one individual church. Nobody would complain of _Phil._ if,
_after_ having deduced philosophically the principles upon
which all Protestant separation from Rome should revolve, he had
gone forward to show, that in some one of the Protestant churches,
more than in others, these principles had been asserted with
peculiar strength, or carried through with special consistency,
or associated pre-eminently with the other graces of a Christian
church, such as a ritual more impressive to the heart of man, or
a polity more symmetrical with the structure of English society.
Once having unfolded from philosophic grounds the primary conditions
of a pure scriptural church, _Phil._ might then, without blame,
have turned sharp round upon us, saying, such being the conditions
under which the great idea of a true Christian church must be
_constructed_, I now go on to show that the Church of England
has conformed to those conditions more faithfully than any other.
But to entangle the pure outlines of the idealizing mind with the
practical forms of any militant church, embarrassed (as we know
all churches to have been) by preoccupations of judgment, derived
from feuds too local and interests too political, moving too (as
we know all churches to have moved) in a spirit of compromise,
occasionally from mere necessities of position; this is in the
result to injure the object of the writer doubly: first, as leaving
an impression of partisanship the reader is mistrustful from
the first, as against a judge that, in reality, is an advocate;
second, without reference to the effect upon the reader, directly
to _Phil._ it is injurious, by fettering the freedom of his
speculations, or, if leaving their freedom undisturbed, by narrowing
their compass.

And, if _Phil._, as to the general movement of his Protestant