are found capable of.
Connection with the Eastern Church, if it could have been carried out
(though the difficulties in the way of this were far greater than they
were at all aware of), would simply have indicated a movement of their
whole body in one direction only, and, in proportion as it was
successful, would have alienated them more than ever from those whose
religious and ecclesiastical sympathies were of a very different kind.
Such communion, on the other hand, of independent national Churches as
was contemplated by Du Pin and Wake might have been quite free from
one-sidedness of this description. It need not have interfered with or
discouraged, it should rather have tended to promote, the near
intercourse, which many English Churchmen were greatly desirous of, with
the National Church of Scotland and with the reformed Churches of the
Continent. A relation of this kind with her sister Churches on either
hand would have been in perfect harmony both with the original
standpoint of the Church of England, and with an important office it may
perhaps be called to in the future. It was in reference to the
sympathetic reception given in this country to many of the proscribed
bishops and clergy of France at the time of the great revolution, that
the Count de Maistre made a remark which has often struck readers as
well worthy of notice. 'If ever,'--he said, 'and everything invites to
it--there should be a movement towards reunion among the Christian
bodies, it seems likely that the Church of England should be the one to
give it impulse. Presbyterianism, as its French nature rendered
probable, went to extremes. Between us and those who practise a worship
which we think wanting in form and substance, there is too wide an
interval; we cannot understand one another. But the English Church,
which touches us with the one hand, touches with the other those with
whom we have no point of contact.'[308]

Archbishop Wake, had he lived in more favourable times, would have been
well fitted, both by position and character, for this work of mutual
conciliation. His disposition toward the foreign Protestant Churches was
of the most friendly kind. In a letter to Le Clerc on the subject,[309]
he deprecated dissension on matters of no essential moment. He desired
to be on terms of cordial friendship with the Reformed Churches,
notwithstanding their points of difference from that of England. He
could wish they had a moderate Episcopal governm