The Silent Village: a Poem, with Notes. BY THOMAS CLARKE. London: Pickering.

1844.

We wish this writer, who has evidently talents, were less negative in his objects. He may depend upon it, he willingly foregoes many advantages by the want of positive opinions. Indifferentism is but a poor field to labour in, and can bring no recom pense. An individual who finds nowhere but hollowness and hypocrisy, should look to himself; the world without may be but a reflection of the world within. What sort of man is he who goes from Dan to Beersheba, and saith all is barren?

Archbishop Usher's Answer to a Jesuit, with other Tracts on Popery. Cambridge: 8vo., pp. 750.

It is very gratifying to find "our dear sister" (or mother, as may be) the University of Cambridge following the example of the University of Oxford, and furnishing the students of divinity with so admirable a volume as that of Archbishop Usher's. Learning of all descriptions-such, we mean, as is suited to illustrate his subject—is poured out abundantly upon most of the topics included in this volume; and as the testimony of antiquity is now more diligently sought for, and a degree of submission to its decisions is manifesting itself with more or less intensity in various quarters, the illustrations of the Archbishop, derived, as they are, so largely from the writings of the Greek and Latin Fathers, will, doubtless, give this volume an importance in the eyes of many who would not be willing to defer so readily, perhaps, to modern ratiocination. It is certainly agreeable to have opinion supported, in some measure, by the lights of former ages, and as some of these, we are told, were instructed by apostles, they can, it would be anticipated, instruct our ignorance far more conclusively than any modern. But, be that notion well grounded or not, we have in the pages of Archbishop Usher as bright a specimen as can, perhaps, be adduced of the successful application of Patristic literature in subverting the doctrine of the modern Church of Rome, or, more properly speaking, the Tridentine Church. The managers of the Council of Trent were forced, in a great measure, to propound the dogmas of that assembly in somewhat general and equivocal language: so much so, that the adherents of different sects in the Church of Rome appeal with equal confidence to the decrees and canons of Trent, as coinciding with them in opinion, and favouring each side its own views. The notion of there being any unity in the Church of Rome either with antiquity or modernity is, indeed, a most whimsical fancy; and we do trust that those who are really desirous of ascertaining the sentiments of the ancient Fathers on various controverted topics, will be persuaded to learn them under the venerable guidance of an Archbishop Usher.

The present reprint is, it need hardly be said, commendable for typographical elegance, and contains, what have been sometimes omitted in other editions, the Treatise on the Religion of the Ancient Irish, and several sermons preached on public occasions; and three Indexes-the latter a recommendation to a volume of any size and of miscellaneous contents, and much more to a work of the present dimensions and varied matter, from sources as varied.

Want of space prevents us from inserting many Reviews, now in type.-ED.

IV. CORRESPONDENCE.

[The Editor begs it to be understood that he does not hold himself responsible for the opinions stated in this department of the Magazine.]

LETTERS TO A PRIEST.

No. II.

THE BURIAL SERVICE.

DEAR BROTHER,

My last letter left untouched the question between us, regarding our obligation to grant, or the propriety of our refusing, I will not say Christian Burial, but the Burial Service of our Church in the case of children unbaptised by ministers of our own communion. "Unbaptised altogether, then," you will say; "for there is no baptism but by those ordained in the line of the Apostolical Succession." You would consider, then, as baptised, those who have passed under the thaumaturgic hands of the priests of the Romish Church-" Roman," I should say, as you will make a point of preferring the Latin to the Saxon form-on the same principle that the term "Anglican" is so far preferable to the common-place designation, "English." Well, as to that point of the validity of such baptism, you are not singular, nor is your party : for the Church of England is not Anabaptist; though there are points that you insist on, which, if granted, would demand of her in mere consistency to become so. You consider as no true baptism that baptism administered, say by a Wesleyan minister; baptism with the same matter as is used by our own Church; baptism with the same words as are employed by her; baptism it is most likely ministered with prayer for, and in reliance on,the same Spirit as our own Church scripturally relies upon. Why? are these heretics? are these schismatics? The question seems simple, but might be long and intricate; and might turn out a question of definitions, according to the ancient or modern, precise or loose, nature of which the sectary might be, or might not be, either heretic or schismatic. Grant him, however, to be schismatical; you refuse the name of baptism to the ministration of him who perhaps from infancy has been trained in all the fascinating prepossessions which error as well as truth throws around her children. And yet your principle of Apostolic succession must grant the name and nature of true Christian baptism to the later ministrations of John Wesley himself, who is necessarily the ArchHeretic or Arch-Schismatic; thus offering a new and unexpected illustration of the popular proverb,

66

Quicquid delirant Reges, plectuntur Achivi."

Truly, you may well fight against reason, and call it but a defensive war against rationalism. You certainly cannot so construct your hive as to admit your own bees, and exclude your neighbours', or be inaccessible even to wasps. There is, indeed, a doctrine which has found favour in the eyes of some of late, as neither absurd nor abominable eighteen centuries after that rebuke of two Apostles, " Ye know not what spirit ye are of." I mean the doctrine of stinging to death, which might obviate, in some degree, some disadvantages of the too wide, although too narrow, tenet of the Apostolic Succession, and keep your hive to yourselves, if your swarm were strong enough to fill it. And after the practice of that amiable theory, you might have the pride and pleasure

(alas! for poor human nature that they are travelling companions for one little stage at least) the pleasure and pride of complying still more with the letter, and trampling still more on the spirit, of the Rubric of our Church which commands you, as you say, to decline reading her Burial Service over the unbaptised, the suicide, and the excommunicate. Let me be checked, if I speak somewhat too bitterly. My presence with you in spirit, while I write, does not entirely do away with the natural effect of personal absence. Forgive me, if in your party I sometimes forget yourself. You may not deserve, at least at present, all the sallies of a too impetuous, or rather too indiscriminate, indignation: but there are consequences of our actions, of our expressions, of our principles, which we ought to look forward to, and which in this case you have not duly weighed ;

“Think what, and be advised: you are but young yet."

And don't be out of humour, but excuse quotations from such a Puritan as Milton. Now, as your cobweb of the apostolical succession can neither shut out nor catch George Whitfield and John Wesley, so it makes no manner of difference to us, who think in opposition to you, even in the establishment the Erastian expression has slipped out unawares. How hard to avoid occasions of apology! It is well for me that the good old Catholic times are not come back, when the two Frenchmen fought before the altar for precedence in the use of the censer. Only fancy, too, your interpretations of the Rubric, and ours, being tested by the same infallible touchstone as the use of the Gothic and Roman Missals at Toledo under Gregory the Great-when the trial by battle and the trial by fire were successively appealed to, and, strange to say, the vanquished party was satisfied with both. Yet, after all, this ordeal was shorter and more decisive than many a general council has proved, and quite as conclusive as an appeal to the discordant infallibilities of two successive popes. That the Supreme Pontiff's trivial title should here have been accidentally written without a capital, might, if unapologised for, lead to serious results, if, with a return of those noli me tangere times, the not unfrequented appeal to the duel in ecclesiastical causes of importance should return likewise. It is true, we might, as the ministers of peace did then, with Christian consistency shuffle off the hazard of soul and body upon champions more ready to incur it, or more reckless: otherwise, before entering on a little matter of controversy like the present, which, nevertheless, might involve so many apologies for so many unguarded expressions, as to differences of as great consequence as some which threaten to tear our Church in pieces, I might be tempted to ask, what happily I am now profoundly ignorant of, "Are you as good a shot as our friend and neighbour Danvers," who is as pleased, and thinks himself as clerically employed in bringing home a brace of pheasants in his shooting-jacket, as I do at pocketing in my sketch-book a crosslegged knight, or you in returning with a rubbing of one of your orate pro animabus brasses? When shall we all learn the sweet religion of that Christian charity, which is more careful to guard the pursuits of our own tastes from becoming passions, than ready to censure other men's as being so, which is less adroit at masking its own romance as religion, than in discovering that sound faith often reasons truly in the utilitarianism of others. You will say this is all digression. What has Danvers to do with the matter? Nay, being crafty, I would catch you by guile, if you were less impatient. It is not for nothing, or for gossip's sake, that I have introduced the person ecclesiastial of the adjoining parish to your own. You know he is gone into Devonshire. He is young as yourself-was ordained with youand I'll not say any worse of him than that he is volatile, as you are. Let us hope that the studies, which our sacred calling demands and ought to obtain, will lead him right, and you not wrong. And the Spirit which can alone so guide them, and so check them, is that which we are all bound to pray for, and privileged to pray for in hope, and in each of us is ready to work an abiding change and daily amelioration. Well, in the hurry of his departure, he forgot to engage any one to take the occasional duties of his little parish, as you know. They say, he brings home a bride on his return; and I, not being a bachelor, nor entertaining your mediaeval speculations about celibacy, am apt to think his clerical memory will be strengthened rather than impaired by the change. However, you are aware, that soon after he started, a new

born child was baptised (allow the term) by the Wesleyan minister who was on the spot. The child was in danger. You, the nearest clergyman, were at a distance, and so even others, who would have readily engaged in this service, they having, like yourself, I trust, feet shod with preparation for the Gospel of peace in other cases. You know how untranslatable is the original ετοιμασία του ευαγγελίου της ειρήνης. The parents, though Wesleyans, would have sent for the clergyman of the parish, had he been at home; for it has been reserved for Tractarians to stir up smouldering embers with a sword, and throw on the dry rags of popery for fuel, to await the rising of a phoenix from the flames. They have aimed at usurping what the analogy of faith in the Scriptures shows us the Lord himself considers as His "strange work," and His alone. "I am come to cast fire upon the earth, and what will I if it be already kindled!" The child, however, of which we have spoken, has recovered. But should it die before Danvers returns, are you prepared to say you will not bury it for him? Are you ready to take a vow (as vows are becoming fashionable again) that if the child live till his hair is grey, and you till yours grows white, and his body be brought to your churchyard to be buried, where his grandmother sleeps already, and the grandfather passes her grave to enter your Church every sabbath-day, you will not bury him? Strange infatuation! No enmity to the Church on one side : hostility unrelenting beyond the grave on the other-from one who would be called a true son of the true Church of Christ.

Yet this is but the following out of your own principle: that there is no baptism, and must therefore be no Burial. You say there is no hostility; and I believe you-no personal hostility; but there is hostility to a name; the mad hostility to a mere abstraction-Dissent, under whatever circumstances. You presume not to give an opinion as to the dead; you hope for the best from the uncovenanted mercies of God; but you presume to prove the deeply wounded hearts of the living at that moment when they are utterly unable to undergo the operation; and when it is next to certain it must end, morally, in fever.

Still, you contend, you have no option. "To the law and to the testimony," you say; meaning the Rubric. And I am willing to grant that, in this case, if followed out consistently and relatively to its spirit, such Rubric is agreeable to each law and testimony, from time to time communicated to us by our God in the Scriptures of truth. But if we profess to go with the Rubric, we must go with it all the way that it will lead us; and we shall find it to be the word of a Church which has styled itself, not "Christ's Holy Catholic Church—that is, the whole congregation of Christian people," but only a branch of it; and content to share the name, not professedly, with such Churches as the Greek and Roman, and exclusively of others that from principle should be dearer; but with such as have, quite as much as the Wesleyans, broken through the tie of what is called the Apostolical Succession; for she has begged the prayers of her children by name, and "especially for the Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland."

Our Burial Rubric, then, we grant, states the office" is not to be used for any that die unbaptised." Who, then, are the unbaptised? The Baptismal Rubric, even in the case of private baptism on great and reasonable cause and necessity, expressly sets apart the office for the minister of the parish, or, in his absence, any other lawful "minister that can be procured." The Rubric is of the date of the Restoration, as far as the naming" the minister of the parish" as most proper. But the confining of the office to "the lawful minister," was the result of the Hampton Court Conference on the accession of James I. And in the 69th Canon of 1603, suspension for three months is enjoined on any minister if he wilfully refuses baptism, or purposely, or negligently so defers the time, that the child dieth through his default unbaptised. But does it necessarily follow, that if it die unbaptised by him, it dieth unbaptised ? Surely, if the child be baptised by another lawful minister, it does not; and though his fault be the same, the punishment cannot be borne out by the Canon. Surely, then, it does not follow from the wording of this Canon that the child dieth unbaptised, if unlawfully baptised; or that its baptism is null in the eyes of our Church if unlawfully received at the hand of an unlawful minister. Let us suppose a child brought to be buried by you from over the border; bodies have been brought to my church

yard from as great a distance. The child was baptised-I beg the question so far as to use the term-by a Kirk of Scotland Minister. Will you hold him unbaptised? Why should you? He was the lawful minister of the parish; and even by the Rubric of our Church, so discordant from the Kirk in its constitution, the baptism is good. But suppose another infant from the same quarter, baptised by an Episcopalian Minister: will you hold the baptism good, or is it none? The Episcopalian is not the minister of the parish; but is he a lawful minister or not? If not, what becomes of the succession of the authority to empower administration of sacraments. And if you say he is, it must be in a very different sense from what we speak of "the minister of the parish, or any other lawful minister." For if that Rubric be retained in future times by an Anglican Church, (if I err, it is in attempting to speak your own language, and you must excuse me,) or if it be allowed to pass muster after the re-establishment of that in England, for the re-establishment of which here prayers have been offered up in France, on the Thursday in every week; in either case it must be in that natural sense of the words in which we understand them, that the lawful minister and the minister of the parish belong to the same Church. I ought to have said, not only to the same Catholic Church, but to the same Particular Church, or branch of the aforesaid. But perhaps even here, when I thought myself close upon you, you are gone to an immeasureable distance. The Roman Catholic Priest can administer baptism, if he be neither the minister of the parish nor a lawful minister in our Church. It is likely you may never be called upon to bury a Roman Catholic infant; though possible, for one might die at the lodging-house in your parish. If so, would your enquiries be particular whether the baptism was by the ministration of an Episcopally ordained priest: since even the midwife is allowed to administer that sacrament privately in case of danger by that Church, as were women among the Marcionites of the quasi-apostolic period. Thus, at the very antipodes of dissent, you find yourself in the same climate. It is true that some of your revered Fathers disapproved of Lay-Baptism. Could it be otherwise when Marcion approved it? But it was from a Romish persuasion of the necessity of baptism to salvation still lingering about them, that its private administration was allowed to the Laity under Edward and Elizabeth. Those holding the Romish error still, or something like it, should be careful to abide by at least Romish charity in going to the very outskirts of the pale of salvation, and taking in all they find there.

What is it you desiderate to constitute true baptism? Anti-Nicene purity, PostNicene mystery, Popish pageantry, Protestant dignity, theories from the times of the first two Stuarts, or practices from those ofthe last two? And when the season is settled, from which field will you gather the flower-from the high or the low, the open or the secret-from that sunny with worldly favour, or that dull with the world's neglect? Is it the form of sound words which is essential? Behold it given by the mouth of Jesus Christ Himself. Which of our sects rejects it? Is it the element? Which of us uses oils or chrisms instead of it or with it? Is it the minister? Our Church allows a distinction of lawful ministers within her pale: and nobly vindicates the right of" every particular or national Church." . . . "To ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church, ordained only by man's authority." Such is the binding or loosing of the authority to baptise: the Lord, as far as appears from Scripture, having simply commanded the duty; without providing for the contingency of the death of those whom he commanded, or letting us know how they were restricted in transmitting the authority, or if at all, or whether the authority was transmissible only through them. Where is it revealed that through them Paul received authority to baptise? or that in his case an authority was formally given by Christ to him as to the Eleven? or that he was not after his baptism by the oncenamed Ananias, whose authority seems by Divine Wisdom as studiously kept out of sight, left at liberty to enlarge Christ's kingdom, in the same form as others had been commissioned to do? Or if Paul's Apostolate included the Episcopate, and the Episcopate the Priesthood, by which was Apollos ordained to baptise? By John's baptism? Was he ordained or not? Was his baptism less valid than that of Kephas or of Paul? For the exclamation of the latter, "I thank God I baptised none of you, except" the Jew whom he alludes to, leaves us to infer, that the schismatics of