THE ROMANISING MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11301, 20 December 1898, Page 6

THE ROMANISING MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND.

TO THE F.DITOB.

Sib, —Many members of the Church of England in New Zealand will probably baye road with interest the public notices which for some months past have appeared showing that, in deliberate breach of their ordination vows, a considerable, number of the clergy of that church in the mother country have been endeavouring to Romanise it by preaching doc- . trinos and indulging in ritualistic practices condemned by that church. This revival of the insidious attempt made some fifty years ago by what was called " the Oxford movement to undermine the Church of England and undo the work of the Reformation lias stirred to its very depth the uncompromising protestant spirit which animates the prreat bulk of the British nation.and has evoked throughout lingland strong and, in some cases, physically violent protests. The: strife had become so acute and had produced-such scandalous scenes in several churches remarkable for ritualistic displays that at length the Archbishop of Canterbury and some .of the bishops interposed with the view of calming the excitement and restoring peace. The archbishop, in a series of recent visitation addresses, was emphatic in his condemnation of the ritualistic practices in question; but in dealing with the principal subject of controversy—the Eucharist,—his utterance, instead of'making for peace, has only added fuel to the fire, the purport of that utterance being that, in his Grace s opinion, the Church of England permits the holding and teaching of the Lutheran doctrine of Oon substantiation. I send herewith a copy of the London Times of the 21st inst, which contains an able, lucid, and temporately written letter from the'pen of that distinguished statesman and profound scholar, Sir William Harcourt, hi which, while duly recognising the service rendered by the archbishop to the church by his outspoken condemnation of the ■ritualistic practices in question, he shows (to my mind conclusively) that the archbishop s statement respecting the Eucharist is contrary to the authoritative opinions of some of the greatest theologians (dead and living) of the Church' of England; and, moreover, that that statement rests mainly*upon' the archbishop s singular misconception of the efFcot of the judgment of the Privy Council in the Bennett case. ' Sir William Harcourt's highly instructive letter, perhaps, supplies a wholesome corrective of the perverting tendency of the doctrine impliedly taught in St. Paul s Cathedral, Dunedhv where, as 1 have witnessed, the bishop and the archdeacon by repeated self-prostrations and genuflexions before the consecrated bread and wine -are wont to indicate a worship of those olemonts (which is expressly forbidden by the 28th article of the church's religion)—which worship is manifestly intended to signify their, belief in one or other of two things—either in the mystical union of the spirit of .Christ with' the consecrated elements in virtue of which He is believed to be really present in those element* and externally to the soul of the communicant, which is-the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation ;or else in the miraculous conversion of the whole substance of those elements into the actual material .body and blood of

Christ, which is the Roman Catholic'doctrine of Transubstantiafcioni'-.-As stated by Sir ■William' Htircourt, upon ■ the authority; of far greater.,theologians; than the Archbishop 'of Canterbury (among whom "the judicious" Hooker, may. bo singled out), those' two doctrines, are1 identical in principle (although the Lutheran is a''Superstition less grossi in character than: the Koman), and both are absolutely 1 and emphatically condemned by the Church of England. ■ :■ ' ■■■■■'■. ': :■ '' -. "• I conclude by quoting from a report in the London Times of the 27th inst. of the Bishop of Exeter's address on:the 26th inst. at the annual conference of the clergy and laity of his diocese.;.. The bishop, said that ''the Roman ■doctrine of Tranaubstantiation was idolatrous and the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation was ambiguous and perilously near the false teaching of Rome," —I am, etc., James Smitm. Junior Athenißum Club, : 116. Piccadilly, London, October 28.