had neglected; nor do they, in any especial manner, “preach Christ.”  In this they offer a striking contrast to the religious movement, if I may so call it, which began some years since in the University at Cambridge.  That movement, whatever human alloy might have mingled with it, bore on it most clear evidence that it was in the main God’s work.  It called upon men to turn from sin and be reconciled to God; it emphatically preached Christ crucified.  But Mr. Newman and his friends have preached as their peculiar doctrine, not Christ but the Church; we must go even farther and say, not the Church, but themselves.  What they teach has no moral or spiritual excellence in itself; but it tends greatly to their own exaltation.  They exalt the sacraments highly, but all that they say of their virtue, all their admiration of them as so setting forth the excellence of faith, inasmuch as in them the whole work is of God, and man has only to receive and believe, would be quite as true, and quite as well-grounded, if they were to abandon altogether that doctrine which it is their avowed object especially to enforce—­the doctrine of apostolical succession.  Referring again to the preamble of their original resolutions, already quoted, we see that the two first articles alone relate to our Lord and to his Sacraments; the third, which is the great basis of their system, relates only to the Clergy.  Doubtless, if apostolical succession be God’s will, it is our duty to receive it and to teach it; but a number of clergymen, claiming themselves to have this succession, and insisting that, without it, neither Christ nor Christ’s Sacraments will save us, do, beyond all contradiction, preach themselves, and magnify their own importance.  They are quite right in doing so, if God has commanded it; but such preaching has no manifest warrant of God in it; if it be according to God, it stands alone amongst his dispensations; his prophets and his apostles had a different commission.  “We preach,” said St. Paul, “not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.”  It is certain that the enforcing apostolical succession as the great object of our teaching is precisely to do that very thing which St. Paul was commissioned not to do.

This, to my mind, affords a very great presumption that the peculiar doctrines of Mr. Newman and his friends, those which they make it their professed business to inculcate, are not of God.  I am anxious not to be misunderstood in saying this.  Mr. Newman and his friends preach many doctrines which are entirely of God; as Christians, as ministers of Christ’s Church, they preach God’s word; and thus, a very large portion of their teaching is of God, blessed both to their hearers and to themselves.  Nay, even amongst the particular objects to which their own “Resolutions” pledge them, one is indeed most excellent—­“the revival of daily common prayer, and more frequent participation of the Lord’s Supper.”  This is their