RITUALISM, a strict adherence to rites and ceremonies in public worship. The term is more especially applied to a tendency recently manifested in the Church of England, resulting in a series of changes introduced by various clergy men of the High Church party into the services of the Church. These changes may be described externally as generally in the direction of a more ornate wor ship, and as to their spirit or animating principle, as the infusion into outward forms of a larger measure of the sym bolic element. They are defended on the grounds of law, ancient custom, inherent propriety, and divine sanction or author ity. The Ritualists hold, with most oth ers, that all authoritative and obligatory regulation on ritual is not laid down in the New Testament, but they, or many of them, maintain that a knowledge of what is obligatory in ritual is derived from apostolical tradition, going back to apostolical times. They argue that the design of the institution of Christianity was not to abrogate the external cere monials by which the patriarchal and Mosaic dispensations in the Old Testa ment were distinguished; but to replace them by a higher ceremonial, and they explain the comparative simplicity of primitive worship by the secrecy and restraint to which the early Church was subjected. The points of ritual about which there has been the most violent contention are those which involve the adoration of Christ as present on the altar under the forms of bread and wine.
Other points are: The E. position of the priest at consecration; lights on the holy table; the use of various vestments; the use of incense; mixing water with wine for communion; fasting before commu nion from previous midnight; regular confession to a priest, with absolution and penance, etc. The legal position of the Ritualists is that the first Book of Common Prayer, issued in the second year of Edward VI. (1549, with altera tions made in 1552, 1604, and 1662), is still the guide of the Church in all mat ters pertaining to ritual, the present prayer-book not being in itself complete, but referring to this first prayer-book in its opening rubric. Various judgments have been given in ecclesiastical courts against extreme Ritualists, and some of their proceedings have been pronounced illegal. Ritualistic practices have been generally condemned by the bishops, and an act of Parliament giving them power to restrain innovations of this kind came into force on Aug. 7, 1874. The ritual istic movement in the Church of England arose out of the High Church movement inaugurated by the Tractarians.