The Guardian of Wednesday reports at length the very interesting
account which Lord Halifax gave to the Church Union on Thursday week of his visit to Rome, the sympathy which the Pope and Cardinal Rampolla gave to his eager desire for a reunion of the Anglican, Eastern, and Roman Churches, and the disposition which seems to exist in the highest quarters at Rome to reconsider the ecclesiastical sufficiency of Anglican Orders. It was a most interesting speech, full of evidence of the liberal feeling of Leo XIII. towards our national Church, as well as of the reluctance which the old English Catholics seem to feel to giving way on comparatively small points, and so throwing a certain discredit on the traditional policy of the Church of Rome, when so many greater questions involving the difference between what Roman Catholics and Protestants alike regard as heresy or orthodoxy, must remain behind. No doubt the craving for unity is very natural and right ; but it is difficult to con- ceive how the craving for unity can guide us into truth, when the craving for truth has failed to guide us into unity. There is a kind of unity which is quite consistent with radically different creeds, but that is not the unity for which Lord Halifax and the Church Union care. Is he prepared to say that a unity which went no further than mutual recognition of the efficacy of the sacraments in Churches of fundamentally different creeds, would do anything towards reconciling Anglicans to the doctrine of indulgences, the habitual adore- tion of the Virgin Mary, and the fundamentally sacrificial character of the priestly office ?
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