Page:A Pastoral Letter to the Parishioners of Frome.djvu/15

7 It is quite true, as you say, that I was driven from the ministrations of the Church about this time last year; and it was because I held as lawful, certain practices of devotion, and, because finding the people generally fond of them, I encouraged their use; and because being pronounced and known to be lawful, I would not abandon them. But you will observe, that it does not follow as a consequence of this, that I am a Roman Catholic. A very earnest lover of the Church of England I am;—a very anxious and faithful abider by all the laws, customs, and usages of the old Catholic Church of, in opposition to the modern school of the last century, I am. But, dear brethren, look at your own old parish church, standing on the brow of the hill, and looking over the graves of your forefathers for many and many a generation. Look too, at that one memorable tomb that holds beneath it the remains of a venerable Bishop, one of the most beloved of the English Church—Bishop of this Diocese, the gentle, the noble, the loving, the conscientious Ken.

How long has that Church been there? How many generations of graves can you count? You would not, no, you do not, tear down the Church and deface its walls; desecrate the altar, and carry havoc and ruin into the midst of the holy edifice; merely because once it was Roman Catholic? No, you have not put aside all religious customs and usages,—all prayers and Creeds, all songs of thanksgiving and praise, all preaching and Sacraments, merely because they were once Roman Catholic. No, what did you do? Three hundred years ago, you put away a great many of them because they were thought superstitious and wrong, but you retained more because they were thought to be edifying, and comforting in devotion. And the law of the Church at the same time that it put away the wrong commanded the use of what was not wrong. Now it was what the Church commanded to be used in some instances, and in others permitted to be used, that I contended for; not Roman Catholic things, but good old English things. That was all. And now let