There is a passage much to the same purport which will well repay perusal in the late Essay on “The Law of Ritualism,” by the Bishop of Vermont, the Presiding Bishop of the United States, from which several extracts are given in one of the Appendices to the Commissioners’ Report. Consider the following passage in reference to the unjust impatience of the day, and the plea for the allowance of fair time to test the merits of the question. His remarks are directed no doubt in the first instance to America, but there is nothing to confine the reasoning to America alone. “Time,” says the Bishop, “and nothing but time, can decide the question whether an increase of Ritualism is advisable, or whether the present average of parochial practice is best fitted to carry on the work of the Church in such a country as ours. I doubt whether any man can estimate with sufficient accuracy the various elements which belong to such a subject so as to form anything like a _positive_ opinion. Success after all must be the ultimate standard. And that can only be determined _by time_, _after a fair trial_.” { 26} The Bishop proceeds to give his opinion, however, upon the matter, which is well worthy of our consideration.
“I am willing, however, to state my _impressions_, and the reader may take them for what they may be worth, according to his own judgment. I incline, then, to regard it as most _probable_ that this Ritualism will grow in favour by degrees until it becomes the prevailing system. The old, the fixed, and the fearful will resist it; but the young, the ardent, and the impressible will follow it more and more. The spirit of the age will favour it, because it is an age of excitement and sensation; the lovers of ‘glory and of beauty’ will favour it, because it appeals with far more effect to the natural tastes and feelings of humanity; the rising generation of the clergy will favour it, because it adds so much to the solemn character of their office, and the interest of their service in the House of God. And the opposition arising from its resemblance to Romanism will die away, as men learn to understand that Popery does not consist in the Ritualism which it pleased the Lord to order for His own chosen people, but in Papal and priestly despotism, in false doctrine, in the worship of the Virgin and the Saints, in Purgatory and Indulgences, in Transubstantiation and pretended miracles, in persecution and intolerance, and in all the other perilous corruptions which are in direct conflict with the unerring Word of God. These, and not matters of mere Ritual, are properly Romanism; and these, and only these, called for the work of Reformation.” { 27a}