Source.—Hansard, “Debates,” vol. 221, p. 78.

Speech on Public Worship Regulation Bill.

I look upon the existence of parties in the Church as a necessary and beneficial consequence. They have always existed even from Apostolic times; they are a natural development of the religious sentiment in man; and they represent fairly the different conclusions at which, upon subjects that are the most precious to him, the mind of man arrives. Ceremony, enthusiasm, and free speculation are the characteristics of the three great parties in the Church, some of which have modern names, and which the world is too apt to imagine are in their character original. The truth is that they have always existed in different forms or under different titles. Whether they are called High Church or Low Church or Broad Church, they bear witness, in their legitimate bounds, to the activity of the religious mind of the nation, and in the course of our history this country is deeply indebted to the exertions and the energy of all those parties. The High Church party, totally irrespective of its religious sentiment, fills a noble page in the history of England, for it has vindicated the liberties of this country in a memorable manner; no language of mine can describe the benefits which this country has experienced from the exertions of the Evangelical school at the commencement of this century; and in the case of the Broad Church it is well that a learned and highly disciplined section of the clergy should show at the present day that they are not afraid of speculative thought, or are appalled by the discoveries of science. I hold that all these schools of religious feeling can pursue their instincts consistently with a faithful adherence to the principles and practices of the Reformation as exhibited and represented in its fairest and most complete form—the Church of England. I must ask myself, What then, sir, is the real object of the Bill? and I will not attempt to conceal my impressions upon it, for I do not think that our ability to arrive at a wise decision to-day will be at all assisted by a mystical dissertation on the subject-matter of it. I take the primary object of this Bill, whose powers, if it be enacted, will be applied and extended impartially to all subjects of Her Majesty, to be this—to put down Ritualism. The right hon. gentleman the Member for Greenwich [Mr. Gladstone] says he does not know what Ritualism is, but there I think the right hon. gentleman is in an isolated position. That ignorance is not shared by the House of Commons or by the country. What the House and the country understand by Ritualism is—practices of a portion of the clergy, avowedly symbolic of doctrines, which the same clergy are bound in the most solemn manner to refute and repudiate. Therefore, I think there can be no mistake among practical men as to what is meant when we say that it is our desire to discourage Ritualism....

Believing as I do that those principles [those of the Reformation] were never so completely and so powerfully represented as by the Church of England; believing that without the authority, the learning, the wealth, and the independence of the Church of England, the various sects of the Reformation would by this time have dwindled into nothing, I called the attention of the country, so far as I could, to the importance of rallying around the institution of the Church of England, based upon those principles of the Reformation which that Church was called into being to represent.... I wish most sincerely that all should understand that, if I make the slightest allusion to the dogmas and ceremonies which are promulgated by the English Ritualists, I am anxious not to make a single observation which could offend the convictions of any hon. gentleman in this House. Whether those doctrines which were quoted from authoritative writings apply to the worship of the Virgin, to the Confessional, or to the various subjects which were quoted by the hon. Member, so long as those doctrines are held by Roman Catholics, I am prepared to treat them with reverence; but what I object to is that they should be held by Ministers of our Church, who, when they enter the Church, enter it at the same time with a solemn contract with the nation that they will oppose those doctrines and utterly resist them. What I do object to is Mass in masquerade. To the solemn ceremonies of our Roman Catholic friends I am prepared to extend that reverence which my mind and conscience always give to religious ceremonies sincerely believed in; but the false position in which we have been placed by, I believe, a small but a powerful and well-organised body of those who call themselves English clergymen in copying these ceremonies, is one which the country thinks intolerable, and of which we ought to rid ourselves.