Note 16 — REMARKS UPON THE FIRST REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON RITUAL, Etc.

If the Commissioners should justify their thus reporting on things not essential, in the face of the very letter of their instructions, by saying that they understand the term essential to be relative; essential, not necessarily to the Being, but to the well-being of the Church, and that the repression of the vestments is, in their mind, thus relatively essential; it occurs immediately to ask, why, if they were thus so quickwitted to perceive this sense of relative essentiality on their own side, were they so obtuse in seeing that the same construction should equally be allowed to the witnesses examined, in their use of the word essential on the other side?