Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

196 Postscript on Catholic Unity.
disunion I have elsewhere had occasion to
enumerate. Thoughtful and earnest minds,
perceiving this, yearn for a restoration of unity.
It is impossible but that all who really believe
in Revelation should be drawn more closely
together in presence of a common foe. The
consciousness is forced upon them that no
available support may be lightly dispensed with
in the conflict now becoming daily more immi
nent, no strength wasted in defending untenable
positions. If the trumpet give an uncertain
sound it cannot lead to
victory.
The need for some central authority has
been conspicuously, I might almost say
illustrated in the recent Colenso
amusingly,
controversy in the Established Church, and
was uneasily recognized in the debates in Con
vocation on the subject. It was felt on both sides
that there should be some right of appeal from
the decision of a metropolitan, and while one
party were striving to erect the See of Canter
bury into a kind of Anglican patriarchate,
another was no less strenuously bent on claim
ing the fulness of papal authority for the
British Crown. At the same time there is
manifestly a growing disinclination to accept any
basis of Union which does not find its roots in
history and its justification in the deepest needs
of the Church and the individual soul. Such
tests can only tell in favour of the primacy of