My dear and venerable Brother Dean—­It was very ungrateful of me not to have thanked you before for your most kind vindication of my act in Westminster Abbey.  I had read your letter with the greatest pleasure, and must now thank you for letting me have a separate copy of it.  I certainly have no reason to be dissatisfied with my defenders.  All the bishops who have spoken on the subject (with the single exception of the Bishop of Winchester) have approved the step—­so I believe have a vast majority of English churchmen.

How any one could expect that I should make a distinction between confirmed and unconfirmed communicants, which would render any administration in the abbey impossible, or that I should distinguish between the different shades of orthodoxy in the different nonconformist communions, I cannot conceive.  I am sure that I acted as a good churchman.  I humbly hope that I acted as He who first instituted the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper would have wished.

You are very kind to have taken so much interest in my essays, and what you say of the Athanasian Creed is deeply instructive.  You will be glad to hear—­what will become public in a few days—­that of the 29 Royal Commissioners, 18 at least—­including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of St. David’s and Carlisle and the two Regius Professors of Divinity—­have declared themselves against continuing the use of it.

I found your note here when we arrived last night to assist at the coming of age of young Lord Elgin.  We were obliged to pass rapidly through Edinburgh, in order to reach this by nightfall.  In case I am able to come over this week to Edinburgh, should I find you at home, and at what hour?

     It would probably be on Thursday that I could most easily
     come.—­Yours sincerely,

     A.P.  STANLEY.

     DEAN RAMSAY to Rev. MALCOLM CLERK,

     Kingston Deverell, Warminster, Wilts.

     23 Ainslie Place, Edin., Sept. 5 [1872].

My dear Malcolm Clerk—­Many thanks for your remarks touching the Athanasian Creed.  I agree quite, and am satisfied we gain nothing by retaining it, and lose much.  You ask if I could help to get facsimiles; I am not likely—­not in my line I fear.  Should anything turn up I will look after it.  One of the propositions to which unlimited faith must be given, is drawn from an analogy, which expresses the most obscure of all questions in physics—­i.e. the union of mind and matter, the what constitutes one mortal being—­all very well to use in explanation or illustration, but as a positive article of faith in itself, monstrous.  Then the Filioque to be insisted on as eternal death to deny!

People hold such views.  A writer in the Guardian (Mr. Poyntz) maintains that God looks with more favour upon a man living in SIN than upon one who has seceded ever so small from orthodoxy.  Something must be done, were it only to stop the perpetual, as we call it in Scottish phrase, blethering!

     I am always glad to hear of your boys.  My love to Stuart, and
     same to thyself.—­Thine affectionate fourscore old friend,