Many persons will probably find fault with me for publishing opinions which are not new: but I shall bear this blame contentedly, believing that opinions on this subject could hardly be just if they were not 1800 years old. Others will blame me for making proposals which are altogether new: to whom I would answer, that things in these days seem not so far right but that they may be mended. And others will simply call the opinions false and the proposals foolish—to whose goodwill, if they take it in hand to contradict me, I must leave what I have written—having no purpose of being drawn, at present, into religious controversy. If, however, any should admit the truth, but regret the tone of what I have said, lean only pray them to consider how much less harm is done in the world by ungraceful boldness, than by untimely fear.
Denmark Hill,
February, 1851.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND (1851) EDITION.
Since the publication of these Notes, I have received many letters upon the affairs of the Church, from persons of nearly every denomination of Christians; for all these letters I am grateful, and in many of them I have found valuable information, or suggestion: but I have not leisure at present to follow out the subject farther; and no reason has been shown me for modifying or altering any part of the text as it stands. It is republished, therefore, without change or addition.
I must, however, especially thank one of my correspondents for sending me a pamphlet, called "Sectarianism, the Bane of Religion and the Church,"[138] which I would recommend, in the strongest terms, to the reading of all who regard the cause of Christ; and, for help in reading the Scriptures, I would name also the short and admirable arrangement of parallel passages relating to the offices of the clergy, called "The Testimony of Scripture concerning the Christian Ministry."[139]
PREFACE TO THIRD (CALLED SECOND) EDITION.
I have only to add to this first preface, that the boldness of the pamphlet,—ungraceful enough, it must be admitted,—has done no one any harm, that I know of; but on the contrary, some definite good, as far as I can judge; and that I republish the whole now, letter for letter, as originally printed, believing it likely to be still serviceable, and, on the ground it takes for argument, (Scriptural authority,) incontrovertible as far as it reaches; though it amazes me to find on re-reading it, that, so late as 1851, I had only got the length of perceiving the schism between sects of Protestants to be criminal, and ridiculous, while I still supposed the schism between Protestants and Catholics to be virtuous and sublime.
The most valuable part of the whole is the analysis of governments, §§ 213-15; the passages on Church discipline, §§ 204-5, being also anticipatory of much that I have to say in Fors, where I hope to re-assert the substance of this pamphlet on wider grounds, and with more modesty.