re misleading if rigorously insisted
on, or so likely to cause error in practice.

The Prayer-Book, however, in spite of the Revision of 1662, retains
many vestiges of the foreign Protestant influence, which affected
the Revision of 1552. With these the Conference have attempted to
deal in a loyal spirit. However much they may be regretted,
Churchmen are bound to accept them. For it must be clearly
understood that nothing was further from the intention of the
Conference, than to attempt Revision. So far from this, it was
hoped by some that a careful series of notes explaining the true
character of disputed Rubrics might go some way to allay the
present agitation for change.

The Conference cannot be blind to the conviction that they have to
face much modern prejudice. On the one hand there is still rife in
the Church of England the Puritan spirit, which condemns in one and
the same category things essentially Roman, and things which are
really primitive, but which have been retained by Rome. On the
other hand, there undoubtedly exists an occasional reaction from
this Puritan spirit, which has produced a prejudice in favour of
things--whether primitive or not--simply because they are Roman.
The Conference have felt that to yield either to one or the other
prejudice was not the right way of dealing with the Prayer-Book.

They have also been brought face to face with what are called
"Legal decisions" on some questions of Ritual. Apart from the fact
that the courts have given directly opposite decisions on the same
question, and have given reasons in one case inconsistent with the
reasons given for their decision in another; apart also from
the fact that these are chiefly decisions of secular courts in
purely spiritual matters; the Conference have been precluded from
entertaining them, as guides or as helps, in consequence of the
courts having generally acted upon principles of interpretation
entirely different from those which the Conference had adopted.

They have, moreover, found themselves in opposition to much modern
practice, originating in carelessness and neglect in the due
performance of the Services of the Church during past generations,
but alien to the spirit of those Services, though often mistaken
for their exponent.

The Conference have had to investigate the origin and to consider
the meaning of many practices, which appear either to be enjoined
or implied in the existing Rubrics, and have, in the lig