Mr.Matthew Arnold, for instance, sees in Jesus one sort of man, Father Newman another, Charles Kingsley another, and M.Renan another; and the _Imitatio Christi_, as understood by these, will be found in each case to mean a very different thing.

The difference between these men, however, will seem almost unanimity, if we compare them with others who, so far as logic and authority go, have just as good a claim on our attention.

There is hardly any conceivable aberration of moral licence that has not, in some quarter or other, embodied itself into a rule of life, and claimed to be the proper outcome of Protestant Christianity.

Nor is this true only of the wilder and more eccentric sects.

It is true of graver and more weighty thinkers also; so much so, that a theological school in Germany has maintained boldly '_that fornication is blameless, and that it is not interdicted by the precepts of the Gospel_.'[39] The matter, however, does not end thus.