Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 150.djvu/289

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

1891.]

Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury.

281

—what High Church orators call the Presbyterian mind—was the Bishop’s indication of efforts “that seemed to aim, on the whole, at good ends,” ‘“to have some fair prospect ” of doing good—a most carefully modified statement. And yet what was it other than that utterance with which the highest authority of all subdued the vehemence of the intolerant apostle?—“Forbid them not: for he who is not against us is a with us.” This was the rule of Bishop Tait’s composed and sober soul.

It was curious that such a man should have witnessed, and, to a great extent, regulated and kept in check, the two great movements that have disturbed the Church of England in his time—that of the so-called High Church or Ritualistic, Oxford or Newman or Romish, according as different classes entitled it. He was, as has been said, one of the “Four Tutors” who lifted the first protest against that extraordinary influence which threatened at one time to change the character of the Church of England altogether, his moral sense being altogether revolted by the method of interpretation suggested by Tract xc., and perhaps his honest plain intelligence lacking sufficient grace of imagination to understand the singular spirit who was its author. It is almost a relief to feel, after the outburst of writing with which the world has been full, that there was one good and indeed great man to whom the strange character of Cardinal Newman was an enigma which awakened more impatience than interest. It was, however, only what seemed to him as playing with truth which revolted Tait. His after-dealings with Ritualists were throughout of the most patient kind, and his desire to avoid prosecutions and embittered controversy very great. It was for this purpose that he put forward, in what an impartial mind must feel to be a most reasonable way, the rights and position of the bishops, claiming for them an authority on ecclesiastical questions which, if there is any meaning in the office of bishop at all, should surely be accorded, as it is indeed their raison d’être. He states this claim, at once powerfully and simply, in almost the first instance which came before him at the beginning of his career as Bishop of London.

“The point beyond which a private clergyman must not go in following his own private judgment in the forms of public worship must surely, in the very lowest view of episcopal authority, be settled by the bishop; and I cannot but hope that when your diocesan, having given his best attention to the law and customs of the Church, forbids an innovation, you will drop the practice objected to, though you may think it right for your own justification to place on record that you do so merely out of deference to an authority which you feel bound to respect, and to which indeed the Prayer-book distinctly refers you in all points that admit of any doubt. I have told you that I have no intention at present of bringing such matters into a court of justice, believing that I best consult the wellbeing of the Church, already too much disturbed by the agitations of questions of ceremonial, by endeavouring to rule, as long as I can, by the quiet and private exercise of that power of godly admonition with which I am intrusted. Let me call to your mind that if, notwithstanding the legal grounds I have stated to you, you still suppose my exposition of the to be erroneous, your dutiful acquiescence in my decision does in no wise prejudice the general question; while I believe you will on calm consideration find such acquiescence satisfactory to your own conscience, and far more likely than a contrary course