NOTICE. In deference to the wish expressed by Subscribers to the PROTESTANT LIBRARY, future numbers, commencing with Vol. 2, will be of the present size, as being more convenient DUNLOP & CO., PRINTERS, SHOE LANE, E.C. RITUALISTIC INNOVATIONS. Part E. "Custom without truth is but the antiquity of error."-CYPRIAN. "Whatsoever is against truth, that will be heresy, even old custom,"-TERTULLIAN. SOME kind friend having forwarded to me Dr. Littledale's Lecture on "Innovations," challenging or inviting a response, according to the sentiment of the anonymous sender, I have accepted the invitation. The Lecture was delivered in the Assembly Rooms, Liverpool, on the 23rd April last; and is now "reprinted by request," with an Appendix of elaborate notes. The Lecturer is an "L.L.D." of Dublin University, and "D.C.L." of Oxford. The facility of attaining such handles to a name is well known, and this should make the possessor modest of their display, but we see them paraded on the present and on every available occasion. He also styles himself “ Priest of the Church of England," and has become notorious for his attacks on our Reformers and the Reformation. His lecture is brimfull of (to use a mild term) erroneous statements, illogical arguments deduced from these statements, and decidedly heretical teaching viewed in the light of a Churchman. A man who publicly advocates (as does Dr. Littledale) Prayers for the Dead, Vestments, Incense, and the Elevation of the Host, and an "Altar," is a Papist in doctrine, though he may by profession be a member of the Church of England. The Church of England recognises only a wooden table on which to commemorate the Lord's Supper, in order to follow our Lord's command to partake of bread and wine in remembrance of Him until He come; hence VOL. II. No. 1. we call it the "Lord's Table." To convert that term to "Altar " is to go directly in the teeth of the letter and spirit of the teaching of our Church, and Dr. Littledale knows it. The word altar," as applied to the Sacrament, does not occur in our Prayer Book. Dr. Littledale of course sets that at defiance. The Elevation of the Host presupposes a real corporeal presence; that is, an entire change of the elements of bread and wine into the body of the Lord; and for what purpose is the elevation but for adoration? Dr. Littledale will admit that the adoration of the elements would be idolatry. But this adoration is implied in the Elevation of the Host, which is accounted by us idolatry, and Dr. Littledale knows this also. He knows also this practice to be rank Popery, abolished by our Reformers; hence probably his deadly hatred of them. Vestments, Lighted Candles, Incense, are adjuncts to the ceremonies in which the Priests of the Roman Church delight, abolished by the Reformation; and it is probable also, therefore, Dr. Littledale declared that "the leading English and Scottish Reformers were a set of miscreants." All these subjects, treated of in Dr. Littledale's Lecture, I propose to notice in turn. The Lecture in question was delivered professedly in "defence of Church principles," and in reply to a question put apropos to Ritualistic innovations:-" Why should all these newfangled ways of teaching and conducting Church services be introduced, seeing that we got on very well without them for three hundred years ?" Now, the drift of Dr. Littledale's Lecture is to show that the "innovations" complained of were institutions in practice before the period named; that is, more than three hundred years old; and he thinks, or pretends to think, he has made a very clever defence for the re-introduction into our Church of those practices complained of if he can only show that they existed previous to the Reformation, when those rascally Reformers came and laid their sacrilegious hands on Altars, Incense, Candles, Vestments, Host, and everything that was (in Dr. Littledale's estimation) holy in the Church, and swept them clean away. It is true that he shows some of these practices to be old, some ancient, some even derived from heathens and Jews; but Dr. Littledale seems wholly to forget that there is such a book as the Bible, from which alone his Church professes to derive her doctrine and teaching. He omits to prove their Bible parentage; but that is The practices he undertakes to characteristic of his school. defend are not found in the Bible. pedigree ! So there is a vital flaw in his Then, again, while he tells us that these matters cannot be settled by a few" off-hand claptraps," he professes that he does not appear before his hearers "in a judicial capacity, to sum up impartially for plaintiff and defendant alike, and to leave them to draw their own conclusions," but "to discharge the functions of a counsel, bound, indeed, to allege no falsehood for his clients, nor against their opponents, but in no way responsible for stating the case against himself." Indeed! I have always thought the minister of the Gospel was a "witness of the truth." My idea of the truth is, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In secular matters we are in the habit of classing in the same category the suppressio veri and the suggestio falsi. The Lord Chancellor, in giving judgment in the famous Overend and Gurney case, said: "The objection is not that it does not state the truth, but that it conceals most material facts, the very concealment of which gives to the truth the character of falsehood." But Dr. Littledale is a Priest, and believes, probably, in the efficacy of Confession and Absolution. I maintain, however, that it is very questionable morality to lecture on "divine" or "religious" subjects with the professed determination of suppressing the truth; and without absolutely trenching on falsehood to suppress all those truths which would tell against his arguments and his "innovations." Hence, the total suppression from Dr. Littledale's Lecture of any reference to the Word of God, except in two almost immaterial points not worth discussing, the "weekly offertory" and "daily celebration of Holy Communion ;" and these only are cited, as it were, by the way, and in quotations from others. The characteristic, then, of Dr. Littledale's Lecture is a suppression of the truth. Not but that there are several erroneous, statements also; but I do not designate these as untruths, for I do not believe Dr. Littledale would knowingly allege a falsehood notwithstanding all the bitterness and invectives which pervade the latter portion of his Lecture, when he comes to deal with the instruments which cleared away all that which he seems to cherish as most dear and sacred. |