"The story of my life"

by Egerton Ryerson

Do not think that I wish to meet you coldly. I would gladly fling away the weapons of strife. The warfare in which I am engaged, and which I dare not decline, is literally embittering my existence, and pressing upon me very severely. I am not aware that I have in any way personally attacked you, or ever by name, since the commencement of my editorial career. I should hail a day of concord with overflowing joy. I should rejoice to see your powerful, acute, and vigorous mind exerting itself in a manner that we should all consider serviceable to the cause of loyalty and the Protestant religion.

From a glance at your letters, I fondly hope that some gleam of light is breaking in upon us all. My firm conviction is that the doctrine of the apostolical succession will be the bond of union and the cementer of differences, now apparently impossible. You must have studied the question—and how can your vivid and clear mind elude its force? Must there not be some one apostolical mode of conferring the ministerial functions, or must it be open to all, and Quakerism be right? I do not think I have been the assailant. The Guardian is outrageously personal and unscrupulous in its misstatements.... I am far from thinking that I am meek and gentle enough; but I have carefully excluded personalities,—though I readily concede that my course of argument, which pervades all I write or select, has been to cut away the ground from under the feet of every denomination in the province, outside of the Church.

The papists, I firmly believe, are meditating some grand movement all over the world; and it would be glorious indeed if Protestants could find a common centre of union. But what can I, in my humble way, do? I dare not drop the necessity of the apostolical succession,—though I might dwell less upon it, and avoid, as much as possible, as I always have done, to mix it up with offence to other denominations. Yet, as I before intimated, the assertion and maintenance of it, in the simplest and least controversial manner, must ever provoke hostility. It is an endless subject to get upon....

I shall be very happy to call on you at an early opportunity, and obtain, or rather revive, the pleasure of your personal acquaintance. It would be the happiest Christmas I ever spent, if it witness the extinction of long theological enmities, and the dawn of an era of Christian concord and love.

On the 29th December, Dr. Ryerson wrote a private note again to Mr. Kent. He said:—I was glad to learn by the last Church that you will give my remarks a place in your columns, and that you cordially and elegantly respond to the general spirit and design of them....

I have had a correspondence with the Editor of the Guardian in reference to the mode of conducting it, in regard to the Church of England, and in some other respects. I am happy to be able to say that he has at length yielded to my reasonings and recommendations, and will, I have no doubt, conduct the Guardian in accordance with the general views expressed in my communications to you.[116] To-day's Guardian, as you see, presents a visible and agreeable improvement in the points referred to.

I blame you not for your strict and high principles as a churchman, but I do not think that you do now make sufficient allowance for difference of forms and ceremonies in the common faith of Protestantism. I think you should allow as much as Archbishop (Lord Keeper) Williams has done, and as much as is involved in the passage quoted by him from Irenæus. Why should we be "unchurched" any more than the continental churches?

Mr. Kent, in reply to Dr. Ryerson (31st December), said:—

I trust you will think that in the remarks which I have made on your letter in The Church, I have met your overtures in a pacific and cordial spirit. I am sure that my remarks will be much more acceptable to churchmen, so far as such remarks are friendly to you, than they will be to others not belonging to our pale. I have not consulted a soul about what I have written, nor have I shown your pleasing reply to my first note to any one save good and safe Mr. Henry Rowsell; though I should like to show it to Rev. H. J. Grasett, and Bishop Strachan. You need never be afraid of what you say to me in confidence.... It is certainly much more consistent in you (provided only you get rid of Mr. Wesley's authority, and then, by the way, you destroy your genealogy and succession) to call yourselves a Church, than to be of the Church and not in it.... You are said to possess some fine old Divinity works. You cannot have read them without some approximation to our Church.

You are not in the position of the continental Churches. No constraint is upon you. You can get Episcopacy, if you desire it. Neither does the Church of England stand relatively towards you, as the Gallican Church towards the Huguenots. You admit the purity of our doctrine, and do not consider our discipline unscriptural. If you were to read Bishop Stillingfleet on Separation, I think you would open up new trains of thought. I just became so staunch an Episcopalian, from viewing the matter extrinsically of Scripture and history, and was led to conclude, from the nature of things, that there can be but one valid ministry.