TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
in the sixteenth than in the nineteenth century? and does the spirit of the nineteenth move with the spirit of the sixteenth, if the sixteenth commands and the nineteenth draws back?
L. But you spoke of parts of the services themselves, as laid aside?
C. Alas!…
What is the prevailing opinion or usage respecting the form of absolution in the office for Visiting the Sick? What is thought by a great body of men of the words in which the Priesthood is conveyed? Are there no objections to the Athanasian Creed? Does no one stumble at the word "oblations," in the Prayer for the Church Militant? Is there no clamour against parts of the Burial Service? No secret or scarcely secret murmurings against the word regeneration in the Baptismal? No bold protestations against reading the Apocrypha? Now do not all these objections rest upon one ground: viz. That these parts of our services savour of Popery? And again, are not these the popular objections of the day?
L. I cannot deny it,
C. I consider then that already I have said enough to show that the Church of this day has deviated from the opinions of our Reformers, and become more opposed than they were to the system they protested against. And therefore, I would observe, it is not fair to judge of me, or such as me, in the off-hand way which many men take the liberty to adopt. Men seem to think that we are plainly and indisputably proved to be Popish, if we are proved to differ from the generality of Churchmen now a-days. But what if it turn out that they are silently floating down the stream, and we are upon the shore?
L. All, however, will allow, I suppose, that our Reformation was never completed in its details. The final judgment was not passed upon parts of the Prayer Book. There were, you know, alterations in the second edition of it published in King Edward's time; and these tended to a more Protestant doctrine than that which had first been adopted. For instance, in King Edward's first book the dead were prayed for; (not of course as if there were a purgatory, but as if it were right to commemorate and hold communion with the saints in paradise;) in the second this commemoration was omitted. Again, in the first book the ele-
