The Ritual Movement / Three plain sermons preached at St. John the Evangelist's, Hammersmith

by James Galloway Cowan

But growing up all around them, and fostered and strengthened by importations from the Continent, (where the Reformation had unhappily been brought about in a very different spirit, and was in fact almost another thing,—not the reforming of the Church but the abandoning of it) was a revolutionary and indiscriminate Protestantism which sought to destroy, root and branch, whatever was old, and was intolerant even of the most harmless conformity to the Church against which it was a reaction.

Let us speak with all charity and fair allowance of those earnest and holy men. Almost all the doctrines of the faith had been perverted or leavened with corruption; almost all the ordinances and ceremonies were associated with gross abuses. In the intensity of their awakened feeling against these things, it was natural that many among our own people, unable to distinguish between the truth and the corruption, the use and the abuse, should think that their rulers had not gone far enough in the way of change; while the foreign Protestants, left to act as individuals, driven to form communities of their own (as their Church would not reform itself) unguided by Catholic influence, directed by no intelligent principle (save that which would anyhow get rid of false traditions and gross abuses) in the construction of their creed and the ordering of their services, determined, as the easiest and most congenial course, to reject the whole system from which they had come out, and to make all things new for themselves.

What wonder that such men were dissatisfied with the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., that they regarded it as a base compromise with Rome, that they were horrified by the mention in it of “priests, altars and sacrifices,” that they scorned as “badges and rags of popery” the vestments which it prescribed; that they were loud and urgent in demanding its immediate revision! Not only had they no sympathy with, they had no comprehension, no idea of the principle on which its compilers had acted. Their notion was that the only true and pure religion was such an one as differed in toto from what they had repudiated. They had been misled by some traditions; therefore they would henceforth recognise no traditions. The word of God had hitherto been withheld from them: therefore now that they were able to possess it, they would handle it as freely as they pleased. The priests had domineered over them: henceforth they would have no priests. Sacrifices had been offered amiss; they therefore abhorred all sacrifices! Such were the feelings with which our Reformers had at once to deal. Should it be a matter of much surprise or reprehension that they dealt very indulgently with them, that they re-cast the service which was objected to as “so like the mass,” that they dealt expressions which were injuriously misunderstood, that individual Bishops ordered the removal of the altar lights, that the celebrant was required to wear a surplice only? Recollect: it was a time of violent re-action; moderation was interpreted as “compromise;” names, ceremonies, and vestments represented to Protestant minds not the things to which they really belonged, but the abuses which had so long been associated with them. In vain was it argued that the abuse does not take away the use. In vain was it protested that the Book of Common Prayer, as it stood, contained nothing that was contrary to the word of God or to the teaching of the primitive Church. In vain was it maintained that the Christian Church has and must have an altar, a priesthood, a continual sacrifice to offer; that, while it is most true that Christ’s one sacrifice was once offered for ever, and cannot be repeated, and that He is such a priest as knows no equal, no successor, no partner, as alone in fact answers to the name of priest; still, as the Jewish Church had its prophetic memorials of His sacrifice—in its slaying and offering of bulls, and goats, and lambs—and its priesthood representing in the various acts of its office what Christ would do—so have we, and by His own command, a historical memorial of His sacrifice: “This do in remembrance of me.” “As oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord’s death till He come”—and must have a so-called priesthood, performing sacerdotal acts as His representatives. In vain I say was all this urged. Doubtless many of the dissentients would have readily admitted much of it if they had calmly considered it, if they could have believed that a memorial sacrifice and a representative priesthood were what the Reformers claimed to retain. But they could not be persuaded to listen; they could not calm themselves sufficiently to listen; the spirit burned within them to root out and destroy popery; and every theological term, every religious ceremony, every ornament or vestment that had been used by papists, was regarded as of the very essence of popery itself! I believe that the reformers were justified in making temporary concession to this state of feeling, particularly in modifying ritual and ornament, which could only be useful so long as they were edifying, which were in fact doing harm to the Church’s cause and to individual souls while they were taken as representing and recommending the very things which had been repudiated. They doubtless justified themselves by considering that their second Prayer Book still contained the doctrines which the offending rites and vestments were meant to adorn; they hoped that men might come to understand and hold those doctrines when their prejudices were disarmed; at any rate they feared, lest, by a stubborn maintenance or violent enforcement at that critical time of anything not really essential, they should endanger the best interests of the Church; or even provoke and perpetuate among us a mere Protestant reformation. It seemed well then that they should make such concessions as the second Prayer Book of Edward VI contained. You know what followed; how within a year popery was established under Queen Mary, and how both Churchmen and Protestants had to flee the land and seek a home among German or Swiss reformers; or, if they remained, were savagely persecuted to the death. It might have been expected that the fact of Churchmen being treated as capital offenders against Rome would have disarmed the prejudices against them and their ritual which had hitherto existed, or at least that common misfortunes would have begotten common interests and sympathies and so have led to a truer appreciation of one another. This was not exactly what resulted. The Protestants retained and even strengthened their prejudices: the Churchmen who had lived in exile among them first of all fell in with their habits, their modes of worship, and their disuse of all vestments—or the substitution for them of a black gown—and presently they also contracted their prejudices. Accordingly when, soon after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, the old law about vestments was re-enacted, it remained except in a few solitary cases a dead letter; men either hated such things, or they were too indifferent to the way of performing divine service to trouble themselves to wear them; or, if they had right notions and right feelings about them, they were too poor to provide them for themselves; and their parishioners did not care, perhaps objected, to provide them. I cannot but believe that it was the knowledge of this fact—the adaptation of law to necessity—which led to the framing in 1603 of that Canon, (so often quoted of late) which requires parochial ministers to wear the surplice only in their ministrations, but directs that a cope shall be worn by the celebrant in cathedrals. The Convocation, it would seem to me, knowing how generally the vestments had been destroyed, or rapaciously seized for the sake of the gold and precious stones that adorned them, and how difficult it would be for the clergy generally to provide them afresh, appointed—what had long been the practice, and could in fact quote something like authority for itself in the Royal advertisements—that as a minimum of vestment in ordinary churches a surplice should be worn, but in cathedrals, whose endowments could provide it, the most costly and splendid of all vestments—the cope—should be retained. Surely it could never have been intended to insist that there should be a difference between the cathedrals and the parish churches of the same communion; far less to forbid as superstitious in the latter, what is positively enjoined in the former! But if it were so, the Canons, though in their spirit a rule to the Clergy and faithful laity, have no force by the law of this realm, and moreover they were almost immediately followed by a revised Prayer Book, which contains the rubric ordering all the ornaments which were in use in the second year of Edward VI. While at the very last revision of the Prayer Book, nearly sixty years afterwards, when our Church was only just lifting her head above the politico-religious revolution which had so nearly overwhelmed her, when so many reasons cogently pressed her to eliminate from her Book of Common Prayer all that was unnecessary, all that was questionable, all that she did not use or intend to use; when the Puritans put their finger on this very rubric, and required that it should be left out—for if it were retained it might bring back copes, albs and such like;—it was nevertheless deliberately determined that the rubric, made by verbal alteration more explicit than it had been before, should continue to be the written rule of our Church! And, brethren, it is still the written rule, confirmed by Convocation, enjoined by the Act of Uniformity.

It is at length very generally being admitted that this is so; that the ritualists have the written law on their side for much of their practice: but then it is urged that precedent as to the observance of that law is utterly wanting, that in fact there has been a general consent of bishops and parochial clergy (for 300 years) that the law was not to be observed. I have shown you my brethren why it could not be observed, why it had to be repealed in Edward VI.’s time. If you know anything of the Marian persecution, and the bitter animosity against suspected Romanism which it naturally begat; of Puritanical infatuation and its superstitious horror at the sight of a surplice, its general disuse of the Holy Ordinance to which “high-ritual” and glorious vestments peculiarly belong, its perversity in wearing black, simply because others wore white, in fasting (as on Christmas day) when others were feasting; if you know anything of the worldliness, the apathy, the deadness to Evangelical truth, the utter ignorance of it or utter indifference to it, which characterized the last century and the early part of this—then you will surely be able to explain to yourselves, why the Rubric in question has not been generally observed, you will be surprised to find that any one has at any time observed it.

I could easily show that it has been, here and there, in part observed, almost to our own time; that it was designed by those who first inserted it in the Prayer Book, by those who restored it, and by those who deliberately confirmed and continued it, to be actually used, as soon as circumstances would allow. (Surely it is vain to argue on the other side, in the face of the repeated discussions about it, and the persistent maintenance of it; in the face, too, of the fact, that those, by whom it was defended and preserved at the last revision, were among the men who have most distinctly taught the doctrines which it embodies!) But were it otherwise; were they one and all, from first to last, in their own private judgments and by consent among themselves, against its actual use, or at any rate deliberately acquiescent in its disuse, are we to be bound by their personal tastes and their private judgments, so as to yield up what at least they have preserved and solemnly handed on to us, what we have seen to have such full Scriptural sanction, so to harmonize with the dictates of true Catholic devotion, so to express in act, as, thank God! our Liturgy does many times in word, that we believe and confess that we have no way of access to God but through the Veil which Christ has consecrated for us, even His own flesh; that He is our only Sacrifice and the only sustaining Food of our souls; that He condescends ever to plead for us that Sacrifice and to give to us that Food; that on the altar He makes for us, by the hands of His representative, the Memorial of that Sacrifice and by the same hands gives us of the heavenly Food—He Himself Priest and Victim both? This is the great, the glorious, the soul-thrilling truth which “high ritual” is intended to picture to the eye, and so to bring home to the mind and heart; nor only nor chiefly this, but rather to express it in worship,—in intelligent, open, adoring, thanksgiving, splendid worship, to the Lamb that was slain, that sitteth upon the Throne!

If, my brethren, we believe this to be the rationale of such “high-ritual” as our Church by rubric or service sanctions, then how can we be patient under its non-observance, unless we feel ourselves to be hampered, like our ancestors, by surrounding prejudices and perversities?

Now of course there are prejudices and perversities still existing and many of them. There are men who for the love of opposition resist and cry down ritualists. There are others, who in their inmost soul are smitten with a great fear, lest they should be beguiled of their reward in Christ, and turned into formalists and idolaters! It was to be expected that each of these classes would strenuously oppose itself to the ritual movement and even that, though they really have little in common, they would readily make common cause against ritualists. And were it not so, did neither of them show any outward sign of resistance, misconception, dislike, distrust or contempt; yet the righteous dread of causing weak brethren to offend, of shaking their confidence in those who should be their spiritual guides, of alienating their affections from their Church and their Prayer Book and of driving them into schism, would make all wise and loving reformers very cautious and slow to introduce even the most desirable changes and to revive the most important practices, very painstaking in removing prejudices and enlightening ignorance, very patient to wait long, if need be, for what they themselves so much appreciated and so eagerly desired.

Nevertheless it is easy to see that there has never been a time since the Reformation when men have been so able as they are now to discriminate between what is Catholic and what is Roman, when they could venture to confess that they had made the discrimination, yes and to act upon it without inevitably leading themselves or others back into the bondage from which we have been delivered. Wherever the experiment has been fairly tried it has thoroughly succeeded: it is only those who have not tried it who doubt of, or deny the hope of its success.

And as there never has been a time when the ritual movement could be so easily effected, so has there never been a time when it was so loudly called for as it is now; first, by so many of the worshippers, who have come to appreciate beautiful churches, musical services, frequent celebrations, devout ceremonies and symbolizing acts and ornaments,—and so to crave the perfect development of the system to which these things belong; next, by the circumstances around us, the bold denial—alas! that it must be said even by ministers of the church—of the precious Sacrifice and alone-availing Intercession of the Incarnate God, which this ritual in its every part and phase asserts and exhibits; next, by the anxious looking towards us of Eastern and Western Christians, yearning for the re-union of Christendom, expecting that somehow the re-union is to be brought about by us; yet hesitating to give themselves into our hands, because they see not in us the due recognition of the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, the due rendering of objective worship to God.

I have endeavoured my brethren in these sermons to set before you in the very simplest way such a statement of the case as may disarm prejudices, and predispose to right thoughts about ritual and earnest endeavours to use it duly where it is offered you.