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1863-67] SISTERHOODS AND VOWS 453
the same, and, allowing
for their natural differences of
style, there is a quite curious identity, even of language,
in some of the letters which passed between each of these
Bishops
and the heads of the different communities in
their dioceses.
The principal question at issue then, and ever since,
has had reference to the imposition of vows of a binding
character. Some twenty years later this subject was ex
amined with characteristic learning and moderation in a
well-known pamphlet by Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, 1
and his practical conclusions were entirely corroborative
of the line which had been taken in earlier days by Bishop
Wilberforce and Bishop Tait :
" When
you ask me," wrote Bishop Wilberforce to a clergy
man in the diocese,
"
to give [a sister] the Apostolic benediction
on her public resolution of chastity and devotion to Christ, you
ask me to do what, with my sense of the certain danger and pro
bable unlawfulness of vows which Christ has not appointed, it is
quite impossible for me to do. Such a resolution made publicly,
and in appearance and intention confirmed by a Bishop s act is,
whatever distinction may be discovered by an ingenious mind,
really and bona fide No
a vow. . . .
-one has, without God s
express appointment, a right, in my judgment, to bind themselves
for the future in such matters. Let them follow the guiding
hand of God from day to day and rely for persevering in a course
of right or service on His daily gifts of guiding, enlightening,
strengthening grace, and not on the strength or effect of any
past vow or resolution. As, then, such a benediction as you ask
would, in my judgment, seem to confirm by a dangerous vow an
unwarranted resolution, I must of course, with real regret, decline
2
your request."
1
And similarly with regard to another much-debated
See Bishop Wordsworth s Miscellanies , Literary and Religioits^ vol. iii.
pp. 267-289. While these pages are passing through the press, the subject
is again under discussion, with no small modification of former opinions, by
the Bishops of the Province of Canterbury.
"
Life of Bishop \Vilberforce, vol. iii. pp. 331-2.