But what is to prevent the Dissenting minister from being joined with the clergyman in the same public function, and being his partner instead of his rival? Episcopal ordination.[11] If I leave the service of a private company, and enter the public service, I receive admission at the hands of the public officer designated to give it me. Sentiment and the historic sense, to say nothing of the religious feeling, will certainly put more into ordination than this, though not precisely what the Bishop of Winchester, perhaps, puts; this which we have laid down, however, is really all which the law of the land puts there. A bishop is a public officer. Why should I trouble myself about the name his office bears? The name of his office cannot affect the service or my labour in it. Ah, but, says Mr. Winterbotham, he holds opinions which I do not share about the sort of character he confers upon me! What can that matter, unless he compels you, too, to profess the same opinions, or refuses you admission if you do not? But I should be joined in the ministry with men who hold opinions which I do not share! What does that matter either, unless they compel you also to hold these opinions, as the price of your being allowed to work on the foundation: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity_? To recur to our old parallel. It is as if a man who desired the office of a public magistrate and who was fitted for it, were to hold off because he had to receive institution from a Lord-Lieutenant, and he did not like the title of Lord-Lieutenant; or because the Lord-Lieutenant who was to institute him had a fancy about some occult quality which he conferred on him at institution; or because he would find himself, when he was instituted, one of a body of magistrates of whom many had notions which he thought irrational. The office itself, and his own power to fill it usefully, is all which really matters to him. [Footnote 11: It has been inferred from what is here said that we propose to make re-ordination a condition of admitting Dissenting ministers to the ministry of the Church of England. Elsewhere I have said how undesirable it seems to impose this condition; and to what respectful treatment and fair and equal terms, in case of reunion, Protestant Nonconformity is, in my opinion, entitled. See the Preface to _Culture and Anarchy_. What is said in the text is directed simply against the objection to episcopal ordination as something wrong in itself and a ground for schism.]