culties be deemed worthy a place in your next Magazine, it will afford me great pleasure to have furnished them. Yours obediently, CHARLES WORTHY, Q. Are the churchwardens authorized, or the parish bound, to put up the Queen's arms in churches? Where? Is there any regulation size? A. There are many articles for which no provision is made by any special order, and therefore must be referred to the general power of churchwardens, with the consent of the major part of the parishioners, and under the direction of the ordinary, such as erecting galleries, adding new bells, (and, of consequence, as it seemeth, salaries for the ringers,) organs, clock, chimes, king's arms, &c. Q. Are the Commandments and Lord's Prayer taken from those parts given in the Catechism? A. Not necessarily so. Vide Canon 82, 1603. Q. To put up the whole of the Commandments? A. Yes. Vide same Canon. In the 25th section of the Act of Uniformity, 1 Eliz. cap. 2. Provided always, and be it enacted, that such ornaments of the church, &c., until other order shall be therein taken, &c. Upon which Gibson says, vol. i. p. 225, " Other order." Pursuant to this clause the Queen Anno Regni 3° granted a commission to the Archbishop, Bishop of London, Dr. Bill, and Dr. Haddon to reform the disorders of chancels and to add to the ornaments of them by ordering the Commandments to be placed at the east end. Q. To put up the Apostles' Creed? The Lord's Prayer? 4. No. But the canon quoted above, orders texts of Scripture to be written on the wall in addition to the Commandments, the Lord's Prayer may therefore be taken literally from the New Testament, and written up. 2. To provide Common Prayer Book for the clerk; books of offices for funerals, baptisms, &c.; books for the communion table; books of Homilies? Copy of the Act for the observation of the 5th of November? A. No provision is made for supplying any of the above articles, with the exception of the Book of Homilies, a copy of which, by the 80th canon, (1603,) the churchwardens are bound to provide, at the expense of the parish; the other matters contained in the above query, together with a following one, respecting the "repair of a cracked bell," may fitly be referred to the "many articles" alluded to by Burn, as quoted in the first answer of this series. It may be mentioned here, that in the Appendix to the Guide to the Duties of Churchwardens, by Prideaux, are certain articles of inquiry for churchwardens, and amongst them the following: "Have you a large Bible, a book of Common Prayer for the minister, and another for the clerk ?" "Are your bells, &c., in thorough repair?" Although these are forms, yet it would be unreasonable to suppose that in such a book mere idle questions would be proposed, and strengthens the supposition that the general power given to churchwardens, with the consent of the majority of the parishioners, must be regarded in these matters, where no specific provision has been made. If the thing be necessary, the parish are bound to repair; if not, they cannot be called upon to repair, excepting by the consent of the majority. The doctrine that the liability of the parishioners extends only to absolute necessaries has been recognised, and acted upon to the fullest extent, and is well illustrated by the language of Sir William Wynne, in Pearce and Hughes, churchwardens of Clapham v. the Rector, Inhabitants, and Parishioners thereof, (Prideaux, p. 177.) The following constitution of Archbishop Winchelsey may not here be unin teresting, A.D. 1305: "That the parishioners of every church in the province of Canterbury may for the future certainly know what repairs belong to them, and they have no disputes with their rectors, our will is, and we enjoin, that, for the future, they be bound to find all the things underwritten, that is, a legend, an antiphonar, a grail, a psalter, a troper, an ordinal, a missal, a manual, a chalice, the principal vestment, with a chesible, a dalmatic, a tunic, and with a choral cope, and all its appendages, a frontal for the great altar, with three towels, three surplices, one rochet, a cross for processions, a cross for the dead, a censer, a lanthorn, a hand-bell to be carried before the body of Christ in the visitation of the sick, a pyx for the body of Christ, a decent veil for Lent, banners for the Rogations, bells with ropes, a bier for the dead, a vessel for the blessed water, an osculatory, a candlestick for the taper at Easter, a font with lock and key, the images in the church, the chief image in the chancel, the enclosure of the churchyard, the reparation of the body of the church within and without, the images, and glass-windows, the reparation of books, and vestments as occasion shall be. The rectors and vicars of the places are to repair all the rest, the chancel, and whatever is here omitted, or they to whom it belongs at their own cost, (See Johnson's Col. of Can.) Q. To provide communion plate? What sort? A. The only order for vessels at the holy communion which can be considered binding on the parish is to be found in the 20th canon, (1603,) and is as follows: "The churchwardens of every parish &c. shall, at the charge of the parish, provide a sufficient quantity of good and wholesome wine &c., which wine we require to be brought to the communion table in a clean and sweet standing pot, or stoop, of pewter, if not of purer metal," and also for a decent basin (in the first rubric after the offertory sentences) in which to collect the alms for the poor. Prideaux (from Ayl. Par., 304; Lindw., 252) adds, that the churchwardens are to take care that the church be provided with a fair chalice, or communion-cup, with a cover, and one or more flagons. In 1175, Archbishop Richard ordained that the Eucharist should not be consecrated in any chalice not made of gold or silver; and amongst the Constitutions of Langton, in 1222, is the following: "We ordain that every church have a silver chalice, with other decent vessels." These are cited as interesting, not as being authoritative. Q. Why are the psalms in the churching service pointed for singing, as they are ordered to be "read" by the "priest" alone? Would there be any impropriety in the priest reading the Creed of St. Athanasius, which is pointed in the same manner, instead of alternately with the people, as is usual? A. The psalms in the churching service are not ordered to be "read" by the priest "alone," neither does the church appear to contemplate such an arrangement. The woman, as the words clearly indicate, is expected to follow with the minister, who is ordered by the rubric to "sing" the psalm. The churching-service appertains solely to the woman; for the congregation therefore, or the clerk, representing the congregation, to repeat the psalm alternately with the minister, who is merely leading the woman, would be a gross absurdity. The churching-service, moreover, if read at its proper time, would be read, according to the opinion of most ritualists, between the first and second service, the congregation having withdrawn. (See Sparrow's Rationale.) There would be a manifest impropriety for the people not to repeat the Creed of St. Athanasius alternately with the priest, for, first, because it takes the place of the Apostles' Creed, the rubric before which gives the following direction, "Then shall be sung or said the Apostles' Creed by the minister and people ;" and secondly, because it is a confession of faith of every person present, and ordered to be sung or said by the minister and people. (See the rubric immediately preceding it.) Q. Would it be advisable to read the commination-service in all churches on the first day of Lent, or has the minister a discretionary power therein ? A. The minister has no discretionary power; it is ordered to be read on the first day of Lent, and at other times as the ordinary shall appoint. (See preface and rubric and the commination-service.) Q. When a child is brought to be received into the church, after the minister of the same parish has privately baptized it, he must certify the same in the prescribed form-but how does he proceed with the service? There is no rubrical direction, though common sense may supply the omission; but common sense is not taken, in all cases, as a sure guide. A. The service to be used when a child is brought to be received into the church after private baptism appears so plain and unencumbered of every difficulty, that I cannot understand your querist's doubts. The service seems to me to be intended to be used as it is printed; but since his convictions are not so clear, I would suggest his application to the bishop of his diocese, the proper person to resolve all doubts, under which head the present question fairly falls. Q. Are marriages (so called) at meeting-houses, licensed houses, and registrars'-offices, according to God's Holy Word? If not, are we authorized in saying, according to our marriage service, that they are not lawful? A. An unprofitable question, since the state has pronounced them lawful. As churchmen we look, of course, on marriage as a religious contract, and therefore consider that it should be contracted in God's name to be lawful in his sight, and by his ordinance. (See Dr. Hook's Church Dictionary, under the head "Matrimony," where may be found an excellent and comprehensive answer to the above question.)* * Vide Bing. Ch. Ant. b. xxii. c. 4. Q. As the law of the land requires clergymen to inter the dead bodies of persons who have been baptized by other than lawful ministers, and as, of course, the clergyman does not allow such bodies to enter the church, after the service at the grave-side, is it necessary to go into the church to read the psalm and lesson? Would not that part of the service appointed for the grave-side be sufficient? A. If the corpse be entitled to Christian burial at all, the minister is undoubtedly bound to read the appointed service, and is not at liberty to refuse to go into the church on the grounds referred to by your querist. The rubric gives the minister the option of going either to the church or to the grave, and with such permission, but for no other reason, he, doubtless, may proceed straight to the grave, and, though ritualists are divided on the point of being obliged to return to the church or not, yet most seem to incline to the affirmative side. Be this as it may, whoever is entitled to Christian burial is entitled to the whole service, if there be no general power to curtail it. On the subject of omitting any part of the service for the burial of the dead, your querist may consult with advantage Shepherd on the Common Prayer, and Wheatley, always remembering, however, that, after all, their opinion is but a private opinion. It belongs to another, of much higher authority, to appease diversity, and to resolve doubts concerning the manner how to understand, do, and execute the things contained in this book. (See preface to Common Prayer.) C. W. NOTICES AND REVIEWS. Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Cymri. By the Rev. John Williams, M.A. London, 1844. (Continued from p. 48.) "BRAN died, it is supposed, about A.D. 80, and his chaplain, Arwystli, A.D. 99." So says Mr. Williams; the first on the authority of the Cambrian Biography, the second on that of Cressy: the one having as much reason for saying, as it has been already shewn, that Brân was a Christian at all, as the other had for adding, that Arwystli was his chaplain." Cressy, it is well known, was a romancer of the first rank. Posterity will place him in a niche side by side with Mrs. Radcliffe. His Catalogue of the British Saints forms as amusing a compendium to church history, and has as much relation to its realities, as the Lives of the English Saints to the History of England, or the quaint vagaries of Cervantes to the dry chronicles of the middle ages. But this is nothing to Mr. Williams. Cressy and Alford, they are all the same to him, provided they only point out the way he wishes to go. He never stops to inquire whether it is to the right or to the left that they would guide him. Inquiry, comparison of records, research, and discrimination, may fit well ordinary chroniclers, when they relate ordinary events; but the his torian of the king of Siluria-that orthodox potentate, who, in the very infancy of the church, lest anything catholic should be omitted, appointed to himself a worthy and reverend "chaplain," and presented him, doubtless, with Howell and James's very best five guinea scarf as a badge of his office-might well afford, like Geoffrey the venerable -he of Monmouth-to overleap the bounds of discretion, and tell us, with all the gravity of a grand mufti, "that the prolongation of their lives [Brân, the emperor, and Arwystli, the chaplain] to such late periods [centenarians, or more] was evidently a great blessing to the church, which had been, without doubt, the particular object of their solicitude, zeal, and protection."-p. 62. No doubt so. It is impossible to enumerate all that they may have done. Mr. Williams leaves it an open question for his readers to draw the inference. He merely gives the hint. It is therefore possible, though Alford the Jesuit-a considerable authority with Mr. Williams as a chronicler of these dark times-does not positively say so, that there was actually in Siluria an Exeter Hall, or even a London Mission; yet you are permitted to infer it; you may guess it, if you like; or, if y your inclinations are at all given in that way, you may jump at once to the conclusion that they really did exist-that they were established by Brân and his "chaplain"-that their purpose was to extend Christianity among the rude boors of Carmarthenshire, and teach civilization to the desperate zealots of the county of Cardigan. The writer, however, regrets that no traces of them can be found at the present day, otherwise it is possible that Rebecca would have been still an appellation appropriate only to the fairer sex, and turnpike gates would never have had a place in the annals of history. But catholic writers-and Mr. Williams claims to be one-who read everything with "a catholic eye," unfold to the vision events which we, poor protestants, can never hope to unfathom. They will tell you what happened centuries upon centuries ago, with a minuteness of detail so accurate and so surprising that we cannot but feel an inward glowing pride to think that our ancestors, the rude, half-naked, tattooed, hardy Britons, toto divisos ab orbe, were so pre-eminently enlightened, and so elegantly civilized, that they were not the men whom Paley, in one of his moral delusions, vainly and fondly imagined to have fattened upon "cockles and muscles, rabbits and acorns, oysters and periwinkles, living in caves and grottoes, and dwellings of wattles and mud"-but (see Mr. Williams's History) that they built "royal palaces," "issued royal enactments," "vindicated their state authority in matters ecclesiastical," exactly as Queen Victoria does now, "passed a law," proclaimed it through Siluria, posted it at every cross road, "that parents should no longer defer to impose names upon their children, until they arrived at years of maturity," nor wait, as was the vulgar and pagan custom, "until their faculties were duly developed, so as to suggest a suitable and appropriate appellative." Decidedly not. It was wrong to wait-it The word catholic has been lately sadly abused, |