The good of comprehension in a national Church is, that the larger and more various the body of members, the more elements of power and life the Church will contain, the more points will there be of contact, the more mutual support and stimulus, the more growth in perfection both of thought and practice. The waste of power from not comprehending the Puritans in the national Church is measured by the number and value of elements which Puritanism could supply towards the collective growth of the whole body. The national Church would grow more vigorously towards a higher stage of insight into religious truth, and consequently towards a greater perfection of practice, if it had these elements; and this is why we wish for the Puritans in the Church. But, meanwhile, Puritanism will not contribute to the common growth, mainly because it believes that a certain set of opinions or scheme of theological doctrine is _the gospel_; that it is possible and profitable to extract this, and that Puritans have done so; and that it is the duty of men, who like themselves have extracted it, to separate themselves from those who have not, and to set themselves apart that they may profess it purely. To disabuse them of this error, which, by preventing collective life, prevents also collective growth, it is necessary to show them that their extracted scheme of theological doctrine is not really _the gospel_; and that at any rate, therefore, it is not worth their while to separate themselves, and to frustrate the hope of growth in common, merely for this scheme's sake. And even if it were true, as they allege, that the national and historic Churches of Christendom do equally with Puritanism hold this scheme, or main parts of it, still it would be to Puritanism, and not to the historic Churches, that in showing the invalidity and unscripturalness of this scheme we should address ourselves, because the Puritan Churches found their very existence on it, and the historic Churches do not. And not founding their existence on it, nor falling into separatism for it, the historic Churches have a collective life which is very considerable, and a power of growth, even in respect of the very scheme of doctrine in question, supposing them to hold it, far greater than any which the Puritan Churches show, but which would be yet greater and more fruitful still, if the historic Churches combined the large and admirable contingent of Puritanism with their own forces. Therefore, as we have said, it is out of no sort of malice or ill-will, but from esteem for their fine qualities and from desire for their help, that we have addressed ourselves to the Puritans. We propose to complete now our dealings with this subject by showing how, as a matter of fact, the Church of England (which is the historic Church practically in question so far as Puritanism is concerned) seems to us to have displayed with respect to those very tenets which we have criticised,