e his belief in the Catholic Faith and to pray for
the good estate of the Catholic Church. A priest who administers Baptism
according to the use of the Church of England should not talk about "the
sanctified contents of a pump," or describe people who cross themselves as
"making right angles upon the breast and forehead." But time brings changes
in religious, as well as in social, manners, and Peter Plymley prophesied
nearly thirty years before Keble's sermon on "National Apostasy" had
started the second revival of the English Church.[176]

No one who has studied the character and career of Sydney Smith would
expect him to be very sympathetic with the work which bore the name of
Pusey. In 1841 he preached against it at St. Paul's.

"I wish you had witnessed, the other day, my incredible boldness in
attacking the Puseyites. I told them that they made the Christian
religion a religion of postures and ceremonies, of circumflexions and
genuflexions, of garments and vestures, of ostentation and parade;
that they took tithe of mint and cummin, and neglected the weightier
matters of the law,--justice, mercy, and the duties of life: and so
forth."

From Combe Florey he wrote:--

"Everybody here is turning Puseyite. Having worn out my black gown, I
preach in my surplice; this is all the change I have made, or mean to
make."

In 1842 he wrote to a friend abroad:--

"I have not yet discovered of what I am to die, but I rather believe I
shall be burnt alive by the Puseyites. Nothing so remarkable in
England as the progress of these foolish people.[177] I have no
conception what they mean, if it be not to revive every absurd
ceremony, and every antiquated folly, which the common sense of
mankind has set to sleep. You will find at your return a fanatical
Church of England, but pray do not let it prevent your return. We can
always gather together, in Green Street, a chosen few who have never
bowed the knee to Rimmon."

It may be questioned whether the Hermit of Green Street was very well
qualified to settle the points at issue between the "Puseyites" and
himself, or had bestowed very close attention on what is, after all, mainly
a question of Documents. In earlier days, when it suited his purpose to
argue for greater liberality towards Roman Catholics, he had said:--

"In their tenets, in their church-government, in the nature of their
endowme