cates pressing it upon worshippers to whom more simple forms are palatable, while at the same time he claims from them the liberty which he so heartily accords to their preferences.

Of all the ceremonial which is helpful to the devotions of this now numerous and rapidly increasing body, there is, I venture to say, only one feature which has not by this time been either formally declared legal or tacitly accepted, and I shall have something to say in favour of the constructive legality even of that feature. Into the inner zone of what is absurdly called 'Ritualism' I do not stray. Keeping to the more simple lines of the traditionary and æsthetic worship in churches which are now to be counted by the thousand rather than by the hundred, we find no one objecting to chancels with stately altars bearing the cross and candlesticks, choral worship, surpliced choirs, continuous services, frequent celebrations with the priest facing the altar and leading his flock at the most solemn rite. Some people may like this presentment of Prayer Book worship and some may dislike it; but the attempt to pull it down is now beyond the warmest aspirations of those who most object to the system. But there is one thing more-namely, the distinctive dress of the celebrant, the appreciation of which now extends far beyond the socalled ritualistic section. Yet the recognition of it in parish churches seems to be barred by the very judgment in Clifton and Ridsdale which confirms its legality by enforcing it in cathedral and collegiate churches. But the real scope of that judgment was the assertion that a certain document issued by Archbishop Parker and his colleagues in 1565, and known as the Advertisements, had been efficiently approved by Queen Elizabeth and was to be read into the Ornaments Rubric of 1662.

I do not pretend to understand this reasoning, but for my present purpose I accept the judgment so far in setting myself to the task of ascertaining what it really is which is said to be read in. Obviously, if it can be reduced to a nominal value, the controversy about reading or not reading in becomes one of words and reaches a vanishing point. Let us, then, go to the Advertisements and see what they really ordain. In the first place, and about this there is no cavil, they ordered the cathedrals and collegiate churches, which were maintained by their own estates, to provide special Eucharistic dresses, namely Copes, which were expensive articles. Then in parish churches, steeped in poverty as they were in Elizabeth's days, only a surplice was ordered to be provided at the charges of the parish, the only available source of income for any church object in an age before the invention of subscriptions. But the Advertisement does not say that the parson is not to wear his cope if he can procure it in some other way. There is nothing surely unnatural in this reading of the Advertisements, and in accepting them as simply reducing a compulsion which no one now contends for to a permission, the

concession of which would go so far to restore peace. But then it will be asked how we can obtain a hearing for it in face of the Ridsdale judgment. This is a question which I can best answer by asking in return how it has come to pass that the first Mackonochie judgment led every thinker to look upon it as a recognition of the eastward position, and how the Purchas judgment, professing the deepest respect for the Mackonochie decision, prohibited that position; and how, in a few more years, the Ridsdale judgment, with an equal respect for the Purchas judgment, virtually set up the eastward position? So much for the ritual question, which cannot be overlooked in connection with the grievance which the Commission sat to redress.

The scheme of ecclesiastical judicature which the Commissioners propose in their Report, both in criminal and in doctrinal and ritual cases, is, taken as a whole, decidedly satisfactory, founded as it is upon the principle of sweeping away the anomalous Church Discipline and Public Worship Acts, and of restoring to the Bishops' and Archbishops' Courts their ancient prerogatives, with powers to the prelates themselves, whose names they bear, of sitting with sufficient legal assistance; this recognition of a personal jurisdiction being in the Archbishops limited to cases of doctrine or ritual.

Proceeding to details, entire approbation should be accorded to the retention of the Bishop's power of stopping at his discretion vexatious suits. Then, again, the provision that only the judgment itself, and not the reasons leading up to it, should be valid would get rid of many of the difficulties which are now most vexatious. Equal praise must also be assigned to the recognition of the principle of giving separate judgments instead of a single collective one, and to the provision that the Archiepiscopal judge whom the Church recognises as its representative shall condescend to receive his appointment from the ecclesiastical authorities constituted for that purpose. It is also gratifying to note the opinion that the two Archbishops should not be bound, under pain of the appointment lapsing to the Crown, to agree upon some man whom very likely neither of the metropolitans would abstractedly have preferred.

I may now go on to the one element of the proposed system as to which my praise must be tempered with a criticism which I desire should be taken as constructive, and consider the Court of Appeal with which it is proposed to replace the Judicial Committee. It is to be a lay tribunal, consisting in each case of at least five members of a larger body, but taken in rotation to guard against favouritism. I have nothing to say against this Court when it has to deal with case; of moral discipline, and when I explain that my doubts are centred upon the occasions when it has to deal (not, as will be seen, in the same simple form) with alleged heresy and ceremonial delinquency, I only confess to feeling difficulties which by their own confession were not unfelt by the Commission itself.

But before going further I must, in justice to the Commission, epitomise its temperate and able reasons for recommending a lay Court of Appeal-reasons with which I entirely concur as far as they establish the character of the Court as one under the supremacy of the Crown, not to create or define dogma, but to ensure legal right between man and man; although I cannot quite say that the constitution actually does justice to its own justification. No ecclesiastical court, we are told, can so conclude a suit as to bar the subject's right to approach the throne with a complaint of justice not done, and the claim for a full investigation. The full hearing of spiritual matters by spiritual judges has been provided in the earlier stages, otherwise a purely lay hearing would not have been recommended in the last resort. The function of such lay judges is not in any sense to determine what is the doctrine or ritual of the Church, but to decide whether the impugned opinions or practices are in conflict with its authoritative formularies so as to require correction. The legal interpretation of documents must often be widely different from the definition of doctrine; so they hold that the actual decree as dealing with the particular case only could be binding, and no reasonings or obiter dicta.

So far as these conclusions are general principles and not special provisions, I can most cordially embrace them; but I cannot agree that they compel me to close with the list of lay judges and its rota of five. If I had no other reason for my hesitation, it would be the manifest difficulty which men untrained in theology or canon law must, with the best intention, find, however well prompted by competent assessors, in treading the narrow and slippery path which lies between the interpretation of documents which embody doctrine and the definition of doctrine.

The most ingenious defence of the lay constitution of this Court was offered in a speech delivered at the Bath and Wells Diocesan Conference by a very competent cleric-just one of my inchoate ecclesiastical lawyers-Prebendary Ainslie, who was himself one of the Commissioners, and who may be assumed to reflect the conclusions of his colleagues. The argument was the more deserving of attention from the known quality of his churchmanship, when he addressed. himself to the defence of the scheme against that which may be termed a charge of subordinating God to Cæsar. These few short words sum up the complaint; but the controversy cannot be so briefly dismissed by those who believe, as I most heartily do, in the benefits of religious establishment, involving, as that does, give and take.

Mr. Ainslie started from the position that our monarchy was an Imperial State, with a reflected parallelism to the Holy Roman Empire, to which England never would own an inferiority. So the idea of imperialism vesting in the Crown led up, as he contended, to the idea that the sovereign was emphatically over all persons and in VOL. XV.-No. 84.

Y

all causes supreme, and therefore in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, bound to see right between man and man. I have no wish to derogate from Prebendary Ainslie's theory of the duty of the sovereign power, though I cannot see that it is more incumbent on one that is imperial than upon that which only claims to be regal, or even upon a Grand Duke or a President. But, anyhow, the idea of an Imperial Court doing justice between all men would be much better carried out, where the persons and causes were ecclesiastical, through the attribution of the Imperial power of the right to call up, if it thinks fit, ecclesiastical persons, from their competency to see right done in ecclesiastical causes. To say, as Prebendary Ainslie in effect does, that the Imperial power has only the command of lay judges, is, in fact, to derogate from its imperial character, and to condition its supremacy. It is because I hold, as a Churchman, the supremacy of the Crown, that I protest against limitations which are neither wholesome for the Crown itself nor for the Church itself.

But I become even more doubtful of the practical working of the new Court when I consider the care which has been taken to fence it with precautions and to make it, while not being an ecclesiastical court, as much like one as possible. This, methinks, is too much protesting. The institution of spiritual assessors is a recognition of the necessity of theological learning in a court which deals with what were during a former period of similar agitation aptly called 'the temporal accidents of spiritual things.' But, granting the principle of assessors, it ought not to be left to the caprice of one or more judges to call them in; for it must follow in each case that either seeking their help or refraining from doing so must be equally suspicious, while the assessors called in by a minority or even a single judge are not likely to be favourably regarded by the remaining court. The spiritual element, if admitted at all, should be invariably consulted; while not even the venerable precedent of the House of Lords which seeks the advice of the judges without being bound reconciles me to the practice in a modern court where the respectful and protective traditions of that great tribunal will be absent. It is too possible that a judge might define his own position towards the assessors by a slight variation of Southey's words:

Thou art a blessed Glendoveer;

'Tis thine to speak, mine not to hear.

I believe that the spiritualty might be made an integral element of the Court, and that the tribunal could be recast without trenching on that royal supremacy which I am as desirous to preserve as the Commission itself. The court which I should sketch is possibly not one which would satisfy the highflyers who put forth claims which can hardly be conceded short of Disestablishment. But I have absolutely no sympathy with Disestablishment, and I desire to preserve the connection for the good alike of the Church and of the State.

But a few words in passing on the suggestion of a fixed rota of judges to prevent the suspicion of partiality. The idea is excellent, but it labours under an obvious difficulty. Either the list will be short, and then the judges will recur too frequently; or it will be a long one, and then there may be a difficulty in finding jurists sufficiently qualified for the delicate task which it is proposed to put upon them. Besides, for the first trial, which will probably be the crucial one, the names will in fact have been particularly selected. It is my conviction that the form of court which I shall suggest better carries out the Commissioners' own intentions than their own project does; for it is the court of the sovereign existing under the Imperial supremacy, and intended to set forth the character attaching to the jurisdiction of the State over all persons and in all causes, spiritual and temporal. I desire that the judges should take their delegation from the Crown; but, having granted that, I ask what magic is there in the fact that all who receive the Queen's delegation should be laymen? Does the person taking holy orders cease to be a subject? and if not, how can he cease to be eligible to sit in a court having at all events relations to spiritual things?

On the other hand-and here I am addressing a very different class of critics, namely, those who are most jealous of the prerogatives of the spiritualty-how does a spiritual person who is, as such, a person holding office in a spiritual body connected with the State, act inconsistently with that office by accepting a responsibility from the State conferred upon him upon the assumption that the training of that office had fitted him for that responsibility? The court in which he sits may not be a spiritual court, but the fact of his sitting there tends to importing into it legitimate spiritual elements, and helps it in reaching sound conclusions in what are, as I define them, the temporal accidents of spiritual things. After all abatements may be made, the presence in the court of judges of the land will be the most desirable; for, unfamiliar as they may be with theology or canon law, they will bring to it the eminently valuable qualities of a judicial training, the capacity of marshalling facts, and the science of discriminating evidence from hearsay and appraising its trustworthiness. The constitution, accordingly, which I propose for the Court of Appeal would be that the Crown should appoint seven judges, divided into three classes. The first class should be two judges or ex-judges of the land, and the second two doctors of laws of ten years' standing, or chancellors of dioceses not immediately connected with the actual suit. The third class should be three theologians, of whom two must be bishops, the third possibly a professor of divinity at one of the two universities. Surely a court so composed ought to work well. In the first place, the two judges and the two doctors of laws would give a majority to the legal element, and so guarantee legal accuracy, while the two canonists and the three spiritual persons would give a