finishes the service on his knees, to the north of the Sacred Table, Ad sacræ mensæ septentrionem;' a form of expression fatal to several of Mr. MacColl's arguments.

10. Mr. Purchas 'did not decline to plead. On the contrary, he pleaded poverty as an excuse for not employing counsel, and ill-health as a reason why he could not conduct his own case. But he offered to defend himself if the Court would only supply him with professional assistance. The Court declined to do so' (p. 215). The whole of this account is at variance with the facts.

11. Mr. MacColl appeals, in proof of the gross unfairness of the Judicial Committee, to four cases, in which costs were not given. The constellation of mistakes upon this point, from one who tells Lord Chancellors that they know nothing of law, is very sparkling. Two distinct tribunals are treated as one; the Lay Committee which sat in the case of Westerton and Liddell, and the Mixed Committee which heard the Purchas case. A suit which had nothing penal in it whatever is described as a 'prosecution' of Mr. Liddell. That gentleman had been cast in costs by the Court below, and the Final Court relieved him of the costs of the respondent; and this is quoted as a proof that the Judicial Committee is unfair to him. Mr. Bennett's is supposed to be a hard case, because there was no order as to costs' (p. 221). Mr. MacColl, after his manner, suppresses the words 'as the respondent has not appeared.'* He had not incurrred any costs whatever, and therefore he did not get any. What would Mr. MacColl have? Was the Court to order a prize of 5007., or a gold medal, to be awarded to Mr. Bennett at Mr. Sheppard's expense? Costs Mr. Bennett had incurred none. In the case of Mr. Purchas, the costs followed the event, and we suppose the usual rule was followed. Mr. MacColl allows himself to accuse the Council' of gross partiality and injustice in this matter. It is a grave charge' (p. 220). The gravity of the charge will depend somewhat on the person who makes it, and the reasons by which it is sustained. . The reason here is that the Dean of the Arches probably knew more about the facts than all Mr. Purchas's judges put together' (p. 220).

12. Mr. MacColl has made much of Zanchius's letter, but he has suppressed an important passage, in which he says (Zurich Letters,' p. 339) that the occasion of this flame has originated from hence;' that the Queen has now more than ever formed the resolution and decreed, willed, and commanded, that all Bishops and Ministers of churches should be attired during the

* Brooke, 'Privy Council Judgments,' p. 248.

performance

6

performance of divine service in the white linen garments that the Mass-priests wear in the popish religion.' Of course to have quoted this would have been fatal, because the garments are white linen,' while chasubles were not, and have been commanded by the Queen, which chasubles had not been. All that the reader is allowed to build on is, that the vestments were 'consecrated,' and that the Mass' was never celebrated in a surplice; but the original Latin of Zanchius does not assert the one or the other. 'Most consecrated' is 'sacratissimis,' and this superlative does not imply degrees of consecration, but is like the numen gentibus illis sacratissimum of Pliny, or the form sacratissime imperator, which do not mean consecrated up to the third degree,' but simply most sacred.' As to the Masspriest,' the Latin has no 'mass' in the case; the word is simply sacrifici' (doers of sacred rites). Thus a letter concerning the Queen's command to wear a white linen garment, which must be the surplice, for the Queen had, in fact, so ordered, becomes after manipulation, a proof that chasubles were worn in spite of the Queen. When this was shown in the 'Review,' Mr. MacColl made the following reply: 'I will not insult the intelligence of your readers by presuming to expose the imbecility of the reviewer's objections('Guardian ').

6

Shall we go on? He tells us that 'September 10, 1571,' is 'seven years and seven months after the issuing of the Advertisements' (p. 71), which would give the date of February, 1564; and tells us in the Guardian' (July 28) that the Advertisements were published 'certainly not earlier than the end of 1564.' He tells us that the Court decided in Martin v. Mackonochie that omission is prohibition;' and then, in a sentence full of mistakes about Aristotle and Roman law, says that the Committee are here in contradiction with one of the fundamental principles of English law (p. 32). The decision of the Privy Council does not contain the dictum that he assails! And as to the principle to which he refers, that the Acts of Uniformity must be construed as ordering what is to be done, and as restraining additions, whether it be or be not contrary to Roman law, the Mixed Committee of Council did not originate or invent it. It was first declared in Newberry v. Goodwin, in a purely ecclesiastical court, in 1811; and further developed by the Lay Committee in the case of Liddell v. Westerton. Mr. MacColl's confusion as to these two distinct courts runs through his book. He tells us that Bishop Wren, when he was accused of standing eastward in the consecration prayer in the Holy Communion, and defended himself on the ground of convenience-being low of stature,' &c.-' was here practising an economy' (p. 199). Vol. 139.-No. 278. Wren

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To

Wren was an honest man, and suffered much and long for his opinions. Why should he then be accused of falsehood? Mr. MacColl says it was not dishonesty to put forth as his one reason this which was not his only or principal reason. attempt,' he says (p. 201), 'to defend his practice on theological and liturgical grounds would simply have had the effect of intensifying the ignorance of his enemies, and exposing sacred things to ridicule. He would have been "casting pearls before swine," and provoking the fate divinely predicted for such folly. He fell back, therefore, on a line of defence, true in itself, and which his accusers could understand and appreciate, but which was far in arrear of that which he would have occupied in happier circumstances. On offering this plea on behalf of Wren I am not, I think, indulging in an illegitimate exercise of casuistry. Our Lord Himself on one occasion (St. John x. 34-36), seeing that His adversaries were incapable of understanding the truth about His Person, retreated from the claim He had just made to one which they could not gainsay.' It is a new ground for not speaking the whole truth, that it would have had the effect of intensifying the ignorance of his enemies ;' but in the name of sound exegesis, in the name of decency, let us be spared this introduction of the Saviour's name, and of a passage of the Bible which bears no kind of resemblance to Mr. MacColl's theories.

Here we leave this remarkable writer. We do not complain of being accused of 'imbecility' and 'incapacity.' We are dealing with a gentleman who has said of the Lay Committee of Council that, in order to save the Evangelical party, itsolemnly and deliberately declared that black was white' (p. 17), and of the Mixed Committee that it was guilty of gross partiality and injustice.' We reckon from such lips on a few suffrages from his litany of scorn, and on being dismissed with the usual benediction, Thou fool.' The question, however, is not wholly whether a reviewer is imbecile and incapable, but whether he has displayed the character of a book in which documents are transformed and garbled, plain facts misstated, legal matters discussed without an attempt to understand them, and all this with a violence of language as unusual as it is unseemly, when aimed against the Courts of the realm. If our readers are able to find grounds for acquitting Mr. MacColl of intentional perversion of facts, we shall rejoice. It is not the reviewer's province to judge the writer; it is his province to prevent, so far as he may, books of this class from being written.

INDEX

TO THE

HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINTH VOLUME OF THE
QUARTERLY REVIEW.