THE DOUBLE BEARING OF THE ST. ALBAN'S JUDGMENT A N able
correspondent remarks in another column, what has indeed been very generally noted throughout the ecclesiastical world, that in some respects the recent decision •
of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the appeal on the St. Alban's case, bears more strongly against the Evangelical section of the Church, than against the sooalled Ritualists. The principle of the decision seems to be that no deviation, either in the way of subtraction or addition, is to be permitted to the authorized regulations with regard to ceremonial and ornament,—except, so far as regards ornaments, where these additions are strictlysubservient to substantial parts of the worship, as the organ to the singing, and the credence table to the consecration of the bread and wine :—and thus the law of the Church is reduced to a strict code, which, as we understand, the Evangelical party break on one side as habitually as the Ritualistic party on the other. Thus, as regards "ornament," the judgment decides that the law of the Church is laid down by the PrayerBook of 1549, which the statute refers to and adopts. This law is, so far as regards vestments, that the bishop shall have "a rochet, chasuble, alb, and pastoral staff ;"—the priest, " a -surplice, chasuble, cope, alb, and hood (if he be a graduate)" ; —the other assistant ministers, "a tunicle and alb." At the ordinary morning prayer, a surplice is the only proper vestment; at the communion service, a chasuble or cope (over a white alb), the assistant-ministers to wear a tunicle over an alb of any colour ; and all these directions as to vestments the judgment practically pronounces not only proper, but compulsory. We need not say that this alone would involve a -considerable change in practice as regards the Evangelical olergy. Again, the black gown in which the clergy used -always to preach, and in which many Low-Church clergy preach still, seems to be positively illegal ; while, on the other hand, the stole must be given up by the High-Church party, and also the hood, except for graduates while preaching the -sermon, or graduate clergy in a cathedral. Again, as regards the ceremonial, the decision of the Privy Council is that the words the priest standing before the table" apply to the whole prayer of consecration, and prohibit the priest from kneeling during that prayer. To this some of the Ritualists reply that they are well content, inasmuch as the practice of the Evangelical clergy has been to assume that, these words do not refer to the prayer of consecration, and to go back to the north end of the communion-table and there say the prayer of consecration, looking southward, and with their profiles turned to the people. For those of our readers who, like ourselves, are newly awakened to the momentous issues thus involved, we may explain that the Ritualists, —or transubstantiationists, as we prefer to call them, from the only idea which seems to dictate their ceremonial,— think it a great matter that the priest should turn his back to the people in order to turn his face to the elements he is consecrating, because, as we gather, that practice implies that he is turning his face towards some greater bodily presence -than any on which he turns his back,—in other words, that there is a divine body on the altar, and only human bodies behind him. On the other hand, the Evangelicals are so averse to the hypothesis favoured by this attitude, that they interpolate for themselves a direction to go back to the north end of the altar, which does not exist in the Prayer-Book, in order that they may not seem to favour the " high " interpretation. This practice it is quite certain that the decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council condemns by the very words in which it condemns the kneeling during the prayer of consecration. it decides that the words "standing before the altar" apply to the prayer of consecration, and standing before the altar no doubt cannot mean standing at the north end of it. Here, then, is a great victory for the Ritualists over the Evangelical party. From this time forth, if the former must give up lighting candles on the altar, and kneeling during the prayer of consecration, the latter must give up their flank march to the north end of the altar, and must even turn their -back to the people during the prayer of consecration. Again, if the Ritualists must give up the stole and generally the hood, they may not only retain the alb and chasuble, but the Evangelicals on the prescribed occasions must use them too. There is no exclusive triumph for either party.
Be it so. We can only say that we are very glad of it. So far as Ritualists only crave a little more ornament in the .service, we have no objection to them at all, rather the _reverse. We had no wish to see them humiliated at the
expense of the Evangelicals, and we are far from regretting that the Privy Council's sword is double-edged and cuts both -ways. But one thing seems to us still certain. Those special ceremonial acts by which the Ritualists strove to express their belief in the bodily presence of Christ upon the altar, and by which, — that is our main care,—the humble inhabitants of rural parishes for the most part supposed that they were committed to the same belief in what they regarded as an idolatry, are to be suppressed for the future. The lights on the altar, the mingling of water with the wine, the elevation of the paten and the chalice, the adoration of the elements, are all forbidden, and these are the ceremonies by which the ordinary parishioners of ordinary churches conceived themselves committed to a belief in the superstition of the Mass. These things being abolished, we confess that we should see nothing but a meaningless and pertinacious fastidiousness in the refusal of the Low-Church Clergy to repeat the prayer of consecration with their backs to the people and their faces to the altar. They are expressly guarded against any false interpretation which might be put either on that posture, or on the kneeling attitude in which all the communicants are to receive the elements, by the rubric which ends the Communion Service, and which we must say seems to us as cruel and authoritative a blow at the main tenet of the Romanizing school as the framers of our Prayer-Book could have struck. In that rubric the kneeling posture is expressly explained as only indicating "our humble and grateful acknowledgment of the benefits of Christ therein given to all worthy receivers, and for the avoiding of such profanation and disorder in the Holy Communion as might otherwise ensue;" and it is declared that lest this act of kneeling "should by any persons, either out of ignorance and infirmity, or out of malice and obstinacy, be misconstrued and depraved,—it is here declared that thereby no adoration is intended or ought to be done either unto the sacramental Bread or Wine there bodily received, or unto any corporal presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood. For the sacramental Bread and Wine remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored (for that were idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians) ; and the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ are in Heaven, and not here, it being against the truth of Christ's natural body to be at one time in more places than one." Now, if the Evangelical clergy,—thus carefully guarded by the Prayer-Book against the slightest misinterpretation,—choose to make a cavil about turning their backs to the people during the prayer of consecration, we can only say we have no sympathy with their scruple, and they must be overruled by the law, like the Ritualists. Indeed, we cannot but think that it should be much easier for anti-Ritualists to conform to the lawwith regard to matters which to them must seem so purely insignificant and subordinate as attitude and dress, than for those who attach the highest symbolical value to attitude and dress, as the only media for expressing a faith which the Prayer-Book wholly ignores, and in many places expressly denies ; and we cannot, therefore, believe that any difficulty will be found by sensible Protestants in conforming to the law, while we are still disposed to think it will be, and should be, a hard trial to crypto-Romanists,—true believers in transubstantiation,—to conform. As regards Ritualists, in the sense only of lovers of an ornate and splendid service,—not Ritualists who look to ritual as a medium for the expression of dogmas ignored in the Prayer-Book,—we have never felt disposed to quarrel with them. Their idea may be insisted on too much, and it may be carried too far ; but it is in itself a true idea to make the service of God as rich and impressive as the resources of human art will allow, without a needless sacrifice of what is wanted for other and graver ends. We are very far indeed from wishing to see Ritualists of this class repelled by the National Church,—though we certainly should feel quite unable to lament that those whose idea of worship hinges on an idea so foreign to our Church as the power of the priest to call down Christ's body to the altar by an incantation, should be driven into a Church of which that idea is the central idea, and where the whole conception of worship is accommodated to it and developed from it.
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