Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/184

 176] ENGLISH HIST0RY. [AUG.

Lord Halifax went on to say that he did not suppose, having regard to the great differences in local circumstances, that any one uniform course of action was likely to be pursued in cases where attempts were made to enforce compliance with the archbishops' opinion against incense. Lord Halifax's high character, knightly bearing, and intense earnestness, had obtained for him a large measure of respect and regard ; but this essay of his towards the organisation of anarchy in the Church of England revolted an appreciable number of strong High Churchmen, who had already been alarmed by the sub- versive tone adopted at clerical meetings organised by or in connection with the English Church Union. Though he only wrote on his own behalf, there can be little doubt that the venerable and popular Dean Hole of Rochester gave expression to the feelings of many devoted adherents of the Oxford move- ment when, in a letter (Aug. 31) intimating his withdrawal from the English Church Union, he said that a just parallel to Lord Halifax's advice to the lay members of that body would be, in regard to the Army, the opinion that " the soldiers must follow the captains, but that the captains may follow their own imaginations." The influences telling for clerical obedience were reinforced by the considerate manner in which the bishops began to press the observance of the Lambeth decision on the clergy of their dioceses. Then, however, a curious event happened. This was the appearance of a pamphlet by an eminent member of the Broad Church party, Dr. Sanday, sub- jecting the reasoning of the Lambeth decision to a searching historical criticism. Dr. Sanday's contention was that the language of the Act of Uniformity of 1559, on which as having been accepted by the Church at the time of the last revision of the Prayer-book in 1662, the archbishops' decision rested, did not, or certainly need not, bear the rigid construction attached to it by the Primates. This point is not one for discussion here ; but it should be recorded that this Broad Church attack on the decision appears to have operated, among some strong High Churchmen, as a sensible discouragement of the hope cherished earlier in the year that the Lambeth " hearing " had provided a kind of working substitute for reformed ecclesiastical courts.

So far, however, as the immediate question of conformity to the Lambeth decision against incense was concerned, there seemed, as the autumn advanced, to be a decided preponderance of opinion that it was a duty to obey, even among the advanced clergy, and an overwhelming consensus to that effect among the general body of High Churchmen. At the Church Congress, which was held in London in October, the firm chairmanship of Bishop Creighton, and the good feeling of most of the speakers, secured that, even when burning questions were under discussion, decorum generally prevailed. For the most part, however, the meetings were engaged in the useful, if not exciting, treatment of aspects of Church life not immediately