will not turn out something more than a paper theory."
That was the answer given at the time, abandoned ten years afterwards.
But this at least may be said, that the longer experience of the last
fifty years has shown that the Church of England has been working more
and more on such a theory, and that the Church of England, whatever its
faults may be, is certainly not a Church only on paper.

But on the principles laid down in this volume, the Roman controversy,
in its varying forms, was carried on--for the time by Mr. Newman,
permanently by the other leaders of the movement. In its main outlines,
the view has become the accepted Anglican view. Many other most
important matters have come into the debate. The publicly altered
attitude of the Papacy has indefinitely widened the breach between
England and Rome. But the fundamental idea of the relations and
character of the two Churches remains the same as it was shadowed forth
in 1836.

One very important volume on these questions ought not to be passed by
without notice. This was the _Treatise on the Church of Christ_, 1838,
by Mr. W. Palmer, who had already by his _Origines_ of the English
Ritual, 1832, done much to keep up that interest of Churchmen in the
early devotional language of the Church, which had first been called
forth by Bishop Lloyd's lectures on the Prayer Book. The _Treatise on
the Church_ was an honour to English theology and learning; in point of
plan and structure we have few books like it.[72] It is comprehensive,
methodical, well-compacted, and, from its own point of view,
exhaustive. It is written with full knowledge of the state of the
question at the time, both on the Anglican side and on the Roman. Its
author evades no objection, and is aware of most. It is rigorous in
form, and has no place for anything but substantial argument. It is a
book which, as the _Apologia_ tells us, commanded the respect of such an
accomplished controversialist as Perrone; and, it may be added, of a
theologian of an opposite school, Dr. Doellinger. It is also one on which
the highest value has been set by Mr. Gladstone. It is remarkable that
it did not exercise more influence on religious thought in Oxford at the
critical time when it appeared. But it had defects, and the moment was
against it. It was dry and formal--inevitably so, from the scientific
plan deliberately adopted for it; it treated as problems of the
theological schools, to be discussed by the rules of s