The Evangelical party in the Church of England we must always, certainly, have a disposition to treat with forbearance, inasmuch as this party has so strongly loved what is indeed the most loveable of things,--religion. They have also avoided that unblessed mixture of politics and religion by which both politics and religion are spoilt. This, however, would not alone have prevented our making them jointly answerable with the Puritans for that body of opinions which calls itself Scriptural Protestantism, but which is, in truth, a perversion of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. But there is this difference between the Evangelical party in the Church of England and the Puritans outside her;--the Evangelicals have not added to the first error of holding this unsound body of opinions, the second error of separating for them. They have thus, as we have already noticed, escaped the mixing of politics and religion, which arises directly and naturally out of this separating for opinions. But they have also done that which we most blame Nonconformity for not doing;--they have left themselves in the way of development. Practically they have admitted that the Christian Church is built, not on the foundation of Lutheran and Calvinist dogmas, but on the foundation: _Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity._[1] Mr. Ryle or the Dean of Ripon may have as erroneous notions as to what _truth_ and _the gospel_ really is, as Mr. Spurgeon or the President of the Wesleyan Conference; but they do not tie themselves tighter still to these erroneous notions, nor do their best to cut themselves off from outgrowing them, by resolving _to have no fellowship with the man of sin_ who holds different notions. On the contrary, they are worshippers in the same Church, professors of the same faith, ministers of the same confraternity, as men who hold that their _Scriptural Protestantism_ is all wrong, and who hold other notions of their own quite at variance with it. And thus they do homage to an ideal of Christianity which is larger, higher, and better than either their notions or those of their opponents, and in respect of which both their notions and those of their opponents are inadequate; and this admission of the relative inadequacy of their notions is itself a stage towards the future admission of their positive inadequacy. [Footnote 1: II _Timothy_, ii, 19.]