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is right,) stronger than this; and that in the Visitation for the Sick stronger still; so that a person might even wish for a much "stronger" form of absolution, and yet remain within the bounds of our Church. And so little strong did our form appear to the American Episcopalians, that in the Rubric before the absolution, they substituted the words, "A declaration concerning the Forgiveness of Sins," &c. Yet herein we fare better than usual; for you have equally treated (ibid.) as Papistical, words wherein another writer (Tracts, No. xvii. p. 4.) embodies our Church's language in the Visitation for the Sick. If a minister, you must, when called upon, use that same language; whether then it be Papistical or no, we may leave you to decide.
Again, another writer, now asleep in the Lord, gave an historical statement of the gradual compression of the Church services, and especially that which went on in the Romish Church, "long before the abolition of the Latin service." (Tract ix. p. 2.) This the Reformers carried on; it is not Papistical, surely, to say, "unadvisedly;" a person may regret that the Communion and Morning Service are conjoined, and think that, but for this, the Communion would probably have been administered more frequently, and yet not be a Papist. For this compression of services had begun in Papistical times, and the error of the Reformers (if it was one) was compliance with the "spirit of [a Papistical] age." This, however, would have afforded no room for pleasantry; and so the whole is represented as being, in our eyes, a departure from Rome, and an error of "our misguided Reformers."
One expression of this writer demanded a candid judgment: he said,
"The idea of united worship, with a view to which identity of time and language had been maintained in different nations, was forgotten."
It is plain that what the writer herein lamented was the loss not of the Latin language as a medium qf prayer, but the loss of that feeling of unity, "with a view to which identity of
