with the ideal standard of a
Church which he had thought out for himself; and this rapidly led to
grave consequences. He accepted from authority which satisfied him both
intellectually and morally the main scheme of Catholic theology, as the
deepest and truest philosophy of religion, satisfying at once conscience
and intellect. The Catholic theology gave him, among other things, the
idea and the notes of the Church; with these, in part at least, the
English Church agreed; but in other respects, and these very serious
ones, it differed widely; it seemed inconsistent and anomalous. The
English Church was separate and isolated from Christendom. It was
supposed to differ widely from other Churches in doctrine. It admitted
variety of opinion and teaching, even to the point of tolerating alleged
heresy. With such data as these, he entered on an investigation which
ultimately came to the question whether the English Church could claim
to be a part of the Church Catholic. He postulated from the first, what
he afterwards developed in the book in which his Anglican position
culminated,--the famous _Ideal_,--the existence at some time or another
of a Catholic Church which not only aimed at, but fulfilled all the
conditions of a perfect Church in creed, communion, discipline, and
life. Of course the English and, as at starting he held, the Roman
Church, fell far short of this perfection. But at starting, the moral
which he drew was, not to leave the English Church, but to do his best
to raise it up to what it ought to be. Whether he took in all the
conditions of the problem, whether it was not far more complicated and
difficult than he supposed, whether his knowledge of the facts of the
case was accurate and adequate, whether he was always fair in his
comparisons and judgments, and whether he did not overlook elements of
the gravest importance in the inquiry; whether, in fact, save for
certain strong and broad lines common to the whole historic Church, the
reign of anomaly, inconsistency, difficulty did not extend much farther
over the whole field of debate than he chose to admit: all this is
fairly open to question. But within the limits which he laid down, and
within which he confined his reasonings, he used his materials with
skill and force; and even those who least agreed with him and were most
sensible of the strong and hardly disguised bias which so greatly
affected the value of his judgments, could not deny the frankness and