Mr. Kent, in reply to Dr. Ryerson (31st December), said:--

I trust you will think that in the remarks which I have made on
your letter in _The Church_, I have met your overtures in a pacific
and cordial spirit. I am sure that my remarks will be much more
acceptable to churchmen, so far as such remarks are friendly to
you, than they will be to others not belonging to our pale. I have
not consulted a soul about what I have written, nor have I shown
your pleasing reply to my first note to any one save good and safe
Mr. Henry Rowsell; though I should like to show it to Rev. H. J.
Grasett, and Bishop Strachan. You need never be afraid of what you
say to me in confidence.... It is certainly much more consistent in
you (provided only you get rid of Mr. Wesley's authority, and then,
by the way, you destroy your genealogy and succession) to call
yourselves a Church, than to be of the Church and not in it.... You
are said to possess some fine old Divinity works. You cannot have
read them without some approximation to our Church.

You are not in the position of the continental Churches. No
constraint is upon you. You can get Episcopacy, if you desire it.
Neither does the Church of England stand relatively towards you, as
the Gallican Church towards the Huguenots. You admit the purity of
our doctrine, and do not consider our discipline unscriptural. If
you were to read Bishop Stillingfleet on Separation, I think you
would open up new trains of thought. I just became so staunch an
Episcopalian, from viewing the matter extrinsically of Scripture
and history, and was led to conclude, from the nature of things,
that there can be but one valid ministry.

You are certainly a _Prospero_. You have waved your magic wand over
the _Guardian_. I saw it in an instant, and saw that you had done
it. I purposely, in my editorial, abstained from all allusions to
our confidential intercourse, or I would have thanked you for this
exercise of your healing influence.

It is by no means an unpleasing marvel that you and I, on the last
day of 1841, should be conversing so pleasantly and amicably. I
trust that peace and amity will flourish still more!

Do me the favour to accept a slight New Year's gift at my hands.

Dr. Ryerson wrote a reply to the strictures of _The Church_ new