_a_. Now it has often been acknowledged by the opposite party, that the compilers of our Articles were not only Protestant, but Calvinistic, and what we now call Evangelical, in their religious views. It has often been felt and allowed, that, in the _plain and full meaning_ of these Articles, according to their _literal and grammatical sense_, which the royal Declaration peremptorily claims for them, without admitting of _any new sense_ whatever, they favour less the Laudians and the Arminians, than the Puritans and Calvinists. {9b} In this sense they are freely and confidently appealed to by the latter; and the appeal is ever most happily and strongly sustained by other appeals to the writings of the Reformers, in proof of what they meant. The true Protestants, therefore, are perceived to have always had the best of the controversy, when conducted by sustaining the full and literal sense on the one hand, and softening it down on the other:—wherefore it is now attempted, with a determination never shown before, not merely to incline the Articles to speak a softer Protestantism; but at once to seize them violently, and force them to an absolute recantation; or, to stifle them under the reiterated pressure of directly antagonist opinions; affirming, against evidence, that those opinions were _intended_ by the compilers to be admissible into the meaning! {11} They thus, in purpose, completely take away the old, and substitute a new confession of faith, whatever care may seem to be taken to retain the form of words. And, casting out the _Writings_ of our Reformers also, as a Court of Appeal, and proposing extraordinary additions to our Formularies, and various ceremonial innovations, they declare it to be their intention to _unprotestantize_ {12} the Church of England altogether, and to re-unite her, in due time, with the Church of Rome. And they are steadily and gradually advancing. While they are labouring with most devoted assiduity at this achievement, we, on the other hand, are firmly maintaining our old Church of England ground, standing by our old appeals as resolutely as ever, and humbly believing that the same GOD, who has for years been gradually and steadily increasing our numbers and our strength, will still go on to increase them, until the Church of England shall stand in the full and undisputed possession of the sons of her reforming fathers; and _true_ Anglo-catholicity shall be the share which the English _Protestant_ Church shall enjoy in Catholic Christianity throughout the world.