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the Church of England. Reservation for the sick and dying, and for no other purpose whatever, may be defended on the ground which has been held to justify the retention of the indicative form of absolution in the Order of the Visitation of the Sick. Both reservation and the indicative form are difficult to justify in themselves; but both may be justified as charitable concessions to physical weakness. On the Baxterian principle of “tolerating the tolerable" the bishops decided to concede the legitimate demand in order that they might the better restrain the superstitious excess.

(4). Prayers for the Departed. The fearful experience of the Great War effected a revolution in public opinion with respect to the Church's duty towards the dead. In approving the introduction of prayers for the departed into the public services, the bishops did but register and endorse the fact. In so doing they certainly did not trespass beyond the frontiers of recognised Anglican teaching. The 22nd Article, indeed, condemns" the Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory," and the homily in the Second Book, which the 35th Article confirms, disallows all praying for the dead; but the first is irrelevant, since there is nothing in common between the medieval teaching about Purgatory (with which alone the Article is concerned) and such prayers for the departed as the bishops, following the precedents of Christian antiquity, have sanctioned; and the last is negligible, since it cannot be harmonised with the language of the Prayer Book and the teaching of standard Anglican divines. "To pray for the dead is not forbidden by the New Testament," wrote Archbishop Temple in his famous Primary Charge (1898), “ and it is not forbidden by the Church of England, and our ecclesiastical courts accordingly have so decided it." All that the bishops have done is to develop and make explicit the rather cryptic language of the existing book. Probably none of their proposals is more congruous with the mind of religious people of every description.

It will not have escaped notice that all the four points which have provoked controversy are connected with the Holy Communion, and it is therefore easily explicable that well-meaning but rather unreflective persons should think that this circumstance indicates an escape from the unpleasant necessity of rejecting the bishops' proposals tout court. Why, they ask, should we not omit the Order of Holy Communion from the revising process, and

sanction all the other proposals of the Composite Book? That is obviously the line of least resistance, and as obviously it leads nowhere. For it is precisely the Order of Holy Communion which is the core of the practical problem for the solving of which the difficult process of revision was taken in hand. To leave the Holy Communion unrevised is to leave the existing intolerable disorders unremedied, and (to adopt a famous phrase from recent political history) to acknowledge that " the game of law and order is up" in the Church of England. Those who are now foremost in denouncing the bishops' proposals were also the foremost in protesting against the illegalities of the "ritualists." It was in response to their clamorous insistence that the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline was originally appointed; and, in their present refusal to accept the result of the Commission's recommendations, they are really stultifying themselves.

The Bishops of Norwich, Exeter, and Birmingham have dissociated themselves from the rest of the episcopate. They are evidently bound to suggest some reasonable alternative to the policy which they reject. How do they themselves intend to restore discipline in the Church of England? Does the Bishop of Norwich mean to continue indefinitely his acquiescence in the extravagant illegalities of (say) Walsingham Parish Church? So long as the Walsingham clergy can plead that, however extravagant, they are no more illegal than their Anglican neighbours, it is intelligible that the bishop should hold his hand, but he cannot (without disregard of his consecration vows) condone permanently the substitution of the Roman for the Anglican version of Christianity within his diocese. What is his lordship's plan for terminating the existing lawlessness, which is clearly indefensible? The Bishop of Birmingham is understood to be opposed on principle to the use of legal coercion within the ecclesiastical sphere. He prefers to rely altogether on his powers of personal persuasion. Pending their successful exercise, the intolerable anarchy, which the bishops' proposals are meant to remove, is to continue !

Is it not apparent that, if the bishops' proposals are defeated, and no alternative is found, the Church and nation will be reduced to the humbling necessity of enduring an unchecked clerical individualism? In short, the Church of England will become confessedly, what its enemies have long declared it to be

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practically, a go-as-you-please" Church, destitute of discipline and distinctive character, a derelict in Christendom. If that is to be our fate, at least let us agree to alter the language of the Form of Consecrating Bishops in order that it may indicate more accurately the modest rôle which in such a Church is reserved for the episcopate !

The opposition of the Evangelical party is regrettable, but not to any student of Anglican history surprising, for Evangelicalism, greatly to its own advantage, has largely left the party, which continues to exploit its name. That party is a declining force in English religion, and the consciousness of the fact may go some way towards explaining its bitterness of tone and total lack of practical wisdom. Neither its arid theology, nor its fierce polemic, makes appeal to the conscience of modern England. The Evangelical party in the Church of England has been described as "an army of illiterates generalled by octogenarians." The description is more unkind than untrue, or rather it is only true when a sharp distinction is drawn between the Evangelical party and the Evangelicals. It fastens on the salient features of those militant Protestants who are most insistent and clamorous in opposition to the Composite Book, most scornful of episcopal authority, and least law-abiding when the rubrick crosses their own sectarian prejudices.

These "irreconcilable " partisans are the Bourbons of English religious life, for they can neither learn nor forget. Their "spiritual home" in modern Christendom is not Wittenburg, nor Geneva, nor Zurich, nor Constantinople, nor Rome, nor Canterbury, but Dainton in Tennessee. They are mostly what the Americans call " Fundamentalists," and would thrust out of the National Church, with equal fervour, both the Bishop of Birmingham and the Bishop of Truro. Fundamentalism is the same on both sides of the Atlantic, though its expressions may perhaps be less crude in England than in the more backward States of America. The historic succession of the faction is apparent in our ecclesiastical record. The "hot gospellers" of the sixteenth century, the militant sectaries of the Commonwealth, the Protestant zealots who rioted under Lord George Gordon, the "No Popery" crowds which hustled Parliament into the absurdity of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act-these have their latest representatives in the followers of Mr. Kensit, and in the audiences which

gather to the "Protestant Parsons" who have deserted their parishes in order to lead a "pilgrimage" through the country to the cry of "your Church and nation in danger." Their religious kinship has never been with the Church of England, but with the "corybantic" Christianity of the sects.

A more formidable opposition is that of the Romanizing section of the Anglo-Catholicks, to whom the acceptance and enforcement of the Composite Book would bring the unpalatable necessity of deciding their ecclesiastical allegiance. Will they obey or retire from the Church of their baptism and ordination? That momentous question, hitherto obscured by a hundred sophistries, will stand out at last in naked clearness of outline, unmistakable and insistent. Yet it will not be easy for them to realize the necessity of decision. They have enjoyed impunity so long; they have entrenched themselves so strongly ; they have gained a hold on so many clergymen; they have advanced so far in the Romeward direction that the process of "coming into line" will be extremely painful. They will be urged, and tempted, to combine in an organized resistance to the revised law. In that event the bishops will be confronted by a duty equally clear, odious, and unavoidable. Will they have the strength to attempt its fulfilment? Can they count upon the measure of support in the public opinion of the Church and of the nation which is essential to the success of their attempt ? These are questions which the future must answer. The present has obligations of its own.

The evident duty of all who value the Church of England is to" count the cost " of ship-wrecking the policy which the bishops received from the Royal Commission, and have presented as the only practical method they can devise for saving the Church of England from the weakness and scandal of domestic anarchy, and averting, even at the eleventh hour, the disaster of disruption.

HERBERT DUNELM

VOL. 245. NO. 500.

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THE INQUISITION ONCE MORE

1. A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. By H. C. LEA. New York: Harpers.

2:

3.

1887.

Histoire de l' Inquisition en France. By TH. DE CAUZONS. Paris: Bloud.

1909.

The Inquisition. By E. VACANDARD. Longmans. 1908.

4. Medieval Heresy and the Inquisition. By A. S. TURBERVILLE. Lockwood. 1920.

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7. Inquisition et Inquisitions. By l'abbé L. A. GAFFRE. Paris. 1905.
8: Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l'inquisition espagnole.
JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. Paris: Pélagaud. 1854.

9.

By le comte

The History of the Inquisition of Spain. By J. A. LLORENTE.
Whitaker. 1826.

10. L'Inquisition. By C. DOUAIS, evêque de Beauvais. Paris: Plon. 1906.

THE HE books on this list fall naturally into two classes. The first four are, on the whole, judicial; the rest are more or less definite pleas for a cause. There is perhaps no subject of equal importance and complication, in so remote a period of history, upon which the general reader can so safely inform himself as upon this. He need only choose one pair out of these first four, according to his leisure, and then he will have two penetrating and well-informed treatises from points of view so varied that he can scarcely fail to realise all that can justly be said on both sides. Different readers will still differ, but at least they will differ en connaissance de cause, and therefore their disagreements on essential points can scarcely prove irreconcilable. If the reader be profoundly interested, and fairly leisured, let him study Dr. Lea, the American Quaker, side by side with the orthodox Roman Catholic, De Cauzons. In their five volumes he will find a detailed and systematic view of the whole subject; for, though De Cauzons confined himself to France, that country is typical enough to give us true perspective. If the reader's interest and leisure be less, let him take Mr. Turberville's 250 pages side by side with the 270 of Abbé Vacandard. Here he will find two authors, generally quite accurate, each aiming separately at a fair judgment, each slightly inclined to conser

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