4

when I wrote that letter. If you will give it another read-
ing, you will see that, whilst advising the use of that Pray-
er, I expressly said "until it may be further orders," thus
purposely leaving open the door to the more authoritative pre-
scription of out General Council, if we were ever to be bless-
ed with another. I would have been more explicit in my re-
ference to that body, if I hadm at the time, been more sang-
uine of our ever having another meeting of the kind, and es-
pecially if I had supposed my language open to the construc-
tion which you have put upon it. You will further see that
in justifying myself for recommending that Prayer, I do it on
the ground,not of the disorganised or disintegrated state of
our Southern Church, but simply on the unsettled condition of
out ecclesiastical affairs; by which I meant nothing more
than that the sudden change in our political status would,
for a time, prevent us a Church from legislating for our-
selves or even consulting with one another. In the mean
time, when every Clergyman was at a loss what course to pur-
sue, and concerted action was so very desirable, I felt free
to exercise a little of that authority which in better times
than these belonged to each and every Bishop, namely the reg-
ulation of worship in his Diocese.

But whilst I thus regarded the circumstances in which we
were placed as virtually, and for a time only, throwing my Di-