And surely it should not escape us that the peculiar form which unbelief assumed during the period under discussion, resulted in a benefit to the Church. "The eighteenth century," (says our author,) "enforced the truths of Natural Morality with a solidity of argument and variety of proof which they have not received since the Stoical epoch, if then." (p. 296.) "The career of the Evidential School, its success and its failure, has enriched the history of Doctrine," not indeed "with a complete refutation of that method as an instrument of theological investigation," (p. 297,) (witness the immortal 'Analogy' of Bishop Butler!)--but, certainly with very precious experience. That age has bequeathed to the Church a vast body of controversial writing which she could ill afford to part with at the present day. So far, we have little to complain of in Mr. Pattison's Essay, except on the side of omission. _But_ for the fatal circumstance of the company in which the learned writer comes abroad, and _the avowed purpose_ with which he is found there, a charitable construction might have been put upon most of the present performance. The following sentences, on the other hand, are _not_ excusable. "In the present day when a godless orthodoxy threatens, as in the fifteenth century, to extinguish religious thought (!) altogether, and nothing is allowed in the Church of England but the formulæ of past thinkings, which have long lost all sense of any kind, (!) it may seem out of season to be bringing forward a misapplication of common-sense in a bygone age," (p. 297.) The "orthodoxy" of the fifteenth century is something new to us. So is the prospect "in the present day," of an "extinction of religious thought,"--the result of "godless orthodoxy." The fault, or the misfortune of the Church of England then, is, that she retains "_the formulæ of past thinkings, which have long lost all sense of any kind_." (p. 297.) If this does not mean the English _Book of Common Prayer_, what _does_ it mean? And if it _means_ the English Prayer-Book, how can Mr. Pattison retain his commission in the Church of England, and exclusively employ a Book which he presumes so to characterize? But this is _ad hominem_. The learned writer proceeds:--"There are times and circumstances when religious ideas will be greatly benefited by being submitted to the rough and ready tests by which busy men try what comes in their way; by being made to stand their trial, and be fully canvassed, _coram populo_. As Poetry is not for the critics, so Religion is not for the Theologians." (p. 297.)