ch He had
promised to be till the end of the world. No . . . by the bye, they
made two exceptions--of their own choosing. One in favour of the
Albigenses . . . who seemed to me, from the original documents, to
have been very profligate Infidels, of whom the world was well rid .
. . and the Piedmontese . . . poor, simple, ill-used folk enough,
but who certainly cannot be said to have exercised much influence on
the destinies of mankind . . . and all the rest was chaos and the
pit. There never had been, never would be, a kingdom of God on
earth, but only a few scattered individuals, each selfishly intent
on the salvation of his own soul--without organisation, without
unity, without common purpose, without even a masonic sign whereby
to know one another when they chanced to meet . . . except
Shibboleths which the hypocrite could ape, and virtues which the
heathen have performed . . . Would YOU have had me accept such a
"Philosophy of History"?

'And then I went to another school . . . or rather wandered up and
down between those whom I have just described, and those who boast
on their side prescriptive right, and apostolic succession . . . and
I found that their ancient charter went back--just three hundred
years . . . and there derived its transmitted virtue, it seemed to
me, by something very like obtaining goods on false pretences, from
the very church which it now anathematises. Disheartened, but not
hopeless, I asked how it was that the priesthood, whose hands
bestowed the grace of ordination, could not withdraw it . . .
whether, at least, the schismatic did not forfeit it by the very act
of schism . . . and instead of any real answer to that fearful
spiritual dilemma, they set me down to folios of Nag's head
controversies . . . and myths of an independent British Church, now
represented, strangely enough, by those Saxons who, after its wicked
refusal to communicate with them, exterminated it with fire and
sword, and derived its own order from St. Gregory . . . and
decisions of mythical old councils (held by bishops of a different
faith and practice from their own), from which I was to pick the one
point which made for them, and omit the nine which made against
them, while I was to believe, by a stretch of imagination . . . or
common honesty . . ., which I leave you to conceive, that the Church
of Syria in the fourth century was, in doctrine, practice, and
constitution, like