Service. his pamphlet just published, entitled Rubrical Modification not Liturgical Change, Dr. Vaughan places before us various plans which have found advocates, only to reject them, till he comes to the plan which he himself commends. In this way after maintaining that "a Christian burial service must express the hopes of a Christian concerning the dead," with much force and weight, he deals thus with the expedients which have been devised as a remedy for difficulties in a service framed on this principle. He says "Shall a clergyman be left to his own discretion in the use or refusal of the authorised service?" He answers, No! "Shall an attempt be made to restore discipline?" He answers, No! save the discipline of Christian opinion. "Shall, then, the language of the Burial Service be altered for all?" He answers, No! "Shall the words of individual application be omitted altogether?" He answers, No! "Shall the use of the existing service be restricted to communicants?" He answers, No! He asks, what, then, shall be done? and he advocates a modification of the rubric, after, he tells us, the pattern of the second rubric prefixed to the Office for the Holy Communion; that is to say, he would introduce into the rubric at the beginning of the Burial Office three new classes of persons to whom Christian burial may be refused by the Church, besides the three therein mentioned-viz., the unbaptised; those who have laid violent hands upon themselves; and those who are excommunicate. And these three additional classes are (1) those who have died in the commission of a crime; or (2) in the professed avowal of unbelief; or (3) who have been open and notorious sinners, dying impenitent. And he would permit in these cases the clergyman called upon to bury, to settle whether the individual in question came under one or other of these heads, and so to refuse the use of the Office, with the obligation, however, that he shall within fourteen days give an account of the matter to the Ordinary. And he adds "And the approval of the Ordinary shall suffice to protect the minister from any proceeding by law in consequence of such refusal." Sir, I venture to affirm, over and above the enormous insuperable mischiefs of these last provisoes, that there is an inherent false principle of classification in the proposed three additional classes to which burial may be refused. Let it be observed, the principle of the rubric as it stands is this-that the Office is not to be denied to those who are in the body of Christ, the Church. The unbaptised are not to be permitted its use, because they have never entered that body; those who lay violent hands upon themselves are not, because they have ever been held to cut themselves off from it; the excommunicate are not, because they have been by due authority of the Church rightly cut off from it. But here you have three new classes of persons to be liable to the refusal, who, whatever may be their real state before God, are yet not cut off from the body of Christ by any sentence; and these in a connection and circumstance very different from that in which such persons are debarred, it may be, from Communion, because therein, being alive, and a trial allowed them, they can be heard in their own defence, dispute the matter for themselves, and set it right for another time. Observe, too, further, how vague and un Service. J certain would these grounds of refusal become in practice under the discretion of individual clergymen and Bishops. Why, sir, by some it might be considered the dying in the commission of a crime if a man happened to die in a theatre, a ballroom, or on a racecourse. Or, if the word crime be supposed to be taken in a more strict sense, and to mean only that which is cognisable by law as an offence, then this plan would wholly fail to meet the cases for which it ought to provide, if you are to have by these means a pure Church, for how could it reach to such things as covetousness or envy, or many other mortal sins before God? Observe, too, the still greater difficulty to be found in questions as to "avowal of unbelief." Unbelief rears its head fearfully among us in many ways; but how would it have here to be dealt with? Suppose the author of some infidel work, inculcating or defending this or that point against God's truth and revelation, to die in the parish of a clergyman feeling very strongly on such matters. He would be liable to be refused the Burial Office on this account. Say it were so, and the appeal for protection to the clergyman made to the Bishop. What a fearful complication would arise! The Bishop might be one who had, perhaps, himself tried to deal with such an offender. He might have failed to get a conviction against him. But now he must either, in determining to shield or not to shield the clergyman who had refused the service-either, I say, sir, seem to desert one who is trying to fight the very same battle which he himself is so anxious to wage against infidelity, or he must appear to join in a persecution of a man dead whom he had failed to convict when alive. Again, I need not surely go into the difficulties involved in making any clergyman, or all the clergy, judges of what is open and notorious evil-living, and as to when the man so living dies impenitent. But let it be observed most carefully, further, that however there may be some check placed upon the clergyman by his having to render an account to the Ordinary, there is—so far as the plan sketched in Dr. Vaughan's pamphlet goes-not the slightest check placed upon the Bishop. He is to be able, utterly irresponsibly as it appears, to whitewash or protect the clergyman by the mere act of his own approval of what has been done by him. Sir, I think I need not pursue this matter further. I trust I may assume that the house generally will be of the mind that whatever plans may be advocated as adverse to the recommendations of the report which I am supporting, yet at least this method is among the most objectionable which has ever been brought forward. Neither is it overlooked in the report. I will not quote the passage; but any one who will turn to page 11, will, I think, find evidence that its principle did not escape the consideration of the committee. I come now, sir, to the wider view of which I spoke as that upon which the whole tone and structure of the Burial Office is, in my mind, to be sustained. If I am asked why I desire to have no change made in it-why I am anxious not to substitute general terms for particular-plural words for singular, by which individual application may be avoided-I answer, because I am taught to believe in the communion of saints." I recognise the individual application as witnessing to this truth, in every one who, having been Service. admitted into the Body of Christ-knit together in that mystical union-has not been cut off from it. It is as such, as still a part of the Body of Christ, which is His Church, that I conceive such have the claim to the use of the Office, and that by its use we thus testify both to their place in it and to our "judging nothing before the time." I do not, indeed, mean or admit what the Archdeacon of Stafford appears to take as the only sense of certain passages in the Office, that we in them proclaim our certainty of the salvation of each person over whom we use it. I claim the individual application; but I say this application is one of hope only, and not of certainty; and over and above other reasons already touched upon for such view and conviction, I think there is a passage (pp. 5 and 6 of the report), which, from the consideration of the persons for whom the Office was unquestionably designed-viz., the whole body of the communicants of the country, places this in a very true and strong light. I cannot believe that any men, even of ordinary sanity, to say nothing of persons of theological knowledge or understanding, could draw up an Office to be used for such a body of persons, and mean to declare their conviction of the salvation of them all, “nor, therefore," as the report expresses it, "seeing that the same words are applied to all, their certainty concerning any." Even further, sir, as to this individual application, let us note well how the principle runs through the structure of the whole Prayer-book, and all our Offices. Take the Baptismal Service-it is, it must be, personal and individual. So with Confirmation; it is so drawn up; it is so intended to be used to each, "Defend, O Lord, this Thy child;" however, in the difficulties occasioned by the disproportion of the numbers of the Episcopate to the population, this requirement is often in practice set aside. In the other Offices we find the same thing. The Marriage Service; the Office for the Holy Communion, where the direction of the Church is plain and distinct, that the words on delivering the bread and wine are to be said individually, however irregularly some may deviate from this rule, and, as it is said, for the very purpose of refusing to recognise the individual application. But, sir, observe the Church directs this, even though of course she is aware that some communicants may be unworthy. Again, look to the Visitation of the Sick-in all, the same principle of the individual being recognised as one of the mystical body of Christ is preserved and insisted upon. Will it be said-Yes! for in these cases we cannot know the man is lost, has died impenitent? Oh! I fear, sir, here is the evil and the mischief. We are too prying and anxious to judge before the time as to the dead. And this puts us upon seeking changes to suit our own unjustifiable fancies or feelings. And here, sir, let me remark that this, I believe, was what was in the mind of the great and learned prelate the Bishop of Exeter (which, if I mistake not, was the subject yesterday of some criticism from Mr. Kennaway), when the Bishop said that the changes proposed were designed to meet some speculative theory. Mr. Kennaway, I think, took exception to this, saying the difficulties were eminently practical. So they may be, sir, in one view, but in another they are of a kind which admits of being described Service. S as resting upon a speculative theory-the theory that we are inthis world to divide the wheat from the tares, and to settle who are lost and who are saved. And to something of this kind, if I may venture to interpret his words, it seems to me the Bishop of Exeter alluded in the expression which Mr. Kennaway thought open to exception. I say, then, that it is because we are not to attempt to put out of the communion of saints him who, having been admitted to it, has not been cut off from it, that I believe, if we were now drawing up a Burial Office, we ought to draw it up as our present Office is drawn up-on the principle of a particular, not a general application, as recognising each individual so placed as one in that Body of Christ, and, as such, a fitting subject for the expression of hope. It is true, even with general terms used, you individually may mentally refer them at your own will to the person buried; you may give him, of your own judgment and pleasure, a place in the communion of saints; but I affirm that if you take out the particular words-the words allowing and awarding him this place in the service itself-then the Church, as such, is bearing no witness to his position, and therefore, in fact, would be using a service which, so far, would or might be used even at the funeral of a heathen, all direct reference to the individual's share in the covenant of mercy being lost in the general phraseology. Sir, I am sorry that I have not quite finished, but I feel I should leave the justification of the report as against the amendment moved very imperfect if I did not touch upon the subject of discipline. I will, however, be very brief upon it, and merely refer to it in its principle, not in its detail. Sir, I conceive that the restoration of discipline as the thing to be aimed at and laboured for among us is not merely the logical sequence of the whole earlier portion of this report, but is indeed the only right and righteous conclusion to its reasoning. I believe this recommendation is felt by some to be the weak point of our report, whereas I feel that it is a matter which we have no possible right to despair of, that some better discipline may be restored in the Church among us. We are quite aware that such restoration must be gentle and must be gradual. The report itself does not overlook or deny this. It expressly states it. At p. 12 I find it said That it is no sound objection to the attempt to restore the discipline of the Church, that any such restoration must be, even for a length of time, of narrow and limited application. Again, it is not overlooked that such remedy will not reach to all cases. Thus it is confessed: Even in the most complete state of a Church's discipline, those actually brought under spiritual censure would not be all those who lead ungodly lives. Again, in the last paragraph of the whole report I find it said In recommending. . . . . restoration of spiritual discipline, your committee are persuaded that any such restoration must be gradual-administered at no private discretion, but by competent tribunals, and according to fixed laws, and (they add) they cherish the hope that when the bearings of this question are clearly understood, the lay members of the Church will cordially co-operate in such restoration, as conducing to the best interests, temporal and spiritual, of the people, to the glory of Almighty God, and the advancement of His truth. Service. In such sense then, by such mode, and to such ends, I believe it is our absolute duty not to despair of the revived discipline in the Church, and to labour for it. And for such reasons, however weakly here given, I would desire, sir, that the recommendations of this report may be accepted by this house, whilst I would implore the house and every member of it to look at the broad principles involved, and rather to support and sustain them than to fritter away their energies in various questions, different plans, and endless proposals, which, whilst they may please or relieve one or two here or there, can bring together no real union even among the advocates of change, one desiring one thing and another another, whilst they make a beginning in that downward course of which no one can see the end. CANON WORDSWORTH-I cannot say that, had the thing been res integra, I should have been prepared to assert that a service in the precise words of our Burial Office was the very best that could be adopted. But we are not in the position of having to form for ourselves a burial service, therefore the matter would be placed upon an erroneous issue if we said the Office in the Prayer-book was theoretically and speculatively the very best in all respects that could be devised. Accepting, then, the service as it stands in the Prayerbook, it is clear that whatever step we take must be attended with difficulty. And as this is a large subject, I would ask the house to consider whether we have not to deal with precisely the same difficulties here as in the Bible? There are many things in the Authorised Version of the Bible we might wish to amend-many difficulties as to the accuracy of the translation of certain words and passages, which, if we had to make a new version entirely, we should endeavour to avoid. But having the Prayer-book and the Bible, and not being called upon to frame a new liturgy, to make a new translation of the Holy Scriptures, but simply to deal with a particular service with a view to the removal of certain alleged difficulties, the question is what course upon the whole will effect the greatest good with the least amount of evil? I believe the best course would be to leave the Office as it is-not to say that it is the best possible Office that can be framed, but that it is the best we can, under present circumstances, possess. Looking, then, at the question in all its bearings, and there being two alternatives to choose from-the one the restoration of discipline, the other a change in the service or in the rubrics which would render it necessary to go to Parliament and to get some change made in the Act of Uniformity-I have no hesitation in accepting the former. It would be most unfortunate for us to confess in this room that Church discipline was a thing impossible. In dealing with this subject we must not fall back upon personal experiences, or consider it merely as incumbents of particular parishes, but endeavour to deal with it as ministers of the Church Catholic of England. And looking at it in this broad view it would be most unfortunate for us to agree to an alteration of the service upon the ground that Church discipline has been abandoned by the Church of England for ever. Church discipline is no mere human |