that it is to be construed on principles which are established in the courts; that reason and common sense are not excluded from the investigations of law any more than from those of history; that, among other things, usage is not to be shut out of consideration; while 'contemporaneous exposition,' as gathered from the documents and the actions of the time, from the works of writers who lived in it or near it, will carry great weight in 'every court of law in England.'* Stone altars, once maintained with the boldest confidence, have been done away with by judicial decisions. Lights on the altar have been barely saved for the time by an affidavit stating that in the church as to which the question had been raised they were used only for the purpose of giving necessary light-a purpose for which the 'Directorium' considers that it is almost sacrilegious to burn them, inasmuch as they ought to be kept for the celebration of the Eucharist (p. 13). And most especially a fatal blow has been dealt to a theory on which Mr. Perry's whole book on 'Lawful Church Ornaments' is founded-the theory that, as certain Acts of Henry VIII. for a reformation of ecclesiastical laws allowed the old canons, &c., to remain in force (unless 'contrariant or repugnant to the laws and customs of this realm') until the proposed revision should be executed, and as that purpose has never yet been fulfilled,—the ornaments sanctioned by the medieval canons had "authority of Parliament in the second year of Edward VI.;' whence it would follow that they are at this day prescribed by the rubric, which orders that the ornaments so authorised 'shall be retained and be in use.'t Mr. John David Chambers, indeed, tells us that the Privy Council, in deciding the cases of Westerton and Beal against Liddell, most culpably declined to go into this question. Perhaps it may be thought by ordinary people that Lord Kingsdown and his colleagues understood their own business as well as the eminent barrister' whose censure they have incurred. But although it is true that they did not argue or decide the question as to the validity of the canons, they did settle the matter which was really before them, by stating that, after much consideration,' they were 'satisfied that the word ornaments in this rubric is confined to those articles the use of which in the

* Dr. Lushington, in Moore's 'Report,' p. 38; Opinion of Sir R. Palmer,' &c.. p. 48, folio ed.; Shaw in Contemp. Rev.,' Jan., 1866, p. 5.

The absurdities which would result from this principle are in some degree shown by Mr. Shaw, 'Contemp. Rev.,' i. 20; iii. 317, but are much more effectively exposed by the unconscious naïveté of Mr. Perry in his summary of canons, which he supposes to be still in force and in his list of ornaments,' Lawful Church Ornaments,' pp. 467, seqq.

'Directorium,' p. 344.

services

6

services and ministrations of the Church is prescribed by the [First] Prayer-book of Edward VI.'* That this is the only reasonable way of understanding our rubric we are thoroughly convinced; and even in the 'Directorium,'-although it had been 'compiled in the belief that the "authority of Parliament" in this rubric was intended to apply only to those ancient canons and provincial constitutions made statutable by the Acts' for a revision of the Ecclesiastical Laws-we are told that subsequent investigation has induced the editor to modify that opinion thus far, viz., that the rubric refers not only to the canon law, but that it also includes the First Book' of Edward VI. (pp. xx. xxi.) We take this avowal for what it is worth, only remarking that the Privy Council, in deciding for the Book of Edward's second year, entirely shut out the authority of the older canons as a guide to the ornaments which are to be retained.

6

Mr. Perry, too, in his essay on 'Lawful Ritual,' shows a consciousness that his old position is untenable (pp. 464-5); but he endeavours to rescue something by a distinction as to the words employed in the judgment of the Privy Council,—that, as they had in one place spoken of ornaments 'prescribed by the Book of 1549, and in another place of things used under' that book, 'it ought not to be assumed that in their minds these were simply identical and interchangeable terms' (pp. 448-9, 450, 497). If the frivolousness of this objection required any exposure, it has received it from Mr. Shaw, who shows that in law the phrase under a statute' is habitually used in the sense of prescribed by.'† And when Mr. Perry's distinction as to the language used by the Privy Council, and his old proposition as to the authority of the canons, were again brought forward in the Case of the English Church Union (pp. 50, 60, 79), the eight learned counsel to whom the case was referred gave no favourable reply, but significantly intimated their opinion to the contrary. For, as they unanimously pronounced against the lawfulness of incense, and as censers or thuribles for incensing were among the articles which were prescribed by the canons and which the Ritualists affirm to have been used under' the First Book of Edward, the inference as to their opinion on the authority claimed for the canons is unmistakeable. We need not, therefore, any longer fight with the opposite view, or expose the monstrous sophistries and absurdities by which it has been maintained.‡

* Moore's' Report,' p. 156; comp. pp. 160-1; Dr. Lushington, ibid. pp.30-3. + Contemp. Rev.,' iii. 314-6.

See against it Mr. Shaw in the Contemp. Review,' Nov. 1866, pp. 333-7.

Mr.

Mr. Perry, indeed, attempts to repair his shattered defences; if the canons are not to be considered as of parliamentary authority, he would still use them as 'subsidiary' to the rubric; for this, he argues, is not a complete system of directions as to all necessary or admissible ornaments.* We allow that it is not ; and so do the Privy Council, by declaring themselves 'not prepared to hold that the use of all articles not expressly mentioned in the rubric, although quite consistent with, and even subsidiary to, the service, is forbidden.'† But then the admissibility of other articles is evidently to be determined, not by unnatural constructions which would foist on the service of the Reformed Church the ornaments which were suitable only for its unreformed state, but according to the rules of right feeling and common sense. If, for instance, it were to be contended that a clergyman, if he wore the attire prescribed by the rubrics of 1549, ought not to wear any under-clothing, the contrary is to be shown from the reason of the thing-not by citing, with Mr. Perry, the Anglo-Saxon canon which enacts Let no minister of the altar presume to go to celebrate the mass with naked legs.' ‡

We have, then, already seen so much as seems to justify us in saying that the result of appealing to law will in general be unfavourable to the Ritualists; and that if in this or that point the Courts should decide in their favour, it will be on grounds very different from theirs.

Mr. Perry enumerates as the five prominent (though not exclusive) points of the Charter of an English Churchman's Ritualistic Liberties

(1). The ancient vestments of the bishops and other clergy;

(2). The two lights on the altar; (3). The incense;

(4). The mixed chalice; and

(5). The eastward position, in front of the altar, of the priest and his assistants at the celebration of the Holy Communion.' §

We may add from other sources, as further points on which the Ritualists insist as important in the celebration

(6). The use of wafer-bread;

(7). The presence of 'the faithful' for what is styled 'spiritual communion;'

(8). The elevation of the consecrated elements.

* The Church and the World,' p. 475.

·

+ Moore, p. 187.

Lawful Church Ornaments,' p. 470. § The Church and the World,' p. 497.

Let

6

Let us, then, consider these items in the order here given :(I.) The rubric and the Act of Uniformity of 1559, in prescribing the ornaments which had authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI.,' appear to sanction the use of copes, vestments (i. e. chasubles), albs, and other articles which had been ordered by Edward's First Prayerbook in 1549, but had been forbidden by his Second Book in 1552. It would seem, however, that the orders of 1559 for the revival of these vestures took little effect; and in 1565 certain advertisements' were issued, which prescribed the use of a cope at the celebration of the Holy Communion in cathedral and collegiate churches, but a surplice for this, as for all other offices, in parish churches. It has been questioned whether these advertisements fulfilled the conditions under which they would, by Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity, have had the force of law. But it is certain that for something like a century after their date they were generally supposed to have such force; and, in our own time, Archdeacon Harrison has vindicated their authority in an elaborate argument, which the opposite party have found it more convenient to ignore than to grapple with. The directions of the advertisements were re-enacted in the 24th and 58th canons of 1604; and this was the rule until the Great Rebellion, although on the one hand the use of the cope was much neglected in cathedrals, while on the other hand it is possible that one or two clergymen may, under the primacy of Laud, have attempted to introduce it into parish churches. ‡

At the restoration of Charles II., when the puritans objected to the rubric, as 'seeming to bring back copes, &c.,' both the wording of their objection and the terms of the reply made by the bishops appear to prove that the 'seeming' was not contemplated as a reality,§ except, possibly, as to the class of churches for which the cope had been ordered by the advertisements and the canons. But in the revision of the Prayer-book which followed, the order of 1559 was re-enacted; and the question now is, whether our rubric is to be construed exclusively by the light of Edward's First Prayer-book, or also by that of the advertisements and canons, with the usage of three hundred

See Chancellor Massingberd's speech in Convocation, June 27, 1866. + Historical Inquiry into the Rubric,' pp. 87-121. London, 1845.

We are not aware of any other evidence for this than a passage of Heylyn's "Life of Land' (p. 471), cited in the Hierurgia Anglicana' (p. 165), by which it appears that four London clergymen were charged by the Puritans, in 1640, with (among other things) 'administering the sacrament in copes.' But it does not appear whether this particular charge was brought against all the four, nor whether it was established against any one of them.

§ See the remarks of the Bishop of St. David's on this, pp. 80-2.

years.

years. It has been pointed out by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his answer to the English Church Union, and more fully by Archdeacon Wordsworth and others, that, immediately after the re-enactment of the rubric, Archbishop Sheldon and Bishop Cosin-both of them concerned in the late revision, and Cosin a high ritualist of the Laudian school, whose authority our modern ritualists are never weary of citing for much more than it will really carry *-spoke in their articles of a surplice as the dress to be worn by their clergy, without any mention of copes, or vestments, or albs;† that the solemnity of Sheldon's language in particular is inconsistent with the idea that these articles were meant only to prescribe a minimum; ‡ and that in the enforcement of conformity under Charles II. no one was ever troubled for neglecting to wear the more gorgeous articles of ecclesiastical dress.

Although the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have pronounced for the ornaments of Edward's First Book in general, they have not precluded themselves from referring to other authority (such as the advertisements or the canons) for the explanation of this rubric, if the question of vestments should hereafter come before them. § The Committee of the Lower House of Convocation declare themselves to be, on the whole, of opinion that the use of the vestments in parish churches

*We cannot here go fully into the abuse which is habitually made of Bishop Cosin's name. Let it be enough to say that his three series of 'Notes on the Prayer-book' (Works, vol. v., ed. Ang. Cath. Lib.) were published for the first time long after his death; that they were mere jottings, made in the course of his reading the later differing in tone from the earlier, and none of them giving any grounds for supposing that he would have wished them to come before the world as containing his settled opinions; that the notes of the earliest and most immature series are those on which reliance is chiefly placed by the Tractarian and Ritualist writers; that these contain mistakes of fact which go far to lessen their value; that even thus, Cosin does not maintain certain opinions for which he is quoted,e. g. that the ornaments prescribed by medieval canons had authority of Parliament in 2 Edw. VI.; that as even the latest notes appear to have been written before the author's advancement to the episcopate, to speak of any part of them as the work of Bishop' Cosin is delusive: that, although Cosin was prominent in the last revision of the Prayer-book, he was certainly not omnipotent in it, inasmuch as there is evidence (in a Prayer-book with notes in the writing of his chaplain, Sancroft) that many of his suggestions in the direction of Laudian ritual were negatived; and, consequently, that it is altogether unwarrantable to bring forward his private opinions, or his personal acts, as if they were decisive for the interpretation of the Prayer-book. We have long seen reason for believing that the influence of Cosin in the revision was controlled by that of Sparrow; and this has also occurred to Mr. Milton (pp. 43-5), whose pamphlet will be noticed below. + The Directorium' (p. 18) quotes Kennet's 'Register' for the statement that at the enthronization of Bishop Walton, of Chester, in 1661, 'all the members of the cathedral' were' habited in their albs.' But it seems pretty clear that this

means merely in their whites, i.e. surplices.

See Milton, 'The Sacrificial Vestments,' pp. 46-7.

§ Speech of the Dean of Ely in Convocation, June 27, 1866.

cannot