10. Speaking generally, and with the exceptions and under the restrictions to be presently mentioned, the incumbent and clergymen permitted by him have the sole right of ministering within his parish; and a clergyman who intrudes and performs any clerical function in it without his permission, commits an ecclesiastical offence.[70] But the bishop, as the chief pastor, has the right to officiate in any church and parish within his diocese whenever he pleases. And an incumbent cannot authorise another clergyman to officiate in his church or parish without the licence of the bishop; but this rule has been held not applicable in its absolute strictness to merely occasional and isolated acts of ministration.[71] The few cases in which two or more incumbents have had the cure of souls within the same parish, have been dealt with by recent legislation.[72] The 28th and 57th Canons prohibited the practice of persons leaving their own parish church and communicating or causing their children to be baptized elsewhere. But this prohibition is not now in force; and by a general understanding and comity, especially in towns subdivided into several ecclesiastical parishes, not only do Church people frequent at will the particular church which they prefer, but the incumbent of that church pays spiritual visits in sickness and at other times to regular members of his congregation who reside in another parish. 11. The ministrations of the incumbent himself are restricted by Canon 71, under which, except where a person is prevented from going to church by infirmity or sickness, no minister may preach or administer the Holy Communion in any private house in which there is not a chapel dedicated and allowed by the ecclesiastical law of the realm, nor, where there is such a chapel, in any other place but the chapel, and even there only seldom on Sundays and holy-days in order that the lord or master of the house and his family may at other times resort to their own parish church and there receive the Holy Communion at least once every year. An incumbent can perform Divine service in any consecrated building in his parish without a licence from the bishop; but, strictly speaking, he requires the bishop's licence to authorise him to do so in any unconsecrated building, whether within or outside his parish, or anywhere in another diocese; and a bishop can inhibit an incumbent of his diocese from officiating within the diocese elsewhere than in the consecrated buildings within his own parish. If an incumbent transgresses in any of these respects he is liable to be sued for an ecclesiastical offence.[73] Moreover, strangely enough, the Acts which legalised the worship of Dissenters not only withdrew them from the care of the incumbent of the parish but also restricted his action among Church people. For these Acts prohibited any meeting for Protestant religious worship of more than twenty persons, besides the family and