serious danger of leading the vulgar to regard it as a charm. Hooker
should have asked--Has it hitherto had this effect on Christians
generally? Is it likely to produce this effect and this principally? In
common honesty he must have answered, No!--Do I then blame the Church of
England for retaining this ceremony? By no means. I justify it as a wise
and pious condescension to the inveterate habits of a people newly
dragged, rather than drawn, out of Papistry; and as a pledge that the
founders and fathers of the Reformation in England regarded innovation
as 'per se' an evil, and therefore requiring for its justification not
only a cause, but a weighty cause. They did well and piously in
deferring the removal of minor spots and stains to the time when the
good effects of the more important reforms had begun to shew themselves
in the minds and hearts of the laity.--But they do not act either wisely
or charitably who would eulogize these 'maculae' as beauty-spots and
vindicate as good what their predecessors only tolerated as the lesser
evil.

12th Aug. 1826.


Ib. 15. p. 424.

For in actions of this kind we are more to respect what the greatest
part of men is commonly prone to conceive, than what some few men's
wits may devise in construction of their own particular meanings.
Plain it is, that a false opinion of some personal divine excellency
to be in those things which either nature or art hath framed causeth
always religious adoration.

How strongly might this most judicious remark be turned against Hooker's