were as well fitted as they ever were to animate its defenders in the struggle with the unfriendly opinion of the day.  They could not open their Prayer-Books, and think of what they read there, without seeing that on the face of it the Church claimed to be something very different from what it was assumed to be in the current controversies of the time, very different from a mere institution of the State, from a vague collection of Christian professions from one form or denomination of religion among many, distinguished by larger privileges and larger revenues.  They could not help seeing that it claimed an origin not short of the Apostles of Christ, and took for granted that it was to speak and teach with their authority and that of their Master.  These were theological commonplaces; but now, the pressure of events and of competing ideas made them to be felt as real and momentous truths.  Amid the confusions and inconsistencies of the semi-political controversy on Church reform, and on the defects and rights of the Church, which was going on in Parliament, in the press, and in pamphlets, the deeper thoughts of those who were interested in its fortunes were turned to what was intrinsic and characteristic in its constitution:  and while these thoughts in some instances only issued in theory and argument, in others they led to practical resolves to act upon them and enforce them.

At the end of the first quarter of the century, say about 1825-30, two characteristic forms of Church of England Christianity were popularly recognised.  One inherited the traditions of a learned and sober Anglicanism, claiming as the authorities for its theology the great line of English divines from Hooker to Waterland, finding its patterns of devotion in Bishop Wilson, Bishop Horne, and the “Whole Duty of Man,” but not forgetful of Andrewes, Jeremy Taylor, and Ken,—­preaching, without passion or excitement, scholarlike, careful, wise, often vigorously reasoned discourses on the capital points of faith and morals, and exhibiting in its adherents, who were many and important, all the varieties of a great and far-descended school, which claimed for itself rightful possession of the ground which it held.  There was nothing effeminate about it, as there was nothing fanatical; there was nothing extreme or foolish about it; it was a manly school, distrustful of high-wrought feelings and professions, cultivating self-command and shy of display, and setting up as its mark, in contrast to what seemed to it sentimental weakness, a reasonable and serious idea of duty.  The divinity which it propounded, though it rested on learning, was rather that of strong common sense than of the schools of erudition.  Its better members were highly cultivated, benevolent men, intolerant of irregularities both of doctrine and life, whose lives were governed by an unostentatious but solid and unfaltering piety, ready to burst forth on occasion into fervid devotion.  Its worse members were jobbers