Such was my first thought on hearing this account, and an hour after, when I went to my chamber, I had not yet overcome the bitterness and agitation it caused me. My temptation became stronger and more formidable than ever, and the desire again sprang up in my heart to retract the sentence I had so recently pronounced. To see him, hear him, sometimes speak to him, and meet his sympathetic glance—was all this really forbidden me? Would this be failing in my duty to the husband who had outraged me so publicly? No, no, it could not be.... No one yet knew Gilbert was to leave Naples. A line, a word, from me, would suffice to prevent his departure. The new life created by his presence would continue as if nothing had happened that ought to terminate it!... I had already seized my pen and written the word ... when suddenly there awoke in my memory the words of Livia: “Think of God, whom he has offended a thousand times more than he has you”; and afterwards these: “If you seek likewise to be released, your fall will be speedy, rapid, and terrible.”
The recollection of these words stopped me and made me shudder. I now perceived what gradations I had passed through within a month. I felt that Livia was right—should I descend from the height I had just attained, it would indeed be to fall lower than I was before, and perhaps to the lowest depths!
My sister in her quiet cell still aided me with her prayers, which doubtless augmented the increasing light in my soul. I tore up the note I had begun to write, and, again preparing myself to struggle and suffer more than ever, I calmly renewed the resolution I had been so near breaking. It seemed to me this slight victory, though it did not lessen my sadness, added to my strength, and made the jewel within gleam with a lustre somewhat brighter than before.
Another General Convention Of The Protestant Episcopal Church.
The late convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church has, we believe, disappointed everybody. With skilful care to avoid anything which might cause a rupture, the various factions of this large and respectable denomination have spoken to each other, and parted. The world is none the wiser, and we hardly think that they are. High-Churchmen have maintained their ground with smooth dignity; Low-Churchmen have gained some points, while they have lost others; and Ritualists have hidden themselves in silence. If neither party is suited, there is the consolation that no one is pleased; and from this universal negative we presume the conclusion comes to an universal affirmative that all are pleased. We have long ago foreseen this result, and they who, arguing from the defection of Bishop Cummins, expected to hear something decisive in the way of doctrine, have learned how peace may be maintained by simply abstaining from war. The Episcopal Church has no fixed creed. Its articles of faith contradict its offices. Its various members interpret both, so that from the Babel of conflicting opinions no certain sound can be heard. Thus it has been, and thus it will be to the end. There is only one thing on which Episcopalians unite—namely, hostility to the Catholic Church. With various degrees of ignorance or honesty, they are enemies of the only body which teaches with authority, whose forms they counterfeit by sad travesties or servile imitations.
The action of this convention, as far as it concerns the interior structure of the church, which they profess to have modelled after the American Constitution, has no particular interest for the world. Some improvement may have been made in the canons, of which we can be no judges. Legislation is one of the peculiarities of our day. If it be harmless, it is looked upon as a safe use of force and nerve which, expended in another direction, might have done damage. We proceed to notice a few things which are of importance, and they are the only acts of the convention which, on the reading of the journal, strike us as of any consequence.
We are happy to be able to congratulate our friends on the rejection of the provincial system. With them it would have worked very badly, because a province supposes some central government and a unit in authority. When a province separates from its parent state, it becomes independent. If there be no home government, there can be no province, properly so-called. The committee very learnedly explains the constitution of the primitive church, and concludes that it would not apply to them, and could not without injury be forced upon them.
“Your committee assume that the terms ‘provincial system’ are used in the resolution in their full ecclesiastical [pg 466]and primitive sense. In the early church there were: 1. the parish; 2, the diocese; 3, the province; 4, the patriarchate. The parish had its priest, the diocese its bishop, the province its archbishop, the patriarchate its patriarch. Among these, the dominant and most active power was the province with its archbishop. Speaking generally, we may say that it possessed the powers of this body and of the House of Bishops, and many of the powers of our diocesan councils. The provinces were disconnected and independent, except as, by very slender ties, they were united in the patriarchate. Such a system would dismember this church, and out of this now compact, now united body create five, or seven, or ten separate churches. The ties which may at first unite them will grow weaker and weaker. However similar they may be at the moment of dismemberment, at that moment the process of divergence will begin, and it will go on until the separation will be as great as that now existing between York and Canterbury. Those provinces now communicate with each other only informally.
“Any institution of provinces or provincial synods, with powers subject at all times to revocation by the General Convention, would be useless and illusory. The provinces, if invested with irrevocable powers, and discharged from the constant and necessary authority and supervision of the General Convention, certainly might, and probably would, soon diverge into widely differing practices and opinions, engendering ecclesiastical conflicts, threatening the unity of our church.”