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The Repeal of the Public Worship Regulation Act.
The Repeal of the Public Worship Regulation Act Author:Frederick George Lee 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: THE REPEAL OF THE PUBLIC WORSHIP REGULATION ACT. MY LORD, VTO enactment of an ecclesiastical character passed during the last two hundred and thirty yea... more »rs has been more thoroughly revolutionary in its leading principles than the " Act for the better Administration of the Laws respecting the Regulation of Public Worship," passed, at the urgent request of the Episcopal Bench, in the summer of 1874. Even the roughness and rudeness of Puritan violence, and the bitter anti-episcopal animus displayed by the Parliaments of 1643 and 1644, embodied in the various " Ordinances" then, from time to time, put forth,"" wrought no such total subversion of ecclesiastical principles in the National Church as the recent Act under consideration. Nor did any members of the degraded school of Tillotson, Burnet, and Hoadley, fifty years and more afterwards, ever dare so to innovate upon ancient laws and customs. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that, over and above the persons against whom the Public Worship Regulation Act was especially directed, These "Ordinances," so called, ran thus—"The Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled, taking into their consideration .... do hereby ordain," etc. —the so-called " Eitualists,"—the main body of old- fashioned High Churchmen,—traditional followers of Andrewes, Montagu, Land, Cosin, and Sancroft, — dislike it more and more as they begin to realize its true character and appreciate its formidable powers. For the new Act does not alone concern those who have been most active in the much-needed restoration of reasonable order and common decency to our churches and their services, but it actually touches every member of the Church of England, lay as well as clerical, who believes in Historical Christianity, and regards the National Church ...« less