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But we must proceed in our examination of his theory.  Having, as he conceives, proved that it is the duty of every government to profess some religion or other, right or wrong, and to establish that religion, he then comes to the question what religion a government ought to prefer; and he decides this question in favour of the form of Christianity established in England.  The Church of England is, according to him, the pure Catholic Church of Christ, which possesses the apostolical succession of ministers, and within whose pale is to be found that unity which is essential to truth.  For her decisions he claims a degree of reverence far beyond what she has ever, in any of her formularies, claimed for herself; far beyond what the moderate school of Bossuet demands for the Pope; and scarcely short of what that school would ascribe to Pope and General Council together.  To separate from her communion is schism.  To reject her traditions or interpretations of Scripture is sinful presumption.

Mr. Gladstone pronounces the right of private judgment, as it is generally understood throughout Protestant Europe, to be a monstrous abuse.  He declares himself favourable, indeed, to the exercise of private judgment, after a fashion of his own.  We have, according to him, a right to judge all the doctrines of the Church of England to be sound, but not to judge any of them to be unsound.  He has no objection, he assures us, to active inquiry into religious questions.  On the contrary, he thinks such inquiry highly desirable, as long as it does not lead to diversity of opinion; which is much the same thing as if he were to recommend the use of fire that will not burn down houses, or of brandy that will not make men drunk.  He conceives it to be perfectly possible for mankind to exercise their intellects vigorously and freely on theological subjects, and yet to come to exactly the same conclusions with each other and with the Church of England.  And for this opinion he gives, as far as we have been able to discover, no reason whatever, except that everybody who vigorously and freely exercises his understanding on Euclid’s Theorems assents to them.  “The activity of private judgment,” he truly observes, “and the unity and strength of conviction in mathematics vary directly as each other.”  On this unquestionable fact he constructs a somewhat questionable argument.  Everybody who freely inquires agrees, he says, with Euclid.  But the Church is as much in the right as Euclid.  Why, then, should not every free inquirer agree with the Church?  We could put many similar questions.  Either the affirmative or the negative of the proposition that King Charles wrote the Icon Basilike is as true as that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third side.  Why, then, do Dr. Wordsworth and Mr. Hallam agree in thinking two sides of a triangle greater than the third side, and yet differ about the genuineness of the Icon Basilike?