On a review of these several works by which the Church of England was restored, it can scarcely fail to be matter of admiration and wonder, that so fair a fabric should have risen under the hands of the Reformers out of such disorder, almost at once; that in the very agony of a first attempt they should have thrown off a comprehensive scheme of doctrine and devotion which scarcely called for any subsequent revision; that they should not only have hewn out such admirable materials, but have brought them, too, in so short a season, to so excellent a work. In this our day (overcast and troubled as it is) we can, perhaps, scarcely transfer ourselves, even in imagination, to the tumultuous age of a Cranmer and a Ridley, or fully appreciate the sagacity which, under God’s blessing, conducted them through such conflicting elements with such signal triumph. Yet so it was; and with the gorgeous ceremonies of the church they had grown up in soliciting their senses on the one hand, endeared, too, by all the holy recollections of their youth and even manhood; and contempt for all decency of apparel and ritual, the natural reaction of former abuses, assailing them on the other; these judicious men yielded themselves to neither extreme, but adopting the _middle way_, (alas! that Milton should bestow upon them no better title for this than that of halting prelates,[395]) left us a church alike removed from ostentation and meanness, from admiration of ornament and disdain of it; a church retaining so much reverence for ancient customs, and ancient forms, as not rashly to abolish them, and only so much as not to adopt them blindly. Under the guidance of this principle it was brought to pass that though this same church was not made to discover the material flesh and blood of our Lord in the communion, it was taught to discover (whatever Bishop Hoadley may say to the contrary) more than mere commemorative emblems; that while she does not presume to limit the regenerating influence of the Holy Ghost to the single mode of baptism, and exclude from all possible admission into heaven every soul of man which has not partaken of that rite, for “the Spirit which works by means may be not tied to means,”[396] she declares it generally necessary to salvation; that whilst she teaches the absolute need of a Saviour and of a Spirit, to restore in us that image of God which was greviously defaced by the fall, and imputes such restoration to the merits of a Saviour and the influence of the Spirit, she thinks it of inferior consequence to determine how far gone from original righteousness we may be, resting satisfied with the assertion (to the truth of which every one who knows his own heart must subscribe) that we are at any rate “very far gone,” “_quam longissime_,” as far as it is possible, consistently with the possession of a moral nature at all, and responsibility for our actions; that whilst she does not allow marriage to be a sacrament, as remembering, that it is