Untitled - Electric Scotland

1 860-68] LETTERS ON RITUAL 415
very injurious. While we may invariably deplore our position
and be in heart and spirit most desirous of submitting to autho
rity (however openly we seem to act without it), they come to
have no such feeling, and presently are developed into despisers
of Bishops. . . . But if being left to act by our own discretion
did no other harm, it would be intolerable as presenting the
and self-rule in a Church which
unseemly spectacle of anarchy
in theory is a model of order. Conceive, my dear Lord, our
misery for we would be loyal as well as honest men in fearing
that the Bishop should visit our Churches or hear of our doings.
" Some would say that I have made out a good case against
high ritual, and shown how much evil attends it. I admit it, but
then, as I need not point out to your Lordship who has frankly
and generously owned it, very great spiritual good has been done
under it, not to say by means of it. Besides, high ritual is an
with it. This is what I
established fact ; we cannot do away
very humbly and respectfully ask the Bishops to consider, and so
to take us in hand as those who have, it may be, odd ways of
their own, but who yet may be regulated and influenced as they
need to be by their spiritual fathers. . . . Do not let us alone
as those hopelessly beyond the pale of approval. In the begin
ning of any revival it is well perhaps that the visible and audible
workers should be those who have comparatively little official
responsibility resting upon them ; but when the revival has esta
blished for itself a footing, it must be guided in its further pro
gress by those in authority.
It may be that if we were left alone,
in a few years the movement would regulate itself and settle
down soberly and satisfactorily, but in the meantime a miserable
school, that of the Church Times, is being formed and stereo
typed to the spiritual injury of its disciples, and the offence, the
grievous offence of all good sober Christians. It is authority
only that can help us, and authority I am sure will be duly re
spected if it will cautiously take us in hand. I am, my dear
Lord, your Lordship s very obedient servant,
The Bishop of London to tJie Rev,
"Mv DEAR MR. -
carefully.
-,
LONDON HOUSE, Feby. loth, 1866.
I have read your letter of the 5th very
I certainly should advise any Bishop who consulted me,
."