ment of the kind be at the moment perceptible among us, it surely will be well to bear such examples in memory. It is well that those who, from amiable confidence in the right feeling of themselves and others towards Him who is our common hope, are apt to make light of differences in doctrine concerning Him: it is well, I say, that they should be aware to what point, before now, men have been led by such presumptuous differences. May we not imagine, even at that time, the scruples of some more considerate Copt overcome by such arguments as are now not rarely alleged, when any Churchman is seen to shrink from symbolizing with the corrupters of the Faith, and despisers of the Church? May we not, without any violent improbability, represent to ourselves the venerable patriarch Benjamin reasoning as follows with such an unwilling disciple? "Why should you be so very loth to act with these our Arabian brethren, whom you cannot deny to be our political deliverers? True, they deny that our Saviour is the Son of God; they do not even allow Him to be the greatest of Prophets: but remember what Holy Scripture says; 'Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ:' . and surely it is possible for a Mussulman to love Jesus of Nazareth: nay, he cannot help doing so, if he be at all consistent: he must love one whom his own Scriptures acknowledge as one of the greatest and most beneficent of heavenly messengers. Be of good cheer then: we and these our new allies are in reality much more unanimous than we have been used to imagine, in what we fundamentally believe. In religion, properly so called, we do not really differ from them. We all acknowledge with one voice the great facts of the Bible. They add, indeed, those of the Koran: but that is not of so much consequence, it being still possible for us all, in one sense or other, to love Jesus Christ. Let us, then, leave off contending about scholastic subtleties, and let us rather unite all our energies against the one common enemy, the exclusive system of the old Church, that Church which so unphilosophically insists on our adoring the same Lord, confessing the same Faith, and holding by the same Baptism. In this way, we shall be left most sure to make our own high doctrines concerning our Lord and his sole uncompounded Nature thoroughly known to our people; and we shall do incalculably more good than we need fear doing harm by this our partial and apparent compromise with what
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TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
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