s of those who desire to excite attention to the subject (in
which number the writers of these Tracts are to be included), it will
not be inappropriate briefly to state in this place what it is
conceived is the present position of the great body of Churchmen with
reference to it.

While we have cause to be thankful for the sounder and more accurate
language, which is now very generally adopted among well-judging men
on ecclesiastical subjects, we must beware of over-estimating what has
been done, and so becoming sanguine in our hopes of success, or
slackening our exertions to secure it. Many more persons, doubtless,
have taken up a profession of the main doctrine in question, that,
namely, of the one Catholic and Apostolic Church, than fully enter
into it. This was to be expected, it being the peculiarity of all
religious teaching, that words are imparted before ideas. A child
learns his Creed or Catechism before he understands it; and in
beginning any deep subject we are all but children to the end of our
lives. The instinctive perception of a rightly instructed mind, _prima
facie_ force of the argument, or the authority of our celebrated
writers, have all had their due and extensive influence in furthering
the reception of the doctrine, when once it was openly maintained; to
which must be added the prospect of the loss of State protection,
which made it necessary to look out for other reasons for adherence to
the Church besides that of obedience to the civil magistrate. Nothing
which has spread quickly has been received thoroughly. Doubtless there
are a number of seriously-minded persons who think that they admit the
doctrine in question much more fully than they do, and who would be
startled at seeing that realised in particulars which they confess in
an abstract form. Many there are who do not at all feel that it is
capable of a practical application; and while they bring it forward on
special occasions, in formal expositions of faith, or in answer to a
direct interrogatory, let it slip from their minds almost entirely in
their daily conduct or their religious teaching, from the long and
inveterate habit of thinking and acting without it. We must not, then,
at all be surprised at finding that to modify the principles and
motives on which men act is not the work of a day; nor at undergoing
disappointments, at witnessing relapses, misconceptions, sud