Page:Hints towards peace in ceremonial matters.djvu/10

6 been entertained against any clergyman for defect of ritual.

The general conclusion at which a dispassionate man must arrive is that, irrespective of specific rites or "ornaments," the ceremonial law of the Church of England—as on the one hand a body whose continuous corporate existence ranges over nearly thirteen hundred years, and on the other a Reformed Church, the principles of whose Reformation have to be gathered out of statutes, rubrics, canons, articles, proclamations, advertisements, visitation articles, &c., dating from 1547 to 1662—is far from being a simple question. Another conclusion which may be safely entertained is, that it is beginning at the wrong end to simplify ecclesiastical proceedings till the mos or lex which has to be administered is rather more clearly defined. The process of court-making might otherwise be represented as one for forcing rather than working out a ceremonial system.

It is only within these last forty years that the more ceremonial side has, since 1662, been strong enough to assert a claim for specific recognition. It is now, however, an undoubted fact that numbers, both of clergy and of laity, have learned to attach the deepest importance to the recognition of a higher type of ceremonial in the English Church. The time, then, seems to have arrived for an attempt to regulate the modus vivendi between more or less ornate forms of worship, by way of conciliation