Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/387

 submits to it merely because it is the law of the land. Thus I went on, not expecting to make any impression on Mr. Vane; indeed, I saw too clearly that he was sneering in his heart all the time, but he did not like to say much, for fear of turning Philip against him; who, as I rejoiced to perceive, entered very much into this part of my talk. And as we walked away to my sister's, he expressed to me some wonder that so pious a man as Mr. Vane should ever have approved of the notion of marrying by Justices of the Peace. 'But I assure you, uncle,' said he, 'that we none of us agree with him. My mother and Letitia would both of them be miserable if they thought the Church's blessing would be wanting on our union. And although I must acknowledge that I could wish some parts of the service omitted, yet it must be owned, on the whole, to be extremely beautiful; and I for my part,' he went on to say, 'never expect to see the day, when I shall take any dislike to the Church, for that or any other reason.'"

Here I interrupted Richard in his recital. "I do wish," I said, "that people who are so much wiser and more delicate than the Prayer Book, would look a little into their Bibles too. And when they have well reformed both, we shall see how purely the world will go on, the warnings of God being silenced, and the mistake corrected, which the Church has made, in speaking out plainly about fashionable and shameful sins."

My friend Richard smiled at my vehemence, and said, "To be sure, Sir, it is tolerably plain, (what I have often thought of the warnings of the Athanasian Creed also,) that the very repugnance which many men feel towards repeating them, is rather a proof of their usefulness and necessity, supposing the substance of them to be true. For it is plain, that people who shudder so much at repeating them after the Church, would never have courage to deliver the like warnings for themselves. And the same kind of remark may be made on the passages you now allude to in the Office for Matrimony. And thus people might be left to perish unwarned, through false delicacy, or false good-nature. I must say, that if I was a Clergyman, and felt, as I suppose I should feel, that such warnings ought to be given, I should feel most deeply obliged to the Prayer Book for putting