Page:A Pastoral Letter to the Parishioners of Frome.djvu/25

17 defects in the memorial "arose out of the hurry into which they were thrown." Alas! why be so hurried to accuse, as to omit the main point on which the meaning of the accused was to be ascertained? It ha not a good appearance; but being allowed to have been done in a "hurry" we have nothing more to say. We are bound to give credit to the idea, that what has been done, was done in the fulness of zeal for some one favourite truth, which blinded them to other truths which were accidentally, not purposely lost sight of. They are hard sayings which the memorialists have used against me,—unkind sayings, bitter sayings; but nevertheless, my part shall be with Grace, to "overcome evil with good," and, at once forget them, because I really do feel that in passing over Charity, they passed it over, not purposely, but in zeal, inadvertently; imagining (however much deceived, still imagining) and meaning to contend, as they interpreted it, for the "faith once delivered to the saints."

I now turn from the memorialists themselves as objectors, to the passages extracted from my writings to which they object. The passages it will be my duty to explain, and to show you that their meaning is not opposed to the spirit of the English Church. The passages cited by the memorialists are four in number. The first is this:

"'The pastors who have as yet been enabled to adhere to the Church of England, finding that she denies herself and forfeits her claim to Catholicity, will, one by one, be ejected by the force of the law from her communion; and although not loving the peculiarities of Rome, will, in order to preserve any faith at all, either in their own hearts, or in the hearts of those over whom they are set, be compelled to seek salvation within her bosom. This will probably happen within ten years. Then will come the end. Protestantism will sink into its proper place and die, and whatever was Catholic in the Church of England will become Roman.'"

Alas, I am sorry to say that I am compelled to adhere to what is here written, only not in the sense in which the objectors think my words are to be taken. I would have you observe that they are written as a kind of prophecy, and nothing more. Let us consider. It