THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD AND HIS CLERGY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 17, Issue 1041, 13 June 1871, Page 3

THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD AND HIS CLERGY.

[BIRMINGHAM WIU TOST.I WiJ have no desire to narrow the comprehensiveness of the Church of England, or to set the Bishops prosecuting offending clergymen right and left. Tt would be a blunder and a misfortune, we. think, to let any of the sects within .the Church to get the upper hand. The .absolute reign of the Evangelicals or Xiow Churchmen, would be only less hurtful than that of the Ritualists or High Chuichn.en. But, with the largest measure of toleration, and the strongest wish to live in the peace and charity recommended by Bishop Selwyn, we must confess that a more melancholy failure than his reply to the Wolverhampton deputation has not come under our notice for a long time. In effect it is nothing more than a confession that •Bishops—the overseers and governors jof the Church—are not at all disposed to exercise their governing powers ; and that Dr Selwyn. himself does not mean to give even so much as an opinion which may serve to guide clergy or laity in their difficulties of interpretation or observance. From beginning to rend of his addicts, th.e Bishop of Liehtiekl evadeo! ,tJp.e questions put to him #>y the deputation. In effect they said 4o him—-The Church of England is a Protestant Church ; it separated ftorn ihe Roman Communion because of er •rors in doctrine and practice which it Relieved the Roman Church to sanction. Of late years a party has arisen in the -Church of England, whose doctrines and practices are scarcely to be distinguished from those of the .Church of Rome. Tbey wear her vestments, they .circulate manuals of devotion resembling hers, they preach the efficacy of confes.sions, of penance, of absolution; they raise the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to Ihe level of a mystic sacrifice ; they declare themselves to be not ministers •but priests, .invested with the right of standing between God and man, and therefore endowed with some kind of supernatural power. The practices and the doctrines .of this party have been condemned by the highest courts as inconsistent with the of the Church of England ; their vestments are prohibited ; their bowings at the communion table are condemned ; they ; are forbidden to use the outsyard.symbols which tend to raise the Eucharist from a .commemoration to a sacrifice. Knowing this to be the law of the •Church, knowing how repugnant these doctrines and practices are to the great •body of English Churchmen, in common with English Protestants generally, we ask you, as our Bishop, to set your face against the Romanizing party, ind to say that they shall have no encouragement in your diocese " . . . ". What was Dr. SeWyn's answer 1 In effect, it was tills- " 1 don't believe there is any Romanizing ten dency in this diocese ; in any case I am not going to trouble myself to put the law in force, and if I did I would make you Evangelicals do a great many things you don't do, and don't like to *]o, just as much as I would make these Ritualists and High Churchman do what they object to do. However, the matter is not 'worth arguing about. Go home again; and shake* hands in a friendly way with the party to which you think "yourselves opposed. 'We are drawing nearer to one another.' Let us be 'long-suffering and forbearjm." in love.' All "we want is an 'in-

crease of light and s iritual knowledge, to be found only by united prayer'" Would it be wonderful if the deputa tion; on going away, came to the conelusion that the Bishop of Lichfield either could not, or would not, understand them, or that he failed to'appreciate the seriousness vita which sueh. matters should' be. ttpated, or that his own sympathies were with the other side] Some of them, perhaps, might remember Dr Selwyu's famous declaration that he would welcome Archbishop Manning as a member of the House of Lords; and others would not forget that his trusted coadjutor, Bishop Abraham, has just signed the clerical protest against the Purchas judgment.