PREFACE.

THERE is one feature in the following pages which requires explanation, lest it should seem to exhibit and encourage the very errors against which they are intended as a warning. It is, the absence of reference, first, to the authority of other writers in support of opinions; and, secondly, to historical facts in illustration of principles, which properly constitute the philosophy of history.

The former deficiency has been caused by a temporary separation from books, which has prevented the fulfilment of an original intention to arrange the same ideas, as might easily have been done, in the very words of men whose names would have commanded reverence- of Plato and Aristotle, of Cicero and Seneca, of Hooker

and Bacon, of Butler and Burke, of our own lawgivers and jurists, of the Fathers of ancient Christendom, and especially of the great philosophers and divines of our own Anglican Church.

The other deficiency is intentional. For reasons elsewhere explained, historical facts cannot safely be made the grounds of political science. Induction is not the mode in which Christians will search for principles, where Revelation has provided them already. And even in their proper place, as illustrations and confirmations of principles, their evidence is often so suspected, motives are so disputed, circumstances so confused, causes and effects so hidden, and when traced out so questionable, that by resting on them we run the risk of diverting attention from certain truth to doubtful arguments, and of losing the demonstrable principle from its connexion with the disputed fact. Theory, indeed, is valueless and mischievous as opposed to facts. But truths, however general and abstract, which have been conveyed to men by Christianity, are as much facts, and are as much supported by the proper evidence of all historical

facts the testimony of the senses currence in history.

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It is idle to suppose that political theories of any kind can be put forward without meeting with condemnation. And even where truth is maintained, it is hard to avoid all occasion for just censure in the mode of stating it. A firm belief will often seem to slide into dogmatism, and the authority with which those are bound to speak who would speak only under the authority of their Church must sound like arrogance. We must seem, while avoiding one extreme of error, to be approaching its opposite, and to omit one face of the whole truth, while occupied with another. And there are real and just grounds for anxiety in the present day, which may well excuse more than ordinary distrust and suspicion.

I have endeavoured, as much as possible, to avoid occasions for misapprehensions even in the use of words. And where the word 'Catholic' has been used, it has been retained lest by degrees a title so venerable, and so necessary for the defence of the gospel of Christ, should

come to be appropriated, whether by Romanists or others, in a peculiar sense not warranted by genuine Christian antiquity.

If a deep and awful reverence for our blessed Mother Church of England; if a belief, confirmed by every inquiry, that her doctrines are consonant with Scripture, with Apostolical teaching, with true reason; if an earnest desire to abstain from every opinion which she would condemn, to submit to her lawful rulers, and to serve her only as she herself calls upon her ministers to serve her; and if a painful but deeprooted conviction, drawn both from personal observation and from reading, that, whatever be the virtues of individual Romanists, the system of the Papacy itself is essentially and radically anti-christian, and can only be corrected by the entire abandonment of its fundamental articles; —if these things, openly and consistently professed and acted on, and at great sacrifices of personal interest and feeling, cannot save servants of the Church from the charge of meditating its corruption and inclining to its bitterest enemies, little remains but boldly to maintain the truth