a farmer, next door. I'm glad
you like it.--I repeat, they _are_ binding, Campbell."

"An odd sort of binding, when they have never bound," answered Campbell;
"they have existed two or three hundred years; when were they ever put
in force?"

"But there they are," said Bateman, "in the Prayer Book."

"Yes, and there let them lie and never get out of it," retorted
Campbell; "there they will stay till the end of the story."

"Oh, for shame!" cried Bateman; "you should aid your mother in a
difficulty, and not be like the priest and the Levite."

"My mother does not wish to be aided," continued Campbell.

"Oh, how you talk! What shall I do? What can be done?" cried poor
Bateman.

"Done! nothing," said Campbell; "is there no such thing as the desuetude
of a law? Does not a law cease to be binding when it is not enforced? I
appeal to Mr. Willis."

Willis, thus addressed, answered that he was no moral theologian, but he
had attended some schools, and he believed it was the Catholic rule that
when a law had been promulgated, and was not observed by the majority,
if the legislator knew the state of the case, and yet kept silence, he
was considered _ipso facto_ to revoke it.

"What!" said Bateman to Campbell, "do you appeal to the Romish Church?"

"No," answered Campbell; "I appeal to the whole Catholic Church, of
which the Church of Rome happens in this particular case to be the
exponent. It is plain common sense, that, if a law is not enforced, at
length it ceases to be binding. Else it would be quite a tyranny; we
should not know where we were. The Church of Rome does but give
expression to this common-sense view."

"Well, then," said Bateman, "I will appeal to the Church of Rome too.
Rome is part of the Catholic Church as well as we: since, then, the
Romish Church has ever kept up fastings the ordinance is not abolished;
the 'greater part' of the Catholic Church has always observed it."

"But it has not," said Campbell; "it now dispenses with fasts, as you
have heard."

Willis interposed to ask a question. "Do you mean then," he said to
Bateman, "that the Church of England and the Church of Rome make one
Church?"

"Most certainly," answered Bateman.

"Is it possible?" said Willis; "in what sense of the word _one_?"

"In every sense," answered Bateman, "but that of intercommunion."

"That is, I suppose," said Willis, "they are one, except that they have
no intercourse with each other."

Bateman assented.