ws, though both ordained of God himself, and the
end for which they were ordained continuing, may, notwithstanding,
cease, if by alteration of persons or times they be found insufficient
to attain unto that end. In which respect why may we not presume that
God doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition
of things themselves doth make necessary?... In this case, therefore,
men do not presume to change God's ordinance, but they yield thereunto,
requiring itself to be changed."--_Ecclesiastical Polity_, b. iii. Sec. 10.

* * * * *

NOTE H. P. 320.

_"Nor is it less strange that any should ever have been afraid of their
understandings, and should have sought goodness through prejudice, and
blindness, and folly_."--For some time past the words "Rationalism" and
"Rationalistic" have been freely used as terms of reproach by writers on
religious subjects; the 73d No. of the "Tracts for the Times" is
entitled, "On the introduction of Rationalistic Principles into
Religion," and a whole chapter in Mr. Gladstone's late work on Church
Principles is headed "Rationalism." Yet we still want a clear definition
of the thing signified by this name. The Tract for the Times says, "To
rationalize, is to ask for _reasons_ out of place; to ask improperly how
we are to _account_ for certain things; to be unwilling to believe them
unless they can be accounted for, i.e. referred to something else as a
cause, to some existing system, as harmonizing with them, or taking them
up into itself.... It is characterised by two peculiarities;--its love
of systematizing, and its basing its system upon personal experience, on
the evidence of sense."--P. 2. Mr. Gladstone says more generally,
"Rationalism is commonly, at least in this country, taken to be the
reduction of Christian _doctrine_ to the standard and measure of the
human understanding."--P. 37. But neither of these definitions will
include all the arguments and statements which have been called by
various writers "rationalistic;" and while the terms used are thus
vague, they are often applied very indiscriminately, and the tendency of
this use of them is to depreciate the exercise of the intellectual
faculties generally. The subject seems to deserve fuller consideration
than it has yet received; there is a real evil which the term
Rationalism is meant to denounce; but it has not been clearly
apprehended, and what is good has sometimes been co