Corinth had plumed themselves on their baptisers. Surely, it had been well for the Church in every age, if, with the Apostolic Succession, there had been transmitted that Apostolic spirit, which had learned to profit by the Lord's faithful, though kind, rebuke of John, who said, " Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name and we forbade him, because he followeth not us." Surely, these things were of the Divine counsels purposely left in the dark, that men might come to the rational conclusion of our Church, that every national Church hath authority to change what she did, when she used her right to restrict what Rome used her right to let loose. She provides ministers enough for her offices, the sacramental and all other. She meddles not with other churches, established or non-established. This is her spirit. If there be some points at variance with this, her openly advocated opinion, in her ritual remaining-the duty of her children is not to make the exception the rule, or the inconsistent the permanent: she hath vindicated for herself as well as others the right to ordain, change, and abolish. She provides baptism for all that will be hers. She enforces none to become hers, and rejects none-in life or in death for if she knows that she cannot draw a line around all Christendom, she rejoices that Christendom is too wide for so short a line too encompass. She is silent over the graves of the unbaptised: but she says not there are none baptised, but her baptised; and while others say, "I am of Peter,' and others, I am of Paul,' she says, And I of Christ;' but adds with a sigh, Is Christ divided?""

Meanwhile, let us read her Rubric in her spririt: and if we do not, or cannot, in all and everything tie ourselves to its letter, let us beware, lest those things, wherein we profess to do so more than others, be not matters of vital and of fatal importance. Thus, are even the Baptismal Rubrics literally complied with by those who take their stand on them, when they think they afford footing for the tenets of a sect? For instance, do you, and others, baptise by aspersion or affusion when not required to dip a child, which I presume is never? I do not pretend to vouch for the general practice, but I never heard of affusion, except in the Church of Scotland. Yet our Rubric commands "to pour water" on the child, not sprinkle. And one is as different from the other, as a shower from a river.

But a truce to this question as regards the unbaptised, of which, if I mistake not, you are as weary as myself. Yet the question between us is not sifted. Is this, your fancied obedience to the Rubric, the only obedience it demands from you? It clearly states this office is not to be used for those," who lay violent hands on themselves." Thus, circumstances attending death, as well as those usually attendant on infancy, are made conditions with our Church, for the being considered members of her congregation for here, in her humility, she expresses no public opinion, knowing how far Divine authority hath discovered, and where it hath stopped. But some complain that coroner's verdicts are prostituted-not now and then, but often: and that the deceased is declared "not sound of mind," when he should be declared " a murderer of himself;" and this, when the secresy, the adaptation of means to an end, the selfcommand, have evidenced the soundness of intellect in this particular. Extenuating reasons are urged for the practice; and it is contended, on the other hand, that truth and justice must not be sacrificed to charity or compassion. It is urged that the fact proves madness: it is answered, if so, the coroner's inquest as to the selfslain is a nullity and absurdity. If the fact, however, proves madness, it may account for our Rubric, which, without any distinction between the felo de se and any other, specifies all who have laid violent hands on themselves. It is now well known that few, if any, are insane on all points; and that, therefore, generally speaking, the insane are capable of committing crime in some way or another. But it does not appear that the Rubric contemplates the question of idiotcy or intellect, sanity or insanity, guilt or innocence. There is the fact before us, that, whether sound or unsound in mind, those laying violent hands on themselves cannot die in Christ, unless a change take place in the mind or will after the deed is done; which is rather too late for us to form a judgement as to its taking place. Hence, was an office, which supposes one dying in Christ, declined in such a case; but no affirmation is made to the contrary; no harsh judgement is passed; no stone is laid upon the coffin in condemnation; burial is not refused, as it is said to have been among the Romans and Jews-only a particular VOL. I.

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form of it, which appears inapplicable to the case: there is no gibbeting of the body; there is no presumptuous sentence on the soul, like the one ascribed to the Rabbies, that no suicide can possibly be saved. If this be the right view of the case, if no "slayer of himself," (call him self-murderer or not, consider him as sane or not,) can do this deed in that exercise of trusting faith, patient hope, and resigned charity, which we call dying in Christ; then, that other question which may be considered as at issue between you and some, as to the salvability of souls after disunion from the body, will not bear at all upon the prohibition in question-a prohibition which has simple reference to what we know of the departed, not what we may fancy or conclude from reasoning.

Do not shift the question by saying, that, as to the dying in Christ, let the case of opinion against the suicide go as hard as it will, there are hundreds over whom the Burial Service is read, of whom the reader knows that they have not died so; and many more of whom he believes they have not; and multitudes besides of whom he has no reason to believe they have. I put this point as strongly as possible, that you may make what use you can of it against me. As to a mere belief against the departed, or a want of belief in their favour, I shall leave such points to those who do not think that it is better to err in charity, than to take one's chance of being right in uncharitableness. Of the three Christian graces which are eternal, we know who has said that the greater of them is love or charity, and we know how he has described it, so that he who runs may know its lineaments, wherever he sees them in the world. But, with regard to those of whom a minister may know that they died not in Christ, perhaps you may find, on studying more deeply the spirit of our Rubric, that the Church of England office is but by a corrupt practice used in such cases. You will observe it is forbidden to be used in the case of the excommunicate. Are there any such now-a-days? Had our Church stood in the place in which she fondly-too fondly, for all historical experience of human nature-hoped to have stood, she had been under Christ the regenerator of the faith and practice of the land of our fathers. All dying in her communion would have been believers in the truth and followers of holiness. It was a vain hope; but it may be pardoned. Too often has it been entertained and everywhere and always disappointed. Our Church, like every other, has failed in this. She has failed in scaling the inaccessible. But high and spiritual were her hopes: they were not the high places of the world's worship. But are there any excommunicate from her communion? Which of us excommunicates? Which of us but would tremble lest his labour should be in vain, if he attempted it, and, if in vain, worse than vain? There are, however, without our doing so, Excommunicates around us and among us, some of them pretending to belong to us, but not really members of our communion. They are excommunicate, ipso facto. The principles and deeds by which they are characterised, are virtually and evidently a self-excommunication from any Church which those principles and deeds contradict and oppose. Our Church in her Canons has reckoned up some of these; and they are no small number. All impugners of the Sovereign's Supremacy in the Church of England; all impugners of the Truth and Apostolicalness of that Church; of her Common Prayer and Sacramental offices as corrupt, superstitious, unlawful, or unscriptural; of her Thirty-nine Articles as erroneous, or such as he, the impugner, may not conscientiously subscribe; of her rites and ceremonies as wicked, Anti-Christian superstitions, or such as the zealous and godly may not approve or subscribe; of her Church Government as Anti-Christian and unscriptural; of the Consecration of her Church Governors as unscriptural or insufficient; all impugners of these things, and all separatists from her, are censured as excommunicate, ipso facto. Not as though they had not the right to exercise their judgement-nor begging the question as though the conclusions of their judgement were not right; but simply asserting that (not by her, but by their own deed) they were not of her communion. So far the Canons from 2 to 9. The 12th Canon, in like manner, declares excommunicate, by the very fact, all maintainers of the legality of any ministers and laics, or either making rules in causes ecclesiastical without the Sovereign's authority; and all submitting to such rules. Now, previous to the framing of this Čanon, suppose the subjects of it themselves had been asked, if they were or were not excommunicate

from that body which held the reverse, they must in conscience have said, "Yes." It was their choice to be so. Since their time, law has altered; and we can now maintain the legality of the proposition in the first part of the Canon, without excommunicating ourselves from a Church which no longer maintains the contrary. The 10th and 11th Canons, with the 139th, 140th, and 141st, which recommend or enjoin excommunication in certain cases, but do not denounce it ipso facto, tend to prove the force of the term where it is employed. But, beside the excommunication ipso facto, our Church has claimed, as every society must do under some name, a right of excommunication according to circumstances: but it was simply excommunication; though of two kinds, the less from the Communion of the Lord's Supper, the greater from the Communion of her Worship altogether, including, of course, the other. Excuse my mentioning these obvious things; excuse my pointing out the marked distinction between this and the presumptuous interdict in old times, from natural and civil rights; excuse my directing your attention to the unostentatious, unirritating mode of it pointed out in our Rubrics and Canons, so utterly different from the awfully blasphemous form of Bell, Book, and Candle. The curate, beneficed or unbeneficed, is directed to wave, advise, repel from communion for a time, till the ordinary is consulted, those notoriously evil in life. Such is the structure of our law, that it has been found necessary to limit this to notoriety in law. But even this, how greatly would it have limited the number of those for whom the Burial Service should be used. Much more if the notoriety were not so limited: since by continual checks, all those, whose Burial with this office is now considered as a scandal, would in that case have either been brought to reformation, or led to excommunicate themselves altogether from so strict a communion. Neither does it invalidate this argument that by Canon 68 the refusal to bury is made liable to suspension only with the exception of cases of the greater excommunication; for it is plain, that if the Church could have become such a church as was wished and hoped for, the purifying process would not have stayed at the smaller restraint if the greater had been found necessary. In conclusion of this topic, let me observe,that the authority of our Canon is so different from that of the Rubrics and Articles, that I have only appealed to it as to a witness of what was the spirit of the Church in dictating the letter of the Rubric.

If such, then, be the spirit of the Burial Rubric, how shall it be complied with? Let the compliance be filial and not slavish. Scandal can be avoided by a manly and sober study of the meaning and intent of the directions given us. The Church cannot be made all that she sanguinely hoped to become, when she threw off the fostered ignorance, superstition, and credulity under which alone she had been able to study the broad aspect of the world. Mankind is found to appear under different phases since that time, which previously were not exhibited, or not noticed, or but slightly 8o. Difficulties will always meet every band of the militant Church. But, if our orders have not provided for every movement, the spirit of them is traceable enough to direct the campaign against evil. The clergyman is as deeply bound to the other offices as to this. Yet you do not, I think-and I think you are singular, if you do-read the whole of the Matrimonial service. By some, I know, more, and by some less, of that service is omitted. The character of the age is unfit for, what was not amiss in the reign of the last Tudor and the first Stuart, when the dramatists, and even Shakspeare, wrote for the most refined, what scarcely the least refined could now read aloud without blushing. You know, that even in our translation of the Scriptures, then published, are passages which we are forced to sink in the public reading. You know, also, that in the beginning of a lesson it is frequently necessary to substitute a name for a pronoun, in order to render an occasional reading of Scripture intelligible to the partially instructed: that in the beginning of the Gospels frequently-that in the beginning of this very office-our Church has added words to the cited Scripture, explanatory of the source of the citation. There is another place in this exquisitely touching and, looking at its intent, most perfect-service; where the Church has omitted so to do, yet, perhaps, might have done so to the great advantage of an unin. structed auditory. It is that where is introduced so strikingly and so consolingly the passage beginning, "I heard a voice from heaven." The very abruptness is awful: It is impressive to the mind of taste, and, what is far better, it is solemn to the

memory of faith. Yet, as it appears to me at least, it wants for the edification of more scantily stored minds-it wants, also, for the ear of that unhappy one who seldom or never has read or heard the Scriptures of truth, till drawn to the Church by some bereavement to these it wants some such short introduction as those touching ones in the communion service: "Hear what comfortable words Saint John saith." Yet a change of this kind would literally make the service not absolutely identical with the "ensuing office" mentioned in the Rubric. Virtually it would remain the same. Two or three equally slight changes, and not of addition, but omission, would render this service as awakening, as encouraging, as spiritually useful, over the grave of the unbaptised, the excommunicate, the suicide, as of the most faithful, consistent, and resigned Christian; even taking the worst cases of wilful unbelief, hardened sin, and determined despair: for our Church has (wonderfully in penning a service so full of consolation) abstained from presumptuous assertion, fond eulogy, and the prying into the invisible, unrevealed, and unknown: wonderfully, let me repeat it, when we consider it was for the Burial of such as should be believed true Christians, and that as it stands no friend of the most faithful need desire more. The necessary omissions are so few and so slight, as to be scarcely more than the changes necessary to be made by a clergyman in London, suddenly called upon to bury the corpse of a stranger in a strange parish, or the corpses of more than one, of whom during the service he can remember no more than that they are dead, and that the survivors are, or should be awakened to be, Christians. Study this office, my dear friend; distinguish what it says of the dead, or of our hopes for the dead; from the glorious things which it avows of our hope in the living Lord Jesus Christ: and I do not doubt that you will abstain from letting fall the sparks of perhaps a conflagration, which may burn our Common Prayer Book-at any rate, the sparks of schism or heresy. Nor do I fear but you will be able conscientiously to comply with the prohibitory Rubric, and yet to taste the pleasure of seizing the only opportunity, in some cases, which may ever be ⚫ presented you, of using the means provided by our Church for spreading or establishing our Redeemer's kingdom in some hearts; even beside the grave of those whom you may yet have the misfortune to consider unbabatised, of those whom you may yet consider as having fallen under the awful misfortune of deliberate self-murder, of those whom you may, perhaps, with truth consider as having deserved to be excommunicated by every congregation faithful men throughout the world. Farewell. May the wisdom of age grow rapidly upon you, long before age itself! And may the Oracles of God become to you the touchstone of all religious truth!

PRESBYTER ANGLICANUS.

NEALE'S "AGNES DE TRACY."

To the Editor of the Christian's Monthly Magazine and Universal Review.
SIR,

It requires the powers of a giant to keep up with the literature of the day, even with that portion of it which wears a religious or ecclesiastical complexion. You will not therefore refuse, at times, to accept from the hands of your readers, a seasonable remark on some of the numerous publications which are passing through the press. The publications which I have in my mind's eye at this moment, are such as are rendered attractive by pictorial embellishments, fictitious narrative, and dramatised histories. A little book of this latter class, entitled " Agnes de Tracy, a Tale of the Times of St. Thomas of Canterbury, by the Rev. J. M. Neale, B.A.." fell into my hands a few days ago. The perusal of it confirmed me in the opinion which I had previously formed of the well-timed appearance of your Review. This

will appear anon. That Beckett did acquiesce in the "Constitution of Clarendon," so far as to swear to obey them, in the words of truth, and without any reserve, is, I believe, an admitted point in history; however much he afterwards gave indications of repenting of the step which he had taken. Moreover, these "Constitutions' contained nothing of an immoral or irreligious character. The clergy had abused their privileges of exemption from being tried in the civil courts; therefore, that they should, when accused of any capital offence, take their trials in the usual courts of justice, was but a reasonable demand.

Now, in page 32 of the tale, we find the following language put into the mouth of the Archbishop, without one word of reproach or reproof; nay, in the preface to the book we read, "Who would seek the faults, when he may contemplate the glorious actions, of these two blessed martyrs, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and Archbishop Laud?" Thus introduced, the following words are put into his mouth:

"God forbid, that we should not prefer His glory and the Church's good before any earthly king's anger; yea, and that we should not rather break through a wicked oath, and that wrung from us by necessity, and from which we have obtained absolution, than add sin to sin, of which we truly and heartily repent us, by keeping it!"

Now, a clergyman is a public teacher of morality, by his very office; and the Bible, which is to be his rule, (see our Ordination Service,) teaches us, that "He that sweareth unto his neighbour and disappointeth him not, though it were to his own hindrance," is the man approved of God. It is to be remembered, moreover, (as Southey in his Book of the Church observes,) that these "Constitutions" were not "new edicts enacted in a spirit of hostility to the Church, but a declaration and recognition of existing laws."

Of a man of these lax notions of a moral obligation, Mr. Neale observes, "Will not the true churchman affirm, He is in peace! Now is he numbered with the children of God, and his lot is cast among the saints!"" The entire fabric of the book is of a similar character: and I lament to say, that this work is but one of a large class. May the efforts of the Christian Review be successful in exposing and checking their mischief!

In page 44, the day of St. Alphege, (19th April,) is said, ever since 1012, to have been observed by the English Church in honour of his martyrdom. Is this true? What says Wheatley (if any proof be at all necessary)?——

"As many of these holy-days as are observed by the Church of England, I shall speak in the fifth chapter. But then, as to Popish holy-days retained in our calendar, I shall have no fairer opportunity of treating of them than in this place." (He then proceeds to notice them, and St. Alphege's day among them.) Our second Reformers, (he remarks,) under Queen Elizabeth, (though all these days had been omitted in both books of King Edward) "thought convenient to restore the names of them to the calendar, though not with any regard of being kept holy by the Church." (Wheatley on Common Prayer, page 58, folio 1720.)

April 12, 1844.

Yours truly,

VIGIL.

The book in question is "affectionately and respectfully dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Mill, chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury." The Reverend Doctor might not be able to prevent the dedication of the book to himself, (for nothing is said of his permission,) but it would be to his honour to disavow the compliment. The author states, in his preface, that he does not write for Romanists (a most necessary piece of information, certainly); but if he supposes that the young people into whose hands his book falls, have the means within themselves of correcting his statements, he gives them credit for more discretion than they commonly possess. Moreover, young people seldom read a preface at all.