234 EARLY REMINISCENCES I can give the reason why Romish preachers fail to draw. The Dissenting preacher urges one single doctrine, insists on one thing only, either Conversion, Justification by Faith, or Predestination and Election. People like to have their religion in a compact form, tied up in one bundle, which they can stow away in their hearts. It matters not whether the doctrine be true or false, it must be packed small, and be portable. Now the Roman religion is cumbered with a multitude of doctrines. I once saw an Italian image-man running to catch a train, with a tray of figures on his head : an Infant Samuel, a Sacred Heart of Mary, a Bambino, a Lady of Lourdes, a head of the youthful Augustus, and a bust of Antinous, He had a difficult task, to run and balance his tray. Unhappily he tripped, and over went all his plaster casts in a mass of fragments on the ground. He let them lie, and ran on, and caught the train. He never would have caught it, had he not rid himself of his set of images. It is just so with Romanism in England. It is charged with such a burden of trash : Indulgences, Sacred Hearts, Ladies of Loretto, of La Salette, of Lourdes, and Heaven knows how many other places; the Latin tongue, litanies not directed to God, but to saints ; relics, privileges, rosaries and holy water. If the Roman Church wants to recover the English people, it must chuck all this rubbish and return to first principles. But—to chuck all this rubbish and return to first principles is incompatible with Popery. A Catholic Church without its tray of fragile articles would look remarkably like Ecclesia Anglicana. When the Oxford Movement was in full swing, the most sanguine hopes were entertained in Rome and throughout Germany, France and Italy that the Conversion of England was at hand; and everywhere prayer was made to God to hasten that end. These hopes and these prayers are being answered now, and have been answered in the past, but not in the way in which was desired. England is being slowly and surely brought to full Catholic doctrine and worship, and that in the English Church, not in that of Rome. On 8th September, 1858, was founded, by the united efforts of the Rev. the Hon. George Spencer and Ambrose Lisle Phillipps,
