THE great meeting at Hereford on Wednesday made it perfectly clear that by the appointment of Latitudinarians of various hues and affinities to the canonries as they successively fell vacant, the Bishop of Hereford has at last constituted a Chapter which is entirely out of touch with the city and the diocese. It is not every subject which, at the busiest moment of the year, will fill the Town Hall of a cathedral city with an absolutely unanimous audience. But the silencing of the Athanasian Creed in the Cathedral [100 Years Ago, 14 December] has caused so deep and widespread a feeling among the orthodox of the diocese that priests and laymen from all parts of the diocese gathered at a day or two's notice.

. . . The resolution was framed with all respect for the Dean and Chapter. It refrained from protest, it appealed earnestly to the Dean and Chapter to restore in their Cathedral the rubrical use of the Creed. Doubtless there were those present who would have desired a more combative resolution, but the terms in which it was proposed and carried without a single dissentient voice at least affords to the Dean and Chapter an opportunity of reconsidering their recent decision. . . It remains to be seen whether the Dean, who knows the city far better than his colleagues, and than whom, as we gather, there is probably no more popular citizen, will be able to prevail upon the Canons to set themselves right with the diocese by the simple expedient of carrying out their declaration that they would use the form in the Prayer Book prescribed, and none other.

THE Dean and Chapter of Hereford have been compelled to give way, but it is impossible to congratulate them as heartily as we might on the manner of their retreat. They are unable to carry out their order to the Minor Canons "that the public saying or singing of the Athanasian Creed be discontinued." Thus far the situation is satisfactory, but what follows is not equally ingenuous. They direct that the statutory recitation of Matins, for which the Minor Canons are responsible, shall be at eight o'clock and without music, and that there shall be choral Matins as an extra service at eleven, without the Quicunque vult.

In regard to this function, it may be observed that, as it is not a statutory service, the Minor Canons are under no compulsion to take part in it, and we trust that they will leave it to the Canons themselves to sing it as well as they can. Upon the latter should be thrown the responsibility of depriving the faithful of Hereford of their right to hear this great anthem sung in its appointed place. Still, the net result of the resistance to this arbitrary conduct on the part of the Canons is to make it difficult for Chapters elsewhere to make the same kind of attempt to override the plain directions of the Prayer Book and the law governing the clergy. If the Chapter at Hereford, wholly united and desperately bent on carrying their point, are unable to do so, it is tolerably certain that no other Cathedral Chapter will succeed.