Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/183

 1899.] Church Troubles. [175

and under many heads, from which it is not possible to give illustrations here. The gist, however, and the temper of this manifesto of his are sufficiently exemplified by a sentence from its concluding paragraph in which he spoke of the archi- episcopal decision, in the reasons on which it was founded, as "cutting at the very roots of the whole system and plan of operation of the i Catholic revival,' and affording a solid basis for the defence of the Protestant principles of the Church of England." The natural, and indeed unavoidable, meaning of all this was that the Lambeth decision involved a repudiation in principle of the whole Oxford movement, and supplied the lines on which all features of ritual which were associated with the sacramental doctrines enforced by the leaders of that move- ment might be suppressed. It was, however, promptly pointed out by Lord Hugh Cecil, who during the recent session had attained a position of very considerable authority among the group of politicians specially associated with the defence of the interests of the Church, that in very important respects Sir Wm. Harcourt had misconceived, and indeed reversed, the true purport of the Primates' decision. Evidently, he said, that decision could have no bearing, as Sir. Wm. Harcourt assumed, on doctrine, for if it had, the archbishops could not have spoken as they had of the possibility of the ceremonial use of incense, though now unlawful, being made lawful at some future time.

Lord Hugh Cecil enforced this and other points, in order to neutralise any difficulty that might have been created by Sir Wm. Harcourt's letter in the way of obedience, the duty of which, while fully recognising the real sacrifice of feeling it would involve in some cases, he himself strongly urged upon the advanced clergy. The Guardian also, while not disguising doubts as to the correctness of the grounds of the archiepiscopal decision, strenuously preached the same duty. On the other hand, Lord Halifax, the President of the English Church Union, in a letter (published at the end of August) to the lay members of that body, the keynote of which was the phrase, " Stand by your priests/ ' whether they obey or disobey, made it very clear that in his opinion no moral obligation to obey in this case lay upon the clergy. He described the decision, or as he called it the "opinion," of the archbishops against the ceremonial use of incense as " one of the greatest misfortunes that had fallen on the Church since the rise of the Oxford movement," because it " did everything that such a document could do to discredit and reduce to an unreality the appeal which the Church of England had ever made to the practice of the whole Catholic Church of Christ as supplying her standard of doctrine and ceremonial." While professing the highest reverence for the character of the archbishops, Lord Halifax's criticism of their decision was couched in terms which, if all suggestion of moral dereliction was to be read out of it, involved the very lowest opinion of their intelligence.