Philip Freeman

“ In the first place, then, it is alleged, that to provide for the Holy Eucharist special vestures of any kind, not only harmonizes with the transcendent superiority of the rite itself above all other [64] kinds of worship, but is the proper correlative of much that has been doing of late years in the English Church. Is it consistent, it is asked, to give to chancel, and sacrarium, and altar, all the chastened richness and beauty of which they are capable, and yet to deny to the celebrant at the holy Rite all adornment beyond surplice and stole? ”

“ Our harvest thanksgivings, and similar occasions, conducted as they have been, have taught those, to whom the lesson was perfectly new, to find in the Services of the Sanctuary, in worship, and attendance at the Holy Communion, a vent and expression for their sense of thankfulness. At such times the flower-wreath and the banner, the richly vested and decked altar, the Choral Service, the processional hymn, have been felt to be in place. And thus familiarised with them, our people come even to look for them as the natural attendants on high days of festival. ”

“ Such of our churches as have already, week by week, a fairly attended Celebration, to which all the faithful are heartily invited and urged to come,—such churches exhibit [35] a spectacle of really Apostolical Eucharistic Service, such as the whole world beside cannot produce. Neither in East or West, but in the English Church only, is weekly Communion, as the bounden duty of all Christians, so much as dreamt of; so utterly has the apostolic model, throughout Christendom, faded from the memory of the Church of God. ”

“ And what therefore I would earnestly desire that the Church of God in this land might draw forth from the present excitement and anxiety about ritual is, a faithful comparison of herself, in point of doctrine and practice, with the Apostolic and Primitive model. There are greater things than these; "The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment." ”

“ Our Services are nobler and heartier. Our church music is more worthy of the name. Better still than this, and more to the present purpose, our communicants have increased in numbers, our Communions in frequency. Our clergy, as a rule, are devoted, beyond the example of former times, to their duty, according to their conception of it. Schools are diligently cared for, and are fairly efficient; foreign missions grow; the home circle of charities is daily widened and rendered more effectual. ”

“ Thus, we rightly view [12] with the utmost repugnance, and even sickness of heart, the practice of the Western Church in later ages in respect of the Elements; viz. her refusing to the laity, and to all but the Celebrant himself, one half of the Holy Eucharist. We pity or marvel at the flimsy pretences by which the fearful and cruel decree, originating in the bestowal of exclusive privileges upon the higher clergy, [2] is attempted to be justified, and its effects to be explained away. The Western Church, we feel, must answer for that to God as she can. ”

“ A weekly Eucharist is really a continual Eucharist, because it makes our whole life to be nothing else than a living over again and again, with perpetual application to our own practice, of those events and memories which are the staple of the Ordinance. In this respect the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist, viewed as crowning the week, possesses a fitness, because a close following in the steps of Christ, in his Incarnation and Passion, his Death and Burial and Resurrection, which no other day can lay claim to. ”

“ And the question is, how is the Church to deal with this fact, and this phenomenon? It is obvious and [57] easy to say on the one hand—"There is no doubt about the matter. The rubric is statute law, and therefore overrides the canon, which is not." And it is equally obvious and easy to say, on the other hand—"There is no doubt about the matter: the usage, with certain exceptions, of two hundred, or even three hundred years, can be pleaded for the use of the surplice at the Holy Communion. A rubric which has been in abeyance for that period is and ought to be considered obsolete." ”

“ From antiquity accordingly, as has been shown above, she has derived, together with her pure doctrine, "her beautiful garments:" alike her surplice, stole, and hood, and her chasuble, alb, and amice. Yet, as regards the obligatory adoption of these, she has, with a grand charity, more beautiful than the richest of the garments themselves, forborne, for 300 years, to press upon an imperfectly trained people those which, in the judgment of her most learned and primitively-minded sons, best beseemed that high Ordinance. ”

“ Surely, as it is the first duty of man to do right, and only his second to do good;—as health is the highest of bodily blessings, so that activity, apart from it, is but spurious and imperfect;—so is it the Church's first duty to be sound,—primum valere,—and only her second to be, if God enables her, active and prosperous. ”

“ The utmost that can be said of our rubrics is, that in cases of musical incapacity, or where no choir can be got, where priest or people cannot perform their part properly, then they may perform it improperly. But, unquestionably, whenever the services can be correctly performed, when the priest can monotone his part, and the people sing theirs, then the services ought to be so performed. It is a matter of simple obedience to Church rule. The single word "Evensong" is a standing protest against the dull conversational services of modern times. ”

“ Next to the infrequency of our Communions, the fewness of our communicants,—that is, in fact, of our bonâ fide members of the Church,—is our greatest and most inveterate evil. When this fewness is allowed its due significance, we must see and confess that the nominally Christian condition of this country is but an illusion and an untruth after all. Judged by our own Church's rule (which is the rule of Christ Himself) , our communicants, and they only, are our people. ”

“ I am well aware, indeed, of the difficulties which, in many cases, stand in the way of such a restoration, and on these I would venture to say a few words.
In the first place, then, the state of things which prevails among us, and of which I have above ventured to speak in such strong language of deprecation, is one which we of this generation have not made, but inherited. It is not we, God be thanked, that have diminished, but rather, in almost all cases, increased, the frequency of our celebrations. The guilt of this evil custom is shared by the whole Church of fifteen hundred years past ”

“ With respect to the presence of non-communicants at the Holy Eucharist, I had of course seen such publications as have appeared in defence of the practice. But they fail altogether in the essential point, which is, to show that antiquity viewed the presence of such in any other light than either—1. As an utter carelessness and irreverence; or 2. as befitting penitents, and them only. The mediæval doctrine and practice, now being revived by some, is that it is a good and laudable habit for Christian persons in a state of grace to come to the Holy Communion, and to decline receiving it. ”

“ For the second time within our memory, a "vestment" [91] or "ritual" controversy has arisen among us. The last time it was about "the surplice" in preaching, as against the gown; and the "Prayer for the Church Militant," as against the disuse of it. This time it is about the more distinctive eucharistic vestments, as against the surplice; and about a fuller ritual as against a scantier one. ”

“ Strange indeed is it that in the very teeth of this plain and evident intention of the Reformers and Revisers of the Prayer-book, there should be English Churchmen and Clergy, so forgetful of the duty they owe the Church, that they are trying with all their power to provoke Parliament to do an unjust and unconstitutional act, by attempting to set aside this law of the Church, which has the sanction of the three Estates of the Realm: and can only be altered by their concurrence. ”

“ We now see, then, how it came to pass that the stole is what it is in East and West; why it is so highly symbolical of ministerial power; why made so rich; why crossed on the breast in celebrating; why, with all its richness, put under the chasuble: scil. because, like the Aaronic breastplate, it was a memorial "before God" of the preciousness of God's people, whom the priest bore, as he should bear still, on his shoulder and on his heart, in his ministry of labour and of love. We see, again, why the "apparel" of [70] the "amice" is so rich, because anciently of gold ”

“ And what the celebrant does, at any celebration, is to imitate, in his humble measure, and as Christ ordained, the action of Christ. In order to this it is important, and has ever been the custom of the Church, that he should stand at the midst of the Holy Table as one leading a common action for all. In the East he stands eastward of the Table, facing the people; in the West, westward of the Table, and looking away from them: in both cases alike he is "in the midst," offering for and with them. ”

“ And if it be still contended that the more usual condition of the English mind is that which has been above described, viz. of preferring a religion which reaches them mainly through the ear, and appeals but little to the eye, I venture to suggest that— (granting this to be so) —if a given nation is wanting in one particular religious sense, that is the very reason why that sense should be carefully educated. If the Italian is over-sensuous, as it would probably be agreed that he is, in his religious constitution, he is the very person that needs for his improvement intellectual development. ”

“ It is now a quarter of a century since two of the ablest and most influential Prelates that ever sat on an episcopal throne in England, the late Bishop of London and the present Bishop of Exeter, invited the Clergy of their Dioceses to carry out the rubrics, with especial reference to a particular rubric bearing [98] upon the dress of the Clergy in one part of their ministrations. It was found impossible at the time, owing to a strong feeling on the part of the laity (which time has for the most part removed) , to carry out those injunctions. ”

“ Is it irreverent to think and believe that what these simple souls witness to, as their own experience in presence of a kind of ritual new to them, though familiar of old to their fathers, and to the Church throughout the world, is but an anticipation of what our great poet, Puritan though he was, has described as among the consolations of the blessed? ”

“ An instance of a canon obtaining recognition by common consent, though irreconcilable with the rubric of the Prayer-book, is that of the 58th of 1604, which orders any minister, when "ministering the sacraments," to wear a surplice; whereas the rubric recognises for the Holy Communion far other "Ornaments of the Church, and of the ministers thereof."
3. A case of statute law being allowed to supplement rubrical provision, by adding an alternative, is that which orders Banns of Marriage to be asked after the Second Lesson at Evening Service, if there be no Morning Service. ”

“ By the time of the Reformation, however, as is evident from the rubric attached to the Communion Office in Edward VI.'s First Book, reception [28] once a year had become the recognised minimum in this country also. Meanwhile the miserable practice grew up, as a result of the lack of communicants, of the priest celebrating a so-called "Communion," on occasion at least, alone. It is probable that in the earlier days, as e. g. of St. Chrysostom, there were always clergy to receive; the "parochial" system of that time being to congregate several clergy at one cure. ”