RITUALISM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3048, 19 November 1908, Page 5

RITUALISM.

CABLE NEWS.

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright.

BISHOPS ATTACKED.

STRONGLY WORDED REPORT,

Received November 18, 9.7 a.m. SYDNEY, November 18. At the annual meeting of the Church of England .'Association, the report declared that every effect had been made to uphold the principles of the Reformation and to counteract the pemicious'Ritualistic teaching. The bishops were blamed for the introduction of the false doctrines and ritualistic practices which had taken such a firm foothold in the Church. The Episcopal Bench in England had been filled with Romanising bishops, who permitted the introduction of mediaeval superstition and sacramental idolatries. The aim of the society, continued the report, was to resist the spread of a system of sacerdotal despotism which threatened to undermine the restore the mass and confessional, fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and the blasphemous doctrine of the transubstantiation. It was sad to record, but it was a startling fact, that 3,000 clergy were wearing illegal vestments, using dim religious light, and gaudy, ostentatious colours and vestments that allured men to Ritualism". The position, it wag urged, was intolerable, and called for drastic action. The president attacked the Bishop of Stepney (Dr Cosmo Gcdon Lang), who had intended visiting Australia, for his extreme Ritualism, and added that his appointment to the See of York would no doubt cause consternation in England, as it did here. It was hard, he said, that ¥ork should have such a Ritualist forced on it.