things would not be, for Mexico, at all an unsatisfactory one. ANGLICAN CHURCHES. I. CHURCH OF ENGLAND. The one hundred and seventy-sixth anniversary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was held in London, April 30th, the Archbishop of Canterbury presiding. The report stated that the income for 1876 had been £136,906 168., the largest amount ever received in one year. There were now sixty-two colonial and missionary bishoprics, in forty-two of which 533 missionaries had been engaged. The missionaries were thus distributed: In Asia, 132; in Africa, 112; in Australia and the Pacific, 63; in America and the West Indies, 225; in Europe, 1. There were also about eight hundred catechists and lay teachers in the service of the Society, mostly natives, in heathen countries. Sixty-seven women were teaching in India, Burmah, Japan, Africa, and Madagascar. Sir Thomas Wade, in addressing the meeting, said that in China the Society singlehanded could hardly effect what it desired, but would have to work with the other Christian societies there. The seventy-eighth annual meeting of the Church Missionary Society was held in London, May 1st, the Earl of Chichester presiding. The annual statement showed that the total income of the Society for the year had been £190,693, and the gross expenditure £210,859. A subscription of £4,000 sterling had been made toward meeting the deficiency in income. Fifty-five candidates for appointment as missionaries had been accepted, and eighty-one candidates were under training. Much success had attended the labors of the missionaries in South India, Ceylon, the Fokien province in China, and Northwest America. An increase of 280 communicants had taken place in Ceylon, and several native ministers had been ordained in China. The progress of the missions in West Africa, at Sierra Leone, was sketched, as well as that in East Africa, where the Society not only has missions on the coast, but has also, since 1875, established a new mission on the Victoria N'yanza Lake. The report referred to difficulties which had been recently encountered by some of the missions of the Society, as in Ceylon, where, in 1876, an effort to introduce ritualism into some of the native churches had been assisted and supplemented by the assumption of Episcopal authority over the missions, which the Society was not willing to acknowledge, as involving "elements of very real danger," and avowed the intention resolutely to " persevere in taking measures to secure the faithful preaching of the full and unadulterated Gospel among the heathen, and to defend the native Christian congregations connected with the Society from erroneous doctrine and superstitious ritual. It has been, and ever will be, the aim of the committee to secure the distinct and emphatic utterance by the Society's agents of those great truths of the sole supremacy of Holy Scripture as the rule of doctrine and of justification through faith on account of the merits of Christ, which are the life-blood of an intelligent and vigorous piety, and which are wont to be ignored or denied by those who receive their inspiration from the leaders of the well-known tractarian movement of some forty years ago." Bishop Crowther, a native African, gave an account of the condition of the Niger missions in West Africa, of which he has charge. By order of the Privy Council, issued April 30th, a new diocese, to be called the Diocese of St. Albans, was constituted out of the counties of Essex and Herts and a part of Kent, the bishop of which should be subject to the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of England. St. Albans Abbey was made the cathedral church. The Right Rev. Thomas Legh Claughton, Bishop of Rochester, was appointed Bishop of St. Albans, and was enthroned June 11th. The Rev. Anthony Wilson Thorold, vicar of St. Pancras, and canon residentiary of York Cathedral, was appointed Bishop of Rochester in place of Bishop Claughton. At a meeting of the bishops of England, Scotland, and Ireland, held on the 17th of May, it was determined that the Archbishop of Canterbury should invite all the bishops of the Anglican communion to meet in London during the month of July, 1878, the first and last weeks to be devoted to general conference, and the two intermediate weeks to the deliberation of committees and other private matters. It was also proposed that the following subjects, in their order, should be presented for consideration: 1. The unity of the several branches of the Anglican Church; 2. The establishment of courts of arbitration; 3. The relation of missionary bishops of different branches of the Church in foreign countries; 4. The establishment of chaplaincies on the continent of Europe and elsewhere; 5. The special forms of modern infidelity, and how they are to be met; 6. The general interests of the several branches of the Anglican communion. It is stated that thirteen bishops, among whom are five American bishops, have refused to attend the conference. The call has been issued for the conference to meet July 2, 1878. The Convocation of York met April 17th, the Archbishop of York presiding. A petition was presented asking, among other objects, the appointment of a royal commission to inquire into the Public Worship Regulation Act; another petition from fifteen thousand working-men, eleven thousand of whom were communicants, prayed that liberty of worship might not be taken from them, as they conceived was done by the present prosecutions of clergymen under the act. A third petition, from laymen of the upper classes, including sixteen peers, set forth that much distress existed as to the question of spiritual jurisdiction. The President stated that a joint committee of the two Convocations would be appointed to consider petitions on the Public Worship Regulation Act and the relation of Church and state. Resolutions were offered by the Dean of Manchester, "that, inasmuch as all priests having care of souls, in any diocese, have received their commission from the bishop, as chief pastor, it is an invasion of the rights of the Church that any priest should be inhibited a sacris by other than spiritual authority," and that the present court of ecclesiastical appeal "does not command that confidence of the laity and clergy which is necessary to the wellbeing of the Church of these realms." The subject-matter of these resolutions was referred to the joint committee of the two Convocations about to be appointed. A resolution was adopted approving generally of the Burials bill which the Government had submitted to Parliament. On this subject the principle was affirmed that the bishops should be the judges as to the fitness of monumental inscriptions in churchyards. The Convocation of Canterbury met at Westminster May 24th. The Burials bill, then before Parliament, the representation of the laity, and the increase of the Episcopate, were the principal subjects of discussion. The petition of sixteen peers and a number of other laymen respecting the unsatisfactory state of ecclesiastical legislation, which had been previously presented to the Convocation of York, was also offered in the Lower House of this body. A resolution by the Archdeacon of Gloucester, "that no legislation on the rubrics can be safely entered upon until some safeguards are devised against the danger lest changes affecting the worship of the Church should become law by the action of Parliament alone without the consent of Convocation," was adopted. A resolution was adopted, as an articulus cleri, in support of the measure proposed in Parliament by the Government for dealing with the burials question. This resolution contained a clause praying the bishops to "oppose permission being given to any person other than a minister of the Church of England to officiate at burials in our churchyards, being assured that such a change in the law will be regarded as a grievance by the general body of churchmen, and will have a tendency to unsettle the present relations between Church and state." A resolution was adopted, recommending the formation of additional Episcopal sees in Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Nottingham and Derby, Birmingham, the Tower Hamlets, and Southwark. A resolution was adopted, proposing the formation of a house of laymen, with whom Convocation should confer, and whose approval of the measures passed by the ecclesiastical houses should be requisite before any propositions were submitted to the Crown or Parliament for legal sanction. The Upper House discussed the report of the Committee on Clergy Discipline, which gave the heads of a bill for the amendment of the present law on VOL. XVII.-2 A that subject. In the course of the debate the difficulty which existed in obtaining the prosecution and punishment of derelict clergymen for immorality was contrasted with the ease of the process in case of ritualistic grievances. The Convocation met again on the 3d of July. The principal subject of discussion in the Upper House was the book for the Confessional, called "The Priest in Absolution," to which public attention had been directed by debates in Parliament. A resolution was adopted, calling the attention of the Lower House to the declaration on the subject of Confession, which had been adopted by the Upper House in July, 1873, and asking its immediate consideration of the same. (The text of this declaration is given in the ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA for 1873.) The declaration was concurred in by the Lower House, by a vote of 62 to 6. On the subject of the book itself, the following resolution was unanimously adopted by the Upper House: 1. That this House holds the Society of the Holy Cross responsible for the preparation and dissemination of the book called "The Priest in Absolution." 2. That this House, having considered the first resthe Holy Cross presented to this House on Friday, olution appended to the statement of the Society of July 6, 1877, viz.: "That, under these considerations, the Society of the Holy Cross, while distinctly repudiating the unfair criticisms which have been passed on the book called 'The Priest in Absolution of it, yet in deference to the desire expressed tion,' and without intending to imply any condemnaby the Archbishop of Canterbury to the representatives of the Society, resolve that no further copies of it be supplied," is of opinion that the Society has neither repudiated nor effectively withdrawn from circulation the abovesaid work. 3. That this House expresses its strongest condemnation of any doctrine or practice of confession which might be thought to render such a book necessary or expedient. It was decided to refer the statutes of the Society of the Holy Cross to a committee of all the bishops of the province, who should submit their report to the President as soon as possible. A committee, to whom had been referred in the previous year a petition on the subject of ecclesiastical discipline, reported that, in their opinion, there were some grounds for dissatisfaction with the present mode of administration, which it was desirable, as far as possible, to remove; that the draft of a scheme for improving one branch of the law of the discipline of the clergy had been recently submitted to both Houses of Convocation; and that there were hopes that some method of dealing with the subject might be suggested by which existing anomalies could be removed, "so far as may be consistent with the necessary relations between the Church and the state." The report was adopted. A resolution was adopted, declaring that, in exacting measures for Church discipline, provision should be made for dealing with cases of neglect of duty, or other causes of grave scandal. In the Lower House, a petition was presented from 1,606 clergymen, protesting against the virtual repeal of the ornaments rubric in the decision in the Ridsdale case, and praying the House to assert the constitutional rights of the Church to determine its own doctrine and ceremonial. The following form for a new rubric, to be inserted in the Prayer-Book, was adopted and sent to the Upper House for its concur rence: In saying any public prayers, or ministering the sacraments and other rites of the Church, the minister shall wear a surplice with a stole or scarf, and the hood of his degree; and in preaching he shall wear a surplice with a stole or scarf, and the hood of his degree; or, if he think fit, a gown with hood and scarf. Nevertheless, he that ministereth in the Holy Communion may use, with the surplice and stole, a cope: provided always, that such cope shall not be introduced into any church, other than a cathedral or collegiate church, without the consent of the bishop. The Ritualistic Controversy, under the influence of the judicial proceedings under the Public Worship Regulation Act, has assumed the character of a direct issue upon the question of the jurisdiction of Parliament, and the courts established by Parliament, over ecclesiastical cases. 66 we see On the 3d of April, a communication was presented to the archbishops signed by about eighty clergymen, who were for the most part regarded as attached to the High Church party, reciting that, being anxious to retain the existing relations of Church and state, they felt great anxiety at the present position of affairs. "On the one side," they said, coercive measures resorted to for enforcing uniformity such as have been happily unknown in this country for centuries; and on the other a determination to endure any suffering rather than submit to a jurisdiction which, rightly or wrongly, is regarded as purely secular." They were also impressed with the unsatisfactory character of the authority and arguments, to which appeal was made in the controversies distracting the Church; for, while the Church had the same authority it had always had in the matter of rites and ceremonies, appeal was made, not to the "living voice of the Church, but to events and documents which have themselves always been matters of controversy." The signers of the address were convinced that not the mere interpretation of existing law was required, "but the living voice of the Church clearly laying down what the law shall be in the future." They would, therefore, urge upon the consideration of the archbishops "that, in our opinion, no peace can be secured for the Church, nor can her existing relations with the state be long continued, unless laws for the regulation of Divine service and for other spiritual matters of primary importance are made by an authority which both clergy and laity would feel to be binding upon conscience; and we are equally satisfied that no authority will be considered thus binding which does not proceed from the synods of the Church as well as from Parliament." The view was further expressed in the address that the legislative action of the Church was now paralyzed by the apprehension that, when its synodical acts were submitted to Parliament, they would be so altered as to be finally quite different from what was intended. The Archbishop of Canterbury replied to this address, April 7th, that its exact meaning was not quite clear to him, and particularly that it did not seem to distinguish between judicial and legislative ecclesiastical matters, the former of which were conducted in a regular gradation of ecclesiastical courts, culminating in the sovereign, advised by the Privy Council, which were "jealously kept distinct from the ordinary civil tribunals of the realm." He presumed they desired some alterations in these courts, but pointed out that character of the changes they sought. "But they did not specify with any accuracy the I gather," he continued" that the main object of the address is to urge that matters of legislation affecting the Church in its rites or ceremonies and controversies of faith should always be submitted to Convocation. It is not alleged that this principle has in any specific case been violated, and, perhaps, it has escaped your attention that, for the last five years, since Convocation adopted the Act of Uniformity Amendment Act, in 1872, it has been engaged in a task such as that which you rightly consider to be its peculiar function, having been called by the authority of the Crown to revise the Rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, a work which it has not as yet accomplished." In conclusion, the archbishop promised that the subject of the address should receive the attention of the Episcopal bench. The case of Clifton against Ridsdale, the first case tried under the Public Worship Regulation Act, in which Lord Penzance, of the Court of Arches, in 1876, condemned the wearing of certain vestments, the use of unnecessary lighted candles, and certain practices at the sacrament, as illegal (see ANNUAL CYCLOPÆDIA for 1876), was carried by appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The hearing of the appeal was begun on the 23d of January, and a judgment was given on the 12th of May, sustaining the decision of the lower court, and adverse to the appellant. The decision covered four points: 1. That the vestments worn by the appellant in the eucharistic services, the alb and chasuble, as distinguished from the surplice, were illegal. 2. That it was the duty of the minister to stand at the side of the table in such a position that "he might in good faith enable the communicants present, or the bulk of them, being properly placed, to see if there be breaking of bread, and the performance of the other manual acts mentioned. He must not interpose his body so as intentionally to defeat the object of the rubric and prevent this result." In the present case the court were not satisfied "that the evidence proved an intention to prevent the people seeing him break the bread," and recommended an alteration to be made in the decree in this respect. 3. That the use of wafer bread was illegal, but the mere power to require the clergy to accept such dispensations in view of serious complications with the state; to set forth a law of ritual observance which will leave no room for doubts or controversies; and to constitute or indicate the courts by which it would have the clergy tried for ecclesiastical offenses. A declaration on the subject of the Ridsdale judgment has been made by a large number of ritualists to the following effect: 1. Having considered the judgment delivered by the judicial committee in the case of Ridsdale vs. Clifton, although we are unable to concur in the whole of the reasoning which it contains, yet we find in it some grounds of satisfaction, in so far as it (a) allows the eastward position of the celebrant, (b) confirms the principle of a distinctive eucharistic dress, (c) recognizes the full right of the Church of England to the legitimate use of religious art in her churches. 3. We believe that the ultimate solution of our present difficulties will be found in the exercise by the Church of her legitimate right to deal with ceremonial, through convocation, with consent of Par liament. circumstance of bread, "such as is usually to be eaten," being round and thin did not constitute it wafer bread. It was not proved that the appellant had used the wafer, properly so called, and a change in the decree was advised on this point. 4. That the erection of a crucifix without a faculty was illegal; that the condemnation of the crucifix by the court below on the ground of its liability to be used in a superstitious manner was correct; and, therefore, the direction to remove this erection was affirmed. Still the court desired to say that they thought it important to maintain, in respect to the representation of sacred persons and objects in the church, the liberty established in Philpotts es. Boyd,' subject to the power and duty of the ordinary, so to exercise his judicial discretion in granting or refusing faculties as to guard against their being likely to be abused for purposes of superstition.' 2. Seeing that successive judgments have left The decision was received with satisfaction by teach her entire doctrine, we advisedly recommend members of the Church of England free to hold and the evangelical party of the Church, although it submission to the discretion of the ordinary in rewas not as completely in their favor as they gard to the points of ritual touched by the late judghad hoped it would be, but was strongly oplated to promote the entire constitutional freedom of ment, and we regard such submission as best calcuposed by the ritualistic party. Mr. Ridsdale the Church. refused to obey it, and announced his intention of continuing the condemned ways in defiance of it, stating that he was resisting the monition because it was contrary to a plain order of the Church. He was convinced that the law of the Church commanded the use of vestments, and the two lights on the altar were likewise sanctioned by the rubric. On some points on which there was no rubrical direction he would yield. His reason for pleading in the court was, that he sought, if possible, to secure peace for the Church, in the hope that the law of the Church would be legalized by the civil law, but, having failed, he was bound to obey the Church. He suggested, however, that if his diocesans should think fit to exert a dispensing power as bishops, which he admitted to exist, he would conform to the form of service as defined by the court. Shortly afterward the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to hin that, understanding that he was willing to be guided by him as his bishop, his grace would gladly take upon himself the whole responsibility of directing Mr. Ridsdale as to the manner in which he should administer the communion, and would grant him a complete dispensation from the obligation under which he believed himself to lie, to act upon what he conceived to be the literal meaning of the Ornaments Rubric. Mr. Ridsdale consented to obey the archbishop's order as a temporary measure until convocation should have a fitting opportunity to deliberate on the question, after which, if no decision were given, he should not feel justified in using the dispensation any longer. On the 2d of July, in the Convocation of Canterbury, a petition was presented from Mr. Ridsdale asking the convocation to decide whether the bishops had such power of dispensation as had been exercised by the archbishop in his case, and whether they have The second case, which was tried by the ecclesiastical courts under the Public Worship Regulation Act, was that of the prosecution of the Rev. Arthur Tooth, rector of St. James's, Hatcham, for violation of the rubrics in the celebration of the Holy Communion, which, as was charged in the indictment, and appeared in the evidence, the defendant had caused to be accompanied with elaborateness of vestments, ceremonial, and ornaments. A decision was given by Lord Penzance, Dean of Arches, on the 19th of July, 1876, condemning the practices of Mr. Tooth which were complained of, except as to those points on which an appeal had been taken in the case of Clifton against Ridsdale to the Privy Council, as contrary to the usages and discipline of the Church, and admonishing him to refrain from them. The defendant paid no attention to the decree of the court, whose jurisdiction he denied, but continued his ritualistic practices. He was cited to appear and answer for contumacy in December. Refusing to obey the summons, he was inhibited for three months, with an intimation that the suspension would be continued if he did not abstain from the objectionable practices. The Rev. Canon Gee was appointed to take charge of the parish during the inhibition, but Mr. Tooth refused to admit him to the church, and he retired from the attempt to serve. The services on the succeeding Sundays, which were the last in December, 1876, were characterized by greater display than ever. On the 31st of December, a disturbance occurred at the church, and a force of police had to be organized to restore cated to him as the action of a purely spiritual body, whose jurisdiction he should acknowledge on the questions at issue, a resolution which had been passed by the Convocation of Canterbury, to the effect that no alteration from the long-sanctioned and usual ritual ought to be made without the sanction of the bishop of the diocese being first had. Mr. Tooth replied that he had searched the records, but had not been able to find "any such canon, constitution, or ordinance, provincial, or other synodical act, promulgated by convocation, or by his grace himself," as the archbishop had mentioned. The archbishop referred him to the record of the proceedings of the two Houses of Convocation on the 13th and 15th of February, 1867, as containing the resolution which he had mentioned, and inquired if he objected to its validity because it had not become law by receiving the sanction of the civil power, adding that, by the law of the realm, except in cases where the civil power steps in, no decision or judgment of convocation could answer such conditions as might be supposed from Mr. Tooth's expression of his views to be deemed by him indispensable. Mr. Tooth replied that the proceedings quoted did not constitute a synodical act of the province, because they had not been passed or promulgated as such; but, had such a synodical act been passed by convocation, or promulgated by the archbishop, or put in use, the fact of the state's having refused to recognize it as a canon would have made no difference in the respect with which he should have treated it. The archbishop summed up as the reasons for which he considered Mr. Tooth bound to abstain from the ritual observances which were complained of against him: and preserve order. Mr. Tooth posted on the door of the church a declaration asserting that he was the lawfully and canonically instituted priest of the parish, "not inhibited therein, nor deprived thereof, by any lawful and canonical authority," declaring all ministrations therein other than his own to be schismatical, and "an invasion and robbery of the rights of the Church of England," and exhorting the congregation to permit no public ministration or discharge of pastoral duties among them other than his own. On the 13th of January, 1877, an order was issued by Lord Penzance, declaring the defendant contumacious, and committing him to jail. On the following Sunday, however, Mr. Tooth held three early services, after which an order was posted by the bishop of the diocese (Rochester), prohibiting the opening of the church or the ringing of the bells. The bishop appointed another clergyman to serve at the church, but Mr. Tooth refused to permit him to be admitted. He was imprisoned in Horsemonger Lane jail on the 31st of January, where he continued in confinement until February 17th, when, the clergyman deputed by the bishop having gained possession of the church, he was released, on the ground that the object sought by his imprisonment had been gained. Mr. Tooth then went abroad, but returned in May, and issued a declaration that all the services which had been conducted in the church since his removal from the parish were schismatical, null, and void, and held a service in the church on the 13th of May. Mr. Tooth's position on the points of law in his case, upon which his conduct was based, was sustained by the voluntary society called the "Church Union." This society, at a meeting held in February, adopted resolutions reciting that, while it acknowledged the authority of all courts legally constituted in regard to matters temporal, it denied that the secular power had authority in matters purely spiritual; declared "that any court which is bound to frame its decisions in accordance with the judgments of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or any other secular court, does not possess any spiritual authority with respect to such deci- realm, as interpreted by the courts, or to the bishop sions. That suspension a sacris being a purely set over you in the Lord, the decision of convocation spiritual act, the English Church Union is pre-principles a solution of the difficulty in which you to which I have referred you seems to afford on your pared to support any priest not guilty of a have involved yourself. moral or canonical offense who refuses to recognize a suspension issued by such a court;" professed a willingness to submit itself to the duly constituted synods of the Church; and, in regard to the matters under dispute, appealed to the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, and the interpretation which had been put upon them by the Convocation of Canterbury in 1875. Bishop Claughton, of Rochester, having been transferred to the See of St. Albans, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in June, became pro tempore administrator of the diocese. He invited Mr. Tooth to take Episcopal advice concerning his course, and communi 1. Because of the obedience which you owe to the law of the Church of England, as interpreted by the Archbishop's Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal. 2. Because you are formally called upon by me as your bishop, in virtue of your oath of canonical obedience, to conform to the order which, as acting Bishop of Rochester, I hereby lay upon you. 3. Because, if through some scruple of conscience, to me inexplicable, you feel a difficulty in paying due obedience either to the law of the Church and I should be sorry to believe that you desire to act in contravention alike of the law, the bishop's order, and the express decision of the two Houses of Convocation. Mr. Tooth reiterated his determination to disregard the judgment of the court, insisting that there was no law or valid declaration of the Church to sustain it. Mr. Tooth obtained from the Court of Queen's Bench, in July, a rule calling on Lord Penzance to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not issue against him. The application for this rule was based upon the allegation that the judgment prohibiting the applicant from |