"That was what struck you in Italy?"
"That, and the infidelity of most of the thinking laity."
"It seems sometimes," said Newman despondently, "as if the gift of truth once lost was lost for ever, and that, with so much infidelity and profaneness, the whole world is tending towards some dreadful crisis."
"Yes," said Dormer, "one is rather tempted to think so sometimes. But perhaps that feeling is an incentive, if we needed one, to set our own house in order."
Newman sighed. "I do believe what you say, in my heart, but there are times, as you know, when it looks as if the Almighty had forsaken His habitation."
Dormer got off the sofa, and came and sat down by him on the window-seat. "You know that you do not really think that, Neander. You are only tired and overworked. I will show you that you don't think it. What was it that you wrote to me in July when the cholera was at its worst here? You said, if I remember rightly, that one's time had come, or it had not come, and that in your case you were sure that it had not, because you felt you were destined for some work which you had not yet accomplished. Do you remember writing that?"
Looking at him, Newman seemed to rouse himself. "I do remember. It was a strong impression that I had just after the fatal case of cholera at Littlemore. I know that a strong impression is not a good argument, yet I have the feeling still at times. But why do you ask me?"
"Because what you feel about yourself—and feel, I am convinced, most rightly—I feel about the English Church. I think that God, instead of leaving His sanctuary, is about to come into it with power. I think that this will mean purgation and suffering for all of us, but that we have deserved. Do you remember the profession of faith that Bishop Ken made in his will?"
"No, I was not brought up on Ken; as I know you were."
"Well, I know it by heart," said Dormer. "'I die in the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith, professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West, more particularly I die in the communion of the Church of England as it stands distinguished from all papal and puritan innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.' That seems to me to be not only a profession of belief, but a vision of what the Church of England might be if she awoke to the knowledge of what it is really to possess the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith."