This reasoning is calculated to make men, who agree with the author in the doctrine, rest contented without that baptism of the Holy Ghost for which they are responsible; to keep them satisfied whilst settled on their lees; and to make their aspirations after the indwelling of the Father, cold and feeble. The Christian church has acted in this respect exactly as the Jewish church did: Joshua brought the people into the promised land; shewed them the means by which they might overcome all their enemies; exhorted them to continue in the course which he had pointed out, and the example of which he had himself set them. Instead of doing this, however, no sooner was Joshua and his immediate successors removed from them, than the Jews relaxed in their exertions: first one party, Manasseh (Judges i. 27), refuse to contend any more; then another party (vers. 28-32) desisted from the contest, and tampered with the inhabitants of the land; until the whole church was separated into numerous small parties, oppressed in every quarter, except that occasionally a Nazarite and man of faith was raised up in different parts to give them temporary deliverance.

In like manner, the Christian church was endowed by our Lord with all necessary furniture for the subjugation of the world but as soon as He and His immediate followers were removed, the church held parley with the learning, and next with the wealth, of the Gentiles; until it became divided and scattered into innumerable small orders, bands, parties, and sects, in which the Spirit has been oppressed, and all the essential characteristics of the original church obliterated. From time to time, indeed, a Nazarite, a Deliverer, a Judge, has appeared in different quarters, to give deliverance to particular bands. Such were Grostête, and Wicliffe, and Luther, and Cranmer, and Knox, and Wesley, and Whitfield, &c.: but these were few and far between, and the Church, as a body, has been a perfect Babel; in which every one did that which seemed right in his own eyes; and there has been no oneness of body, nor of faith, nor of hope, although there has been one ceremony of unmeaning baptism.

So surely as the church in the days of the Judges was responsible, and not God, for neglecting the directions given her by Joshua, and for losing the heart to do so; so surely is the Christian church responsible for having let go those precious endowments, by the possession of which alone could she perform the duties to which Jesus had appointed her.

The whole of Christendom, instead of exhibiting a body of churches walking by the same rule, minding the same thing, and governed by the same laws, presents but a mass of discordant and opposing materials, from which only variance, hatred, and strife arise,-church in open hostility against church, and sect

against sect. Nay, within the bounds of the same church, not only individual professors, but authorized teachers, are to be found differing widely even on some of the most important points of faith and practice. There is no need of going further for proof of this, than the very pamphlet now before us. This is "6 by a Clergyman of the Church of England:" there are at least a dozen more on the same subject by Clergymen of the Church of England, all differing from our author, and all from each other in some one or other essential point. It is obvious, therefore, that there is no oneness of spirit amongst the writers, who are nevertheless all teachers of the same church. What are the taught to do? There might as well be no teachers at all, as some teachers who teach that a thing is black, while there are other teachers who teach that the same thing is white yet this must be the case where there is no voice of the Spirit to guide us into all truth. The Rev. Mr. A. asserts one proposition, and the Rev. Mr. B. asserts a contrary proposition here is proposition against proposition; and the scholars, instead of coming to be taught, are necessarily erected into judges over their teachers. It is really marvellous that things have been kept together as well as they have been: but in the present state of universal insubordination, and particularly in moral, intellectual, and religious subjects, it is impossible to expect any deference to be paid to a mere expression of man's opinion. Nor ought there to be: the pastors ought to be gifted themselves, and speak, not from the operation of their reasoning faculties, but from the power and with the words of the Holy Spirit within them. Still more, if they are not gifted with prophecy, is it necessary for them to have in their church prophets to teach them and their flocks,

The danger that is likely to flow from this tract, notwithstanding what the author has well said under the second head, is the continuance of the false notion that there can be such a thing as a church without the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. This is indeed sometimes, perhaps generally, admitted in words, but by making good-natured persons with "sweet spirits" the examples of what it is supposed Christians ought to be, and by making an unscriptural distinction between the various manifes tations of the Holy Spirit, whether of power or of holiness, in gifts or fruits, an idea is attached to the words wholly foreign to their meaning in the New Testament. While men are under this false notion, and, above all, when they are ignorant, from want of experience of the holy and sanctifying effects of the voice of the living God rebuking evil, revealing hidden iniquity, directing the testimony for Jesus, upholding the witnesses whom He sends to bear it, applying Scripture to the times in which we live, unfolding dark and obscure passages, abasing human

pride, and glorifying Jesus, they never will cordially cry to the Father for that power which can alone enable them to perform his will.

The metaphorical language of the Christian church has been, for many years, taken from the time when the church dwelt in the wilderness of Sinai: and this, indeed, ought to have been her condition but her real condition has been amongst the flesh-pots of Egypt. She returned into Egypt when she lost the gifts of the Spirit. Ever since that time she has been trying to make bricks without straw; to be a pillar of truth, without being able to prove that the truth was in her; to be a witness for God, when she had no credentials to shew that she was commissioned by Him. The learning of Egypt, and its onions and flesh-pots-human eloquence, and tithes have been her support: upon these she has leaned; and, now that they are removed from beneath her, when the infidel rabble is more learned than her office-bearers, and when her wealth is a bait too tempting for the spoiler to resist, she is stripped bare, and without a particle either of the real or of the false lustre which she once presented to the eyes of men. She can never be delivered from the bondage of Egypt, until men really feel that they are under it. So long as they are satisfied with a religion of the intellect; so long as the first object of preachers is to draw crowds of hearers; so long will the pulpit be prostituted to feed the vanity of vain babblers of human wisdom: but when men are sufficiently spiritual to long for the mind that was in Christ Jesus, to be satisfied that the bride of the Lamb must be holy as he is holy, and that as the tree falls so it must for ever lie, then will they be sensible that they cannot perfect holiness with instruments of less power, and of less heavenly temper, than those with which the Apostles and first Christians laboured; then will they cry to the Lord for deliverance, and He will fill them with his Spirit; He will set them free from the bondage of the flesh, and enable them, like Elijah of old, to bear witness to kings, and princes, and priests, and people, all banded together in one confederacy against the Lord, and against His Anointed.

The great omission, however, which pervades this tract, is one which pervades the whole of the author's reasonings, and the whole of his church: The LORD is forgotten. His glory, in the gifts of his Spirit, is not once thought of. The sole idea canvassed, is, What is their use to men, and how will they square with the strait-lacing of that human system called the Church of England? The glory of the gifts of the Spirit is, that they are the demonstration of the sovereignty to which our nature is raised by Jesus; the proof that Christ is not an abstract proposition, but a present God; the sole perpetually abiding fulfilment of His dishonoured promise. The damning sin of the

Church of England is, that in her services there is no longer any room for Jesus to be seen and in the attacks which have been made upon the present manifestations by her ministers, neither the Bishop of London, Mr. M'Neile, Mr. B. Noel, Mr. Greenwood, &c. &c. besides the herd of Dissenters, have ever once thought of the glory of Jesus as connected with it, from the beginning to the end of all their lucubrations. It is impossible that any glory should redound to Jesus from the services of the Church of England: much fame may be acquired, and is acquired, by man. The pulpit is a stage for successful acting; and of this base employment of it, laymen are, or at least have been, as guilty as the clergy. If money has been required for any society, a church is engaged, like a playhouse; a sermon is advertised, like a favourite comedy; and a preacher, like an actor, new to the London boards, is solicited to come forward for the amusement of the people these in crowds flock to hear him: small contributions from the many, make a large total, collected into the coffers of the society; and this is intended to further the cause of religion! It is man's eloquence, and not God's glory, that is the object, first and last, throughout the whole affair. If the preacher be a clever man, the end is obtained; if his natural parts are inferior, the end is defeated. Enticing words of man's wisdom," in defiance of the whole spirit and letter of the Scriptures, is the notorious object. God is clean cast out: the voice of the Spirit, that which is foolishness to man, is avoided; and the wisdom of man, which is odious to God, is advanced. There is no room for the wisdom of the Creator to be seen, all minds being filled with the wisdom of the creature. The church service is as entirely independent of the presence and operation of God, as the representation of a play or a meeting of the Royal Society.

The author's notion of a church goes beyond that which the word of God inculcates. A church, as we are told there, is a body of men builded together for the habitation of God: men are the stones of the church, the Spirit is the cement, and God the dweller within it. And is God to be shut up in this house as in a prison, in which He is never to be seen? are the ceremonies and rites and ordinances which He has appointed, to be used as bars to the windows and bands to enthral him? Are not the stones of this building living men, instinct with life and motion and wills and affections and powers and faculties; and are they to be inhabited as no other men are, and yet manifest no more than other men manifest? We know it was not thus when the Master Builder finished the model at the day of Pentecost; and if we have now a house not according to that plan, He will assuredly destroy the workmen who have deserted his instructions, and built from schemes of their own devising.

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It matters nothing, in this view of the question, whether the present manifestations of the Holy Spirit be true or false. If the Apostles themselves were to appear in the Church of England, and exercise their gifts, they would be proceeded against in the Bishops' courts as brawlers*, The rites of the Church are so constituted as that the gifts of the Spirit cannot be manifested within its pale. Thus every minister of the Church of England, who is sincerely attached to his church, has an habitual bias on his mind, which must strongly prejudice him against the admission of any claim to spiritual power. Let him think himself as impartial as he may; the better Churchman he is, the less impartial must he be and it is only a lax churchman who is uninfluenced by this bias; while, unfortunately, a lax Churchman must be so lax on all points of conscience, that his difficulties, though from another origin, are still more insurmountable. The Churchman who thinks his church so rich and well stored with goods as to need nothing more-the condition which the author very properly censures in a note in p. 25-can never earnestly desire the manifestation of the Spirit: yet this is really the condition of the author himself, who, while he would be glad to remedy much of the administration, seems to think the services perfect and so, if man only be considered, they are; but if God's glory be considered, then are they as much opposed to it as any other church on the globe.

Another cause of grief at the shortcoming of this tract arises from our certain conviction, after an experience more accurate than most of our readers have had opportunity of enjoying, that the voice of prophecy is not intended by the Lord to produce its full benefit to the people except under the superintendance of the pastors. But where are the pastors who will admit it? God must break down the ordinances and ceremonies which are used not for Him, but against Him; which are not helps, but hindrances, to the manifestations of His Spirit. As the state is trusting to laws in which Jesus is not acknowledged, so the church is priding herself upon forms through which His Spirit cannot appear. We beseech the author to remember, that whatever evil he has sufficient spiritual discernment to perceive in the nation is equally prevalent, in a more subtle form, in the church; and to be assured that it is for its own sins that it has now lost all honour in the eyes of the people, and become a laughingstock and derision to the basest of the rabble. It says it does not need the manifestation of the Person of the Holy Ghost; and the mob, our present sovereign, says it does not need a church.

A curious corroboration of this argument occurred lately in the London Presbytery of the Church of Scotland, where it was asserted that, even "If he himself (Mr. Irving) was the subject of that inspiration, he could not exercise it in that church, until that gift had been recognized by that church.”—Short-hand Report, p 12.