as to admit of being laid before your friends
in council, must be set down without any question of personal
feeling--as simply as a mathematical question or demonstration.

225. The first exact question which it seems to me such an assembly may
be earnestly called upon by laymen to solve, is surely axiomatic: the
definition of themselves as a body, and of their business as such.

Namely: as clergymen of the Church of England, do they consider
themselves to be so called merely as the attached servants of a
particular state? Do they, in their quality of guides, hold a position
similar to that of the guides of Chamouni or Grindelwald, who, being a
numbered body of examined and trustworthy persons belonging to those
several villages, have nevertheless no Chamounist or Grindelwaldist
opinions on the subject of Alpine geography or glacier walking; but are
prepared to put into practice a common and universal science of Locality
and Athletics, founded on sure survey and successful practice? Are the
clergymen of the Ecclesia of England thus simply the attached and
salaried guides of England and the English, in the way, known of all
good men, that leadeth unto life?--or are they, on the contrary, a body
of men holding, or in any legal manner required, or compelled to hold,
opinions on the subject--say, of the height of the Celestial Mountains,
the crevasses which go down quickest to the pit, and other cognate
points of science--differing from, or even contrary to, the tenets of
the guides of the Church of France, the Church of Italy, and other
Christian countries?

Is not this the first of all questions which a Clerical Council has to
answer in open terms?

Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.

III.

BRANTWOOD, _6th July._

226. My first letter contained a Layman's plea for a clear answer to the
question, "What is a clergyman of the Church of England?" Supposing the
answer to this first to be, that the clergy of the Church of England are
teachers, not of the Gospel to England, but of the Gospel to all
nations; and not of the Gospel of Luther, nor of the Gospel of
Augustine, but of the Gospel of Christ,--then the Layman's second
question would be:

Can this Gospel of Christ be put into such plain words and short terms
as that a plain man may understand it?--and, if so, would it not be, in
a quite primal sense, desirable that it should be so, rather than left
to be gathered out of Thirty-nine Articles, written