Take a case in illustration. Say you treated thus the Decalogue, or any part of it. Take the Sixth, Seventh, or Eighth Commandments: suppose you left them to be printed in the Prayer Book still; but by “a simple and positive enactment” set men free from obedience to them, or rather prohibited obedience to them, until further order be taken. Would they be thus repealed so far as human enactment goes, or would the Prayer Book still remain unchanged in respect to them? Or, still better, look to the Fourth Commandment—I say better, because the others are negative, and this is positive. “Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day.” Grant that it were still permitted to be printed in the Prayer Book, and recited in church; but then that there were “a simple and positive enactment” restraining men from keeping it holy; prescribing and requiring a uniformity of work, according to custom widely prevailing, reminding us that a careful observance of the Lords Day had become obsolete; that long custom to the contrary had abrogated the usage, and now it was expedient to restrain it. Would this be no alteration? Would this be no repeal of the Decalogue, or change in the Prayer Book? Oh! but the Bishop says the restraint is only “until further order be taken.” Well, what is the force of this? Whatever hope it may hold out in the future, is it any qualification even, for the present? Surely not. Whilst the “simple and positive enactment” lasts, the former law is repealed. Besides, how much hope does it hold out, even for the future? If the Bishop’s temper and counsel are to prevail, I must affirm none. For we have seen that not merely the more violent enemies of Ritual, but even the Bishop himself, whom we must assume to represent its more moderate opponents, I say he himself is not for waiting to give those who are certainly more nearly maintaining and obeying the law than those who clamour against them, even the chance of making good their position in the eye and mind of England. He will not do this at present, when there is at least a fair presumption that in the main the law is in their favour, but he will hold them out a dim hope of something turning up propitiously for them in the future; when he has thrown all his weight and influence into the scale against them, and when, if he can have his way, he will pass a “simple and positive enactment” to condemn them, and alter adversely their status in the Church! He will have them put down now with the strong hand, by legislation framed expressly and on purpose to catch them for their obedience to the existing law; but they may console themselves with the thought that “all contemplation of a future when further order might be taken concerning the questions now under consideration would not be authoritatively excluded.” Well, put the consolation at its best; make what you may of it; avoid, if you can, bitterly laughing at such a mockery of hope. But even then, turn to the state of things if such an enactment take place; “a simple and positive enactment,” forbidding such “ornaments of the Church and ministers thereof” to be used “as were in use by the authority of Parliament in the second year of King Edward VI.;” and I ask again (for this is our real and great question) What would be the condition of the Book of Common Prayer? Would it be what it is now, or would it be changed? Would the present rule be “in abeyance”—that is, much unused, but still the law—or would it be repealed? What is the difference between the proposed remedy and repeal? It would be as if you made “a simple and positive enactment” that, “until further order,” no man should be arrested for debt; no man taken up for theft or violence; no man prosecuted for treason; no man hanged for murder. You may call this, abeyance of the law in those cases, but it is a misuse of the term. A thing is in abeyance which for any cause happens to be disused, not when it is by enactment forbidden to be used; as a title is in abeyance, not when there is no heir (in which case it is extinct), but when the heir is unknown, or the pretensions of two or more claimants undetermined; when the heir is not forbidden, as the heir, to take it if he be the heir, but only whilst there may be doubt whether he be the heir or not. But here, it is assumed by the very act of legislation that something is known to be the law, so that you despair of getting rid of it but by altering the law; and therefore that, though it is known to be the law, and for the very reason that it is known to be the law, it is to be prohibited and excluded. Can any man in his senses be made to believe that this is not repeal?
I think, sir, I need go no further as to proving that all these schemes, and this last just as much as the rest (all except the letting the courts of law settle what is the law, and then abiding by it), agree fully in this one point that they tamper with and alter our Book of Common Prayer.
And all this, over and above the reason and common-sense of the matter, tells us what the next Report of the Ritual Commission will be, unless the Commissioners be duly impressed with the danger of the course which they are pursuing, and the enormous responsibility of trying to carry it out.
And this brings me to a further practical point, which it is very fitting that I should lay before you. I mean the resistance proposed to all alteration in the Prayer Book by means of the public meeting so lately held in London; and the action to be taken in connection with the resolutions then passed as to memorializing the Royal Commissioners upon the subject.
There appears to be a curious piece of evidence that the great meeting in St. James’s Hall has even already not been wholly unproductive of results. That meeting was held on Tuesday, the 19th of November. The Times was singularly quiescent in relation to it for nearly a week: but yesterday, Nov. 26, in an article upon Lord Portman’s questions in the House of Lords touching the Bishop of Salisbury’s Charge—though not dealing directly with the meeting—it yet introduces the following apposite remarks:
“It is alike extremely difficult and extremely dangerous to alter our existing formularies, but it would be perfectly possible, and that, as the Bishop of London said, without any very sweeping alterations, to simplify the course of procedure in our Ecclesiastical Courts. It seems to be generally felt that all classes of the clergy should be more amenable to the public than they have been; and it will certainly be better, as well as more practicable, to attempt in the first place to effect this result, rather by an improvement in the administration of the law than in the law itself.” [36] Is it straining matters too much to think that we have in this no mean tribute to the justice of the objects and views of the meeting at St. James’s Hall?
And here it may not be amiss to say one word upon the principle of a Memorial to such a body as the Royal Commission. I believe there are some who think it improper to memorialize the Commissioners, as if it were like petitioning a judge to convict or acquit a prisoner placed upon his trial before him. Of course, if the cases were parallel, it would be most improper and indecent. But a moment’s reflection will shew the difference. The Commission is not a court of justice at all. It has no judicial functions at all. There is no more objection to memorializing it than there is to petitioning Parliament. It is a body of men appointed to collect evidence, and afterwards to give an opinion as to what is expedient. It is then in the very nature of things, of high moment and importance that these Commissioners should know and understand what large masses of earnest Churchmen are thinking and feeling, whilst they are finding their way to their recommendations. It is a duty upon us to let them know what these feelings are, and what consequences are likely to result to the Church, when we see their tendency, nay, more than tendency, to lead an assault upon the Prayer Book. It is not only not improper, but it is a part of high and holy duty, which we owe to ourselves, to our Book of Common Prayer, to our faith, to the Church of England, to Christendom at large—nay, to God, our Maker, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, to say openly and plainly, solemnly and earnestly, “We will have no tampering with our faith; we will have no altering our Prayer Book; we will have no legislation in this matter of Ritual;” and this all the more; all the more deeply felt, the more strongly urged, became we see that this is a wholly one-sided movement. We hear of no restraint or restriction, no new Canons or new enactments, when men fall short of the requirements of the Church and the Church’s law; when churches are closed from Sunday to Sunday; when Christ’s people are starved and stinted of their spiritual food and sustenance by few and far-distant communions; when Services and Lessons are altered, and Services garbled and curtailed at the will of this or that priest. Nay, we hear of no “simple and positive enactments,” even when men within the Church’s pale deny the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; impute absolute ignorance to Christ our Lord, the ever-blessed Son of God; as, that He did not know as much about the authorship of the Pentateuch, or the date of certain of the Psalms, or other facts concerning the Holy Scriptures, as modern doctors could tell Him; none, when we hear denied the possibility of miracles; none, when we find explained away and rejected the duration without end of Hell; none, when it is maintained that we ought not to pray to the Son of God. I say that upon these subjects we hear of no Royal commissions, no Bishop’s charges recommending new enactments; no impending legislation to place such teaching under the disability of “abeyance” even “until further order be taken;” but here, where the law of the Church as to ceremonies and vestments (things no doubt important, because no doubt representing doctrine and connected with it, but certainly not more important than those other subjects to which I have alluded), but here, where these ceremonies and vestments, are the objects of ignorant clamour and brutal violence, the Prayer Book is to be altered, and new law is to be made, actually to put a penalty on those who have been guilty only of the crime of obeying it as it is.
And here I must say a word as to such alteration of the law, if made, being what one of the resolutions passed at St. James’s Hall termed it, ex post facto legislation. A good deal has been said upon this topic, and we are told that if you call such legislation ex post facto, then all legislation is such, when it forbids for the future what has been permitted in the past; and we are reminded that the true sense of ex post facto legislation is when a penalty is placed, by a new law, upon acts done before the law was altered. Now first let me remark that, even without coming exactly up to the definition, you yet draw very near to the substance of ex post facto legislation if you make a one-sided change to catch only one side or one party whom you make offenders under the new law, and when it is a law framed expressly and on purpose to catch the men on one side and let the others go free. Whether this be technically ex post facto or not, it comes exactly to that which, in a passage already quoted from the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol’s Charge, is described by him as likely to cause “rankling bitterness, from the thus greatly increased conviction that the law is really in favour of those to be restrained; and being so, is overridden by an unjust Act of Parliament.” But, secondly, there is another way in which such an enactment would come very near indeed to ex post facto legislation—I mean where it disturbs a great settlement of many years’ standing, which has induced men to enter into numerous and weighty engagements, from which you cannot free them if you would, when you change their status in relation to their obligations. To take an illustration. The country has entered into such a kind of contract with the fundholder. Millions are embarked in the Funds upon the faith of a great settlement the principles of which shall never be departed from; and to depart from which would be ex post facto legislation, practically putting a penalty upon those who had come under voluntary obligations upon the strength of those principles and that settlement. But it may be said, nevertheless, the country does sometimes vary the contracts and alter the rate of interest towards its creditors. Yes! but what would be thought of the minister who proposed to do this, without offering, as the alternative, to pay the lender off in full; to replace him in the position in which he stood originally? And if, without offering this, he proposed to alter his status, who would not feel there was an unjust ex post facto alteration of the law? Now, upon such a great, just, and deliberate settlement, have men entered into relations with the established Church of this country. And here the State cannot set them free, or replace them in the position in which they stood before they accepted the cure of souls within her pale. The Legislature cannot give them the alternative offer: and therefore, again, such a change as alters the Catholic standing of the Church of England must come very near indeed to being ex post facto legislation. But yet further, thirdly, there is another consideration which brings this case exactly within the strictest definition of ex post facto legislation. I mean the affixing a penalty by new enactment upon acts done before the law was changed. Observe, all penalty is not material; not restricted to fine or suspension. There is the penalty of stigma and imputed dishonesty, as real and as hard to bear in many cases as other punishment. Now, it needs no great foresight or wisdom to perceive that if the law of Ritual shall be altered in the sense and mode proposed, this very thing will be used as a stigma and brand of disloyalty to the Church of England against those men who have been High Ritualists. It is true it might be, and in my judgment, ought to be, read the other way. It ought to be taken as a proof that the existing law being in their favour, those who could not endure the law got it altered. But, from the whole tone and temper of the objectors, it is clear this would not be their line. They tell us even now, over and over again, with the outstretched throat of clamour, and with the utmost violence of passion, that all such are false to the principles of the Reformation; are dishonest and disloyal to their Church; are not to be endured in a Protestant Establishment. It is clear, then, that they would proclaim the new legislation to be merely declaratory of the existing law; not admit that it changed it; and so the enactment would be used as a fresh ground of obloquy and reproach against those whom their opponents could not convict of any crime, but whom they would thus be allowed, nevertheless to condemn. Such a stigma, such a penalty placed by legislation upon acts done before the change of law, and upon the persons who had done them, would bring such change of law under the definition, in the strictest sense, of ex post facto legislation.
But now to return. Let me explain the position which I am throughout maintaining. I have not been speaking as the advocate of high Ritual. I do not understand the aim of the great meeting held last week in St. James’s Hall to be this advocacy; nor do I so understand the Memorial to be laid before the Commissioners. It is not to defend high Ritual in itself, however incidentally Ritual may be affected; but it is to defend the Prayer Book. It is to preserve our present status. It is to allow no door to be shut upon the Catholic side, whilst all are left open on the Latitudinarian. It is to preserve an outwork which defends doctrine—dearer than life to many among us. It is to keep all which God’s providence has given us in our Reformation and subsequent Revisions. It is to preserve our character and place in the face of Christendom; it is to shew our loving memory and gratitude for all which our blessed Lord has done for us, and is still doing at the right hand of God, that we will not consent to have this our heritage mutilated or taken from us. And surely in this all Churchmen who believe the ancient Catholic Faith are interested with us, Ritualist or non-Ritualist. I am not myself a Ritualist in the sense of using any of the higher forms of ritual, ceremonial, or vesture. I believe indeed, and who that believes the doctrine so represented, but must believe, that England would be in a higher, holier, and happier state, if, not neglecting one other point of holiness, humility, repentance, or faith, yet, I say, if all among us longed for and delighted in the higher and fuller expression of the faith. But I do not think this fuller expression is to be forced on those who are unprepared for it. I believe in many cases this would hinder rather than help the doctrine. And I have been accustomed to consider that the abeyance of much of the usage (I take the term in its true sense of a practical discontinuance, not of a legal forbidding, which is the repeal or extinction of a thing), that such abeyance may well justify us in not harshly shocking prejudices or wounding feelings; and, therefore, certainly it is not as a mere movement in support of the higher forms of ritual that I am addressing you:—but I ask this;—What is the object of our opponents? Assuredly not merely to put down vestments, or put out candles, or extinguish incense; but to drive out of the Church of England the whole doctrine which those things represent; to expel every one, whether Ritualist or not, who holds and teaches it; to run riot in the destruction of every vestige of faith in the Real Presence, in the Priesthood, the Altar, and the Sacrifice. The papers of the Church Association (passim), the writings of the whole anti-Ritualistic world, who are also the anti-Sacerdotal party, from the well-known noisy and ignorant correspondents of the Times to the miserable man who so lately has shocked every feeling of decency in his, at first, most impertinent, and, at last, most blasphemous, correspondence with and concerning the late revered Bishop of Lichfield; all such proclaim this as their aim and end, with open mouth and outstretched throat. If you ask for an example, take the following brief passage brought before the English Church Union at its anniversary meeting in June last, by Mr. Charles Wood in his excellent speech on that occasion. He said—“In an article that appeared in one of the periodicals, which is most conspicuous in its attacks upon Ritual—I mean Frazer’s Magazine—I found, in one of its last year’s numbers, this, ‘There is no use in taking half-measures. As long as the Ordination Service remains as it is, Ritualism will always be cropping up. The real remedy is to alter a single rubric. Forbid the imposition of hands, and then we shall get rid of Ritualism once and for all.’” [41] Surely such language as this, and it is the very staple of the fierce opponents of Ritual, should open the eyes of all Churchmen as to what it is, (that it is really vital doctrine,) for which we have to contend. I say, then, that the present contest and crisis touches every Churchman, Ritualist or not, who believes the higher doctrine. Nay, it touches every one, Ritualist or not, who does not desire to see the comprehensive character of the Church of England narrowed, in a party sense, and for a party purpose. It touches all who agree with what the Dean of Norwich lately said at Wolverhampton, that it would be an immense and incalculable evil if one great school of thought in the Church of England were to drive the other out of her (though, by the way, I think he did not note what surely in justice he should have noted, that it is only on the one side that this desire for expulsion has been expressed). It touches in short all who desire to let law and reason have fair play against clamour and violence; all who will stand by and for the Prayer Book as it is. Let us all join hand and heart in averting the present danger, and in defending our heritage. Oh! if I may say it, believe me, friends, there has been no such crisis as now is in our Church, in our day at least.
Bear with me a few moments longer whilst I confirm what I have said by a better warrant than any word of mine. In the year 1865, he whose name is perhaps more revered among us than any name of at least this century—he whose memory is “as galbanum, and onyx, and sweet storax, and as the fume of frankincense in the tabernacle,” the “sweet singer” of our Israel—wrote and published some thoughts upon Ritual, and the doctrine represented by it, and the growing opposition to it. In almost, as it seems, a spirit of prophecy, speaking of the very matter now in question—a proposal for legislation, touching thereby the integrity of the Prayer Book—he said:—“It professes, indeed, to meddle with one rubric only, but it involves the same prerogative over all, and that which it specifies is one of the most important and comprehensive, bearing directly on one vital doctrine, and through that, as theologians know, upon the whole Creed of the Church. And what is more, those who promote the movement openly avow that their object is thus comprehensive . . . They frankly own their purpose to be, not simple reformation of that one rubric, but the discomfiture at all points of a rival section in the Church.” He adds:—“It is well perhaps that they have declared themselves so openly. It may put many on their guard who might otherwise have supported them at least passively, as not liking the special usages complained of, or as fearful of their being revived where they would cause disturbance. Whoever after this their plain speaking shall join in their movement must be aware that he is committing himself to a one-sided policy, which ultimately displacing those who are called Tractarians or the like, will quite overthrow the sort of equilibrium which for many years has providentially subsisted among us.” [43a]