usages," are you, my Lord, so ill-informed as to the 
 usages of the various nations in the world as not to 
 
 i Vide Act of Uniformity, 5, 6 Edw. cap. i. prefixed to Edward 
 VI., 2nd book, 1552.
 
 12 
 
 know that the " Ritualism/' or more properly the 
 ceremonial used in Ritualistic churches, corresponds 
 with the ceremonial of the Eastern Church proper, 
 with that of the Russian Church, the Armenian, the 
 Jacobite, with that of the Eastern sects, with the 
 Lutheran ceremonial of Denmark, Norway, and 
 Sweden, and with that of Germany during the time 
 that the influence of Melanchthon and Luther still 
 remained. Have you never seen the Catechisms com- 
 piled from Luther and Melanchthon'sworks,^ with their 
 woodcuts of lights, triptychs, ^chasubles, and dal- 
 matics ? These usages you please to ticket as Romish 
 are no more Romish than Oriental, no more Oriental 
 than Russian, no more Russian than Jacobite, and 
 no more Jacobite than Lutheran. (Blot 8.) 
 
 " If the time for repression has not come, when such things as 
 this are done, surely it never can arise. What are the arguments 
 against now interfering to stop ritual excesses ? First — that 
 they ought not to be restrained unless, at the same time, other 
 evils in the Church, to which as yet no adequate remedy has been 
 applied, are corrected. But this is the old Busticus exspectat 
 dum defluai amnis. Is it worthy of men who profess high doctrine 
 and practice to plead the insufficiency of the restraints applied 
 to other men's faults as a reason why they should be indulged 
 with impunity in their own ? " 
 
 To this clause I will give as an answer a reference 
 to the Gospel according to St. John, chap. viii. verses 
 3 to 9. I can fancy I hear Pilate or the ex-Chancellor 
 of that day quoting to our Lord your Latin text of 
 "-Rusticus,'' &c. (Blot 9.) 
 
 * Vide among others, " Formes Precationum Piarum collectee ex 
 Scriptis Reverendi Yiri D. Phillippi Melanchthonis a Luca Back- 
 meistero. Vitebergia, 1563." 12mo.
 
 13 
 
 " Next, it is said that some parts of the law in question are 
 nncertain and others obsolete, and that the law ought to be 
 revised and altered before it is enforced. But there never has 
 been, and probably there never will be, any considerable body 
 of law in which there are not some things uncertain and some 
 obsolete. This, however, creates no real practical difficulty in 
 the administration of the law. What is really obsolete is not 
 enforced, and what is uncertain becomes certain when it is authori- 
 tatively interpreted. Those parts of the law which are disputable, 
 in liturgical as well as in other matters, bear no real proportion 
 to those which are clear enough for all men to understand and 
 obey them, if only they have the will. And it seems extravagant 
 that because there are some points in which the law might ad- 
 vantageously be altered (and some difficulty in altering it), there- 
 fore we are to go on as if we were under no law at all. Here, 
 again, the only party whose object this line of argument really 
 tends to promote is the Latitudinarian. They would doubtless 
 be well enough pleased to see a general revision of the Liturgy 
 attempted in England, such as, since Disestablishment, has been 
 going on in Ireland. But I have not so entirely unlearnt the 
 old sort of Churchmanship as to be willing to help them towards 
 the attainment of that object." 
 
 Here at last I think we have a ground of agree- 
 ment ; nearly all of this quotation from your letter 
 to the Times newspaper is true, but it all makes 
 against you and for the Ritualists when applied. The 
 " parts of the law which are disputable " '' bear no real 
 proportion to those which are clear enough for all 
 men to understand." Good ; I quite admit it. It 
 cannot be disputed with the least show of truth or 
 reason that the laws of the Church and the Act of 
 Uniformity enjoin (1) daily morning and evening 
 prayer, (2) that the words of application in the Com- 
 munion Service be said to each person severally, 
 (3) that the words of Confirmation be said to each 
 severally, (4) that a priest or bishop join the hands of 
 those who are to be married, (5) that the children of
 
 14 
 
 the parish be publicly catechised after the Second 
 Lesson in Evening Prayer, (6) that the children to 
 be baptised be received publicly into the congregation, 
 not baptised after all the congregation have left the 
 church. Not any of these plainly enjoined acts and 
 forms are proposed to be enforced, though they are 
 not disputable ; the only things that are to be 
 enforced (vide Archbishop Tait's Speech) are those 
 things which are as disputable as the statement that 
 no Magna Charta ever existed. (Blot 10.) 
 
 ** With respect to your own feeling that there is too much 
 distance between the Bishops and their clergy, I would content 
 myself with calling in question its relevancy for the present 
 purpose. Assuming the fact to be so, whether its cause may be 
 the great size of dioceses, the mode of appointing Bishops, or 
 , anything else, our system of Church government is, after all, 
 Episcopal, and not Presbyterian or Congregational ; and I do 
 not see how it can be right to resist the lawful authority of 
 Bishops, appointed under the actual law and order of the Church, 
 because there may not be so much as we might desire of that 
 kind of intercourse between them and their clergy which would 
 reduce the frequency of occasion for any authoritative inter- 
 ference. This brings me to your suggestion that the Bishops 
 should deal with Ritual questions in a council of (say 12) pres- 
 byters of the diocese. Whether this might be a possible and 
 desirable arrangement, or not, it is difficult for me to judge; 
 because we never know all the reasons for or against a particular 
 proposition till it has become the subject of public discussion. 
 I do not, however, think that it would be possible for any question 
 of law to be conclusively determined in that way. The Arch- 
 bishops' Bill has gone beyond the stage at which any such scheme 
 could have been proposed by way of amendment to it ; if it were 
 now proposed, I am sure it would receive no favour, either from 
 the supporters or from the opponents of the Bill. In principle 
 I know no reason why the executive authority of the Bishop 
 should be controlled, or that of Ecclesiastical Judges superseded 
 in ritual matters by such a Council ; nor do I know whether 
 there are any precedents for it in the history of our own or of 
 other Churches. And, since all coercive laws must necessarily 
 be made for the disobedient and not for the obedient, I cannot
 
 15 
 
 say that I think it at all probable that those who hold themselves 
 under no obligation to obey either the extrajudicial advice or 
 admonition of their Bishop, or the judicial authority of any 
 Court, when opposed to their own practice and judgment, would 
 be more likely to submit themselves to the advice or to the coercive 
 authority, under an Act of Parliament, of a Bishop assisted by 
 twelve or any other number of Presbyters." 
 
 Here I can agree with you again; I think the 
 Archbishops' bill has gone beyond amendment ; 
 I think it is so utterly bad and dishonest that it 
 would be a pity to insert any clause which had a 
 chance of being workable. For myself, I ask for no 
 council, no meddling, no muddling, no manipulating, 
 no policy patching;* I desire the law to be admi- 
 nistered in its plain grammatical sense, that the Act 
 of Uniformity should be interpreted as any other act 
 of parliament would be, without fear or favour, and 
 that the judge who decides such questions of law 
 should know enough of his own knowledge as not to 
 be led into saying there is no Prayer of Consecration 
 in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer, and that he 
 should have no bishop or archbishop at his elbow to 
 earwig and deceive on such matters. This proposed 
 jury of twelve presbyters with which you credit the 
 Ritualists, is not, so far as I know, a Rituahst propo- 
 sition; it is rather the proposal of that ghost of a 
 presbyter who favoured the Times with your letter. 
 (Blot 11). 
 
 " I have gone so much at length into my view of this matter 
 because you are so good as to say that there are some of your 
 friends with whom my opinions have hitherto had some weight. 
 If they had really, which I am far from assuming, any value, 
 this could only be because they are formed and expressed accord- 
 ing to the best of an honest judgment by a Churchman who 
 
 1 Vide " A Handy Book of Privy Council Law." 8vo. London, 
 1871.
 
 16 
 
 wishes to be faithful to the principles of the Church without 
 regard to the praise or blame of any parties or leaders of parties. 
 I should be glad to find favour with them ; but — I do not say it 
 now for the first time, multo malo vos salvos esse. 
 
 Believe me, dear , 
 
 Ever yours truly, 
 " Jime 13, 1874" " Selboene." 
 
 In this passage I believe there is somewhat of 
 truth. I must myself plead guilty to having enter- 
 tained some hope of honesty and truthfulness in a 
 man who protests against the " tampering with the 
 text of hymns ;"^ but this man is, it seems, willing to 
 have the decrees of the final court of appeal mani- 
 pulated and forged, and to place further power in 
 the hands of one who was particeps criminis in such 
 acts. Again, a man who is reported to have declined 
 the highest honour attainable in his profession, for 
 conscience' sake, is a person that one hopes to be able 
 to respect to the close of his life. From such a 
 quarter special pleading and unjust accusation, accu- 
 sations which must be known to be unjust, and 
 special pleading which would be unnecessary in any 
 good cause, are very disappointing. It makes one 
 lay down one's pen and ask with the Psalmist, Qais 
 ostendit nobis bona ? 
 
 I am, my Lord, 
 
 Your Lordship's obedient 
 
 Servant and Fellow-Layman, 
 B. M. P. 
 
 * Vide Preface to " The Book of Praise." 
 
 CHISWICK PKE8S: — PRINTED BY WHITTINOHAM AND WILKINS, 
 TO0K8 COUHT, CHANCERY LANE.
 
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