it will be expedient to obtain from Parliament an alteration of the present law so far as it affects the question :' that is, a repeal of legal restrictions on the exercise of a secular calling by men in Holy Orders. The resolution, it will be observed, confined itself to general language. It was passed unanimously. Had the 'clause' been inserted into it, the result would obviously have been different. The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol' said that 'there could be no serious objection in the mind of any reasonable person to the resolution, if the clause was not added,' whereupon the Bishop of Winchester distinctly explained that 'he did not include that clause in the resolution." If he had not frankly read the clause to the House, as representing what he personally would wish to see adopted, the resolution, as it stood, might have been interpreted as intending to favour the proposal now before us. It cannot now be so interpreted. What we see is, that the prelates of the province of Canterbury accepted the resolution as not committing them to any approval of the combination of a secular calling with 'deacons' orders.' It was accepted by the Convocation of York in the ensuing April. To come to the proceedings of the last two years. At the London Diocesan Conference, March 3, 1886, it was unanimously agreed that the diaconate should be extended, and made more efficient, by 'the admission to it of such suitable and duly qualified persons as are not excluded by law; but that nothing should be done to reduce the order in the public mind to the level of a lay ministry.' We beg our readers' attention to this resolution. It distinctly declined to recommend a change in the law, such as would allow deacons to follow secular employments; and it uttered a pointed warning against whatever might tend to assimilate a deacon to a layman. At the Chichester Diocesan Conference in October 1886, a motion affirming the desirableness of an extension of the diaconate was carried, the mover including within the proposal 'the admission to that order of men of mature age, who had perhaps retired from the active practice of a secular profession-though he did not insist on this condition-and who would be content to remain permanently as deacons.' the Lichfield Conference, Bishop Maclagan announced that 'very few persons had taken advantage of the Bishops' resolution of 1884;' adding that 'in his judgment it would be At 1 In regard to the proposal involved in the clause, the objection, said Bishop Ellicott, was this: You are really reversing the law and principle of the Church; you are simply superadding the spiritual to the secular.' 4 better to retain the diaconate as the preliminary step to the office of priesthood, and to avail themselves in a much greater degree than at present of the help of the laity in such work as they might legally and fittingly share with the clergy.' A motion approving of the bishops' resolution of 1884 was carried.' Early in the parliamentary session of 1887, Mr. Sydney Gedge brought in a bill to the effect that 41 Geo. III. c. 63, and parts of 1 and 2 Vict. c. 106,2 'should not apply to any person to be thereafter ordained a deacon of the Church of England, being not less than thirty years of age at the time of his ordination, so long as he should continue to be a deacon.' This last significant clause was of course intended to provide for his 'taking the benefit' of the 'Clerical Disabilities Act;' but an earnest layman might have been expected to show more respect, in his choice of phraseology, to the Church's principle as to the 'indelibility' or spiritual permanence of Holy Orders. However, to pass this by, the effect of the bill, if it were passed into a statute, would be (1), as the Archbishop of Canterbury said in Convocation, to ' restore,' in regard to deacons of the class specified, the former 'doubt as to their eligibility to sit in the House of Commons ;' and (2) to allow them to carry on 'trade or dealing for profit.' On February 8 the Convocation of Canterbury and the House of Laymen assembled. In the Lower House the Rev. Henry Twells, Hon. Canon of Peterborough, gave notice of a motion identical in terms with the episcopal resolution of 1884, up to the clause which contemplated the contingency of 'admission to the priesthood.' On the next day Mr. Sydney Gedge thought fit, without waiting for any expression of the mind of Convocation, to move in the House of Laymen : "That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that all the legislative enactments which now prevent a deacon from engaging in secular occupations should be repealed, or greatly modified." In spite of some expressions of dissent, the motion was carried by thirty-four votes to eighteen; Mr. Gedge, we ought to add, having intimated that a corresponding alteration in the canons would be necessary before his scheme could be carried into effect.3 The proceedings of a new consultative body, believed to represent the lay mind,' and therewith some. qualities which should correct the deficiencies of the clerical, will command respectful and attentive interest; but they 1 See Guardian for 1886, pp. 378, 1646-1650. 2 See Cripps on The Law relating to Church and Clergy, p. 65. cannot, in any case, be exempt from criticism, and symptoms of one-sidedness or precipitancy will not win the confidence of the Church at large. In this case we find that the London Diocesan Conference in March disposed of the scheme by means of the previous question;' that the Norwich Conference in April rejected it on a division by sixty-four clerical votes against thirty-six, and fifty-two lay votes against thirtyfour; 2 that the Rochester Conference, in spite of the personal appeals of Mr. Gedge, who was so injudicious as to sneer at the diocese of Norwich as 'Boeotian,' adopted an amendment in favour of 'leaving the present spiritual status of deacons unaltered; '3 that at the Winchester Conference in June, with reference to the bill of Mr. Sydney Gedge, the Parliamentary committee reported that the status of the diaconate, as a holy order, would be materially lowered if those ordained were allowed to engage in secular pursuits,' and a resolution against the bill was carried by forty-four votes to thirty-six.1 At the Ely Conference Mr. Gedge, who was present and spoke, obtained a victory; we shall presently notice one or two points taken up by his chief clerical supporter. At the Oxford Conference, on the motion of a highly respected layman, the bill was disapproved without a voice being raised in its favour. But we must now return to the proceedings of the Canterbury Convocation. On February 11, the Upper House had appointed a committee 'to report on the Bill agreed to by the House of Laymen for empowering deacons, ordained after the age of thirty, to continue in their secular occupations.' This committee reported on May II, and, after stating some historical reasons, to which we shall afterwards advert, professed their inability to recommend any relaxation of the existing laws, unless it could be shown that the necessity for doing so had passed into that state of spiritual urgency which has ever been regarded by the Catholic Church as justifying departure from existing disciplinary practice. That the need is great, not only in our populous towns, but in scattered ham 1 Guardian for 1887, p. 343. 2 Dr. Jessopp bluntly asked the Conference to throw away the folly of such proposals.' Guardian for 1887, p. 616. 3 This amendment favoured 'the extension of the present system of licensed preachers.' Guardian, p. 654. This was in the presence of the Bishop of Winchester. He had said that if the Church rejected the proposal recently made, namely, that people should be deacons, and yet work at some useful occupation, yet in one way or another he trusted that a true diaconate would be provided for the Church of England.' Guardian, p. 914, lets . . . for an increase of ordained ministers, cannot be denied ; but the measure proposed . . was so great a departure from the long-continued practice of the Catholic Church, that we do not judge it to be desirable at the present time to take any step in regard to facilitating an entry into the diaconate, beyond that which has been taken in the passing of the . . . resolution of February 15, 1884, with which the report had previously contrasted the bill. The Bishop of London, declining to express any decided opinion on the abstract question, said that- 'the purpose of the report was to maintain what was done in 1884, and to stand there he thought it would be the best course they could adopt, as the experiment then proposed had not been tried sufficiently to judge whether it was wise to take another step in the same direction.' The Bishop of Winchester, after going at some length into the question of precedents, expressed, somewhat hesitatingly, his acquiescence in the report, and only asked the House 'not to decide against the possibility and expediency one day of making a permanent diaconate, some of whose members might be engaged in secular callings.' The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol spoke from a different standpoint to that of the Bishop of Winchester. The Bishop of Ely agreed with the Bishop of Winchester; but he afterwards, with characteristic frankness, acknowledged before his own Conference that he had become better informed.' The Bishop of Oxford uttered warnings against premature action: Those who advocated the bill before Parliament without reserve had looked on one side, and forgotten that there was another side, full of perplexity.' The Bishop of Bath and Wells hoped that the report would not be a permanent block in the way of increasing the diaconate by employing persons engaged in trade.' The Primate closed the discussion with an exceedingly weighty speech, from which we shall further on quote largely, and as to which we would echo the Guardian's words that it 'expressed with eminent and satisfactory clearness a view of the question which was both statesmanlike and learned.' 2 His Grace concluded thus: 'I desire to see the diaconate extended under the restrictions laid down in the resolutions passed by your Lordships' House in the 1 Guardian for 1887, p. 950. The Bishop then said that 'the proposal was a new departure, and in no sense the ancient custom.' 2 Guardian, p. 754. year 1884; but, until we have much larger experience of what can be done by means of readers, and with a diaconate within the power of the law, I think we should be rash indeed to abrogate the old constitutional law of the Church of England.' The adoption of the report was carried unanimously; and so the matter stands in regards to the Upper House. In the Lower House, on the last afternoon of the July group of sessions, Mr. Twells found himself in the possession of the opportunity for which he had long waited,' that of bringing forward a motion for the extension of the diaconate. Those who have not read the report of that day's proceedings will, perhaps, suppose that Mr. Twells's resolution, as then moved, embodied a definite advance on the general language of 1884. On the contrary, it was a simple reproduction of the resolution of the Upper House passed in that year. He admits in his preface that it was 'indefinite,' but pleads that he 'was anxious to adopt the phraseology of the bishops, instead of formulating any motion of his own.' But much had happened since February 1884; Mr. Gedge's bill had been introduced into Parliament before Mr. Twells had given notice of his motion, and had been widely and elaborately discussed before he took his 'opportunity' in July. It was, therefore, an anachronism to fall back on language which, it adopted by the Lower House, would provoke the rejoinder, 'But what of the proposal now in hand?' If Mr. Twells desired to echo the language of the bishops, one would think that he might have referred to their own adoption of their committee's report in the previous May sessions. As it is, he asked his brethren to say simply what the bishops had said three years before, and not to add what the bishops had said two months before. He himself, in his speech, outran the terms of his own resolution. He argued for some measure of that very relaxation of existing law which the bishops -implicitly in 1884, and explicitly in 1887-had declined, at least for the present, to advocate. The debate was adjourned, it being impossible, as the mover frankly admits, that it should be satisfactorily carried on while the House was expecting its notice of prorogation to a comparatively distant date. It will, in the ordinary course, be resumed when Convocation meets in February. Let us now endeavour to realize the actual working of the 1 We say, 'for some measure,' inasmuch as Mr. Twells would not include the lower trades among the 'secular callings' to be thus privileged. He would insist on such an examination as the Ordinal requires, and, therefore, on a knowledge of Latin (Speech, p. 21). |