Page:A Pastoral Letter to the Parishioners of Frome.djvu/34

26 not save him—unless he should follow up his reading by becoming a recipient of the graces of the blessed Sacraments. Which should we candidly pronounce the nearer in obedience to Almighty God in spirit and in truth,—he that possessing the Holy Scriptures and reading them, should stedfastly deny the grace of Sacraments and live without them—or he that not only possessing no copy of the Holy Scriptures, but even if he had not being able to read them—yet nevertheless in obedience to the Church should live a sacramental life, and be in constant communion with in the "Living Bread which came down from heaven?" I leave the answer to you. But at any rate the Bible in itself does not save a man.

And you observe the 6th Article perfectly agrees with what I say; for it does not assert broadly and only that "Holy Scripture is necessary to salvation," but it qualifies and explains how, namely "so that whatsoever is not read therein, or proved thereby is not necessary to salvation." Now how can it be proved thereby, and who is to prove it against deniers of Sacraments, that Baptism is necessary to salvation, or that, the blessed Sacrament of the Supper is necessary to salvation? Not you or I—not the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of Rome, nor any other Bishop, nor any other individual—but solely the Church—for another Article (the 20th) says "the Church hath authority in controversies of Faith." So that the 6th Article being what it is, and the 20th what it is, and my saying about the Bible remaining what it is, may notwithstanding appearances, perfectly coincide; and after all, it does not quite so certainly follow as the memorialists imagined in their "hurry," that I was contradicting the spirit of the Articles.

I now come to the fourth passage. This does not appear in the memorial to the Marchioness of Bath, but does in that made to the Bishop. It is this:—

"'If you are at present separated from the sacramental communion of a great part of Christendom, as you unfortunately are, weep over this separation and deplore it as a fault and a sin; but, reflect"