"We often read the Scripture without comprehending its full meaning; however, let us not be discouraged. The light, in God's good time, will break out, and disperse the darkness; and we shall see the mysteries of the Gospel." "With them (the Puritans) nothing is more familiar than to plead in their causes the Law of God, the Word of the Lord ; who notwithstanding, when they come to allege what word and what law they mean, their common ordinary practice is to quote by-speeches, and to urge them

The essay following the treatise on St. Paul and Protestantism, was meant to clear away offence or misunderstanding which had arisen out of that treatise. There still remain one or two points on which a word of explanation may be useful, and to them this preface is addressed. The general objection, that the scheme of doctrine criticised by me is common to both Puritanism and the Church of England, and does not characterise the one more essentially than the other, has been removed, I hope, by the

M. Renan sums up his interesting volume on St. Paul by saying:—'After having been for three hundred years, thanks to Protestantism, the Christian doctor par excellence , Paul is now coming to an end of his reign.' All through his book M. Renan is possessed with a sense of this close relationship between St. Paul and Protestantism. Protestantism has made Paul, he says; Pauline doctrine is identified with Protestant doctrine; Paul is a Protestant doctor, and the counterpart of Luther. M. Renan has

We have seen how Puritanism seems to come by its religion in the first instance theologically and from authority; Paul by his, on the other hand, psychologically and from experience. Even the points, therefore, in which they both meet, they have not reached in the same order or by the same road. The miserable sense of sin from unrighteousness, the joyful witness of a good conscience from righteousness, these are points in which Puritanism and St. Paul meet. They are facts of human nature and can

In the foregoing treatise we have spoken of Protestantism, and have tried to show, how, with its three notable tenets of predestination, original sin, and justification, it has been pounding away for three centuries at St. Paul's wrong words, and missing his essential doctrine. And we took Puritanism to stand for Protestantism, and addressed ourselves directly to the Puritans; for the Puritan Churches, we said, seem to exist specially for the sake of these doctrines, one or more of them. It is t