THE CHURCH AND THE ORNAMENTS RUBRIC.* THE theory of this

little volume is of the nature of an argu- mentain ad herniae'n against those who object to the Ridsdale judgment on the ground that it contradicts the previous and existing law of the Church, as expressed in the Ornaments Rubric. The author takes the bull boldly by the horns, and declares (1), that the Ornaments Rubric has ever been and still remains a purely Erastian document, imposed originally on a reluctant Church by the mere will of the Sovereign ; (2), that the resistance of the Church to it was completely successful from the first; (3), that the voice of the Church finally pre- vailed in the Advertisements, which superseded and abolished once for all the requirements of the Ornaments Rubric. But we had better let Mr. Balme speak for himself :— " Tbe Ornaments Rubric was an attempt at legislation, circa sacra, by authority purely secular, steadfastly resisted by the Church. In it Queen Elizabeth, Tudor-like, tried to impose on the Church her • Is the Us. of Vestments under the Ornaments Rubric Part of the Discipline which This Church of England has Bemired t By E. B. Wheatley Balme, M.A. London Rivingtona. Ism own personal taste in matters of Ritual. Her subservient Paella. ment obeyed her behest, and passed the Statute of Uniformity, from. which the Ornaments Rubric was a modification of one clause. But every Bishop who was present in the House of Lords voted against the Bill. That was the only opportunity which the authorities of the Church had of giving official judgment upon it. The Queen took care that the Prayer-book in which she bad the Rubric inserted was. never submitted to Convocation. But the mind of the Church was unmistakably expressed in act, or rather in passive resistance. So• far as evidence has been produced, not one parish priest ever con- formed to it then, or for three hundred years afterwards."

The italics are Mr. Balme's ; and he goes on to argue that the Advertisements expressed the mind of Church and State, making the surplice and cope the only legal vestments,—the former in parish churches, the latter in collegiate churches and cathedrals. Even if we granted all this, for the sake of argu- ment—and we believe Mr. Balme to be totally mistaken— what about the last revision of the Prayer-book, in 1661, in which the Ornaments Rubric is re-enacted? Mr. Balme is not easily staggered, and he is ready with an answer to this objee.- tion. The revision of 1661, he tells us, rests on secular, not on ecclesiastical authority. 'Certainly we have hitherto believed that Convocation had both a voice and a hand in that revision, at least. But this is quite a mistake, according to Mr. Balme.

The Southern Convocation had a band in it, he admits, and he' also admits that the Convocation of Canterbury was aided by a number of Bishops from the Northern Province, as well as by some proxies from the Lower House of the Northern Convoca- tion. But these proxies, he argues, were not selected with all the proper formalities ; and therefore the Ornaments Rubric of 1662 has no ecclesiastical authority : it is merely State law. Yet Mr. Balme professes to write as a strong opponent of Erastianism " Since the time of the Gorham judgment," he says, " I have been intensely anxious about encroachment by the State on the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, to which I attach great im- portance." He is anxious accordingly to destroy the authority of the Ornaments Rubric, on the ground that it rests on a merely secular sanction, and to substitute for it the Advertisements, which, as he believes, can claim Church and State authority.

He maintains that Mr. Green endured imprisonment, though he knew it not, in defence of the principle of Erastianism, and that the English Church Union is guilty of the same paradox by its support of Mr. Green and its vindication of the Ornaments Rubric.

We shall show presently that Mr. Balme has grievously- misread and misunderstood his authorities. But the strange thing is that he does not see that if his theory were true, it would prove a great deal too much. If the Ornaments Rubric-

has no claim to ecclesiastical authority because the Lower House of the Convocation of York was not properly repre- sented in the revision of 1661, the objection is equally fatal to the whole of the Prayer-book. Moreover, there is no pretence for claiming any Synodical authority for the Advertisements during the reign of Elizabeth. They were drawn np by Com- missioners, appointed by authority of an Act of Parliament.

So that if the Ornaments Rubric lacks Church authority, much more do the Advertisements,—at least, throughout the reign of Elizabeth. Nor can the subsequent references to them in various Canons invalidate this initial defect, any more than the reference to Jewell's " Apology," in the Thirtieth Canon, can invest that book with legal authority. Mr. Balme has, in fact,. acted the part of the woodman who carelessly cut down the branch on which he was sitting.

But let us look at the principal arguments on which Mr. Balme builds his extraordinary theory. And let ns begin with the revision of 1661. There is no question that the Convocations both of Canterbury and York received the royal licence, and were

invited to revise the Prayer-book. There is no question that both Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury did revise the

Prayer-book ; nor does Mr. Balme deny that the Bishops of the

Northern Province delegated some of their number, including, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of Durham, and the Bishop of Carlisle, to sit in London with the Southern Convocation, is

order to save time. Nevertheless Mr. Balme denies that the Ornaments Rubric possesses ecclesiastical authority, because: it was passed, in his belief, without having been submitted to the judgment of the Lower House of the Convocation of York. As we have said, the objection, if valid, would be equally fatal to the whole Prayer-book. It is not valid, however, for more reasons than one. The troth is that the rule of Christendom has been that canons and constitutions shonld'be made in Synods consisting of the Archbishops of the Province and his Comprovincials. The co-ordinate power of the Presbyteriate in the two English Convocations is an innovation on ancient custom, and grew out of the right of the Lower Houses of Convocation to vote in the granting of subsidies, when the Clergy taxed them- selves apart from Parliament. So that if it were true that the Lower House of the Northern Convocation had no opportunity of passing judgment on the Revised Prayer-book, this would not prove that it lacked Church authority, inasmuch as the Arch- bishop and his suffragans undoubtedly took part in the revision, and approved the result. But it is not true. The Lower House, to save time, appointed proxies (most of whom belonged to the Southern Province, and were already in London) to act for them ; and they pledged themselves, under forfeiture of their goods, to abide by the votes of those proxies. When the revision was completed, the Upper and Lower Houses of the Southern Province subscribed the book separately; as did also the proxies of the Upper and Lower Houses of the Convocation of York. Here is the form of subscription signed by the proxies of the Lower House:—

" Nos etiam, universes Clerus inferioris Domes ejusdem Proviaciae Ebor., synodice congregati, per nostros respective Procuratores, sufficienter et legitime constituti dicto Libro Publicarum Precum, Administrationis Sacramentorum et Ritaum, luta cum Forma et Modo ordinandi et consecrandi Episcopos, Preshyteros, et Diaconos, unanimiter consensimus et sabscripsimas, die et anno predictis [i.e., December 20th, 1661]"

Yet Mr. Balme tells us that the Lower House of the Northern Convocation had no voice in the revision of the Prayer-book ! Either from want of familiarity with his subject, or from care- lessness, he has misunderstood his authorities. Nor is it by any means a solitary example, as we shall see presently. Mean- while, let us say emphatically that no document was ever more amply ratified by ecclesiastical and civil sanction than the Prayer-book of 1661, including the Ornaments Rubric. Mr. Balme draws on his imagination when he asserts that the Canterbury Contocation of 1661 "retained the Rubric" in the sense expounded in the Ridsdale judgment. We have seen how absurd is his exclusion of the York Convocation from any re- sponsibility for the revision. Equally absurd is the view that the Revisionists retained the Rubric while mentally reading into it a meaning directly contrary to its plain grammatical sense. Would it not have been more simple, as well as more honest, to substi- tute for the old Rubric one which should say plainly what the Revisionists are supposed by Mr. Balme to have meant? Assum- ing the honesty of the Revisionists, their retention of the Rubric in its present form can only be explained on the supposition of its expressing what they intended. But even if it were otherwise, it would not matter in the least. For it is a recognised rule of legal interpretation that the plain meaning of a statute—and the Ornaments Rubric is statute as well as ecclesiastical law— overrides any interpretation which is contrary to its plain meaning. That consideration alone is fatal to Mr. Balme's theory. But fallacies are hard to kill; so we had better expose one or two more of Mr. Balme's blunders.

"The Queen's own Rubric," he tells us, "was contradictory to the Queen's own Injunctions issued the same year, 1559. The thirtieth injunction, on apparel of ministers, ' both in the Church and without,' commando that they shall use and wear such seemly habits, garments, and such square caps as were most commonly and orderly received in the latter yere of the raigne of King Edward the Sixth." Mr. Balme thinks that he has here made a great discovery, which he accentuates by the aid of italics and old- English characters. It is in fact the corner-stone of his theory. And what is the discovery P This, namely, that the injunction commanded the use of the vestments ordered by the Ornaments Rubric of Edward's Second Prayer-book, and thereby abrogated the Ornaments Rubric of 1559 ! In other words, Mr. Balme asks us to believe that, simultaneously with a rubric which ordered the use of all the vestments of Edward's First Prayer-book, Elizabeth issued an injunction forbidding them all except the surplice ! So preposterous a conclusion requires strong evidence, and all the evidence which Mr. Balme gives us is the expression," both in the Church and without," and the words, "in the latter yere of the raigne of King Edward the Sixth," which Mr. Balme prints in old-English characters. The simple truth is that Mr. Balme has again misunderstood the passage on which he comments. The injunction plainly refers to the ordinary dress of the clergy, not to their official vestments. The clergy, both before and after the Re- formation, were prone to imitate the costume of the laity, and.the authorities had the greatest difficulty in keeping them to the use of clerical dress. The Advertisements go into the question minutely. This, and this alone, is the meaning of Elizabeth's injunction. " Her Majesty," it says, " being de- sirous to have the prelacy and clergy of this realm to be had as well in outward reverence as otherwise regarded for the worthi- ness of their ministries, and thinking it necessary to have them known to the people in all places and assemblies, both in the Church and without, and thereby to receive the honour and estimation due to the special messengers and ministers of Almighty God," therefore she prescribes the use of the dress " commonly ordered and received in the latter year of the reign of King Edward VI.," and therefore not reasonably obnoxious to the charge of being Popish. And she wishes this dress to bo worn "in all places and assemblies," in order that the clergy may be distinguished from the laity. Does Mr. Balme suppose that the Queen ordered the surplice to be worn " in all places and assemblies" P And does he think that " the prelacy and clergy" were more likely to be mistaken for laymen in copes or chasubles than in plain surplices P Mr. Balme's interpretation makes ludicrous nonsense of the injunction.

One more example of Mr. Balme's method of reasoning must suffice. He quotes an injunction of Archbishop Grinders, which ordered in the year 1571 the destruction, among other Church ornaments, of all vestments, albes, tunicles, stoles, crosses, candlesticks. This is a clear proof to Mr. Balme's mind " that the vestments were unlawful in kind " after the issue of the Advertisements. But crosses and candlesticks are also mentioned. Does Mr. Balme believe that they, too, were made unlawful by the Advertisements P If he does, both law and usage are against him, If he does not, what is the value of his argument P Elsewhere he quotes Episcopal Injunctions, which doom chasubles, copes, crosses, candlesticks, and altar vest- ments to the same ruin. Yet altar vestments are unquestion- ably legal. This fast-and-loose method of reasoning is inad- missible, and it shows either a very illogical state of mind or a very superficial acquaintance with the subject under discussion. On the whole, we do not think that upholders of the Ridsdale judgment are to be congratulated on their latest champion.