Untitled - Electric Scotland

9 o LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. iv.
"
I once more . . . say Anathema to the principle of Pro
testantism .
. . and
to all its forms, sects, and denominations.
. . . Likewise to all persons who, knowingly and wittingly, and
understanding what they do, shall assert, either for themselves
or for the Church of England, the principle of Protestantism,
or maintain the Church of England to have one and the same
common religion with any or all of the various forms and sects
of Protestantism, or shall communicate themselves in the temples
of the Protestant sects, or give communion to their members, or
go about to establish any intercommunion between our Church
and them otherwise than by bringing them in the first instance
to renounce their errors, and promise a true obedience for the
future to the entire faith and discipline of the Catholic and
Apostolic Episcopate to all such I say Anathema." 1
Is it wonderful that, with the memories fresh in his
mind of the Christian influences which had affected his
boyhood, with his deep
affection for the brothers and
sisters to whom he owed so much, and his warm regard
for a host of Scottish friends, Archibald Tait should have
expressed his repugnance to a theological system which
practically put almost every one north of the Tweed out
side the pale of Christianity ?
The following letters speak for themselves, and the
subject is so important, both in its public and its personal
aspect, that no apology is required for an endeavour to
show how Tait s action presented itself at the time to
some of his more intimate friends.
" MY
The Rev. Robert Scott 1 to the Rev. A. C. Tait.
"DuLOE, Monday night \\$th March 1841].
DEAR TAIT, Your packet only reached me this morn
ing. The Protest itself, without comment, I saw on Saturday
1 From a pamphlet entitled Letter to the Rev. C. P. Golightly, 1841, p. 13.
2 Mr. Scott had been Tait s colleague and friend as Fellow of Balliol
since 1836. He was afterwards Master of Balliol from 1854 to 1870, and
Dean of Rochester from 1870 to 1888.