nsound ministry, for
a sound one? Why, that he loves Christ's Church and truth so much
better than any circumstances, that though it may cost him pain and
sorrow he leaves the one for the other.

There seems an idea prevalent, and kept up in all these letters, which
is in fact most untrue--that a man, by leaving the church[41] becomes
a dissenter in principle. Whereas I think many who have merely
followed the line which the apostle recommends, of turning away from
false teachers, are not at all thereby rendered in love with dissent
as one system set up against another system. It appears to me, that a
sectarian Church of England-man, and a sectarian Dissenter, whose only
desire is to see augmented the respective members of those who follow
them, are equally removed from the mind of Christ. The thing devoutly
to be prayed for, for them all is, that when they respectively
approach the nearest to the meaning of the divine word and the mind of
Christ, they might be respectively strengthened and made willing in
those things to borrow from each other, and all sides to remember that
that love which covereth many faults is more valuable a thousand times
than that sectarian zeal that magnifies every weakness and infirmity
into a mortal sin, and which delights in evil surmisings and evil
speakings.

[41] I use this term, though in its sense of national
churches, I think it absolutely unscriptural.

The term which passes current with so many who are attached to the
Church of England exclusively of "our apostolic church," it may not be
amiss for a moment to dwell on. Where then does this apostolic
similarity dwell, and in what does it consist?

Is it in the mode of appointment of Bishops? _Formerly_ it was the
work of the church, with which the state had nothing to do. _Now_, it
may be the work of an infidel ministry, for infidel purposes.

Is it the state and pomp of the episcopacy, the titles--"Your Grace,"
"Your Lordship," your palaces, your carriages, and fame, and hosts of
idle livery servants?

Is it in the mode of appointment to the cure of souls? _Then_ it was
in the choice of the church; or, if of new churches, the appointment
of those who had gathered them. _Now_, this cure is publicly sold like
cattle in the market to the highest bidder, and a large proportion of
the remainder may be in the hands of an infidel Lord Chancellor, to
give as he pleases.

Is it the Liturgy? However valuable it may be, no one will