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 simply set it down, as he found it, a matter of fact; and but for your acute scent of a weak part, it might have remained unnoticed. No evil could have arisen from his simple statement of the fact. You, indeed, may possibly perplex men's minds, little prepared as they are for the discussion of the point, by confounding it with a popish superstition (which Calvin did not do), and thereby giving arms to opponents of our Church: it is ours to vindicate the early Church and our reformers.

It is, meanwhile, not a little remarkable that the main position of this tract which you have selected for censure, is precisely that incidentally, maintained by the learned Archbishop Wake, of whose soundness never was any doubt in the Church. The position was;

Archbishop Wake says in like manner (Dissert, on the Apostolical Fathers, c. ix. § 20.):—

Nor even in these last days, has "prayer for God's departed servants" been by well-instructed writers confounded with purgatory. The following passage evidently proceeds from the heart of one, whom no one will accuse of a blind adherence to the antient Church (Short's History of English Church, § 15):

"To pray for the dead was the dictate of human nature, and the