and which I do not think will be likely to be chosen by the Committee as the model of its changes. The divines who drew their inspirations from the gentle and polished White were the authors of the omission of the Athanasian Creed, of the substitution of "who" for "which" in the Lord's Prayer, of the elegant retrenchment of the "Virgin's womb," and of the banishment of Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from evening worship. I think that I need not multiply words to show that this Prayer Book, the offspring of civil strife in the first place, and of divided internal counsels in the second, would be a disastrous model for the Irish Church to select as the guide of its future self-regulation.
There is only one more consideration to which I must refer before I close this letter. All public movements have a tendency—right, within due limits—towards compromise; and it is, therefore, not impossible that in face of the difficulties inherent in any scheme of absolute alteration of the Formularies, the Committee may alike endeavour to gratify the party which values identity with England, and that which advocates change with a single eye to the supposed requirements of Ireland, by leaving the letter of the Liturgy and Formularies as it stands, and yet supplementing that letter with a body of explanatory and modifying glosses in the form of rubrics, notes, or canons. Upon this project, should it be entertained, I have merely to observe that the expedient would either effect too much or else too little for the objects of its promoters and for the peace of the Church. If these rubrics, notes, or canons were intended to possess a value identical with the text on which it was proposed that they should cast a light additional to, or corrective of, that with which it is at present illuminated, it will be but a transparent play upon words to assert that the Formularies will have passed the ordeal of the Committee without having been subjected to changes of a doctrinal nature.
