RITUALISM AND COMPREHENSION.
(To rue EDITOR Or TITS " SCROTATOR."J SIR,—Mr. Robinson not improbably represents the feelings of a good many " zealots," in his desire to turn the Ritualists out of the Establishment. May I be allowed to suggest to all such well-meaning persona that, by making this attempt, they are not only assailing that great principle of Protestantism, the right of private judgment, and nicking their own conscience the measure of other men's (which ia simple Popery), but they are attempting to hinder men in their endeavour to maintain Christian dogma, in an age when failures to do so are as remarkable as they are sad, What are the facts ? Certainly not that the expulsion of the Ritualists would maintain "the connection between a Christian Church and Christian dogma." For What are the dogmas of the Establishment ? Thanks to the Judicial Committee, the dogmas about the grace of baptism are open questions. So is the dogma of the inspiration of the Bible. So is the dogma of eternal punishment. So is the dogma of the personality of Satan; so is the dogma of a real presence or a real absence in the Holy Communion. And then a certain number of Chnrch- men say,—With your practical abolition of all dogma, we find your Establishment honeycombed with agnosticism and indif- ference, we find, one-half of the professing Christians in Eng- land. and Wales renouncing communion with yon, we find nearly one-half of the entire population rejecting religion of any sort ; and in order to maintain the old Catholic faith among a
• remnant at least, we claim to be allowed to concentrate their faith in a personal Christ, by the solemn and stately worship of the Eucharist (that witness to the Incarnation) as the English Church at least permit, in the Ornaments Rubric, and as she orders in the Twenty-fourth Canon, which Deans and Chapters, as well as Bishops, set at defiance.. It can scarcely be denied, then, that the Ritualists, in these days " of rebuke and blasphemy," have a full right to protect their people by all the surroundings of Catholic worship ; and it is because the historical High-Church party Lave got eyes to
see the utterly chaotic condition to which the Establishment has been reduced, so far as Cluistian dogma is concerned, that they have—I venture to think, rightly—thrown their broad shield Over the more advanced section of their adherents.—I am, Sir, &es
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