living examples of the spirit of the age, have all, in different
ways, foretold the advent of a Church of the Future.'


This is from the preface, p. ix., where the phrase, _Church of the
Future_, points to the Prussian minister's (Bunsen's) _Kirche
der Zukunft;_ but in the body of the work, and not far from its
close, (p. 114,) he recurs to this crisis, and more circumstantially.

_Phil._ embarrasses himself and his readers in this development
of Protestant principles. His own view of the task before him
requires that he should separate himself from the consideration of
any particular church, and lay aside all partisanship--plausible
or not plausible. It is his own overture that warrants us in
expecting this. And yet, before we have travelled three measured
inches, he is found entangling himself with Church of Englandism.
Let me not be misunderstood, as though, borrowing a Bentham word,
I were therefore a Jerry Benthamite: I, that may describe myself
generally as _Philo-Phil._, am not less a son of the 'Reformed
Anglican Church' than _Phil._ Consequently, it is not likely
that, in any vindication of that church, simply _as_ such,
and separately for itself, I should be the man to find grounds of
exception. Loving most of what _Phil._ loves, loving _Phil._
himself, and hating (I grieve to say), with a theological hatred,
whatever _Phil._ hates, why should I demur at this particular
point to a course of argument that travels in the line of my own
partialities? And yet I _do_ demur. Having been promised
a philosophic defence of the principles concerned in the great
European schism of the sixteenth century, suddenly we find ourselves
collapsing from that altitude of speculation into a defence of