So long as the well-known habit, on which we have so often enlarged, prevails amongst our countrymen, of holding mechanically their ideas themselves, but making it their chief aim to work with energy and enthusiasm for the organisations which profess those ideas, English Puritanism is not likely to make such a return upon its own thoughts, and upon the elements of its being, as to accomplish for itself an operation of the kind needed; though it has men whose natural faculties, were they but free to use them, would undoubtedly prove equal to the task. The same habit prevents our Puritans from being reached by philosophical works, which exist in sufficient numbers and of which M. Reuss's history of the growth of Christian theology[18] is an admirable specimen,--works where the entire scheme of Pauline doctrine is laid out with careful research and impartial accuracy. To give effect to the predominant points in Paul's teaching, and to exhibit these in so plain and popular a manner as to invite and almost compel men's comprehension, is not the design of such works; and only by writings with this design in view will English Puritanism be reached. [Footnote 18: _Histoire de la Théologie Chrétienne au Siècle Apostolique_, par Edouard Reuss; Strasbourg et Paris (in 2 vols. 8vo.) There is now (1875) an English translation of M. Reuss's work.] Our one qualification for the business in hand lies in that belief of ours, so much contested by our countrymen, of the primary needfulness of seeing things as they really are, and of the greater importance of ideas than of the machinery which exists for them. If by means of letting our consciousness work quite freely, and by following the methods of studying and judging thence generated, we are shown that we ought in real truth neither to abase St. Paul and Puritanism together, as M. Renan does, nor to abase St. Paul but exalt Puritanism, nor yet to exalt both Puritanism and St. Paul together, but rather to abase Puritanism and exalt St. Paul, then we cannot but think that even for Puritanism itself, also, it will be the best, however unpalatable, to be shown this. Puritanism certainly wishes well to St. Paul; it cannot wish to compromise him by an unintelligent adhesion to him and a blind adoption of his words, instead of being a true child to him. Yet this is what it has really done. What in St. Paul is secondary and subordinate, Puritanism has made primary and essential; what in St Paul is figure and belongs to the sphere of feeling, Puritanism has transported into the sphere of intellect and made formula. On the other hand, what is with St. Paul primary, Puritanism has treated as subordinate: and what is with him thesis, and belonging (so far as anything in religion can properly be said thus to belong) to the sphere of intellect, Puritanism has made image and figure.