The Nonconformists appear to resent rather vehemently any suggestion of
a rapprochement between the English Church and Rome, though we should have thought that the more Romanising the English Church becomes,—and we have no belief that much will be done in this direction,—the more charce the independent Churches would have of winning new adherents from the very heart of the National Church itself. However that does not seem to be the view of the great Dissenters. Dr. Joseph Parker in Tuesday's Times bewails the possible results of Mr. Gladstone's letter as if it might blow the Dissenting Churches to atoms,—a most inex- plicable expectation,—and Dr. Guinness Rogers, while doing full justice to Mr. Gladstone's conscientiousness and con- sistency, declared, also on Tuesday, as reported in Wed- nesday's Times, against the de-Protestantising of the National Church as if it implied a great danger and inroad on Protestantism in general. Our own impression is very different. If the Church of the via media lost strength to Rome, we should fear a great Protestant reaction and a great loss to the moderate Church party. The English people is impulsive, and recoils from what it dreads.
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