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THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS 557
mere difference between high and low breeding. For the essential differences in the religious opinions of the two parties are sufficiently marked in two men whom we may take as the highest representatives of each-George Herbert and John Milton; and I do not think there would have been much difficulty in atoning those two, if one could have got them together. But the real difficulty, nowadays, lies in the sin and folly of both parties; in the superciliousness of the one, and the rudeness of the other. Evidently, however, the sin lies most at the High Church door, for the Evangelicals are much more ready to act with Churchmen than they with the Evangelicals; and I believe that this state of things cannot continue much longer; and that if the Church of England does not forthwith unite with herself the entire Evangelical body, both of England and Scotland, and take her stand with them against the Papacy, her hour has struck. She cannot any longer serve two masters;1 nor make courtesies alternately to Christ and Antichrist. That she has done this is visible enough by the state of Europe at this instant. Three centuries since Luther-three hundred years of Protestant knowledge-and the Papacy not yet overthrown! Christ’s truth still restrained, in narrow dawn, to the white cliffs of England and white crests of the Alps;-the morning star paused in its course in heaven;-the sun and moon stayed, with Satan for their Joshua.2
40. But how to unite the two great sects of paralyzed Protestants? By keeping simply to Scripture. The members of the Scottish Church have not a shadow of excuse for refusing Episcopacy; it has indeed been abused among them, grievously abused; but it is in the Bible; and that is all they have a right to ask.
They have also no shadow of excuse for refusing to employ a written form of prayer. It may not be to their taste-it may not be the way in which they like to pray;
1 [Matthew vi. 24; Luke xvi. 13.]
2 [Joshua x. 13.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
