of the awkward acknowledgement it involves, that our Church exacts from her members a form of Subscription, which cannot be made without a _salvo_. You scarcely could have inferred from his Lordship’s _advice_, that he “unequivocally allowed and approved of _this_ latitude.” But as he had told you that he thought your interpretation of certain points admissible, and that you might openly hold your opinions, you _might_ have inferred that he also considered them consistent with an “_unreserved_ Subscription, and that according to the literal sense of the words”—for the question is, will not the literal sense of the words bear a different _application_? You subscribe _unreservedly_, at least you have given us no reason to suppose otherwise, to the Apostles’ Creed, in which we are told that Christ sitteth at the _right hand_ of God, but the _literal_ meaning of the words is at variance with the truth, that “God is without body, parts, or passions.” {11} I must think that you have conjured up a greater difficulty on the score of Subscription than in reality obtains. At all events you must detail some further particulars of his Lordship’s conversation, before you will enable us to detect its discrepancy with the subject of his subsequent letter. But if his Lordship’s private opinion on the allowable interpretation of the points on which you consulted him, failed to remove your doubts and scruples, and you were after all fully persuaded in your own mind that the words in question could by no possibility bear the only interpretation with which you could _conscientiously_ subscribe to them; I cannot see how the _open sanction_ of the Church could affect you to the “easing of your conscience.” For surely if the words will _not_ bear a certain sense, the Church cannot make them—the sanction of all the Bishops in Christendom could never make _black_ mean _white_. If you are of opinion that it could, for a Protestant you must entertain rather high views of the power of the Church—and yet such would seem to be your opinion, for in the “Circular” which you sent a day or two before the presentation of the petition last year, to “all the Peers whose London residences could be ascertained;” after alluding to _these opinions_ which you had received from the Archbishop and the Bishop of London, you say, “my answer was, if such be the case, let these statements be _openly sanctioned_, and I am content. But I cannot with _truth and honesty_ subscribe, not according to the _literal_ meaning of the words, _unless_ such latitude _be authorised by the Church_.” Now if the Subscription is still to be made to the same form of words, it is very difficult to see how the _authority of the Church_ can impart to them a meaning, to which without that authority _truth and honesty_ would forbid you to subscribe. If you do not take care, the Editors of the Oxford Tracts will mark you for their own, in spite of yourself.