human
Nothing can be more unpractical than for an individual to throw himself into the Roman Church because he could accept the _letter_ of the Council of Trent. Those who were born Roman Catholics have a liberty which, in the nature of things, a person could not have who left another system to embrace that of Rome. I cannot imagine how any faith could stand the shock of leaving one system, criticising _it_, and cast himself into another system, criticising _it_. For myself, I have always felt that had (which God of his mercy avert hereafter also) the English Church, by accepting heresy, driven me out of it, I could have gone in no other way than that of closing my eyes, and accepting whatever was put before me. But a liberty which individuals could not use, and explanations which, so long as they remain individual, must be unauthoritative, might be formally made by the Church of Rome to the Church of England as the basis of reunion.
gpt
It seems to me to be a psychological impossibility for one who has already exchanged one system for another to make those distinctions. One who, by his own act, places himself under authority, cannot make conditions about his submission. But definite explanations of our Articles have, before now, been at least tentatively offered to us, on the Roman and Greek side, as sufficient to restore communion; and the Roman explanations too were, in most cases, mere supplements to our Articles, on points upon which our Church had not spoken.