Herefordshire, on which great stress has recently been laid." So the positive evidence of what Wren himself took pains to ordain on an occasion so important as his first consecration of a church, closely following upon his own consecration, is to be set aside, because there is a book of which, according to the then practice of his predecessors in the English episcopate, Wren recommended the acquisition, which book happens to be by the author of another work (not recommended for acquisition), wherein is found a single very short passage, in which the turning of the back of the Roman priest is incidentally referred to in connexion with his elevation of the Host. This wonderful reason is paraded by the very writer who has just been trying to make capital out of Wren's own defence, in which that bishop himself took pains (as the Dean actually quotes) to contrast his own limited practice of turning to the east only during the Prayer of Consecration with the attitude of the Roman priesthood during the elevation, and to couple with his repudiation a denunciation of that elevation in itself—the elevation rather than the external incidents accompanying it being most manifestly the grava-men of the accusation contained in Jewel's sermon.
I can only very seriously ask, is my friend jesting? If he happens to be serious, he must allow me to help his argument by offering a parallel one, which is only not in pari materiâ, because it wants the abatements which (as I have shown) count in the case of Wren and Jewel. The Dean of Chester is very commonly supposed to be an advocate for north-end celebration, and those who make this assertion allege the positive evidence of a book, entitled Before the Table, by the Dean, in which that practice is supported. Against this, however, may be urged "a circumstance, which seems to have been somewhat overlooked." Some years previously, Dr. Howson published a volume of Cathedral Essays, including, among others, one by Mr. Beresford Hope. Now
