INTRODUCTION lxxiii

often been in his mind during preceding years. Thus in his diary for March 18, 1849, we find the following entry on Episcopacy:-

“Reading to-day part of Hooker’s seventh book, it seems to me that the question is very conclusively settled by the two passages quoted from Jerome; showing it to be a thing of custom only, but that ancient. And if on either side prejudice might be dismissed, it could not but seem reasonable that, granting the administration of the Church to be in the hands of Presbyters, yet as in less important affairs bodies of men naturally appoint over themselves for their better regulation one who-either for convenience’ sake has a regulative office, as a chairman of a committee, or else, being thought wiser and more prudent and learned than the rest, has some superior authority put in his hands, or at least has a tacit weight, and is asked counsel at, by the rest; so in the most important matter of Church government: for it is in this manner only that the greatest profit may be reaped from the mind and labours of the better men, whose authority to enlarge is to provide more largely for the well-being of the Church and of all; for in all things the secret of good success is to place that which works best where it will work most, and to increase the power of the things which have healthiest operation. Doubtless the difficulties are great in the matter of appointment; only it would be well if the prime question were first settled: whether or no Episcopacy, with good bishops, be not a good and desirable thing (we admitting it not to be a thing commanded); and thereafter to consider how far it is in our power to secure goodness in bishops, and what dangers attend on our failure so to do, or what collateral inconveniences even on the event of our success....”

He then goes on to collate all the texts in the Bible in which the word “Church” is mentioned, and several pages follow of notes on Hooker and collateral authorities. The method of Ruskin’s argument in the pamphlet is very characteristic. He was essentially a Bible Christian. He was a constant student of the Bible; he knew it by heart, and the literal text of it was the test to which he brought all statements. The reader will already have noticed this in all Ruskin’s writings from his essay in Volume I.-“Was there death before Adam fell?”-down to the time of the present volume. The Catholic theory of the Church as the repository of truths not contained in, or at any rate not obviously deducible from, the text of the Bible, was repugnant alike to the Protestant traditions in which Ruskin had been reared, and to the daily practice of his own Scriptural exercises.

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