The Bishop of Rochester writes an admirable letter to Monday's
Times in regard to the "controversies on teaching and practice in the Church of England." We are glad to see that though to a certain extent he appears personally to support confession, he protests against the "general—and there- fore conventional and shallow—use" of confession, and again against "the dangers of a shallow, mechanical, dwarfing use of this potent remedy." His main point, however, is to insist upon the spirit of comprehension as the true spirit of the Church of England. It has happened, he tells us, "from Elizabeth's time to now that men who seemed very near to the Roman and Puritan positions respectively have been held within the unity of the Church's life. But it has been a tenure on two conditions,—a condition of loyal conformity and a condition of not imposing what was peculiar to their own convictions as an exclusive test or standard upon the whole body of the Church." The Bishop ends his letter with a striking passage in which he points how great a mistake it is for men in such a Church "to write in language which, if it were really meant by its writers, or if they were unchecked by the good-sense of English Churchmen at large, ought to be followed up by an attempt to extrude from the Church, not individuals guilty of flagrant disloyalty, but one or other of those great sections which in the good providence of God have been hitherto held together in a unity of life." Another passage in the letter speaks of "the quiet witness of the formularies" which are contrasted by implication with extreme opinions on both sides. We do not know whether the Bishop would count Selden among the latitudinarians whose compliments he appears to think so detestable, but we cannot refrain from quoting a passage from the "Table Talk" which strikes us as most apposite in this context :—" If you would know how the Church of England serves God, go to the Common-Prayer Book ; consult not this or that man."
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