versialists, has met with his match in our Barrow; Bingham's learning in antiquities is little inferior to that of Mosheim or Mabillon; and the candour and gentleness of Melancthon do not surpass the moderation of our good Bishop Hall: the ancient apologies of Christianity are not more admirable than the evidences of our divines. We say not this in the spirit of contempt for the labours and excellences of other ages and churches; far be from us that spirit of exclusive Anglicanism which would extol our own Church at the expense of other communities, or seek to believe that there is but little piety and ability, but little learning and devotion, out of our own pale. Yet is the first admiration and gratitude due to the great divines of our own Mother, who has fostered them, as well as us; to those who have used the same Liturgy and Articles to which we are bound, and transmitted to us that polity, to the defence of which they devoted all their abilities; even though we may gladly hold communion with the undaunted spirit of Luther, and the severe piety of Calvin, on the one hand, and the milder virtues of Fenelon and Pascal on the other. Those illustrious writers of our own Church, indeed, have gladly acknowledged the excellence of theologians of other countries; being far from that little spirit, which has no sense of the merits of others. And this brings us to the consideration of one excellence, which eminently, we think, distinguishes the divines of our Church-we mean the total absence of party spirit, and sectarian zeal, from their writings. They wrote, indeed, as Protestant divines (how could they otherwise?), for they had protested against what they considered the errors of Rome, when they signed our Articles; they wrote as members of the Church of England in particular (how could they otherwise?), feeling, as they did, that they owed all to the spiritual Mother, who had instructed and nourished them: but further than this they knew of no party, they sought to form no section within the Church-to belong to which was enough distinction for them. Who has ever heard of the followers of Hooker and Pearson-of the party of Barrow or Taylor, except so far as we are all their followers, all of their party? Such men as these, with their vast reputation for learning and wisdom, ability and discretion, might have divided the Church against itself, and have been followed by crowds of admirers and partisans; but no such ambition was theirs and well has it been for their real usefulness, their true and lasting honour, that it was so. We have heard, indeed, of the school of Laud, and the Non-jurors; for, doubtless, it is true that they formed a party within the Church, and sought to introduce something beyond her recognised teaching: but the writers of these schools, or, rather, school (for, in truth, they were but one), are not, we believeexcept, indeed, by those who would be of the same school-placed in the rank of the first writers of our Church. Who, indeed, can compare Laud, and Thorndike, and Collier, with Hooker, and Barrow, and Pearson? Who does not feel, when he is reading the works of the former, that there is need of that caution and suspicion, which can never be laid aside when we are studying those who are anxious to

make out a case and to promote party views-a caution and suspicion which we feel to be needless when we sit at the feet of the really great doctors of our Church? They were truly Catholic writers-not in any technical sense of that word, but in its genuine meaning; Catholic, because not writing for one age, but for all-not for any sect, but for the great cause of Christianity-not for so-called High Church or Low Church views, but the moderate doctrines of the Church, whose servants they were. And therefore it is that their writings are still to be valued and studied by us-as useful as when they were written; therefore it is that their very differences amongst themselves are valuable, showing, as they do, that they wrote in no narrow spirit, and so giving a higher worth to their agreement on all important points-on which, we fully believe, they will always be found of one mind. The expositions of the Creed, by the incomparable Barrow and Pearson, appear as complete as ever: the works even of those who wrote, as Hooker, against particular errors, are still most useful, even though the errors themselves are now no longer so prevalent. For these great divines, these giants of literature, as they have been called, while refuting their opponents, have left us words of wisdom and moderation, and have taught us truths, which will serve us as a defence against doctrines the very opposite, perhaps, of those which they were immediately combating. And how, we would ask, can we better show our gratitude for so great a blessing as the works of these divines, than by diligently studying them, not, indeed, in the spirit of blind submission and partisanship, for such spirit they themselves have never sought to inculcate, writing as they did for reasonable men, fit to judge of what they said; yet giving them the first hearing, and ready to believe that it is very improbable that such honesty and genius, integrity and diligence, as they confessedly had, should have either been mistaken, or sought to mislead others from the truth?

But it is our present object to call attention to a treatise by one whom we cannot but think must be classed in the first rank of these great writers-we mean Dr. Waterland. To a thorough acquaintance with the fathers, and the divines of our own Church, he added great learning, which is not so common in the writings of the divines of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches; nor was he less deeply read in the works of Socinius and his followers, against whose heresy he was a faithful and able champion. His style, if not often rising to eloquence, is yet clear and good-full of matter, without being involved or difficult. And he seems to be most remarkable for that candour and absence of party spirit, which, as we have just said, distinguishes all our greatest divines, and without which learning is nearly useless; for a ready and willing acknowledgement of the services of other writers, both of his own and other churches; a disposition to seek points of unity rather than division, wherever it is possible; a moderation worthy of the Church of England; and all allowance for the differences caused by the prejudices of education and customary ways of expression. We have selected his treatise on the Eucharist, partly as exemplifying

these qualities in an eminent degree, partly because we consider it to be peculiarly adapted to do good in these days, when that unhappy controversy has again been raised. If anything we can say in praise of this dissertation may induce any to study it, and so, perhaps, in these dangerous days, to be imbued with the moderation and wisdom of the views contained in it, we shall feel ourselves fully repaid: and this must be the excuse for our presuming to recommend any of the writings of a divine who has long ago taken his place among our great theologians. It is by bringing again into notice such treatises as this on the Eucharist, Barrow's on the Supremacy, Cosin's on Foreign Ordinations, Jackson's and Sanderson's on the Church, and others of the same character and stamp, that there is any hope of preventing our becoming, as a Church, committed to views which are at present only held by a party in it-of our preserving our Articles unaltered, which, we doubt not, will be first attacked. It is not, then, with any wish of setting up Waterland's judgement, as infallible authority on a subject so full of difficulties as that of the Eucharist confessedly is, that we call attention to it; it is simply with the desire to show that his authority, at least, cannot be pleaded in defence of those opinions which are now recommended as having been held almost universally by all learned divines.

This dissertation was written, as we are told at the very commencement, when the extreme most to be feared was that of neglect (p. 1);* and accordingly it is against the views of the Socinians and Anabaptists that it is chiefly directed. Against these, indeed, it furnishes a most complete answer. But what we said above of the writings of our great divines in general, is true of this treatise in particular; that it is so perfect and finished in all points, as now to serve us with a safeguard against the very opposite extreme of superstition also. When Waterland wrote, there may have been many in our own Church, as well as those without it, who had low and diminishing conceptions of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. But now we believe that there are very few, indeed, (so great has been the improvement in this direction,) who do not allow, "that the Holy Communion is instrumentally a cause of the real participation of Christ, and of life in his body and blood," which, says that excellent divine, Hooker, is "nothing but that which is alone sufficient for every Christian man to believe concerning the use and force of that Sacrament." Why, then, may we not ask, if this be so, why should we wish for more than this; why demand that the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper should be believed as the sole means of grace to baptised Christians to the exclusion of the Word read or preached; why seek to involve the whole subject in mystery, and adopt the incautions and ill-guarded rhetoric of the fathers? Waterland did not so: Scripture, with its plain and simple statements, was sufficient for him;

• We quote from the edition by Van Mildert. Oxford. 1823. Vol. vii.

and if he called in antiquity to explain Scripture, yet antiquity he tried also by Scripture. If he speaks of Scripture and antiquity as the rules which are to guide us, yet he says, "that Scripture alone is our complete rule of faith and manners," (p. 1,) quoting directly the Sixth Article; and he adds the "principles of reason," (p. 259,) which he never would lose sight of: and, again, he justifies our Church for having admitted no express invocation for the illapse of the Holy Spirit in her Communion Service, because "Scripture had not particularly ordered some such special form to be made use of," (p. 305,) and that, too, though the ancient liturgies very generally contained such form. Again: writing about coming fasting to the Lord's Table, he says, "the rule was early and almost universal; a rule of the Church, not of Scripture, and so a matter of Christian liberty, rather than of strict command.” (P. 410.) Here was the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, yet he put it not on equality with Holy Scripture. He had no slight opinion of the value of antiquity, or of the learning and wisdom of the fathers: yet of Clement he does not scruple to say, that he commented on our Lord's discourse in John vi. in a dark, allegorical way (p. 116); of Tertullian, on the same passage, that he blended "his ideas in a very perplexed manner" (p. 120); of Origen, "admired Origen," that "he allegorises the flesh of Christ in a very harsh manner" (p. 121); and again-when speaking of the same father's comment on Numb. xxiii. 24, "that whatever weight he may justly have as to other cases, he can have but little in this, where he manifestly trifled." (P. 122.) Again: of the same Clement he writes, "his pieces are all of them learned, though not always so clear as might be wished" (p. 166); of all that Cyril says of Chrism, he will not speak in terms of approbation, as "not standing upon Scripture authority" (p. 178); Jerom's comments on Matt. v. 23, 24, appear to him "argute rather than solid, straining the point too far." (P. 402.) Let us but consider the impossibility of speaking of any words of Scripture in this way, and we shall see the immeasurable distance between the fathers and Holy Writ. When Waterland cites the fathers, he does not string the passages together without comment and remark, but compares them together, tries them by the test of Scripture and reason, and corrects their hyperbolical and unguarded expressions by their more accurate and moderate statements. We have learned by sad experience to what unscriptural corruptions their incautious rhetoric has given rise: does not prudence now teach us to beware lest this happen again? Waterland thought that the perversion of the "once innocent names of oblation, sacrifice, propitiation, was good cause why Protestants should be jealous of admitting these names, or scrupulously wary and reserved in the use of them" (p. 342); he judged that "such manner of speaking and thinking was just and innocent, till the succeeding abuses of angel worship made it almost neces sary for wise men to lay it aside" (p. 280, note); and again—“that the prayers for the illapse of the Spirit in the Office of Baptism, and the Office for the Communion, were thrown out afterwards upon prudential considerations, and at the instance of two learned and judicious

foreigners." (P. 303.) Of the disputed point as to what is the spiritual eating and drinking taught in John vi., we need not speak, for that controversy has fallen into abler hands; and Mr. Meller's sermon is quite convincing. Yet this we will say that Waterland, who is no bad judge, thought that probably Ignatius Irenæus, Clement, Cyprian, and more certainly Tertullian, Origen, Novatian, Eusebius, Athanasius, Cyril, Hilary, Jerom, Chrysostom, Augustin, did not interpret our Lord's discourse directly or primarily of the Eucharist, but only applied it to it, which is manifestly quite different. How, then, can it be quietly assumed that the general consent of the Church has ever explained that chapter directly of the Holy Communion? There may, indeed, perhaps, be a difference of opinion as to what the fathers taught on this point (for the fathers want explaining as much-nay, a great deal more than Holy Scripture, and who then is to be the ultimate judge?); but what we complain of is, that what is, at least, doubtful should be assumed to be unquestionable, and those who venture to question should be accused of setting up their private judgement against the united authority of antiquity.

But we pass on to other points, in which the wisdom of this excellent writer is no less conspicuous, and no less seasonable for these times. Are we now told that the argument of impossibility against transubstantiation is rationalistic? Waterland thought this doctrine "absurd, contradictory, and impossible. If we may trust to our reason and senses, (and if we may not, what is there we can trust to ?) the bread and wine do remain after consecration the same in substance as before." (P. 200.) Are we now taught that the Sacraments are the only means of grace? Here we read, "by the word, also, God conveys his graces. (P. 213.) Is the expression "real presence" made all-important, so that to refuse to adopt it is little short of heresy? Dr. Barlow is here quoted with praise by our author, as saying "The Church of England has wisely forborne to use the term of real presence, in all the books set forth by her authority. We neither find it recommended in the Liturgy, nor the Articles, nor the Homilies, nor the Church's or Nowell's catechism. So that, if any Church of England man use it, he does more than the Church directs him; if any reject it, he has the Church's example to warrant him. Yet it must not be denied, that the term may be safely used among scholars, and seems to be grounded upon Scripture itself." (P. 191.) Again: are Calvin and Zuingle spoken of as those who denied the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to be a means of grace? Of Zuingle we here read, "that apologies have been made for him, as one who erred in expression, rather than in real meaning; and it is certain that his friends and followers after a while came into the old and true notion of spiritual benefits." (P. 182.) How, indeed, Calvin, "that great man, and illustrious Reformer" (p. 183), that bright light of the Reformed Church, as conspicuous for his learning as for his piety, how he can be accused of having held that in the Eucharist there is no more than a bare commemoration of Christ's death, we confess we are utterly at a loss to understand.