This rubric, if construed to include only these ornaments, would exclude many things which common sense and custom have sanctioned; and if the doctrine that "omission is prohibition" be insisted on, would actually shut out organs or harmoniums, hangings on doorways, seats for priests, clerks, and people, stoves, hassocks, pulpit-cloths or pulpit-cushions, pews, Christmas decorations, and the use of the pulpit or bell except on Ash Wednesday; it would forbid any bishop to officiate publicly on any occasion without a cope or vestment and pastoral staff. On the other hand, there seems to be a limit to laxity in construing the rubric, and that it cannot, unless this laxity be strained beyond the bounds of reason, be taken to admit the substitution of other ornaments for those which the rubric enjoins; such as the use of a bason in, or instead of the Church font, of a common bottle for the Holy Communion, of a black gown instead of an authorised vesture in the pulpit during the Communion Service, or of foreign forms of surplices and vestments instead of the English ones. In general, the more nearly the ornaments of the Church and Minister, and the use thereof, are conformed to the English, usage in the early years of the reign of Edward VI., the better; as marking the continuity of the English Church, and avoiding the imputation of adopting at second hand the ornaments and usages of foreign communions, whether Belgian, French, Italian, or Swiss. Nevertheless, the non-user of any legal ornaments, such as the Eucharistic Vestments, in any old Church, for a long period, seems to be a valid plea against any absolute obligation of sudden restoration in that Church, when the communicants do not desire them to be restored. With regard to the colours of the Priest's vestments, and of other coloured ornaments of the Church and Minister, there were variations in different Churches. In the rubric of Sarum, which seems to have been regarded as a standard of English usage up to the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., _red_ was directed to be used on all Sundays in the year, except in the Easter season and the Ascension festival (up to Whitsun Eve), and except on any other festival marked by the use of white, which takes precedence of the particular Sunday. In these cases the colour would be _white_.