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The above image is from The Directorium Anglicanum (1858) - being a manual of directions for the right celebration of the Holy Communion ... according to the ancient uses of the Church of England. Revd John Purchas was the editor of The Directorium Anglicanum, a highly influential publication amongst the clergy of the Oxford Movement. Fr Purchas and Fr Enraght knew each other, they were former curates at St Paul’s Brighton, and both prosecuted for ‘Ritualistic practices’ |
I am
grateful to the Revd David Swyer, M.A., SSC.,
Vicar of the Parish of Portslade & Mile
Oak,
for granting permission to reproduce, the following dissertation :-
David Martin Swyer., The
Oxford Movement in the parishes:
Richard William Enraght SSC (2019)
(University of Chichester)
Introduction
Chapter 1 - The Social Significance of the Church: ‘To the Poor the Gospel is Preached.’ (1865)
Chapter 2 - Ritual Reveals the Church: Bible-Ritualism Indispensably Necessary for Purposes of Instruction & Of Worship (1866)
Chapter 3 - Honouring God: Catholic Worship Not Pharisaic Judaism. (1873)
Chapter 4 - Eucharistic Theology: The Real Presence and Holy Scripture (1872)
Chapter 5 - The Political and Legal Consequences of Ritualism: My Prosecution Under the Public Worship Regulation Act. (1833)
Conclusion
Bibliography
*******
Introduction
A great deal has been written about the theology, history and influence of the Oxford Movement and its successor movements such as the Ritualists. S. L. Ollard’s book, ‘A Short History of the Oxford Movement’3, Owen Chadwick in his two volume work on the Victorian Church4 and various other authors all focus on the themes and characters of the Nineteenth Century Church.
‘The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement’5 edited by Stewart J. Brown, Peter Nockles, and James Pereiro shows that many distinguished scholars are still analyzing the influence of the Tractarians on the Church of England in the present day. In this volume, articles range from ‘The Legacy of the Caroline Divines, Restoration, the Emergence of the High Church Tradition’ by Andrew Starkie to ‘Histories and Anti-Histories’ by Nockles. This volume from 2017 demonstrates that the study of the Oxford Movement and its related endeavours is still of great interest to contemporary academics. Although this work deals with many subjects, it is surprisingly quiet of the slum priests of the Victorian era.
Although a great deal of research exists on the broad theological and sociological effects of the Oxford Movement, there is still a lack of research into the realities of working the Tractarian theology out in real parishes. Victorian figures such as Archdeacon Dennison and Fr. Arthur Tooth are well known, many others, however, do not attract the attention they merit.
This dissertation will deal with a barely acknowledged figure in this movement, the Reverend Richard William Enraght SSC. He was born on the 23rd of February 1837 in Moneymore, County Londonderry, Ireland6. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in1860. After his ordination to the diaconate (1861) at Gloucester Cathedral, he served his title in St Bartholomew, Corsham, Wiltshire, being ordained to the priesthood in 1862.
After curacies in Wiltshire, Sheffield and Lincolnshire, Enraght served as curate of St Pauls’ church, Brighton under the Revd. Arthur Wagner from 1867-71 and as curate in Charge of Portslade by Sea with Hangleton from 1871-1874. It is clear that Enraght was already sympathetic to the ritualist movement that had developed in the wake of the first generation Oxford Movement. His sermon on ‘Bible Ritualism’ which will be dealt with later in this dissertation, pointed to his developing thought on the matter. Indeed, it may be a motive for his accepting a curacy in Brighton under Arthur Wagner. Wagner was a great influence on Enraght during his seven years in and around Brighton.
From the moment of Arthur Wagner’s presentation as Perpetual Curate of St Paul’s church in 1850 he was the pioneer of the Tractarian Movement or “Puseyism” as it was called.7
In his PhD thesis, Stratford deals with the so-called ‘slum priests’ of the mid-Victorian period: Bryan King (1811-1895), Charles Fuge Lowder (1820-1880), Alexander Heriot Mackonochie (1825-1887), Arthur Henry Stanton (1839-1913), Robert William Radcliffe Dolling (1851-1902), John Purchas (1823-1872), Arthur Tooth (1839-1931), Richard William Enraght (1837-1898).
Four of the eight named above were graduates of Oxford University, and three Cambridge. All eight served in slum areas through their ritual controversies.
from The Oxford graduates were well known shared similar influences. Dolling came into this same circle having encountered Mackonochie and Stanton during his time in Cambridge. Their influence by the Oxford Movement is quite direct.8
Enraght is the only one on this list who was neither a graduate of Oxford nor Cambridge. However, the Oxford Movement’s influence had spread throughout the Church of England principally through the ‘Tracts for the Times’9 and the scholar-clergy who wrote them. The Oxford Movement grew out of this desire to re-connect with the Primitive Church. Newman’s research on Arianism had led him to delve deeply into the Early Church Fathers. Rowlands notes that, ‘By 1835 Newman had been reading the Fathers for many years. The Romantic spirit did much to arouse Newman.’10
As further evidence of his embrace of what would now be called Anglo-Catholicism, Enraght was enrolled in the Society of the Holy Cross in 1868.11 The Societas Sanctae Crucis was founded on the 28th of February 1855,
Its objects are to defend and strengthen the spiritual life of the clergy, to defend the faith of the Church, and to carry on and aid Mission work both at home and abroad. The members of this society, meeting together as they did in prayer and conference, were deeply impressed with the evils in the Church, and saw also, in the remedies adopted by St. Vincent de Paul, the hope of lessening them.12
Members of the SSC would be at the heart of many of the battles over the Catholic identity of the Church of England in the second half of the Nineteenth Century.
While Enraght was at St Paul’s, Brighton, he witnessed the legal difficulties of the Reverend John Purchas, perpetual curate of St James, Brighton, who was charged before the Court of Arches in 1869 for various of his ritual practices. This Vincentian mixture of concern for the poor and clear Catholic teaching must have appealed to Enraght. He had already shown his advocacy for the poor while a curate in Sheffield. The next chapter will analyse his sermon, ‘To The Poor The Gospel Is Preached’ given in the parish church in 1865.
This dissertation will trace Enraght’s life and thought through his published works. In order to maintain clarity, only his major works will be dealt with in detail and they will be arranged thematically where necessary as he sometimes returned to a subject later in his life. Some of the minor publications are still not easily available.
Although Enraght was one of the “martyrs” who were sent to prison for ritual abuses, he is hardly mentioned in the historical literature of the period. Why do so many books about this period skate over Enraght? The classic ‘A Short History of the Oxford Movement’, which did so much, in the early part of the 20th Century, to record the achievements of the pioneer Tractarians and Ritualists, only mentions Enraght in passing.13 Palmer, likewise, in a book focusing on Victorian clergy who fought against the Establishment, deals with Enraght in part of one paragraph and a footnote.14 Owen Chadwick’s second volume of his great study of the Victorian Church is similarly brief on Enraght’s contribution to the events of his day.15
It is the contention of this dissertation that in Enraght’s published works a Vincentian16 blend of social justice and Catholic teaching will be found. Although it is wrapped up in the language of his day, a language that can sound patronizing to the modern ear, Enraght had a profound desire to reach the working classes and those he believed the Church had alienated. Enraght, along with Lowder, the founder of the Societas Sanctae Crucis, believed that
Eucharistic vestments and other accessories said in a graphic and indisputable way that the Church of England was part of a universal Catholic Church that had historical and theological roots reaching far deeper than England itself.17
Each chapter will reveal something of Enraght’s motivation and theology.
From
a sermon on the abolition of pew rents and the welcome of the working
classes into the new urban parish churches through a paper on the
role of ritual in the Bible and the Church and a Tract about the Real
Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of Holy Communion to a robust
rebuttal of the Church’s treatment of him in his prosecution under
the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874, Enraght’s passion for
the Catholic nature of the Church of England and her mission to the
whole nation, rich and poor alike, is demonstrated. Each chapter of
this dissertation will deal with one facet of Enraght’s Vincentian
spirtituality as he worked it out not in the Groves of Academe but in
the grime and dirt of poor and neglected communities.
*******
Chapter
1 – The Social Significance of the Church:
‘To
the Poor the Gospel is Preached.’
(1865)
As J. C. Bennett explains in his PhD thesis, “The practice of pew-renting blossomed under the Church Building Acts, the first of which was passed in 1818, which officially made pew-renting a legitimate part of fund-raising for new churches in the widespread church-building of the nineteenth century. And within two decades of the 1818 Act, a vigorous protest sprang up against pew-renting, based mainly on the contention that the poor, lacking the money for luxuries such as pews, were demeaned by their relegation to free seats and might take umbrage and refuse to attend church.”18
In his work on the Church of England in Mid-Victorian Sheffield, Wickham shows through the 1881 religious census taken in Sheffield, that out of a total population of 284,140, 33,835 people attended a Church of England service on the 20th of November. The total number of people attending a Christian service that day was 87, 756. This did not include children attending Sunday School.19 38.5% of those attending church that day did so in an Anglican church. As Wickham points out,
Whatever may be said of the 1881 figures relatively… they do in fact represent a vast body of church- and chapel- goers that, with tens of thousands of Sunday School children of all denominations, add up to a substantial proportion of the population in the churches.20
Enraght’s first published work emerged in the Church’s struggle to reach out to the masses gathering in the new urban centres of England. Thousands of people were not attending worship or being touched by faith in Christ.
“To the Poor The Gospel is preached.” was preached in the Parish Church of Sheffield on the 23rd Sunday after Trinity 1865 (19th of November) where Enraght was one of the curates. It is interesting to note that a cleric who would go on to be controversial for liturgical and theological reasons first came to prominence on a matter of social justice. In his forward to the sermon, he denounced the renting of pews as “wretched and unchristian”21 In the 19th Century, the practice of individuals or families renting pews had become unacceptable to many in the Church. The effect of the system was, according to its detractors, to discourage poor people of the parish from attending church. In the burgeoning towns and cities, such as Sheffield, many of the poorer inhabitants were failing to attend services. Enraght believed “that the poor are, as a body, virtually excluded from, at least, the greater number of our town churches.”22
Enraght’s sermon took as its text part of Luke 7.22 “To the Poor the Gospel is preached.”23 He opened his sermon with the injunction that Jesus “directed His preaching and teaching and all His loving ministrations very especially to the poor”24, he then linked this dominical practice to the teachings of the apostles as they “forgot not His example and instructions after their Lord’s ascension.”25 Enraght was clear that this injunction was something to which “every minister, however humble, is solemnly bound by his ordination vows.”26 After a rhetorical flourish, “Where, then, are my poorer brethren this Lord’s Day morning?”27, he told his congregation that the poor were alienated from the Church and her worship. This alienation came from the pew rent system and the allocation of the best seats to those who can afford them.
Enraght invoked the Letter of St James to remind the congregation not to favour any class of person.
Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? But ye have despised the poor. [James2.5-6]28
He placed the blame for the alienation of the poor and the neglect of their souls with the system of pew renting and the culture of church attendance.
The poor in our large towns have grown up to manhood with the idea that they may find room in church while they are children and while they are Sunday School, but as soon as they leave Sunday School…then there is “no room for them” in the “assembly” of the Church.29
As soon the poor try to attend church in adulthood they will be “looked coldly upon”30 or turned out of pews that they do not have permission to use.
For Enraght,
Nothing on earth, I believe, has produced more exclusive selfishness than this same pew system; which is, moreover, a plain and manifest innovation upon the ancient Church system.31
Here we see Enraght’s theological instinct to return to what he saw as the ancient belief and practice of the Church. For him, the Church of England was not simply the ecclesiastical arm of the State but part of the One Church that was based on the teaching and practice of the apostles. In his view, the very life of the Church was threatened because of the injustice of the pew system which undercut all the missionary work undertaken in the parishes.
Parish priest, Scripture Readers, Bible women, district visitors, are all very well; but the crying want of all is … church room… in which to bring the half-claimed outcast.32
Until the current allocation of pews was done away with, he saw little hope of reaching out to the huge number of poor people who had flocked into the cities of England. He linked the neglect of the poor in church to the currents of “Chartism, rebellion and riot or worse…”33 Injustice in church was a sign of injustice elsewhere and had to be addressed. Enraght believed that, in order to change the future of mission in the cities, children had to grow up in the Sunday Schools to see and believe that they had a place in church as adults. They needed
a different idea of the house of prayer, from that entertained at present by their parents… and grow up… attending and loving “the assembly” of Christ’s church.34
Throughout Enraght’s impassioned sermon many of the congregation may well have felt attacked and could have legitimately asked themselves on what basis Enraght was speaking for the poor. As Bennett points out,
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the complaint most often heard about pew-renting was that the practice kept the poor away from church – generally these argued that the destitute were so offended by the system of seat-letting that they refused to attend church. This objection was largely made not by the alleged victims, but by those of higher social standing ostensibly on behalf of the poor.35
However,
E. R. Wickham describes Enraght’s incumbent as also persuaded of
the case to abolish pew rents. Perhaps this is why Enraght had
license as curate to preach so boldly on the matter?
Canon Sale, who was vicar of Sheffield from 1851to 1873, tried to do something about the practice in the Parish Church, but apparently without much effect, and some of his comments are revealing – the Scripture readers, he said, “when visiting the poor, and asking why they do not come to Church, were often met with the reply that the pews in the church were owned or let, so that there was no room for them to sit in them.”36
Canon Sale’s remarks about Scripture readers were echoed by Enraght in his sermon and this may indicate a concerted effort to challenge the pew system in the parish. At first, Enraght’s strident pulpit manner may be a surprise coming from a junior curate but Wickham’s description of Canon Sale, the vicar, reveals why Enraght felt able to preach so boldly on a sensitive subject. Wickham also points out that
Not until 1880, when the popular Canon Blakeney was Vicar and extensive alterations were made to the fabric of the building, were the pews replaced with oak benched for 1,600 people, all of which were to be free…37
This shows how long the campaign to change embedded customs and practices can take. It is certain, though, that Sale and Enraght’s tireless campaign laid the foundations for the future incumbent to act. Enraght’s sermon was given in 1865 and so fifteen years would elapse before victory was gained. This campaign by Enraght carried on after he had left Sheffield. On the 14th of December 1871, he was the keynote speaker at a meeting of the “National Association For Promoting Freedom of Worship And The Weekly Offertory”.38 He was, by now, the curate in charge of Portslade by Sea and Hangleton. The meeting was presided over by the Bishop of Chichester and the various clergy and lay participants revealed that this movement had support across the theological spectrum of the Church, “The subject is far removed from party passion and miserable prejudice; it lies in a higher region altogether…”39
Enraght opened his lengthy address with the statement
We want to see the parish churches of this land opened for the free and unrestricted access of the people, and the system of Church finance one which will not interfere in any way with such free access.40
At the heart of this protest lay his abhorrence of the injustice of a system that prevented those who were the poorest and most marginalized from worshipping with the Church of God,
We have treated the upper and richer and well-to-do classes with such manifest favouritism, and the working classes, as a body, with such glaring unfairness, and I must really say – cruelty – that they have gradually lost their interest in the church – in the things of God, and of eternity.’41
For Enraght, it was biblical practice and Church teaching that had to come first. Part of the reaction of the High Church clergy from the time of the Oxford Movement and beyond was a rejection of secular and Parliamentary interference with the right of the Church to govern herself and to be true to the apostolic faith. Therefore, equality before the Law derived from Christian truth. It was the Church that should be moulding society, not the other way around. Justice for the poor was, for Enraght, a matter of Natural Law.
In the first place, it seems to me that in a town like Sheffield, the doctrine of the equality of mankind is pretty fairly established out of doors, and I don’t know why there, where men certainly are equal before our Almighty Father, I don’t see myself why we should take any human and personal distinctions into the church with us. And, therefore, I give my voice certainly for having all the people who come to worship God put on equal footing.42
Enraght was passionate about the access of the poor to the teachings of Jesus and life of His church. As in his sermon in Sheffield, he pointed to the priorities of Jesus and how the system of pew rents was a manifest obstacle to the Church’s mission to the poor.
Yes, the pew-system violates the common law, common sense, and the spirit of Holy Scriptures. It also violates the letter of Holy Scripture. Remember that our Lord Himself chose to be a poor man, born of poor parents, and that He chose that He and His companions should live in deep poverty. Poverty He ever honoured. How invariably throughout the sacred Scriptures the common people and the poor, both in their souls and bodies, are said to be the especial objects of the Divine Shepherd’s care. To these especially He said He came to preach the Gospel.43
Enraght represented many clergy who were very concerned about the alienation of the urban working classes from the Church of England in particular and Christianity in general. In comparison to the statistics of church attendance in the 19th Century given at the beginning of this chapter, according to the 2011 census, the population of Sheffield was 552,698 and 52.5% of this figure described themselves as Christian. In 2009 the average Sunday attendance in the diocese of Sheffield was 16,200.44 This figure included children where the 1881 statistics did not. The decline is stark. However, it does put the efforts of Enraght and his contemporaries into context. Wickham writes,
The [1881] details should be compared with those of the 1851 Religious Census. It will be seen that the population slightly more than doubled itself in the period of thirty years, and the total number of attendances is also just more than doubled. Altogether it showed a valiant effort on the part of the churches to cope with the great increase of population.45
Enraght concluded this speech with his vision for an inclusive Church of England where class and wealth did not matter.
If we wish (far higher aim still!) to really have some chance of evangelizing the mass of the people of England, let us unite to make our churches what they once were – but what too many of them have long ceased to be – the working man’s and the poor man’s, just as much as the rich man’s, home on earth: a fore-taste of all true believers, both rich and poor, meeting in one common Home in Heaven.46
It is interesting to note that Enraght’s first publication is about the opening up of the Church of England to the poor and working classes. He has a high view of the Church as the Body of Christ and, as such, all should be welcome in God’s House. This bias to the poor is at the heart of the mission of the Society of the Holy Cross.
*******
Chapter
2 Ritual Reveals the Church:
Bible-Ritualism
Indispensably Necessary for Purposes of Instruction & Of Worship
(1866)
In 1866, while he was still curate in Sheffield, Enraght published a sermon47 given in the church of St Luke’s, Sheffield. The sermon was given in response to a controversy in the parish about perceived ritualism and popery. Enraght began in his customary, pugnacious manner,
Certain men, who ought to know better, have been telling you that, in endeavouring to stir up this Church of S. Luke into something like life, we are only actuated by a Jesuitical desire to bring you all over to what many persons, who do not understand what we are talking about, call “Popery”.48
One quickly gains an impression of Enraght’s character as someone who relished conflict. Despite his youth in holy orders, he quickly went on to the offensive. However, the preacher was very concerned to root his arguments in Scripture. The bible texts he began with were: ‘We preach Christ Crucified” [1 Corinthians 1.23] and ‘As often as ye eat this Bread and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord’s death till he come.’ [1 Corinthians 11.26]. He linked the duty of the Christian to proclaim the crucified Christ with Jesus’ own command to break bread to drink the cup [1 Corinthians 11.24-25].
Sermons and words had to be linked with the ritual following of Jesus’ command to his disciples. Enraght repudiated the Quakers’ rejection of the administration of the Lord’s Supper,
how is it that our blessed Lord has solemnly commanded that He should be “shewn forth”, “proclaimed”, “declared” in the Most Holy Eucharist, in a word, that He should show Himself forth therein, if it be really true that He intended to do away teaching by Rite and ceremony, Sign and symbol?49
Having established the dominical command to perform the ritual remembrance of the Lord’s Supper, Enraght went back to the ‘Jewish Church’50 He wanted to demonstrate that ritualism was part of the Church’s history going right back to her Jewish origins. ‘We find “Altars”, “Pillars”, and “Oil poured upon them,” “Jacob’s Ladder” … all of which had deep meaning in them.’51 For him, the whole breadth of the Bible was couched in symbols and ritual. The ‘Heavenly Church’ was symbolised in the same manner. He pointed to passages in Isaiah and in the Revelation to St John the Divine that ‘have deep Symbolical meanings.’52 Both Old and New Testaments used the language of ritual worship so to reject them would be unscriptural. Moreover, ‘if the Patriarchal, the Jewish, the Heavenly, and the Christian Churches were four separate Churches, it would be indeed strange… that the last was intended to be radically different from the other three…’53 This went to the heart of Enraght’s thesis that the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church was one and, therefore, her worship on earth should be a type for the reality and anti-type of heaven. Separating the Jewish Church from the Christian would not do. For Enraght the Church of England was part of the whole Church that reached back to the Creation and forward to the Second Coming and Parousia. Like many clergy and other ritualists of his day, Enraght had a very high view of the Book of Common Prayer. When the rubrics, canons and ordinances of the Church and prayer book were followed correctly, ‘we are following the example of the whole Catholic Church in the days of her ancient purity.’54
For Enraght, the way one prayed and worshipped on earth prepared one for heaven,
The Catholic Church is gradually learning on Earth the Ritual of the Heavenly Service-Book, that she may be able to join in it forever.55
His sermon was not simply about haranguing the congregation about their lack of understanding of the rubrics of the Prayer Book,
Now … get the … notion out of your heads; namely – that you go to Church for little else than preaching… and get a true view of the primary and principal object for which “we assemble ourselves together” into your head… you will never object to any Signs and Symbols and Ceremonial taken from the Heavenly Service-Book being used in Christian worship here in preparation for the everlasting Worship in Glory hereafter.’56
Despite his forthright manner Enraght was keen to show that doctrine, faith and practice must all be aligned. Storr makes this point eloquently,
Ritual is dogma translated into symbolism and outward form. Apart from the dogma which underlies it, ritual is the expression of aesthetic needs in worship. The intimate connection between dogma and ritual is sometimes denied, but the history of the ritualistic movement proves that the desire for ritual was determined by a dogmatic interest.57
Ritualism could not be something in and of itself, it was part of the Christian experience of faith. Worship on earth had to catch us up into and prepare us for the worship in heaven. This was a crucial part of Enraght’s mission. He ended the published part of his sermon with a cri de cœur
God grant that you may use this Heavenly Ritual aright, that so your use of its eternal Anti-type may be eternal in the Anti-typical Church of the living God.58
It is questionable whether Enraght’s use of type and anti-type made an impression on the congregation before him. However, as this sermon reached a wider audience through publication, it would have joined the growing voice of the second generation Anglo-Catholics as they sought to reclaim the Prayer Book and the whole of the Church of England as the inheritor of the primitive Catholic Church. Bentley writes that,
in one respect ritualism merely reflected the general ornateness and conspicuous waste of Victorian middle-class life.59
Although
Bentley is basing this on Gladstone’s view, this is, in my opinion,
unfair to Enraght and his contemporaries. Ritualism is not the same
as ornamentation. Enraght based his sermon on what he saw as the
biblical foundation of ‘ritualistic or symbolical teaching’60
in the Old Testament and that found in the New Testament, namely in
the Book of Revelation.
*******
Chapter
3 Honouring God:
Catholic
Worship Not Pharisaic Judaism.
(1873)
Although this tract61 was written in 1873, some years later than the one on Bible-Ritualism, Enraght’s arguments followed the same logic.
Divine Worship means principally and especially paying honour and glory to Almighty God. It is man's first and highest duty. It is the unceasing occupation of the Angels in Heaven.62
If this was true, then we had to use all our skills to make this act as beautiful as possible. Enraght used a contemporary image of worship to help his readers.
The Worship of the Church means that God holds a Leveé from time to time to receive His faithful subjects, and those subjects assemble themselves to do Him homage.63
The Levée was still practised in Enraght’s time in the court of Queen Victoria. Important dignitaries and military officers would be formally presented to the monarch. They would wear full dress uniform and, when called by name, would step forward and bow at the monarch seated on the dais in the Throne Room. Enraght’s argument was clear. If we did this for an earthly monarch, should we not use all our artistic skill and ritual in the worship of God?
When we desire to do honour to an earthly friend or benefactor, is it our aim to do so with stinginess and meanness, or in the best way in our power? Shall all that is beautiful and lovely, whether in painting, or music, or bright lights, or costly garments, or flowers, or sweet odours-- be spent upon our earthly friends, and benefactors, or upon ourselves; but denied to God?64
Enraght used various passages from the bible, including Isaiah 60-61.4, to back up his case. If his opponents wanted to claim that many of his biblical quotations were from the Old Testament, Enraght countered with
Our Lord has plainly declared that in this and other matters "He came not to destroy the Law" of Moses "but to fulfil" it, -- that is to fill it full, to pour into it its full, evangelical, gospel meaning--to turn the shadow into the substance, to fill the sign with the thing signified.65
The worship of the Christian Church came organically from that of Jewish Temple worship, Enraght returned to a subject he had used in his sermon on Bible-Ritualism, namely, typology. St Paul, himself, used this method to interpret Scripture when he described Adam as a type of the Christ who would come [Romans 5.14]. It is through this biblical method of interpretation that the Church had to deal with the Scriptures herself.
That is, those which had been ordained by the Catholic Church, and which were even in those days the "custom of the Church," as tending--not to draw men away from Christ, but--to the honour of God through Jesus Christ; -- adapted to preach Christ crucified or Christ glorified to the eye, as well as to the ear; -- tending to the "doing all things decently and in order," and so to "the edifying" of the Church. This is the sole end of Church Rites and Ceremonies. (Mat. xviii, 15-20; 1 Cor. x, 31; xi, 1-19; xiv, 26-40; Rom. xvi, 17-20; 2 Cor. xi, 13-15; 1 Thess. v, 11-14; 1 Tim. iii, 15; Titus iii, 10, 11; Heb. viii, 5; ix, 23, 24; xiii, 7, 17; Jude 8-13, 19, 20.)66
Relying on so many biblical passages was crucial for Enraght’s argument. The opponents of ritualism and those who would see the Church of England as protestant rather than catholic had to be challenged through the bible as they claimed this territory for their own.
Proving that his own method of interpreting scripture was solidly biblical, indeed, that it was used by St Paul himself, was central to Enraght’s thesis. If he was to show that the Catholic understanding of worship and ritual was not some mediaeval accretion, he had to demonstrate its scriptural basis and its foundation in the primitive church.
The Catholic Church from the beginning moulded her Ritual and her religious observances upon those general principles. She found a certain Divinely appointed ritual and a certain round of religious observances declared to be "patterns of things in the Heavens," "the very image of Heavenly things," and "figures of the true;" (the Greek word translated "figure" means the impression upon earth from the Heavenly Die.) See Heb. ix, 23, 24; x, 1;67
Those types which had been fulfilled in Christ were already abolished such as ‘circumcision, the Passover and the Jewish Sabbath’68. However, this did not mean that all symbols and rituals were automatically abrogated. Enraght concluded the first part of his argument with more scriptural proofs,
When man has "truly" learnt to "worship God with his spirit," he will be found to worship and glorify his God with "his body" also, (Rom. xii, 1, 2; Phil. ii, 10, 11,) and with everything he possesses, or can bring to the Service of the God he adores. (Phil. iv, 16-18; Heb. xiii, 15, 16.’69
In the second part of his treatise, Enraght looked at particular customs and rituals. He dealt with the various hot topics of the day, for example, bowing or genuflecting to the altar when entering or leaving church; processions and use of the processional cross; choral services; turning East for the creeds and prayer; the placement and ornamentation of the altar and other issues. This part of the pamphlet was rather brief and perfunctory. Enraght’s main aim in this tract was to establish the principles upon which catholic church ritual was based and had developed. At each point he used Scripture or the canons of the Church of England to back up his argument.
In this tract and his work on Biblical-Ritualism, Enraght doggedly defended the growing ritualistic movement in the Church of England as nothing new but the recapture of something ancient and thoroughly Anglican. If the Church of England was still part of the ancient Catholic Church, then her ritual, prayer book and ornamentation should reflect that.
The Preface to the Prayer Book--"Of Ceremonies"--reminds us that ceremonies which are of holy and pious significance, "do serve to a decent order and godly discipline, and be apt to stir up the dull mind of man to the remembrance of his duty to God, by some notable and special signification, whereby he might be edified."
If the English Church be a true portion of the one Catholic Church of Christ, is it not only reasonable that her Church buildings and Services should resemble, at least in their main features, those of the other portions of the Church Catholic. (John xvii, 21; Acts i, 42, 44, 46; iv, 24; 1 Cor. i, 10; xi, 16-19; Phil. i, 27; ii, 2.)70
Enraght
insisted that the Church of England was Ritualism was not aping Rome
but rediscovering what the Church of England always had been, before,
during and after the Reformation, namely a part of that one, ancient
Church of Christ.
*******
Chapter
4 -
Eucharistic
Theology:
The
Real Presence and Holy Scripture
(1872)
The largest work written by Enraght concerned the theology of the Eucharist.71 This was written in 1872 while he was curate in charge of Portslade by Sea and Hangleton. As the title suggests, Enraght was keen to show that the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine was rooted in Scripture and the teaching of the Church of England. In order to convince the average Anglican in mid-Victorian England it was vital that the author relied on arguments based on biblical verses and quotations form the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Anything that was perceived to come from Roman Catholic theology would be rejected out of hand.
Enraght began his essay with the most obvious objection to his assertion of the Real Presence which is the Symbolism theory.
WHEN we quote the words, "This is My Body," "This is My Blood," as proving that our Lord, both God and Man, is "verily and indeed" present in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, many persons reply "Oh, these words are merely figurative. They only mean that the bread of the Holy Communion represents Christ’s Body, and the wine represents His Blood. To believe anything more is an idolatrous superstition.72
He then set out the Reception theory that
Christ feeds with Himself the really believing communicant, and him only, upon his reception of the consecrated Sacrament, as some of them say; or, as others say, He makes Himself present to the truly believing receiver.73
Having outlined opposing beliefs, Enraght claimed that
the Catholic Church has, from the beginning, held the doctrine of the objective Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. By this is meant (1.) That Christ our Saviour makes Himself really present, both in His divine and human natures, in the Holy Eucharist; (2.) That such Presence depends altogether upon the consecration, and in no wise whatever upon either the belief or the unbelief of the communicants.74
As he had used the word ‘Catholic’ in the above quotation, Enraght was keen to head off the neuralgic response of the typical Church of England worshipper. He immediately dealt with the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. In one brief paragraph, he explained the belief that the substance of the bread and wine was changed into the Body and Blood of Christ whereas the accidents (appearance, taste, smell) remained. Enraght deftly concluded,
Into the merits of this philosophical theory, current for a long time in the Roman Church, I need not enter. I will merely say in reference to it, that upon its truth or falsehood in no wise whatever depends the truth or falsehood of the Real Presence.75
Enraght wisely decided to deal with this controversial subject head-on but then to leave it. He did not actually reject it but remarked that its acceptance is irrelevant to his current argument. For Enraght, the doctrine of the Real Presence could be found in the primitive Church.
The Church of England believes she follows the ancient Church in holding that by and after consecration the bread and wine do not cease to be bread and wine; but that, by the miracle of consecration, they inexplicably become the Body and Blood of Christ, -- that is, Christ himself, whole living Christ, both God and Man, for He cannot be separated from His Body and Blood. Further than this, she makes no attempt to explain the matter … Regarding the fact of the Real Presence, there is no difference of opinion whatever between the Churches of Rome and England. The difference of opinion that exists is with reference to that further explanation of the mode and manner of the Presence which has been put forth by the Church of Rome.76
Again, Enraght differentiated between the ‘ancient’ belief of the Church of England and the more recent Roman ‘philosophical theory’.77 If he was to convince his countrymen, he had to demonstrate that his teaching was ancient and also thoroughly English. In order to do this, Enraght turned to the Book of Common Prayer. If people really understood what was taught in the Prayer Book, they would not deny the Real Presence,
Christ our Saviour, as the English Communion Office explains to us in the first Exhortation, did not take our human nature for the sole purpose of dying for us in it. Fallen man needs the renewal of his fallen human nature quite as much as he needs an atonement for his sins, and the consequent forgiveness of them. He needs not only forgiveness for the past, but also the means of doing better for the future.78
The Sacrament of the Holy Communion was inextricably linked to the doctrine of the incarnation or as Enraght put it, ‘the very infusion into our fallen humanity of the perfect humanity of Christ.’79 He then turned back to the Prayer Book for further corroboration,
"Almighty God" the Church says in her first Exhortation to Communion, "hath given His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our Spiritual Food and Sustenance in that Holy Sacrament." Again (to pass over numerous other passages) she prays, - "Grant us … gracious Lord, so to eat the Flesh of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink His Blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by His Body, and our souls washed through His most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in Him, and He in us."80
Having introduced his audience to the sources of Scripture and the Prayer Book, Enraght turned to the dominical words. Using three passages of Scripture, he posed three questions. This was the heart of his position.
Let us now endeavour to seek for the true meaning of the celebrated words, "This is My Body," "This is My Blood," from a comparison of them with other passages of Holy Scripture bearing upon the same question. The passages we will consider are - (1) The sixth chapter of St John; (2) certain passages in the First Epistle to the Corinthians; and (3) certain passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Our inquiry will have reference to these three points: (1) Whether Christ’s words are to be taken literally or figuratively? (2) If they are not figurative, whether they refer to a Presence merely in the heart of the believing receiver of the Sacrament, or a Presence objective, and entirely independent of the belief or unbelief of the receiver? This second inquiry involves the question: (3) Whether the bringing about of such Presence depends upon the belief of the receiver, or upon something else; as, for instance, consecration?81
Beginning with John 6.27-58, Enraght divided his response into three major sections. For him the plain reading of the passage required that salvation was a sharing in ‘the reality of the Lord’s Flesh and Blood.’82 However, he admitted that some people did not hold that this passage has any reference to Holy Communion and, moreover, others did see a reference to Holy Communion but the following verses, for them, revealed that Jesus was talking figuratively,
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. [John 6.61-63]
Enraght held that this was a misreading because the reader was interpreting Jesus’ word spirit as only figurative. He organised his response to the figurative interpretation of Christ’s words into nine sections. One of the weaknesses of Enraght’s arguments was that he hardly referenced or quoted from any academics, Anglican Divines or Early Church Fathers. In sixteen pages dealing with the figurative doctrine of the Sacrament, Enraght barely touched on the rich Anglican theological heritage never mind Patristic or contemporary. He mentioned Cardinal Cajetan (d. 1534) as denying that John 6 referred to the Holy Communion but he did not furnish a reference or quotation,
It might have been sufficient to say, that the assertion, that this chapter does not refer to the Blessed Sacrament and the Real Presence, was never heard of amongst Christians, until it was made by Cardinal Cajetan (who flourished between 1469 and 1534), in sheer despair of in any other way parrying the scriptural argument, deduced from this chapter, by the Bohemian Protestants against confining communion in the chalice to the celebrant.83
In trying to connect Cardinal Cajetan with those who hold a Zwinglian, figurative, view of the Sacrament, without a solid reference to his writings, Enraght undermined and confused his argument.
Cardinal Cajetan was what may be called a hyper-Ultramontane. Truly "extremes meet," when modern Protestants are found to vie with a hyper-Ultramontane "Popish" Cardinal in denying to this chapter its Eucharistic interpretation.84
Indeed, the whole pamphlet reads more like a sermon with rhetorical flourishes than it does an academic paper. It is difficult to discern for whom Enraght wrote this tract. At the time of writing it, he was curate in charge of South Portslade and Hangelton. This was a working class town on the edge of Brighton and Hove.85 If he was writing the tract for a wider, clerical audience, as it being in print suggests, one wonders why the arguments were not backed up with more academic rigour?
Enraght linked John’s Gospel chapter 3 with baptism and chapter 6 with Holy Communion. Having described nine correlations between the two passages, he wrote,
There must be some connection, then, between these two chapters. That connection is: the third speaks prophetically of Holy Baptism, the sixth of Holy Communion; and, therefore, as might be expected, our Lord sets forth the truth relating to each of these two great sacramental mysteries of His gospel after one and the same method. One and the same way of dealing with His subject is found in each discourse… This is, of course, the interpretation of the Church of England. She takes the first part of the third chapter of St John as the Gospel in her service for the baptism of adults; and she uses several expressions in her Communion Office which occur nowhere in Holy Scripture except in the sixth chapter of St John that is, she interprets and quotes that chapter as speaking of Holy Communion.86
In the second section of his pamphlet, Enraght turned to Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians in order to deal with the second objection to the doctrine of the Real Presence, that was, the receptionist theory.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? [1 Cor 10.16.].87
Enraght held that
St Paul declares our Lord’s words at the institution of the Eucharist to set forth no mere figure, but that (1.) the Bread broken is the communion (or communication to the communicant) of the Body of Christ, and the Cup blessed is the communion of the Blood of Christ. He (2.) makes this communication to the communicant of Christ’s Body and Blood depend, not upon the faith of the receiver, but upon the consecration: - "The bread which we [the clergy] break," and "the cup of blessing, which we bless," alluding to the words and acts of consecration.88
Enraght added the startling gloss that the ‘we’ who break the bread and bless the cup is the clergy. It would seem that the plain reading of the sentence referred to the worshipping body. The very next sentence of Paul stated, ‘For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread.’ [1 Cor 10.17]. It is clear that the ‘we’ refers to the Christian body gathered together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Referring then to the Gospel institution narratives, Enraght claimed that in them and the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians,
the Real Presence of Christ is plainly made to depend exclusively upon the consecrating words and actions, whether of Christ Himself at the institution, or of Him working through His ministers at all subsequent celebrations.89
Enraght moved on to 1 Corinthians 11, writing,
his chapter, let us observe, contains the last express revelation upon this subject, and therefore likely to be the clearest, and intended to remove all previous unbelief and misconceptions.90
Modern scholarship in New Testament studies dates 1 Corinthians at about 57 AD91 as one of the first Christian documents to be written. This could be seen as destroying part of Enraght’s argument as he assumed 1 Corinthians to have been written after the gospels. However, the earlier date of Paul’s letter actually strengthens Enraght’s case because it revealed that the worshipping communities among and for whom the gospels were written may have already been aware of Paul’s teaching on the eucharist.
Enraght saw I Corinthians 11 as a complete refutation of Symbolism. Why would the Corinthians be punished, 'if this theory be true, that what they ate and drank, however unbelievingly and unworthily, was, at most, mere bread and wine?’92 Paul’s vivid language suggested a much stronger theology of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Enraght turned to ‘the Reception Theory’93 noting that there were various nuances to this approach. Calvin’s thinking developed in reaction not only to Roman Catholicism but also to Luther and Zwingli. Calvin wanted to ask how the Body of Christ becomes ours?
Calvin’s answer lay in the role of the Spirit. The presence of Christ is not made by ‘doing sacraments’ (Roman Catholic), or by physical presence (Luther), or by the contemplation of faith (Zwingli)… The Sacrament is no “vain and empty sign”.94
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. [1 Corinthians 11.27]
However, for Enraght, Paul’s words were crystal clear:
St Paul teaches that our Lord has appointed consecration, that is, the words and acts of "blessing" the bread and wine, said and done by a minister of His own appointment, to be the way whereby He makes Himself Really Present.95
If the presence of Christ relied on the belief of the communicant, this was obviously lacking in the Corinthians. Therefore, how could Paul use such harsh language? Indeed, Enraght linked this language to the third Exhortation in the Communion Office, ‘we kindle God's wrath against us; we provoke him to plague us with divers diseases, and sundry kinds of death.’96 For Enraght this was proof of the Church of England’s acceptance of the Real Presence.
The third and final part of Enraght’s paper dealt with Hebrews 10. 19-32. Enraght emphasised the parallelism between this and 1 Corinthians 11.
In Hebrews x. 19-32, St Paul (presuming him to be the writer) gives us a short summary of the Christian Faith and Christian practice. He begins by affirming that the "way" back to God is through "the Blood" and "Flesh" "of Jesus."97
Having charted the parallels between 1 Corinthians and Hebrews, Enraght wrote,
I think the terribly parallel character of these two passages will now be clear. They both warn us of the awful sin and danger, the danger of damnation, which we incur if we do "not discern the Lord’s Body," as most Really Present by consecration in the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist :- if we, consequently, treat "the inward part of thing signified" in the Holy Sacrament as "a common [a profane, not sacred, not especially holy] thing;" thereby "treading under foot," so far as we can, "the Son of God," and being "guilty of" profaning "the" very "Body and Blood of the Lord."98
Enraght’s purpose in writing this pamphlet was to defend the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the bread and wine after the consecration during the Eucharist. One of the main problems of this work was that, despite its tripartite structure, it read like a stream of consciousness. It is difficult to discern for whom the pamphlet was written. If it was for the clergy and those who have studied theology, then it was sorely lacking in references to the early church fathers or Anglican divines. If it was aimed at the average parishioner in mid Victorian England, in particular the working classes, then its technical and strident language could have been rather off-putting. Enraght finished the pamphlet with fiery language based on Hebrews 10,
I commend these most awful passages to the careful attention of all unbelievers in the true Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence.
If this sacred doctrine be full, as it is, of joy and consolation to all who faithfully and penitently receive it, it is equally full of "judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries" of it. Except they repent, all profane gazers upon the Sacred Mysteries, who irreverently approach the Sacrament as they would show all mockers and scoffers; all who lightly and impenitently, and without true faith, dare to take the most Holy Sacrament; all who thus "tread under foot the Son of God;" shall of a surety, one day, find the threatening burst with malediction upon them “Vengeance belongeth unto Me, I will recompense, saith the Lord."99
Enraght’s tone in this work was strident and combative. His emphasis seemed to be on what the Sacrament was not, rather than a promotion of his belief in the Real Presence. One wonders if it would have been better to make a more positive case for the Real Presence rather than try to demolish symbolism and receptionism? Using Anglican precedents for the doctrine of the Real Presence such as Cosin, Andrewes and Overall100 may have been better. Moreover, an appeal to the Early Church Fathers would have been more consistent with the Oxford Movement pioneers who sought to prove the Church of England as part of the primitive Catholic Church and not an invention of the Reformation. Although Enraght quoted the Anglican Bishop Geste in Appendix A101, it referred to a technical dispute with another contemporary bishop,
BISHOP GESTE, the author of the 28th Article, says of the Real Presence, not merely that “Christ’s Body is in the Sacrament," or that It is present "under the form of bread and wine ;" but he says that "Christ’s Body" "is undoubtedly in the bread," and that "It is presented in the bread (as questionless It is)," and that "It is presented in the accidents of the bread." 102
Such
language about the Real Presence from a post-Reformation bishop of
the Church of England surely would have advanced Enraght’s argument
had it been placed in the body of his tract? Enraght followed in the
footsteps of the first Tractarians by publishing his teaching. Just
as theologians today resort to social media and blogging, the
Victorian priest used mass media to disseminate his teaching and
faith. The problem with this, as Newman found to his cost with Tract
90, was that it drew the attention of one’s theological and
political enemies.
*******
Chapter
5 The Political and Legal Consequences of Ritualism:
My
Prosecution Under the Public Worship Regulation Act. (1833)
‘Not until the 1860s did most observers notice the change that was taking place in the High Church party.’103 Bentley notes that it took some thirty years from Keble’s sermon on National Apostasy for the fruits of Tractarianism to reveal themselves in ritualism. Indeed, ‘[t]he great Tractarian movement, said Bishop Fraser of Manchester in 1874, had developed of late “some strange and extravagant forms”’.104 It was about this time that notice began to be taken in the national political sphere. Bentley finds in Hansard (Vol 220, 1874, 1376)
‘that Gladstone informed the House of Commons that ritualism then was quite different from the ritualism he had known twenty years before.’105
In a letter from Archbishop Tait to Queen Victoria sent from Addington Palace on the 17th March 1874,
The Archbishop of Canterbury presents his humble duty to your Majesty. The Archbishop has now placed in Mr. Disraeli’s hands the rough draft of a Bill to give effect to such a controlling power over the services of the Church as your Majesty mentioned in conversation with the Archbishop at Osborne… If all goes well, the Archbishop hopes to lay a Bill on the table of the House of Lords on the first day of the meeting of Parliament after Easter…’106
Victoria’s animus against ritualists was already clear from her correspondence, ‘Queen Victoria said she was ‘shocked and grieved’ to see ‘the higher classes and so many of the young clergy tainted with this leaning towards Rome!’107
It was against this background of connivance between the Queen, Archbishop Tait and the political establishment that Enraght, among others, was caught up in the legal efforts to put down ritualism by the use of the 1874 Public Worship Regulation Act.108As Norwood wrote,
Tait has been labeled (sic) an Erastian; and if to accept the intervention of “the great Civil Power” in ecclesiastical affairs, and to stand squarely upon the Reformation settlement established by law to regulate the interrelations of Church and State, is to be Erastian, an Erastian he certainly was.109
The other prime mover in the campaign to put down ritualism was the Church Association, ‘a Protestant body founded in 1865 to fight Tractarianism through the courts…’110 indeed, by 1869 its membership stretched to over 7,000 and this included many in both Houses of Parliament.111 Another SSC priest, the Reverend A. H. Mackonochie, was prosecuted in 1867 ‘for using altar lights, kneeling during the consecration, elevating the Eucharistic elements, mixing water and wine in the chalice, and using incense.’112 The Church Association pursued this case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and Mackonochie was condemned on all of the charges. Emboldened by this success the Church Association turned its fire on the Revd. John Purchas who, as vicar of St. James’s, Brighton was known to Enraght.
Enraght had been appointed vicar of Holy Trinity late in 1874, the same year as the Public Worship Regulation Act had come into force. His predecessor was Dr. Oldknow who had recently died. Oldknow was also a member of the SSC and a well-known author of Tractarian pamphlets. It is from Enraght’s pamphlet ‘My Prosecution under the Public Worship Regulation Act…’113 that the events in Bordesley will be described.
Enraght was concerned from the outset that the Bishop of Worcester, Henry Philpott (17 November 1807 – 10 January 1892)114 might be hostile to his ministry. Enraght assumed, or so he maintained in this Statement that, as the Bishop had not drawn his attention to known ritual practices in the parish, he was not concerned about the situation. Enraght wrote that he would not have accepted the living, had the bishop written something along the following lines:
I am bound to inform you that the Ritual practice of your predecessor, Dr. Oldknow, was in several respects contrary to the now ascertained law of our Church, and if you should be proceeded against under the Public Worship Regulation Act I should be unable to protect you, unless you should be willing to alter such practice. I therefore hope that you will undertake to bring the Ritual of Holy Trinity into accordance with the law of our Church as laid down by the Courts of the Realm.115
The question arises as to whether Enraght was being disingenuous from the start. So often in his written works, his tone sounded sarcastic and overly clever.
I naturally interpreted the Bishop’s reply to mean that as a clever man, a good lawyer, and an excellent man of business, having made himself acquainted with my antecedents as set forth in "Crockford," and having perused my papers, he was determined to stand by me so long as I did not innovate upon the well-known opinions and practices of my learned and venerable predecessor, Dr. Oldknow.116
It was more likely that, given the then size of the Diocese of Worcester, the Bishop would not have had all the salient facts at his fingertips.
It was four years later, in 1878, that Enraght’s legal and disciplinary difficulties began.
On Easter Tuesday 1878, the customary Easter Vestry meeting of the parish, where the churchwardens were to be elected for the coming year, was. according to Enraght,
suddenly invaded by a number of men, several of whom were Dissenters, who carried by a show of hands Mr. John Perkins as Parish Churchwarden.117
This was a standard tactic used by the Church Association to challenge incumbents they believed were acting against the Protestant nature of the Church of England. Perkins then engaged in various activities to undermine Enraght’s position in the parish.
[He] commenced a series of annoyances to me and the Congregation and Parishioners, including five inflammatory Lectures, and Sermons, in the immediate neighbourhood repeated circulation at every house in the Parish of "Church Association" and other abusive literature…118
According to Enraght this backfired and alienated Perkins from many of the congregation and wider parish. Not long after his election to the post of churchwarden, Perkins filed a complaint against Enraght to the Bishop of Worcester reporting various ritual abuses. Enraght was summoned to a meeting with the bishop. Enraght insisted that ‘I have continued the Ritual of this Church substantially as I found it.’119
Although Enraght did not include Perkins’ original complaint in his Statement, one can deduce the charges from the Bishop’s subsequent direction sent on the 14th of June 1878 that such things ‘are contrary to the law and custom of the Church of England.’120
Placing lighted candles upon the Communion Table… during the celebration of the Holy Communion, when such lighted candles are not wanted for the purpose of giving light;
Wearing in the Communion Service the vestments known as a Chasuble and Alb;
Mixing water with the wine before consecration in the Holy Communion;
Making the sign of the cross in the air towards the congregation in the Communion Service.121
The Bishop directed that, because Enraght had, like all candidates been required to make oath and swear that he will pay true and canonical obedience to the Bishop of the Diocese in all things lawful and honest122
that he should immediately cease those four practices.123
Enraght responded to the bishop on the 5th of July and, in a long letter, refused to accede on the first two points because to do so would violate his ‘Ordination and oaths’.124 As authority for holding to these points, Enraght turned to Bishop Cosin who was largely responsible for the revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1662.125 However, Enraght conceded that the Prayer Book did not explicitly require the second two points, namely the mixed Chalice and the Sign of the Cross. In each case he pleaded for the Bishop to give permission for their continued use as they both have such ancient authority and practice behind them.
Therefore, if your Lordship requires me, submitting myself to your judgment, I will discontinue to make the Sign of the Cross towards the congregation in the Communion Service.126
In his letter, Enraght made it clear that he believed it was the Bishop of Worcester who was acting ultra vires,
I respectfully maintain…That your Lordship, by your Ordination and other vows, is bound to conform to the law of the Church as much as any priest under your jurisdiction.127
The final part of Enraght’s letter to his bishop dealt with the intrusion of the state in ecclesiastical affairs. For Enraght, ‘We hold these ceremonies important… because we know well that our Doctrines and Faith are the matters really struck at through them.’128 The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Public Worship Regulation Act were part of the political Establishment and alien to the right of the Church of England to order her own affairs. ‘The whole question of the constitutional rights and liberties of the English Church is involved in the present struggle.’129 This was, for Enraght, at the very heart of the Ritualist cause. He believed wholeheartedly that the Book of Common Prayer and its rituals revealed the Church of England to be part of the primitive Catholic Church albeit shorn of later papal accretions. For him, the rituals for which he was being disciplined, ‘witness to the continuity of the present Reformed Church with the ante-papal and ante-Reformation Church of England.’130
It was this reliance on his arguments being in harmony with Church Law, if not the civil law, that would later on bring him great heart-ache.
On the 10th of April 1879 John Perkins made an official Representation to the Bishop against Enraght under the PWRA, citing him on twelve charges.131 One of these charges, namely, the use of wafers during Holy Communion, ‘not being, and instead of bread, as is usual to be eaten.’132 Perkins, acting on behalf of the Church Association, meant to follow the case through to a successful prosecution. A letter from Enraght to the Bishop dated the 9th of November 1880 recalled that the bishop had subsequently written to him that he could not ‘protect [Enraght] from [Perkins’] proceedings’133 because of continued ‘illegal practices’ including those the Bishop had forbidden in the correspondence of 1878. However, Enraght pointed out that,
Your Lordship in this letter plainly implied that had the four points, in reference to which you ordered me in your first “Direction” been surrendered by me before the receipt of the “Representation” you would have protected me from further proceedings upon the part of the promoter of my prosecution.134
On
Friday the 4th
of July 1879, Enraght’s case had been dealt a blow when both houses
of the Convocation of Canterbury had
passed a Rider to the Ornaments Rubric to the effect that the Eucharistic Vestments should not be used in a Parish Church, “contrary to the monition of the Bishop of the Diocese.”135
Because the Church had, through its own procedures, amended the Ornaments Rubric, Enraght felt constrained to obey his bishop and he ceased wearing the Eucharistic vestments. Also, Enraght submitted to the bishop’s demand that the two candles be removed from the altar during Holy Communion even though this had not been covered by the new Rider.
Enraght had also offered Mr. Perkins and the Church Association to change the Sunday service rota so that Holy Communion would be celebrated at 9.45 am followed by Matins, Litany and Sermon. Various other accommodations regarding ritual were put forward.
On the 12th of July 1879, the Bishop wrote to Perkins that, due to the resolutions adopted by the Convocations of Canterbury, Enraght was now complying with the four directions made on the 14th of June 1878. Admitting that he had no power to stop the proceedings, he continued,
I shall be truly glad if, the main grounds of complaint having been thus removed, the peace of the parish may be protected from litigation.136
Perkins and his backers, the Church Association refused to drop the prosecution. The Bishop seemed aware that he had lost control of the situation and that the Church Association was not interested in his attempts at mediation.
Why the trial was allowed to continue when Enraght had already capitulated to the Bishop of Worcester’s original demands, showed the desire of the Church Association to make an example of him no matter what. Enraght catalogued the many erroneous charges brought before Lord Penzance’s court.137 However, on the 9th of August 1879, Enraght was tried in absentia before Lord Penzance, Dean of the Arches Court of Canterbury, and found guilty.
Enraght and many other ritualist clergy of the time could not accept Lord Penzance as a bona fide Judge of the Church of England because his position depended neither on Canon Law nor on the authority of the Convocations of Canterbury and York but on an Act of Parliament.
As I could not recognize Lord Penzance or his court, which derives its authority - not from "this Church and Realm," but solely from an Act of Parliament, as having any spiritual jurisdiction over me, I was unable conscientiously to defend myself before it. The whole of the charges were in consequence taken as true by Lord Penzance, and I was condemned. If I had been able to appear and plead, there can be no doubt that the issue would have been different, inasmuch as, since I obeyed the Bishop, there were really no valid charges remaining against me.138
During the trial, evidence of Enraght’s alleged disobedience was produced by Perkins’ counsel. The trial report in the press described how Perkins showed the court a plan and photographs of the church to press his complaint.139 During Perkins’ witness statement he presented to the court a ‘wafer similar to those administered to the communicants.’140 To prove to Lord Penzance that the use of this wafer was contrary to the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, Mr. Perkins, a baker, was called to the stand and ‘he proved that the bread was unleavened, and was not “bread as such is usual to be eaten.”’141 This display of courtroom theatrics was to have far-reaching consequences.
According to Enraght, this wafer had actually been consecrated at Bordesley and had been, ‘stolen from the Communion by a non-parishioner.’142 The English Church Union who had been supporting the Ritualist clergy in their legal battles reacted strongly.
On August 31, 1879, Mr. Enraght denounced from the altar the conduct of a person who, on Feb. 9, had carried off from the altar a Consecrated Wafer, obtained under the pretence of communicating, in order to file IT as an exhibit in the law courts as evidence of the use of wafer-bread. A feeling of intense horror and indignation was excited when the fact of this fearful sacrilege became known. It was difficult to credit the fact that a Consecrated Wafer, after having been sacrilegiously secreted by a pretended communicant, had actually been delivered to Mr. Churchwarden Perkins, the prosecutor, produced in Court as evidence, marked with pen and ink, and filed as an exhibit!143
In the face of such outrage from churchgoers across the Church of England, the Bishop of Worcester wrote to Perkins in the strongest of terms.
It has been represented to me that you produced for the examination of the Court some Bread which had been consecrated for use in the Holy Communion in the Church of Holy Trinity, Bordesley; and that, though you did not yourself obtain possession of the Bread by pretending to communicate, you received it from a person who did so profane the Holy Sacrament, and knowing how it had been obtained made use of it for the purpose of the prosecution in which you were engaged, and thereby made yourself partaker of the profanation. I am not surprised at the deep feelings of pain and grief which this circumstance has excited. I think it my duty to make you acquainted with them, and I desire to express my own hearty condemnation of the offence which has been committed. I regret greatly that so grave a charge can be brought against an officer of the Church, whose special duty it is to preserve order and promote reverence in our services.144
Archbishop Tait, who had plotted with the Monarch and prime ministers to bring the Ritualists to heel, was constrained to intervene in the widely-perceived sacrilege.
Thanks to the efforts of some members of the Council of E. C. U., the Consecrated Wafer was obtained from the Court, and given over to the care of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who reverently consumed IT in his private chapel at Addington on Friday, Dec. 12, 1879.145
Such was the upset in the parish of Bordesley with the whole trial and treatment of their vicar, that the parishioners roundly rejected Perkins as a churchwarden at the Vestry Meeting held on Easter Monday 1880.
Despite the change in churchwardens, the Church Association pressed ahead with the case before Lord Penzance. On the 5th of August 1880, a request was made to find Enraght in contempt. The attempt failed as the Judge ruled the paperwork not to be in order. Finally, after another abortive attempt,
On November 20, the Judge pronounced Mr. Enraght contumacious and in contempt, and directed this to be signified to her Majesty in Chancery. Mr. Enraght was consequently arrested on November 27, and imprisoned in Warwick Gaol.146
Having been arrested at his vicarage in front of his wife and family, Enraght was escorted to Warwick prison. He was released fifty-one days later on the 17th of January 1881 after the English Church Union had successfully challenged the imprisonment on technical grounds before the Court of Appeal. The Prosecutor, on the advice of the Church Association, tried to have Fr Enraght re-arrested, but the Church Union managed to block the attempt. Enraght was still liable for further imprisonment if the prosecution was successful. The Church Union lodged an appeal on behalf of Enraght in the House of Lords to head off this eventuality.
Mr. Enraght, however, was released from custody in consequence of the defective issue of the writ of Capias; but he was left liable to recommitment if a fresh writ were granted, and an application was made by the Church Association for that purpose. An Appeal was therefore lodged in the House of Lords on behalf of Mr. Enraght, with respect to the legality of his inhibition.147
On Thursday, the 8th of March 188673, Enraght was served with a revocation of his licence and the removal of his Cure of souls. The bishop had acted according to the PWRA and had declared the benefice to be void. The patrons were informed and they had nominated The Reverend Alan Watts to be the next incumbent. Thus Enraght’s ministry in Bordesley came to an end and he and his family were evicted from the vicarage.
One could interpret the bishop’s actions in a charitable light because, due to a recent failure of an appeal to the House of Lords, Enraght was at risk of a further period in prison. The final action of the bishop in ending Enraght’s ministry in his diocese brought the matter to a close. This could have been an act of mercy on the bishop’s behalf or simply a desperate attempt to prevent further embarrassment to and ridicule of the Church of England.
After various farewells from his loyal parishioners, Enraght and his family went to live near St Michael and All Angels in Brighton to recuperate. As the following note reveals, Enraght and other priests who had fallen foul of the Church Association and the PWRA were supported by the English Church Union.
It was announced that grants amounting to £2,818 had been made out of the Sustentation Fund since its creation to the following priests, viz.--Revs. J. Baghot De la Bere, T. P. Dale, Warwick Elwin, E. W. Enraght, S. P. Green, A. H. Mackonochie, A. Tooth, H. A. Walker, and to the St. Raphael's Sustentation Fund for the Rev. A. H. Ward.148
The next phase of his ministry was spent in London. From 1884 until 1888 he was a curate at St Michael’s Church, Bromley-by-Bow and from 1888 until 1895, he served as curate of St Gabriel’s, Poplar.149 During this time the English Church Union continued to support him and his family.
Lord Hastings presented Enraght to the parish of St. Swithun’s, Bintree in 1895. Here, in quiet, rural Norfolk, he spent the final years of his ministry. Having spent the majority of his priesthood in densely packed urban environments, he returned to the rural experience similar to his first curacy in St Bartholomew, Corsham, Wiltshire, some thirty-four years previously. On Saint Matthew’s Day, the 21st of September 1898 Enraght died. He was buried in the churchyard of his final parish.150
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Chapter 6 - Conclusion
One of the purposes of the dissertation has been to bring Enraght to a wider audience. Why is he not remembered so widely as Fr Tooth and Fr Purchas? He, like them, suffered at the hands of the Church Association and mob rule. Stratford points out that Enraght was the only one of the clergy, facing persecution and prison, who was not a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. This, I think, is key to Enraght’s relative invisibility. Unlike Newman, Denison and many others, Enraght did not have wealthy family or powerful connections. Archdeacon Denison.151 Enraght, being from Ireland and not having influential people to vouch for him, was at a severe disadvantage. He was not part of the English upper-middle class. Fr Tooth remained alive into the 1930s.152 He was fêted at Anglo-Catholic Conferences as a ‘martyr’ for ritualism and the Catholic Movement in the Church of England. Enraght, dying in 1898 missed out on the adulation and veneration of later Anglo-Catholics.
Despite his obscurity, Enraght has left an impressive body of writing. This reveals his passion for the Gospel and the Church of England. He was not tempted to convert to Roman Catholicism. For him, the Christian and Catholic life could be lived authentically in the Church of his baptism. In his writings and sermons Enraght fought for the Catholic identity of the English Church.
I have proved that the last Revision and Settlement in 1662 of the Formularies of the English Church, by which the Bishops and Clergy are bound, both by their Ordination promises and by Act of Parliament, was distinctly Catholic. I have proved, therefore, that the Catholic-minded clergy of the English Church alone are in the right, that the charge of "Romanizing" and unfaithfulness to their Church, so persistently brought against them because of their faithful adherence to Catholic truth and practice, is a grievous slander.153
Perhaps one of the best clues to Enraght’s place in the Church of England is his membership of the Societas Sanctae Crucis. The SSC was, as already mentioned, founded as a place where Anglican priests could support one another in their ministry in some of the poorest and most challenging parishes in England and elsewhere. The SSC is unashamedly Vincentian in its spirituality. It follows in Vincent de Paul’s legacy of teaching the Faith to the unchurched poor and in educating new generations of priests to serve the Church wherever they are most needed. One of the mottos of the Society of the Holy Cross is “No desertion, no surrender!”154 This certainly captures Enraght’s attitude and his loyalty to the Church of England, if not to the Establishment. Even at his darkest moment during his Trial, Enraght sought to obey the Bishop even when it stretched his conscience to the limit. He was not deliberately disobedient. He strove to follow the teachings and practice of the Church as he saw it.
Enraght was an exemplary priest of the Society. He fought to open the Church to the poor at a time when pew rents and social exclusion were alienating the working classes. He worked to teach the Catholic faith in an atmosphere of Protestant hysteria over perceived Popery. He saw the benefit of beautifying the church buildings to give the poor a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven and he knew that the wordiness of Anglican liturgy would not do. Decent ritual could speak loudly to the mercy and love of Christ in the Eucharist.
This balance of social justice, unwavering faith in Christ and a desire to worship God to the best of one’s ability marked out Enraght as a pioneer of the Societas Sanctae Crucis.
One of Enraght’s characteristics was his pugnacity and plain speaking. This would have endeared him to people of the working class that he was desperate to welcome back into Church. This same blunt manner may be another reason he did not become as popular as other Ritualist clergy did in later decades. The English middle classes would not have taken kindly to being lectured by an outsider from Ireland.
It is my hope that this dissertation will begin to interest the reader in a forgotten name in the Anglo-Catholic cause. Enraght was, first and foremost, a parish priest with the good of his people in his heart. He was no sanctuary priest who was happiest deciding what vestments to wear. He was an advocate for all who lived in his parish whether rich or poor, he was a teacher of the Faith and, when necessary, he was not afraid to speak the truth to Power. He worked out the consequences of Tractarian theology in the parish. Enraght lived out his ministry according to the Society of the Holy Cross motto ‘In hoc Signo vinces’.
Copyright © David M. Swyer 2019
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Bibliography
1662 Book of Common Prayer, Cambridge University Press (2004)
Avis, Paul The Identity of Anglicanism, (T & T Clark, 2007)
Bentley, James Ritualism And Politics In Victorian Britain, (OUP 1978)
Brilioth, Yngve The Anglican Revival, Studies In The Oxford Movement, (Longmans, Green & Co. 1925)
Brown, Raymond E. (ed) The Jerome Biblical Commentary, (Geoffrey Chapman 1968)
Brown, Stewart J., Nockles Peter and Pereiro, James (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement, (OUP 2017)
Chadwick, Owen The Victorian Church, Part II, (A. and C. Black, 1970)
Clarke, C. P. S. The Oxford Movement And After, (Mowbray & Co. 1932)
Crowther, M. A. Church Embattled: Religious Controversy in Mid-Victorian England, (David & Charles Archon Books 1970)
Edwards, David L. Leaders Of The Church Of England 1828-1944 (OUP 1971)
Elliott-Binns, L. E. Religion In The Victorian Era, (Lutterworth Press 1936)
Enraght, R. W. To The Poor The Gospel is preached, a Sermon (With A Preface), Advocating The Right Of The People To Freedom Of Public Worship In “The Church of the People,” Preached In The Parish Church, Sheffield, By The Rev. Richard W. Enraght, B.A., One of The Assistant Curates Of The Parish Church, Sheffield On Sunday Morning, The 23rd Sunday After Trinity. (Bell And Daldy” 1865)
Enraght R. W. Bible Ritualism Indispensably Necessary for Purposes of Instruction & of Worship, (London 1866)
Enraght R. W. Who Are True Churchmen and Who are Conspirators? (London: J. T. Hayes. 1870)
Enraght R. W. “Free and Open Churches and the weekly Offertory”1871
Enraght, R. W. The Real Presence and Holy Scripture, London: J. (T. Hayes, Lyall Place and Henrietta Street. Brighton: G. Wakeling. 1872)
Enraght, R. W. Catholic Worship Not Pharisaic Judaism: or, A Brief Explanation of Some Matters in Divine Service Popularly Misunderstood. (J. T. Hayes 1873)
Enraght R. W. Not Law But Unconstitutional Tyranny. (London. J. T. Hayes 1877)
Enraght R. W. A Pastoral to the Faithful Worshipping at Holy Trinity, Bordesley, Birmingham 20th July 1879
Enraght R. W. My Ordination Oaths And Other Declarations: Am I keeping them? (Birmingham: Cornish Brothers. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co. 1880)
Enraght R. W. An Aggrieved Parish, or The Minutes of the Easter vestries in the Parish of Holy Trinity, Birmingham from 1878 to 1881 with an address delivered in 1881
Enraght R. W. My Prosecution Under the Public Worship Regulation Act (London: Marshall & Co. 1883)
Flindall, R. P. (ed.) The Church of England 1815-1948, (SPCK 1972)
Hewison, P. E. (ed.) Lancelot Andrewes Selected Writings, (Carcanet Press 1995)
Jones, W. H. S. A history of St Catharine's College, (Cambridge University Press 1936)
Lossky, Nicholas Lancelot Andrewes The Preacher (1555-1626), (OUP 1991)
Marsh, P. T. The Victorian Church in Decline. Archbishop Tait and the Church of England 1868-1882, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969)
McAdoo H. R. & Stevenson, Kenneth The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Anglican Tradition, (Canterbury Press 1995)
Ollard, S. L. A Short History of the Oxford Movement, (Mowbray 1963)
Palmer, Bernard Reverend Rebels Five Victorian Clerics and Their Fight Against Authority, (DLT 1993)
Reed, John Shelton Glorious Battle The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism, (Vanderbilt University Press 1996)
Rowlands, John H. L. Church, State And Society, (Churchman Publishing 1989)
Secor, Philip B. Richard Hooker on Anglican Faith and Worship, (SPCK 2003)
Stevenson, Kenneth Covenant of Grace Renewed. A Vision of the Eucharist in the Seventeenth Century, (DLT 1994)
Storr, Vernon F. The Development of English Theology In The Nineteenth Century (Longmans, Green & Co. 1913)
Symondson A. (ed.) The Victorian Crisis of Faith, (SPCK 1970)
Wagner, Anthony & Dale, Anthony The Wagners of Brighton, (Phillimore 1983)
Wickham,
E. R. Church
and People in an Industrial City,
(Lutterworth 1957)
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Online Resources:
Project Canterbury has a wealth of material on the Oxford Movement, the Catholic Movement in the Church of England and a section on Enraght. Many of his publications have been transcribed and uploaded to this site. http://anglicanhistory.org
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1
The short
title
in the Republic
of Ireland
is Church
Temporalities Act 1833,
assigned by the Statute
Law Revision Act 2007.[1]
The description "Church Temporalities (Ireland) Act 1833"
was used in Hansard.[2]
The long
title
is "An Act to alter and amend the Laws relating to the
Temporalities of the Church in Ireland."
2 John Henry Cardinal Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Being a History of His Religious Opinions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 43.
3 S. L. Ollard, A Short History of the Oxford Movement, (Mowbray, 1915, revised edition, 1963),
4 O. Chadwick, The Victorian Church, parts I & II, (A & C Black, 1966, 1970)
5 Stewart J. Brown, Peter Nockles, and James Pereiro (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement, (OUP 2017)
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Enraght#Early_life_and_work (Entry written by D Sharp in 2007, which he originally wrote for the Parish of St Nicolas & St Andrew Portslade website in 2001) [accessed 26 August 2020]
7 Wagner, Anthony & Dale, Anthony The Wagners of Brighton, (Phillimore 1983) p. 104
8 T. R. Stratford, Urban Liturgy in the Church of England, The University of Sheffield, 2008 p. 18
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/3641/1/489072.pdf [accessed 24 August 2020]
9 A set of ninety pamphlets written by various authors, from 1833-1841, notably including J H Newman who wrote, among others, the first and the last. The notoriety of the 90th Tract triggered much controversy in the Church of England.
10 J. H. L. Rowlands, Church, State and Society, The Attitudes of John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froude and John Henry Newman, 1827-1845 (Churchman Publishing 1989), p. 15
11 THE Roll Of Brethren And Probationers Of The Society of the Holy Cross, 1876-77. W. KNOTT, 26, Brooke Street, Holborn. http://anglicanhistory.org/ssc/roll1877.html
12
J. Embry, The Catholic Movement and the
Society of the Holy Cross, London: The
Faith Press, 1931.
[pp 1-21]
http://anglicanhistory.org/ssc/embry/chapter1.htm
13 Ollard, p. 140
14 B. Palmer, Reverend Rebels, Five Victorian Clerics and Their Fight Against Authority (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1993), p. 14
15 Chadwick, p.348
16 St Vincent de Paul (24 April 1581 – 27 September 1660) was a French Catholic priest who worked to educate the workers in cities and to form priests to serve them.
17
Groves, Nicholas T. (1988) "Vincent
de Paul in Nineteenth-Century England: Charles Lowder, the Society
of the Holy Cross and a Church in Crisis,"
Vincentian Heritage Journal: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 , Article 1.
Available
at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/vhj/vol9/iss1/1 p.17
18 J. C. Bennett, The English Anglican Practice of Pew Renting, 1800-1960, University of Birmingham, p. 1 https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/2864/1/Bennett_11_PhD.pdf [accessed 27 August 2020]
19 E. R. Wickham, Church and People in an Industrial City, (Lutterworth Press 1957), p. 148
20 Wickham, p. 149
21 R. W. Enraght “To The Poor The Gospel is preached,” a Sermon (With A Preface), Advocating The Right Of The People To Freedom Of Public Worship In “The Church of the People,” Preached In The Parish Church, Sheffield, By The Rev. Richard W. Enraght, B.A., One of The Assistant Curates Of The Parish Church, Sheffield On Sunday Morning, The 23rd Sunday After Trinity. (Bell And Daldy” 1865), p. 2 http://anglicanhistory.org/england/enraght/gospel.html [accessed 26 August 2020]
22 Enraght, p.2
23 Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. [Luke 7.22 KJV]
24 Enraght, To The Poor , p.6
25 Enraght, p.6
26 Enraght, p.6
27 Enraght, p. 7
28 Authorised Version of the Bible.
29 Enraght, p. 9
30 Enraght, p. 9
31 Enraght, p. 10
32 Enraght p. 10
33 Enraght p. 12
34 Enraght p. 12
35 Bennett, p. 213
36 Wickham, p.143
37 Wickham, p. 143
38 National Association for Promoting Freedom of Worship And The Offertory, Brighton Town Hall 14.12.1871, Lewes, “Observer” Office, Brighton. Transcribed by D & N Sharp (2020)
39 Enraght, p. 8
40 Enraght, p. 8
41 Enraght, p. 14
42 Enraght, p. 22
43 Enraght, p. 16
44 https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/Church%20Statistics%202009-2010.pdf p. 10
45 Wickahm, p. 148
46 Enraght, p. 30
47 R. W. Enraght. “Bible-Ritualism Indispensably Necessary For Purposes Of Instruction & Of Worship”. A Sermon (with notes and appendices), (2nd edition), London: Masters. Sheffield: Pawson and Brailsford; and Hirst & Co., 1866 http://anglicanhistory.org/england/enraght/bible_ritualism.html [accessed 24 August 2020]
48 Enraght p. 1
49 Enraght, p. 3
50 Enraght, p. 3
51 Enraght, p. 3
52 Enraght, p. 3
53 Enraght, p. 3
54 Enraght, p.5
55 Enraght, p. 5
56 op cit p.6-7
57 Vernon Storr, The Development of English Theology In The Nineteenth Century 1800-1860, Longmans, Green and Co 1913
58 Enraght, op cit p. 7
59 James Bentley, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain, (OUP. 1978), p. 25
60 Enraght, p. 3
61 Enraght, Catholic Worship Not Pharisaic-Judaism: or, A Brief Explanation of Some Matters In Divine Service Popularly Misunderstood, J. T. Hayes, 1873 http://anglicanhistory.org/england/enraght/catholic1873.html
[accessed 24 August 2020]
62 Enraght, p. 3
63 Enraght, p. 3
64 Enraght, p. 3
65 Enraght, p. 4
66 Enraght, p. 7
67 Enraght, p. 7
68 Enraght, p.8
69 Enraght, p. 9
70 Enraght, p. 15
71 Enraght, The Real Presence and Holy Scripture, J. T. Hayes, 1872 http://anglicanhistory.org/england/enraght/realpresence.html [accessed 24 August 2020]
72 Enraght, p. 5
73 Enraght, p. 5
74 Enraght, p. 6
75 Enraght, p. 6
76 Enraght, p.7
77 Enraght,. p. 6
78 Enraght, p. 7
79 Enraght, p. 8
80 Enraght, p 8
81 Enraght, p. 9
82 Enraght, p.8
83 Enraght, p. 11
84 Enraght, p. 11
85 Indeed, it still has a very low academic achievement among the sixteen-year-old school leavers in Brighton and Hove https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/english-indices-of-deprivation-statistics-comparison-for-north-portslade-in-brighton-and-hove-e05002428.html
86 Enraght, p.16
87 Authorised Version
88 Enraght, p. 25
89 Enraght, p. 26
90 Enraght, p. 26
91 R. E. Brown, The Jerome Biblical Commentary, p. 255
92 Enraght, ibid p. 28
93 Enraght, p. 29
94 Kenneth Stevenson, Covenant of Grace Renewed. A Vision of the Eucharist in the Seventeenth Century, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994, p.5
95 Enraght, p. 32
96 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Cambridge University Press, p. 250
97 Enraght, p. 33
98 Enraght, p. 36
99 Enraght, p. 38
100 Before consecration we call them God’s creatures of bread and wine; now we do so no more, after consecration.... And herein we follow the Fathers, who after consecration would not suffer it to be called bread and wine any longer, but the Body and Blood of Christ. http://anglicanhistory.org/pusey/pusey5.html
101 Enraght, p. 39
102 Enraght, p. 39
103 J. Bentley, Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain, OUP, 1978, p. 21
104 J. Bentley, p.21
105 J. Bentley, p. 21
106 ed. George Earle Buckle The Letters of Queen Victoria Volume 5: 1870-1878, (Cambridge University Press 1926) p. 329
107 Bentley, p. 23
108 PWRA
109 A Victorian Primate Author(s): Percy V. Norwood Source: Church History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Mar., 1945), pp. 3-16 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3161019 Accessed: 06-08-2020 09:18 UTC p. 4
110 Bernard Palmer, Reverend Rebels, Dartman, Longman and Todd, 1993 p.9
111 Bentley, p. 37
112 Bentley, p. 37
113 R. W. Enraght My Prosecution Under the Public Worship Regulation Act (London: Marshall & Co. 1883)
114 W. H. S. Jones, , A history of St Catharine's College, (Cambridge University Press 1936), p. 414.
115 Enraght, p. 2
116 Enraght, p. 2
117 Enraght, p. 3
118 Enraght, p. 3
119 Enraght, p. 4
120 Enraght, My Ordination Oaths, p. 6
121 Enraght, My Ordination Oaths, p. 6
122 Enraght, p. 5
123 Enraght, p. 6
124 Enraght, p. 14
125 Enraght quoted Cosin’s own testimony that the two lights were set upon the High Altar by injunction of Edward Vi and that these lights were continued to his own day, Likewise Eraght relied on Cosin that the law requiring Chasuble and Alb fell into desuetude due to Puritan-minded bishops returning from Geneva on the accession of Elizabeth I (pp. 14-15)
126 Enraght, p. 17
127 Enraght, p. 9
128 Enraght p. 18
129 Enraght p. 19
130 Enraght, p. 17
131 Enraght, p. 24
132 Enraght, p. 24
133 Enraght, p. 25
134 Enraght, p. 25
135 Enraght, My Prosecution, p. 7
136 Enraght, p. 8
137 Enraght’s alleged setting up a metal cross which had been in place five years before he arrived; preventing the people from seeing him break the bread and take the cup; kneeling during the Prayer of Consecration; kissing the Service Book; causing the Agnus Dei to be sung when this had been discontinued a year before the Trial; wearing a biretta; allowing processions; most importantly the original four points of the Bishop’s Direction were still in the Representation despite Enraght already conforming to them. My Prosecution p. 9
138 Enraght, p. 9
139 “LAW AND CRIME.” John Bull, vol. LIX, no. 3,062, 16 Aug. 1879, p. 526. Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/DX1900534060/NCUK?u=univcc&sid=NCUK&xid=fd08f8b9. Accessed 23 Mar. 2020
140 John Bull, p. 526
141 John Bull, p. 526
142 Enraght, p. 10
143 G. Bayfield Roberts, The History of the English Church Union 1859-1894 (London: Church Printing, 1895) http://anglicanhistory.org/england/ecu/roberts/1879.html Retrieved 20/08/2020
144 Enraght, p. 10
145 http://anglicanhistory.org/england/ecu/roberts/1879.html Retrieved 20/08/2020
146 http://anglicanhistory.org/england/ecu/roberts/1879.html Retrieved 20/08/2020
147 http://anglicanhistory.org/england/ecu/roberts/1879.html Retrieved 20/08/2020
148 G. Bayfield Roberts The History of the English Church Union 1859-1894. London: Church Printing, 1895.
http://anglicanhistory.org/england/ecu/roberts/1885.html [accessed 23 August 2020]
149 Crockford's Clerical Directory (1897)
150 Nigel Yates, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain 1830-1910. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), p. 262
151 ‘Brother of politician Evelyn Denison, 1st Viscount Ossington, colonial administrator Sir William Denison and bishop Edward Denison, he was born on 11 December 1805 at Ossington, Nottinghamshire, and educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Denison_(priest) [accessed 27 August 2020]
152 (17 June 1839 – 5 March 1931)
153 Enraght, Who are True Churchmen? http://anglicanhistory.org/england/enraght/churchmen.html [accessed 26 August 2020]
154
Embry, J, The Catholic Movement and the
Society of the Holy Cross. (London:
The Faith Press, 1931) http://anglicanhistory.org/ssc/embry/chapter1.htm
*******
See the Revd Richard Enraght Biography