The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1869-03-10

ly well that the gesturerhich they described
as trivial implied on their own part equally
Important opinions. This confederation has
a further bearing upon he equally question
able plea that there wasn no evidence to show
that alteration was inended BY kneeliDg.
The Court would, IN my case, find it very
difficult to Judge Of Infections and sentiments
and consequently it isall the more neces-
sary that II shonld iutge strictly Of :. out
ward movements.n OTthis point, in short,
Mr.. Mackonochie has violated distinct Ru-
brio, and the question could not therefore be
referred to the discretion Of the Bishop.
The use of lighted cauiles raised question
of even greater significance and importance.
They had been treated sither as a ceremony
or as an ornament, and on either alternative
they had been justified " an argument which
has been extensively used BY the Ritualists,
aud on which, in fact, tley base their whole
system of innovation. They have alleged
that they are justified il adopting any prac-
tice which the Prayer Book does not explicitly
condemn-in other words, that whatever is
not expressly abolishedis retained as lawful
In this instance they appeal to certain Injnnc-
tons issued in the first year of Edward VI,
and their counsel even went so far as TO
quote Constitution msde by 4 Council held
under the Archbishop q Canterbury in 1922.
The Court, we rejoice u say, dismissed those
antiquarian references rs utterly irrelevant
They lay it down, in diitct opposition to the
principle of the RituaIsts, that all ceremo-
MES are abolished whicbare not expressly re-
tanned in the Prayer Book This is plainly
implied in the Preface but it is placed be-
yond doubt by Elizabeths Act of Uniformity,
now applicable to the present Prayer Book,
which prohibits any riie, ceremony, order,
or form which is not mentioned in the Prayer
Book, and declares void all prior usages and
ordinances. The Opening Rubric, again,
orders that "such ornaments of the Church
and of the Ministers hereof shall be re-
tanned, and be in use, as were in this Church
of England by authority Of Parliament, in the
second year of the reign of King Edward
VI" The Ritualists have argued from this
that whatever was lawful in the designated
year of Edward VI is lawful now; and
through this loophole, as the reader has al
ready seen, they have introduced into the
controversy not ouly the shifting usages OF
that confused period, but the endless and an
tiquated canons of medieval eeclesiastics.
Anything, of course, might be built on such
foundation. The Court, however, have
now distinctly explained that those things
only possess the authority of Parliament
which are expressly named in the Prayer
Book referred to- 1t is nothing to the point
that the candles were lawful at the time
when the Prayer Book was issued. They are
not prescribed in it, and they are, therefore,
abolished. The Rubric, they observe, might
have said that such ornaments should be re-
tanned as were then lawful, or such as were
then in use; but in fact it says such only as
were in use by authority of Parliament, and
this is now decided TO mean such as are ex-
pressly prescribed in the first Prayer Book, or
as are consistent with and subsidiary to them.
As matter of fact, the use of lighted candles
was almost universally discontinued after
the Reformation, which affords q strong
confirmation of the view thus taken of the
L..