THE

CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW.

NO XCIII. OCTOBER 1898.

ART. I.-THE PRESENT CRISIS IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

1. The Present State of the Church. A Charge delivered to the Clergy and Churchwardens of the Diocese of Hereford. By JOHN PERCIVAL, D.D., Bishop of Hereford, at his Primary Visitation, May and June 1898. (London and Hereford, 1898.)

2. A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles at the Synod held in St. John's Church, Oban, on Thursday, August 17, 1898. By J. R. ALEX. CHINNERY HALDANE, D.D., Bishop of Argyll and the Isles. (Edinburgh and London.)

3. A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lichfield. By AUGUSTUS LEGGE, D.D., Bishop of Lichfield, at a Visitation held in the Cathedral Church of Lichfield, September 20, 1898. (London and Lichfield, 1898.) 4. Considerations on Public Worship and on the Ministry of Penitence. A Letter addressed to the Clergy of the Diocese of Salisbury. By JOHN WORDSWORTH, D.D., Bishop of Salisbury. Together with a Pastoral Letter to the Laity of the Diocese, issued after Consultation with the Greater Chapter. Second Thousand. (Salisbury, London, New York, and Bombay, 1898.)

5. A Pastoral Letter. From the Right Rev. C. W. SANDFORD, D.D., Bishop of Gibraltar. To the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese. (London and Oxford, 1898.) 6. Alcuin Club Tracts. I. The Ornaments of the Rubric. By J. T. MICKLETHWAITE, F.S.A. II. Consolidation. An Address delivered before the Annual Meeting of the English Church Union on June 1, 1897. By the Rev. W. C. E. NEWBOLT, M.A., Canon Residentiary and Chancellor of St. Paul's. III. Liturgical Interpolations. By the Rev. T. A. LACEY, M.A., Vicar of Madingley. (London, New York, and Bombay, 1897–8.)

VOL. XLVII.-NO. XCIII.

B

7. The Times, 1898.

8. The Guardian, 1898.

9. The Spectator, 1898. 10. The Record, 1898.

II. Various Newspapers, 1898.

SUCH outward peace as there has been in the Church of England for some years past has been rudely broken. We have passed again into a time of disturbances in churches, letters in newspapers, and speeches in Parliament called forth by teaching and practice in the Church. Mr. John Kensit has made his name known throughout England; the columns of the Times have been filled with correspondence on ecclesiastical subjects; Sir William Harcourt has found an occasion in the House of Commons for violent denunciation of a section of English Churchmen. Controversies on important matters and on side issues have been going on everywhere; eminent clergymen and laymen have been drawn into them; and, to pass by for the moment official episcopal declarations and instructions to the clergy, the signatures of more bishops than one have been attached to letters in the public press.

In devoting an article to the subject of these controversies let us begin by observing that the party of which Mr. Kensit acts as the leader has aims of a very wide-reaching description. Some of the attacks made by it from time to time have been skilfully contrived so as to appear to be directed against services and ceremonial which, to say nothing further, cannot be regarded as authorized in the Church of England. But it is clear that these have been selected for attack only because they supplied favourable opportunities for arousing popular feeling against doctrines and practices which, as a matter of fact, stand on an altogether different footing from the services and ceremonial in question. The extent of the real object of the attacks may be illustrated from one of the letters which Mr. Kensit addressed to the Bishop of London, which was printed in the Guardian for July 27. In that letter Mr. Kensit supplied the Bishop with a list of what he termed 'illegalities' in the four churches of St. Cuthbert's, Kensington, St. Alban's, Holborn, St. Michael's, Shoreditch, and St. Peter's, Great Windmill Street. This list contained practices of the most varied kinds. At the one end was a piece of such extraordinary fancy ritual as the ceremonial lighting of the candles in two seven-branched candlesticks during the comfortable words'; at the other were acts which have great authority and are ordered in the Book of Common Prayer, such as the wearing

of the 'illegal Mass vestments' (we presume the chasuble and other Eucharistic vestments), the use of lighted candles, and the censing of persons and things. But we ought not to flatter Mr. Kensit by attaching too much importance to his proceedings. It may be sufficient for us to have pointed out that the real object of his hatred is the Catholic system of belief and practice which is contained in the Book of Common Prayer, and to add the expression of a hope that the bishops will make clear to him that any further recourse to mob violence or the disturbance of congregations will be regarded by them as altogether discrediting his cause.

Even more painful to many devout people than disturbances in church must have been some of the letters on the subject of Confession which have appeared in the newspapers. Many of these letters have been marked by singular ignorance both of the history of the penitential discipline of the Church and of the modern methods of the administration of the sacrament of penance. Statements have been made in various places which, apart from their painful character, could only appear grotesque to persons who have been accustomed to hear or to make confessions. Yet, when what is simply ignorant or grotesque is put aside, there remains sufficient to show that a very serious attack is being made upon the practice of confession in the Church of England. It will illustrate what we mean if we refer to two letters which appeared in the Times of August 24 and September 6 from a writer so greatly entitled to respect as the Bishop of Southwell. In the first of these letters the Bishop, while professedly dealing with the subject of confession as a requirement before the Holy Communion, as a rule of obligation on "all who embrace Catholic principles," declared his opinion that the exhortation in the Book of Common Prayer directed to be used when the minister giveth warning for the celebration of the Holy Communion' does not contain any express reference to private confession.

'The exhortation is ordered to be read as a whole. Read as a whole, it explains itself. To read the last sentence alone is to contradict the whole, by presenting the exception as the rule. It says very plainly, The way and means is to examine yourselves, where ye perceive yourselves to have offended, to confess yourselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment, and with this to reconcile yourselves to your neighbours, by forgiveness and satisfaction. No need of a priest is supposed. No other way or means is prescribed. Only help is provided for any not ready to use the one way. In that exceptional provision confession is not mentioned at all, nor priest. "A discreet minister of God's Word" is the person to

whom those who " require further comfort and counsel are to "open their griefs "-i.e. to show "the scruple and doubtfulness" which prevent "their quieting their own consciences" by the one prescribed means. The requisites to be wished are "a full trust in God's mercy and a quiet conscience." The word absolution is guarded against any idea that it carries itself the practice of sacramental confession, by the statement of its method, the very opposite of a priest's judicial fiat, "by the ministry of God's Holy Word." The spirit of the paragraph would be entirely altered by any introduction of the idea of sacramental confession. It is admitted that the exceptional treatment of special cases does not sanction, but rejects, all systematic requirement or general encouragement of private confession as preliminary to the Holy Communion. The passage cannot be said to recognize in words any use of it even in special cases. In spirit, the exhortation as a whole, the change from the former Prayer Book, and the recent Tridentine canon, makes the substitution of the opposite principle a deliberate exclusion of sacramental confession from being even an admitted alternative.'

In his second letter the Bishop of Southwell dealt more generally with the question, violently attacked the confessional itself, and summed up the evils of it under the heads of ' untruth, insecurity, and disbelief.'

'The evils,' he said, 'recorded officially of the confessional by its own rulers, apart from the moral dangers which form a chief subject of their ordinances, are: 1. Ordinary people never tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 2. Ordinary confessors are not to be expected not to use the information gained in confession, or not to use confession to gain information, though with no breach of the seal of confession. 3. Ordinary absolutions must become perfunctory, and such unreality undermines masculine religion.'

A somewhat similar attitude to that of the Bishop of Southwell has been taken up by the Bishop of Gibraltar in a letter in the Times of September 5 and in his Pastoral Letter to the English congregations under his charge. In the former he quoted the report of the committee of the Upper House of the Convocation of Canterbury of 1873 agreed to by the House in 1874 and the 'pronouncement' of the Lambeth Conference of 1878. In the latter, after admitting that the occasional use of confession is contemplated in the formularies of the Church of England, and at the same time speaking in unmeasured terms of what he supposes to be the evils of confession, he went on to say:

'God has assigned to the conscience of every one a sovereign office as His vicar or representative. Our duty is so to discipline our conscience that it may be able to discharge this duty aright.