He enlisted Aristotle, hitherto the guide of infidelity, on the side of orthodoxy, and constructed an ingenious Christian philosophy which is still authoritative in the Roman Church.

To limit the effect of that solemn act by any terms or conditions whatever, they should have been embodied in it, and made of import no less authoritative than the act itself.

But then we were disciples, and not critics; and nobody will suppose that the admirer of Wordsworth, the author of the Essay on Coleridge, and of the treatise on Representative Government, the administrator in the most bureaucratic and authoritative of public services, was a terrorist or an unbridled democrat, or anything else but the most careful and rationalistic of political theorisers.

No pains or expense has been spared to render the work authoritative on all questions upon which it treats, and in presenting it to the public, the publishers feel the utmost confidence that the work will meet the highest expectations of those who have waited impatiently for its appearance during the months which have elapsed since its preparation was first announced.

At the same time it became a matter of duty to me, if possible, to discriminate the authoritative from the unauthoritative in the Scripture, or at any rate avoid to accept and propagate as true that which is false, even if it be false only as science and not as religion.

If the book had previously been the received sacred law, it could not possibly have been so lost, that its contents were unknown, and the fact of its loss forgotten: it was therefore evidently then first compiled, or at least then first produced and made authoritative to the nation.