I must ask leave to refer my readers to Mr. Tucker's book for the grounds in detail of the Bishop's wishes. I am not aware that any English prelate has ventured upon so hazardous an experiment; one, I should rather say, so certain to fail disastrously. The infancy of the Christian Church, and the Divine guidance directly exercised, rendered such discipline in the first centuries both practicable and effective.[15] But I do not remember that any parish priest of the Reformed Church has ever attempted to enforce the Communion rubrics, except, as we have learned from the public papers, in recent times, with disastrous consequences to the promoters. And what kind of wickedness is to be so visited? To prove drunkenness, or impurity, or fraudulent practices, or false doctrine (Canon 109), a judicial inquiry must be resorted to. Rebukes for lesser offences would certainly lead to disputes, if not even to recrimination! The irresistible circumstances of the age would entirely defeat any such endeavours. In towns, parochial limits are practically unknown or ignored, and families, or individuals, attend whatever church or chapel they please, no one preventing them, thus making all exercise of sacerdotal authority impracticable. In the country, even where only the parish church is within reach, it is highly probable that an offender would meet priestly excommunication by the easy expedient of cutting himself off from communication with his clergyman and his church; and even if he did not, it would be a very new state of things if the sentence were received with submission on the part of the offender, and acquiescence on that of the congregation. [15] As these sheets are passing through the press, I happen to meet with these words of Bishop Wilberforce:--"The more I have thought over the matter, the more it seems to me that it was providentially intended that discipline, in the strictest sense of that word, should be the restraint of the early Church, and that it should gradually die out as the Church approached maturity, or rather turn from a formal and external rule to an inner work in the spirit--should run into the opening of God's Word and its application to the individual soul and life."--_Life_, vol. i., p. 230.