242 EDITOR. 



the English Channel, the proceedings of the Bishop of 

 Exeter, when beaten down and baffled in the Gorham case, 

 would have been considered a mixture of unseemly in- 

 solence and atrocious humbug. Mr Bennett, of Erome, re- 

 fuses to plead in what are called the ecclesiastical courts, re- 

 garding them and their doings as mere imaginary entities 

 in relation to the Church of which he holds himself to be 

 a member. How he would name that Church I cannot 

 tell, but he stands before the public as a minister of the 

 State-Church of England. The Rev. Mr Mossman of 

 Wragsby, rejoicing that ' the lurid, murky flame of Pro- 

 testantism, enkindled in the sixteenth century, is rapidly 

 becoming quenched, and the true light of the gospel, 

 which twice before came to England from Rome, is once 

 more beginning to beam upon us from the Eternal City,' 

 hoping for the day when ' it will come to pass that Angli- 

 cans will see that it is God's will that they should sub- 

 mit to the Holy Apostolic See, and that it is their duty 

 as well as their privilege to be in communion with that 

 Bishop who alone is the true successor of Peter, and, by 

 Divine Providence, the Primate of the Catholic Church/ 

 nevertheless continues an official of the Anglican Estab- 

 lishment. By the simple process of regarding the doc- 

 trinal formularies of the Church as meaningless and the 

 ecclesiastical courts as imaginary by merely ignoring 

 the little ceremony of subscription, the preliminary fib 

 which has to be uttered, the passing of conscience under 

 the Caudine Forks which has to be undergone un- 

 limited freedom is obtained to expatiate in the sweetness 

 and light of the English State-Church. Thank God, the 

 clergy of the protesting Church of Scotland in 1843 

 did not content themselves with rendering it an in- 

 soluble or even an intricate problem to make them 

 out to be honest men. They had distinctly defined 



