hich
Christ incarnate dwells,--how could this question be so forced upon their
minds, as by the fact that her Champion, whom they had hitherto felt to be
invincible, who had seemed her heaven-sent defender, with the talisman of
victory in his hands, of whom they were even tempted to think

Si Pergama dextra
Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent,

that he, who fighting her battles, never met with his equal, unsubdued by
any foe from without, has surrendered to his own doubts and fears;
self-conquered, has laid down her arms, and has gone over to the camp
opposed. Henceforth she has ranged against her those powers of genius and
that sanctity of life, to which so many of her children looked as to a
certain omen of her Catholicity. They felt that she who bore such children,
must needs be the spouse of God. It is no wonder that many others, of no
mean name among us, and whom we could ill afford to spare, have had their
doubts and disquietudes determined by such a fact as this. For the first
time, I repeat, in the history of the Church of England have earnest and
zealous children of hers, who desired nothing but their own salvation and
the salvation of others, found no rest for the sole of their feet within
her communion. Men who set out with the most single-minded purpose of
defending her cause, nay, of winning back to her bosom alienated
multitudes, of building her up in a beauty and a glory which she has not
yet seen, and one, especially, who has been the soul of that great movement
to restore her,--these have now, after years of hard fighting spent in her
service, quitted her, and proclaim that all who value their salvation must
quit her likewise.

These are some of the special circumstances which force upon the most
reluctant the question of Schism. It was the privilege of other days to
feed in the quiet pastures of truth. We have to seek the path to Heaven
through the wilderness of controversy, where too often "the highways are
unoccupied, and the travellers walk through byways." But it is a question
which cannot be put off or thrust aside. No instructed Christian, who has
any true faith or love, can bear the thought that he is out of the one fold
of Christ. The question cannot be put off, for it will brood upon him in
his daily devotions and labours; a doubt as to the justice of his cause
will paralyse all his exertions. It cannot be thrust aside; for the
imputation of heresy on another has