This seems evident enough in the very nature of things. And therefore if we value the Prayer Book as it is, and the _status_ of the Church of England as in such large measure depending upon it, we have every right, and more than the right, the duty, to be up and stirring to defend it, under the assault upon its integrity which this, the present Report, threatens. Indeed, under such intimations as we have, where “coming events cast their shadows before,” it seems to me that it would be absolute infatuation to wait until the attack is more matured, and the danger nearer, before organizing every mode and means of defence and resistance to that which is already so obviously impending.
But we are not even left to our own mere reasoning, or natural anticipations, to guide us to the mode in which the Commissioners must be prepared to carry out their opinion and recommendation. We have a light thrown upon this, in a lucid commentary upon the bare Report, furnished us by one of the Commissioners. I have already alluded to it. The recent Charge of the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol not only deals with the question of Ritual itself, but specifically, in relation to it, with the modes in which the recommendation of the Report may be carried out; and I will venture to affirm, even in the face of his Lordship’s disclaimer as to the mode which he himself advocates being an alteration in the Prayer Book, that there is not one of the courses suggested (except the course of leaving the matter to the decision of the Courts, which he at once rejects,) that does not involve a repeal, direct or indirect, of the rubric upon ornaments. It will not be alien from, but indeed very much to, our purpose to take his statements in some detail, and see what they indicate as to the likely progress of the Commissioners’ work. Bishop Ellicott’s Charge in this relation is very important, for it cannot but give us the key to what he at least will press upon his brother Commissioners when again they meet, and perhaps is now pressing upon them.
Let us turn to the Charge, and mark both its general tone and specific recommendations as to high Ritual. Having adverted to the “deteriorating developement of the Ritual movement,” he says: { 19}—“Reluctant as I am to enter upon a subject of such difficulty and controversy, yet I feel it my clear duty to place succinctly before you the present state of the question, to endeavour dispassionately to estimate the real amount and extent of the _evil_” (Bishop Ellicott has no doubts as to this term); “and, lastly, to consider the remedies that have been proposed, and the general counsel that may seem at this serious crisis most calculated to bring back peace to our now disquieted Church.” Then, after an historical sketch, with remarks, shewing his lordship’s feelings upon the subject, and a brief—almost, as it seems to me, a needless—apology for the bishops for not having put down with a quick and strong hand certain presumably _legal_ ornaments or usages, he proceeds to consider what may be done in the way of remedy for the _evil_, as he deems it, of Ritual representing doctrine, in the following terms:—