THE BISHOPS AND THE RITUALISTS.
WE owe an apology to the Bishop of Peterborough for being misled, by imperfect reports, into giving a wrong idea of his speech in Convocation on Mr. Green's im- prisonment. With a great part of that speech, as explained in the letter we print elsewhere, we entirely agree. When • the Bishop of Peterborough describes himself as in " favour of comprehension, as distinguished from toleration,"—as believing in "government by law, as distinguished from government by connivance," he takes a line which, as we have all along maintained, is the only one that can be taken consistently with any effective desire to maintain the • Established Church in its present form. Again, we are alto- gether at one with the Bishop when he contends that to say that a clergyman may free himself from the consequences of disobeying the law, as interpreted by a lawful Court of Final Appeal, " by setting up the plea of conscience, is anarchy pure and simple." But our agreement with the Bishop of Peterborough's letter does not extend to the letter of " One Who Was Present." To allow Mr. Green to come out of prison while the law remains as it is would in- • voice one of two consequences,—his speedy return thither, or his persistent defiance of the law. Canon Trevor says that after "his release simplicitcr he would still be under Lord Penzance's sentence of suspension," and that the only dif- ference would be that he would "await the menaced depriva- tion at liberty, instead of in goal." But Mr. Green is in prison for the very reason that he did not behave himself as though he was under Lord Penzarie'e's sentence of suspension. Had he done so, no difficulty would, up to this time, have presented itself. It is his refusal to take any notice of Lord Penzance's sentence that is at the bottom of the whole business. If he were set free to-day, the services in his church would be carried on to-morrow in precisely the same way as before his suspension, and he himself would take precisely the same part in them. No doubt, he would be awaiting the menaced deprivation, but he would be awaiting it in a way which would deprive the actually inflicted suspension of all its present value. This would be more than the prosecutors could be expected to stand. After all, the law is on their side, though, as we think, it is a bad law, and the proper remedy is to alter the law, and not merely to let Mr. Green out of prison, in the hope that no other clergyman will ever be ill-advised enough to go there for a similar reason. Canon Trevor assures us that his proposal to " appease " diversities of ritual by the exercise of the Bishop's pastoral authority was intended to avoid that conflict of fire and water which we supposed it to involve. We are quite certain that this is what Canon Trevor wishes and means it to do, and if Ritualists and Bishops were other than they are, we are willing to believe that it is what it would really do. But how would such an expedient work with Ritual- ists and Bishops what they are I The Bishop of Man- chester, if he wore appealed to on such a question, would propose the cathedral of the diocese as a standard of cere- monial beyond which no true son of the Church of England can possibly desire to go ; the Bishop of Liverpool would appease diversity of ritual by insisting on a rigorous adherence to the text of the judgments in the Purchas and Ridsdale cases. A proposal of this kind ignores that initial and indispensable condition of any satisfactory•settlement which the Bishop of Peterborough suggests. It puts connivance in the place of comprehension, and makes each Bishop say to his clergy, "If you will not break the law very violently, I will protect you against those who seek to have it obeyed in every particular."
It is not enough, however, that Bishops who desire to see com- prehension made the rule of the Church should state their wishes in Convocation. They are legislators as well as Bishops, and it is in the former character that they ought now to come for- ward. They were the original authors of the Public Worship Regulation Act, and it is only fair that they should make some compensation to the Church for all the confusion which that Act has wrought. We do not know how many Bishops there are who, like the Bishop of Peterborough, are in favour of comprehension ; but be they few or many, their plain duty is to give expression to their opinion by presenting a Bill to the House of Lords. It is useless to expect the Government to do it. The Government is made up of one or two men who care about the question, and a number who take no interest in it. Besides this, the Government has its hands full for the present Session, and probably for several Sessions to come. It is probable, indeed, that the House of Lords would throw out the Bill. The Peers have an ecclesiastical character of their own, and it is not at all favourable to com-: prehension. But a measure of this sort can seldom be carried until after several defeats. When the Lords see that, unless they make the Established Church more comprehensive, they are likely to see it no longer established, they will take a far more kindly view of the Bill. Nor is it likely that compre- hension as first proposed by certain Bishops would command acceptance from the Ritualists. There would have to be many conferences and much concession on both sides, before men who start from such different points could hope to find a common goal,. But when once the idea of comprehension had been seriously put forward by persons of authority, it might grow with immense rapidity. From being one suggestion among many, it would come by degrees to be regarded as the only suggestion worth thinking about. The number of Bishops who supported it would increase at a corresponding rate, and before any appreciable number of deprivations had been effected under the Public Worship Regulation Act, the need for de- priving anybody would have come to be seriously questioned. The Bishop of Peterborough might at first stand alone in his advocacy of a Bill to make the Church of England as com- prehensive in law as she already is in fact, but he would not stand alone long.
We do not believe, however, that any substantial good would be effected by the particular kind of comprehension which is all to which the Bishop of Peterborough yet stands committed. He speaks in his letter of making the Ornaments Rubric " broader, by allowing distinctly some at least of those Ornaments which are so dear to the hearts of many excellent clergymen." We see no probability, however, that an amount of "ceremonial" which the Bishops would be prepared to allow distinctly in a new Ornaments Rubric would satisfy the Ritualists ; while, even . if it did satisfy them, it would do nothing to prevent congregations unaccustomed to Ritualism from having it forced upon them by inconsiderate clergymen. We have no desire to protect Ritualists at the expense of non-Ritualists. The object we have at heart is to see both given what they wish for, and protected against what they dislike, so far as this double end is attainable by legis- lation. How it is to be done is another question, and one the difficulty of which we fully acknowledge. Earlier in the controversy we were in favour of a provision that no change should be introduced into the services of any church without the consent of, say, three-fourths of the congregation, but we confess to having found the difficulty of defining a " congre- gation " greater than we at first expected it to be. The term cannot be taken as co-extensive with the parishioners, since many—perhaps a majority—of the parishioners never come to church ; indeed, are not, except in a civil sense, members of the Church of England. There is no very obvious way of identifying the regular attendants at the services generally ; and, though this difficulty might be got over in the case of communicants, to give communicants as such the right of de- termining the character of the services would tend to make communion the mere civil test which it was before the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. The only remedy which is free from all these objections is to give the minority of a con- gregation which is dissatisfied with any changes introduced by the incumbent the right of providing, at their own cost, addi- tional services in the church, or, if they preferred it, an addi- tional church in the parish. No doubt, this would only meet the case of minorities who could afford, at the least, to pay an additional curate. But where every proposal is open to some objection, it is useless to dwell upon the objections to which the most promising of the number is undoubtedly open. Much, indeed, might be said to Show that the particular objections just instanced are less serious than they may appear at first sight. It would be premature, however, thus to go into the details of a project which as yet is scarcely more than a sug- gestion of our own. But, as Canon Trevor is kind enough to say that some of the Clergy would be glad to have our advice, we have thought it well to indicate the direction in which, as we are more and more convinced, the amelioration of the present distress can be most hopefully looked for.
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