short of authoritative definition, and was so regarded in the Anglican formularies.  These formularies implied the authority of the Church to speak; and what was defined on this authority was based on good evidence, though there were portions of its teaching which had even better.  The other point was more serious.  “Your theory,” was the objection, “is nothing but a paper theory; it never was a reality; it never can be.  There may be an ideal halting-place, there is neither a logical nor an actual one, between Romanism and the ordinary negations of Protestantism.”  The answer to the challenge then was, “Let us see if it cannot be realised.  It has recognised foundations to build upon, and the impediments and interruptions which have hindered it are well known.  Let us see if it will not turn out something more than a paper theory.”  That was the answer given at the time, abandoned ten years afterwards.  But this at least may be said, that the longer experience of the last fifty years has shown that the Church of England has been working more and more on such a theory, and that the Church of England, whatever its faults may be, is certainly not a Church only on paper.

But on the principles laid down in this volume, the Roman controversy, in its varying forms, was carried on—­for the time by Mr. Newman, permanently by the other leaders of the movement.  In its main outlines, the view has become the accepted Anglican view.  Many other most important matters have come into the debate.  The publicly altered attitude of the Papacy has indefinitely widened the breach between England and Rome.  But the fundamental idea of the relations and character of the two Churches remains the same as it was shadowed forth in 1836.

One very important volume on these questions ought not to be passed by without notice.  This was the Treatise on the Church of Christ, 1838, by Mr. W. Palmer, who had already by his Origines of the English Ritual, 1832, done much to keep up that interest of Churchmen in the early devotional language of the Church, which had first been called forth by Bishop Lloyd’s lectures on the Prayer Book.  The Treatise on the Church was an honour to English theology and learning; in point of plan and structure we have few books like it.[72] It is comprehensive, methodical, well-compacted, and, from its own point of view, exhaustive.  It is written with full knowledge of the state of the question at the time, both on the Anglican side and on the Roman.  Its author evades no objection, and is aware of most.  It is rigorous in form, and has no place for anything but substantial argument.  It is a book which, as the Apologia tells us, commanded the respect of such an accomplished controversialist as Perrone; and, it may be added, of a theologian of an opposite school, Dr. Doellinger.  It is also one on which the highest value has been set by Mr. Gladstone.  It is remarkable that it did not exercise more influence