struggles. Protestantism it is that has created him into this child
and heir of liberty; Protestantism it is that has invested him with
these unbounded privileges of private judgment, giving him in one
moment the sublime powers of a Pope within his own conscience; but
Protestantism it is that has introduced him to the most dreadful
of responsibilities.

I repeat that the twin maxims, the columns of Hercules through
which Protestantism entered the great sea of human activities, were
originally but two aspects of one law: to deny the Papal control
over men's conscience being to affirm man's self-control, was,
therefore, to affirm man's universal right to toleration, which
again implied a corresponding _duty_ of toleration. Under
this bi-fronted law, generated by Protestantism, but in its turn
regulating Protestantism, _Phil._ undertakes to develope all
the principles that belong to a Protestant church. The _seasonableness_
of such an investigation--its critical application to an evil now
spreading like a fever through Europe--he perceives fully, and in
the following terms he expresses this perception:--


'That we stand on the brink of a great theological crisis, that
the problem must soon be solved, how far orthodox Christianity
is possible for those who are not behind their age in scholarship
and science; this is a solemn fact, which may be ignored by the
partisans of short-sighted bigotry, but which is felt by all, and
confessed by most of those who are capable of appreciating its reality
and importance. The deep Sibylline vaticinations of Coleridge's
philosophical mind, the practical working of Arnold's religious
sentimentalism, and the open acknowledgment of many divines who are