use of which is now condemned, were in use by authority of Parliament in that year.  Having that fact, you are bound to construe the rubric as if those vestments were specifically named in it, instead of being only referred to.  If an Act should be passed to-morrow that the uniform of the Guards should henceforth be such as was ordered for them by authority and used by them in the 1st George I., you would first ascertain what that uniform was; and, having ascertained it, you would not inquire into the changes which may have been made, many or few, with or without lawful authority, between the 1st George I. and the passing of the new Act.  All these, that Act, specifying the earlier date, would have made wholly immaterial.  It would have seemed strange, I suppose, if a commanding officer, disobeying the statute, had said in his defence, “There have been many changes since the reign of George I.; and as to ‘retaining,’ we put a gloss on that, and thought it might mean only retaining to the Queen’s use; so we have put the uniforms safely in store.”  But I think it would have seemed more strange to punish and mulct him severely if he had obeyed the law and put no gloss on plain words.

This case stands on the same principle.  The rubric indeed seems to me to imply with some clearness that in the long interval between Edward VI. and the 14th Charles II. there had been many changes; but it does not stay to specify them, or distinguish between what was mere evasion and what was lawful; it quietly passes them all by, and goes back to the legalised usage of the second year of Edward VI.  What had prevailed since, whether by an Archbishop’s gloss, by Commissions, or even Statutes, whether, in short, legal or illegal, it makes quite immaterial.

I forbear to go through the long inquiry which these last words remind one of—­not, I am sure, out of any disrespectful feeling to the learned and reverend authors of the Report, but because it seems to me wholly irrelevant to the point for decision.  This alone I must add, that even were the inquiry relevant, the authorities on which they rely do not appear to me so clear or cogent, nor the analogies relied on so just, as to warrant the conclusion arrived at.  For it should never be forgotten that the defendant in a criminal case, acquitted as to this charge by the learned judge below, was entitled to every presumption in his favour, and could not properly be condemned but by a judgment free from all reasonable doubt.  And this remark acquires additional strength because the judgment will be final not only on him but on the whole Church for all time, unless reversed by the Legislature.

On the second point he thus speaks, in terms which for their guarded moderation are all the more worth notice:—­