The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-28 00:00:00

ROME ON RITUALISM.

ENGLISH clergymen of the Ritualist persuasion
would do well to read an article on " Anglican
" Sacerdotalism" in the new number of the Month,
a very able and interesting Roman Catholic maga-
zine. The following passage will suffice to indi-
cate the point of view from which the real Roman
Catholic priest contemplates the pretensions of his
sham Anglo-Catholic brother. After demolishing
the claim of the Anglican " priest" to the " ewer-
" dotal character," as conferred by his " Orders,"
the writer proceeds thus :
Considerations such as these may not be enough, in the
teeth of positive evidence, to settle the question of which
we are speaking. We are only claiming for them a certain
moral weight on the minds even of thoughtful Anglicans
themselves. Such persons have to satisfy themselves in
some way or other of the validity of their so-called
" Orders," denied by the whole world except themselves,
and the first aspect of the question is certainly, to say the
/east, very doubtful. This is enough—for no one has a
right to act in doubt in such a matter. But we should be
glad to know that anyone in such a position had recog-
nised its doubtfulness, and had set himself manfully and
prayerfully to seek for satisfaction in inquiry. We
fear that not one " advanced " clergyman in twenty—not
one in twenty of those who talk so freely in their pulpits
theta the Sacrifice, and the sacerdotal power of absolution,
who clothe themselves in the vestments of the old English
catholic church and imitate her ritual, who assume all
over the country not only the power of order, but that of
jurisdiction also—has ever fairly sounded the depths of
the controversy. These clergymen must know that their
life is something very like a mockery if they are not real
priests, and that those who say they are not such are
more numerous, and of much greater authority, than
those who say they are. Practically, their own " church"
speaks a very dubious language at the best, and their own
bishops, as a body, are not more satisfactory . Probably
we are not doing them injustice if we say that they allow

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themselves to rest on the diets of one or two of their own
party—men, it may be, to whom they have been ac-
customed to look with reverence, but of whom it eon
hard:) be denied that they are very interested witnesses
in this matter, sad that they hare, moreover, more that
cone been convicted of groin mistakes beak in theology
and in history. •
•

Here is another complimentary end consoling
passage for the well-meaning.but weak Ritualistic
Ang' lean :
In the course of the last year an attempt was made by
certain persons belonging to the Establishment in Eng-
land to organise a kind of intercominunion between
their own religious body and the Protestant communities
in Sweden and Denmark. A distinguished American
prelate, who was afterwards, we think, present at the
Pan-Anglican Synod, actually communicated with the
Lutheran Archbishop of Upside. This movement towards
• larger measure of fraternisation with Protestant bodies
—though by no means unprecedented in the Establish-
ment—gave great alarm to the High Church party, who
were just at the same time endeavouring to obtain some
sort of recognition from the Eastern Churches. Dr. Pusey
—who seems to bo for ever passing from the use of
Protestant arguments against Catholics to that of
Catholic arguments against Protestants—wrote strongly
against the proposed union, and availed him-
self, among other controversial weapons, of the
probable non-existence of a real priesthood among
the Swedes as • reason for inferring that they had
no apostolical succession as to their bishops. Ho reasoned
very legitimately—though not without evident misgiving
that where there were no priests there oould be no
bishops, and that the Swedish forms wore insufficient for
making priests. Now, we have to remark on the one
hand, as indeed was hinted at the time, that the very
tame argument applies with great force against the
Anglican succession, and on the other hand, that the de-
fence of the latter, as set forth by Dr. Forbes and Mr.
Bailey, leaves this most material part of the Anglican
position altogether unprotected. As far as these writers
are concerned, it is open to a candid Anglican, whose
mind has been awakened to the importance of the question
now before UN to say to himself that even if everything
they have said be true there may yet not be at the pre-
sent moment, and there may not have been for two cen-
turies and • half, either bishop or priest in the Anglican
establishment. If such a person were to go on to inquire
into the question thus raised, he would find himself in
presence of perhaps the very gravest difficulty of all those
that beset his position. Dr. Forbes professes to have
written his book with the active assistance of Dr. Pussy,
and Mr. Bailey can hardly be unaware that the objection
at which we have now hinted would be one of the very
first to occur either to a Catholic controversialist or to
a reflecting and well-informed Anglican. We may, there-
fore, fairly ask how it is that both these gentlemen have
left this extremely weak point altogether unprotected ?
As long as this difficulty remains, it is simple nonsense to
talk triumphantly of the absolutely indubitable validity of
the Anglican ordinations ; and the writers who defend
these last and yet leave this question nnhandled, are
certainly no true friends to the many simple souls who
may be led by their assumption of confidence to think
the matter closed against all further inquiry. As
far as we understand Dr. Pusey's objections to the
Swedish ordinations, there is no ground of com-
plaint urged against them, by him, which does
not exist, in principle, in the case of the Anglican
ordinations, and he has been perhaps forced by the con-
sciousness of his own position to forbear from urging
against the Swedes the most important and crushing of
all the arguments that can be brought against persons in
such a position. This argument is to be found in the
careful exclusion from all formularies and authoritative
definitions of all mention of that which is the very essence
of the priestly office—the power to offer the adorable
sacrifice of the altar. We called attention a few months
ago, in noticing Canon Estcourt's late pamphlet, to the
entire elimination of the doctrine of the sacrifice from
the communion office in even the fret "Book" of
Edward VI., much more Catholic as that book was than
the present " Prayer-book." The same remark applies
to the Anglican ordinal, in which the sacrifice and the
power to offer it are not once mentioned or alluded to.
If Dr. Pusey could have urged this charge against the
Swedes, he would have done more, from • catholic point
of view, to demolish any claim they may set up to the
possession of a true priesthood, than he has done by what
he has said ; but vox faueilnia lideeit, he knew too well the
miseries of his own communion to venture so far. The
full argument against the Anglican ordinations which is
to be drawn from the fact to which we are now alluding
is too long to be introduced into our present article, and
we hope soon to return to it. It is enough for the
moment to have pointed out that the defenders of the
so-called English " priesthood " have left unguarded the
very centre of their own position, and that if we were to
grant every single argument adduced by Dr. Forbes and
Mr. Bailey, the chief difficulties of their position would
remain altogether unsolved.
The sad and simple truth is, that while the
Anglican Ritualists are regarded with indulgent
commiseration at Rome, and even with a certain
sympathy, as more or less involuntary dupes, their
performances are considered as private theatricals.