Church and its Ministers, with which ignorant and indiscreet persons have ruined the ancient beauty of Roman Catholic churches. We who loyally obey the Prayer Book are mercifully saved from the possibility of that barbarous degradation, which educated Frenchmen and Italians despise and regret not less than ourselves.
The cure, therefore, for all our troubles and deficiencies is to practise that loyal obedience to lawful authority which the clergy have sworn to do in the solemn declaration of the amended Canon 36:—
‘ I A. B. do solemnly make the following declaration: I assent to the thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and to the Book of Common Prayer, and of the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. I believe the doctrine of the Church of England, as therein set forth, to be agreeable to the Word of God; and in public prayer and administration of the Sacraments I will use the Form in the said Book prescribed, and none other, except so far as shall be ordered by lawful authority.’
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in a recent charge at Maidstone, has pointed out that, though the Church of England wisely allows a certain amount of doctrinal latitude to her clergy, she is very strict as to ceremonial. The Declaration supports this statement; nothing more enthusiastic than ‘assent’ is required to the Articles, but the undertaking as to the forms of public prayer admits of no compromise.
Is there then any excuse for laxity in the conduct of public prayer and the administration of the Sacraments? Clearly not. Yet the popular idea is that the English Church is ‘comprehensive,’ and that its services can with equal loyalty be conducted in an infinite variety of ways; they can be ‘low,’ or ‘of a cathedral type,’ or ‘high,’ or even, strange as it may seem, ‘Roman.’ But this the Archbishop has shown
