You ask, “what concord hath a mitre with a meeting-house?” The Pharisees of old were fond of asking questions of the same sort—“Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” The Pharisees were very little satisfied with the answer they received; and, I dare say, any answer that could be given to the Country Clergyman would satisfy him as little. I must therefore leave him to doubt whether _any concord_ can subsist between kindred souls, pursuing the same object under different forms, and in unequal stations, till he shall see how near the spirits of an Usher and a Baxter, of a Taylor and a Henry, of a Tillotson and a Watts, of a Seeker and a Doddridge, will _venture_ to approach each other, in the new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth _righteousness_. And pray what are we to understand by your merry question about the _unequal yoke_? “Why (you ask) should a clergyman of the church of England be unequally yoked with a lovely sister of the conventicle?” And then you desire “a certain officer of the Society” {51b} to be consulted. What sort of an answer that “officer” might think proper to give, it belongs to himself to determine; but I confess I see nothing in the question which I should be afraid to meet. I am at a loss to see what harm “a lovely sister of the conventicle” can do to any man. I am sure there is every probability that such an “unequal yoke” would do the Country Clergyman’s temper a great deal of good. But I cannot give him any great encouragement, if he should _venture himself_ upon such a speculation, _into the company of those of whom he has always hitherto been horribly afraid_. The sectaries, on whom he has laid such heavy blows, will keep (I fear) their “lovely sisters” for priests of a gentler nature and better breeding; and leave the Country Clergyman to whisper his tale of love into some high-church ear, and to be as “equally yoked” as Richard Hooker, {52} or any other country clergyman ever was before him. But though I can pardon in this “certain officer of the Society,” his _hymeneal_ error (for matches, you know, Sir, are made in heaven), yet I have no such allowance to make for those other transgressions, in which he is, or ought to be, a freer agent. “Perhaps (you say) he can resolve us, how a clergyman of the church can attend the meeting-house, without danger to his principles, or gross indecorum towards the church and its spiritual superior. He perhaps can show us too, how a clergyman of the church can securely, and without breach of trust, take his pupils to hear the harangues of those who daily revile her. This, to common understandings, does not appear to be the likely way ‘to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines, contrary to God’s word,’ which every clergyman at his ordination solemnly promises to do. It wants some clearing up.” {53}