Page:The Irish Church and its Formularies.djvu/15

 limitation, as you will observe, centres in and is defined by the one word "such." If, therefore, words have any meaning, the Committee is empowered to propose all alterations in the Prayer Book and Formularies, with only the one limitation that these shall be such as, in the uncontrolled discretion of the legislative Committee, do not directly or by implication change doctrine. This statement is no extravagant assumption of my own, for it is based upon the sound maxim of reasoning, that the overt exclusion of one contingency is the absolute admission of all others. In the present case accordingly every proposition, which the Committee by any majority, at any quorum which it may adopt, may declare to be undoctrinal, becomes an alteration of Prayer Book, or of the Articles which it is at liberty to propose for the formal acceptance of the Irish Church. Here, then, we come full face with the questions—What is, and what is not, doctrine? What is, and what is not, change? What are, and what are not, the doctrinal portions of the services and the formularies, and what formulary can there be which is not doctrinal? Behind these questions comes the inquiry—who are the judges competent, legally, morally, and constitutionally, either to answer these inquiries, or to give practical action to their own answers? No preliminary decision was arrived at in the Convention upon these heads, no specific instructions were given to the Committee upon these all-important matters. No tribunal was in existence before its appointment, to smooth the way for settling these grave preliminaries, and none has been created consequent on its nomination to help it in an inquiry, in which every difficulty of law, fact, and theology, grows up and is twined together like the shrubs and the creepers of a tropical jungle. One thing only is certain—that the difficulty, greater or smaller, having arisen in respect of certain incidents of Church practice or Church teaching, which are variously held by