"My Dear Sir,--We expect the Bishop of Lichfield here on the 25th January, and I have ventured to hope that I might be able to induce you to come here at that time, to meet him and stay the week. I hope so the more, as I think your conversation might induce him, as well as my father, to think more seriously on that awful subject on which we conversed when I had the great happiness of being introduced to you at Northampton. I assure you, a day has not passed without my offering up my unworthy prayers to Almighty God in your behalf; and I cannot refrain from again saying, that I hope one day we shall be united in the same faith of the One Holy and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ. How great is the consolation to belong to that holy Church which alone Jesus Christ has founded, which alone He has illustrated with a never-failing succession of {188} pastors and of miracles, from which all others have separated, and out of which I find in the Holy Scriptures no covenanted promise of salvation! The Catholic Church alone has converted those nations which have been brought to the faith of Christ; and as, on the one hand, no man could at this moment be a Protestant had not Luther and the other Reformers existed, so, on the other, neither Luther nor any succeeding Protestant could derive any knowledge of Christianity but from the Catholic Church. How sublime are the promises of Christ, 'Upon this Rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.' .... 'Going, therefore, teach ye all nations.' .... 'And lo! I am with you all days, even unto the end of the world.' Now to what Church was this promise made (a promise which involves infallibility; for it would be blasphemy to say that the God of Truth could commission a Church to teach the world, if that Church could possibly teach error)? Certainly not to Churches (sects, I should say) which separated from the parent Church fifteen hundred years after the promise was given, and therefore came into existence fifteen hundred years too late to be the Church of Christ. And to what do the sects have recourse? To groundless accusations of the Church of God, involving the charge of idolatry; but this very charge condemns them, '_ex ore tuo judico te_.' for, by saying that the Church fell into idolatry, and that that justifies their separation, they admit that there was a time when the Church was not guilty of idolatry. Now how are the promises of Christ verified, if His Church could ever become idolatrous? I find in no part of Scripture any prediction that the Church of Christ should ever become idolatrous, and that then it should be lawful to separate from her. Christ said simply, 'I am with you all days,' and 'he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned.' It is in vain to urge that St. Paul speaks of