-Catholicism, the religion of Andrewes, Laud, Hammond, Butler, and
Wilson, is capable of being professed, acted on, and maintained on a
large sphere of action, or whether it be a mere modification or
transition-state of either Romanism or popular Protestantism." I trusted
that some day it would prove to be a substantive religion.

Lest I should be misunderstood, let me observe that this hesitation
about the validity of the theory of the _Via Media_ implied no doubt of
the three fundamental points on which it was based, as I have described
them above, dogma, the sacramental system, and anti-Romanism.

Other investigations which had to be followed up were of a still more
tentative character. The basis of the _Via Media_, consisting of the
three elementary points, which I have just mentioned, was clear enough;
but, not only had the house itself to be built upon them, but it had
also to be furnished, and it is not wonderful if, after building it,
both I and others erred in detail in determining what its furniture
should be, what was consistent with the style of building, and what was
in itself desirable. I will explain what I mean.

I had brought out in the "Prophetical Office" in what the Roman and the
Anglican systems differed from each other, but less distinctly in what
they agreed. I had indeed enumerated the Fundamentals, common to both,
in the following passage:--"In both systems the same Creeds are
acknowledged. Besides other points in common, we both hold, that certain
doctrines are necessary to be believed for salvation; we both believe in
the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement; in original
sin; in the necessity of regeneration; in the supernatural grace of the
Sacraments; in the Apostolical succession; in the obligation of faith
and obedience, and in the eternity of future punishment,"--pp. 55, 56.
So much I had said, but I had not said enough. This enumeration implied
a great many more points of agreement than were found in those very
Articles which were fundamental. If the two Churches were thus the same
in fundamentals, they were also one and the same in such plain
consequences as were contained in those fundamentals and in such natural
observances as outwardly represented them. It was an Anglican principle
that "the abuse of a thing doth not take away the lawful use of it;" and
an Anglican Canon in 1603 had declared that the English Church had no
purpose to forsake all that was held in the C