26 December 1874: ". . . [T]he question which causes by far the greatest anxiety to me is how is the Church of England to be kept together, . . . after the men of English blood have contrived to effect this for the 350 years since the first crisis of the 16th Century . . . . My point of view is, I am afraid, peculiar, but I am sensible of the real service done by all writers who like yourself make a reader feel the real price of the points they have to urge."
30 December 1874: "The demands upon my time in connection with a controversy about the Vatican Decrees are so absorbing as to secure you from . . . the case of our own Church difficulties. I will only say . . . [I]f I were to choose a motto inferring my main idea of a true Church policy, it would be your motto to 'let the Church alone'. . . . I have never declared a view in favour of or against any side or party in these matters, but what I lament is to see haphazard proceedings by persons in high authority, and what I desire is to see . . . some method of action just as any rational set of men must in a cabinet to deal with the Corn Laws the Currency or the Franchise. But what are we to expect when the fashion is set perhaps by your Bishop who so innocently boasts that he will on no account take consent with his brethren as to their common responsibilities. It is this sort of proceeding that grieves and alarms me; since whatever is right, that must be wrong. . . ."
With--Gilbert Elliot. Transcription of his letter to Gladstone, in unknown hand, suggesting that the best way to keep the Church together is to leave it alone. 7 pages, 8vo, pale blue paper, "Chapter House" stationery. Bristol, 28 December 1874.
In November 1874, Gladstone's pamphlet The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: a Political Expostulation, made public the full formulation of his objections to papal infallibility for the first time. In the subsequent weeks leading up to the new year, over 100,000 copies were sold, prompting a wave of letters to which Gladstone struggled to respond.