Were I to designate, dear Hooker, the branch of study which has fallen into the most unreasonable neglect, and which yet would overpay, with most abundant, and with richest fruits, the utmost cost of prosecution, it should be without a doubt, the study of _Church History_. “It is not St. Augustine’s nor St. Ambrose’s works,” Lord Bacon well remarks,[1] “that will make so wise a divine”--he might as well have said, _so wise a man_--“as ecclesiastical history, thoroughly read and observed.” “There is, in good truth,”--we justify, while we illustrate, the words of the great Philosopher, by the language of one who is himself their living illustration, the present Principal of King’s College, London,[2] “there is, in good truth, no way so certain to lead us to truth, no way so certain to lead us to _fixed, calm, and Christian views in divinity_ as the study of it, _by the way of history_. If we take up a ‘system of divinity,’ whether in the shape of a body of Articles, or a regular treatise, comprising a discussion of all the great points of the Christian covenant, useful and necessary as such things are, each in its own way, yet it cannot be but that they present all these great points to us in a controversial view and with a controversial air. This surely cannot be desirable. Our concern with the great doctrines of the Gospel covenant is to govern our hearts, lives, thoughts and words by them, to bring the whole man into subjection to those awful truths which God himself revealed to us in order to teach us how we are to live here, and how to live with him hereafter.” Now it is precisely these “fixed, calm, and Christian views in divinity” which, in this age, and especially in this country, are most wanted--which are sought for in vain in the din of religious controversy and the stir of religious excitement--and for the want of which, to the joy of the infidel, and to the shame and grief of the meek searcher after truth, who would walk humbly with his God, Christianity, at times, appears almost unchristianised. And the inquiries which would lead men to them--which securing to us, upon the certain warrant of “Holy Scripture and ancient authors,” a sound rule of faith, should establish for us a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion, and as it were, domesticate among us that serene and dovelike Christianity, which the sweetest spirit of our age[3] illustrates well, when he speaks of the “_soothing tendency_” of the Prayer-book--am I not right when I say, that, as Christians, not only, but as patriots and philosophers, there are no investigations more worthy of us--and do I greatly err in the belief, that already, among the thoughtful and the good, there is a preparation to receive them favourably, and to bestow on those who lead the way that best reward and most distinguished honour, their confidence and acquiescence?