IV. The next performance is mainly directed against faith in the Church, as a society of Divine origin. "The Rev. HENRY BRISTOW WILSON, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton, Hunts," claims that a National Church shall be regarded as a purely secular Institution,--the spontaneous development of the State. "If all priests and ministers of religion could at one moment be swept from the face of the Earth, they would soon be reproduced[76]." The Church is concerned with Ethics, not with Divinity. It should therefore be "free from dogmatic tests, and similar intellectual bondage:" (p. 168:) hampered by no traditional Doctrines; pledged to no Creeds: but, on the contrary, should be subject to periodical doctrinal re-adjustments. "Doctrinal limitations" (i.e. the Creeds) "are not essential to" the Church. "Upon larger knowledge of Christian history, upon a more thorough acquaintance with the mental constitution of man, upon an understanding of the obstacles they present to a true Catholicity (!), they may be cast off." (p. 167.) "In order to the possibility of recruiting any national Ministry from the whole of the nation, ... no needless intellectual or speculative obstacles should be interposed." (p. 196. So at p. 198.) To all this, the answer is very obvious. Viewed as an historical fact, the Church is _not_ of human origin. The Church _is_ a Divine Institution. That a Priest of the Church, charged with a cure of souls, should desire her annihilation,--the reversal of the facts of her past History,--her reconstruction on an unheard-of basis, without even Creeds as terms of communion with her,--and so forth; all this may suggest some very painful doubts as _to the objector's honesty_ in continuing to employ the formularies of that Church, and in professing to teach her doctrines;--but it can hardly be supposed to have any effect whatever on the question at issue. Foreseeing this, Mr. Wilson begins by asserting,--(for to insinuate is not for so advanced a disciple of "the negative Theology,") (p. 151,)--"the fact of a very wide-spread alienation, both of educated and uneducated persons, from the Christianity which is ordinarily presented in our Churches and Chapels." (p. 150.) "A self-satisfied Sacerdotalism, confident in a supernaturally transmitted illumination," may amuse itself in trying to "keep peace within the walls of emptied Churches:" (p. 150:) but the day for "traditional Christianity" (p. 149.) has gone by. We may no longer ignore "a great extent of dissatisfaction on the part of the Clergy at some portion, at least, of formularies of the Church of England,"--especially at the use of "one unhappy creed." (p. 150.) There has been "a spontaneous recoil" from some of the old doctrines: a distrust of the old arguments: and a misgiving concerning Scripture itself. "In the presence of difficulties of this kind, ... it is vain to seek to check open discussion." (p. 151.)