Appeal to the Clergy.

May we venture to plead with the Clergy of all three divisions. To the first we say, "If you are honestly convinced that Truth is to be found in the Roman rather than in the Anglican Communion, why not go there at once and ease your souls? Surely you are not seeking to follow the wicked example set in England by men who remain in our Communion in order to do Rome's work of proselytism more effectually?"

Of the second section, Clergy who adopt ritualistic practices, but do not attach much, if any, doctrinal significance to them, deeming them merely "fanciful and innocent," we ask: "Are you acting loyally to the Church or by the people, whose salvation it is your function to 'help and not to hinder,' when, because of your own stubborn will and inflated conception of office, you indulge in practices, preach doubtful doctrine, or assume a lordship which page 14 results in driving from their Church men with their families, who were born in our Church, sealed with its seal, and nourished by its truths, long before you were ever admitted to the exercise of the Ministry. God calls to account the steward of His Vineyard as well as the humblest labourer therein. For your own sake, for your people's spiritual welfare, and for the triumph of God's Kingdom on earth, consider these things.

To the Clergy of the third class, the younger men, we would say in the words of the exhortation delivered to them at their Ordination, "Ye ought to apply yourselves, as well as that ye may shew yourselves dutiful and thankful unto that Lord, Who has placed you in so high a Dignity, as also to beware, that neither you yourselves offend, nor be occasion that others offend."

To the Clergy, as a whole, we say : "We give God thanks that it is but a fraction of your Order, who in this Diocese afflict the people in the direction we have dwelt upon. The great body of you we believe to be out of sympathy with the ritualistic movement in its grosser form. God keep you so, and save you from the influence of bad example! The establishment of this League will, we trust, assist you in your honest course. It will have a steadying effect on the Diocese, and, perhaps, beyond it. And we believe that, given wise counsels in the conduct of the League, the Church of New Zealand will, in future years, have reason to be thankful for its existence.

O, the pity of it, to see honest old-fashioned English Churchmen driven with their families from their Parish Church to seek the ministrations of the Pastors of other Christian bodies, or to join themselves to sects which, in the desperate effort to escape from the arrogance of a priesthood, are serving God under the guidance of lay Preachers only, or, worse still, "to forsake the gathering together," as the manner of most now is, and to drift away with the multitude of the careless and indifferent! The Reformation freed England from the superstition of the dark ages; there is grave danger that the restoration of that same superstition will plunge the Empire into a darker age of paganism, from which not even denominational schools will save it. For let the Clergy mark this—it was one thing for a sacerdotal caste, the sole repository of the Nation's learning, to impose on a benighted country a system as full of priestly claims as of religious error; it will be found a very different undertaking to set again the yoke of Ecclesiasticism on the neck of a Laity in whom has been fulfilled the saying "The truth shall make you free."

Responsibility of the Laity.

Brethren of the Laity, recognise, and teach your children to recognise, the greatness of the heritage which, in our pure religion and free Church, God has given us. Resist, with might and main, the beginning of error, false doctrine, and tyranny within the Church. See for yourselves how far innovations, foreign to the principles of our Church, have been introduced here. Let page 15 each bring to the touchstone of Holy Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer, the teaching and ritual of the Church in which he worships. At this stage of the League's existence it is not thought well to single out particular persons or churches for its attention, and we trust that there may be no need in the future. But should any of you desire aid, beside that of your fellow parishioners, against the encroachment of error, the League, as far as it is within its power, will render it. This is our bounden duty. For the Church of Christ is not so much a body, clerical and lay, but a body more lay than clerical; from this it follows that lay action is not incidental or occasional, but an essential part of all Church action whatever. The action of the Laity is competent in matters of doctrine and government, from the very nature of Christianity and of the Church; it follows from this that The Laity are Responsible if False Doctrine is Formally Accepted by the Church.

How easy and natural is the slip from Ritualism to Romanism is well exemplified in the case of "Father" Hugh Benson, son of a late Primate of England, who, speaking to a Roman Catholic audience, stated :—

"At that time (when he was in the English Church) I believed that we had the true priesthood and we practised Catholic doctrine. We had what we believed to be the Mass, we observed silence during the greater part of the day, we wore a certain kind of habit with a girdle, and some wore a biretta. We used the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, supplementing it with a great part of the Catholic Breviary, and I for months—I might say years—before I became a Catholic, recited my rosary every day. . . . At the conclusion of the missions which I conducted as part of my public work, I used to hear far more confessions than I have heard as a Catholic priest. . . . On practically every point except the supremacy of the Pope, we believed the teaching of the Catholic Church, taught most of her doctrines, as thousands of Anglican Clergy are doing to-day, and it is this High Church teaching that is building the bridge over which Anglicans will come into the true fold."

Professor St. George Mivart, F.R.S., a well-known Roman Catholic writer, in the Nineteenth Century, after referring to the "absurdly grotesque" conduct of Ritualists in some respects, says :—

"But these facts should not blind us to the good work the High Church party in the Establishment is doing. The English people are sadly inaccessible to the Catholic clergy on account of old habits and traditional prejudices, and modern Catholic worship is often strange and repellant to them. But the Ritualistic ministers of the Establishment can easily obtain a hearing, and succeed in scattering the good seed of Roman doctrine far and wide. We now frequently meet with devout practices which, forty years ago, were unheard of, save to be denounced and scouted outside the small Catholic body. But Ritualists are rapidly making the word Protestant to .stink in the nostrils of their congregations, amd causing them to regard it as a detestable form of belief. Thus, not only are our ancient Churches being renovated and decorated in the Roman spirit, and so prepared for us, but congregations to fill them are being gathered together. The devout and noble-minded men who form the advance arty are preparing the way for a great increase of the [Roman] Catholic hurch in England."