BISHOP ANO PRAYER BOOK

Taranaki Daily News, 9 October 1928, Page 9

BISHOP ANO PRAYER BOOK

DR. BARNES MAKES ATTACK ‘MUST NOT BE LAW-BREAKER’ POSSIBILITY OF. DISASTER By Telegraph— Press Assn.—Copyright. Australian Press Association. Receiped Oct. 8, 5.5 p.m. London, Oct. 8. “Bishops must not be law-breakers,” declared Dr. E. W. Barnes, Bishop of Birmingham, interviewed regarding the Prayer Book. “I would prefer not to criticise, but the situation created is so grave and is likely to be so disastrous that I still hope the private remonstrances of men of weight will prevail. “The bishops, who are appointed by the Crown to maintain sound doctrines and lawful order in the national church, must not be law-breakers. The book was rejected by the House of Commons with the general approval of the country because it permits continuous reservation and because it sanctions alternative service at Holy Communion, “If the bishops permit these they will be breaking the law and flouting the authority of Parliament. Moral authority to restrain further lawlessness in the church will end. It would be the same as judges of the High Court permitting theft up to £lO and severely censuring the theft of larger sums.” Dr. Barnes declared Synod could no more permit the bishops to set aside the old Prayer Book than to confer a right to repudiate the Commandments. He would most strongly urge that in the course of private discussions his Lambeth colleagues should drop the two contentious proposals and re-submit the remainder to Parliament. The reply of the nation to any such course as the Archbishop suggested would be disestablishment. The people did not wish to subsidise Catholic innovations, but disestablishment would be preferable to the course suggested, which was indefensible. The majority of his colleagues, said Dr. Barnes, had made a serious mistake in underestimating the Protestant feeling of the country. It would be a worse mistake to challenge the regard for law and order which was one of the soundest instincts of the British race.

EVANGELICALS’ VIEWS STATED. British Official Wireless. Rugby, Oct. 6. The decision of the bishops of the Church of England provisionally to sanction certain alterations as provided in the Prayer Book recently rejected by Parliament has called forth a strong protest from Sir William Joynson-Hicks, the Home Secretary, who led .the opposition to the revised Prayer Book in the House of Commons. He says: “We evangelicals do not not want to harm the Church; we want to maintain it and enlarge it. As for the new Prayer Book, over 90 per cent, of it we desire to have passed into law, but we cannot give up the principles of the Reformation for which our forefathers fought and suffered, enshrined as they are in the Book of Common Prayer.”