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services, Saints' days, and weekly Communions, palavering in public halls and Evangelical Alliances with omnigenous dissenters. But we never dreamed of saying that they were confessedly' as symbolical of that for which Cranmer and Ridley were burnt, for if we had made any such statement we hope some avenger would have risen up to put us to open shame for daring to bring a charge so sweeping, so vague, and yet so damnatory, against the revival-opportune or not-of usages of which the most prominent are urged on the authority of a rubric in a Prayerbook put forth when the two most prominent of this noble army of Martyrs,' who 'loved not their lives unto the death,' in resisting them, were respectively Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London. We have no patience to follow this protest through its next paragraph (a useless amplification of the preamble), which is simply a solemn protest' against all doctrine and ritual' of which the tendency is to assimilate the 'teaching of the United Church of England and Ireland to the 'teaching and worship of a Church which we have declared to be ""idolatrous."' 'We have declared '-let the memorialists, as Dr. Parr said, mind their pronouns and speak for themselves. When have we done so ? We have no doubt asserted that a certain doctrine of adoration of the Sacramental Presence1 was 'idolatry,' not however even saying that it was a necessary Roman doctrine, but of the Church of Rome itself we had, we thought, only said what we also said of the Churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria (i.e. the three primitive Eastern Patriarchates), viz. that it (the Western Patriarchate) with them ' hath erred not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, 'but also in matters of Faith.' (Article XIV.) Finally, the declaration, having disposed of the Church in its spiritual aspect, settles its political standing in a brief and pregnant sentence. 'And we declare our conviction that the claim of our Church to 'be the Established Church of the realm, rests mainly upon 'her fidelity to the principles of the Reformation.' In our ignorance we imagined that these claims rested upon the common law of the land, shaped centuries before there was either a Reformation to check the excesses of Rome, or before those excesses had reached such a height as to create that Reformation, confirmed by the Great Charter, and recognised by Acts of Parliament more than we can count, passed before, during, and after that Reformation.

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We have not cast in our lot with the so-called 'ritualists.' On the contrary, we were taken severely to task by their organs

1 It might clear the minds of the memorialists on this point to recur to certain observations of the Bishop of St. David's in his recent Charge on the term 'Penance.'

for the plainness with which we have expressed our dissent from their aberrations. We feel accordingly more free to make our protest now, not against them but against their accusers, as a body of men who have taken advantage of the follies of those persons, and of the clamour of the journals against them, to bind together 'High-and-dry' with 'Low,' in a protest which might swamp chasuble and censer, but equally, in the vagueness of its vituperation, 'secretly strike at any established doctrine, or laud'able practice of the Church of England, or indeed of the whole 'Catholic Church of Christ,' which happened to displease the Morning Advertiser or any other organ of public opinion.'

To persons other than these memorialists, who think that excessive ritualism ought not only to be checked, but thrown back, we would venture to recall the little damage which was done to the Church of England by that ultra-ritual movement in the early days of the Church revival, of which the foundation was the excessive study which the leaders of the advance-guard at that time bestowed upon the Breviary, of which the keynote was struck in the service for Bishop Ken's day, contributed by Mr. Newman to the Tracts for the Times.' It would carry us much too far out of our way now to give a minute account of this peculiar and interesting-and, we believe, now very much forgotten-phase of the movement. It is enough to say that to us, who happened to have seen, without being implicated in, something of its internal working, the present manifestation sounds like the echo of a long-dropped strain. The same extravagant adulation of the foreign and pre-Reformational-the same faith in the sentimental-characterised the two epochs; while in the men who ruled the earlier one, poetry, intellect, and unwavering faith in virtue of the enterprise stood revealed. Well, that laborious pursuit of devotions whose ruling principle was the bountiful use of the Psalter, coloured by suggestive antiphons said with accessories of æsthetic excitement, has died away-some of its most eminent promoters are lost to us; others, with sobered energies, are earnest labourers in our own Church; while, in the general spread of the daily service, we find the good seed saved from that too luxuriant harvest. Bear, then, we say to all sound Churchmen, with the present commotion. A change now will be a change produced, not by conviction, but by force, and therefore worthless, even if it be one which merely restricts the liberty of the present rubric, to forms most generally familiar. We make little distinction between a change by judgment of the Privy Council, or one by Act of Parliament. Neither can be compassed under circumstances which can command abiding respect. The 'ritualist' will be exasperated, the advocate of moderate conformity and sober dignity will be indig

nant that the opportunity should not have been taken advantage of for screwing up the Puritan, while the Puritan will storm because the general level had not been beaten down, and the Latitudinarian will be generally disgusted by the entire turmoil. To the ritualist, on the other hand, we say as emphatically-be advised in time, and show the truest courage, that of daring to retrieve a mistake, and in the cause of peace not flinching from the unmeaning reproach of inconsistency.

In strong contrast to that of 1866, the Congress of 1867 will not even be held in a cathedral city. Birmingham was first thought of, but the cold unwillingness of the Bishop of Worcester defeated the proposal: so Wolverhampton, in the more genial diocese of Lichfield, was chosen, upon the invitation of the mayor, and with the promise of the bishop to preside. This large town is so near Birmingham that it will virtually sweep in the same body of local attendants. Wolverhampton, itself as it were the creation of its subterranean treasures of coal and iron, developed by modern science and enterprise, will have nothing about it of that antiquarian picturesqueness which formed so powerful an attraction at Bristol, Norwich, and York. The persons that go there from a distance will be people who wish for a Church Congress in itself, and desire, at some little trouble to themselves, to help it on. This will very probably thin the attendant numbers, but the change will be tonic, because the benefits of such a gathering are those emphatically of influence and information, so long as at a congress formal resolutions are forbidden. Care must be taken, in the long run, not to let the easy and social, nor even the archæological, aspect of the affair, become too prominent. Deliberation with action is one thing; without it, it is another, but still it is deliberation, and should be respected in its given aspects, such as we may expect in the coming instance, for it could not be expected that Churchmen would make a three days' residence in Wolverhampton for any other end than that of mutual counsel.

There is one special aspect in which we think that the choice of Wolverhampton is peculiarly fortunate. There is no cathedral there. York, as we have seen, showed off the cathedral element in our Church in an aspect of spiritual usefulness and majesty which must have surprised many of those who were present. The time had naturally come for the experiment to be tried how much could be done with a parish church in supplying the worship element of a general gathering. For this trial Wolverhampton is peculiarly well adapted. The church there had of old been collegiate, and till lately, while practically only that of a parish, had possessed that titular rank, the Dean of Windsor being ex officio also Dean of Wolverhampton. Now we believe this

harmless distinction has been blotted out, and it is only as other spacious town churches. The fabric was rather larger than the average of parish churches, but the choir had been replaced by some hideous abortion of deteriorated Italian architecture. As the church, however, lost in dignity, it regained in beauty; for a restoration of, we believe, a very satisfactory character, including the rebuilding in more seemly form of the choir, was not very long since consummated, under an incumbent who knows well how to work the church which he possesses. So it would be a strange thing if the solemn celebrations and public services, which ought to form essential elements of every Church Congress, could not be provided in this old collegiate church. The question of how to work the parochial system for the best benefit of the people was debated at York, in a discussion where the worship question received due prominence, a most friendly hearing being accorded, among others, to a clergyman well known for his extremely advanced 'ritualism.' At Wolverhampton practice may supplant theory. We venture to suggest that it might be worth while at this, the first congress not held in a university or cathedral city, to superadd, in some form, the choral festival to the congress. The diocese of Lichfield has, since the institution of the Church-music congresses as we may well style them-been prominent for the zeal with which it has encouraged them, both in the cathedral and in various parish churches. Here, then, at Wolverhampton, when on the occasions of these public days the worship ought to be made allglorious in a place destitute of capitular resources, the diocese might combine to furnish the means. One special introductory service, and at least one specially solemn Communion, would, we have no doubt, be provided. But even on the other mornings and in the evenings something might be done to honour God in His sanctuary, and withal promote the study of Church psalmody by strongly sustained choral services of a scientific character.

In this union of the outward manifestation of Anglican worship, and in deliberations not inferior, we hope, to those of previous congresses, the usefulness of such gatherings would make itself felt in a region where, from all we know of the growth of Church feeling in the populous towns of great and active Staffordshire, men's minds are very open to wholesome impressions. The Wolverhampton Church Congress might thus be made a pattern of that which we believe the ideal advantages of the institution to be. These are, in brief, the building up of the members of the Church of England, as in no fanatical or exclusive sense, but with all their national characteristics preserved, into a holy people, attached to, understanding, and zealous for that Church to which they belong; not prone to take the offensive;

tolerant and tender of the consciences and rights of others, but ready, at the faintest sound of danger, to stand to her defence; appreciating that, with a very wide liberty of individual opinion, the topics on which all who call themselves Churchmen ought to take unanimous counsel together, are as numerous as they are important; convinced, above all, that in the Prayerbook, as a record of things to be believed, and an exponent of things to be done in God's honour and for man's salvation, is to be found for them the common bond of Christian union, and the common law of the acceptable service due to Almighty God.