THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY

483

be bound to say and use the Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, celebration and administration of both the Sacraments, and all other the public and common prayer, in such order and form as is mentioned in the said book."*

Those ministers who would not undertake to use the Book were of necessity removed from the benefices the duties of which they were no longer capable of fulfilling; and some of them thereupon seceded from the Church. We may regret that more of gentleness was not shown to them, and more of consideration for conscientious scruples; but the action of the Church upon the great question of principle involved cannot possibly be regretted. The Act of Uniformity was in the truest sense an act of liberation. It secured to Churchmen the enjoyment of their common heritage, free from the possibility that any should defraud them.

There are many amongst us who are still accustomed to speak of the Act of Uniformity of 1662 in terms of contempt and opprobrium. This surely is a grave mistake. Many of us may think that liturgical reform in one direction or another is gravely needed; that services which bear the marks of the conflicts of the sixteenth century are not at every point suited to the permanent usage of the Church; and that in our own day provision is needed for a greater enrichment of the services than was then contemplated. Very many more are convinced that the repeated endeavour (which has been made at any time during the last fifty years) to prove that the things which at the present moment meet our sense of fitness are just the things which were actually contemplated by the rubrics of the Prayer-book, is at once immoral in itself and highly impolitic in its results. But this does not really touch the question. Whatever the services appointed by authority may be, it is surely expedient 14 Car. II. cap. 4.

and right that they should be used and not neglected,* loyally used and not mutilated or overlaid with additions which are calculated to alter or disguise their true character. It is surely good that the rule of the society should be obeyed, not defied, by the individual.

It may be readily granted that uniformity, like every other good thing, has its dangers. The assumption which is frequently made, indeed, that conformity to an outward rule involves a loss of spontaneity is quite untrue; there is nothing which so invigorates the will as laying it down. In spite of much popular language, formularies have no monopoly of formalism. But none the less uniformity may be merely formal. That which was intended to be a deliverance from the arbitrary tyranny of the individual may only involve the submission to another tyranny even more lifeless, that of a system.

The English Church has endeavoured to guard against the danger, and has in some sense done so, by the largeness of her forms. We have already observed that the rubrical directions of the reformed English service-books

* It should be remembered that the neglect of the services during the last two centuries, grave as it has been, has at no time been acquiesced in by those who best represent the mind of the English Church. Bishop Butler speaks of it, in his Charge to the Clergy of Durham in 1751, in the following terms:

"In Roman-catholic countries people cannot pass a day without having religion recalled to their thoughts, by some or other memorial of it; by some ceremony or public religious form occurring in their way: besides their frequent holy days, the short prayers they are daily called to, and the occasional devotions enjoined by confessors. . . . Our reformers, considering that some of these observances were in themselves wrong and superstitious, and others of them made subservient to the purposes of superstition, abolished them, reduced the form of religion to great simplicity, and enjoined no more particular rules, nor left anything more of what was external in religion, than was in a manner necessary to preserve a sense of religion itself upon the minds of the people. But a great part of this is neglected by the generality amongst us; for instance, the service of the church, not only upon common days, but also upon saints' days: and several other things might be mentioned." (Bishop BUTLER, Works, ed. Gladstone, ii. 406.)

INTERPRETATION OF RULES

485

are never so painfully minute as those of the pre-Reformation service-books. Where the services are less complicated, and the rubrical directions less exact, there is less to induce the danger of a merely formal or outward uniformity. But this in itself can hardly be said to suffice: and indeed there is no formal principle whatever, and no external rule, by which we can effectually guard ourselves against the danger of formalism. Certainly the abolition of forms would not bring about such a result; for what we most need to be delivered from is the unreality of our own mannerisms and our merely formal actions.

All that the Church can do with a view to securing that the bulwark against tyranny shall not be turned into a tyranny, is to interpret her Acts of Uniformity in a large sense, with as much of laxity as possible under the particular conditions of time and circumstances. If we may judge from the practice of great Churchmen during the past three centuries, there has never been any reluctance to do this. Indeed, the words which were actually written in a different connection may be not inaptly applied to the largeness with which the Church has allowed her own rules to be interpreted: "It hath been the wisdom of the Church of England, ever since the first compiling of her Publick Liturgy, to keep the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and too much easiness in admitting any variation from it." That such a large method of interpreting the rules of the Church is in itself desirable is obvious enough. Circumstances vary not a little, people vary from time to time and from place to place; and a wise rule must be elastic as well as reasonable. But whilst this is the case, no new right is given to any man to vary from the rule of the Church. It is for the authorities of the Church to settle how the law should be applied, not for the individual;

and nothing but the temper of willing obedience and large-hearted tolerance for the views of others can render possible that large application of the law of uniformity which most Churchmen at the present day would gladly welcome.

XVI.

Parties in the Church

BY LORD HUGH CECIL, M.P.

ANY influences combine to gather Churchmen into

M groups, or (as the phrase goes) schools of thought.

Differences of opinion are inevitable. Even the most reasonable and charitable men cannot avoid disagreement. And when differences of opinion have arisen, the greater differences will tend to obliterate the smaller. Men are driven by the strong disagreement they feel with some opinions to look, first with indulgence, and then with approval on other opinions with which, wanting that propulsion, they would never have agreed. Other influences co-operate. Those whose opinions they partly share assure them that they cannot logically or reasonably accept part and reject part. It must be all or nothing. It matters not that they may have accepted certain beliefs, without logically proving them from premisses previously accepted. They may have arrived at them by any other path. than logical ratiocination, which, as philosophers tell us, is the least used, though the most praised way to belief. Nevertheless, with the belief they are required to accept the premisses by which it might have been proved, and all the conclusions which may be drawn from those premisses. They are in the position of a young man who has married a lady without first making the acquaintance of her family, and who is obliged to accept the friendship of many from whom, unwedded, he would