CHAPTER LII
"YOU know, my dear Pontifex," said Pryer to him, some few weeks
after Ernest had become acquainted with him, when the two were
taking a constitutional one day in Kensington Gardens, "you know, my
dear Pontifex, it is all very well to quarrel with Rome, but Rome
has reduced the treatment of the human soul to a science, while our
own Church, though so much purer in many respects, has no organised
system either of diagnosis or pathology- I mean, of course,
spiritual diagnosis and spiritual pathology. Our Church does not
prescribe remedies upon any settled system, and, what is still
worse, even when her physicians have according to their lights
ascertained the disease and pointed out the remedy, she has no
discipline which will ensure its being actually applied. If our
patients do not choose to do as we tell them, we cannot make them.
Perhaps really under all the circumstances this is as well, for we are
spiritually mere horse doctors as compared with the Roman
priesthood, nor can we hope to make much headway against the sin and
misery that surround us, till we return in some respects to the
practice of our forefathers and of the greater part of Christendom.
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