In answer to what concerns me, I repeat that I neither publicly nor privately to you ever made any comment or observation whatever upon your last publication; and that, if to others I may have alluded to it, it was in terms of disapprobation and with feelings of regret. I now proceed to a discussion of your pamphlet, which will give me an opportunity of satisfying those, who may wish to know, how far I concur in your opinions and views; and I trust I shall not express myself otherwise, than in that “candid and christian spirit,” for which, by anticipation, you have already given me credit. The title of the pamphlet is a true index of what may be found within. Indeed, the contents may be reduced to PROPOSITION and COROLLARY. _Proposition_: “Subscription the Disgrace of the English Church.” _Corollary_: “Repeal of the present form of Subscription.” These in turn shall have my best consideration. The Proposition you attempt to establish by various suppositions and allegations. A grave charge, which strikes at the very foundation of our church establishment, like that involved in this proposition, should not be grounded on suppositions, the force of which must depend on their degree of probability, which is always questionable, but should rest solely upon proven and admitted facts. Indeed, in a matter of such moment as that, which you appear extremely anxious to substantiate, all other reasoning but from facts alone must be excluded. I therefore humbly submit, that the opinions which you appear to have collected from “Newspapers, Periodicals,” and “Commercial Travellers’ Rooms,” must be rejected as inadmissible in the present consideration; for the articles in newspapers and periodicals, of a controversial nature especially, being generally got up to serve some party purpose, are too often limited to a partial and one-sided view of things; and I have yet to learn that commercial travellers’ rooms, however proverbial for practical information and good sense, have become schools of sound theology. For the same reason, we must pass by the suppositious questions of “youthful profligates, led on by some ingenious sceptic;” also, “the obvious reasoning of the dissenting part of our population,” and the notions of “a still larger class, who, amidst the din of controversy, pick up a few popular reports, which help to confirm their indifference to religion.” We must likewise dismiss from our consideration your analogical reasoning, from the case of the Officers of the Army and Navy to that of the Clergy, and from the “Articles of War” to the “Confession of our Faith.” For reasoning of this sort, to be valid, must be founded upon cases analogous; and what analogy exists between the “Articles of War,” which depend on ever-varying expediency and annual revision, and the “Confession of our Faith,” which is based on the never-changing word of truth? {8} Some analogy there may be between Officers of the Army and Navy, who for