it thanks Him arrogantly, as if they were deserved. Besides, the experience of the Christian will speedily inform him that such imaginative raptures are not devotion. They are presumptuous, as they are supposed to confer rights; they are impious, as they prescribe laws and conditions to the grace of God. Repentance is, indeed, mentioned, yet not as a means of Grace and a Grace itself, but as something which is to merit it. Freedom, memory, understanding, will, are offered to God in exchange for his Grace. The Protestant, therefore, who "tries the Spirits" by the rule of Scripture, will scarcely meet much difficulty in deciding the relative claims of Luther and Loyola.

How, in the face of such works as D'Aubigné's History of the Reformation," and Ranke's "History of the Popes," can the Tractarian heresiarchs persist in branding Protestantism as a mere negation? Surely, inasmuch as it effected a re-formation, it must have been so far positive? Can a negation establish aught; or satisfy the consciences of whole peoples for successive generations? The proposition needs only to be stated to supply its own refutation. "Protestantism," remarks Ranké, was by no means a mere antithesis, a negation of the Papacy, or an emancipation from its rule: it was in the highest degree positive; a renovation of Christian notions and principles, that sway human life to the profoundest mysteries of the soul." The evidence adduced proves that it protested for, rather than against; that it restored, rather than destroyed; that the negative tendency was an accident, the positive its essential attribute. Against the glittering delusions of fanatic asceticism, it vindicated the regeneration which is wrought in the contrite heart by the infusion of the enlightening grace and unction, which is the only true spiritual communion; against the insolence of human merits, it vindicated that faith in the sufficiency of Christ, which, displayed in good works, is the only means of salvation; against the claims of a crowd of saints, it vindicated the majesty of the One Intercessor against the multitude of penances, it vindicated the true repentance; against the bondage of the flesh, it vindicated the freedom of the spirit; against a host of traditions, it vindicated the pre-eminent authority of the one indubitable Word of God. But the subject is not yet exhausted.

;

The arguments in favour of Protestantism which may be drawn from Ranke's "History of the Popes," are, indeed, cogent; nor are they the less valuable for the exemplary impartiality of the writer whom, from anything on the face of his work, we should not have known to be a Protestant, had he not ingenuously confessed the fact in his preface. While such a work remains in extensive circulation, the attempts of Tractarianism to mislead and misinstruct, cannot be other than vain. Erewhile the learned alone had a competent knowledge of History; now, no acquisition is more general. Take our word for it; the Dark Ages have departed for aye, and are not to be compelled to return even by so potent an agency as Tractarianism.

We have felt ourselves justified in making this disgression from the forthright course of our argument, for the purpose of showing, first,

what is the nature of all Counter-Reformation in itself, illustrated by the manner in which it has from time to time been manifested; and, secondly, the nature of the enthusiasm by which such reaction is prompted. What the Jesuits were, the Tractarians are. They demand that visionary food for the imagination in which Loyola revelled. The same remark is still more true of the late Mr. Froude, from whose "Remains" we learn in what sympathies with Romanism the Tractarian heresy commenced; and how far Mr. Froude's own mind was influenced by Roman Catholic connexions, conversation, and reading. The tendency which it now manifests, was inchoate in it from the first. To Mr. Froude and Mr. Palmer the origin of Tractarianism may be justly attributed-the former sympathising with the Romanist, the latter with the Non-juror. During the long vacation of 1833, these two gentlemen met in the common room of Oriel College, and resolved to unite and associate for the restoration of that pseudo Catholicism which had been tried and found wanting; and to that end Mr. Palmer undertook to correspond with Mr. Hugh J. Rose, who had shortly before established "The British Magazine;" while Mr. Froude communicated their design to Mr. Keble. Ere long they were joined by Mr. Newman. Mr. Palmer was right-early taught to understand that mere Pro-Non-juring inclinations were not sufficient to satisfy Mr. Froude, whose influence he soon found was constantly exerted in a contrary direction. In private conversation with Mr. Froude, and others of his inclining, Mr. Palmer had reason to feel that on several important points there were material differences between their views; particularly touching the questions of the Union of Church and State, and the character of the English and the Foreign Reformers. Mr. Froude, he says, "occasionally expressed sentiments on the latter subject which seemed extremely unjust to the Reformers, and injurious to the Church; but as his conversation generally was of a very startling and paradoxical character, and his sentiments were evidently only in the course of formation, I trusted that more knowledge and thought would bring him to juster views."*

How, with Mr. Froude's Remains before him, Mr. Palmer could think there was any chance of this, passes our comprehension. Clear it is, that he represented a PARTY, who acted on a PLAN, and who were ready to defend his views (as they did in the preface to the second series of his "Remains") at all hazards. Nothing now remains, then, but to connect Mr. Froude and his friends with the Church of Rome; and this, we think, there will be but little difficulty in doing. The full developement of the subject, however, we must defer to future Numbers. Suffice it for the present, to ask, in the language of Mr. Young,† respecting the party alluded to, whether they were, while urging on a crisis which has ulti

* Mr. Palmer's Narrative, p. 23.

† Protestantism or Popery. A Tract for the times, showing that the Tractarian Movement is a Departure from the Principles of the Church of England, and a Departure for the Principles of the Church of Rome. By the Rev. Edward Young, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: J. Nisbet & Co. 1842.

mately reacted against themselves, men who might be safely despised, or neglected, as apparently or really powerless? Could any one look on them, and pronounce them wanting in any human qualification for success? Were they without talent, learning, wealth, influence, numbers? Did they want energy, enthusiasm, perseverance, concert? Were not their efforts everywhere? Did they not issue tracts, write in journals and newspapers, preach in churches, gather disciples in private houses, hold tutorships in colleges, and professorships in universities? Did they not innoculate poetry, criticism, literature, history-found architectural societies-revive antiquarian interests-build, endow, and curiously adorn churches, chapels, and collegiate schools-manifest the most magnificent self-devotion and most profound self-renunciation, whilst prosecuting the sublime work of making the Church (that is, their own order) what she has long ceased to be in these realms? Could any one contemplate this embodied party, without recognising the well-known portrait of an agitator, not half so dangerous? "Corpus patiens inedia, vigiliæ, algoris, supra quam cuique credibile est animus audax, subdolus, varius, cujuslibet rei simulator ac dissimulator :" (sure, Sallust must have caught a prophetic glimpse of No. 90 :) "ardens in cupiditatibus : satis eloquentiæ:" (might we not give the finishing stroke?) Such was the party pledged to hurry on the crisis. Can such a party, with any shadow of safety, be let alone? Let it be freely granted that there is danger in the contest: who shall tell us the danger of declining it?

We agree with the same writer in declaring that we have nothing to do with the personal exellences, personal feelings, or personal consciousness of those who constituted the Tractarian movement; but only with their written documents and overt acts; all of which are, more or less, departures from the doctrines, principles, and practices of the Church of England; that the allegiance of the body is to a something higher up than the Church of England-and that, not the simple Word of God, where the Church of England finds her credentials, but a something shadowy, dark, and questionable, of which she does not hold, and against which, as at all authoritative, she has significantly protested; and that the doctrines, principles, and practices of the Tractarian party, so far as they are peculiar, are not only neither those of Scripture nor of the Church of England, but that they all savour of, lean upon, bear towards, that systematic and deadly perversion of God's truth, whichnatural to the fallen heart of man at all times, constituting the "mystery of iniquity" in the apostolic days, and gradually maturing through each succeeding age-is best known, in its complete symmetry and dimensions, at Rome.

Our present Church system, accordingly, is described by Mr. Froude, in his "Remains," as "an incubus on the country.' "Would," he adds, "that the water would throw up some Acheloides, where some new Bishop might erect a see beyond the blighting influence of our upas tree!" immediately afterwards applauding the sentiment of some one who had said that the Church is "united to the State as Israel to Egypt." Nor are we surprised that Mr. Faber should speak

of the Church's "most dire weapon of excommunication" with a sanguinary satisfaction. Surely, exclaims this writer, kindled to enthusiasm by his "Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches," "surely, it is a duty of Christian states to deprive such excommunicated person of every social right and privilege; or even, if they so judge, to sweep him from the earth." Well may Mr. Young say, "This is startling language from an Englishman, and in the nineteenth century. We shall not be surprised, after this, to find from the same high-toned authority, that, so far from the Church being established by the State, it is for ecclesiastical discretion to determine if the State shall be established by the Church. We are told that Europe will once more see a people fall back from the throne of an excommunicated king.'"

Here comes again into play the great argument of the Tendency of the proposed scheme of Tractarianism. It is not concealed. St. Bartholomew massacres, Netherland persecutions and assassinations, Inquisition excommunications and martyrdoms, conspiracy, sedition, TREASON-all are lawful, whenever the Froudes and Newmans shall have the power to decree them to be so. We repeat that the tendency is not concealed, but proudly confessed, and the right boldly contended for. The Protestant, excommunicated by their Romanised Anglican Church, is to be swept from the earth by their Romanised Anglican State. In making these appalling suggestions, Mr. Faber seems not to have been conscious that he was recommending Murder, but only that he was purposing to do God service, and perhaps acting even compassionately towards the souls of his proposed victims. Such was the tender mercy of the excommunicating and interdicting Pope Innocent, when he promoted the bloody crusade against the Albigenses. Protestants have been apt to ascribe these enormities to the rude character of the times in which they occurred; but their cool and serious proposition, by men yet in the Protestant communion, who have suffered themselves to be seduced Romeward, shows that the evil lies in the spirit with which they are filled, and not in the accidents of a particular age.

That they may be free to manifest this execrable spirit, is what the party desire. Till then, as Mr. Young remarks, "they work 'in chains; but not without all possible efforts for this new Catholic emancipation. Attacks are daily making on the terrible connexion between Church and State. The most emphatic stress is laid on what is technically called the Visibility of the Church,' as of a body distinct, not in character only, but in external features-a body having an external form, not as an accident, variable with time and place, but as an integral essential quality of its being-a body with as true an articulation of visible parts as any external thing can have a body whose visibility consists not in its members being individually visible, but in its own corporate substantiality-a body not spiritual, save by a misapplication of the word; not distinct, as our blessed Lord said His kingdom was, from all other kingdoms, but of this world,' and 'from hence'

possessing all the external developement of any other kingdom;—' a horn' amongst other horns-a 'little horn,' but that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.' This is the Tractarian view of the Visibility of the Church. The idea of a mystical body will not suffice. The word, indeed, is retained; but retained as the style and title of what is essentially visible; a sort of 'fifth monarchy,' whose rulers are to sit on thrones. The spiritual unity of a body will not suffice. They quote Christ's prayer, 'that all may be one: but they have no notion of oneness, save of subordination to one government. The sublime unity of faith, hope, and love of character, and object, and experience, and end-is all beyond them. The holding this unity of the faith in unity of Spirit and the bond of peace,' by toleration amidst differences, and recognition of membership amidst varieties of outward form and action, is not so much as among the virtues of their decalogue. The aspect such a unity would present to the world-the impressive grandeur of a thing so unearthly and so luminous-the moral force of so magnificent a triumph of a heaven-descended principle over the littlenesses and selfishnesses the world understands so well-the distinctness of the mark the Church's Head has established, 'By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another'-a mark lustrous as it is found on those who differ in external things, stamping 'unity of the Spirit' on those who have no bond of union in the flesh-this is foreign to their system, and foreign to their hearts. It is not a unity of the Spirit they seek for. The ecclesiastical principle is everything; the religious is absorbed. Christ's prayer is for one government; Christ's test is for one rule. There is a groaning for communion with the darkest portions of episcopalianism; not a sigh, not a syllable, for those other parts of Christendom, where, under diversities of administration,' there is one faith, one Lord, one baptism.' We can imagine how such persons must regard what they call 'the moderate principle of the Church of England,' which, framing an article on the critical subject of Orders, and distinctly denying the lawfulness of a self-appointed ministry, has neither surrendered episcopacy on the one hand, nor, on the other, made the apostolic succession an article of faith. And we can imagine the galling nature, to such ecclesiastics, of a position in which the Church can no longer speak those 'very great things' that, more than 'dim eclipse,'

'disastrous twilight shed

O'er half the nations; and with fear of change
Perplexed monarchs.'

Against this fearful tendency of an exclusive and despotic spirit, we will offer such resistance as it shall please the Almighty to arm us withal, not doubting that he will lead us safely even through the valley of the Shadow of Death, and bring us thence more than conquerors, for the sake of his dear Son, whom alone we acknowledge as Mediator between God and man.