It is plain that the Author is rather describing what his Lectures were intended to be, than what they have turned out. He found it impossible to fulfil what he contemplated within the limits imposed upon him by the circumstances under which they were written. The very first objection which he took on starting, the alleged connection of the Movement of 1833 with the National Church, has afforded matter for the greater part of the course; and, before he had well finished the discussion of it, it was getting time to think of concluding, and that, in any such way as would give a character of completeness to the whole. Else, after the seventh Lecture, it had been his intention to proceed to the consideration of the alleged claim of the National Church on the allegiance of its members; of the alleged duty of our remaining in the communion in which we were born; of the alleged danger of trusting to reason; of the alleged right of the National Church to forbid doubt about its own claims; of the alleged uncertainty which necessarily attends the claims of any religion whatever; of the tests of certainty; of the relation of faith to reason; of the legitimate force of objections; and of the matter of Catholic evidence. He is ashamed to continue the list much further, lest he should seem to have been contemplating what was evidently impracticable; all he can say in extenuation is, that he never aimed at going more fully into any of the subjects of which he was to treat, than he has done in the sketches which now he presents to the reader. Lastly, he had proposed to end his course with a notice of the objections made by Protestants to particular doctrines, as Purgatory, Intercession of the Saints, and the like. Incomplete, however, as the Lectures may be with reference to the idea with which they were commenced, or compared with what might be said upon each subject which is successively treated, of course he makes no apology for the actual matter of them; else he should not have delivered or published them. It has not been his practice to engage in controversy with those who have felt it their duty to criticise what at any time he has written; but that will not preclude him, under present circumstances, from elucidating what is deficient in them by further observations, should questions be asked, which, either from the quarter whence they proceed, or from their intrinsic weight, have, according to his judgment, a claim upon his attention. BIRMINGHAM, July 14, 1850. PART I. COMMUNION WITH THE ROMAN SEE THE LEGITIMATE ISSUE OF THE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT OF 1833. LECTURE I. ON THE RELATION OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH TO THE NATION. THERE HERE are those, my brethren, who may think it strange, and even shocking, that, at this moment, when the liberalism of the age, after many previous attempts, is apparently at length about to get possession of the Church and Universities of the nation, any one like myself, who is a zealous upholder of the dogmatic principle in all its bearings, should be doing what little in him lies to weaken, even indirectly, Institutions which, with whatever shortcomings or errors, are the only political bulwarks of that principle left to us by the changes of the sixteenth century. For to help forward members of the Established Church towards the Catholic Religion, as I propose to do in these Lectures, what is this but, so far, to co-operate with a levelling party, who are the enemies of God, and truth, A |