It is with great regret that we learn that the
extreme Protestants in the House of Commons, led by the Home Secretary and the Solicitor-General, intend to organize opposition in Parliament to the acceptance of the " Deposited " Prayer Book. We have all respect for their genuine religious convictions and even share some of them. We find the other extremists in the Anglo-, Catholic school as antipathetic as they do ; but we seriously ask them to consider what they propose. We cannot in a note here prove that some of their fears are groundless and others possibly mistaken. But let them think how two hundred and sixty-five years 'have passed without a change. Surely they cannot now bolt the door against change merely because it is change. If they do, let them ponder on. a quotation from Froude's Plea for the Free Discussion of Theological Difficulties
" If medicine had been regulated three hundred years ago by Act of Parliament ; if there had been Thirty-nine Articles of Physic, and every licensed practitioner had been compelled under pains and penalties to compound his drugs by the prescriptions • of Henry the Eighth's physician, Dr. Butts, it is easy to conjecture in what state of health the people of this country would at present be found.".
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