irritability of temper, ill state of health, and the remorse, without repentance, which they display. Take a specimen : 64 July 23. (1827.) I fear it is now rather laziness and indifference, than any rational idea of its inexpediency, which prevents my confessing oftener on paper my evil thoughts and deeds. I am becoming careless and sensual. I often arise from my meals conscious that I have eaten more than I ought, and often, when beforehand I think it better to be abstinent, I have not the resolution to fight off the self-deceit of the moment; and the same state of mind developes itself in more important matters. I very often find myself negligent of other people's interests, and forget what has been the matter with them, and what they have wanted. And in my prayers, my thoughts run off on boats, or some romance of the sort. I waste my days from want of regularity and every evening confess it in my prayers, and make faces as if it tormented me, and yet do exactly the same again. And often, when I have fancied I am disgusted with myself for indulging too much at dinner, I fail to infer from it that I must eat less at tea."* So much frivolity and asceticism were surely never blended before! The next instance is still more ludicrous: "December 10. I have been bothering myself for the last three days about whether I should buy a great coat. I believe I want one, and it is after all a question of degree. But I also wish for one, and it will do me more harm to gratify this childishness, than good to escape a wetting; so I will put it out of the question." Is it not lawful, then, for a Christian to wish for a great coat to escape a wetting? What folly! Such is the individual, and such the spirit in which he worked, in resistance to the spirit of the age in which he was born, and of the Church by which he was supported. Thus it was that he cherished an idolatrous preference for historical prejudices, rites, ceremonies, and ascetic mortifications, and discouraged the exercise of rational discrimination in regard to the usages and opinions of antiquity, and all distinctions that would separate true religion from superstitions that had happily become, or were becoming, obsolete such as unnecessary fasting, celibacy, religious vows, voluntary retirement and contemplation, invocation of Saints, worship of the Virgin, and such like. He would take the sixteenth century back into the fourth, notwithstanding the acknowledged impossibility for the same mind to sympathise with both, and so not seek to bridge over the chasm between ages, but abolish all but one. He would give the lie to the teaching of Time, and to the law of progression as an instinct of the human soul, and substitute the privileges of a doubtful succession for the certain sanction of a present piety. His course was retrograde-his cry and watchword, not "Onward!" and "Forward!" but " Backward!" and there "Stop!" Yet this is the man whom his editors compare with the Saviour Himself, whose Gospel was altogether a Gospel of progress. Yes, in order to get rid of the unpleasantness which is felt in regard to * Page 451. Mr. Froude's ironical and sometimes flippant mode of speech and writing, they refer to the example of Christ Himself. "Does there," they ask, "yet remain something that troubles us, something that we cannot at all explain? We must not forget (it is a deep and high allusion, but not, it is humbly trusted, altogether irrelevant to this case) that as all other manifestations of our Lord, so those which He has vouchsafed to make of Himself in His Saints, have ever been more or less mysterious and unaccountable."* And thus we are called upon to accept the character of Mr. Froude as an imitation of Christ, nearer, and perhaps better, than that of Thomas à Kempis! We forbear to quote what follows the extract just made, as it goes to deprive the moral sense of all power of distinguishing between good and ill in relation to the Church's history; wherein all manner of things paradoxical must "needs be venerated, because she gave them her sanction." O, prostration of conscience with the reason, before the dead but enshrined carcase of cast-out superstition! Therefore it is that these same editors mark, for reprobation, the following extracts, with many others, from Bishop Jewell's "Defence:" "Whereas some use to make so great a vaunt that the Pope is only Peter's Successor, as though thereby he carried the Holy Ghost in his bosom, and could not err; this is but a matter of nothing, and a very trifling tale. God's grace is promised unto a good mind, and to every one that feareth Him; not unto Sees and Successions If so be the place and consecration only be sufficient, why then Manasses succeeded David, and Caiphas succeeded Aaron. And it hath been often seen, that an idol hath been placed in the Temple of God." "These worthy and learned fathers, Luther and Zuinglius, and other like godly and zealous men, were appointed of God, not to erect a new Church, but to reform the old." Mr. Froude's hatred of Protestantism was stronger than his love for truth. He commends hatred as the proper feeling for young and ardent natures, and opines that they should only grow into love by experience. Never did he grow into love-with anything as it is; for the past he felt a prejudice, and conceived, indeed, a sort of quasi affection for it, but only because it was past, and had been so for twelve centuries. For anything more recent he had no sort of respect, but entire loathing. He refused to look, too, at the moral relations of things. With him a Manasses and a Caiphas were as good as a David or an Aaron, if only he found them in an historical sequence and genealogical descent. Thus he refused to accept "the fulfilment of great essentials, the maintenance of order, decency, and true doctrine,"† as the signs and seals of an Apostolic communion; but whether with or without these conditions, Apostolic succession, as mere succession, was to be all-in-all. Conscience hoodwinked by tradition, might be the *Remains of the late Rev. R. H. Froude, M.A., Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Part. ii., in 2 volumes. Derby and London: Mozley, and Rivingtons, 1839. Vol. i., preface, xxxiv. Part. ii., vol. i., p. 40. more easily extinguished by authority; and at the sight of this deplorable murder, Mr. Froude and his editors express themselves equally happy. Here they revel-here they triumph, and, while this mighty scene is acting, demonstrate from it "the unreasonableness of Rationalism !" "And can these things be Without our special wonder?" With them, mere ecclesiastical questions are the only questions of vital importance. We are awfully reminded "that the Reformed Church of England has given birth to two martyrs, an archbishop and a king, and that these blessed Saints died for Episcopacy." With them, they also contend that Episcopacy was "a Divine mystery for perpetuating the Church," and that the gift of transmitting the Holy Spirit (O horrible blasphemy!) rests with such Episcopate. "The gift thus transmitted empowers its possessors, (1) to admit into or exclude from the mysterious Communion, called in Scripture the Kingdom of Heaven,' any one whom they judge deserving of it; and this with the assurance that all whom they admit or exclude on earth, and externally, are admitted or excluded in heaven, and spiritually, in the sight of God and of the Holy Angels: (2) that it empowers them to bless and intercede for those who are within this kingdom, in a sense in which no other men can bless or intercede: (3) to make the Eucharistic bread and wine the body and blood of Christ, in the sense in which our Lord made them so: (4) to enable delegates to perform this great miracle by ordaining them with imposition of hands."* If Charles and Laud died as martyrs for this superstitious system, it is clear that their cause has not been blessed by Providence-that their blood was shed for the manure, and not as the seed, of the Church— in defence of an expiring polity, and not for the establishment of a new; a polity which, even according to the showing of its advocates, was irrespective of order, decency, and true doctrine, and had, in fact, existed a long time without regard to either, and even in opposition to their assertion. "According to this view of the subject," says Mr. Froude, "to dispense with Episcopal ordination is to be regarded, not as a breach of order merely, or a deviation from apostolical precedent, but as a surrender of the Christian priesthood, a rejection of all the powers which Christ instituted Episcopacy to perpetuate: and the attempt to substitute any other form of ordination for it, or to seek communion with Christ through any non-episcopal association, is to be regarded, not as a schism merely, but as an impossibility."+ Against these views expressly, was the Reformation a protest; and the Church of England thus reformed, and as at present instituted, is still a standing and living declaration. Not for the sake of decency, order, and true doctrine, but for the privileges of office, these men, then, *Part ii., vol. i., p. 41. † Part ii., vol. i., p. 43. have been contending. They are not satisfied that ordination should convey to the person ordained the legal, or formal, qualifications for the discharge of his office in a decent orderly manner; but a real and invisible power, which is to be believed in, though not manifested. We are not to expect that ordained persons should be more eloquent, better acquainted with Scripture, wiser, holier, than they were before ordination-oh, no! A power (forsooth) may be real, though its effects remain invisible. In a word, let us claim and exert spiritual dominion over your conscience and reason, and ask from us, in return, no moral or spiritual equivalent; let us be tyrants, and be you content to be slaves. Religious Freedom is the watchword of the Reformation. It requires piety and diligence as the only true credentials of a priesthood; and while these remain, it acknowledges a succession-where those are not, it denies the power, and despises the form. No wonder, then, that a blind surrender to the guidance of the Church is the great duty taught by the followers of Mr. Froude; that they should advocate an appeal, not to the personal qualifications, but to the commission of the teachers* (as if children must be necessarily better disciplined if sent to the parish school, though a dunce had been appointed for its master, than they could be at any other, though presided over by an intelligent and diligent instructor)in a word, that they should assert that "there exists in the world a set of men, and only one set of men, who derive their commission to teach religious truth though an uninterrupted succession of persons, themselves similarly commissioned, and deriving their first appointment from the Apostles themselves: such a set of persons there is in the world, and everybody knows and admits that this set of persons consists of those who have been ordained by Christian bishops as ministers of the Catholic Church: this point is clearly established by history; and its truth is in no way affected by the supposed truth or falsehood of the doctrines which these ordained persons teach.”† In order to frighten us into a superstitious reverence for such a set of persons, irrespective of their doctrines or their morals, we are told in so many words "No Eucharist without a Priesthood;"‡ and the state is warned of the peril of interfering in matters spiritual-meaning thereby the external polity of the Church-and of its presumption in "now commencing a new system of ecclesiastical polity, the merits of which are yet to be decided."§ The new system here spoken of, is, at least, as old as the Reformation; that is, in principle, if not in developement. A change then took place not only in the Reformed Church, but in that of Rome, which was thereby placed in a Protestant attitude, and embodied and ratified her protest in the acts of the Tridentine Councils. Whether in the affirma * Vol. ii., p. 234. Part. i., vol. ii., p. 237. § Part. ii., vol. i., p. 186. tion then made by the Reformed Church in favour of "order, decency, and right doctrine," or in the protest entered against it by the Church of Rome, in her attempts at Counter-Reformation, the limits of discretion were passed on either side, is not now the question. Both parties now are on the same side of the Rubicon, and the conflict has been maintained, and is raging at this very hour. Tractarianism, indeed, affects an elder Romanism than "the wretched Tridentine," and would rather own the council of Lateran than that of Trent: there is many a Jesuit, also, in the Roman community itself, who sighs for ancient unity and sole dominion. Professor Sewell (perhaps the most eloquent writer among the Tractarians) does not disguise the fact; but, in the pages of the Quarterly Review, uses the acknowledged efforts of the Jesuits at the present time, as a part of his argument. While the emissaries of Rome are thus spreading themselves in every quarter, our universities are halting between two opinions, and controversies are pending, which will tend either to purify still further our faith and practice, or confirm us in present prejudices, or take us back to old corruptions and abuses-the assertion of privileges and powers that had their existence not only in the vain but evil imaginations of the human heart, the fruits of a wicked ambition and of the lust of spiritual despotism; such as the pretension to miraculous performances and rites, the assumption of the Divine prerogative to forgive sins, and to dispense eternal happiness and misery, together with the claim of no less than oracular authority in all ecclesiastical ministration; claims, every one of which is boldly and uncompromisingly asserted in both parts of the Remains of Mr. Froude. Bitterly did this gentleman and his friends regret that by the Reformation, they should be separated both from the past and the foreign, and early did they determine to stir heaven and earth to effect a reunion of the Anglican Church with both. To this they were willing to devote their private means; but they were assisted by unknown hands. Names are carefully excluded from Mr. Froude's Remains, and every allusion to foreign or external influence and aid, where not suppressed, is explained away by the editors; but enough is left to show conjoint effort with many parties, and not all of the Church of England. Money, to a very considerable amount, must have been expended in forcing the circulation of the Tracts, and other methods of propagandism; and the effect produced has only been in proportion to the accu mulated weight and power of the agency put into operation. Mr. Frederick William Faber expresses the common feelings of the party, when, on the continent, he sought in vain the unity of the Church in that external conformity which he desiderated, and regretted the loss of Catholicity in his own Nonconformist spirit, as a mere Anglican clergyman. We would ask this gentleman, If it was not something, then, that he could sympathise with the one Church of the continent? And would it not be something better if he could have done the same with all other Churches? Would he not then have realised an internal unity, to which the loss of the external would have |