The Sun.
London, England, 1869-01-23 00:00:00

TWO LETTETIS.

The Timex publishes a letter from Lord Ebury ; the
Daily Telegraph a letter from a far abler and more
noticeable man, Dr. Rowland Williams, one of the
seven Essayists and Reviewers. Lord Ebury says
that so far from " desiring a new Prayer-book, which
shall make his doctrine the only one tenable within the
pale of the Church," as Mr. Prowett had asserted of
him, he wishes to have the broadest possible compre-
hension, and his hindrances have arisen quite as much
from the Low Church party, to which Mr. Prowett
assigns him, as from other parties. Ile would
make one exception from his inclusive policy.
He would exclude the Romanists. "We desire," he
says, "to see those who condemn the Reformation,
revile its confessors and martyrs, and desire to make
use of their influence in our Church to bring us back
from the Church of Rome, absolutely shut out from
our Church Establishment. In all other respects our
object is comprehensive, and our mode of effecting
this is by means strictly conservative and constitu-
tional—royal commissions." The Bible, he declares,
is, "so far from being conducive to minute
dogma, an untiring protest against it, and there-
fore against that mountain of human regulations
and shibboleths which the enemy of mankind
has persuaded us to adopt for the purpose
of dividing and conquering." He would have
Jeremy Taylor's " Liberty of Prophesying" trans-
lated into modern English and largely circulated.
He concludes by pointing out that the Church has
now, at the cost of a few conc,:ssions so
trifling that it seems astonishing that its rulers
in Church and State should hesitate to make them,
an opportunity of uniting and regulating the entire
Reformed Churches of the world. "If our Church
will not, it needs no prophet to predict her future
downward career, namely, that after fostering for a
while every species of controversial asperity, she will
separate into sects unusually embittered against each
other, and will sink into well-merited insignifi-
eance.—Absit omen."
Dr. Rowland Williams heads his letter "Are not
limits to ecclesiastical freedom its best preservatives?"
He begins by saying that he should never forgive
himself if he added to Mr. Mackonochie's difficulties
at the present time. But since that gentleman has
in his recent letter to the papers, paraded his belief
in Scripture as stronger than his neighbour's, and
especially than his (Dr. Williams's), he feels bound to
protest. He asks Mr. Mackonochie to say, for instance,
where the New Testament has
Enjoined the use of incense in church, not to say the
worship of a bodily God or a material altar.
Cr, how does it appear that candles were used
symbolically in that upper chamber of the Gospels,
when we know that for three centuries the heathens
ridiculed Christians for not using such things ! Or, where
is it written scripturally that water was mixed with
wine at the Last Supper. Does not the practical
difference between Mr. Mackonochie's friends and myself
(to mention the less than the least of those whom he
abhors) amount to this, that while we hold fast
the religion of Scripture, rightly interpreted, but claim a
freedom of expansion, co-extensive with the march of
human progress, for its accidental accompaniments, he
and his school permit themselves to develope religion and
ritual licentiously, but forge out of Scripture weapons or
fetters, which may enable them to interfere with social
order, arrest scientific discovery, and perplex the human
mind? _ . .

......
He will never admit that his own religious doctrine
is as little scriptural, or as little willing to be tested
by Scripture, as that of either our younger Ritualists,
or of their more cautious progenitors who stand be-
hind them." He goes on to allirm that if the decision
in the " Essays and Reviews" case had been given
against him it would have operated more fatally as a
decree of excision against Mr. Mackonochie and all
his generation than against himself or any friend of
his. Mr. Mackonochie complains that spiritual
things have been tried by purely secular tests.
Dr. Williams reminds him that he (Dr. Williams)
annealed to Convocation to hear_ him before