One of the means he adopted for reuniting Protestants to the Catholic Church laid him open to another serious charge, which was, if possible, more groundless than the last. In January, 1850, he began to go about and call upon Protestants of every description--ministers of church and state nobles and plebeians. His object was to get them all to pray for unity. To state plainly his way of action, it was this:--He intended to ask all Protestants "to pray for unity in the truth, wherever God knows it to be." This, he said, was of course to pray for conversion to Catholicism unknown to themselves; it was taking the enemy by stratagem in his own camp. Objections were made in different quarters against the proposition. Some said it was not acting fairly and candidly; he then used to qualify it by telling them that he knew very well the truth lay in the Catholic Church alone, and so did every Catholic, and that if any Protestant asked him he would plainly tell him so. Others then said, Protestants would be all praying for proselytes to their own persuasions, for they were all in good faith, and thought themselves in the truth. These and sundry other objections were made to this mode of proceeding; it was looked upon with suspicion, as savouring too much of communication with heretics, and he never got a {390} superior to approve of it, neither was it condemned. So it remained to the last an agitated question, which none of us would enter into, and which himself adopted with a kind of tentative adhesion. There was nothing wrong, certainly, in getting Protestants to pray for unity; but then, "unity in the truth, where God knew it to exist," was a very indefinite thing to propose to them. Questions might be raised which could only be answered in one way. What kind of unity? External or internal, or both? "Where does God know the truth to exist? Must we all put ourselves in a Cartesian doubt for a starting-point? And so on. The only answer could be--The Catholic Church. And might he not as well ask them to pray for that at once? Father Ignatius was not at all obstinate in sticking to this proposal as a theory he might reduce to practice, it came up at times in his conversation, and was dropped as easily.