Mr. Henry Petre has published his correspondence with Bishop Vaughan,
the Bishop of Salford, in which the Bishop first asked him to retract his publicly expressed doubts of the recent Papal dogmas, and then, when Mr. Petra declined to do so, explained that he must direct the priests of his diocese not to admit Mr. Petre to the sacraments or to absolution without retracting his heretical views. The correspondence seems to strike Mr. Henry Petre and also the Times with amazement at Bishop Vaughan's audacity in drawing so "rusty" a weapon out of the armoury of bigotry. We confess we can't see it in that light. Does Mr. Henry Petre attach any real importance to the absolution of a Roman priest and the participation in the Roman Catholic sacraments? If he does not, we do not see what harm has been done to him, or how the rusty weapon has inflicted a blow at all ; it has, in that case, simply passed through the air. If he does, no doubt the inhibition must be painful to him ; but in that case he must attribute special grace, otherwise unattainable, to the consecrating and absolving power of the Roman hierarchy; and if they possess that mysterious and super- natural power, it is reasonable to suppose that they also possess some supernatural knowledge of the conditions of its dispensation, to which a Roman Catholic might fairly submit. It seems to us that in these days it is regarded as a grievance that you may not be both a Catholic and a Protestant at once,—that you may not both eat your cake and have it too. Children, at least, are always told that that wish is unreasonable.
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