foot within, and its lame Lutheran fellow without, halting betwixt.
These were the true Protestants. You are--Protesters.

"Besides the inconsistency of this proceeding, I must think it a piece
of impertinence, unseasonable at least, and out of place, to obtrude
these papers upon the officiating clergyman,--to offer to a public
functionary an instrument which by the tenor of his function he is not
obliged to accept, but, rather, he is called upon to reject. Is it done
in his clerical capacity? He has no power of redressing the grievance.
It is to take the benefit of his ministry, and then insult him. If in
his capacity of fellow-Christian only, what are your scruples to him, so
long as you yourselves are able to get over them, and do get over them
by the very fact of coming to require his services? The thing you call a
Protest might with just as good a reason be presented to the
church-warden for the time being, to the parish-clerk, or the
pew-opener.

"The Parliament alone can redress your grievance, if any. Yet I see not
how with any grace your people can petition for relief, so long as, by
the very fact of your coming to church to be married, they do _bonâ
fide_ and strictly relieve themselves. The Upper House, in particular,
is not unused to these same things called Protests, among themselves.
But how would this honorable body stare to find a noble Lord conceding a
measure, and in the next breath, by a solemn Protest, disowning it! A
Protest there is a reason given for non-compliance, not a subterfuge for
an equivocal occasional compliance. It was reasonable in the primitive
Christians to avert from their persons, by whatever lawful means, the
compulsory eating of meats which had been offered unto idols. I dare say
the Roman Prefects and Exarchates had plenty of petitioning in their
days. But what would a Festus or Agrippa have replied to a petition to