"THE 'SAGACITY' OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF IRELAND."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
BIR,—Will you allow an Irish clergyman to thank you for your article last Saturday on "The ProtestankChurch of Ireland, &c." ? It is only simple truth to say that you have said more truth of the Synod's proceedings than has been said in all the Synod's dis- cussions; and yet I almost think that you do not know either how much truth you have spoken, or how much occasion there is for your speaking it. It is palpable that the Synod "can scarcely be regarded as a very sagacious interpreter of the times and their signs ;" that they have "no sense of any other serious danger" besides Ritualism ; that their contention is "one of the most aston- ishing pieces of narrow assumption ;" that they have no "implicit confidence in the power of truth, especfltlly if combined with a
decided relaxation of the conditions of clerical subscription." Alt these descriptions are as true as they are disparaging, and they are disparaging enough, even if the Synod had to " interpret " only the distant "signs of the times" in general ; but what would you have said if you knew, as we here know, that the denial of all divine attri- butes to Christ, the denial of Christ's vicarious punishment, and the assertion of the Real Presence of Christ's body in the receiver of the Sacrament, are taught by bishops and prominent leaders in the Synod,—and that not one man in the Synod has had the- " sagacity " to allude to the fact? I do not wish for exclusion any more than you do, neither do I mean to discuss the right or- the wrong of these opinions ; I only mean to point out the want- of "sagacious interpreters" in the Synod, and the evasive pur- pose to which "the spectre of Ritualism " is applied. If the episcopal or clerical holders of the foregoing opinions had only held, in their stead, Ritualistic views, what an explosion we should, have had !—I am, Sir, &c.,
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