11 This is the title of a remarkable poem by the Rev. John Keble,
unpublished until after his death.
12 Dr. Irons, in his book entitled _New Legislation for the Church: Is
it needed?_ says: “The most discreditable because the most insincere
of all the pleas for new legislation is the cry that the ritualists
are encouraging popery amongst us. To say that we are in danger of
becoming papists is about as rational as to say that we are becoming
‘Plymouth Brethren,’ ” (one of the many new sects which have sprung
up of late years in England).
13 At a meeting of a High Church society, called the English Church
Union, recently held, a member of this Low Church association who
was present rose and informed the assembly that that body further
existed “for the purpose of teaching the bishops the law”—a
statement which must have been interesting to the Bishop of
Lichfield and his two coadjutor‐bishops who were present.
14 Upon this the _Times_ remarks: “There can be no department of
administration ... without a large deposit of discretionary powers
in the best hands that can be found. The Church of England has
always had to submit to that law, for it sees its prelates appointed
alternately by the opposite political and religious sides, and has
had to see the ecclesiastical patronage of populous counties
bestowed for a whole generation on men of one school, and then as
long on men of the other.” Could any words more graphically depict
the shuttlecock existence of Anglican ecclesiastical arrangements
than these?
15 See _Peace through the Truth_, by the Rev. F. Harper, S. J., whose
words we occasionally venture to adopt, as expressing so much more
completely the state of the case than could be done by any of our
own: “In the authorized formularies of the Church of England there
is only one single instance in which confession is distinctly
alluded to, namely, in the Service for the Visitation of the Sick.”
But let us hear what is said by the great Anglican authority,
Archbishop Whately, with regard to the rubric to which we refer, his
work being a text‐book which nearly every Anglican bishop recommends
to his candidates for ordination. After quoting Marshall and Potter
as authorities in his favor, he says: “No authority can be urged
from thence for the applying of God’s pardon to the conscience of a
sinner, or for absolving him from any otherwise than from the
censures of the church,” (_Whately on the Common Prayer_, ch. XI.,
sec. 5, p. 430, London, 1840). And the late Bishop of London, Dr.
Blomfield, in one of his charges (1842) speaks of auricular
confession as “a practice wholly unknown to the primitive church,
one of the most fearful abuses of that of Rome, and the source of
unspeakable abominations.” From all which it ought to be clear to
Anglicans themselves that, if they would find authorized confession
and valid absolution, they must seek it elsewhere than from the
self‐authorized confessors of their own communion.