Untitled - Electric Scotland

464 IJFE OK ARCHBISHOP TA1T [CH. xvi.
session, to write to you on a subject brought before me within
the last few days. I have been told that the division of the East
Grinstead Sisters who are established at Ash Grove, Hackney,
are at present in much perplexity from the secession to the
Church of Rome of Mr. Tuke, who has been their clerical adviser
for some time, and that they are anxious to avail themselves of
your assistance and advice.
"
I have carefully inquired into the circumstances, and am
most anxious that everything possible and right should be done
to prevent these ladies from being unsettled in their allegiance to
the Church of England by what has happened, and that they
should have whatever assistance and advice you are able to give
them consistently with your ^maintenance of what you believe to
be right.
"
My own views as to Sisterhoods in the Church of England
have been clearly expressed in my Charge of December last, and
I could earnestly desire that these ladies would conform to what
I have thus sketched out. I have reason to believe, indepen
dissent from the model I
dently of other matters in which they
approve, that they have a custom in reference to the reservation
of the Elements in the Holy Communion which I am certain
that you disapprove of, and also that in the private Oratory there
are signs of a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, going far beyond
what the Church of England approves as due to her who is
blessed amongst women. It would be useless for me to request
any clergyman, whose sentiments are quite at variance with their
own, to endeavour to influence these ladies. I understand that
they have confidence in you and are more likely to listen to you
than to any one else. Their practice of the reservation of the
Elements in the Holy Communion alone must prevent me, and
I should suppose must prevent any Bishop
of the Church of
England, from becoming Visitor of their Institution. I trust they
may be induced to give it up.
"
Meanwhile, I hear from undoubted testimony how great is
their self-denial in nursing the sick, and in exposing themselves
to many dangers for Christ s sake. I cannot therefore withhold
the expression of my sympathy with their ceaseless labours for
the poor and the afflicted. I pray God to guide them to a sober
view of their duties as members of the Church of England, and
I should rejoice to hear that they can bring their Sisterhood in
all things to the model which I approve.