‘I have a miscellaneous jumble of things that I want to talk to you about, if I can but arrange them in any sort of order…. And first, I shall attack you for the expression “The Church teaches” so-and-so, which I observe is in the Tract[225] equivalent to “The Prayer-Book etc. teach[es] us” so-and-so. Now suppose a conscientious layman to inquire on what grounds the Prayer-Book etc., are called the teaching of the Church: how shall we answer him? Shall we tell him that they are embodied in an Act of Parliament? So is the Spoliation Bill. Shall we tell him that they were formerly enacted by Convocation in the reign of Charles II.? But what especial claim had this Convocation to monopolise the name and authority of the Church? Shall we tell him that all the clergy assented to them ever since their enactment? But to what interpretation of them have all, or even the major part of the clergy assented? For if it is the assent of the clergy that makes the Prayer-Book etc. the teaching of the Church, the Church teaches only that interpretation of them to which all, or at least the majority of the clergy have assented; and in order to ascertain this, it will be necessary to inquire, not for what may seem to the inquirer to be their real meaning, but for the meaning which the majority of the clergy have, in fact, attached to them! It will be necessary to poll the Hoadleians, Puritans, and Laudians, and to be determined by [the] most votes. Again, supposing him to have ascertained these, another question occurs. Why is the opinion of the English clergy, since the enactment of the Prayer-Book, entitled to be called the teaching of the Church, more than that of the clergy of the sixteen previous centuries; or, again, than the clergy of France, Italy, Spain, Russia, etc., etc.? I can see no other claim which the Prayer-Book has on a layman’s deference, as the teaching of the Church, which the Breviary and Missal have not in a far greater degree…. I know you will snub me for this…. Surely no teaching nowadays is authoritative in the sense in which the Apostles’ was, except the Bible? nor any in the sense in which Timothy’s was, except that of Primitive Tradition? To find a sense in which the teaching of the modern clergy is authoritative, I confess baffles me.[226] … ‘Next, as to _The Christian Year_. In the Fifth of November――[as to] ‘“There present in the heart Not in the hands,”―― how can we possibly know that it is true to say “not in the hands”?[227] Also, on the Communion … you seem cramped by Protestantism. I desiderate something in the same key with ‘“Shall work a wonder there Earth’s charmers never knew,” and ‘“When the life-giving stream,” etc.[228]