ABSTRACT
FROM J. CUMMING, Ritualism, The Highway to Rome, London, 1867, Lecture I, ‘Ritualism—What is it?’ Inspired by the appointment of the Parliamentary Ritual Commission, Dr Cumming gave a series of weekly lectures in the Scotch National Church (Presbyterian) at Covent Garden, London, of which he was minister, on the evils of ecclesiastical ceremonial and doctrinal sacerdotalism. In his dedication, to the Protestant Society, he remarked upon his conviction ‘that never was our country in greater peril in its highest and holiest interests’. Like the author of the Durham Letter, almost twenty years previously, Cumming was out to associate Roman Catholicism and the High Church party within the Establishment in a single condemnation.
