5-9-34 dyng Library 'niv. of Western Ontario APR 13 34 INTRODUCTION TO SECOND EDITION. THE rapid sale of the first edition of this work is an evidence of the interest which is felt by the public in the subjects upon which it treats. This is not to be wondered at, when we consider the startling events which have taken place in our Church within the last few years. Ritualism, or, more properly speaking, Romanism, has broken out in the country, and although the great body of the Laity is still sound, this system urges its pretensions with all the attractions of novelty, and all the energy of new born zeal. Commonly known as Ritualism, it is, in reality, Romanism, teaching, as it does, all the distinctive errors of the Council of Trent. The sad and awful fact, that the worship of the Host is now set up in several churches, and the acceptance of the Eirenicon by a considerable party evince the greatness of the evils from which we suffer! When Dr. Pusey, a Regius Professor of our oldest University, ventures to assert that there is nothing in the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome to which he objects, and when "the English Church Union," an influential Society, endorses the sentiment, there seems to be little or nothing more required than the formal act to make the apostacy of these parties complete. Dr. Pusey has himself explained the process by which this unhappy state of things has been attained. In his late speech to the English Church Union, he compares Ritualism to the flower, and the Tracts for the Times to the Bulb.* The chief leader of Oxford *See the Church Review, June 16, 1866. |