The Dean of Cheater, Dr. Howson, has entered the lists
as a firm opponent of any relaxation of the law as declared in the Pushes case against the Eastward position of the eelebrant in the Communion Service, on the ground that the view of those who fight for that position is that there is something sacrificial in the Eucharist, and that priests are appointed to offer the sacri- fice—a view which he declares to .be un-Scriptural and un-Pro- testant. As to the un-Protestant character of any doctrine which gives a magic function to priests, as such, there can be no doubt ; but then, though the Anglican Church has always been Protestant in the sense of protesting against the later developments of Roman doctrine, it has always included men who held strongly to the special unction of a sacerdotal order ; and indeed its own services still retain the most marked impress
of that view. We do not believe, therefore, that it is either desirable or possible, now, without a new rupture of a violent kind, to &elude the moderate Higit-Church view from the Anglican Communion ; and as to the tacrificial view, it is held, in some sense, by the Mauricians and the broadest of Broad Churchmen, as Mr. Llewelyn Davies's letter to Monday's Times proves. It seems to us that Dean Howson goes much too far in con- tending for an interpretation of the law which would exclude from the Church such men as the Dean of St. Paul's, and that it is a mistake generally on the part of Liberal Churchmen to be so anxious to catch the favouring breeze of popular opinion as to stimulate, instead of clearly defining and moderating, that movement• against the extreme party which may, and we hope will, end in " putting down " the extravagant antics of true Ritualism. We don't believe that the moderate High-Church view has much We- in it, but it has a historic place in the Anglican Communion.
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