9. And now, after having said so much as this, bear with me, my dear friend, if I end with an expostulation. Have you not been touching us on a very tender point in a very rude way? Is not the effect of what you have said to expose her to scorn and obloquy who is dearer to us than any other creature? Have you even hinted that our love for her is anything else than an abuse? Have you thrown her one kind word yourself all through your book? I trust so, but I have not lighted upon one. And yet I know you love her well. Can you wonder, then--can I complain much, much as I grieve--that men should utterly misconceive of you, and are blind to the fact that you have put the whole argument between you and us on a new footing; and that, whereas it was said twenty-five years ago in the "British Critic," "Till Rome ceases to be what practically she is, union is _impossible_ between her and England," you declare, on the contrary, "It is _possible_ as soon as Italy and England, {91} haying the same faith and the same centre of unity, are allowed to hold severally their own theological opinions?" They have not done you justice here because, in truth, the honor of our Lady is dearer to them than the conversion of England. Take a parallel case, and consider how you would decide it yourself. Supposing an opponent of a doctrine for which you so earnestly contend, the eternity of punishment, instead of meeting you with direct arguments against it, heaped together a number of extravagant descriptions of the place, mode, and circumstances of its infliction, quoted Tertullian as a witness for the primitive fathers, and the Covenanters and Ranters for these last centuries; brought passages from the "Inferno" of Dante, and from the sermons of Whitfield; nay, supposing he confined himself to the chapters on the subject in Jeremy Taylor's work on "The State of Man," would you think this a fair and becoming method of reasoning? and if he avowed that he should ever consider the Anglican Church committed to all these accessories of the doctrine till its authorities formally denounced Taylor and Whitfield, and a hundred others, would you think this an equitable determination, or the procedure of a theologian?