562 APPENDIX TO PART III

those very Epistles of fornicators,” etc. (8) He objected to Ruskin making “so entirely light of Baptism,” which to Maurice “is a witness for the universality of God’s goodwill.” (9) Next, on Ruskin’s scheme of excommunication (§ 23), Maurice was severe: “I never read any scheme better contrived for enthroning, if not canonizing, respectability and decency; and any scheme which less levels the hills and exalts the valleys, which less affronts Scribes and Pharisees with the rude and terrible sentence, ‘Oh generation of vipers! who hath bidden you to flee from the wrath to come?’ With Maurice’s other points we are not concerned, as they do not arise in the subsequent correspondence. Maurice’s letter to Furnivall of March 25 was sent on to Ruskin, who replied as follows:-]

I

Sunday evening, 30th March [1851.]

MY DEAR MR. MAURICE,-I have been reading with much respect and interest your letter to Furnivall, and comparing it with some of your published writings:-I am much grieved, on one side, that what I have written should so far offend you; and happy that it should, on the other, for I should be most thankful to be proved wrong in much of what I believe:-My faith is a dark one; yours, so far as I can understand it, a glorious and happy one. I said, in the beginning of what I wrote, that I should not allow myself to be drawn into controversy: nor should I, unless in the hope of being convinced of error. If I thought your opposition to me futile, or if I did not wish to think with you, I should not have made any comment on your letter. But I covet that wide-world spirit of yours; and if you do not think you have spent too much time on me already, I would fain ask you to devote still an hour or two. For in your present letter you have been too indignant to reason. I like your indignation; but I must have something more out of you than indignation before I can come to be of your mind.

1. You find fault with me for not enough considering the etymological force of ekklhoia-truly I did not, nor have I ever done so enough: I have always thought the word was simply used as we should use the word “assembly,” and that when the idea of calling was to be implied, it was separately expressed as in 1 Cor. i. 2; and I so far think so still; that is, I believe the word in St. Paul’s time to have been one of such common use that it would never have expressed, per se, any idea of calling by God: nor do I think it was ever intended to do so. I may be very wrong in this, and will consider of it.

2. But while I do not enough attach the idea of “calling” to this word, do not think I ever lost sight of the calling itself. All that you say in your 3rd Clause, I hold to the full: but it did not appear to me to bear in the least on the matter in question. I do not-throughout the Pamphlet-speak of the methods of Conversion: I had nothing to do with them. All I had to examine was the practical method of associating and governing men pretending to be converted.

3. Answer to your 4th Clause.

This exclamation against “Isolated Texts” I always look upon with

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