In truth, the evils of the last century were but the inevitable fruits of the long ascendency of Mr. Newman’s favourite principles.  Christ’s religion had been corrupted in the long period before the Reformation, but it had ever retained many of its main truths, and it was easy, when the appeal was once made to Scripture, to sweep away the corruptions, and restore it in its perfect form; but Christ’s church had been destroyed so long and so completely, that its very idea was all but lost, and to revive it actually was impossible.  What had been known under that name,—­I am speaking of Christ’s church, be it observed, as distinguished from Christ’s religion,—­was so great an evil, that, hopeless of drawing any good from it, men looked rather to Christ’s religion as all in all; and content with having destroyed the false church, never thought that the scheme of Christianity could not be perfectly developed without the restoration of the true one.  But the want was deeply felt, and its consequences were deplorable.  At this moment men are truly craving something deeper than satisfied the last century; they crave to have the true church of Christ, which the last century was without.  Mr. Newman perceives their want, and again offers them that false church which is worse than none at all.

The truths of the Christian religion are to be sought for in the Scripture alone; they are the same at all times and in all countries.  With the Christian church it is otherwise; the church is not a revelation concerning the unchangeable and eternal God, but an institution to enable changeable man to apprehend the unchangeable.  Because man is changeable, the church is also changeable; changeable, not in its object, which is for ever one and the same, but in its means for effecting that object; changeable in its details, because the same treatment cannot suit various diseases, various climates, various constitutional peculiarities, various external influences.

The Scripture, then, which is the sole and direct authority for all the truths of the Christian religion, is not in the same way, an authority for the constitution and rules of the Christian church; that is, it does not furnish direct authority, but guides us only by analogy:  or it gives us merely certain main principles, which we must apply to our own various circumstances.  This is shown by the remarkable fact, that neither our Lord nor his apostles have left any commands with respect to the constitution and administration of the church generally.  Commands in abundance they have left us on moral matters; and one commandment of another kind has been added, the commandment, namely, to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  “Do this in remembrance of me,” are our Lord’s words; and St. Paul tells us, if we could otherwise have doubted it, that this remembrance is to be kept up for ever.  “As often as ye eat that bread or drink that cup ye do show the Lord’s death till he come.”  This is the one perpetual