[Footnote 2:  The sixth and last mark which he gives of the unity of the Church is, “the unity of discipline and government.”  “All the Churches of God have the same pastoral guides appointed, authorized, sanctified, and set apart by the appointment of God, by the direction of the Spirit, to direct and lead the people of God in the same way of eternal salvation; as, therefore, there is no Church where there is no order, no ministry, so where the same order and ministry is, there is the same Church.  And this is the unity of regiment and discipline.”  Pearson on the Creed, Art.  IX. p. 341, seventh edit. fol. 1701.  It would be easy to put a construction upon this paragraph which I could agree with; but I suppose that Pearson meant what I hold to be an error.  Yet how gently and generally is it expressed; and this doubtful paragraph stands alone amidst seventeen folio pages on the article of the Holy Catholic Church.  And in his conclusion, where he delivers what “every one ought to intend when they profess to believe the Holy Catholic Church,” there is not a word about its government; nor is Pearson one of those interpreters who pervert the perfectly certain meaning of the word “Catholic” to favour their own notions about episcopacy.  I could cordially subscribe to every word of this conclusion.]

[Footnote 3:  “To believe, therefore, as the word stands in the front of the Creed, ... is to assent to the whole and every part of it as to a certain and infallible truth revealed by God, ... and delivered unto us in the writings of the blessed apostles and prophets immediately inspired, moved, and acted by God, out of whose writings this brief sum of necessary points of faith was first collected.” (P. 12.) And in the paragraph immediately preceding, Pearson had said, “The household of God is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, who are continued unto us only in their writings, and by them alone convoy unto us the truths which they received from God, upon whose testimony we believe.”  It appears, therefore, that Pearson not only subscribed the 6th Article of the Church of England, but also believed it.]

Many reasons, therefore, concur to make it doubtful whether the authors of the Tracts have discovered the true remedy for the evils of their age; whether they have really inculcated “something better and deeper than satisfied the last century.”  The violent prejudice which previously possessed them, and the strong feelings of passion and fear which led immediately to their first systematic publications, must in the first instance awaken a suspicion as to their wisdom; and this suspicion becomes stronger when we find their writings different from the best of those which they profess to admire, and bearing a close resemblance only to those of the nonjurors.  A third consideration is also of much weight—­that their doctrines do not enforce any great points of moral or spiritual perfection which other Christians