Note 190 — THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXII., No. 130.—JANUARY, 1876. (continued 3)

Since writing the above we happened to see the following case in point, in the Church Times of September 10, 1875, in which a clergyman, signing himself “a priest, not of the Diocese of Exeter,” writes a letter of remonstrance against the violent abuse heaped by “a priest of the Diocese of Exeter” against the late learned and venerable Vicar of Morwenstow, Mr. Hawker, who, on the day before his death, made his submission to the Catholic Church. From this letter, which contains many candid and interesting admissions, we quote the following: “In these days, when we have among us so many dignitaries and popular preachers of the Established Church who in their teaching deny all sacramental truth, while others cannot repeat the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds without a gloss, and others again boldly assert that ‘the old religious ideas expressed in the Apostles’ Creed must be thrown into afresh form, if they are to retain their hold on the educated minds of the present generation, it appears monstrous that a clergyman whose faithful adhesion to the Prayer Book during a ministry of forty years was notorious should be denounced as a ‘blasphemous rogue and a scoundrel’ because he held opinions which are considered by some individual members of either church as denoting ‘a Roman at heart,’ or, in the exercise of a liberty granted to everyone, thought fit to correspond with influential members of the Church of Rome.”