So long as the Puritans thought that the essence of Christianity was their doctrine of predestination or of justification, it was natural that they should stand out, at any cost, for this essence. That is why, when the 'Zeit-Geist' and the general movement of men's religious ideas is beginning to reveal that the Puritan gospel is not the essence of Christianity, we have been desirous to spread this revelation to the best of our power, and by all the aids of plain popular exposition to help it forward. Because, when once it is clear that the essence of Christianity is not Puritan solifidianism, it can hardly long be maintained that the essence of Christianity is Puritan church-order. When once the way is made clear, by removing the solifidian heresy, to look and see what the essence of Christianity really is, it cannot but soon force itself upon our minds that the essence of Christianity is something not very far, at any rate, from this: _Grace and peace by the annulment of our ordinary self through the mildness and sweet reasonableness of Jesus Christ_. This is the more particular description of that general ground, already laid down, of the Christian Church's existence: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity_. If this general ground, particularised in the way above given, is not 'the sincere milk' of the evangelical word, it is, at all events, something very like it. And matters of machinery and outward form, like church-order, have not only nothing essentially to do with the sincere milk of Christianity, but are the very matters about which this sincere milk should make us easy and yielding.