FOOTNOTES.

Or, further, if they should plead that although the things themselves were unessential, yet the liberty to deal with them was essential, (and in their mind essential on the side of repression,) and that thus their recommendation to restrain ceremonial is brought within the terms of their Commission; it must again be asked, why did they not award the same latitude of construction to the witnesses upon whose evidence they ground their sole recommendation; when it would be seen immediately that their inference and conclusion are wholly illogical and absurd. For their reasoning fully stated would then run thus:—“We find the vestments are by none regarded as essential to the Being, though we are aware that by many they are considered essential to the well-being of the Church; and therefore we come to the opinion that all variations in respect of vesture be restrained and abolished.” Or, (on the other view,) “We find the vestments are by none regarded as in themselves essential, though by many the liberty to use them is regarded as essential, and therefore we recommend that they be repressed and disallowed.” What must be said of a Report the compilers of which can only present even the semblance of avoiding direct collision with the terms of their appointment by such treatment of the word essential; who claim this latitude of interpretation on their own side, whilst they wholly overlook or deny the same to the witnesses whose evidence they desire to make responsible for their illogical conclusion? Truly if the Commissioners have taken such interpretations for themselves, and in the same breath deny them to the witnesses whom they quote, what words can be too strong to describe their blindness if they did not see this incongruity, or their unfairness if they did; whilst, if to escape such a dilemma, they repudiate both the above pleas, what defence can they make against the just rebuke of the trenchant Archdeacon of Taunton, when he said at Wolverhampton that “they had been appointed to report only upon things essential, and had reported only upon things non-essential”?