round upon my Mother-Church with
contumely and slander," in this sense, but in no other sense, do I
plead guilty to it without a word in extenuation.

In no other sense surely; the Church of England has been the
instrument of Providence in conferring great benefits on me; had I
been born in Dissent, perhaps I should never have been baptised; had
I been born an English Presbyterian, perhaps I should never have
known our Lord's divinity; had I not come to Oxford, perhaps I never
should have heard of the visible Church, or of Tradition, or other
Catholic doctrines. And as I have received so much good from the
Anglican Establishment itself, can I have the heart, or rather the
want of charity, considering that it does for so many others, what it
has done for me, to wish to see it overthrown? I have no such wish
while it is what it is, and while we are so small a body. Not for its
own sake, but for the sake of the many congregations to which it
ministers, I will do nothing against it. While Catholics are so weak
in England, it is doing our work; and, though it does us harm in a
measure, at present the balance is in our favour. What our duty would
be at another time and in other circumstances, supposing, for
instance, the Establishment lost its dogmatic faith, or at least did
not preach it, is another matter altogether. In secular history we
read of hostile nations having long truces, and renewing them from
time to time, and that seems to be the position the Catholic Church
may fairly take up at present in relation to the Anglican
Establishment.

Doubtless the National Church has hitherto been a serviceable
breakwater against doctrinal errors, more fundamental than its own.
How long this will last in the years now before us, it is impossible
to say, for the nation drags down its Church to its own level; but
still the National Church has the same sort of influence over the
nation that a periodical has upon the party which it represents, and
my own idea of a Catholic's fitting attitude towards the National
Church in this its supreme hour, is that of assisting and sustaining
it, if it be in our power, in the interest of dogmatic truth. I
should wish to avoid everything, except under the direct call of
duty, which went to weaken its hold upon the public mind, or to
unsettle its establishment, or to embarrass and lessen its
maintenance of those great Christian and Catholic principles and
doctrines which it has up to this time su