[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—Surely the Provost of
Worcester is rather unreasonable. - I have explained in an earlier letter grounds, which may he insufficient but are certainly not nugatory, for thinking that the Thirty-nine Articles do not in the least forbid reservation for the communion of the sick. The Provost is, of course, perfectly entitled to think that I am wrong. But he is not in the least entitled to charge those who agree with Me and who favour reservation for the communion of the sick, with dishonesty in continuing to accept the Articles as part of the doctrinal standard of the Church of England.
It is not for him to pronounce, as though he were Pope, what the Articles mean or what they do not mean. And he ought to have sufficient openness of mind to recognize that those who hold the same opinion as I about the meaning of the Articles, are sincere in that opinion. But, like many of his school of thought, the Provost is the victim of a rigid narrowness of mind. This makes him unable to believe that anyone's opinions (on these controversies) which differ from his own are honest opinions.
His interpretation of the Articles seems to me perverse and untrue. But I recognize that though gravely mistaken, he is yet honest. Why cannot he do the like ? What disease is there in Evangelical Protestantism which extirpates candour ' from the mind and leaves nothing but narrow intolerance ?—
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