“ Although a vehement controversialist, Hugh McNeile was a man of simple and sincere piety of character. Sir Edward Russell, an opponent alike of his religious and his political opinions, bears witness to the deep spirituality of his teaching, and describes him as an absolutely unique personality. “He made himself leader of the Liverpool people, and always led with calm and majesty in the most excited times. ”

“ As the Tractarian movement in the Church of England developed, he became one of its most zealous opponents and the most conspicuous leader of the evangelical party. In 1840 he published a volume of Lectures on the Church of England, and in 1846 (the year after Newman’s secession to Rome) The Church and the Churches, in which he maintained with much dialectical skill the evangelical doctrine of the “invisible Church” in opposition to the teaching of Newman and Pusey. ”