Produced by Elaine Laizure from images generously made
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[Transcriber's Note: Footnotes have been moved to the end of thedocument.]
1881.
At a Conference of some friends interested in the subject of Ritual,held on January 17, 1880, the following propositions were, amongstothers, agreed to:
I. That the evil of unnecessary Diversity in Ritual, as practisedin various Churches aiming at the maintenance of Catholic doctrineand usage in the Church of England, is real and great.
II. That an effort to moderate it should be attempted, restingmainly on the united opinion of some of those who have givenspecial attention to the theory and practice of Ritual, in theirprivate capacity of Students or Parish Priests.
III. That the effort should take the form of a body of Comments uponthe Rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, and that these Commentsshould include cautions against practices which are infractions ofthe law and usage of the Church of England.
With the view of carrying these propositions into effect, it wasarranged that a series of meetings should be held; and the Vicarof All Saints, Margaret-street, kindly provided a room at theclergy-house for the meetings of the Conference.
Those who had met in the first instance were duly summoned, andothers were invited to join them. The meetings were held at firston two consecutive days in alternate weeks, (since some of themembers came from a considerable distance). Latterly, in order toexpedite the work, meetings were held on three consecutive days inalternate weeks. In all, forty-eight meetings were held betweenJanuary 17, 1880, and July 13, 1881.
It was thought possible that by the co-operation of several minds,information might be collected from sources not commonly accessible,and perhaps hardly within the reach of any one individual. Amongthe members of the Conference also were those who had had experienceof parish-work, as well as those who had devoted time and attentionto historical enquiry into the origin and meaning of the Rubrics ofthe Prayer-Book, or who had made ancient Liturgies their specialstudy: some, it may be added, combined these various qualifications.A hope therefore was entertained, as the second proposition implies,that by considering on very wide grounds (both practical andhistorical), and not from any one point of view, the variousdivergencies of ritual practice, some agreement might be arrivedat even on the most controverted points.
This hope has been realized. It was found that points whichseemed at first to afford no basis on which agreement was atall probable, were settled, after long discussion, almost (if notquite) unanimously; but this involved expenditure of time, andmuch investigation into matters on which existing text-books wereoften silent.
With regard to the actual diversities in ritual which came underthe attention of the Conference, some appeared to be such directinfractions of the Rubrics that no explanation of the Rubrics couldmake their irregularity more evident. Others seemed to arise fromwell-meant attempts to interp