No part of his book shows more earnestness than this. Such being the case, it seems to us very strange that any one should expect Catholics to be satisfied with a simple assurance from Dr. Pusey that "nothing was further from my wish than to write anything which should be painful to those in your communion." [Footnote 43] [Footnote 43: Dr. Pusey to the "Weekly Register," Nov. 25, 1865.] We suppose that if some one were to write a pamphlet of a hundred pages full of the hardest and most vulgar insinuations against something that Dr. Pusey holds dear and sacred, his opinion of it would hardly be changed by the assurance, unaccompanied by a single retraction, "I never meant to hurt your feelings." He would naturally ask in what sort of atmosphere such a person had lived, to be able to think that such things _could_ be said without being "painful." He disclaims {223} all desire to "prescribe to Italians and Spaniards what they shall hold, or how they shall express their pious opinions." But he is not speaking of Spaniards or Italians only in many of the most offensive passages of his work. He says, for instance, that it "is a practical question, affecting our whole eternity: What shall I do to be saved? The practical answer to the Roman Catholic seems to me to be, Go to Mary, and you will be saved; in our dear Lord's own words it is, Come unto me; in our own belief it is, Go to Jesus, and you will be saved" (p. 182). Can anything be more shocking than the contrast insinuated here? Or, again, when he says in another place, "One sees not where there shall be any pause or bound, short of that bold conception, 'that every prayer, both of individuals and of the church, should be addressed to St. Mary?'" Dr. Pusey must be perfectly aware of the effect of words like these from him upon the mass of his readers. It is certainly no sufficient _withdrawal_ of them to write a letter to a Catholic newspaper, of limited circulation, saying that he "never thought of imputing to any of the writers whom he quoted that they took from our Lord any of the love which they gave to his mother." Whatever he may think about the writers themselves, he certainly asserts in the face of the world that they teach others to do this. He asserts that there is a "system" in the Catholic Church, of which this is the effect. If he "had no thought of criticising holy men who held it," he still will not take Catholic explanations of their words, which show that they did _not_ hold it; and his own words imply, or at all events admit of, a reservation, that such is the tendency of the system, from which certain individuals escape in consequence of their holiness. Now, it is this assertion about the system of the church which offends Catholics. They care little about their own "feelings;" they resent false charges against the church all the more when they proceed from one who professes to be nearer to them than others, and to be a lover of peace, and who might easily have