LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE BISHOP OF HEREFORD AND NON- CONFORMISTS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Can you find room for a line of protest from me against the interpretation put on my letter to you the week before Last by " Nemo " in your last issue ? In saving that I consider baptism, according to our Lord's distinct command, a necessary preliminary to admission to Christ's Church—i.e., His visible Church here on earth—it never occurred to me that anyone would suppose I meant, as your correspondent assumes, baptism "by an episcopally ordained clergyman." The most elementary student of Church history would tell him that baptism by a layman, even by a heretic, was recog- nized as valid by the highest authorities in the Early Church, provided that the necessary conditions of the use of water and of the name of the Blessed Trinity were observed. What I wrote to ask was this: Do Wesleyans, Congregationalists, and Baptists require baptism as an essential preliminary before admission to full Church membership ? If they do not—and from their silence on the point I gather they do not —what right have they to resent hesitation on the part of us Anglicans to recognize as members of Christ's Church those who have not complied with the first condition of admission ? May I add that, speaking for myself, I should gladly recognize the claim to Churchmanship of all who can show that they
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