of formal legal opinions on several of the most prominent of the contested points. One of these, on the subject of the position of the celebrating priest, will be found in our present number.

It is remarkable enough that it is the external, rather than the internal, part of Church worship that is now the main object of attack. We do not hear of priests being threatened or denounced or worried about doctrine, but about ritual. In one it is his "genuflexions," in another his changes of place in one his turning to the east, in another his reading the lessons at a lettern, in a third his use of a litany-desk. One man suffers for his surplice, another for using a bier, or for putting up, perhaps to one of his own family, a churchyard cross. Here they object to intoning, there to singing the Psalms: in one parish the Litany is not to be sung, in another the Amens must be given in discord. Altar candlesticks are an abomination in one church; in its neighbour it is some red cloth hangings that are the sure sign of a concealed Jesuitism. There is no kind of uniformity in the popular demands for reform. The National Club took care to brand every single particular of reverence, of decency, of beauty, of propriety; and in each of the disturbed parishes the vulgar ringleader has chosen his own special Túyna as the main object of outcry, protestation, and attack.

The approved course is an active canvass,-an abusive memorial signed by all the evil livers of the parish,—the most abandoned testifying to their wounded spiritual perceptions, the most active dissenters putting their hand to statements of the deepest reverence for the bishop and the profoundest belief in the Royal supremacy,—an interview with the parson, who is told by the emptiest and noisiest of the party that it is his duty, being so well paid, to obey the dictates of the ratepayers,-every kind of threat and inducement used to keep people from church, in order that the fact of the diminished congregation may be used with effect in the next step-the appeal to the bishop. We almost shrink from continuing the picture. There are-we thank GoD for it-some noble exceptions, but as a rule, the bishops have behaved in a way the worst enemies of the Church of England would never have been bold enough to hope for. They will be found forward to endorse the illiterate, the self-contradicting, the ridiculous petitions made to them, in order to conciliate and "satisfy the public." In vain do the regular communicants of the parish send up their counter petition in behalf of the practices they venerate and the privileges they enjoy in vain is the National Club memorial dissected, exposed, rendered as worthless as the famous Chartist petition; in vain does the slandered priest appeal to increased numbers of communicants, more orderly schools, improved morality, and every other token of a successful ministry; in vain, very often, does he point out the sure ruin of his usefulness that must ensue if he is sacrificed to the ignorant clamour of those whom his zeal and consistency have armed against him; in vain (we put it last, for it is the last thing in these times to be considered) does he prove that he has merely acted up to his own solemn vows in obeying the rubrics, that he has never transgressed them, that he has the right and the truth on his side. The bishop does not know

the rubric; or reads it, as it is fashionable to read the Baptismal Office, by the rule of contrary:—or, which is commonest of all, he claims to be superior to the rubric. Amid the cheers of dissenters, who view his lawful authority as anti-Christian, and the approbation of the semidissenting Churchmen, who deny as heartily as he would himself disclaim any special grace in his office as a bishop in the Church of GOD, he proceeds to make an assumption, such as the wildest ambition of the most arbitrary Pope never dreamed of, viz., that he is above Church law; that he is absolutely independent, as well of his brethren as of that organized system, with all its traditions and legislation and written constitutions, which it is, in reality, his one duty to administer. Accordingly the non-complying priest is threatened, or actually served with a monition, to desist from this or that practice which the Church itself in express terms allows or even enjoins; or to do this or that which he knows to be not only intrinsically wrong, but opposed to that common order of the Church which the bishop, as much as himself, is bound by oath to obey. He must resist his bishop, or do violence to his conscience and betray what he knows to be the truth. Most painful dilemma: the more painful from the ready taunt that he who has always taught, and alone taught, reverence for the episcopal office, is now in open opposition to his ordinary. To this stage of the quarrel many cases are now come. We wait in suspense for the next move, which, however unwilling may be the bishops, the "public" or the National Club will take care soon to accelerate. The next step, being (most happily) an aggressive one, must be taken by the bishop.

This is no overdrawn picture; we are drawing from the life. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the crisis, and the suffering of the aggrieved clergyman. Isolation, want of sympathy, the alienation and disaffection perhaps of those who have hitherto supported him, gloomy prospects of costs impossible to be paid :—these are what might have been expected to have driven many more than have yet left us, to another communion, or, at least, to resign the miserable benefice which is the cause of all this annoyance. But happily, and it is a most hopeful sign, there have been few secessions, fewer compromises, and still fewer retirements. It is felt indeed that great principles are here at stake. There must be a right and a wrong: what is allowed in the diocese of Oxford cannot be wholly intolerable in that of Worcester. What was laudable under a man's late diocesan, cannot be altogether sinful under the successor to the see. One bishop, from his own leanings or the dictates of his political patron, makes a positive order, which his successor, next month perhaps, the nominee of a rival statesman, or himself of a directly opposite theological school, may countermand! Again, what is to be the limit of a bishop's discretion? May he forbid the use of the Athanasian Creed? may he compel his clergy to teach Solifidianism? May he abolish the surplice as well as intoning? May he dispense with the articles as well as put down the choral service? Is he absolute? Is he an autocratic lawgiver? Have the second order of the ministry no rights, no duties but implicit obedience to the fancies, or heresies, of the bishop? Men will ask these questions, and will sooner or later have an answer. There must be

some such thing as law and right: some common standard which all alike must acknowledge. "The law is open, and there are deputies: let them implead one another." εἰ δέ τι περὶ ἑτέρων ἐπιζητεῖτε, ἐν τῇ ἐννόμῳ ἐκκλησίᾳ ἐπιλυθησεται.

The time has come indeed when it is absolutely necessary to define the episcopal authority. One would have thought that in this country and in this age the notion of an absolute power was exploded, but we have lived to see Whig statesmen asserting a more than Tudor interpretation of the royal prerogative, and political bishops claiming an irresponsible absolutism. The Archbishop of Canterbury is assured by Lord Ashley, in the Freemasons' Hall petition, that his authority is supreme:" and his Grace, we are informed, is seriously thinking of acting upon the hint, and overruling the rubrics by prescribing, under penalty of suspension, the exact modulation, pitch, accent, and variety of cadence with which the clergy of his diocese are in future to "preach," in an "impressive and edifying manner" the prayers of the Church.

We do not hesitate to say that this claim is preposterous and untenable. The authority of a Bishop, like all other authority, save that of a despot, has its bounds. It is his duty, not to make law, but to govern by, and according to, the law that is established. The personal opinion of any Bishop will doubtless carry a degree of weight with the Clergy who owe him canonical obedience; but after all, the value of this opinion depends on the wisdom, or sanctity, or orthodoxy of the prelate; and, strictly, and in a legal sense, the personal opinion of a Bishop is worthless unless he is acting canonically, in his court, and according to the common law of the Church. A Bishop in his study, as it has been well put lately, is wholly different from a Bishop in cathedra. Priests, at their ordination, promise to "minister the doctrine and Sacraments, and the discipline of CHRIST, as the LORD hath commanded, and as this Church and Realm hath received the same," and they vow obedience to their Ordinary's "godly admonitions," and "godly judgments." This qualification is all that is needed. must be an appeal, in case of need, to something more fixed than the individual opinion of an individual Bishop. And in like manner at the consecration of a Bishop, "all due reverence" is promised to the Metropolitan and the candidate pledges himself to "correct and punish," not according to his will and pleasure, but "according to such authority as he has by GoD's Word, and as to him shall be committed by the ordinance of this realm": in other words, according to the canons and constitutions of the Church enforced by the action of the Ecclesiastical Courts maintained in this realm.1 Surely the existence of Canons, and the like, and the fact of the Court of Arches, are enough to prove that there is a Church law independent of the shifting, timeserving, expediency of this or that prelate. When we remember the expenses which hinder a Bishop from convicting a notoriously pro fligate clerk, it seems ridiculous to have to argue against a Bishop's

1 Thus Canon XLII. orders the diligent observance of such orders "as shall be lawfully enjoined by the Bishop of the Diocese in his Visitation, according to the statutes and customs of the said Church, or the ecclesiastical laws of the realm."

autocracy in respect of ritual or doctrine. But the claim is made, and a stand must be made against it: although we do not conceal from ourselves that, in the present state of "public opinion," that most powerful and dangerous abstraction, such a stand will be most difficult, and perhaps useless. But it is not yet time to despair.1

We must confess then to a longing to hear of some real appeal being made to the Ecclesiastical Courts. We most earnestly hope that none of our readers will shrink, in their own cases, from the anxiety, and worse than anxiety, of resisting, firmly but temperately, any undue exercise of episcopal authority. We are bound to maintain our rights, as Churchmen, and especially as Clergymen, to that decency and beauty of public worship which our Church prescribes. We have always taken our stand on the rubrics, and we must not abandon them. At any rate, let us try whether we have not the law and the right on our side. Every one knows the ambiguity of the ecclesiastical law; and every one knows that, as things now are, a learned and sound decision in the Arches Court may be contemptuously overruled upon appeal to another Court. But still, we are so confident in our cause-so sure that we, and we only, fully and fairly act up to, and (as a rule) do not go beyond, the requirements of our Church-that we are anxious to put these matters to the proof. Should it indeed be otherwise,should it be shown satisfactorily that, by the existing law, ecclesiology is not allowable in the Church of England, it is best to know it, fully and fairly, so that the difficulty may be met. Of one thing at least we are certain, that we are honest in our present belief, that in all we have done we have been faithful to the written law and the plain spirit of our Church. Indeed, from the admissions of the most active of our opponents, of compromising Bishops and of statesmen trying to "satisfy the public," it may be safely gathered that they are far more unwilling than we are to engage in the decisive struggle-that they know that they cannot put us down without doing violence to the existing constitution of the law. Let this issue be tried; by friendly suits, if our opponents are as anxious as we are to arrive at the truth, whichever way it be; or, if it must be so, by hostile litigation. Then, should either party be dissatisfied with the result, there is convocation, to which an appeal may be made; that true "Church of England by representation," which alone has the right to alter the formularies, or canons, or rubrics of this Church.

1 While we write these lines, there is in the contemporary press, an extract illustrative of our meaning; indeed, it wants nothing but the merest common sense to see at once the rightful limit of all constitutional power. Perhaps no power is more absolute than that temporary authority, with which for practical purposes it has ever been found necessary to invest the chairman of a deliberative assembly. The Speaker, we apprehend, might rule a point of order in the most unfair and absurd manner; and the House would yield at the time to his decision, although it might be necessary the next day-(we put it merely as an illustration)-to remove him from his chair. So irresponsible, for the moment, is his power. Yet Lord John Russell, commenting on a late disgraceful outbreak of religious rancour in the House of Commons, is reported (in the Times, March 22, 1851) to have said, "Of course, it was not for the Speaker to fall short of the orders of the House, or to endeavour to enforce anything beyond them. (Hear, hear.)" For Speaker read Bishop, and for Orders of the House read Rubrics.

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THE MORNING CHRONICLE, NO. 26,284.

The Morning Chronicle, No. 26,284, folio, pp. 8. London: John Adkins Tibbitts. Feb. 27, 1851.

"WHY should the Ecclesiologist review No. 26,284 of the Morning Chronicle?" we think we hear some readers ask. A strange question in sooth. Why should we not review it? There are many reasons to induce us to do so. In the first place it is No. 26,284, which implies, that making allowance for leap years, and making allowance for 1800, not having been leap year, the first number of the said paper was published on Lady-Day, 1767. This is quite as good a reason for reviewing it as the fact of the Times of the same day being No. 20,735 is for reviewing that. But if this motive is not thought sufficient we can further advance that it contains the list of the division in the House of Lords on the marriage bill, and of the company at Her Majesty's first levee. If these are not telling facts, why for the first time since our existence as a magazine, we have turned our critical acumen to the dissection of a daily paper, what are so?

But it may be that further motives are still required:-if so we must perforce turn to the sixth page of the paper-here we find Mr. Macready's parting address, and also a review-that review one of a novel, and the novel the maiden work of Lord John Russell, and published in the year 1822, when his lordship was in the prime of his intellects thirty years old. This fact alone would make "the Nun of Arrouca"-for so the work is named-most precious to all "virtuous" politicians-but what must be its price to ecclesiologists, when as we learn from the pages of the enthusiastic Chronicle, we find that those studies of ours which in vain we traced to the veteran Britton-the Quaker Rickman-the Romanist Pugin-or our own glorious selves, are in truth the emanation of a greater mind-of a mind called from planning churches, to ruling empires; and the marvellous versatility of genius when we further find that the same small book of eightyseven pages is not merely the Proto-Camdenian Hierophant-but the mysterious Vates of that anti-Camdenian system, the worship at the banks of the river side with Lydia !

We know we speak wonders, not credible-so let the Morning Chronicle itself reveal its wild and wondrous tale.

The earlier part of the review we will not handle-suffice it to say that it unfolds a fiction of charming interest and delightful morality. The brief unvarnished epitome of the entrancing narrative may be soon given.

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A young soldier, Mr. Edward Pembroke, attached to the British army in the Portuguese campaign in 1810, visits the convent of Arrouca;' takes tea with the abbess, which we are informed is a Portuguese 'practice ever of an afternoon' (p. 6); sees and falls in love with one Miss Catherine, a novice, a lovely young lady of nineteen. Mr. Edward is desperately smitten; contrives to get wounded; like the hero of Mr. Tennyson's Princess, is nursed