It has been my conviction that in respect of the theory of the Faith, (though God be praised! not in the practical result,) the Papal and the Protestant communions are equi-distant from the true idea of the Gospel Institute, though erring from opposite directions. The Romanists sacrifice the Scripture to the Church virtually annulling the former: the Protestants reversed this practically, and even in theory, (see the above-mentioned Articles,) annulling the latter. The consequence has been, as might have been predicted, the extinction of the Spirit (the indifference or 'mesothesis') in both considered as bodies: for I doubt not that numerous individuals in both Churches live in communion with the Spirit. Towards the close of the reign of our first James, and during the period from the accession of Charles I to the restoration of his profligate son, there arose a party of divines, Arminians (and many of them Latitudinarians) in their creed, but devotees of the throne and the altar, soaring High Churchmen and ultra royalists. Much as I dislike their scheme of doctrine and detest their principles of government both in Church and State, I cannot but allow that they formed a galaxy of learning and talent, and that among them the Church of England finds her stars of the first magnitude. Instead of regarding the Reformation established under Edward VI as imperfect, they accused the Reformers, some of them openly, but all in their private opinions, of having gone too far; and while they were willing to keep down (and if they could not reduce him to a primacy of honor to keep out) the Pope, and to prune away the innovations in doctrine brought in under the Papal domination, they were zealous to restore the hierarchy, and to substitute the authority of the Fathers, Canonists and Councils of the first six or seven centuries, and the least Papistic of the later Doctors and Schoolmen, for the names of Luther, Melancthon, Bucer, Calvin and the systematic theologians who rejected all testimony but that of their Bible. As far as the principle, on which Archbishop Laud and his followers acted, went to re-actuate the idea of the Church, as a co-ordinate and living Power by right of Christ's institution and express promise, I go along with them; but I soon discover that by the Church they meant the Clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, and then I fly off from them in a tangent. For it is this very interpretation of the Church that, according to my conviction, constituted the first and fundamental apostasy; and I hold it for one of the greatest mistakes of our polemic divines in their controversies with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions of the Gospel faith to the Papacy.