Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

Corporate Re-union. 253
a day; such a prayer (unless under the authority
of a particular inspiration) would be pre
sumptuous, as being a prayer for a miracle.
Now then the question is, whether the conversion
of that Corporate Body, which wr e call the
Anglican Church, would not be in the same
general
sense a miracle ? in the same sense in
which it would be a miracle for the Thames to
change its course, and run into the sea at the
in the
Wash instead of the Nore. Certainly
course of ages such a change of direction might
take place without miracle ; by the stopping up
of a gorge, or the alteration of a level. But we
should not pray for it ; and if we wished to
divert the stream from London, wT e should cut a
canal at Eton or Twickenham ; we should carry
the innumerable drops of water our own way
and
by forming a new bed by our own labour ;
for the success of this project we might perhaps
reasonably pray.
Now I beg my readers to observe I am stating
the objections of our opponents, as I think, in
the
strongest way in which they can be put,
and in fact almost in the very words in which
they were once put before me.
Such an objector might continue: that the
Anglican Church is siii generis ; it is not a
collection of individuals ; but it is a bed, a river
bed, formed in the course of ages, depending on
external facts, such as political, civil, and social