564 APPENDIX TO PART III

And finally and chiefly, the main text: “Let him be unto thee as an heathen man,” etc.

Now, my dear Sir, you have called my representation of this text¹ frightful and detestable: What is yours? It has a meaning, I suppose-isolated though it be:-and to give it a plain and practicable meaning is all I ask of you; and that you must do, before you have any right to be indignant with me.

But permit me once more to put my interpretation of it into clear form. I find Christ associate constantly in one breath-the heathen, publican, and harlot. Now, there is a harlot’s house within six doors of me. There was a ball there-four nights ago; and many other harlots met there on the occasion. I did not go myself; I would not have allowed my wife to go, if she had asked leave. I call that excommunication; and I prevailed upon a young man of my acquaintance, who had intended to go to the meeting, to join in my excommunication-and stay away also. Was there anything wrong in this?

But further: if I had my way, this person’s name should be written up as excommunicate at the church door up the street. Would this be very dreadful?

If, however, this same person were sick, or in sorrow, and happened to hear of me as able to assist her, and asked me to come and talk to her, I should go instantly-and eat with her-or do anything that I could for her, without the least fear of, or care for, compromising my own character, and I would make my wife do the same.

In the same manner I would not ask a pickpocket to dine with me, unless for some special purpose-but if the pickpocket were suffering or repentant, I would associate with him to any extent.

Is there anything detestable in all this?

Again-Lady -- ran away from her husband last year; she is received into all the best English society of Italy together with her paramour. I don’t think she is received as a Magdalene, but as an agreeable person. I think this is wrong: and would not receive her, until she parted from her paramour, and declared herself penitent. I don’t think this unmerciful or horrible. I do but desire that some sense of the awfulness of presumptuous sin should be manifested by the Church; and behold, you fly in my face like a wild creature, and upset a whole scuttleful of ashes on my head-as if I had said that sinners were of different flesh and blood from the apparently righteous. I do not mean the separation to be expressed as a “stand aside-for I am holier,” but as “I serve God-you do not. Do not therefore wear my livery.”

7. Answer to your 7th Clause.

I have nothing to do with the contents of the Epistles, except as they bear on the question in hand:-and as to the character of those to whom they were written, I suppose the directions to be warrant for it: and that the writers knew whom they intended to address.

I could give you a longer answer, but have not time.

8. Answer to your 8th Clause.

Precisely because I believe conversion to be an act of God, and not of our own, I make light of Baptism. For Baptism I consider an act of man.

¹[See above, § 24.]

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