It appears to me, that dividing the Church of England into two æras--the first from Ridley to Field, or from Edward VI. to the commencement of the latter third of the reign of James I, and the second ending with Bull and Stillingfleet, we might characterize their comparative excellences thus: That the divines of the first æra had a deeper, more genial, and a more practical insight into the mystery of Redemption, in the relation of man toward both the act and the author, namely, in all the inchoative states, the regeneration and the operations of saving grace generally;--while those of the second æra possessed clearer and distincter views concerning the nature and necessity of Redemption, in the relation of God toward man, and concerning the connection of Redemption with the article of Tri-unity; and above all, that they surpassed their predecessors in a more safe and determinate scheme of the divine economy of the three persons in the one undivided Godhead. This indeed, was mainly owing to Bishop Bull's masterly work 'De Fide Nicæna', [2] which in the next generation Waterland so admirably maintained, on the one hand, against the philosophy of the Arians,--the combat ending in the death and burial of Arianism, and its descent and 'metempsychosis' into Socinianism, and thence again into modern Unitarianism,--and on the other extreme, against the oscillatory creed of Sherlock, now swinging to Tritheism in the recoil from Sabellianism, and again to Sabellianism in the recoil from Tritheism. Ib. First, we are to consider this fullness to have been in Christ, and then, from this fullness arose his merits; we can consider no merit in Christ himself before, whereby he should merit this fullness; for this fullness was in him before he merited any thing; and but for this fullness he had not so merited. 'Ille homo, ut in unitatem filii Dei assumeretur, unde meruit'? How did that man (says St. Augustine, speaking of Christ, as of the son of man), how did that man merit to be united in one person with the eternal Son of God? 'Quid egit ante? Quid credidit'? What had he done? Nay, what had he believed? Had he either faith or works before that union of both natures? Dr. Donne and St. Augustine said this without offence; but I much question whether the same would be endured now. That it is, however, in the spirit of Paul and of the Gospel, I doubt not to affirm, and that this great truth is obscured by what in my judgment is the post-Apostolic 'Christopædia', I am inclined to think. Ib.