Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

Corporate Re-union. 257
of each party, the Clergy only or the Laity
also ? It is a miracle, if the Catholic party
among& the Clergy cv
of the establishment manage O
to swallow up the Evangelical and the Broad
Church but how much more difficult an idea
;
is it to contemplate, that they should absorb the
whole Laity of their Communion, of whom
but a fraction is with them and a great
portion Evangelical, a greater Broad Church,
and a still greater, alas, without any faith
at all.
Moreover, how is it possible to forget
that the
Established Church is the Church of England ?
That Dissenters are, both in their own estima
tion and in that of its own members, in some
sense a portion of it ; and that even were its
own proper laity Catholic in belief, the whole
population of England, of which Dissenters
form perhaps not less than a half, would, as re
presented by Parliament, still claim it as their
own ? and, of course, when it came to the point,
on their side.
they would have fact and power
It is indeed hard to conceive that the constitu
tion of the Church of England, as settled by
Act of Parliament, can be made fit for Re-union
with the Catholic Church, till political parties, as
such, with the great interests of the Nation, the
country party, the manufacturing, the trade,
become Catholic as parties. Before that takes
place, and sooner than it will, there might seem
s