Page:Books Condemned to be Burnt - James Anson Farrer.djvu/113

Rh "very superstitious and full of idolatry," and to have used many gestures and ceremonies "not established by the laws of this realm." These were the sort of ceremonies that, without ever having been so established by law, our ritualists have practically established by custom; and the offence of the ritualist doctrine as held in those days, and as illustrated by Pocklington, lay in the following tenets ascribed to him: (1) that it was men's duty to bow to altars as to the throne of the Great God; (2) that the Eucharist was the host and held corporeal presence therein; (3) that there was in the Church a distinction between holy places and a Holy of holies; (4) that the canons and constitutions of the Church were to be obeyed without examination.

For these offences of ritual and doctrine—offences to which, fortunately, we can afford to be more indifferent than our ancestors were, no reasonable man now thinking twice about them—Pocklington was deprived of all his livings and dignities and preferments, and incapacitated from holding any for the future, whilst his books were consigned to the hangman. It may seem to us a spiteful sentence; but it was after all a mild revenge, considering the atrocious sufferings of the