perfection, will it not make us wish to cure the provincialism of the
Nonconformists, not by making Churchmen provincial along with them,
but by letting their popular church discipline, formerly found in the
National Church, and still found in the affections and practice of a
good part of the nation, appear in the National Church once more; and
thus to bring Nonconformists into contact again, as their greater
fathers were, with the main stream of national life? Why should not
a Presbyterian or Congregational Church, based on this considerable
and important, though not essential principle, of the congregation's
power in the church management, be established,--with equal rank for
its chiefs with the chiefs of Episcopacy, and with admissibility of
its ministers, under a revised system of patronage and preferment, to
benefices,--side by side with the Episcopal Church, as the Calvinist
and Lutheran Churches are established side by side in France and
Germany? Such a Congregational Church would unite the main bodies of
Protestants who are now separatists; and [xliv] separation would
cease to be the law of their religious order. Then,--through this
concession on a really considerable point of difference,--that
endless splitting into hole-and-corner churches on quite
inconsiderable points of difference, which must prevail so long as
separatism is the first law of a Nonconformist's religious existence,
would be checked. Culture would then find a place among English
followers of the popular authority of elders, as it has long found it
among the followers of Episcopal jurisdiction; and this we should
gain by merely recognising, regularising, and restoring an element
which appeared once in the reformed National Church, and which is
considerable and national enough to have a sound claim to appear
there still.

So far, then, is culture from making us unjust to the Nonconformists