



Produced by Elaine Laizure from images generously made
available from the Internet Archive.





[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been moved to the end of the
document.]



RITUAL CONFORMITY.


INTERPRETATIONS OF THE RUBRICS OF THE PRAYER-BOOK, AGREED UPON
BY A CONFERENCE HELD AT ALL SAINTS, MARGARET-STREET, 1880-1881.



PARKER AND CO.

OXFORD, AND 6 SOUTHAMPTON-STREET,

STRAND, LONDON.

1881.



PREFACE.


At a Conference of some friends interested in the subject of Ritual,
held on January 17, 1880, the following propositions were, amongst
others, agreed to:

I. That the evil of unnecessary Diversity in Ritual, as practised
in various Churches aiming at the maintenance of Catholic doctrine
and usage in the Church of England, is real and great.

II. That an effort to moderate it should be attempted, resting
mainly on the united opinion of some of those who have given
special attention to the theory and practice of Ritual, in their
private capacity of Students or Parish Priests.

III. That the effort should take the form of a body of Comments upon
the Rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, and that these Comments
should include cautions against practices which are infractions of
the law and usage of the Church of England.

With the view of carrying these propositions into effect, it was
arranged that a series of meetings should be held; and the Vicar
of All Saints, Margaret-street, kindly provided a room at the
clergy-house for the meetings of the Conference.

Those who had met in the first instance were duly summoned, and
others were invited to join them. The meetings were held at first
on two consecutive days in alternate weeks, (since some of the
members came from a considerable distance). Latterly, in order to
expedite the work, meetings were held on three consecutive days in
alternate weeks. In all, forty-eight meetings were held between
January 17, 1880, and July 13, 1881.

It was thought possible that by the co-operation of several minds,
information might be collected from sources not commonly accessible,
and perhaps hardly within the reach of any one individual. Among
the members of the Conference also were those who had had experience
of parish-work, as well as those who had devoted time and attention
to historical enquiry into the origin and meaning of the Rubrics of
the Prayer-Book, or who had made ancient Liturgies their special
study: some, it may be added, combined these various qualifications.
A hope therefore was entertained, as the second proposition implies,
that by considering on very wide grounds (both practical and
historical), and not from any one point of view, the various
divergencies of ritual practice, some agreement might be arrived
at even on the most controverted points.

This hope has been realized. It was found that points which
seemed at first to afford no basis on which agreement was at
all probable, were settled, after long discussion, almost (if not
quite) unanimously; but this involved expenditure of time, and
much investigation into matters on which existing text-books were
often silent.

With regard to the actual diversities in ritual which came under
the attention of the Conference, some appeared to be such direct
infractions of the Rubrics that no explanation of the Rubrics could
make their irregularity more evident. Others seemed to arise from
well-meant attempts to interpret the Rubrics. These last formed
the chief subject of the labours of the Conference.

The main line of procedure laid down was a true and loyal adherence
to the spirit of the Prayer-Book. A mere literal interpretation of
the Rubric was found in many cases to be insufficient. Even if the
existing Prayer-Book had been composed for inaugurating some new
religious system, it would be scarcely reasonable to depend upon
the abstract meaning of the words employed, without any reference
to the circumstances under which the book had been written. But
when we remember that the Prayer-Book of 1662 was the last of
several revisions of the original English Prayer-Book of 1549,
which was itself avowedly based upon the Ancient Liturgies, and
carried on the existing and ancient worship of the Church of
England (with such reformation as was considered needful), no mode
of interpretation could be more misleading if rigorously insisted
on, or so likely to cause error in practice.

The Prayer-Book, however, in spite of the Revision of 1662, retains
many vestiges of the foreign Protestant influence, which affected
the Revision of 1552. With these the Conference have attempted to
deal in a loyal spirit. However much they may be regretted,
Churchmen are bound to accept them. For it must be clearly
understood that nothing was further from the intention of the
Conference, than to attempt Revision. So far from this, it was
hoped by some that a careful series of notes explaining the