Untitled - Electric Scotland

440 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xv.
unritualistic legal functionary who was waiting there, Oh, these
are the ribbons which the Bishop made the clergy take off.
Next day appeared the story of the Bishop s stern command-
7 ;
Take off these ribbons, gentlemen.
On the same occasion, the Bishop required, before pro
ceeding with the consecration service, certain other
changes
in the ornaments of the chancel to make it
correspond with what it had been when the usual inspec
tion prior to consecration took place. The story of what
was called, in a Church newspaper at the time,
"
the
Bishop s disgusting and irreverent conduct at St. Michael s,
Shoreditch," grew to large dimensions, but seems to have
been treated with deserved contempt by the clergy of St.
Michael s. Indeed, Mr. Nihill, the incumbent, at a
Dedication Festival of the Church in a subsequent year,
in proposing the health of the Bishop of the Diocese,
expressed his
"
firm conviction that the Bishop was placed
over that Diocese by Providence for the special purpose of
allowing Catholics to obtain, under his truly liberal
government, a "
position which would be unassailable a
testimony, by the way, which brought the Bishop no small
trouble from the opposite quarter, where he used frequently
to be denounced for his inactivity in the suppression of
Popery and Popish ways.
" The Bishop of London,"
said the Record,
"
is, to a qualified extent, decidedly Anti-
Ritualistic, but he is one of those who have planted new
ritualistic churches in his diocese, and who would widen
the platform of the Church of England, and does not fully
go with the Evangelical school in following the old
Reformers of the Church."
We have now passed in review the Bishop s relation
to most of the prominent Churches of the advanced
school in his diocese. His personal friendship with such
men as Mr. Lowder and Mr. Mackonochie was knit yet