"You bade me read the Anglican divines; I have given a great deal of time to them, and I am embracing that creed which alone is the scope to which they converge in their separate teaching; the creed which upholds the divinity of tradition with Laud, consent of Fathers with Beveridge, a visible Church with Bramhall, a tribunal of dogmatic decisions with Bull, the authority of the Pope with Thorndike, penance with Taylor, prayers for the dead with Ussher, celibacy, asceticism, ecclesiastical discipline with Bingham. I seek a Church which in these, and in a multitude of other points, is nearer the apostolic Church than any existing one; which is the continuation of the apostolic Church, if it has been continued at all. And seeing it to be like the apostolic Church, I believe it to be the same. Reason has gone first, faith is to follow."
Father, you keep hankering after the old evil ways. Anima nostra sicut passer erepta est de laqueo ventum…give it up, give it over, embrace the Church fully with will and intellect and heart. Then you will find peace. You are a real Catholic now not a make-believe.
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