and its free influence upon conduct, are matters finally placed in practice, under the principle of toleration, at our own disposal, and with the power thus admitted a corresponding obligation is entailed. From a due sense and conscientious discharge of that obligation in individual minds, will be found to proceed a leavening spirit which may, under the ordinary providence of God, be speedily and palpably felt to have affected the mass, and to have affected it for good.

29. It is now time briefly to indicate the course of observation which is to be followed in these pages. I shall attempt, in the first instance, to present a familiar, or at least a partial, representation of the moral characteristics and effects of those doctrines which are now perhaps more than ever felt in the English Church to be full of intrinsic value, and which likewise appear to have so much of special adaptation to the circumstances of the time. They are particularly (to omit the mention of points for the most part minor, on which a greater diversity of opinion may without disadvantage prevail) the doctrine of the visibility of the Church, of the apostolical succession in the ministry, of the authority of the Church in matters of faith, of the things signified in the sacraments. On these I shall endeavour to touch in succession, excepting only the one topic which bears upon the right of private judgment, and of which I have elsewhere had occasion to treat in a somewhat similar view. And I prefix a discussion on

* See "The State in its Relations with the Church," chapters V. and VI. (third edition).

that which is termed Rationalism, by which I hope to supply assistance in determining what are the predispositions and anticipations with which we ought, upon truly rational grounds, to train our minds for the proposed inquiry. Lastly, after having thus far regarded the subject ethically, I strive to show the practical results of these principles upon our relations, as members of the Anglican Church, with one another, and with the members of other religious communions, under the peculiar circumstances of the present day.

30. I have been in some degree at a loss to choose an appellation which should be at once convenient for habitual use, intelligible to the generality of readers, comprehensive enough to include the several chief topics on which these chapters touch, and yet not so large as to include other tenets equally Catholic, equally primitive, equally taught by the universal and perpetual Church. In selecting, as upon the whole preferable to any other, the phrase "Church principles," I do not mean by it to imply that these are the only principles taught by the Church, or that they were the principles specifically urged by the early Church against the early heresies; for the early heretics were not bold enough, it seems, to deny them. But I mean merely, with whatever degree of precision, to imply by this appellation, that they are the principles relating to the constitution of the Church, that they are strictly its principia or elements, and that all of them are easily to be extracted by analysis from the idea of the Church, as one, holy, Catholic, and apos

tolic, according to our constant and unanimous profession of faith.

31. The general subject thus described and thus ordinarily designated in this volume is capable of discussion in several distinct modes. The first, the most appropriate, and the highest of these, is the scientific process whereby these principles are deduced and proved from Holy Scripture. This is the proper office of the theologian: and it has been my desire to occupy no more of this ground than has seemed necessary for the purpose of intelligible statement of my subject. At a time when there is so much defect of information, and so much consequent misapprehension abroad, it is necessary to be more specific in this matter than might otherwise have been desirable: and indeed the sense of the exclusive rights of Scripture as the tribunal of ultimate appeal is so strong among Englishmen, that they would hardly listen to other considerations which they rightly deem secondary, at least they would receive them under hostile prepossessions, from any author who should allow it to be so much as suspected, that he had a concealed desire to emancipate himself from such restraints as the sense of the sacred writings may impose. But let no one suppose in opening this volume that it pretends to repeat the process of demonstration upon these topics; for it the reader must refer to other and easily accessible sources.

32. The next method in which these important questions may be discussed is that which, abandoning

the examination of their proofs from Revelation, regards them in their ethical tendencies, in their bearings, that is to say, upon the formation of human character, and in that sense upon the accomplishment of the work of the Gospel. Such a mode of inquiry may establish presumptions in their favour even with those who have not yet been directly instructed in, nor have for themselves ascertained, their truth; but its more legitimate and specific office is, to corroborate the faith of those who have already received the doctrines, by evincing their beautiful and perfect harmony with the purposes, so far as they are legible to us, of the Christian scheme; their correspondence with the necessities and the capabilities of human nature. Or it may be usefully and seasonably employed in the removal of adverse prepossessions which may already have more or less occupied the minds of men, and which may operate as serious impediments to the consideration of the more direct argument upon the merits, that is to say, upon the theological proofs of the principles themselves. In this labour there is less that bears a strictly professional character: it is conversant with theology indeed, but in the philosophical aspect of the science, upon the side and at the points where it comes into contact with man: and any results of the investigation may possibly be liable to less suspicion, when they have been wrought out by persons who came to their task under no official obligations or prepossessions, and who viewed their subject from a position occupied by them in common

with every member of the Church who has in any degree given his mind to moral speculations.

33. Besides, however, this inquiry into characteristic tendencies, or what may be called general consequences, there is also a more limited yet not immaterial function which remains: it is the examination of the specific and particular bearings which these principles are likely to have upon the religious interests and feelings of the day in our own country: a sphere comparatively narrow, but affording room, as it appears to me, for useful explanations. And this is a part of the subject which has received very little attention from those who have written in defence of the Catholic principles of our ecclesiastical institutions, and who, in accordance with the bent of their own minds as well as with their primary obligations, have usually bestowed more labour on the proof of the principles than on attempting to show that they involve no painful consequences, introduce no real causes of division, deny to no man his spiritual privileges; but, on the contrary, that while they are the divinely appointed bulwarks of the faith as long as the world shall last, they offer to us also the best promise of peace and practicable union. I wish to show, or at least to incite the minds of men to that kind and those trains of thought which will lead them to perceive, that neither as it respects our own communion, nor as it respects the Romanists, nor as it respects the Dissenters, ought we to find in these principles, anything but the means of consolidated