This essay following the treatise on St. Paul and Protestantism, was meant to clear away offense 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 criticized by me is common to both Puritanism and the Church of England, and does not characterize the one more essentially than the other, has been removed, the author hopes, by the concluding essay. But it is said that there is, at any rate, a large party in the Church of England,—the so-called Evangelical party,—which holds just the scheme of doctrine the author has called Puritan; that this large party, at least, if not the whole Church of England, is as much a stronghold of the distinctive Puritan tenets as the Nonconformists are; and that to tax the Nonconformists with these tenets, and to say nothing about the Evangelical clergy holding them too, is injurious and unfair.
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