Therefore, my dear brethren, act up to your professions.  Let it not be said that you have neglected a gift; for if you have the Spirit of the Apostles on you, surely this is a great gift.  “Stir up the gift of God which is in you.”  Make much of it.  Show your value of it.  Keep it before your minds as an honourable badge, far higher than that secular respectability, or cultivation, or polish, or learning, or rank, which gives you a hearing with the many.  Tell them of your gift.  The times will soon drive you to do this, if you mean to be still anything.  But wait not for the times.  Do not be compelled, by the world’s forsaking you, to recur as if unwillingly to the high source of your authority.  Speak out now, before you are forced, both as glorying in your privilege and to insure your rightful honour from your people.  A notion has gone abroad that they can take away your power.  They think they have given and can take it away.  They think it lies in the Church property, and they know that they have politically the power to confiscate that property.  They have been deluded into a notion that present palpable usefulness, producible results, acceptableness to your flocks, that these and such like are the tests of your divine commission.  Enlighten them in this matter.  Exalt our Holy Fathers the bishops, as the representatives of the Apostles, and the Angels of the Churches; and magnify your office, as being ordained by them to take part in their Ministry.

But, if you will not adopt my view of the subject, which I offer to you, not doubtingly, yet (I hope) respectfully, at all events, CHOOSE YOUR SIDE.  To remain neuter much longer will be itself to take a part. Choose your side; since side you shortly must, with one or other party, even though you do nothing.  Fear to be of those whose line is decided for them by chance circumstances, and who may perchance find themselves with the enemies of Christ, while they think but to remove themselves from worldly politics.  Such abstinence is impossible in troublous times.  HE THAT IS NOT WITH ME IS AGAINST ME, AND HE THAT GATHERETH NOT WITH ME SCATTERETH ABROAD.

While Mr. Palmer was working at the Association and the Address, Mr. Newman with his friends was sending forth the Tracts, one after another, in rapid succession, through the autumn and winter of 1833.  They were short papers, in many cases mere short notes, on the great questions which had suddenly sprung into such interest, and were felt to be full of momentous consequence,—­the true and essential nature of the Christian Church, its relation to the primitive ages, its authority and its polity and government, the current objections to its claims in England, to its doctrines and its services, the length of the prayers, the Burial Service, the proposed alterations in the Liturgy, the neglect of discipline, the sins and corruptions of each branch of Christendom.  The same topics were enforced