I, at all events, found out the mischief of my life then, undeveloped as my views were at that time of the sacrament of penance. I looked upon the priest as a commissioned minister; and I did not see that it was our Lord himself to whom I was confessing, and who was speaking to me; nor did I see, as I have seen since, that the confessor's words are not his own, but that he is under the control of One who regulates them in a way of which the priest himself is generally unconscious.'-(pp. 225-6.)

Thus she had entered on a course which made human direction necessary to her; and her mind, taught to court temptations and to encourage morbid cravings, went on from one thing to another. She consults spiritual doctors in all quarters, and they correspond about her case, but without doing her much good (p. 229). Earthly love came in the way, and at last she married, where upon she tells us-

'I was directed to pray for serious illness, if what I had done in this matter was not in accordance with the will of God, and I have never been well since; but I would not part with one day's suffering now.'-(p. 233.)

At one time she was near going over to Rome, but she did not; and she has since found in the English Church spiritual delights which, if she had gone, and had then found them in Romanism, would have been mistakenly supposed to be a privilege peculiar to it (p. 242). She therefore looks down with pity on Dr. Newman, as having left the English Church while he was yet half a Protestant, and knew nothing as to the true nature of the Church.* In all points of difference except one she gives Rome infinitely the advantage over us; but the Papal supremacy (which in former times was felt by some as the main argument for conforming to Rome) she believes to have no foundation. (p. 241). She despises 'the conventionalities and dry counsels of such writers as Jeremy Taylor.' 'These men,' she says, 'could guide the moral and practical part of the spiritual life, but for the depths beyond we require a moral conformation and a theology different from theirs. Only Roman Catholic ascetic writers can give us what we need' (p. 226). She invokes the Blessed Virgin and the saints as possessing our Blessed Lord's nature' (pp. 230, 238-9); but the centre of all her religion is the adoration of the Saviour's presence in the sacrament of the altar; and the great sin of the English Church is that this object of worship is not continually held forth among us, 'as it is to our more fortunate Roman brethren, an abiding joy and resource continually' (pp. 236, 244, 248). Sometimes she

speaks as if she had found a rest which could no longer be disturbed; but in other places she shows a suspicion that she may yet undergo further changes; and judging from the changes which have already taken place in the Catholic school,'-from the process by which it has passed from 'dry dogma and first principles, moral duties and fixed devotion,' to 'spirituality and fervour,' she expects yet higher developments to unfold themselves hereafter. Prayer increases, and the direct and remarkable answers it receives almost induce me to believe that, before very long, such answers will assume a more directly supernatural character,' (p. 247). We do not think it necessary to comment on all this, and shall certainly not say anything unkind of the lady who has thus laid bare her history, or at least her own view of that history, with the hope (it is to be presumed) of inducing us to follow her example. But things must already have gone far with any who will not see in the results at which she has arrived a powerful reason to dissuade them from imitating the earlier steps of her course.

How alien the use of confession, as an ordinary means of spiritual training, is from the mind of the English Church, has been admirably shown in two pamphlets by Mr. Benjamin Shaw, whom we have already so often quoted on other parts of our subject. How widely it is practised,-with what deplorable indiscretion, and with what grievous consequences in many cases, the system is administered,-has lately appeared in some degree from a newspaper correspondence, in which Dr. Pusey's part has been such as even an observation of his career for more than thirty years had not prepared us for. The entireness with which the system takes possession of a suitable subject is forcibly shown in the autobiography which we have been noticing; and that a system of religion thus becomes entirely dependent on human counsel is to our mind a sufficient argument against it. We have seen the awful language in which the autobiographer describes the authority of the confessor, and we would rather not repeat the words in order to place them side by side with her statement that a confessor, whose 'equal she had never met,' mistook her case, and was unintentionally severe ' (pp. 225-6). Even this lady, with all her enthusiasm, finds it impossible to believe in the astounding pretensions to infallibility with which her party would invest the clergy. And everything that we see or hear or read of those who would set these pretensions at the highest, inclines us more and more to distrust their judgment in spiritual matters, unless it could be clearly

* Rivingtons, London, 1865-6.

proved that there is a promise of infallibility in such matters, and that it is fulfilled in men on whose judgment we should decline to rely in any ordinary question-nay, in some of whom the commonest sense of the duty of truthfulness is palpably wanting. And while there are such objections as these to the system of confession as it is already used among ourselves, we know that in countries where it is the rule of the Church, the practical effect is, while it enslaves the women, to alienate the men from the Church, if not from all religion.

The ritualists are fond of warning us against repeating towards them the error which was committed by the authorities of our Church in the case of Wesley; and others, as Dean Stanley,† repeat the warning, although they do greater justice to the bishops of that time. But the parallel fails in two points-that Wesley professed a warm affection for the Church which these men invariably vituperate; and that whereas Wesley and his brethren, in so far as they were thrust out of the Church, were thrust out by the personal acts of the bishops, the ritualists, if they are to suffer, will suffer by legal judgments. Their movement, as has been truly said, 'is not a defensive movement, not a movement on the side of liberty, but an aggressive movement, which does alter the previously existing equilibrium between different parties in the Church.' It is the attempt of a small knot of men, unknown except for their extravagances, to revolutionize the system which has been settled among us for more than three hundred years—a time as long as that by which the Reformation was separated from the Council which established the doctrine of Transubstantiation and imposed the necessity of confession. Although as yet they ask only for a place among us, they show plainly that nothing less than a triumph over all other parties could satisfy them; and even already they denounce liberty of conscience and the emancipation of the intellect' as an intolerable offence against the truth. § Dean Goodwin thought in the beginning of last session that the opinions of lawyers would have an effect on them; and the Committee of Convocation deprecated any resort to legal proceedings. The opinion of lawyers has since been taken; even from the eight or nine to whom a case was submitted by the Ritualists themselves, the answers were, for the most part, discouraging; while on the one point as to which these learned gentlemen were agreed in favour of the ritualistic practice, an adverse opinion was unanimously

* Baring-Gould, in 'The Church and the World,' p. 98; Medd, ibid.

† Speech in Convocation, June 26.

Speech of the Bishop of St. David's in Convocation, Feb. 9, 1866. § Blenkinsopp, in 'The Church and the World,' pp. 189, 190, Vol. 122.-No. 243.

Р

p. 350.

given

given by the equally eminent lawyers who were consulted by the bishops. What may be the next step we cannot tell, but if the subject should be carried before legal tribunals, and if the judgments of these should be against the Ritualists, they have already told us that they are not disposed to acquiesce; that they will admit no construction of the Church's laws but their own; that they are prepared to cause a split in the Church of England,' by setting up a system of 'confraternities,' exempt from episcopal superintendence, although well aware of the endless mischiefs which such an act would produce.*

It is, indeed, matter of great satisfaction that the temper of our people is now calm; that there has been nothing like a repetition of those violent disturbances which a quarter of a century ago were excited by so trifling a change as that of introducing into the pulpits of parish churches the dress which was worn at all other ministrations in those churches, and which had always been used in the pulpits of cathedrals. We trust, therefore, that whatever may be done will be done by the way of reason and of Christian moderation. And while we deal with the danger from this new party, we must take good heed to another danger, of which many symptoms have been already manifested-the danger that the extravagances of the Ritualists may be used as a pretext for altering in an opposite direction the formularies and the principles of the Church of England.

POSTSCRIPT.

The following paragraph appeared in the Times' of Monday, January 7th:

ST. ALBAN'S, HOLBORN.-Yesterday, at midday service at the District Church of St. Alban the Martyr, Holborn, the censing of persons and things and the elevation of the Elements were discontinued. The incumbent informed the congregation, by circulars distributed in the church, that he had been moved, "after consultation with other parish priests," to make such alterations in consideration of the legal opinion procured by the English Church Union, but "especially of the wish of the Bishop and the opinion of Convocation." However, before the Consecration-prayer the censer was brought in and incense burnt before the altar-"a mode of using incense allowed by occlesiastical, and not disallowed by legal, opinion."

On the profession of having been especially' moved by

*Baring-Gould, ibid. pp. 107-8.

deference

deference to the Bishop of London and to Convocation, we may remark

1. That, although the opinions of counsel on the case of the Church Union were not completed until very lately (that of Sir W. Bovill and Mr. Coleridge bearing the date of November 17th, 1866), the Report of the Committee of Convocation was published as long ago as the month of June, 1866, and the Bishop of London's views had been expressed very much earlier, but without any effect, although the incumbent of St. Alban's affects to write as if he had learnt them for the first time from his Diocesan's Charge in the end of November.*

2. That of the practices censured by the Bishop and by the Committee of Convocation, two only are now in any degree given up. On one of these (the 'censing') the opinions of the counsel on both sides had been unanimously against the Ritualists, so as to leave no hope whatever of success in an appeal to law ; while the other (the elevation') is so manifestly opposed to the principles. and laws of the English Church, that the Church Union did not venture to ask for a legal opinion on it. Moreover, in yielding on these two points, Mr. Mackonochie, with the usual tactics of his party, endeavours to retain the substance of the rites, while giving up the extreme form in which they have been hitherto used. Incense is still to be burnt at the consecration, although discontinued in certain other parts of the service, and although no longer swung at persons and things.' And as to the elevation, the congregation of St. Alban's may still take comfort:

'I must tell you,' says Mr. Mackonochie, 'for your own satisfaction, that the less obtrusive elevation indicated in the words of the Prayerbook, "Here the priest is to take the paten into his hand," and "here he is to take the cup into his hand," is quite sufficient for the ritual purpose-that, namely, of making the oblation of the holy sacrifice to God.'

A specimen has already been given (p. 173) of the language used by the Ritualists as to the Bishop of London, so long as they could flatter themselves that the law would not second his 'wish' for an abatement of their ceremonial excesses. In like manner, the distinction between various uses of incense, which has now been adopted by way of compromise, was received with the utmost contempt and ridicule when proposed by the Committee of Convocation; † nor do we now hear that the 'simpler'

Address to the Congregation of St. Alban's,' by the Rev. A. H. Mackonochie. Reprinted in the 'Guardian' of Jan. 9, 1867.

† See a Letter of the Rev. E. Stuart, in the Preface to the third edition of the 'Directorium,' p. xlvii.