p152 Dear Miss D Coke, - … Mr.- told me that when you left the Establishment your father would not hear of your going amongst brethren, so-called, but acquiesced in your going to -. Now this in a measure acquits you of any knowledge of the principles of that meeting. … But this ought to shew how instinctively the world makes the difference, and that the reproach of Christ was not there. Forgive me if I say that it would have been happy if this had struck you at the time. I am far from thinking the brethren perfect; I know more faults in them and myself than the world would cast on them, and just where the world would think them more reasonable. Still as a fact they are under the ban of the world: they have sufficiently preserved their separation from it to be rejected by it, not only at - but everywhere; and this is right. Those who fall in with the evangelical world have not. Church people of course do not like dissent, but there is more or less of the camp and the clergy, and it is tolerable; but following Christ wholly the world or the human heart will never stand. I thought after speaking with Mr. -, I would notice this one point, partly as owning in one aspect the excuse, but a tale to the conscience on the other.

Nice, January 1st, 1872.

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