this disputation, to fill the minds of the people with it-to recall their attention to the standard of the Church -to the agitation of the reforming times-to the details of the written word and to all those arguments which triumphantly maintain the honour and glory of God in the free justification and salvation of sinners.

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The Church of England has spoken as plainly as the power of language will admit on this great point. Her eleventh article declares that "we are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings; wherefore, that we are justified by faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort." And in order that due attention may be given to a doctrine of such moment, the article refers to the homily on Salvation, written by Archbishop Cranmer, saying, as is more largely expressed in the Homily of Justification." Surely it would not be easy to add to this statement even a single word, to increase the distinctness and lucidness of the averment! And yet there have ever been a number of clerical members of the Church who have subscribed this article, but have never acknowledged its tenets; who have not only not affirmed anything like what it states, but have invariably, through a lengthened ministry, preached the contrary. There have been bishops who have written and printed treatises in opposition to it; and, too frequently, instead of a sincere belief of this doctrine being required of candidates for holy orders, any modification of it has been allowed to pass; and this to such an extent, that, not many years ago, nine-tenths of the clergy were in virtual opposition to the article which they subscribed; and even the notion of atonement, however prominently it appeared in the desk, was seldom heard of in the pulpit; and when it was proposed to place the late Dr. Ryder, then dean of Wells, on the bench, he was opposed on this very ground, with much pertinacity, at Lambeth; and nothing but the determined remonstrance of relations high in office succeeded in

establishing his claim to the mitre. Now, such a decidedly unconscientious state of things could not but have a retributive issue. One of the plainest rules of God's procedure in respect to religious matters is—" to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." The honest and seeking mind, faithful to its light, shall grow in spiritual knowledge. "If any man will do my will he shall know of the doctrine;" but if an individual or a community will act unfaithfully-will evade their own solemn and deliberate declarations and while they profess to hold a truth, hold it in the miserable unrighteousness of denying it by a shuffle or a logical quirk, the issue will be, most undoubtedly, a gradual loss of other portions of truth, a growing distaste to other principles of the divine message, and a rapid drawing off toward some system of strong delusive error. That this should be the case, is perfectly consistent with the equitable principles of the divine government. And so have we seen it. The doctrine of the eleventh article, in the hands of a faithful minority of the clergy, has had to contend, during the last century, against the prejudices of a majority of the clergy. It has been kept in abeyance by many who did not absolutely deny it. It has been explained away by others. It has been made the barrier to professional advance in countless instances of real pastoral deserving; and when occasionally it has occupied the chair in high places, and been supported by ability, and vindicated by known and consistent piety, its influence has been turned aside by the nickname and the sneer. Was it likely that such a practice could be innocuously maintained? Was it likely that the direct dishonesty of such a system-the signing the article with reservation, and the preaching the reverse, or something very like it-should not issue in the positive manifestation of some more palpable evil? And the full bloom of a system so unconscientious has gradually opened. While the minority, holding the article in sincerity, have established with tri

umphant argument all its positions, and made good their ground, as being perfectly in accordance with the original principles of the reformers-and what is far more important, with the teaching of the written word; the majority have gradually declined further and further from their engagements and from the truth; and while some bolder leaders of the party have stated, without reserve, their accordance with the doctrine of the council of Trent, to which the Thirty-nine Articles are directly opposed, there are many who are imbued in different degrees with the same evil influence, who are waiting in breathless anxiety for the issue of this struggle, and expecting, in some way or other, a release from their inconvenient engagements a more open indulgence of their Pelagian propensities, and a trampling of the annoying doctrine of the article under foot.

This is the history of the issue of Mr. Ward's book, and of its original nucleus, Mr. Newman's tract No. 90; and this is the reason that the whole clergy of a Protestant Church have not risen at once, as one man, to put it from them with indignant repudiation. But it has been palliated and paltered with in high places, and the expressed desire for a broad unqualified condemnation of it, met with countless excuses and explanations, and sinister attempts to justify this part or that of the nefarious system on which such interpretations proceed; and the manifest attitude of a great many, has been that of waiting to see what turn things would take, and whether, or not, there is not a hope that the objectionable article may be got rid of, and that "they that dwell on earth may rejoice and make merry, and send gifts to one another," because that which tormented them is put away.

It is sad indeed to see any man, laying any claim to honesty and sincerity, talking of signing the 11th article in a non-natural-that is, in plain words, an unnatural sensethat is, when his statement is stripped of all disguise, signing "yes" in the sense of "no;" and while, by his subscription, he avers that "justifica

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tion by faith is a wholesome doctrine," affirming deliberately in his published writings that it is "the master-piece of Satan's craft;" a hateful heresy" -and " worse than atheism itself.” It is possible to feel pity for any man so morally degraded as to place himself in a position of such disgrace; beyond which no academical censure can ever degrade him: but it is also right that we should view, with holy indignation, the gradual and steady progress of a system of allowed misrepresentation and mystification, which has been going on for many years, and ending at last in this daring and unqualified fulness of heterodoxy. It is impossible not to look with deep distress on a community pledged most distinctly to this essentially marking feature of revelation; and yet to find that the teaching of a large proportion of its ministers, and the printed documents of some of its leading societies are openly at variance with it, and are either in accordance with the wily decrees of Trent, or yet more unequivocally stained with the bolder errors of Pelagianism.

But the days are come when there can be no parleying with such errors. The times are critical; and men must take either one side or the other-for or against the article, for or against their subscription, for or against the manly and unreserved avowal of Christian liberty in the documents of the Reformed Church in England, and in all the other branches of the Protestant Reformation. The time is come when the faithful men, who sign without reserve the articles and liturgy, in their plain, literal, and grammatical sense, must make a stand in one close and bold phalanx for the truth. There has been too much concession and yielding. It has only allowed room for error to grow. It is that system of unhallowed compliance which has made Oxford what she is at this moment; with nearly a majority of her resident tutors belying in their daily teaching their deliberate subscription, and calling absolutely for her non-resident members to come up at any risk, sacrifice, or expense, to control the heterodox teaching of her collegiate chairs, and to brand

the present popular system of Jesuitical tergiversation with its deserved infamy.

It is impossible that those who subscribe the articles in the true reformation sense, can any longer sit quiet under a system, the full fruits of which they now perceive. They must ask for the whole Reformation system at all risks. It is impossible for those who know the true meaning of the Word of God, and the entire support which it gives to Reformation principles, to allow themselves any longer to wink at Pelagian peculiarities. The Church must be strained up to her real theological strictness of sentiment. Nothing less must be asked by those who know that they hold the articles in the true grammatical sense: and if evil should come of such a course, otherwise than what ought to be anticipated, the evil be on those who have compromised the truth, and dealt falsely with their deliberate subscription.

It is impossible that they who are really faithful and honest should be looked to, to answer for the consequences. The late Mr. Cecil said, "Duties are ours, events are God's." And it cannot be questioned but that portion of the Church, who, as scholars and meditative readers of the Scriptures, know full well the general harmony of the Holy Scriptures and the Church formularies, and the evangelical view of doctrine, must now raise the cry, "To the law and to the testimony"-both of the revealed record, and of the reformed Church. If it shall appear that we are in a minority, let it be so. If the majority shall avail themselves of their numbers for ulterior measures, let it be so. We can have no compromise. The palpable inconsistency between the doctrine held and the doctrine subscribed, must be shown unflinchingly. And however heterodox they persist in continuing, it must be shown in plain, manly, palpable, and patient argument. The nail should be driven to the head to bind the inconsistency on those who are guilty of it; and cause them to feel in the recesses of the conscience, that the source and spring of their present theology is not

any ambiguity either in God's gracious messages, or in the deliberate deductions of our reformers, but in the innate reluctance of the soul to the humiliation which becomes a sinner, and the sovereignty that holds out to him a free pardon. Yours, LATIMER.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM A FRIEND.

MY DEAR W

A master stroke of Satanic policy, in all ages, has been that of rendering the progress of good subservient to the propagation of evil; and in no case has this been more systematically attempted than in the case of religious publications. The "Old Serpent" is also an old smuggler, and few, indeed, have been the vehicles of Christian truth in which he has not continued to run a keg.

As the franks of ambassadors are often made to cover contraband articles, so, in precisely the same manner, are the names and subscriptions of the ambassadors of Christ made use of for the introduction of error; and the more eminent the man, the more earnest the endeavour to secure the sanction of his name. Between what is positively good and positively evil, in moral agency, there stands a third or seemingly neutral class, who, by the way, are any thing but neutral in the exertion of their influence. There is, for example, a very considerable body of men, particularly among the clergy, who stand midway between Tractarianism and Evangelical truth -a class of amphibious beings, who seem to be endowed with the faculty of living in either element-and these, of all others, are the men of whom it behoves us to be most upon our guard, in the pulpit, in the press, in the school-room, and in society. It is chiefly through their influence that the virus of Tractarianism is conveyed to the uninfected part of the public. Like the vampire bat which fans its unconscious victim with its wings, while it is sucking his life's blood with its jaws, they keep suspicion asleep by their charity and apparent sanctity, at the very moment that they are drying

up the sources of spiritual life. *** It is through their instrumentality that Tractarian Popery is insinuating itself into every department and every form of Christian literature, and thus subordinating to its own views and purposes many of the greatest names and most orthodox publications of the present day. Like an ill conditioned tramper, who stealthily creeps up behind a gentleman's carriage, and thus, in ignorance of the driver, gets a stage on the road at the owner's expence, it is clinging to every vehicle on the highway of truth, and nothing but the closest watchfulness, and repeated applications of the whip, will be sufficient to keep it at a distance.

But, perhaps, the greatest amount of evil inflicted upon the church of Christ by these Evangelical touchers, tasters, and handlers of the "accursed thing," is the toleration which they procure for it among the faithful and really enlightened part of the community. It is this mixture of the pigeons with the crows, if I may so speak, which prevents the primed and pointed artillery of the Church from doing its work. There may be no disposition to spare the crows; but there is a risk of wounding the pigeons, and thus the presence of Christianity, or a something that is mistaken for Christianity, becomes a shield and safeguard to soul destroying heresy. Better, a thousand times, that the arrows of truth should shiver the shield of charity to pieces, than that deadly error should thus be permitted to escape.

But what, my dear Sir, is to be the end of all this? To me it seems very evident, that the Church of England is fast becoming a mere adjunct of the Papal apostacy, and this without any serious or characteristic effort on the part of the Evangelical body for her salvation. Where, I would ask, is the man who is REALLY VALIANT for that truth which our Confessors and Martyrs freely offered their lives to establish? What is the body of the Evangelical clergy about? And where are the men whose office it is to tell us "what Israel ought to do?" As it regards the hierarchy of the Establishment, it is in the position of

a steam vessel among breakers, with one of its paddle-wheels reversed. Are we, the laity, to look on until the fatal collision takes place; or are we to undertake the office of a "tugboat," and attempt the extrication of the vessel? The time for lay exertion is certainly approaching; but if I am to judge from present appearances, it will be more likely to take the form of the hurricane-sweep, which lays the bark upon her beam-ends, than the gentle gale, which conducts to a port of safety. May the Lord awaken a spirit of holy zeal for his own precious truth, and raise up faithful and fearless champions of that truth, fitted for the crisis at which we have arrived. We want a spiritual Suwarrow. Believe me, my dear W

Mr.

OUR readers may have seen, in the Morning Herald, a correspondence which has taken place recently, between the Rev. Mr. Hawkins, the Secretary to the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and the Rev. B. Richings, of Atherstone, on the subject of Mr. Hawkins' vote in favour of Mr. Ward. Hawkins' explanations do nothing to remove the alarm which his support of Mr. Ward must necessarily occasion. The subject is most important. That Tractarianism is fast spreading in our colonies is unquestionable. That a Secretary of such a society has almost unbounded influence as it regards the selection of candidates for foreign labour, is also certain.

We

have no hesitation in giving our opinion, that confidence in the proceedings of that Society must needs be shaken, while it retains as the Secretary, one who steps out of his way to shew, on so marked and public an occasion, his espousal of Mr. Ward. What can Mr. Hawkins mean when he says, "that he has neither directly nor indirectly shown any disposition or favour to the advocacy of Romanism"? When he has shewn the strongest disposition and the most determined favour to an unblushing advocate of Rome, will he succeed in

getting any one to be satisfied with his disclaimer ? And who can be satisfied that the Rev. Secretary of such a Society should profess to give his vote, irrespective of any "theolological considerations whatever! !" What can a clergyman mean by such an avowal! If " theological consideration is not to govern a vote in favour of a man who has proved a traitor to his Church, and on questions in which the dearest interests of

theology are vitally concerned, what can we expect from the theological influence of Mr. Hawkins in his responsible and most important position of Secretary to the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts? Something must be done, and speedily too, to check the rapidly growing mischief.

May God give us grace, in all meekness and humility, to be valiant for the truth!

THE LARGEST CHURCH IN THE

WORLD.

A LETTER from the Rev. Mr. Coan, of Hilo, Hawaii, Sandwich Islands, contains the following graphic account of a communion scene of the largest church in the world, comprising more than seven thousand members.

"Once in three months the whole church meets at the station to eat the Lord's Supper. Our last communion was on the first Sabbath in

April last. Perhaps five thousand were present; and for want of a convenient house, we met in a grove of cocoa-nut trees on the sea-shore. The assembly was immense, and the scene overwhelming. Before us was the wide Pacific, heaving its broad chest to the breath of heaven. Behind us were the everlasting mountains, rearing their snowy summits above the clouds, and forming an eternal rampart against the western sky. Beneath us was a little spot of earth, once ignited by volcanic fires, rocked by a thousand earthquakes, and more than once submerged with a flood. Above us was the vaulted sky, that glorious mirror, that 'molten looking-glass,' spread out and made strong by the hand of Omnipotence. Around us was a land of inimitable beauty, clothed with verdure, teeming with life, and smiling in loveliness. The softer and sweeter features in nature, blended with the grand, the bold, the sublime, conspired to render the scene enchanting. But there was one object that eclipsed all the rest, and which led us to lose

1845-APRIL.

sight of all the wondrous handiwork of creation around. In the midst of us was the Man of Sorrows under the emblems of the bread and wine; his flesh torn, and his blood flowing! Christ tasting death for us! We heard a voice sweeter than the breath of heaven, Look unto me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth.' We heard another voice. It rose above the roar of the ocean, 'It is finished!' I looked uponthemultitude, the five thousand communicants seated at His table, and in view of the sacred emblem. I remembered the words, And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.' I thought of the predictions, The isles shall wait for his law,' and 'all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord.' I thought of the promise, 'He shall see of the travail of his soul.' My heart exclaimed, How blessed are the eyes that see the things that we see.'!"

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MORAVIAN MISSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES.

THE largest congregations among the Negroes in the West India Islands and Surinam, at the close of the year 1843, contained 51,685 persons, young and old, among whom 12,057 were communicants. This work of the Lord appears on the whole to be advancing and prospering, through His blessing upon the faithful labours of the Moravian Brethren. The grievous loss of Missionaries has been partially supplied by the accession of some additional

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