Untitled - Electric Scotland

1 86o-68] LETTER ON RITUALISM 441
closer when he and they were toiling side by side in the
cholera visitation of 1866, elsewhere described, the epi
demic reaching its height a few weeks after the consecra
tion of St. Peter s, London Docks. 1
But it would be altogether a mistake to suppose that
his growing appreciation of the character and work of
these devoted men led the Bishop to change the opinion
he had formed as to the errors of their ecclesiastical
system, or as to the mischief arising from their disregard
of duly constituted Courts of Law. Quotations have
already been given in this chapter, perhaps too copiously,
from his public speeches upon the subject, both in Parlia
ment and in Convocation. These utterances were in
tended, of necessity, for the Church at large. But the
warnings he addressed to his own Diocese were even
more emphatic and detailed.
In February 1866, the Archdeacon and Rural Deans
of Middlesex presented a petition to the Bishop, praying
him to discountenance the Ritualistic practices which were
here and there coming into use,
"
and, so far as they are
illegal, to suppress them." The Bishop in a few days
published a long and careful answer for circulation among
the clergy of the diocese, and he incorporated the greater
in De
part of it in his third Diocesan Charge, published
cember 1866. A few paragraphs may be quoted :-
"The phrase excessive Ritualism,
1
he said, "requires to
be explained, for, as commonly employed, it bears two meanings.
(i) Sometimes the phrase is used for the introduction into
Parish Churches of a form of worship always sanctioned and
maintained in our Cathedrals, and in many of our College
Chapels. ... No doubt the spirit in which these efforts origi
nated has done very much of late years to invest our houses of
God with a more seemly dignity, and to give a liveliness to our
outward worship which has been found very attractive, especially
1 See p. 470.