THE LINCOLN JUDGMENT.
OUR remarks on the Lincoln judgment must be prefaced by a retractation. Things have turned out im- measurably better than we ventured to expect. The action of the Archbishop of Canterbury is the most important contribution to the cause of ritual peace that has yet been made, and it comes just at the time when it is most likely to be effectual. Twenty years ago, it would have been received with the irritation which the triumph of a party naturally excites in opponents. It would have been regarded as a Ritualist victory. Now it expresses a sentiment common, we believe, to the best and wisest men in both parties, the desire for ritual peace based on the recognition of ritual divergence. It comes as a confirmation of all the efforts that have from time to time been made to get some authoritative declaration in favour of the co-existence of different ceremonial uses in the same Church. Hitherto, these efforts have failed from the impossibility, under present circumstances, of getting legislative sanction for any change in or addition to the Book of Common Prayer. The Archbishop's judgment shows that, upon certain important points, there is no necessity for this legislative sanction. The Prayer-Book has only to be interpreted with a reasonable reference to the customs it found existing, and to those which have been in existence since, to ensure a very large measure of liberty. This is the drift of the whole judgment. The rubrics are part of a historical document, the service-book of a historical Church. More- over, they are part of a comprehensive document, the service-book of a comprehensive Church. They were meant to combine the introduction of what was new with the maintenance of what was old, to satisfy, so far as was possible, those who regretted what they had lost, and those who would have liked yet more change than they got. The only reasonable, the only possible, way of carrying out this complex design, was to leave those whose eyes were turned backward to use the old ceremonies, so far as they were not plainly inconsistent with the directions in the new book, while forbearing to impose these permitted customs on those who wished to push the process of change to the utmost limit permitted by law.
This is the test to which the judgment submits each point in the case. The two first charges were the mixing of wine and water in the chalice during the service, and the consecration and administration of the chalice so mixed. The Archbishop declares the first unlawful not only on the ground that "the express removal [from the second Prayer-Book] of so simple a direction as that con- tained in the words, putting thereto a little clean and pure water,' must undoubtedly be understood to mean that the mixing at that place was not to be con- tinued," but also because "there were good liturgical grounds for the removal of the direction" in the fact that in the Eastern and Greek Churches, the custom was (except in Armenia) "to mix water with the wine before the service ;" so that "the ceremonial mixture in the service was omitted from our book in accordance with the highest and widest liturgical prece- dents, and must in our Church be accounted, in the words of the Preface, as one of the accustomed ceremonies which be put away." But the consecration and administra- tion of a cup previously mixed is an "all but uni- versal use," and to prohibit it would be to do what the framers of the Prayer-Book were careful not to do and the Archbishop's Court is not competent to do,—i.e., to make a new rubric. The eighth and ninth charges refer to the use of the sign of the cross in giving the absolution and the benediction, and with these the judgment deals in just the same way. The Arch- bishop sets himself to inquire whether "this gesture was prescribed in the English Church up to the time of the Reformation," and whether "her Bishops and clergy con- tinued to use it in giving the absolution or benediction, as it were traditionally and without correction." The result of the inquiry is that neither practice was "in any sense a continuance of old prescription in the Church of England," since in the pre-Reformation service-books there is no direction for making the sign of the cross in absolu- tion, and the benediction was not given at all.
In dealing with the eastward position and the use of altar- lights, the Archbishop had chiefly to consider the evidence for their continued user, and for this purpose he has brought together a large body of testimony from the most recondite sources. His conclusion in regard to lights is, that "they were legal when and after the Prayer-Book became law and so remained,—a scheme to make them otherwise not having been completed, the Acts of Uniformity having no bearing on them, and their very general disuse being due to causes other than legal enactment." But this very general disuse was never complete, at least before 1737; and though "their use appears to have been in the main attached to places or occasions of marked dignity, there was no privilegium entitling such times and places to fashions or ways elsewhere illegal." It is not to be supposed, for example, that Queen Elizabeth would have used them in her chapels—except when a weak-minded Bishop declared, "with wet eyes," "I dare not minister in your Grace's chapel "—if they had then been esteemed unlawfill As regards the eastward position, again, there is a curious conflict of evidence, and in this case conflict is identical with evidence in favour of the usage of more positions than one. The judgment rejects, indeed, what seems to us by far the simplest interpretation of the rubric, that " north side" means what it means alike in ordinary and in ecclesiastical language, the northern half of the building to which it is applied. To sit on the north side of the church does not mean to sit with your back against the north wall, but to sit on the northern side of the central aisle ; and in like manner, to stand at the north side of the altar would be most naturally taken to mean to stand at the northern side of the centre. The Archbishop prefers to regard the rule about the north side as referring to a time when communion- tables were placed lengthways in the chancel, so that the north side was really the side, and not the end. When the tables were again moved to the east end, it was impossible to stand at the proper north side, because what had been the north side was now the east side. Hence a variety of practices grew up, some of the clergy continuing to stand at the long side of the table, disregarding its change of aspect, while others kept their faces in the same direction, and so went round to the north end. The evidence of this liberty in inter- pretation is strong enough to convince the Archbishop that both positions are true liturgical uses. We fail to see why he stopped short at this point, and did not hold that a strict compliance with one of the meanings attached to the rubric, the manual acts in consecration, must be waived as exceedingly inconvenient in one of the two recognised positions. As it is, the judgment seems to us to attach an exaggerated importance to the performance of the manual acts in consecration, and to reject needlessly the interpretation—to which the Archbishop seemed at first to be leading up—that "before the people" means, not "in sight," but "in presence" of the people, and that the object of this rubric was to ensure that the bread should be broken in the course of the consecration, and not brought already broken from the vestry. The merit of the judgment, however, lies not so much in its positive conclusions as in the method by which they are reached. An extreme Ritualist may dislike being told to discontinue the mixing of the chalice in and as part of the service ; but when this prohibition is made to rest on the absence of any such practice in the Oriental and Greek liturgies, he cannot complain that no deference has been paid to antiquity. The judgment is, from first to last, an ecclesiastical judgment, whereas the judgments of the Judicial Committee were civil judgments. Now, eccle- siastical and civil judgments are both good in their way ; what is not good is the application of principles derived from one type of case to cases coming under the other. This confusion is not an inseparable accident of lay Judges ; and as the parts of the Archbishop's judgment which are favourable to the Bishop of Lincoln are to be made the subject of an appeal, we hope and believe that the result will show that the Judicial Committee are able to divest themselves of it. For it is needless to say that the prospects of ritual peace entirely depend on the avoidance of a conflict between the spiritual and tem- poral authorities. If the Civil Court were simply to override the Archbishop's judgment, and send back the cause to his Court with directions to condemn the Bishop of Lincoln on the charges of which he has now been acquitted, one of two consequences must follow. Either the Archbishop would refuse to condemn the Bishop for what he believed to be no offence ; or he would declare him- self ready to call black white, and to make as many new rubrics as the Privy Council chose to exact of him. In the former case, the Church and the State would be brought into acute conflict; in the latter case, the Archbishop's Court would forfeit the respect of the clergy and be made to appear -the mere mouthpiece of the State. One of these results would probably be fatal to the maintenance of the Established Church; the other would almost destroy its comprehensive character. Happily, the labour and research which the Archbishop and his assessors have bestowed on the pre- paration of the judgment makes either result in the highest 4legree unlikely. We are not yet in possession of ritual peace, but for the first time we are fairly in sight of it.
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