Upon the second point I have less to say, though it is to me much the most important.  The Report, I think, cannot be shown conclusively to be wrong here, as it may be on the other; still it does not seem to me to be shown conclusively to be right.  You have yourself given no reason in your second letter of the 8th March for doubting at least.

Let me add that, in my opinion, on such a question as this, where a conclusion is to be arrived at upon the true meaning of Rubrics framed more than two centuries since, and certainly not with a view to any such minute criticism as on these occasions is and must be applied to them, and where the evidence of facts is by no means clear, none probably can be arrived at free from reasonable objection.  What is the consequence?  It will be asked, Is the question to receive no judicial solution?  I am not afraid to answer, Better far that it should receive none than that injustice should be done.  The principles of English law furnish the practical solution:  dismiss the party charged, unless his conviction can be based on grounds on which reasonable and competent minds can rest satisfied and without scruple.  And what mighty mischief will result to countervail the application of this rule of justice?  For two centuries our Church has subsisted without an answer to the question which alone gives importance to this inquiry, and surely has not been without God’s blessing for that time, in spite of all much more serious shortcomings.  Let us remember that Charity, or to use perhaps a better word, Love, is the greatest of all; if that prevail there need be little fear for our Faith or our Hope.

Having said this much, Sir John Coleridge proceeds to the second, and indeed the main object of his letter—­to remonstrate against exaggeration in complaint, both of the particular decision and of the Court which gave it:—­

I now return to your letter.  You proceed to attempt to show that the words of Keble to yourself, which you cite, are justified by remarks in this Report and some previous judgments of the same tribunal, which appear to you so inconsistent with each other as to make it difficult to believe that the Court was impartial, or “incapable of regarding the documents before it in the light of a plastic material, which might be made to support conclusions held to be advisable at the moment, and on independent grounds.”  I wish these words had never been written.  They will, I fear, be understood as conveying your formed opinions; and coming from you, and addressed to minds already excited and embittered, they will be readily accepted, though they import the heaviest charges against judges—­some of them bishops—­all of high and hitherto unimpeached character.  A very long experience of judicial life makes me know that judges will often provoke and bitterly disappoint both the suitors before them and the public, when discharging their duty honestly and