“I have been favoured with your note of the 3rd instant, to which I should have replied before this time, had I not waited for the list mentioned in your postscript.
“As this list does not appear to be forthcoming, I am the more confirmed in the conviction expressed in my former communication, that your statement at the Meeting is altogether at variance with clear and well established facts.
“Instead, however, of bringing forward proof as to the correctness of your remark, you are pleased to take a step in advance, and to express your belief, that a very large majority of the clergymen, (not a mere ‘six of one and half-a-dozen of the other,’) who have gone over to Rome, received their religious education ‘among the Low Church people.’
“I do not, sir, presume to question what you believe: all I ask for, is something in the shape of satisfactory evidence, that your belief has any better foundation to rest upon, than that of Dr. Pusey, who believes that the Protestant Church of England, and the Apostate Church of Rome, ‘are almost identical in their views on the doctrines of original sin and justification.’
“If your opinion as to the effect of Evangelical teaching, had any foundation in fact, how comes it to pass, that the Perverts to Rome, whether from the clergy or laity, are in almost every case, from ‘Tractarian’ congregations.
“I have not, sir, received a University education, nor does it require the mathematical powers of a senior wrangler to discover, that if your premises are correct, the friends and apologists of Romish error would be found not in ‘Tractarian’ Churches, but in the congregations of St. Saviour’s and Park Chapel, where from Sabbath to Sabbath, the blessed truths of the Gospel are preached, in all their Evangelical fulness.
“I may very well leave it to my Dissenting neighbours to answer for themselves, if they feel inclined to do so; but I may be permitted to remark, that if your belief has any foundation to rest upon, the principles you imbibed at Oxford, may not, in the opinion of your ‘Tractarian’ friends, be considered a sufficient guard to counteract that Evangelical teaching, which I believe it was your privilege to partake of in your earlier years [11] and that consequently (reasoning in your own belief), your present position is not free from danger: as you must be looked upon rather as a ‘traveller’ pursuing your onward course to Rome, than as a ‘native’ or ‘dweller.’
“I beg leave to attach hereto the opinion of Cardinal Wiseman, as expressed several years ago, ere ‘Tractarian’ buds had in so many instances opened out into Romish flowers. The Cardinal does not say one word as to his expectations from the Evangelical party; his hopes are built on Oxford, and on those ‘to whom our Saints, our Popes, are become very dear, and in whose eyes our rites, our ceremonies, nay our very Rubrics are precious.’
“You are kind enough to say you are sorry if you have annoyed me by your observation at the Meeting. I assure you I was not annoyed; I certainly felt pain and sorrow, similar to what I experienced when I read the statement of Dr. Pusey before referred to.
“I believed there was no foundation for either of the statements, and I thought I saw in both of them the fatal effects of that teaching, and those principles which led the present Romish Priest at Islington, to claim the right, whilst officiating as a minister of the Protestant Church of England, ‘to hold all Romish doctrine, so long as he did not teach it from the pulpit;’ and which led another individual of the ‘Tractarian’ party to defend the lawfulness of subscribing to the articles and formularies of our Church, in a ‘non-natural sense.’