THE BISHOP OF EXETER AGAIN. PAINTINGS IN CHURCHES.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 634, 12 May 1852, Page 4

THE BISHOP OF EXETER AGAIN. PAINTINGS IN CHURCHES.

[Piom the Daily News, December 20 ] Sydney Smith once remarked how much a clever friend's conversation would be improved by a few bi illiant flashes of silence. Of Lite the noisy and turbulent episcopal career of Dr. Phillpotts has been illuminated by a Hash of silence vastly agreeable to the whole country. During the last three months he has neither anathematised the Primate of Ins province, nor persecuted any of the clergy of his diocese; he has neither printed curses nor prayed libels ; he has neither clipped the Queen's prerogative, nor extended the wings of his own pretensions ; he has neither knocked down any laymen with the Apocalypse, nor scattered discord broadcast- over England from the Fathers. The synod of Exeter was almost forgotten ; its "Acts" had descended to the butler man and the trimkmaker ; the Bishop's age and infirmities seemed to be bringing back peace, ami calm, and repose to the diocese of Exeter; his thoughts were, it was hoped, being turned from the troubles of earth towards the quietude of heaven. But no : the flash is past— he is again to be heard. The stormy petrel of episcopacy preludes by his approach another tempest. The diocese of Exeter is, -we have heard him teach,— a perfect church in itself. In it we have seen him assemble and preside over a legislature of its own ; and, having varied the doctrine, and separated the church of Exeter from the church of England, he is now, after a pause, settling the millinery and the decorations of his new establishment. This he does by an instrument no less grave and solemn than a " Judgment." Other bishops write letters, - but Henry of Exeter, in the plenitude of his power, pens decrees only. Prelates of greater learning but more modesty offer advice, make recommendations, and state their opinions ; he adjudicates, adjudges, and decides; they try to persuade, to convince, to guide and direct^ by their counsels; he orders and commands by > his authority. They adjust their communications to the improved and leh'ncd tone of modern society ; he preserves intact and unmitigated the harsh language and severe phraseology of the middle ages! They — good, quiet, timid men— scarcely dare to put on their mitres ; he never sinks to sleep without the haughtiest emblem of his power on his uneasy head. And thus, in one of the most dilfioult and delicate questions that could come before a bishop, we have from him, without doubt or hesitation, a judgment — nothing less. It is about paintings m churches. To adorn and beautify places of worship with works of art, is at once so conformable with human weakness, so sanctioned by both heathen and Christian practices, and yet so dangerous and hazardous in its endencies, as venders it any time, — but particuarly now, — a question both difficult and delicate. [t was a reproach often urged against the early Christians that they did not adorn their churches >vith the art they saw in Pagan temples ; and that •eproaeh Origen answered by telling his oppolents, that the images to be dedicated to God ivere not to be carved with the hands of artists, jut to be formed and fashioned in use by His ivord ; they were to be the virtues of justice, and icinperan.ee, and wisdom, and piety. Nor are ;here wanting decrees and canons of early couniils (that of illiberio for example) against placing paintings in churches. Whilst the story of Epiphanius tearing down a picture from the walls of % village church in Palestine, and giving the shreds to the churchwardens to be used as a wind-ing-sheet for the poor, is familiar to students of ecclesiastical history. The cultivation of art in churches is, however, one of the glories and a great part of the strength of the Romish church. When Europe emerged from barbarism, cathedrals became great exhibitions of art ; and as corruptions grew in that chm eh their adornments had much the same effect on the Christian religion as it had on Pagan rites and ceremonies. It became a medium and a source of corrupt religion ; and in images and paintings the reformers saw only the worship oi saints and unscriptural intercessors. Hence, to use the language of Wheatley (a very high church authority), " they thought them too false a beauty for the house of God." In themselves humanizing and civilising, their presence in churches is hazardous and dangerous. And this feeling predominated in England from the Reformation until the birth of Traetai'ianism. Then, -with the doctrines, the pretensions, and the ceremonies of the Romisli church, began to be cultivated uiediieval art ; and no little of the success of that delusion may be traced to this new passion. It appeared in every thing; in our churches and in our plates and dishes ; inside and outside the prayer-book ; in vestments and in dress. New handicrafts, new trades, new feelings, new thoxights were opened bv it. It produced St. Barnabas ; but, until now, it had not introduced paintings into our churches. At last, however, it has taken that step. She ■ viocke is a small rectory in Cornwall ; its value is under £500 a-year, and its population not mucli greater than that number. The chancel of our churches belongs to the rectors, ecclesiastical or lay ; they are bound to repair them ; and generally in very bad repair they are kept. This chancel, in a rural church, attended chiefly by ploughmen and farm labourers, the rector of Sheviock resolved to beautify. He painted the north wall red and white, intending to cover the white with gilt ; and on this ground is filling in medallion pictures, viz.: — 1. The Annunciation. 2. Our Lord "in Majesty" seated on a Rainbow. 3. Our Lord being led to execution. 4. Our Lord with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. 5. The First Miracle in Cana of Gallilee. And these finished, the other wails have to be similarly illustrated.^ This proceeding very properly alarmed the principal inhabitants, and a vestry being held, a vote was passed condemning the paintings, and calling on the bishop to require their removal. Dr, Phillpots sent the rural dean to inquire into the facts ; and the rector on the other hand got a majority of the ploughmen of the parish to express their " warm approval" of his decorations. ]t is in this state of things the judgment is issued ; and a very rare document it certainly is. First, is carefully noted the numerical majority in the rector's favour. But, as any argument derived from majorities might hereafter be dangerous for the Bishop on other questions and in other parishes, he, having placed it foremost and dwelt most impressively on it, "immediately dismisses it altogether from consideration in deciding on the matter before me." A majority either one way or other is as nothing compared with the rector's right to do with the chancel as he pleases, subject always to the Bishop's control. "I have no hesitation in saying that I recognise that right of the rector." The lights of majorities are nought, are nil, are worthless ; the feelings of parishioners are idle whimsies, not worth a rectorial thought or an episcopal consideration. But " the rector's right" — that is indefeasible, predominant, ever to be respected. It must be protected ; and Dr. Phillpots does protect. " Looking at the question thus, I find very little which demands my interference in the partial^ executed designs or in what is further intended. 1 They are " from Overbeck :" and therein the epis copal consolation is great. Still they do — in on* trifling unimportant trait— just in a comer — ex peed propriety. So, brush in hand, the Bisho] daubs out his " single objection"— an angel kneel ing to the Virgin. That done he cannot too mucl 1 bespatter the rector with pi-aises : "In an <ige when no decoration is deemed too costly fo • the dwellings of ihe opulent among; us, of nil orders, i > is «urely a matter of just praise, rather than of reasona r bk' centime, that a not opulent elegr} man, modest an

unpretending in Ins own house, devotes whatever menus he can command to t lie somewli.it «umptuous, it may he. yet bober and reveroutial adorning 1 the house of God." "What better than Fetish is this ? The finer we dress the finer must be our churches ; the more sumptuous our houses, the gaudier our chancels ; because ladies put rouge on their cheeks, the walls of our places of worship must be bedizened with vennillion. The poor, not allowed io enter the magnificent mansions of the rich, must be astonished by our wealth in the parish church. Why, it is precisely thus, Father Hue tells us, they worship Buddha in the Slamaserics of Mongolia and Thibet ; it is after this, fashion, and in this spirit, that the negroes adorn their idols on the western coabt of Africa. But this, we use the freedom to tell Bishop Phillpots, i» to paganise, to Judaize, nay, worse than either, is to liomanise the Christian religion. It is to dress,_ to adorn, to deface, to conceal" it ; to make it consist in external emblems, in images, in pictures, in painted windows and sculptured walls, at the risk of expelling it from the mind. It is to direct the ploughmen ofSheviocke from the prayers of tin humble and a contrite heart to daubs of red and white in its chancel. If Bishop Phillpotts live many years longer, the church of Exeter will be as different from the church of England as Romanism is from Protestantism. It was not without an object he set up an Establishment of his own in that diocese ; — and very steadily, logically, and consistently he is pursuing it.