You will understand, of course, that I write in respect of the Report recently made by the Judicial Committee in the Purchas case.  I am not about to defend it.  No one, however, ought to pronounce a condemnation of the solemn judgment of such a tribunal without much consideration; and this remark applies with, special force to myself, well knowing as I do those from whom it proceeded, and having withdrawn from sharing in the labours of the Committee only because age had impaired, with the strength of my body, the faculties also of my mind; and so disabled me from the proper discharge of any judicial duties.  With this admission on my part, I yet venture to say that I think Mr. Purchas has not had justice done to him in two main points of the late appeal; I mean the use of the vestments complained of and the side of the communion-table which he faced when consecrating the elements for the Holy Communion.  Before I state my reasons, let me premise that I am no Ritualist, in the now conventional use of the term.  I do not presume to judge of the motives of those to whom that name is applied.  From the information of common but undisputed report as to some of the most conspicuous, I believe them entitled to all praise for their pastoral devotedness and their laborious, self-denying lives; still, I do not shrink from saying that I think them misguided, and the cause of mischief in the Church.  So much for my feeling in regard to the vestments.  I prefer the surplice at all times and in all ministrations.

This is feeling—­and I see no word in the sober language of our rubric which interferes with it—­but my feeling is of no importance in the argument, and I mention it only in candour, to show in what spirit I approach the argument.

Now Mr. Purchas has been tried before the Committee for offences alleged to have been committed against the provisions of the “Act of Uniformity”; of this Act the Common Prayer Book is part and parcel.  As to the vestments, his conduct was alleged to be in derogation of the rubric as to the ornaments of the Church and the ministers thereof, which ordains that such shall be retained and be in use as were in the Church of England by the authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI.  The Act of Uniformity is to be construed by the same rules exactly as any Act passed in the last session of Parliament.  The clause in question (by which I mean the rubric in question) is perfectly unambiguous in language, free from all difficulty as to construction; it therefore lets in no argument as to intention otrier than that which the words themselves import.  There might be a seeming difficulty in fact, because it might not be known what vestments were in use by authority of Parliament in the second year of the reign of King Edward VI.; but this difficulty has been removed.  It is conceded in the Report that the vestments, the