THE CLERICAL CONSCIENCE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."]
F.sa,—Mr. L. Davies thinks it a peculiarity of the clerical conscience that it should shrink from expressing "sure and cer- tain hope of the resurrection to eternal life" with regard to persons whose unholiness still is notorious, and have no such ,s.ruples where the "holiness, without which no man can see 'the Lord," cannot be certainly ascertained.
Surely the answer is simple—we can only judge the outward act—where the life has been openly wicked, and there has been no declared repentance, there can be no ground for openly expressed assurance of a resurrection to life. It is mis- leading souls to teach them that if they "live after the flesh," they "shall" not "die." "The pnblicans and har- lots" -attained to their place in the Lord's kingdom by repentance, not by continuing in sin. Let those who have "-dupe and certain hope" in such cases by all means say so,—they are allowed to do it by the Act. I complain of the injustice of obliging those to say so who have not this hope, at any rate in the sense understood by popular Protestantism. —I am, Sir, &c.,
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