A case was lately pending before the Judicial Committee in which the action of a “priest” in refusing communion was reviewed and judged by the court. A parishioner of a Ritualist pastor having declared that he did not find in the Bible sufficient evidence for the existence of evil spirits to incline him to believe in the devil, the clergyman prohibited his coming for communion until he did believe in the devil. The parishioner wrote a complaint to the bishop, and the latter took his part against his parish “priest” and for the devil. The matter being referred to the Judicial Committee, the bishop’s verdict was confirmed in favor of the sceptical parishioner and of his Infernal Majesty.
Nor can any individual cases of this kind be matter of surprise when we reflect to what the doctrinal decisions of the supreme courts of the Anglican Establishment have, with the consent of her entire episcopate, as expressed in their famous “allocution” on the Public Worship Act, pledged her clergy. According to the final and irreversible authority acknowledged by that episcopate, the Church of England holds, 1, that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is an open question; 2, that it is an open question whether every part of every book of Scripture is inspired; 3, that there is no “distinct declaration” in the formularies of that church on the subject of everlasting punishment, and that the words “everlasting death” in the exposition of the Lord’s Prayer given in the catechism “cannot be taken as necessarily declaring anything touching the eternity of punishment after the resurrection”; 4, that Anglican bishops are the creatures of English law and dependent on that law for their existence, rights, and attributes.[[22]]
“The Church of England,” said Dr. Stanley, the Protestant Dean of Westminster, in a sermon recently preached at Battersea, “is what she is by the goodness of Almighty God and of his servant Queen Elizabeth.” If he had said, “of Henry VIII. and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth,” we could have agreed with him, particularly as the riper years of the Establishment continue so suitably to fulfil the promise of such parentage; but to Catholics there is a revolting profanity in classing together the goodness of God with that of one of the most implacable persecutors of his church—a persecutor, not from conviction of the justice, but the iniquity, of her cause, and from a persistent determination to extinguish in her realm the ancient faith, whose very existence was a condemnation of the state religion arranged by her father and Cranmer, improved by her brother and his Genevese assistants, and re-fashioned to her own liking by herself. The sentence pronounced by the Protestant historian Chalmers upon this powerful and unprincipled queen is that “she was a woman without chastity, a princess without honor, and a sovereign without faith”; and, as if by way of a satanic parody on the vision of the Immaculate Virgin in the Book of Revelations, we see Elizabeth, the offspring of an adulterous union, trampling under her despotic foot the Bride of Christ.
“The Church of England,” continued the dean, “was, it is true, a compromise,” and “he was not a true son thereof who used it as a weapon for promoting this or that doctrine, but, after the example of Elizabeth, and for the interests of the nation, used it as a broad shield under which he might work for good,”[[23]] etc., etc. The sense of which, in plain English, appears to be that the said church prefers general indifference to doctrinal truth, the “interests of the nation” to the glory of God, and the “example of Elizabeth” to purity of faith and life.
But Dean Stanley represents one only of the four principal sections into which the Church of England has divided itself; and however complacently the “Broad” and even “Moderate High” Churchmen may regard the marshy nature of the ground in which the foundations of their faith, if faith it can be called, are laid, and congratulate themselves on the fact that it is neither land nor water, but something of both, there are earnest men who have no fancy for being amphibious, and who spare no pains and toil to drain away the stagnant waters from their morass, in the sincere conviction that beneath the miasma-breeding mosses there lies, for those who dig deep enough to find it, the imperishable rock.
Of this number seems to be the Rev. Arthur Tooth, vicar of St. James’, Hatcham, who is now in prison because he chooses to act upon the principle of “no compromise.” We honor a man who is willing to suffer for conscience’ sake, and to uphold the right of the church to decide in ecclesiastical causes, but at the same time we cannot but feel that Mr. Tooth is more conscientious than logical, and that by his present opposition he is breaking the solemn promise and oath which, as a clergyman of the state church, he took, at his ordination, to a state-church bishop.
Mr. Tooth, on account of certain ritualistic practices—i.e., the use of “Catholic” vestments, conducting the communion service so as to make it resemble as much as possible Holy Mass, having “a crucifix in the chancel, little winged figures on the communion-table, lighted candles on a ledge where he had been ordered not to place them, etc., etc.—was, by order of Lord Penzance and with the approval of his own bishop, Dr. Claughton of Rochester, interdicted from officiating again in the diocese. The writ of inhibition was served him on a Sunday morning before the commencement of the service; he not only took no notice of the writ, but also on the following (Christmas) day publicly resisted his substitute. Canon Gee had been appointed by the bishop to read the service in the place of Mr. Tooth, but, on his arriving at the church, the latter gentleman, backed by about forty of his male parishioners, met him at the door and refused to allow him to enter, upon which Canon Gee, after protesting against this insubordinate proceeding on the part of his refractory brother, was forced to retire. Having thus disposed of the episcopal delegate, the vicar proceeded to display an unusual pomp in the ceremonial. Six splendid banners were carried in procession, on one of which was embroidered the monogram of Our Blessed Lady, surrounded by the words, Sancta Dei Genitrix.” The church was crowded to suffocation, partly with worshippers, and also very largely by people who had come from curiosity, as was evident by their behavior no less than by their murmured expressions of ridicule or indignation; a crowd, not only of “roughs,” but numbering many well-dressed people, had assembled outside. On one occasion, the 14th of January, in particular, the scenes both within and without were disgraceful. “Inside,” we are told, “there was a good deal of fighting and scuffling, especially at the lower end,” while outside the crowd, besides breaking down the fences, shouting “No popery,” yelling, and in various ways demonstrating their inclination to break the laws as well as the parson did, had they not been kept in some abeyance by a strong body of three hundred police, joined in singing loudly the national anthem, vociferating with especial emphasis and vigor the line “Confound their knavish tricks”—improved by some to “popish tricks” in honor of the occasion. Some time after the service was over, so as to give the mob time to thin, the sight of Mr. Tooth issuing from the church under the protection of “twenty stout policemen of the F Division” had in it something almost ludicrous to those who reflected that all this commotion arose from the fact of his having spurned the “secular arm.”
When, on the 20th of January, the Rev. R. Chambers, who has been appointed curate in charge of the parish of Hatcham by the Bishop of Rochester, went, accompanied by the bishop’s apparitor, and, producing his license, requested Mr. Tooth to hand over to him through the church-wardens the possession of the church, the vicar replied that he refused to take any notice of the document or the application. He was therefore committed for contempt of court, and is now lodged in Horsemonger Lane jail.
It is not necessary to give more than two portions of the very temperate explanations with which Lord Penzance has accompanied his judgment—namely, those portions which are aimed at the delusions supposed to be most important in the controversy. These delusions are, in brief, 1st, that the new Public Worship Act was an innovation upon Anglican custom, and an invasion of its rights; 2d, that obedience should be rendered to an ecclesiastical and not to a lay superior. The answers of Lord Penzance to these assumptions are, substantially, as follows:
“1. It would be well if those who maintain these propositions were to read the statutes by which the ritual of the Church of England at the time of the Reformation was enforced—I mean the statutes establishing the two successive prayer-books of King Edward VI. and the prayer-book of Queen Elizabeth, which regulated the ritual of the reformed church for the first hundred years after its establishment. They would there find that a clergyman departing in the performance of divine service from the ritual prescribed in the prayer-book was liable to be tried at the assizes by a judge and jury (the bishop, if he pleased, assisting the judges), and, if convicted three times, was liable to be imprisoned for life. The intervention, therefore, of a temporal court to enforce obedience in matters of ritual is at least no novelty; the novelty, as far as the Church of England is concerned, is rather in the claim to be exempt from it.