"The letter which I have just received from you astonishes and confounds me; not that I ought to be surprised at anything strange which you may do, after what I have lately witnessed and heard; but I must say, in plain terms, that your letter is the letter of an insane person. You profess to be willing to ask advice and hear reasoning, and yet you take the most decided steps to wound the feelings of your friends and injure the cause of the Church, without giving those whom you pretend to consult an opportunity of satisfying your doubts. You suffer your father to be with you two days without giving him a hint that you were meditating a step incomparably the most important of your life, and most involving his happiness; and then, in the midst of his security, write him a letter, not to tell him that you are doubtful on certain points and wish to be advised, but that your mind is made up and you are determined to act. Surely common sense and filial duty ought to have suggested the propriety of waiting till you had communicated with me, although even to me you do not state what your doubts and difficulties are with sufficient precision to enable me to discuss them; but you write a long panegyric upon your own sincerity and humility, of which I entertained no doubt, and thus, after repeated conferences with Dissenting ministers and Roman Catholic priests, far more astute and subtle reasoners than yourself, you are worked up into an utter disapprobation of one of the articles of our Church, having all along concealed your doubts from your nearest and dearest {157} friends, and from me, who had an especial claim to be made acquainted with them. Is this sincere and judicious conduct?" He proceeds to some lengths in this style, then tells him that it is one thing to doubt of the truth of a doctrine, and another thing to believe it to be false, and that one should take no step of importance until he thought in the latter way. He tells him to be quiet for some time, and give him the objections one by one. This Mr. Spencer does, and the answer is partly, that given in Dr. Blomfield's life, page 85, and partly, another letter he wrote to him within a fortnight's time. The argument of this good ecclesiastic shapes itself thus:-- "The general proposition of excluding all from salvation who do not believe the doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation, as set forth in the Athanasian Creed, is laid down with certain limitations. The Protestant Church does lay it down thus, as is evident from certain quotations from the Articles. Besides, she never intends to pronounce a condemnation on any, like the Church of Rome. The meaning, therefore, of these clauses is an assertion of the truth of the doctrine simply; and for this he quotes the opinion of some commissioned interpreters and the admission of "the most scrupulous and captious Baxter that such exposition may be received."