[Footnote 41: In his second letter to the "Weekly Register."] We think that the fullest credit should be given to Dr. Pusey for these explanations; but they must not be allowed to counterbalance assertions which he has never withdrawn, and seems never to have meant to withdraw. He has only negatively declared something about the intention he had in making them. He says they were not meant to hurt Catholics; he does not say that they were not meant to frighten Anglicans. We refer, of course, to the large number of pages which he has devoted to attacks on what he chooses to consider as the practical system of Catholicism, chiefly with regard to the _cultus_ of our Blessed Lady, and which no Catholic can read without intense indignation. He has heaped up a number of extracts from books of very little authority, and put forward as characteristics of the Catholic system the pious contemplations of individuals, as well as tenets which have been actually condemned. The charge is urged with all the recklessness of an advocate, with eager rhetoric rather than calm argument, with all the looseness of insinuation and inaccuracy of quotation which mark the productions of a heated partizan. [Footnote 42] [Footnote 42: A writer in the current number of "Macmillan's Magazine" (Feb., 1866) observes: "We could scarcely transcribe all that is here set forth without offending the religious taste of our readers, and appearing to gloat over the degradation of a church which, amidst all its aberrations and after all ita crimes, is a part of Christendom. We may reasonably hope, also, that there is something to be said upon the other side: for, without casting any suspicion upon Dr. Pusey's honesty, we must remember that he is personally under a strong temptation to scare the wavering members of his party from defection to the Church of Rome" (p. 277). This is the opinion of an intensely anti-Catholic writer; and it would be easy to quote scores of similar criticisms. A letter from Oxford, in the "London Review" of February 3, says: "It seems a gentle irony, certainly, to call a book an 'Eirenicon' which most mercilessly exposes the errors, perversions, and tendencies of those whom it proposes to conciliate. A great portion of the book might have been written by the most distinguished Papophobe--we will not say Dr. Cumming, for the style does not remind us of his publications." The writer in "Macmillan" adds an observation on another point which is well worthy of Dr. Pusey's consideration: "Dr. Pusey's argument, both against Mariolatry and Papal infallibility, _appeals to principles essentially rationalistic_, which are capable, as we conceive, of being turned with fatal effect against himself" (p. 230).]