The Ritual Movement, by James Galloway Cowan

These words are a general precept about Church order following up a particular remonstrance. The Corinthian Christians, divinely distinguished by the number and excellence of the spiritual gifts and privileges bestowed on them, had, alas! distinguished themselves by anarchy, lawlessness, pride, self-will, self-sufficiency, uncharitableness, ecclesiastical and moral laxity of various forms and kinds. The Apostle deals with all these offences severally and particularly, and then he gives a general rule—a rule which was to cover and guide all their practice, and the practice of every other church: “Let all things be done decently (decorously) and in order” (according to system and appointment).

Without further preface, I would, in all solemnity, read this precept as addressed to us, brethren, to the clergy and laity of the Anglican Church of this present day, and as one which for the glory of God, and the edifying of ourselves, it is most needful to fix in our remembrance and to observe with all strictness. And did I design my teaching to be merely general, p. 4I know no more useful theme to which to address myself; for as like the Corinthians we Anglicans have been distinguished by God, in that He has poured out upon us conspicuous and super-excellent gifts and privileges, so like them are we constantly distinguishing ourselves by strifes, irregularities, and miserable assertions of self’s importance and self’s wilfulness unparalleled, I believe, by Romans, Greeks, or dissenters.

But I have a special purpose, as you have probably anticipated, in selecting the subject for consideration at this time.

There is just now a great agitation throughout the land about what is called “The Ritual Movement.” After many years of sluggish indifference to the Apostle’s precept—it would hardly exceed the truth to say of perverse opposition to it, in doing all things indecently and against order—men on all sides are waking up to a sense of their neglect, and to a desire to repair it; and, by consequence, those who have not gone with the movement have found themselves surrounded by what wears the appearance of strange and even dangerous innovation, and those who have gone with it—both teachers and disciples—have in some cases been hurried along without due care to consider, perhaps without time to consider, whither they were tending.

To both these parties—the standers still and the hurriers along—how wisely speaks the precept, “Let all things be done decently and in order”!

And first to the first—the standers still—the “old-fashioned,” the contented with things as they were. Consider, my brethren, what mean ye by the service of God in the sanctuary, the assembling of yourselves in Church from time to time. Why do you come? Who bade you come? what to do? You come to worship God in a building set apart for His worship; a place in which He may meet you by appointment. And who is God? The great and glorious Jehovah, in Whose sight the very Heavens are not clean; Who asks, asserting His dignity, “What place will ye build Me” (that is worthy of Me)? My brethren, p. 5if you duly regarded His Majesty, if you, in any adequate degree, appreciated His amazing condescension, would you consider any edifice too grand for His localised presence, any expenditure on its furniture and ornament too lavish, any care for its arrangement and for the reverent honour of its All Holy Tenant too elaborate, too scrupulously particular? You know what provision you would make, what anxious care would possess you to fit your house, to array and order your household, for the due entertaining of an expected guest only just a little above yourselves in dignity and in claim to be respected. You can hardly imagine what you would do if your Queen condescended to be for a while your guest; but you know that at least you would not err on the side of niggardliness, slovenliness, and indifference; that your provision would be as magnificent as possible, your service particular and constant, your reverence profound. This being the case—and you know it is the case—a lively belief that God does wondrously vouchsafe to dwell with you, that the Church is indeed His local habitation, that when you enter within its walls, you are in His available, His very tangible presence; that what you do or neglect there, is done or neglected to Him, would spontaneously beget in you the desire, and quicken the effort, to make the edifice worthy of Him, according to your natural notions of worthiness, to provide due accessories of worship, to order yourselves as real and most reverential worshippers.

But you are not left to spontaneity. When God chose for Himself a people to honour and serve Him, to be witnesses for His honour, to bring in due time all nations to serve and worship Him, He taught that people what kind of House they should build Him, and with what kind of ritual they should serve Him; treating the matter of such importance as actually to inspire the architects, to prescribe each article of furniture and every detail of ornament, to appoint precisely the ceremonies and observances. And what did He require? That p. 6the material of house and ornament should be of the best and costliest and most splendid; that every act, every feeling of worship should have its corresponding sign in some ritualistic observance; that among the accessories of worship should be attractions for means of enlisting men’s various senses; colour, and pattern and ornament for the eye, music for the ear, fragrant perfume for the scent.

But you object: “No, this was God’s pattern and order: but it was all appointed under a different dispensation from Christianity, for a rude and childish people, as pictures and types and carnal ordinances, to be exchanged when men were fit, when the Messiah should come, for inward and invisible realities, for purely spiritual things, which heart and mind alone could apprehend, which outward sense would rather obscure than discover.”

Now, of course, Judaism was in some respects a different dispensation from Christianity, and some even of its divinely appointed observances were merely temporary, and had a significance and use for Jews which they would not have for us. But it is quite an error to suppose that these Jews were a rude and childish people; they were rather the civilised and cultivated and most spiritual of the earth. Albeit, if we might dare to say so, for them more than for us, or for any other people whom God has since drawn near to Himself, an elaborate outward and sensuous worship (if it were not the right, the necessary, the permanent accompaniment of inward realities) was unsuitable and fraught with danger. They had just come out from the home of idolatry; they were going to dwell among the observers of carnal and idolatrous rites; they were themselves hankering after visible objects of worship; they would again and again make stumbling blocks for themselves out of the very things which God appointed for their edification in His worship. Now ascribing to God, as we must always do, perfect wisdom and p. 7clearest foresight, is it presumptuous to say that He would have kept these snares from the Jews, that he would have drawn off their minds from the external and the naturally magnificent, and rather would have forbidden than enforced minute ritual and much worship of the body, as things through which they were sure to err, unless there were in the things themselves intrinsic good, unless, in fact, they were not merely useful accessories of worship, but a very integral and essential part of the worship itself?

And then, again, my brethren, where are we told that Christianity is a purely spiritual religion; that its functions are all such as can be performed by mind and heart, without body; that, in fact, the body has no real part in them? The worship of the body is indeed no worship by itself, for: “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” But is it not Christianity that has redeemed and consecrated the body? Has not the second Adam taken away from it all but its form of mortality? Has not the Lord purchased it for Himself, imposing upon it much work in His service; commanding by His inspired Apostle that it should glorify Him; promising it great excellencies and rewards in its future state; appointing for it a glorious worship in heaven? Assuredly, my brethren, as man is three-fold and has been redeemed in his three-fold nature, mind, heart, and body, so has each part of him its appointed, its bounden part, to take on its own account in the positive worship of God. And were it not so, were the body merely the case of the soul—its link with the material; its tabernacle in the temporal; its agent among the natural and outward—still, is it not in these respects part of its office to exhibit what is in the soul? Does not the soul naturally move it when it is moved itself? Is not the body, as it were spontaneously, affected by all that passes within, and, unless unnaturally restrained or physically disabled, does it not always betray and manifest the inward affection?

The soul may worship God sufficiently (for the whole being) p. 8when the body is taking no part by reason of paralysis or prostration, or because the man, deeming it inexpedient at that time that sound or sign should escape him, is curbing and binding it down; but in health and left unrestrained, the body is such a spontaneous sympathizer and persistent co-operator with all within, that we are justified in saying of him who does not speak to God with his lips, and bow his head before Him, and clasp his hands, and kneel upon his knees, that he does not worship God in spirit and in truth!

We have reached thus far, brethren—if you have gone with me—that God has prescribed much ritual, and that man from his very nature must use much ritual in divine worship.

Of course God’s prescription is liable to much modification when it comes to be applied, not to one people, but to all the nations of the earth; not to a tabernacle in the wilderness or a temple at Jerusalem, but to every place in which men ask him to record His name and come unto them and bless them; not to dim and imperfect types, but to the glorious and perfect anti-types; not to Judaism, which was local and temporary, but to Christianity, which is universal and eternal. Of course, too, the details of men’s spontaneous worship will, necessarily, be different according to the truth which they have to express by outward signs, according to their natural characteristics in a warm or cold climate, according even to individual temperament.

But this principle assuredly holds good for all time and for all men: that God having once pronounced Himself in favour of a certain kind of ritual, and His Church having consented to express its doctrines and its feelings by certain outward signs and rites of its own, the general rule and form of decent and orderly worship has been set and established, which should only be departed from by Divine sanction and appointment, unless, indeed, the doctrines and feelings which we have to express are so diverse from those of the elder Church that they cannot find an intelligent and real expression in the same ritual.

p. 9You will hardly need, brethren, that I should prove to you that our religion is substantially that which God gave to the Jews; that under the old dispensation as under the new, salvation is offered to mankind only through Jesus Christ, and that the general ways of seeking and keeping hold of that salvation—humbling ourselves before God, initiation into His covenant, constant prayer, supplication and praise, constant pleadings of His sacrifice, constant feeding on His grace, are the same for us as for them, unless God Himself has changed them. Now this we know that He has done in some respects, taking away circumcision, the daily sacrifice of animals, and the Passover, and various rites and ceremonies which, from the nature of the case, could be only temporary; or, at least, had real use and significance only for the nation of the Jews, or for an expectant Church. But then He has given us other ordinances in the place of those withdrawn, and these we naturally observe in the same spirit, and, as far as suits them, with the same form as He appointed for the older ordinances. God is still the same: man is still the same. The expression of worship which He once required, is that which He must surely still require in all its essentials, all its characteristics.

That the Christian Church accepted at once this rule of worship is evident from the fact, that the apostles and first disciples continued to take part in the temple and synagogue services as long as the Jews would let them; yea, and that they even still observed those ordinances which, in their necessary observance, God had abrogated; instead of which He had appointed other things. This, my brethren, is most worthy of note, because it shows that these men, full of the Spirit, discerned that they had still the same God to worship, and that, as far as circumstances would let them, the natural way—the right way—of worshipping was that which their fathers had followed; so much so that they might even still retain—as long as it could be done without injury, with edification—those very ordinances p. 10which, in their binding, their sacramental character, by God’s declaration, belonged not to Christianity!

But God left it not to this pious, conservative feeling to maintain the dignity and splendour of His worship. As in the Mount He had given Moses a pattern and a law of all things that men should make and do for His worship in the Church on earth; so in Patmos to the beloved disciple, to him who had drunk in most deeply the spirit of Christ, to him who was to teach men more than any other prophet of the real, the abiding, the spiritual, the heavenly—to him, I say, God opened a door in heaven, and showed the things that must be hereafter, the worship that is to be celebrated and perpetuated in His fullest Presence; and lo! it was full of visible glories and ceremonial observances.

“Yes,” men say: “but surely that must be allowed to be figurative—to be a mere pictorial way of describing inward and invisible truths and feelings.” We are not so sure of that, brethren. Heaven must be a substantial and tangible place; because those who are to inhabit it will have bodies to rest in it, and eyes, and ears and other senses to find gratification in it. And if it is such a place, and is full of objects which affect the body, and which the body may employ, then I see not why much of what the Apostle saw in vision may not be a literal representation of what shall actually be. But concede that it is only an image, a pictorial representation, nevertheless it is God who has chosen these things to symbolize His perpetual worship; and are we best preparing ourselves for that worship—best rehearsing it, best professing it, best honouring Him, doing all things decently and in order, if we set aside in His worship all that He once enjoined in letter upon His early Church, all that He has used—figuratively, if you will—as fittest to represent to us His perfect worship in the Church triumphant, and, I suppose, to enlist our present interest, and to kindle a hearty intelligent desire for a full share in it hereafter?

But here, again, men object. They will concede that, perhaps, p. 11there may be something literal in this prophetical description; at any rate that it symbolizes faithfully and precisely the spiritual homage, the joy and adoration of souls which shall be in heaven. But they assert that it does not symbolize—that, in fact, it is in very contrast with all the state and feeling which belong to us poor wandering and afflicted pilgrims and prodigals on earth.

My brethren, if there were no other argument in favour of maintaining or of restoring where it has fallen into decay such a ritual as I am advocating, this one objection would furnish a most cogent reason for it,—a very necessity; for what does it show but that men have lost the truth which this ritual embodies and expresses—namely, that while indeed in the world they are still pilgrims, still prodigals distant from home, though sighing for and seeking that home, beholders of promises afar off, yet in the Church they are at home, having obtained the promises. The Church is the ark of salvation, which God has provided to keep us safe in the drowning of the world. It is the kingdom of heaven, whose King is now in the midst of it. It is the bosom of the Father whereon each penitent prodigal now rests accepted, the Everlasting arms whose felt embrace assures of present peace and joy. It is the wedding feast whereat all the friends of the King’s son are decked with glories and feasted with good things; nay, it is the Bride herself, adorned for the Bridegroom, the King’s daughter, all glorious and full of joy!

What present comfort in the troubles of this lower life, what cheering in despondency, what stimulus in toilsome effort do we not miss, my brethren, by not realizing that in the Church we are come unto Mount Zion, unto the heavenly Jerusalem—unto the very throne, into the very presence, within the enfolding arms of the God who has saved us, Who loves to fill us full of peace, and joy, and benediction now.

And, alas! what do we not in our blindness or misconception withhold from God—of that most reasonable, that greatly due, p. 12that loudly-demanded service—the perpetual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for the past mercies of our redemption, for our continual sustentation through the intercession of our Great High Priest, by the grace which He continually gives us; for the coming glory which, being promised, is sure on His part, and most certainly needs to be acknowledged with grateful, hearty, and adoring lives!

If, my brethren, it is the aim of “the ritual movement” to express all this grand truth, and to help men to live by it, then surely they are doing a great work who have originated and are carrying on the movement; and we are inconsiderately depriving ourselves of much that is helpful and edifying—that, I say, not withholding from God due and most acceptable worship—if we allow our prejudices to oppose the movement, so far as it is lawful, and either insist upon prescribing for ourselves a ritual, or labour to uphold and stereotype one that has no likeness in the Old and New Testament, in the Church of any age, in our own Book of Common Prayer.

Some of you may think, my brethren, that I have not chosen the fittest theme for Lent sermons. But recollect that this season is specially appointed for the self-discipline and growth in grace and in all godliness of those who are already in some sense religious; and then put it to yourselves whether the rooting out of you of stubborn prejudices, uncharitable and unworthy suspicions (with the many bitter, unchristian fruits that follow them), and that miserable spirit of formalism which delights in finding objections to a form and in refusing conformity, would not greatly help you to worship God in spirit and in truth.

There are dangers inherent in high ritual, it is being greatly abused, and of those who desire it many are wholly misconceiving its spirit and its use. To these I shall speak in turn, if God will, with the same affectionate boldness and desire to be faithful, which have influenced me in all that I have now said.

Meantime, beloved, remember that we are all brethren, saved p. 13from the same destruction, redeemed with the same precious blood, sanctified by the same spirit, called with the same calling, and to the same service, inheritors of the same heaven, worshippers of the same God. Strive not, then, with one another. Judge not, that ye be not judged. Do not exaggerate differences; try rather to lay aside differences. Seek each one what may edify others, and all what may honour God. Endeavour to take, each and all of you, your due part in common worship. Ask God’s Spirit to show you out of His own Word, illustrated by the testimony of His Church, what is common worship; and soon, if you do so, you will come to agree with and to join fervently and profitably in all that is really essential to the right adoration of our ever and all-glorious God.

p. 15SERMON II.

I endeavoured last Sunday to exhibit the principle and rationale of Christian ritualistic service. I reminded you that God had Himself prescribed for Israel an elaborate and splendid ritual, and that, moreover, He had shown in vision to the eagle-eyed Apostle, either what should actually be His worship in heaven, or what would, in figure, most fitly represent it to us, and stimulate us to an interest in it, and a desire and aim to prepare ourselves for a share in it. I further urged, that man’s natural feeling, rightly enlightened as to its relationship with God, would spontaneously have prompted him—has, in fact, prompted him—to make such a manifestation of inward devotion, such an external homage and worship, such an use in God’s honour of the things which the senses approve as costly, excellent, beautiful, edifying, joy-inspiring, joy-proclaiming, glorifying. Hence I deduced the rule, that—God being always quite the same, and man being always much the same—in the absence of any Divine reversal or modification; or, on man’s part, of any realised unsuitableness to altered times and circumstances; the same kind of ritual and service of body and offering of substance, must, to speak generally, be upheld and used by us as was actually imposed upon the Jews by God or by themselves, p. 16and has been foreshadowed, whether in figure or letter, of the Church triumphant in heaven. It had to be conceded that God has made a charge in the details by the absolute repeal of some service, and by modifications and substitutions affecting Christians generally; and, moreover, that the service of different nations by reason of their various temperaments, and their peculiar ways of estimating and using some of the things of which sense takes cognizance, must, to be natural, differ in particulars from somewhat of that which Eastern people actually did and offered. Making these concessions, I endeavoured to maintain that such ritual as is prescribed in the Jewish law and pictured in the Apocalypse is to be regarded as appointed or approved by God for Christians; that its observance is necessary to the due expression and offering of intelligent hearty and acceptable common worship, and that it is very serviceable to the worshippers in kindling, guiding and sustaining the spirit of true devotion.

Christendom at large has so judged, and has acted upon the judgment from the very first Whit-Sunday; using these things with the Jews as long as it was allowed to do so, and providing them for itself as soon as it had liberty and means of providing them. I need not occupy your time in proving this statement. All of you probably are aware that at least as soon as the Roman Emperors gave their protection and encouragement to the Christian Church, and ever since then, in east or west, in north or south (till some 300 years ago, when the rule began to be departed from in practice by the Anglican branch), the Scriptural rule and pattern have been followed. Everywhere, when possible, men have erected stately and costly Houses of Prayer; they have adorned them with all the skill which art could exercise; they have furnished them with all the magnificence that the worshippers could afford; they have observed in them a grand and elaborate ritual, whose outline, whose main features are to be found in the Pentateuch and the Apocalypse. They have employed the same symbols and furniture; the lamps p. 17or lights representing the Divine presence; the altar of memorial sacrifice; the holy incense, originally compounded after God’s own proscription and significant of that meritorious intercession of our Great High Priest which alone makes acceptable and carries up into heaven our poor and unworthy service on earth; the white albs or surplices of the officiating ministers—the outward sign of the purity and righteousness which the worshippers, whose leaders these ministers are, should possess; the splendid robe of the Celebrant, who is the representative, in all his acts of intercession, absolution, consecration, oblation, benediction, of our great and glorified High Priest. Read Church history from the beginning, and where do you find (save among insignificant sects) anything different from this? Go into any place of worship (out of England) belonging to the body Catholic, whether of the east or west, and though it will possibly be among many additions, many perversions from their original purpose, many corruptions, and, alas! that it must be owned, often among many abominations, you will still be able to discern all the leading features of the same one rule and pattern of Divine worship.

I have said “out of England.” You know that this would not be the case in England or in English dependencies. Many of you rejoice in the difference; you think you can give a good account of it; you are able to justify its origin; you are disposed to maintain, if you can, its continuance. “The Reformation did away with all that.”

The Reformation did away with all that! Is it possible that worshippers of Jehovah, men who owe all their peace, their privileges and blessings to their membership of Christ’s Church, can for a moment allow and do not rather with horror shout down the fearful assertion, that their community has abolished for itself the ritual of Scripture, and has cut itself off from all the Church that went before it, and all that lies around it? That is what the statement “The Reformation has changed all this,” p. 18implies! Which of you my brethren would not repudiate and thrust it away thus nakedly exhibited? Which of you would not feel that if it were true the Reformation was a curse, and not a blessing, and that no effort must be spared to undo it? Which of you would not sink to the earth beneath what would then be the righteous taunt of the Romanist:—that we have no covenanted part or lot with Christ’s Church?

Do not start away from such a statement of the case. I am not misrepresenting the argument. I am not exaggerating minor matters. I am not denying, I freely own and stoutly maintain, that each branch of the Church has authority and power to change and change again and again many of her rites and ceremonies—the details, perhaps, of every one of them—so long as all be done in accordance with God’s word: above all I am not foolishly alleging that altar lights, or incense, or chasuble, or any such thing is of such importance as to make or unmake a Church, or is really necessary in the Christian Church at all. I have mentioned these things only as particular illustrations of a system of Ritualistic Service, much of which was taught us by God, and which has been adopted by the universal Church and used everywhere and in all ages. And I say that if the Reformers had deliberately rejected all God’s pattern and all Christendom’s use, and had prescribed for themselves and for us things altogether not only different but opposite, then they would have inflicted a curse upon us, and it would be our bounden duty to repudiate them and to undo their work.

I have spoken thus plainly and openly in the earnest desire to awaken, to a sense of what they are countenancing, those who carelessly, or it may be deliberately, out of honest and zealous prejudice, represent the Reformation as having made all things new. If once men can be brought to feel that it would have been wrong to make all things new, they will be at pains to inquire with all anxiety whether they have not misconceived the Reformation, and so inquiring, they will come to see what it really p. 19did or aimed at, and hence to believe that the Ritual movement of the present day—I am not, of course, speaking of the extravagancies and eccentricities of individuals—so far from ignoring, contravening, and overturning the principles of the Reformation, is the very carrying of them out.

Were I not convinced that it is so, God forbid that I should stand here as a vindicator of the movement. For I am persuaded that the Reformation was most righteous and necessary, and that God Himself specially wrought it for us. However gently we should always speak in controversy, however charitably we should think of and construe the acts and motives of others, we must not hide from ourselves that the unreformed Church of this country, in the sixteenth century, was in a very corrupt and ungodly state. The form, indeed, of all the essentials of Christianity was maintained, but it was overlaid by man’s idle, or even false traditions and man’s corrupt practices. The power of the priesthood was abused; the word of God was withheld from the people; the Holy Eucharist was mutilated and perverted from the purposes of its institution; in worship, the creature was set side by side with the Creator, if not exalted above Him; the substitution of form for spirit and substance, and in many cases of a wrong form, too, was generally sanctioned and encouraged. From all this the Reformers were stirred to rescue us, and by the grace of God they did it. But theirs was no hot-headed indiscriminate work. They laboured, with all the calmness that men in their trying circumstances could command, to distinguish between right and wrong. They wished to retain all that seemed edifying, or even merely harmless, though it were of recent growth. They sought to restore all things to the primitive rule and pattern. They would have counted it sin to have rejected anything that God had suggested to His Church or that the Church in former ages had adopted. Let any one acquaint himself with the doctrine, ritual, and practice of the unreformed Church, and then compare with them the first Prayer Book p. 20of Edward VI., and he will find that there is no unnecessary deviation from them; that there is a strict maintenance of everything that it was possible to retain without fostering error or obstructing Christian edification; that the Reformers even went beyond, and revived and enforced what had been disused and forgotten—if it had early sanction—leaving nothing unrestored that had primitive authority, save only the godly discipline of Penance; and how they thought of that, how they wished to restore it, how they hoped that the time would come when it would be restored, let the Commination Office testify!

This was the principle of the Reformation. And how was it carried out in the matter of ritual? Why! everything that was Scriptural or primitive, or, though recent, edifying, was retained. There were the same Churches, the same altars, the same symbols and furniture, the same vestments. Even the same services and the same ways of offering them were preserved; only they were cleansed from corruptions, divested of things doubtful or unedifying, simplified by making prayers and lections more continuous, and by discountenancing those minutiæ of bodily worship—numerous bowings, genuflections, and the like—which, however natural they may have been to the foreign Priests who had ministered at our altars, however useful to the people when, by reason of all being performed in an unknown and muttered tongue, much dumb show and bell ringing were necessary, were distracting to true worship by their multiplicity, and were unnecessary in an audible and intelligible service.

I do not say that everything which this ritual movement seeks to restore is distinctly by name approved and retained by our Reformers; but in its general features, in almost all its items, in the kind of worship and confession of faith at which it aims, I am sure that it has their sanction and is the taking up of their work.

How is it that this ritual has never been the generally used ritual of the Reformed Church? Why should it now be revived?—p. 21these are questions which, if God will, I will answer in detail in my next sermon.

Meantime, my brethren, strive to make profitable and personal use of what has been said, by carefully informing yourselves as to the real state of the case; by trying to root out of you prejudices, and to keep yourselves from uncharitable suspicions of ritualists and rash and profane speech about ritual; by cultivating respect for the motives of those who, in their labour to be loyal to the Church of the Reformers and useful to you, have come under so much obloquy; by praying earnestly that those in authority may have wisdom given them rightly to deliberate and determine in this matter, and that those under authority may have grace to render all due submission: that each and all of us may be animated by the pure desire to enforce and observe the Apostolic rule, “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

p. 22SERMON III.

By the good Providence of God, the Reformation was effected in this country with the sanction, under the immediate direction of the highest authorities in Church and State; by men of sound faith, sober judgment, and calm temperament; on the righteous principle of maintaining as good and necessary whatever of doctrine or practice had universally prevailed among Christians, and of not differing unnecessarily, even in non-essentials, from the mediæval Church.

The conservative and Catholic feeling which animated the Anglican Reformers very soon, however, came into conflict with a radical and mere Protestant spirit. I desire not to repudiate “Protestantism” as an attribute of the Anglican Church. Our Reformers did most stoutly protest—by speech, by deed, by enactment, by suffering—against prevailing corruptions and superstitions; specially they protested against the tyrannical assumption of universal dominion by the Bishop of Rome, and the capricious and lawless issuing by him of ecclesiastical prohibitions and indulgences.

But their Protestantism only asserted what they were not; and certainly they never prided themselves in or contented themselves with the mere assertion of the negative and the diverse. p. 23In that they put away what was wrong, or corrupt, or unedifying or distracting or burthensome, they were Protestant; but in their maintenance of the one faith in its integrity and the due proportion of its several parts, in their strict adherence to the principle which had ever guided the service and ritual of Christ’s Church, they were true Catholics—much more worthy of the name than those who henceforth claimed the exclusive right to it.

But growing up all around them, and fostered and strengthened by importations from the Continent, (where the Reformation had unhappily been brought about in a very different spirit, and was in fact almost another thing,—not the reforming of the Church but the abandoning of it) was a revolutionary and indiscriminate Protestantism which sought to destroy, root and branch, whatever was old, and was intolerant even of the most harmless conformity to the Church against which it was a reaction.

Let us speak with all charity and fair allowance of those earnest and holy men. Almost all the doctrines of the faith had been perverted or leavened with corruption; almost all the ordinances and ceremonies were associated with gross abuses. In the intensity of their awakened feeling against these things, it was natural that many among our own people, unable to distinguish between the truth and the corruption, the use and the abuse, should think that their rulers had not gone far enough in the way of change; while the foreign Protestants, left to act as individuals, driven to form communities of their own (as their Church would not reform itself) unguided by Catholic influence, directed by no intelligent principle (save that which would anyhow get rid of false traditions and gross abuses) in the construction of their creed and the ordering of their services, determined, as the easiest and most congenial course, to reject the whole system from which they had come out, and to make all things new for themselves.

p. 24What wonder that such men were dissatisfied with the First Prayer Book of Edward VI., that they regarded it as a base compromise with Rome, that they were horrified by the mention in it of “priests, altars and sacrifices,” that they scorned as “badges and rags of popery” the vestments which it prescribed; that they were loud and urgent in demanding its immediate revision! Not only had they no sympathy with, they had no comprehension, no idea of the principle on which its compilers had acted. Their notion was that the only true and pure religion was such an one as differed in toto from what they had repudiated. They had been misled by some traditions; therefore they would henceforth recognise no traditions. The word of God had hitherto been withheld from them: therefore now that they were able to possess it, they would handle it as freely as they pleased. The priests had domineered over them: henceforth they would have no priests. Sacrifices had been offered amiss; they therefore abhorred all sacrifices! Such were the feelings with which our Reformers had at once to deal. Should it be a matter of much surprise or reprehension that they dealt very indulgently with them, that they re-cast the service which was objected to as “so like the mass,” that they dealt expressions which were injuriously misunderstood, that individual Bishops ordered the removal of the altar lights, that the celebrant was required to wear a surplice only? Recollect: it was a time of violent re-action; moderation was interpreted as “compromise;” names, ceremonies, and vestments represented to Protestant minds not the things to which they really belonged, but the abuses which had so long been associated with them. In vain was it argued that the abuse does not take away the use. In vain was it protested that the Book of Common Prayer, as it stood, contained nothing that was contrary to the word of God or to the teaching of the primitive Church. In vain was it maintained that the Christian Church has and must have an altar, a priesthood, a continual sacrifice to offer; that, p. 25while it is most true that Christ’s one sacrifice was once offered for ever, and cannot be repeated, and that He is such a priest as knows no equal, no successor, no partner, as alone in fact answers to the name of priest; still, as the Jewish Church had its prophetic memorials of His sacrifice—in its slaying and offering of bulls, and goats, and lambs—and its priesthood representing in the various acts of its office what Christ would do—so have we, and by His own command, a historical memorial of His sacrifice: “This do in remembrance of me.” “As oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord’s death till He come”—and must have a so-called priesthood, performing sacerdotal acts as His representatives. In vain I say was all this urged. Doubtless many of the dissentients would have readily admitted much of it if they had calmly considered it, if they could have believed that a memorial sacrifice and a representative priesthood were what the Reformers claimed to retain. But they could not be persuaded to listen; they could not calm themselves sufficiently to listen; the spirit burned within them to root out and destroy popery; and every theological term, every religious ceremony, every ornament or vestment that had been used by papists, was regarded as of the very essence of popery itself! I believe that the reformers were justified in making temporary concession to this state of feeling, particularly in modifying ritual and ornament, which could only be useful so long as they were edifying, which were in fact doing harm to the Church’s cause and to individual souls while they were taken as representing and recommending the very things which had been repudiated. They doubtless justified themselves by considering that their second Prayer Book still contained the doctrines which the offending rites and vestments were meant to adorn; they hoped that men might come to understand and hold those doctrines when their prejudices were disarmed; at any rate they feared, lest, by a stubborn maintenance or violent enforcement at that critical time of anything not really essential, they should p. 26endanger the best interests of the Church; or even provoke and perpetuate among us a mere Protestant reformation. It seemed well then that they should make such concessions as the second Prayer Book of Edward VI contained. You know what followed; how within a year popery was established under Queen Mary, and how both Churchmen and Protestants had to flee the land and seek a home among German or Swiss reformers; or, if they remained, were savagely persecuted to the death. It might have been expected that the fact of Churchmen being treated as capital offenders against Rome would have disarmed the prejudices against them and their ritual which had hitherto existed, or at least that common misfortunes would have begotten common interests and sympathies and so have led to a truer appreciation of one another. This was not exactly what resulted. The Protestants retained and even strengthened their prejudices: the Churchmen who had lived in exile among them first of all fell in with their habits, their modes of worship, and their disuse of all vestments—or the substitution for them of a black gown—and presently they also contracted their prejudices. Accordingly when, soon after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, the old law about vestments was re-enacted, it remained except in a few solitary cases a dead letter; men either hated such things, or they were too indifferent to the way of performing divine service to trouble themselves to wear them; or, if they had right notions and right feelings about them, they were too poor to provide them for themselves; and their parishioners did not care, perhaps objected, to provide them. I cannot but believe that it was the knowledge of this fact—the adaptation of law to necessity—which led to the framing in 1603 of that Canon, (so often quoted of late) which requires parochial ministers to wear the surplice only in their ministrations, but directs that a cope shall be worn by the celebrant in cathedrals. The Convocation, it would seem to me, knowing how generally the vestments had been destroyed, or rapaciously seized for the sake of the gold and precious stones p. 27that adorned them, and how difficult it would be for the clergy generally to provide them afresh, appointed—what had long been the practice, and could in fact quote something like authority for itself in the Royal advertisements—that as a minimum of vestment in ordinary churches a surplice should be worn, but in cathedrals, whose endowments could provide it, the most costly and splendid of all vestments—the cope—should be retained. Surely it could never have been intended to insist that there should be a difference between the cathedrals and the parish churches of the same communion; far less to forbid as superstitious in the latter, what is positively enjoined in the former! But if it were so, the Canons, though in their spirit a rule to the Clergy and faithful laity, have no force by the law of this realm, and moreover they were almost immediately followed by a revised Prayer Book, which contains the rubric ordering all the ornaments which were in use in the second year of Edward VI. While at the very last revision of the Prayer Book, nearly sixty years afterwards, when our Church was only just lifting her head above the politico-religious revolution which had so nearly overwhelmed her, when so many reasons cogently pressed her to eliminate from her Book of Common Prayer all that was unnecessary, all that was questionable, all that she did not use or intend to use; when the Puritans put their finger on this very rubric, and required that it should be left out—for if it were retained it might bring back copes, albs and such like;—it was nevertheless deliberately determined that the rubric, made by verbal alteration more explicit than it had been before, should continue to be the written rule of our Church! And, brethren, it is still the written rule, confirmed by Convocation, enjoined by the Act of Uniformity.

It is at length very generally being admitted that this is so; that the ritualists have the written law on their side for much of their practice: but then it is urged that precedent as to the observance of that law is utterly wanting, that in fact there has p. 28been a general consent of bishops and parochial clergy (for 300 years) that the law was not to be observed. I have shown you my brethren why it could not be observed, why it had to be repealed in Edward VI.’s time. If you know anything of the Marian persecution, and the bitter animosity against suspected Romanism which it naturally begat; of Puritanical infatuation and its superstitious horror at the sight of a surplice, its general disuse of the Holy Ordinance to which “high-ritual” and glorious vestments peculiarly belong, its perversity in wearing black, simply because others wore white, in fasting (as on Christmas day) when others were feasting; if you know anything of the worldliness, the apathy, the deadness to Evangelical truth, the utter ignorance of it or utter indifference to it, which characterized the last century and the early part of this—then you will surely be able to explain to yourselves, why the Rubric in question has not been generally observed, you will be surprised to find that any one has at any time observed it.

I could easily show that it has been, here and there, in part observed, almost to our own time; that it was designed by those who first inserted it in the Prayer Book, by those who restored it, and by those who deliberately confirmed and continued it, to be actually used, as soon as circumstances would allow. (Surely it is vain to argue on the other side, in the face of the repeated discussions about it, and the persistent maintenance of it; in the face, too, of the fact, that those, by whom it was defended and preserved at the last revision, were among the men who have most distinctly taught the doctrines which it embodies!) But were it otherwise; were they one and all, from first to last, in their own private judgments and by consent among themselves, against its actual use, or at any rate deliberately acquiescent in its disuse, are we to be bound by their personal tastes and their private judgments, so as to yield up what at least they have preserved and solemnly handed on to us, what we have seen to have such full Scriptural sanction, so to harmonize with p. 29the dictates of true Catholic devotion, so to express in act, as, thank God! our Liturgy does many times in word, that we believe and confess that we have no way of access to God but through the Veil which Christ has consecrated for us, even His own flesh; that He is our only Sacrifice and the only sustaining Food of our souls; that He condescends ever to plead for us that Sacrifice and to give to us that Food; that on the altar He makes for us, by the hands of His representative, the Memorial of that Sacrifice and by the same hands gives us of the heavenly Food—He Himself Priest and Victim both? This is the great, the glorious, the soul-thrilling truth which “high ritual” is intended to picture to the eye, and so to bring home to the mind and heart; nor only nor chiefly this, but rather to express it in worship,—in intelligent, open, adoring, thanksgiving, splendid worship, to the Lamb that was slain, that sitteth upon the Throne!

If, my brethren, we believe this to be the rationale of such “high-ritual” as our Church by rubric or service sanctions, then how can we be patient under its non-observance, unless we feel ourselves to be hampered, like our ancestors, by surrounding prejudices and perversities?

Now of course there are prejudices and perversities still existing and many of them. There are men who for the love of opposition resist and cry down ritualists. There are others, who in their inmost soul are smitten with a great fear, lest they should be beguiled of their reward in Christ, and turned into formalists and idolaters! It was to be expected that each of these classes would strenuously oppose itself to the ritual movement and even that, though they really have little in common, they would readily make common cause against ritualists. And were it not so, did neither of them show any outward sign of resistance, misconception, dislike, distrust or contempt; yet the righteous dread of causing weak brethren to offend, of shaking their confidence in those who should be their p. 30spiritual guides, of alienating their affections from their Church and their Prayer Book and of driving them into schism, would make all wise and loving reformers very cautious and slow to introduce even the most desirable changes and to revive the most important practices, very painstaking in removing prejudices and enlightening ignorance, very patient to wait long, if need be, for what they themselves so much appreciated and so eagerly desired.

Nevertheless it is easy to see that there has never been a time since the Reformation when men have been so able as they are now to discriminate between what is Catholic and what is Roman, when they could venture to confess that they had made the discrimination, yes and to act upon it without inevitably leading themselves or others back into the bondage from which we have been delivered. Wherever the experiment has been fairly tried it has thoroughly succeeded: it is only those who have not tried it who doubt of, or deny the hope of its success.

And as there never has been a time when the ritual movement could be so easily effected, so has there never been a time when it was so loudly called for as it is now; first, by so many of the worshippers, who have come to appreciate beautiful churches, musical services, frequent celebrations, devout ceremonies and symbolizing acts and ornaments,—and so to crave the perfect development of the system to which these things belong; next, by the circumstances around us, the bold denial—alas! that it must be said even by ministers of the church—of the precious Sacrifice and alone-availing Intercession of the Incarnate God, which this ritual in its every part and phase asserts and exhibits; next, by the anxious looking towards us of Eastern and Western Christians, yearning for the re-union of Christendom, expecting that somehow the re-union is to be brought about by us; yet hesitating to give themselves into our hands, because they see not in us the due recognition of the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, the due rendering of objective worship to God.

p. 31I have endeavoured my brethren in these sermons to set before you in the very simplest way such a statement of the case as may disarm prejudices, and predispose to right thoughts about ritual and earnest endeavours to use it duly where it is offered you.

It remains to say a few words to those whom at the outset I called “hurriers along;” to those who have gone with the movement without considering whither it was carrying them, or what would be the effect on others who are being left behind; to those who in their conformity to “high-ritual” are rather indulging their taste, than exercising their judgment, or are regarding as the soul of worship, that which is but the accessory, the expression, the body and clothing of worship. As I have warned you before, there are great and peculiar dangers inherent in “high-ritual;” its abuse became a snare to the Jews and led them into formalism and idolatry, even when they had inspired prophets and the very audible voice of God to teach them; it became a like snare to our forefathers, from which they escaped only by giving up the use as well as the abuse; it is a snare now to millions of eastern and western Christians; yes, and it is evidently a snare, a very dangerous snare to many of yourselves. Exaggerated in importance, regarded as an end instead of a means, followed out into very minute detail,—its forms and expressions unduly repeated and multiplied—it obscures the very truths which it was meant to exhibit; it distracts the attention which it should fix; it begets formalism, it mocks God with a worship which is not spiritual and true, and therefore is no worship at all; it leads its votaries to a pitiable self-ostentation, which confirms in their prejudices the anti-ritualists, which retards the restorers of ritual (who fear to give looser reins to those who are already running wild), yea and well-nigh frightens them, in their concern for souls, out of the continued observance of what they have already restored!

p. 32My dear brethren, this is sober, necessary warning. I pray you try to receive it and to regulate your worship by it. Take heed lest, being cumbered about many things you neglect the one thing needful; lest, following right observances in a wrong spirit you incur the Pharisees’ condemnation; lest, by an indiscriminate performance of all the bowings, genuflections, and crossings invented in mediæval or modern times, you destroy the emphatic teaching of pure and dignified Catholic ceremonial; lest indulging your own fancies and carrying out your own ritual, in the face of that which the responsible officers of the congregation by precept and example enjoin, you offend grievously and culpably against the apostolic precept: “Let all things be done decently and in order.”

FOOTNOTES.

[13] Reprinted, by permission, from ‘Hymns and other Poems,’ by W. Bright, M.A. (Rivingtons).

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ritual Movement

THE
RITUAL MOVEMENT.

p. 3SERMON I.

p. 15SERMON II.

p. 22SERMON III.

FOOTNOTES.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ritual Movement

THE RITUAL MOVEMENT.

p. 3SERMON I.

p. 15SERMON II.

p. 22SERMON III.

FOOTNOTES.

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THE
RITUAL MOVEMENT.