'A servile imitation': a late 19th century Old High critique of Anglo-catholicism
And this not only on those broader questions of doctrine or ritual in which it is alleged that Rome has but preserved the traditions of primitive antiquity, but in those for which no such claim can possibly be made. No one can deny - the most advanced members of the party do not themselves care to deny - that it is, in its latest development, marked by a close and even a servile imitation of all the minutest details of Roman Catholic ceremonial; a hankering after Romish theology and Romish forms of private devotion; an almost childish affectation of all the most Romish modes of thought and forms of expression; in short, as they themselves express it, by a "deferential" "Latinising" of our Church; and that to such an extent that one might not unfairly suppose that the one aim of such persons is to make themselves, in all respects, as like Romish priests as possible, and their greatest happiness to be mistaken for such; and that the accusation which they would most keenly resent would be, that they were capable of supposing that on any point whatever on which the Church of England differs from that of Rome, she can by any possibility be in the right.
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