But every system has its natural and specific danger, and the specific English danger, as it is the condition of vigorous English life, is that spirit of liberty which allows and attempts to combine very divergent tendencies of opinion. "The Church of England," Mr. Gladstone thinks, "has been peculiarly liable, on the one side and on the other, both to attack and to defection, and the probable cause is to be found in the degree in which, whether for worldly or for religious reasons, it was attempted in her case to combine divergent elements within her borders." She is still, as he says, "working out her system by experience"; and the exclusion of bitterness--even, as he says, of "savagery"--from her debates and controversies is hardly yet accomplished. There is at present, indeed, a remarkable lull, a "truce of God," which, it may be hoped, is of good omen; but we dare not be too sure that it is going to be permanent. In the meantime, those who tremble lest disestablishment should be the signal of a great break up and separation of her different parties cannot do better than meditate on Mr. Gladstone's very solemn words:-- The great maxim, _in omnibus caritas_, which is so necessary to temper all religious controversy, ought to apply with a tenfold force to the conduct of the members of the Church of England. In respect to differences among themselves they ought, of course, in the first place to remember that their right to differ is limited by the laws of the system to which they belong; but within that limit should they not also, each of them, recollect that his antagonist has something to say; that the Reformation and the counter-Reformation tendencies were, in the order of Providence, placed here in a closer juxtaposition than anywhere else in the Christian world; that a course of destiny so peculiar appears to indicate on the part of the Supreme Orderer a peculiar purpose, that not only no religious but no considerate or prudent man should run the risk of interfering with such a purpose; that the great charity which is a bounden duty everywhere in these matters should here be accompanied and upheld by two ever-striving handmaidens, a great Reverence and a great Patience.