But under the little difficulty that exists of ascertaining with any certainty what your intentions have been, or even now are, we earnestly trust they may not result in the alternative of a resignation, to which in the course of your correspondence you have made such frequent allusions. “An alternative,” which as Bishop Heber says, “it is easy to suggest in the case of a brother, but which every man in his own case receives with difficulty.” {15a} A few days before the presentation of the last petition you wrote to his Grace thus, “If I fail on this occasion . . . I consider myself pledged to resign my preferment.” {15b} The result of that petition was unfavourable. But ten months afterwards, that is, in your last publication, you call upon his Grace to pronounce that judgment which he had told you he “was _unwilling_ to pronounce on scruples which he hoped time might remove,” {15c}—“and _should_ that judgment require such a step, you will with God’s permission resign next December, _unless_ a clear expression of public opinion should intervene appealing against the judgment pronounced.” {15d} Let us hope then that you will abide in this your _latest_ resolution, for I think from the evidence with which you have furnished us, we may venture to conclude that no such judgment will be pronounced as shall call for any expression of public opinion. I shall now proceed to hazard a few observations on the reasons assigned by the Bishop of Norwich in favour of an _Expansion_ of Subscription, seeing that they are considered by many so strongly to confirm the correctness of your own views, and as you have told us that you cannot consistently with _truth and honesty_ make the required Subscription, we cannot but apprehend that in the proportion that those views are believed to be substantial and correct, the character of the clergy must be prejudiced, at all events in the eyes of those, who unwilling or unable to investigate the matter for themselves, take up the opinions of others, and arriving through them at a corollary of their own, hesitate not to go as far as to declare that “_all_ the clergy are _perjured_.” As I can devise no better, I shall pursue the plan you have adopted with respect to the speech of the Bishop of London, that is, giving such extracts from his Lordship’s speech as bear upon the subject of Subscription, with a running comment of my own. I will not however, introduce my remarks with the preface you have affixed to your “plain story,”—giving us to understand that it is intended to be “a refutation of almost every statement in the Bishop of London’s speech.” {16} Lest having led my readers to exclaim Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu. I should leave them to conclude that I had been labouring under what the faculty, I believe, term “a false conception.” His Lordship’s first reason for wishing for a more expanded Subscription, is that—