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8itnslilmi THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 62
This distrust-strongly roused by the Mackonochie judgment (1868) and the Purchas judgment (see PURCHAS, JOHN); in which it was supposed, in spite of obvious paradox, that everything not mentioned in the PrayerBook was disallowed and illegal -culminated in the Ridsdale judgment (1877), in which it was declared that the " fur-
6. Decision ther order " allowed by the queen had Adverse to been taken in the issuing of the adver Ritualism. tisements under Archbishop Parker (see ADVERTISEMENTS or ELIZABETH), and that the divines of Charles II. therefore, when they permitted the ritual of the second year of Edward VI., really intended only so much of it as was required in the Elizabethan ad vertisements. This startling decision the main block of High-church clergy found it impossible to respect or accept; and this repudiation of its verdict brought to a head the protest that had been made ever since the Gorham judgment against the validity of the court itself as an ecclesiastical tribunal. This last problem had been made critical by the famous Pub lic-Worship Regulation Act (1874), introduced in the house of lords by the archbishop of Canterbury, in disregard of the protests of the lower house of convocation, and declared in the house of commons to be a " bill to put down ritualism " by Disraeli, then prime-minister, who, in spite of Gladstone's impetuous opposition, carried it, amid intense ex citement, in an almost unanimous house. This bill swept away all the process in the diocesan courts; it allowed any three aggrieved parishioners to lodge a complaint, which, unless stayed by the bishop's veto, was carried before an officer nominated nor mally by the two archbishops to succeed to the post of dean of arches on its next vacancy. From him the appeal would be, as before, to the privy council. Thus the scanty fragments of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, which, under existent conditions, might be supposed to balance the civil character of the court of appeal, were all but wholly abolished. The attempt to enforce this bill by the bishops was met by absolute resistance, ending, after being chal lenged at every turn by technical objections, in the imprisonment of four priests. In this collision with the courts, the Ritualists had the steady support of the mass of High-church clergy, who had held aloof from their more advanced and dubious ritual. This support evidenced itself in the '" Declaration " of over 4,000 clergy, headed by the deans of St. Paul's, York, Durham, Manchester, and others (1881).The condition of things had become intolerable; and in 1881 a royal commission was issued to consider the whole position of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. A similar mode of relief had been attempted in 1867, when a royal commission on ritual had been appointed, which under the chairmanship of Archbishop Longley,-after taking an im7. Attempts mense mass of evidence, and after
to Relieve prolonged discussions-had issued a the Stress. report on the crucial point of the " Or naments Rubric," which recommended the " restraint " of the use of vestments, " by pro viding some effectual process for complaint and redress," but which, by the use of the word " re..strain," declined to declare their illegality, and then had found itself unable to attain anything like unanimous agreement on the nature of the legal process which it proposed to recommend. The inner history of the commission will be found in A. R. Ashwell and R. G. Wilberforce, Life of . . . S. Walberforce, vol. iii. (London, 1882). No legislation on the main subject followed this divided report. But convocation in 1879, and the Pan-Anglican Synod in 1880, had come to resolutions more or less in accord with the commissioners' report, in the sense of recommending a prohibitory discretion to the bishop in any case where a change of vesture was attempted. Such a recommendation seemed naturally to allow and assume the abstract legality of the change. Yet the courts of law had finally decreed vestments illegal, and the majority of bishops were prepared to accept their interpretation; and, as long as they did so, no terms of peace could be found on the basis of the proposal in convocation. For even though the bishops were willing to abstain, in favorable cases, from pressing the legal decisions, they were forced to set the law in motion by the action of a society called the " Church Association," which exerted itself to assert and support the rights of any parishioners who might be aggrieved by the ritual used in any church. Thus the exercise of discretion was made all but impossible to a bishop, who could only veto proceedings brought against a clergyman by giving a valid reason, and yet was forbidden to offer as a valid reason the possible legality of the vestments.
The commission on ritual, therefore, had left the conflict still severe and unappeased. Only the Signal to relieve its stress had been given. For the last act of Archbishop Tait, on his death& The Work bed, was to suggest a truce to the fierce of the legal prosecutions which had embitCommission. tered the long controversy, by bringing about an arrangement which would terminate the historic case of Martin vs. Mackonochie, round which the contest had turned for eighteen years. Thus the tension slackened; the possibility of peace seemed to have become conceivable. The question had widened from the consideration of ritual to the problem of the permanent adjustment of Church and State. A wiser temper had come over the public, which had, by the appointment of the commission, allowed that the problem of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was open to historical examination. Bishop Temple had come to London and was determined to avoid all legal measures. A time for consideration was then secured, pending the report of the commission. It did not report until 1883. The report included the historic papers prepared by Bishop Stubbs and Dean Church. Under the weight of their authority it decided against retaining the existing judicial committee of privy council as the court of final appeal. It proposed a reconstructed court which should obviously exhibit its primary character, . as a court of the crown and not of the church, while, on all matters affecting doctrine and discipline, it should act on the advise of the spirituality, which for this purpose is represented by the bishops. No action was taken on the recommendation of this report-a fatal in-