Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Speech in the Case of the Office of the Judge Promoted by the Bishop of Salisbury Against Williams, and the Criminal Articles Against Dr. R. Williams
Tures and the Doctrine of Revelation. In the 36th number of that work - the number for October, 1860 - 1 find in a review upon what is called Nee Christianity, a highly eulogistic review of this work, Essays and Reviews. At page 294, are these words: We speak of this book as a joint production, and not as a mere collection of essays; for such, notwithstanding its outward form, it undoubtedly is. We are quite aware that there is no formal connection in the argument and we read in the preface that it has been written without concert or comparison. At the bottom of that page the reviewer says: If, again, we speak of this book as aggressive, we do so advisedly. No fair mind can close this volume without feeling it to be at bottom in direct antagonism to the whole system of popular belief. They profess, indeed, to come forward as defenders of the creeds against attacks from without, but their hardest blows fall not on the assaulting, but on the resisting, force. They throw themselves into the breach, but their principal care is to clear it from its oldest and stoutest defenders. In object, in spirit, and in method, in details no less than in general design, this book is incom patible with the religious belief of the mass of the Christian public, and the broad principles on which the Protestantism of Englishmen rests. The most elaborate reasoning, to prove that they are in harmony, can never be anything but futile, and ends in becoming insincere. All attempts to show that these opinions are in accordance with Scripture, the Articles, the Liturgy, or the Church, have little practical value, and do no small practical harm. Such reasoning may ease the conscience of troubled inquirers, but it is powerless to persuade the mass that that is, after all, the true meaning of that which they have been taught and have believed. Just as their instinct repudiated the ingenious attempts of the Tractarian writers to build a semi-romish system on the dogmas of our Church, just so it will revolt from' any attempt, however sincere, to graft the results and the principles of rationalism on the popular Christianity of the day. Is the crumbling edifice of orthodoxy to be supported by sweeping away the whole of its substructure, and Christian divines taught cheerfully to surrender all that the most exacting criticism assails? The mass of ordinary believers may well ask to be protected from such friends, as their worst and most dangerous enemies. Is it reasonable to suppose that, at this time of day, the Christian world will consent to reconsider the whole of its positions, to develope its cardinal doctrines into.
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