Paul, too, be it remembered, condemned disunion in the society of Christians as much as he declined politics. This does not, we freely own, make against the Puritans' refusal to take the law from their adversaries, but it does make against their allegation that it does not matter whether the society of Christians is united or not, and that there are even great advantages in separatism. If Anglicans maintained that their church-order was written in Scripture and a matter of divine command, then, Congregationalists maintaining the same thing, to the controversy between them there could be no end. But now, Anglicans maintaining no such thing, but that their church-order is a matter of historic development and natural expediency, that it has _grown_,--which is evident enough,--and that the essence of Christianity is in no-wise concerned with such matters, why should not the Nonconformists adopt this moderate view of the case, which constrains them to no admission of inferiority, but only to the renouncing an imagined divine superiority and to the recognition of an existing fact, and allow Church bishops as a development of Catholic antiquity, just as they have allowed Church music and Church architecture, which are developments of the same? Then might there arise a mighty and undistracted power of joint life, which would transform, indeed, the doctrines of priestly absolution and the real presence, but which would transform, equally, the so-called _Scriptural Protestantism_ of imputed righteousness, and which would do more for real righteousness and for Christianity than has ever been done yet. Tillotson's proposals for comprehension, drawn up in 1689, cannot be too much studied at the present juncture. These proposals, with which his name and that of Stillingfleet, two of the most estimable names in the English Church, are specially associated, humiliate no one, refute no one; they take the basis of existing facts, and endeavour to build on it a solid union. They are worth quoting entire, and I conclude with them. Their details our present circumstances would modify; their spirit any sound plan of Church-reform must take as its rule. '1. That the ceremonies enjoined or recommended in the Liturgy or Canons be left indifferent. '2. That the Liturgy be carefully reviewed, and such alterations and changes be therein made as may supply the defects and remove as much as possible all ground of exception to any part of it, by leaving out the apocryphal lessons and correcting the translation of the psalms used in the public service where there is need of it, and in many other particulars.