mounting almost to a belief, that the
church of England must split asunder. 'Nothing can be firmer in my
mind,' Mr. Gladstone replied (Aug. 31, 1846), 'than the opposite idea.
She will live through her struggles, she has a great providential
destiny before her. Recollect that for a century and a half, a much
longer period than any for which puritan and catholic principles have
been in conflict within the church of England, Jansenist and
anti-Jansenist dwelt within the church of Rome with the unity of wolf
and lamb. Their differences were not absorbed by the force of the
church; they were in full vigour when the Revolution burst upon both.
Then the breach between nation and church became so wide as to make the
rivalries of the two church sections insignificant, and so to cause
their fusion.' Later, he thinks that he finds a truer analogy between
'the superstition and idolatry that gnaws and corrodes' the life of the
Roman church, and the puritanism that with at least as much countenance
from authority abides in the English church. There are two systems, he
says, in the English church vitally opposed to one another, and if they
were equally developed they could not subsist together in the same
sphere. If puritanical doctrines were the base of episcopal and
collegiate teaching, then the church must either split or become
heretical. As it is, the basis is on the whole anti-puritanic, and what
we should call catholic. The conflict may go on as now, and with a
progressive advance of the good principle against the bad one. 'That has
been on the whole the course of things during our lifetime, and to judge
from present signs it is the will of God that it should so continue.'
(Dec. 7, 1846.)

The following to Mr. Phillimore sums up the case as he then believed it
to stand (June 24, 1847):--

... The church is now in a condition in which her children may and
must desire that she should keep her national position and her
civil and proprietary rights, and that she should by degrees obtain
the means of extending and of strengthening herself, not only by
covering a greater space, but by a more vigorous organisation. Her
attaining to this state of higher health depends in no small degree
upon progressive adaptations of her state and her laws to her ever
enlarging exigencies; these depend upon the humour of the state,
and the state cannot and will not be in good humour with her, if
she