464 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [1803 



made "this Church is far from intending to depart from the 

 Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, 

 or worship; or further than local circumstances may require." 

 Dr. Smith would not, in their hour of common peril, and when 

 beleagured by a common enemy, have turned his back upon his 

 " mother, the Church of England " — the church of Cranmer, 

 and Ridley, and Latimer, and of the whole glorious host of sons 

 who have fought for and maintained that faith for which they 

 died — in this way. He was far too wary, if he had not been too 

 sound-headed, ever to have made such a concession to the enemy; 

 one which surrenders the whole case to both our present enemies, 

 though each is more opposed to each other, than either is to us. 



If the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England au- 

 thorizes, though but in latency, the practices of Rome, or, even in 

 their smouldering ashes, still preserves Rome's living doctrines; and 

 if they who made our prayer book did not intend — were far from 

 intending — to depart from that church in any essential point 

 of doctrine, discipline, or worship, or further than local circum- 

 stances require, how can we defend ourselves from the " Low 

 Papists " — sometimes called Ritualists — who are disturbing its 

 peace and misapplying, in a disingenuous, dangerous and unwar- 

 ranted way, its doctrines? And how, again, are we to answer the 

 authors of the so-called Reformed Episcopal Church ? They 

 assert exactly what this view admits, adding only to it what 

 the declarations of the Preface to our prayer solemnly affirm. 

 And both these parties, the semi-papists and radicals, enter our 

 citadel together! Our whole case is given up by such a position. 

 Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribiis istis, would Dr. Smith have 

 dealt with the parties who are taking us, one-half of them to the 

 gates of Rome, and the other to the shores of Geneva. He would 

 have said to them, and his position would have been true: "Our 

 church, by the changes which it has made in the English book, 

 coupled with the solemn assurances which it has given in the 

 new Preface, that it does not intend to depart from the Church of 

 England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship, 

 or further than local circumstances require ; tells you that you 

 misinterpret the rubrics, prayers, and other things in the book of 

 the Church of England ; that you 7vrest them from their proper 

 sense; and that rightly interpreted — interpreted by her articles. 



