The Ecclesiologist Author:Cambridge Camden Society Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 53 NEW CHURCHES. S. Bartholomew's, Moor Lane, in the parish of S. Giles. Cripplegate, is building as a kind of substitute for S. Bartholomew by the Exchang... more »e, which was pulled down a few years ago to widen the road, and to make room for the Sun Fire Office. At the time of the destruction of S. Bartholomew's, a little Protestant enthusiasm waa got up, not because it is a heinous sin to pull down churches, but because it was the church in which Coverdale was buried, and, if we remember right, there was a sort of translation of his relics. Other relics were also preserved, viz., the " fittings " of the church, i.e., the ugly oak pues, the pulpit and organ, and the sprawling altar-piece, of the cabbage and cauliflower pattern : whether the altar itself was saved, we are not aware. These relics, (the memorials, however, of Wren rather than Coverdale,) have been influential, for they have actually necessitated the building of a church to fit the fittings. This is a piece of hysteron-proteron senti- mentalism into which we cannot enter: " fittings " may rightly be designed to accommodate themselves to a given church, but to build a church in style and place only to harmonize with such " fittings " as Wren's brown pues, and fubsy cherubs, is a caricature of reverence. If it were felt to be irreverent to sell, (which it were,) or to burn (which it were not,) these precious " fittings," surely a little of this piety might have been expended upon an attempt to preserve the church itself. Besides if, as we fully believe, there is a relative holiness in all that once served for the uses of the sanctuary, why was not the whole building transferred stone by stone from Bartholomew Lane to Moor Lane ? Of such a translation, instances occur even in England. Perranzabuloe, if we remember right;...« less