“I cannot think that the Article was intended to teach that a man can be accounted righteous before God without righteousness—that faith will serve as a substitute for it, since I read in the Homily in which the doctrine of the Article is ‘more largely expressed’ such words as the following: “‘This true Christian faith neither any devil hath, nor yet any man who, in the outward profession of his mouth, and his outward receiving of the Sacraments, in coming to the Church, and in all other outward appearances, seemeth to be a Christian man, and yet in his living and deeds sheweth the contrary.’ “I am, my dear Sir, “Very faithfully yours, “John Ruskin, Esq. “Edward Z. Lyttel.” (a): My correspondent cannot quit himself of the idea that I am his antagonist. If he preaches what is true, I say so—if what is false, I say so. I congratulate him in the one case, and am sorry for him in the other; but have nothing to ‘acknowledge’ in either case. (b) and (c): “You have rather hastily assumed.” “You have of course taken for granted.” Compare Mr. Headlam’s “I fancy that, on consideration, you would like to withdraw,” p. 176. These clerical gentlemen, who habitually and necessarily write without consideration, and as habitually and necessarily ‘take for granted’ the entire grounds of their profession, are quaintly unable to enter into the mind of a man who for twenty years has not written a word without testing it syllable by syllable; nor taken for granted one principle or fact, in art, science, or history,—having somewhat wide work in all three. In the present case, I am very sorry to have to tell my correspondent that the last thing I should ‘take for granted’ would be the completeness and accuracy of his own account of himself. What his words actually mean, my twenty years’ study of English enables me to tell him with authority;—but what he means by them he only knows! (d): Who is talking of public opinion? Does my correspondent suppose that in any—even among the rudest or most ignorant—debates on this subject, ‘righteousness’ was ever supposed to mean worldly credit? The question is, was, and will be—simply how men escape being damned—if they do.