In a letter to Wednesday's Times" A Canon Residentiary "
agrees that the life and soul of the Church of England lies in its being comprehensive, but be wants to know how far com- prehension is to extend. That is, on the face of it, a reasonable question ; but it is just one of those questions which, if pressed remorselessly home, will ruin the Church. We should answer it by saying that the Church should try to comprehend all zealous, honest, and religious men who are sincerely willing to be comprehended, and also willing to see comprehension extended to others. No doubt there must be limits to comprehension, but we should not be too 'curious in our efforts to define them, but should rather be content with the knowledge that in practice there is always more danger of the Church being too little than too widely comprehensive. To ask for a rigid statement of what can and what cannot be done and believed in the Church, must end in exclusions. Those who ask so loudly for limits to be placed on comprehension mean that they want their own special doctrines comprehended, but not the doctrines which they dislike. But though we must not set rigid and unyielding limits to comprehension, that need not prevent those who believe some of the practices and tenets comprehended to be mischievous from combating them by spiritual means. Let those who hold that an extreme ceremonial and a sacerdotal doctrine are injurious fight them by preaching and practising a better doctrine, not by " dis- ciplining " their opponents or by driving them out of their churches. Persecution never yet made converts to the side .of the persecutors.
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