utions" pledge them, one is indeed most excellent--"the revival of
daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord's
Supper." This is their merit, not as Christians generally, but as a
party, (I use the word in no offensive sense;) in this respect their
efforts have done, and are doing great good. But they have themselves
declared that they will especially set themselves to preach apostolical
succession; and it is with reference to this, that I charge them with
"preaching themselves;" it was of this I spoke, when I said that there
was a very great presumption that their peculiar doctrines were not
of God.

Again, the system which they hold up as "better and deeper than
satisfied the last century" is a remedy which has been tried once
already: and its failure was so palpable, that all the evil of the
eighteenth century was but the reaction from that enormous evil which
this remedy, if it be one, had at any rate been powerless to cure.
Apostolical succession, the dignity of the Clergy, the authority of the
Church, were triumphantly maintained for several centuries; and their
full development was coincident, to say the least, with the corruption
alike of Christ's religion and Christ's Church. So far were they from
tending to realize the promises of prophecy, to perfect Christ's body up
to the measure of the stature of Christ's own fulness, that Christ's
Church declined during their ascendancy more and more;--she fell alike
from truth and from holiness; and these doctrines, if they did not cause
the evil, were at least quite unable to restrain it. For, in whatever
points the fifteenth century differed from the fourth, it cannot be said
that it upheld the apostolical succession less peremptorily, or attached
a less value to Church tradition, and Church authority. I am greatly
understating the case, but I am content for the present to do so: I will
not say that Mr. Newman's favourite doctrines were the very Antichrist
which corrupted Christianity; I will only say that they did not prevent
its corruption,--that when they were most exalted Christian truth and
Christian goodness were most depressed.

After all, however, what has failed once may doubtless be successful on
a second trial: it is within possibility, perhaps, that a doctrine,
although destitute of all internal evidence showing it to come from God,
may be divine notwithstanding;--revealed for some purposes which we
cannot fathom, or simply as an exer