The Dean of Durham (Dr. Lake) has had a little
controversy with the Guardian, on the subject of the Bishop of Manchester and his episcopal injunction to the clergy of his diocese to regard the ritual of the Cathedral as a maximum, not to be ex- ceeded by them in their parish or district churches. The ques- tion between the Dean and our contemporary is whether the injunction of a Bishop, when it does not pretend to carry any special ecclesiastical authority,—the "synodical" authority is not even contended for,—demands " reveren- tial deference" or not; and while the Guardian insists on the " reverential deference " due to the Bishop, the Very Reverend Dean, while full of personal respect for the Bishop of Manchester, asks that his injunction shall be measured by its ecclesiastical authority, its legal validity, and its common- sense, in all which elements he finds it wanting, and therefore is disposed to regard it simply as the mistake of a very excellent man. The Dean gives point to his protest against the excess of reverential deference demanded in the Guardian by a quotation from Bishop Wilberforce, who, referring to the Guardian of earlier days, seems to have found its "faint and contemptuous praises" of the Bishops, the last drop in his cup of bitterness. We are not sure that the Guardian would be so very deferential even now to a Bishop, purely as such. But to a Bishop who offers himself voluntarily as a sort of buffer between the perplexed lawyers of - the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Ritualists, "reverential deference" from all journalistic allies of the Privy Council, is clearly due.
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