Properly appreciating this sentiment, we must conclude that the Bishop of Norwich understood the prayer of the petitioners with no reference to such a practice as _Mr. Maty_ here condemns, when he represented them as praying “that that which is consented to and allowed privately, may be the avowed and acknowledged sentiments of the Church at large.” Yet in their “explanation of the statements of the petition,” and the object which _they_ had in view, the _Messrs. Hull_, enumerate amongst these deviations from the authorized forms and positive obligations of _the Church_, _sanctioned_ as they assert _by general practice_; the omission of the Athanasian Creed, the change or omission of certain sentences in the Burial Service, and the substitution of other lessons than those appointed by the Church. Now I must think, that if a complaint were preferred against a Clergyman to his Diocesan for _habitually_ and advisedly deviating thus from his _positive obligations_, the complainants would scarcely be told that such things were _consented to and allowed privately by the Church_. If so, for consistency’s sake it might be as well to expunge in future from the Churchwardens’ Articles of Enquiry exhibited at Episcopal Visitations, any such query as the following, “Doth the Incumbent or Curate regularly read service with the Litany and Creeds, exactly according to the Rubric of the Book of Common Prayer, without omission, addition, or alteration?” {38} _You_ represent the petitioners “as having presented to parliament the sound and reasonable prayer, _that the law and the practice should be assimilated_.” You mean, I presume, that some regard should be had to the nature of the thing _practised_, otherwise I must think your principle a very _unsound_ one. For instance, it is to be feared that a habit prevails sadly too much amongst both high and low, of neglecting the observance of the sabbath day and keeping it anything but holy. But I would not therefore assimilate the _law_ to this practice and go to parliament for an act to legalize sabbath breaking. And even in respect to the prayer of the petitioners, I should say that the Archbishop’s proposition that steps should be taken to assimilate the _practice_ to the _law_, was the sounder one of the two. But the _Messrs. Hull_ in _their_ view of the matter, represent the Bishop of Norwich—“as pleading strongly for that privilege which should be conceded to every ingenuous mind, to mean what it says, and to say what it means.” A form of Subscription such as would admit of every one saying what he means, seems to have been the view which the Bishop of London took of the object of the petitioners, and called it very truly,—“expansion with a vengeance.”