difficulties, while you are perpetually seeing them." I said, "I found it very difficult to represent our real position to them. The question was, not whether one _might_ be a Roman Catholic, for of that I had no doubt; we all admitted that they were a part of the Church. The question was, whether I was _forced_ to become a Roman Catholic; to deny all my past life; supposing that we had the succession, and formularies which conveyed the episcopate and priesthood,--whether I should be forced to affirm that the grace of the Sacraments was intercepted by the sin of schism or heresy. We saw and deplored the division of the Church; but might not such a state of things be allowed, as in the great Western schism the Church was, as a fact, divided for forty years; might it not then be for 300 years?" "As to that," he said, "supposing the question of faith did not exist, supposing you could interpret the Thirty-nine Articles in a Catholic sense; granting there were no variance as to the number of the Sacraments; supposing that you individually, or the whole English Church, were to admit the faith of the Roman Church,--for _you_ must come to her, not _she_ to you,--then there would be the _una Fides_, but there would still remain the _unum Corpus_. Now every branch that is severed from a tree does not immediately die, it may sometimes be planted afresh, and take root beside the parent trunk; it may even bear leaves and some fruit, but that will not be unity. The Greeks have a vast deal in common with us. Supposing that the question of the Procession could be resolved by explanations on their part, there would only remain the authority of the Roman See to be admitted by them. You again have retained much more than the Lutherans and Calvinists. What you have of good is ours, is Catholic. If persons among you believe in God, believe in the Redemption, lead a holy life, bring forth good works, I do not deny that all this is Catholic in them; if they are ignorant as to the sin of schism or heresy, this, which is good in them, may be sufficient for their salvation. When I hear persons saying there is this or that good in Protestants, I always admit it; I say this is a portion of the truth they have carried away from us; they have a certain root, and yet they are not joined to the tree. Why, Mahomet himself carried away much truth from the Catholic faith; and though he mixed and adulterated this, Mahometanism lives still by those remains of truth. So it is with those who have separated from the Church; the full life remains in her; unity is in her alone: portions of the truth, portions of life, may exist in other bodies; may suffice for the salvation of those who, by no fault of their own, and with no consciousness of their own, are in those bodies; but she alone has the full truth, she alone is one. Whether you can exist with safety out of her depends on the degree of your personal knowledge." I said, "It is very hard to represent to you