of all others which most closely conforms to the laws of the finest period. In recent years, the love of madrigals has been largely stimulated by the excellent performances of the Magpie Madrigal Society, which, under its admirable conductor, Mr. Lionel Benson, has done work of which the value cannot be overestimated. Such collections as Novello's Glee Hive, Landy's Arion, and the 'Old English Edition' of many madrigals and later compositions, edited by Mr. G. E. P. Arkwright, or the series of Ausgewählte Madrigale (of which the bulk are English works), edited by Mr. W. Barclay Squire (Breitkopf and Haertel), have done good. work in making our younger musicians acquainted in a practical way with the limitations and the opportunities of the form. A famous modern specimen of the 'fa-la' or 'ballet,' though it is usually called a 'madrigal,' is the quartet 'Brightly dawns our Wedding Day' in Sir Arthur Sullivan's Mikado, in which many of the old rules are duly regarded; and in Professor Stanford's Eden, the splendid Madrigale Spirituale, Flames of pure love are we,' is masterly alike in construction and effect. Shortly before the death of Queen Victoria, the idea of celebrating her fame in the manner in which Queen Elizabeth was sung in The Triumphs of Oriana has borne rich fruit in the volume of compositions modestly styled 'Choral Songs' by various members of the modern English school. Among these there is not to be expected a too strict observance of the laws of the madrigal, but a considerable number of the thirteen compositions are real madrigals, while it is clear that several others of the composers have attempted more or less close imitations of the madrigal style. Professor Stanford's Out of the windy west would have commanded admiration in any age, and Sir John Stainer's Flora's Queen obeys the limits of the form, while in the contributions of Dr. H. Walford Davies, Dr. Charles Wood, Sir Walter Parratt, Dr. Arthur Somervell and Mr. A. M. Goodhart, new ideas have been fitted into the old forms. The purely modern side of the book, so to speak, is headed by Sir Hubert Parry, whose Who can dwell with greatness? is not the less a work of genius because it is cast in that development of the part-song form which he brought to perfection in There rolls the deep, and in others of the same series. One result the collection must have-to stimulate the taste for a branch of art in which Englishmen have a peculiar heritage, and to encourage our young composers in the practical acquaintance with the works of the past, so that they may at least attain that kind of ease in strict counterpoint which the madrigal, if properly understood, both requires and gives.

J. A. FULLER MAITLAND.

THE BISHOPS AND

THE REFORMATION SETTLEMENT

On the first day of this month a deputation representing the clerical signatories of the now familiar 'Appeal to the First Six Centuries' was to be received by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The idea underlying the movement seems to be that the period named, and none other, covers the whole ground of Catholic antiquity. Anglican theology of the best type has constantly and consistently accepted antiquity as its guide; but the appeal has been to antiquity as settled authoritatively by the Church, not as defined arbitrarily by round-robin. The Church's own reference to this august standard has, indeed, already been made. The result is with us to-day. It is known as the Reformation Settlement.

It ought to be unnecessary to insist on the fact that the Reformation Settlement was not brought about exclusively by the drastic changes made under the Tudor sovereigns. In truth, it was the resultant of many forces-the final outcome of a series of striking experiments and stirring experiences extending over several generations. The movement set going under Henry the Eighth, and guided as to its eventual direction by the strong and statesmanlike handling of Elizabeth, did not reach its goal until after the Restoration, at what -to borrow a memorable saying of Dr. Liddon-must ever be 'in the eyes of English Churchmen the sacred date of 1662.'

On the work of the Reformation in its purely negative and destructive aspect it is not uncommon to lay disproportionate stress, in strange forgetfulness of the fact that it had also a positive and constructive side-that its aim was, indeed, not a permanent unsettlement, but a very real and definitive settlement. The glibly uttered partisan charges of 'disloyalty to the Reformation' which a special tribunal is at present engaged in investigating, are based upon a one-sided view of that two-fold process of elimination and restoration which had for its object not merely to reject errors and correct abuses, but to re-assert old truths and to establish and perpetuate a complete system of ecclesiastical order and discipline. It follows that there are other possible modes of exhibiting unfaithfulness to Reforma

tion principles-an unfaithfulness of negligence, of omission, of defect, which are none the less real because the new Star Chamber may forbear to take account of them, and none the less insidious because, maybe, they are discernible in the highest ecclesiastical places. Dr. Liddon once observed1 that the question, 'Do the Bishops obey the law?' is one which it is not disrespectful to ask, since it cannot in justice be ignored in this connection. No graver issue, indeed, could engage the attention of Churchmen than that involved in the inquiry how far their spiritual rulers are themselves acting in loyalty to the principles of the Reformation. If even to suggest a doubt on the point should seem undutiful, let a sufficient justification lie in the paramount claim which the Church possesses to the allegiance of all-not least of those who bear rule in her name; who, equally with the rest of the clergy, have solemnly promised obedience to lawful authority; who are themselves the servants of the Church, not its masters; and whose own example, whether of obedience or of disobedience, must have a vast and far-reaching influence over others.

Viewed in its totality, the Reformation Settlement in England presents three great facets. It may be considered, in relation to its effective results, in three principal spheres of activity-namely, Worship, Doctrine, and Polity.

I

So far as the first Reformers have indicated their aims in the preface to the Book of Common Prayer concerning the services of the Church'-a document written probably by Cranmer for Edward's first book, and printed in every succeeding issue-the actual rationale of the Reformation was the recasting of the public services and their restoration to a form in consonance with the 'godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers.' What has been the normal relation of the Anglican episcopate-roughly speaking, during the last sixty years towards the Prayer-book? Will it be denied that, at the time when a revived spirit of loyalty to the Liturgy first animated the second order of the clergy, it was always the Bishops who sought to suppress the movement of reform; always the Bishops who, instead of correcting the ignorance of, took active sides with, the prejudiced opponents of the revival; always the Bishops who, while bestowing favour on many who neglected the plainest obligations, rebuked and persecuted those who were trying to render exact obedience to the Prayer-book?

How many episcopal charges delivered during the last half-century have urged on the clergy the recitation of the prescribed public service for morning and evening prayer 'daily throughout the year'; or emphasised the duty of observing the appointed holy days; or enjoined 1 Letter to Sir J. T. Coleridge, 1871, p. 25. Vol. LVII-No. 336

U

the reinstatement in its rightful place, as the principal Sunday service, of the one office in which the sermon must be preached; or reminded them of the Prayer-book's positive directions with respect to confession and absolution?

...When the Bishops were wont to complain of lawlessness,' did it never occur to them that their own example was scarcely calculated to stimulate the obedience of others? To take one small but significant instance. The same secular tribunal whose decrees they sought to impose on their clergy had incidentally laid on themselves the obligation of wearing copes in their cathedrals; yet the Bishops, with a few exceptions, calmly set this explicit ruling at defiance.

It is not so many years since their ecclesiastical rulers allowed men who originally desired only to obey the Prayer-book in all its rubrics to be prosecuted in courts which were believed to be unccnstitutional and known to be biassed. They not infrequently forced their clergy to choose between disobedience to the Prayer-book and disobedience to their superiors. Such, as a matter of historic fact, was the genesis of that evil spirit of confirmed lawlessness which has since proved so difficult to lay. Had the Anglican episcopate in those periods of acute stress been itself loyal to the Prayer-book, it might without serious difficulty have guided, controlled, and where necessary restrained, the reforming, and occasionally too exuberant, enthusiasm of clergy and laity.

In a different but perhaps more disastrous way the spirit of liturgical anarchy owes a stimulus to episcopal action. The Bishops of the Tait period, by promoting what is commonly known as the Shortened Services Act of 1872, familiarised men's minds with the notion that almost any liberty, either of omission or of addition, may be taken with the services of the Prayer-book. To this cause is directly attri butable the prevalent disregard of liturgical authority on the part not merely of one section of the Church but of all alike.

II

...In elucidation of the reformed Anglican position, viewed on its doctrinal side, its leading characteristics can be summed up in three propositions: (1) That the Church of England is essentially and in the strictest sense a teacher of dogma; (2) that it professes to ground all its teaching on Scripture, as on a sure and certain basis; and (3) that it declares the Catholic Church, of which it claims to bet an integral portion, to be the witness and keeper of Holy Writ.' Here, as in a nutshell, lies the gist of the Reformation Settlement with respect to doctrine.

1

If there be one thing specially distinctive of the Book of Common Prayer, it is its uncompromising enunciation of Catholic dogma-its unswerving adherence to a type of teaching removed as far as the

poles asunder from the vague and invertebrate compromise known as undenominationalism.

To the Churchman the vagueness of undenominationalism is a thing essentially repugnant; yet he is at this moment menaced with a universal, compulsory, State-endowed system of 'undenominational' religious teaching in the primary schools. Already the vast majority of the children of Church parents-in London no less than threefourths of the whole number-are attending schools in which they are taught, not their own faith, but the tenets of a brand-new religion obligingly invented for their benefit by a scratch committee of theological amateurs in 1871. It is possible to suggest that if the Bishops in 1870 had but possessed a little grit they might have ensured the defeat of the fateful Cowper-Temple clause. It is safe to assert that if in 1902 they had taken their courage in both hands, they might have secured not only the repeal of that proviso, but also the rejection of the Kenyon-Slaney amendment.

Neither in the State schools nor even in its own has the Church now any security that in time to come its children will be taught its faith. The gravest doubt exists, as Mr. Athelstan Riley showed in his recently published letter to Archbishop Davidson, as to the ability of the Church schools in the near future to offer a successful resistance to those who plot their downfall. Their sole chance of survival lies in a prompt and united effort on the part of Churchpeople, under the leadership of the Bishops, to make sure that the school buildings erected by them shall remain Church property. Yet at this crucial moment Dr. Davidson can placidly assure an expert lawyer like Mr. Cripps, K.C., and the hard-headed business men of Lancashire who founded the Church Schools Emergency League, that their fears are groundless, that they are the victims of hallucination, and that everything is for the best in the best of all possible circumstances. The Archbishop's cheery and well-meant optimism may for the time soothe public opinion; but when their baptized children shall have been irretrievably deprived of their just rights, and driven by State compulsion into the arms of a hostile, and especially Unitarian, proselytism, Churchmen will derive but cold comfort from the reflection that the men responsible above all others for this fatal finale to the long struggle are the occupants of the episcopal bench.

་་་

In no respect is the pronounced bias entertained by the larger and more influential section of the English Bishops against the Church's dogmatic teaching exemplified more clearly than in their handling of the Athanasian Creed. That a formula which is none the less in substance a statement of belief because it is in form a psalm-which, notwithstanding the obscurity of its origin, has won its way to acceptance as an authoritative exposition of the faith of Western Christendom, Roman, Anglican, and even to a great extent Protestant, alike →which, even in the unchanging East, has for at least seven centuries