This was the principle of the Reformation. And how was it carried out in the matter of ritual? Why! everything that was Scriptural or primitive, or, though recent, edifying, was retained. There were the same Churches, the same altars, the same symbols and furniture, the same vestments. Even the same services and the same ways of offering them were preserved; only they were cleansed from corruptions, divested of things doubtful or unedifying, simplified by making prayers and lections more continuous, and by discountenancing those minutiæ of bodily worship—numerous bowings, genuflections, and the like—which, however natural they may have been to the foreign Priests who had ministered at our altars, however useful to the people when, by reason of all being performed in an unknown and muttered tongue, much dumb show and bell ringing were necessary, were distracting to true worship by their multiplicity, and were unnecessary in an audible and intelligible service.
I do not say that everything which this ritual movement seeks to restore is distinctly by name approved and retained by our Reformers; but in its general features, in almost all its items, in the kind of worship and confession of faith at which it aims, I am sure that it has their sanction and is the taking up of their work.
How is it that this ritual has never been the generally used ritual of the Reformed Church? Why should it now be revived?—these are questions which, if God will, I will answer in detail in my next sermon.
Meantime, my brethren, strive to make profitable and personal use of what has been said, by carefully informing yourselves as to the real state of the case; by trying to root out of you prejudices, and to keep yourselves from uncharitable suspicions of ritualists and rash and profane speech about ritual; by cultivating respect for the motives of those who, in their labour to be loyal to the Church of the Reformers and useful to you, have come under so much obloquy; by praying earnestly that those in authority may have wisdom given them rightly to deliberate and determine in this matter, and that those under authority may have grace to render all due submission: that each and all of us may be animated by the pure desire to enforce and observe the Apostolic rule, “Let all things be done decently and in order.”