Editorial note — From The Month. DR. PUSEY ON THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

[Footnote 74: Practically speaking, it is surely a matter of surprise that so few Anglicans should have interested themselves in ascertaining what is thought about their orders by others than themselves. No portion of the Catholic Church (as they consider it) has ever been persuaded to acknowledge them in any way. It is of course their business to obtain their acceptance, not ours to disprove them; all the more, as so very large a number of those who have borne these orders have never believed in their sacramental character. Dr. Pusey says (p. 278), "I do not believe that God maintains the faith where there is not the reality." He is speaking directly of the real presence. By how large a proportion of the bishops and clergy and laity of the Church of England since the Reformation has it been believed, even with all the force of the old Catholic traditions to maintain it? And as to the priesthood and its correlative, the sacrifice, a strong argument, on Dr. Pusey's own ground, against their existence in Anglicanism, might be found in the fact that all practical belief in them has so completely died out in the mass of the people. If there had been the reality, there would have been the faith; and so it is with Eastern heretics and schismatics.]