the Channel. I forbear to speak of
the state of Spain, Portugal, and much of Italy; but I imagine that the
worst deeds of the Reformation were at least paralleled by what the Church
has had to endure there from the hands of her own children. I believe that
our own most sad corruptions have, too, their counterpart among Churches in
communion with the Apostolic See.

But to conclude. As our defence against the charge of Schism rests upon the
witness of the ancient Church, thus fully corroborated by the Eastern
Communion, so our whole safety lies in maintaining the clear indubitable
doctrine of that Church. I have avoided the whole question of _doctrine_ in
these remarks, both as leading me into a wider field than that which I am
obliged to traverse so cursorily at present, and as distinct from the
question of Schism, though very closely connected with it. No one can deny
that it is not sufficient for our safety to repel one single charge: but
this charge was the most pressing, the most specious, and one which
requires to be disposed of before the mind can with equanimity enter upon
any other. My conclusion is, that upon the strictest Church principles,--in
other words, upon those principles which all Christendom, in its undivided
state, recognised for six hundred years, which may be seen in the Canons
and Decrees of Ecumenical Councils, our present position is tenable at
least till the convocation of a really Ecumenical Council. The Church of
England has never rejected the communion of the Western, and still less
that of the Eastern Church: neither has the Eastern Church pronounced
against her. She has only exercised the right of being governed by her own
Bishops and Metropolitans. There is, indeed, much peril of her being forced
from this, her true position,--a peril lately pointed out by the author of
"The real Danger of the Church of England." I need say little where he has
said so much, in language so well-timed, so moderate, and from a position
which cannot be misrepresented. I will only add, that I cannot conceive any
course which would so thoroughly quench the awakened hopes of the Church's
most faithful children, as that her rulers, which I am loth even to
imagine, at a crisis like the present, should seek support, not in the rock
of the ancient Church, in which Andrewes, Laud, and Ken, took refuge of
old,--not in the unbroken tradition of the East and West, by which, if at
all, the Church of Christ must be restored