The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-20 00:00:00

RITUALISM.

The following further reply has been returned to
an address from a large number of clergymen and
churchwardens in the diocese of Salisbury by the
Archbishop of Canterbury :
" Addington-park, Oct., 1867.
" Rev. and dear Sir,—ln the short answer I gave
to the address you forwarded me some time since, I
informed you that there were legal as well as theo-
logical questions involved in my compliance with its
prayer in the sense in which I understood it, and
that these would require my very careful considera-
tion. You seemed to expect that I should take some
public notice of the late charge of your diocesan in
the way of censure or approval, in consequence of
the representations you made to me of some pas-
sages in that charge. But your address proceeds
upon an erroneous view of the duties of an arch-
bishop. As bishop of his own diocese he is pre-
cisely on the same footing with each of his episcopal
brethren in the provinces. Although he ba prim us
inter pares, for certain purposes, yet that primacy
gives him no more right to interfere with the con-
duct of such bishops in their diocese than they have
with his, until his action as metropolitan be invoked,
for the purpose of admonishing or coercing one of
his suffragans, through his Court, on appeal in re-
gard to an injury inflicted on some. party by that
suffragan in the exercise of his administrative au-
thority in his diocese.
"I do not, however, gather from the tenour of
the address that you make any such appeal to my
jurisdiction in the Court of Arches in the matter of
the charge ; so that it would be impertinent in me
as a brother bishop to sit in judgment on the charge
of the Bishop of Salisbury without such appeal, and
premature were I to pass any opinion with respect
to it, when my action as metropolitan might pos-
sibly be invoked to pass a judicial sentence upon it.
" The subscribers say that they feel solemnly
bound to resist the introduction into their churches
of the practices of the Ritualists ; but they do not
allege that the Bishop has insisted in his charge
upon the introduction into all or any of the churches
of his diocese of these novel practices, which they
assert they would feel bound to resist; there is ac-
cordingly so far no ground for the intervention of
the metropolitan's authority.
" In conclusion, I must express a hope that the
novel variations from the established usage of our
Church, which you intimate have caused the alie-
nation of many of its attached members in the dio-
cese of Salisbury, will not ba continued after the
Report of her Majesty's Commissioners ; that the
restraint of all such variations is expedient with a
view to promote the peace of the Church.
" I am, rev. and dear Sir,
" Your faithful friend and brother,
" C. T. CANTUAR.
" Rev. Henry Moule, Fordiugton Vicarage, Dor-
chester."
The following reply has been addresse 1 to the
Archbishop :
" Biughains Melcombe, Dorchester, Nov. 15.
" My Lord Archbishop,--lu the absence of my
friend Mr. Moule from home on business, he has re-
quested me to acknowledge in the name of our-
selves and our co-signatories the receipt of your
courteous reply to an address forwarded to you
some time since from a large number of clergy and
churchwardens in the diocese of Salisbury.
" While submitting, as we needs must, to the
conclusions to which your Grace has come, we can
scarcely fail to consider it somewhat hard that there
seems to be no possible hope of shielding the Church
in this diocese from the authoritative promulgation
of such erroneous doctrines as we believe our Bishop
to have set forth in his late Charge, except by em-
barking in what experience tells us is likely to be an
almost interminable and ruinous law suit in the
Ecclesiastical Courts.

" I trust I have been guilty of no impropriety iu
forwarding your Grace's letter for publication in
the Times newspaper, and I have the honour to bo,
your Grace's faithful and obedient servant,
" U. W. BINGHAM."