Untitled - Electric Scotland

404 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xv.
dealing with it will certainly be by good and intelligent men,
who have sympathy with these innovations, coming to the
rational and right conclusion that they ought to be guided by
their Bishops in this matter, and if they did not desire to be
guided by the opinion of a single Bishop, they might be
content to be guided by the expression of your Grace s opinion,
and by what they might ascertain to be the universal sentiment
of the whole of the Bishops of England. That would be a
highly satisfactory way of dealing with the subject, for men
would be doing what they should have done long ago : namely,
submit themselves to the decision of those whom God had
placed over them in His Church. We are told that we ought
to enforce the law, and if need be we must enforce the law, but
what an unpleasant position would that place us in a position
from which any one would shrink, inasmuch as we should be-
involved in the prosecution of some of the best men in our
dioceses. I deprecate following such cases from court to court
for many reasons, not the least because I cannot bear that one
whose title in the Church is that of a Father in God should pro
secute the very persons for whom he has a deep respect. ... If
the laity feel that their liberty is infringed in this matter, they
have a very plain course before them ; namely, to strengthen the
hands of the executive of the Church. But if any mode of
strengthening the hands of the Ordinary be adopted,
I should
greatly desire that it should be done with many safeguards. I
should wish that the individual Bishop should be assisted by
whatever counsellors might be thought desirable in treating of these
questions, and I believe that if such power were exercised by the
Ordinary, subject to the proper appeal pointed out by law,
it would
tend to calm many dissensions in the Church. My own experience
is that many of these disputes do not arise from disputed law
so much as from matters of disputed discretion, and that persons
who are unwilling to submit themselves perhaps to a newly
ordained priest will submit themselves to the Church of which
he is the minister to the Bishop of the diocese, calmly deciding
after full consultation, subject to an appeal to the Archbishop of
the province."
1 Chronicle of Convocation, Feb. 9, 1866, pp. 156, etc. It is noteworthy
that the suggestion here made in general terms for the solution of ritual
difficulties is precisely that to which he tried eight years afterwards to give
effect when drafting the Public Worship Regulation Bill of 1874.