The pamphlet before us, to which he has put his name, is the most
important, perhaps, of all that have been elicited by the deep interest
felt in the matter on which it treats. Besides its importance as the
expression of the opinion, and, it must be added, the anxieties of a
leading statesman, it has two intrinsic advantages. It undertakes to
deal closely and strictly with those facts in the case mainly belonging
to the period of the Reformation, on which the great stress has been
laid in the arguments both against our liberty and our very being as a
Church. And, further, it gives us on these facts, and, in connection
with them, on the events of the crisis itself, the judgment and the
anticipations of a mind at once deeply imbued with religious
philosophy, and also familiar with the consideration of constitutional
questions, and accustomed to view them in their practical entanglements
as well as in their abstract and ideal forms. It is, indeed, thus only
that the magnitude and the true extent of the relations of the present
contest can be appreciated. The intrinsic greatness, indeed, of
religious interests cannot receive addition of dignity here. But the
manner of treating them may. And Mr. Gladstone has done what was both
due to the question at issue, and in the highest degree important for
its serious consideration and full elucidation, in raising it from a
discussion of abstract principles to what it is no less--a real problem
of English constitutional law.

The following passage will show briefly the ground over which the
discussion travels:--

The questions, then, that I seek to examine will be as follow:--

1. Did the statutes of the Reformation involve the abandonment of
the duty of the Church to be the guardian of her faith?