the truth only through fear of giving offence. His plain duty is "with all faithful diligence to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded; and to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word;" and he must claim and must assert, so that he may lead his people to seek it at his hands, that he and others of his order, are the sole dispensers of the best gift of God, the food and earnest of immortality, the bread of life, the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ.

in

And another charge: that they who would speak thus are but Romanists in disguise; or at least are wavering, and tending Romewards. Surely upon every point on which we rightly can, the more we can establish a similarity of doctrine, I would not say of practice, between ourselves and the church of Rome, the more we shall keep stragglers away from her, and promote good feeling between the two communions. They cannot be many number among us, who would hesitate to express their earnest prayer that the English and the Roman churches were at one again, and that through the western world there might be fellowship once more; which, when in God's good time it comes, may well be looked upon as an earnest of a restored communion with the East, to a healing of the divisions which have torn asunder that One Church, of which the seamless robe of her Incarnate Lord was the appointed type.

And yet, how deep is the gulf between us! the doctrines of Transubstantiation and of Papal Infallibility present an impassable barrier, through which we can discern no opening, so long as the Church of Rome denies communion to all who do not consent to them. And it is our duty to contend against them: it is our duty no less to point out their unscriptural character, and false foundation, than to inculcate the truths which I have spoken of above. If those truths are held also by the Church of Rome, shall that be a just reason for

our rejecting them? shall we regard them, upon that ground only, even with suspicion? We do not argue so in many other cases, why then in this? There have been in former times men to whom the very sound of Rome brought tidings of nothing but what was to be abhorred, and they repudiated first one part of her creed, and then another, first one observance and then another, for the single and to them sufficient reason, that so it was believed and done at Rome : until they left to themselves little of Christianity but the name: and all that was vital had been given up. Not so has the church of England taught her children: she has rejected the errors of the church of Rome, but the act of separation was not hers at the first, (we trust, therefore, not the punishment,) and she has never been stripped, although they may have been obscured, of the marks and tokens which distinguish her as a true portion of the Holy Catholic Church.

To return to our more immediate subject, the ancient and modern liturgies of the church of England. None would wish to see restored the trifling observances and the doubtful rites which the rubrics of the old services enjoin. Writers of the Roman church have made many objections against our present Form, several of which are unfounded, or may be advanced equally against their own, or relate to things which very few would seriously complain of. A collection of these are to be found in Mr. Palmer's book which I have already referred to,90 and among the latter class are such as, that particular prayers and ejaculations, anointings, exorcisms, &c. have been omitted. These may safely be left without more remark, and the reader, I doubt not, will justly decide that they are as far as possible from necessary, being mere additions or alterations of late ages, from

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90 Origines Liturgicæ. vol. ii. p. 9—18.

which the earlier liturgies are free. But it is our duty to retort the charge, and express our dislike to much still retained in the present Roman liturgy, but which we have not in our own. The prayers and order of the old Forms are derived from remote antiquity; many of the rubrics are comparatively modern and superstitious. No one can read the Uses which are reprinted in this volume, without acknowledging the truth of this. There are directions" for so many crossings, so many various gestures, that the priest should at one time stand, at another bow, at another kneel," without a reasonable cause; "that now he should look up, then down, now regard the altar, then the people, kiss the book of the Gospels, or the deacon, or subdeacon, at one time take the paten between his finger and middle finger, at another hold it in a different way :"-all these are rules, which, whilst, we carefully boast not too boldly of our liberty, we may rejoice that we are free from.

These are not, however, after all, matters of vital consequence: but besides them are considerations of a very serious character. Simply to name them, will be sufficient. The great error of transubstantiation brought with it additional directions to bow down and after consecration adore the Host: then expose it to the people, who should adore likewise. And in this, the highest service of the Church of Christ, who is there but must feel it to be a profanation to speak of the merits of the saints? 91

91 I am bound to remind the reader that Thorndike puts an interpretation upon the term "merit" as used in the old liturgies, (he speaks only of the Roman) different from that in which the later Latin fathers used it: and therefore takes it "to import only the exercise of that communion which all members

of Christ's Church hold with all members of it, ordained by God, for the means to obtain for one another the grace which the obedience of our Lord Jesus Christ hath purchased for us without difference, whether dead or alive." Epilogue. book iii. p. 357.

Again, there is the use of an unknown and dead language and above all there is the denial of the Cup; an abuse the evil consequences of which we can scarcely overrate, nor esteem too lightly the authorities and reasons on which it rests: contradicting as it does the express commands of Christ, and the steady practice of a thousand years; and throwing doubt upon the entire reception by communicants of the instituted Sacrament.

There is one ceremony commanded in the old Books to be observed, not in like manner to be condemned, and which seems to me to call for a brief remark. I mean, the use of the sign of the Cross. The multitude of crossings in the old Canons may very rightly have been discontinued, and yet to give no direction anywhere throughout for the use of that Holy Sign may be equally far from accordant with primitive usage. I would here quote the words of a ritualist of great authority among us, whose work is generally recommended to the attentive study of all candidates for Orders.

He says: "I do not know that there is an ancient liturgy in being, but what shews that this sign was always made use of in some part or other of the office of communion. A number of crossings renders the service theatrical: but one or two we always find: so much having been thought proper upon this solemn occasion, to testify that we are not ashamed of the Cross of Christ, and that the solemn service we are then about is performed in honour of a crucified Saviour. And therefore as the Church of England has thought fit to retain this ceremony in the ministration of one of her sacraments, I see not why she should lay it aside in the ministration of the other. For that may very well be applied to it in the ministration of the Eucharist, which the Church herself has declared of the Cross in Baptism: viz. that it was held in the primitive Church, as well by the Greeks as the Latins, with one consent and great applause at what time, if any had opposed themselves

against it they would certainly have been censured as enemies of the name of the Cross, and consequently of Christ's merits, the sign whereof they could no better endure." 92 How common the use of this sign anciently was, is clear from Tertullian, in the often quoted passage, "Ad omnem progressum atque promotum, ad omnem aditum et exitum, ad vestitum, ad calciatum, ad lavacra, ad mensas, ad lumina, ad cubilia, ad sedilia, quacunque nos conversatio exercet, frontem crucis signaculo terimus."93 The reader will see that the use of the sign of the Cross is enjoined in the first Book of King Edward. There never, however, has been any question of necessity as regards the ceremony of the use of the sign of the Cross but not so with respect to another, the mixing of water with the wine. The epistle of S. Cyprian upon this subject is well known and in short, from the earliest times of which any account has come down to us, there is an uniform and concurrent testimony that such was the observance. But passing by the proofs which the ancient liturgies furnish, and the often-quoted authorities of the fathers and ritualists of the middle ages, which are to be found in the works of almost every later writer, I shall merely add to these a few other testimonies which bear more immediately upon the practice of the church of England.

In one of the earliest documents which have come down to us, the very famous penitential of Archbishop Theodore, we find: "Nullus namque presbyter nihil aliud in sacrificio offerat, præter hoc quod Dominus docuit offerendum: id est, panem sine fermento, et vinum cum aqua mixtum ; quia de latere Domini sanguis et aqua exivit." In the succeeding century, the

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92 Wheatley. Rational Illustration, &c. p. 293.

93 Tertullian. de Corona. Edit. Rigalt. p. 102.

94 Cap. xlviij. 17. Thorpe. Ancient Laws and Institutes. vol. ii. p. 58.