'If you refer to my act in 1851 in submitting to the Catholic
Church) by which we were separated for some twelve years, I can
understand it.
'If you refer to any other act either on your part or mine I am
not conscious of it, and would desire to know what it may be.
'My act in 1851 may have overcast your friendship for me. It did
not overcast my friendship for you, as I think the last years
have shown.
'You will not, I hope, think me over-sensitive in asking for this
explanation. Believe me, yours affectionately,
'H. E. M.'
'My dear Archbishop Manning,' Mr. Gladstone answered, 'it did, I
confess, seem to me an astonishing error to state in public that
a friendship had not been overcast for forty-five years until
now, which your letter declares has been suspended as to all
action for twelve...
'I wonder, too, at your forgetting that during the forty-five
years I had been charged by you with doing the work of the
Antichrist
in regard to the Temporal Power of the Pope.
'Our differences, my dear Archbishop, are indeed profound. We
refer them, I suppose, in humble silence to a Higher Power...
You assured me once of your prayers at all and at the most solemn
time. I received that assurance with gratitude, and still cherish
it. As and when they move upwards, there is a meeting-point for
those whom a chasm separates below.
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