in this Church, such as can be justly cited in defence of any departure from the express law of this Church, its liturgy, its discipline, rites, and usages;' and further, that no strange or foreign usages should be introduced or sanctioned by the private judgment of any member or members of this Church, clerical or lay;' and furthermore, that in the censures of that Declaration it was the intention of the signers to include all departures from the laws, rubrics, and settled order of this Church.' That a surpliced processional singing at the opening of Morning Prayer is a departure from 'the settled order of this Church,' it is impossible to deny, unless some other meaning be found to the words settled order' than is known to us. "This is no matter of mere technical importance. Our people have been trained and habituated, in the venerable usages of their Church, to a certain uniform, well regulated, dignified, grave and solemn method of commencing the public worship of God, as well as to seeing the garment appropriated to the Clergy when ministering in the congregation, confined to the Clergy; and they are offended, and reasonably offended, in their most sacred associations, and painfully disturbed in their most solemn devotions, by witnessing the novelties of which we have been speaking.

"The Address of the twenty-four Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England, to which I have before referred, lays down certain principles which, in their view, should limit changes in ritual matters not otherwise regulated. One is, that any change which suggests the fear of still further alterations is most injurious.' The principle is wise, whencesoever it come. That particular change of which we have been speaking, comes under its application. It does decidedly prepare the way for further changes, as is evidenced in the particular case before us, which began with processional singing at the opening of divine service. In a very short time it has grown to processional singing at the termination of divine service. It began with the request to the congregation to rise as the procession enters, and continue standing till it reaches the chancel. It has now the additional expectation that the congregation will stand till the procession, in its going out, singing as it goes, shall have reached the door. Well, a plain old-fashioned Episcopalian may reasonably ask, What next? If so much already, how much more? If individual discretion has made such a breach already in the defensive usages and order of our worship, what is to hinder its going a great deal further among us in this Diocese, just as we know such beginnings have increased in some other dioceses of our American Church, and in certain parts of the Church of England, bringing in that whole retinue of ritualistic restoration of Romish superstitions, which have so deformed and dishonoured the worship of our Church, that in certain places our venerable Liturgy can hardly be recognized in the foppish masquerade with which it is accompanied ?

"In the Report of a Committee of the Archiepiscopal Province of Canterbury, on Ritualism, in 1866, the principle is laid down, as true for us as for them, that every congregation of Christ's flock, being in itself a member of the general congregation, is bound to consider not only what may be most edifying to itself, but what

may be most conducive to the peace and influence of the whole National Church.' We are not Congregationalists. It is not, even in things left in a measure unregulated, the right of any one congregation to consider exclusively what will please itself. The feelings and usages and habits of their brethren in the whole communion have a right to be considered, before any serious innovation is made in the mode of their common worship.

"In this connection I may say, without hesitation, that the novelty in question is offensive to hundreds of our people, where it may be pleasing to one. It seriously dishonours our Church as one of order, of law, of uniformity, of gravity, of simplicity; a Church protected in her worship, as we have been accustomed to boast, against the individual caprice, or taste, or whim, or fancy, or infirmity of the particular Minister, or any leading influence in the congregation. It hedges up the way of our progress where we want to obtain the confidence of the people in order to draw them to our ministry. plants suspicions, preindices, distrust, aversion, which it will take many years of better doing to eradicate, but of which we have no reason to complain while such innovations of individual discretion shall have place.

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"Do not think, my brethren, that I am making too much of this matter in thus enlarging upon it. There is wisdom in taking such things at the beginning. An opening in the sea-dyke, which at first might be stopped with a man's finger, by delay lets in the flood. How much easier would it have been to restrain the evils which are now causing such apprehensions in the Church of England, had the day of apparently small things' been more respected. In the year 1846-when the present growth of the doctrine of a sacrificial, propitiatory offering in the Lord's Supper, and of a sacrificial, propitiatory Priesthood in the Christian Ministry, and of a sacrificial altar for its ministrations, with its zealous substitution of an altar for the communion table, as well in fact as in word, was yet comparatively in the bud-I saw what was coming (and it required no prophetic eye to see it), and I took ground against that Romanizing, as in other ways, so especially in the declaration that I would not consecrate a church having an altar-form structure for the Lord's Supper, instead of a communion table, properly so-called. It was intended as my standing protest against the whole Romanistic claim of sacrifice, priest and altar, which since has come in like a flood. I have borne much ridicule for my so-called weakness and folly. I have persevered, and am satisfied with the vindication which the present ritualistic revival, the whole of which centres around and is for the stronger establishment of that very claim, is continually furnishing. And it is worth noting, that precisely where was erected that altar-form instead of a table, which gave occasion to that declaration, has appeared the innovation which gives occasion to the present remarks. There was a doctrine involved in that substitution of form; and there is doctrine involved in this surpliced ceremonial; though I have no thought of imputing any doctrinal connection in either instance to the intentions of those who instituted it. And it is that doctrinal connection which makes me the more earnest in the present matter; and exactly the same doctrine is in

volved as in that former instance of the substitution of the form of an altar for that of a table. Allow me to explain :

"Suppose the practice of vesting choristers in surplices should become common in our parishes-and if one may do it, all maythen, of course, the distinctiveness of that garment, as appropriated to the clergy in their ministrations, is gone. It no more designates the clergyman than the layman. But can you suppose that those clergymen in this country, or in England, who make the office of the Christian minister, in its distinctive character, to be that of a sacrificial priest, serving in actual propitiatory sacrifice as a mediator between the sinner and his judge, and who, therefore, regard their office as one of such mysterious sacredness and spiritual power, that between it and the congregation for whom they offer there is a wide and solemn separation, to indicate which they covet the symbolism of separating bars and gates-do you suppose that they will be satisfied with no vestment distinctive of their office, any more than they are satisfied without a holy place and a holy altar distinctive of their office? Do you suppose they will not be aspiring after a priestly robe, as well as a priestly ritual? Will they be long content that they who offer the sacrifice shall be vested no more in accordance with their awful dignity than the boy that sings outside the rail of the holy place? Of course not. The surplice is good enough for ministers who deny that they are sacrificing priests, to whose ministrations the communication of the body and blood of Christ with all-saving grace to sinners is restricted. It is good enough, with some additional garb at times, even for themselves, in the reading of prayers and the preaching of the pulpit; but a garment distinctive of their ministration as priests (which the surplice is not) they must have, and they will get, by adopting the garment of that priesthood which in other things they are so fond of imitating.

"Now is this all mere predictive theory? No. It is simply the recital of what has taken place already, and of what has already been, in print, foreshadowed in this country. The report of the Royal Commission on Ritual appointed by the Crown to investigate the practices and doctrines of the English Ritualists, brings out strongly what I wish you to notice. One of the clergymen examined was asked: Do you consider yourself a sacrificing priest?' 'Yes, distinctly so.' Then you think you offer a propitiatory sacrifice?' 'Yes, I think I do offer a propitiatory sacrifice' (p. 72). 'Do you use the surplice ?' 'We use the surplice always in the matins and even-song, and at all times, except during the Holy Communion. At the Holy Communion we use the vestments.' 'Will you describe them ?' 'The chasuble, dalmatic, and tunicle.' 'Do you use those vestments at any other time?' 'No, we never use them except at that time' (p. 70). Is there any mysterious signification in the chasuble, or in wearing it?' 'I think there is a doctrine involved in the using of it.' 'What is that doctrine ?' 'The doctrine of the sacrifice' (p. 72). To another of these clergymen : "Is the surplice ever used beneath ?' 'Not at celebration.' Let it be marked that when these men speak of 'vestments,' in the Ritual sense, they do not include the surplice. There is nothing distinctive,

in that, of their sacrificial priesthood, as appears in the answer to the following question: What doctrine or meaning do you attach to the vestments?' Answer-The vestments I take to mean a distinctive dress for the priest at the time of celebrating the Holy Communion.' Question What doctrine do they imply?' 'I should certainly think the use of the chasuble would imply the belief in the doctrine of sacrifice-Eucharistic sacrifice-that being the object of a distinctive dress.' 'Will you explain what you mean by that, for I do not quite understand how you connect that with the sacrifice?' Answer-It has been thought that the priest offering this sacrifice at the Holy Communion should have a distinctive dress, to mark him off from the rest of the ministers, as being the prin cipal priest in office, offering the sacrifice at the time.' And all this from so-called Protestant ministers!! Alas! alas! But you see the process. First, the taking away from the surplice all distinctiveness as a vestment indicating the clergyman's peculiar function; then the necessity felt of having some distinctive vestment; next, inasmuch as, in their view, the peculiarity of the function is the offering of sacrifice, comes the adoption of that very vestment which, in the Church of Rome, is the priest's distinctively symbolical robe when he officiates in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

"I think, brethren, I need not say any more to shew that the question whether the surplice among us shall lose its distinctive appropriateness to our ministry, by being made as well the garment for the chorister as of the officiating clergyman, has an important doctrinal importance which may conciliate your forgiveness for my having so long occupied your attention with this subject.

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"Ah! brethren, these are not times for sudden changes of raiment, any more than for other changes in the externalism of our Church. There is an epidemic abroad. Our 34th Article says 'every particular or national church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church, ordained only on man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying.' Let us be content to leave all such changes in such hands. Individual choice or preference has no authority here. The more the spirit of innovation upon the ritual of our Church shall increase, the more let us hold fast to what we have so much loved, and that has served us so well in the past. We have rites and ceremonies in our Church as bequeathed to us from our fathers, and decreed to us by their enactments. We want no more. Especially do we want none out of the list of those rejected by our martyred Reformers in the great Protestant Reformation. Let the clergy and the laity see to it that by any but Church authority we get no more."

Amid so much heartlessness, and so much connivance at the growth of these and other ritualistic practices amongst those whose duty it is to restrain, and forbid them, it is cheering to find that Bishop McIlvaine has lost nothing of that fervour, or of that plainness and simplicity with which in former days, he used to cheer our hearts on his visits to this country. Long may his life be spared, while the fruits of righteousness increase and multiply upon him.

NOTE ON THE SURPLICE QUESTION.

BY THE EDITOR.

WE cannot fail to observe that Bishop McIlvaine, not without some complacency, takes credit to the American Episcopal Church for having rejected the surplice, where the Church of England still permits it to be used. We regret the course which our sister-church in America has pursued. They have made a grand concession to popery: they have, in fact, conceded the principle that the surplice is a Romish vestment. Extremes proverbially meet each other, and, in their haste to show their hatred of popery, they have unconsciously given it a real triumph. This the moderation of the Church of England has happily enabled us to escape. An historical retrospect of the surplice question from the Reformation will enable our readers to see this at once, and in the shortest compass.

During the first stage of the Reformation, in the reign of Henry VIII., the surplice was worn without exciting much controversy. It was in the reign of his son, Edward VI., that the surplice contest began to afford ground for real anxiety. On the one hand, the eloquent and learned Cartwright, preaching at Cambridge, maintained that it was an Aaronical garment pertaining to the priesthood, and that having no sacrificing priests we had no right to appear in priestly garments. At this time it appears that the University attended public worship, as they do now, dressed on certain days, such as the eve of our Saints' days, and Sundays, as well as those days themselves, habited in surplices. Cartwright's preaching had such an effect that all the undergraduates of St. John's appeared in chapel the next Sunday in the ordinary cap and gown. The seniors of the College, including some of the leading men of the Reformation, frowned upon this attempt to innovate; and no endeavour has since been made at Cambridge to supersede the surplice.

The question, however, of the lawfulness of this vestment in the Reformed Churches, was from this time argued, abroad as well as at home, with a degree of learning and ability in proportion to its importance.

If the Puritans could make good their ground, the cause was lost; the surplice became, indeed, an accursed thing, and the brand of popery would be deeply stamped on all those reformed Churches which continued to make use of it. But how if it could be made to appear that, before the Church of Rome existed, the surplice had been used even from Apostolic times? nay, the very word itself "candidate," the designation of one