course. We thank them, however, for the open expression of their sentiments and intentions, because it leaves those without excuse who would still persuade themselves that the matters in dispute are of secondary importance, and that the efforts of the Tractarians are merely the result of temporary excitement, which may be left to cure itself.

"Be assured," says the faithful Bishop of Ohio to his clergy, "if you do not regard the difference between the two sides of the controversy as of such momentous importance, our adversaries do. Their last publication declares that it cannot be too often repeated; that if Protestantism be Christianity, Catholicism (meaning, of course, their system) is Anti-Christianism, and vice versa.' We shall never

meet this controversy aright till we see the question in that aspect of life and death. The words of our adversaries are quite just in reference to those who try to believe, and to make others believe, that the matters in dispute are not vital to the Gospel. 'There never was,' they say, 'and never will be, charity in softening down real distinctions; open hostilities are ever a shorter road to eventual peace than hollow and suspicious alliances.' I repeat and adopt their plain declaration of war, that if Protestantism (such as they condemn in the writings of the Bishop of Chester) be Christianity, Catholicism (such as we condemn in their writings) is Anti-Christianism.' This is the true issue, and the sooner it is universally acted upon, the better. We cannot be at peace with this system. We must detest it, because we must love the Gospel of Christ." (Pp. 24, 26.)

And therefore he exhorts his hearers, "Take care that you do not suffer yourselves to be lulled into a false security, by imagining the danger little, because it seems to be distant; not worthy of your watching, because its infection is not visibly spreading in your parishes; exaggerated, because you may not see nor hear of any in our Church so far deluded as to be actually carried captive into outward and visible Romanism." (P. 27.)

Of the praises which have been bestowed upon the Tractarian writers, he justly observes-"I am alarmed for our Church; not that I fear for her ultimate purity and continued stedfastness, but that I apprehend a great trial is awaiting her. I see the praises lavished upon In

the writings which contain all this system of Anti-Christian error. almost every instance where they have been eulogised in this country, the only drawback is some feeble expression, indicating that the eulogist is not to be considered as agreeing with all they contain, while scarcely an instance of eulogy has occurred wherein the points of disagreement have been stated. What can this mean? Is it that the productions praised have not been really read and pondered enough, to know what they contain? Is it that they have not been read with eyes sufficiently accurate in the great points of Gospel doctrine, to be able to detect their manifold errors? Is it that while their errorssuch as that of a righteousness of works for justification, instead of the righteousness of Christ alone-have been really seen and acknowledged, there has not been enough appreciation of the importance of such

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errors, a sufficient sense of what is vital and precious in the Gospel, to make them seem worthy of being distinctly named and condemned? Or is it that, while these errors have been seen and privately confessed, and really lamented as serious, there has been such a preponderance of zeal for the outward structure of the Church over that for the inward life of the Gospel, that, because these writings seemed most potent auxiliaries for the former, though really most injurious to the latter, they must be lauded to the skies for their usefulness, and circulated as lights in the Church? One or other of these modes of accounting for the fact, must be true. Take either, or take all, as applicable somewhere (and this is my view of the case), and then you have assuredly a state of things calling for alarm. In proportion as we may have ministers in our Church whose doctrinal discernment is too confused to perceive the errors of this system, or whose spiritual discernment is too feeble to perceive their vital importance, or who so hold the proportion of faith that vital errors as to the way of salvation can be overlooked, because there is connected with them what seems important and seasonable truth as to the outworks of the Church; I say, so far as we have such a ministry or laity, we have cause of alarm. For myself, I know of no good these writings have done, or can do, except as God makes all things work together for good to his Church. If a man go into your house, and set to rights its furniture, and establish its rightful order, and then for bread leave your children a stone; or if he drop the seeds of a plague, and distribute death through your household; will you speak of his benefits? But I deny that, even in outward things, we have received any good. What they have taught in points of order or discipline, even when true in itself, has been rested upon such a basis, or urged by such motives, or placed in such a relative position, as to leave us nothing to be thankful for. Take, for example, the Apostolic Succession. There is a part of their doctrine, on that head, which has always been held in our Church-viz., that the ordaining power has descended from the apostles through the line of bishops.

But when they speak of a succession of saving grace, as well as of ordaining power of saving grace inherent in the line, and sent down from hand to hand, precisely as the right of ordaining is inherent and descending; when all that is precious in Christ to sinners is made to come to us exclusively through that descent, so that not only does the validity of the sacraments depend thereon, but the very being of a Church, and the whole regeneration and justification which the Gospel offers; when we are instructed that a sinner comes not to Christ but by coming to his vicars in that line of descent, and Christ comes not to the soul of a sinner, with grace to pardon and sanctify, but through that succession, and that the gate of life is unlocked only by its keys, and the bonds of sin are not unloosed but by its hands; when such awful pretensions are joined to the simple basis acknowledged of old, the doctrine is no longer the same; its whole form and visage are changed. It is the doctrine we have been used to, no more than their doctrine of sanctification or justification is that to which we have been used. In

both we recognise some truth; but truth so changed by additions and new relations, that, like the Rule of faith, when to Scripture is added traditions of men for joint authority, we know it no more, but utterly renounce it." (Pp. 27-29.)

And in reply to those who seem to think that, if only men do not actually go over to Rome, all is safe, he remarks, "I have spoken, brethren, of my fears for the Church. It is not that I much apprehend the going over of our clergy or laity to the Roman obedience. It is not that suppose there will be any general setting up of this whole system, with all its parts, in the minds of our people. We may have Romanism in substance, without going to Rome. We may take enough of her cup of abomination to paralyze us, if it does not kill us. We may live as a Church of apostolic order, and die as a Church of Christian spirit, and zeal, and energy, and usefulness. I fear there will be a spreading of these doctrines, whether in part or in whole, to such an extent as greatly to weaken and obscure the preaching of the Gospel, where it does not quite prevent it; to introduce a counterfeit spirituality-one of imagination and mysticism—for the spirituality which hath life and peace, &c." (P. 29.)

Were we to give the reader all we could desire to bring under his careful consideration, we should present him with the whole Charge. But our limits forbid us. We will therefore only notice his treatment of two other points, in which some appear to themselves to find an apology for Tractarianism.

The first is, the character of its first and chief propagators. But, as the Bishop observes, "What its disciples are in point of holiness, is not the question. Men may be pious in spite of a defective creed, from influences prior to its adoption, or extraneous to its provisions. We are speaking of the system, not of those who now profess it. Its direct working must be to produce in fruit what it is in substance; a form of godliness, and the denial of the power thereof." (P. 23.)

The second is, the pretensions of the system to spirituality. "As a system of religion, it is but another form (an old form new-dressed) of formality, animated, indeed, to a very great degree, but with the life of fanaticism, the peculiar fanaticism of formality; the worst fanaticism, because the most intrenched in attractive forms; the worst formality, because the most insidious counterfeit of spiritual life. The old Pharisees were full of precisely this most dangerous of all types of spurious religion; compassing sea and land for proselytes, full of zeal for traditions, for ceremonies, for fastings, for the temple, for garnishing the sepulchres of the righteous, for holy days and holy places, for 'taking away the key of knowledge' and hiding it under the interpretations of the Fathers, for 'shutting up the kingdom of heaven against men.' This was their religion. It was all dead formality, and yet all alive with fanaticism; and, like a whited sepulchre, looked very beautiful and pious to those who looked only on the outward appearance. But the Saviour abhorred it, as full of uncleanness; and the men who taught that system of self-righteousness, he likened unto 'graves which appear not, and the

men that walk over them are not aware of them.' Such, precisely, is the deceitfulness of the active vigorous formality of this system; and such, by-and-by, more and more, will be the men who shall teach it, whatever its teachers now. Because fanatical, it looks spiritual; because zealous, it seems pious; because all in motion with the spirit that possesses it, it would make us believe it is all alive with the Spirit of God. Beware! Try the spirits! Dead bodies seem wonderfully alive when galvanised. There is a spirit, mighty, crafty, full of wiles, insatiably bent on the destruction of the kingdom of Christ, entering into forms of religion and bodies of doctrine as he used to into bodies of flesh and blood, and who thus appears sometimes as an angel of light, only to be more effectually an angel of darkness and death." (Pp. 23, 24.)

"As to the spirituality of this system, what is it? A man substitutes his own righteousness for that of Christ, and then speaks of his foundation of hope in the highest spiritual language, and with the utmost complacency, and confidence, and thankfulness. Can there be any real spirituality while the basis of the Gospel plan of salvation is denied? A man speaks of eating the body of Christ in the Eucharist. He denies, it is true, the transubstantiation of the bread, but maintains the actual corporal' reality of the presence of the body of Christ therein or therewith. He calls it a spiritual presence, but means thereby nothing less than a corporal presence still, a presence as real and substantial as that of the body of Christ in heaven. He tells you that it is by this receiving of the body of Christ-of that same body which rose from the dead, and is now at the right hand of God, and which is given to be eaten in the Eucharist, in a manner he pretends not to be able to explain, that he receives justification, and all the blessings of the Gospel. He receives them by contact with the actual body of Christ. All that he means by faith, in that act, is, that it brings him to the Eucharist, and so to the body of Christ. The priest in the Sacrament gives him the real flesh of Christ, and thus he is justified. Now, let him invest that doctrine with all the spiritual drapery that imagination and enthusiasm can invent. The counterfeit may be very plausible, but the reality is one of the grossest, most carnal corruptions of Christianity. Anything can be made to seem spiritual to those who are not spiritually discerning. The worship of the Virgin Mary, that most odious of all forms of idolatry, when seen under all the passionate expressions of love, and trust, and praise, and prayer, with which Romish superstition arrays it, appears just as spiritual as any of the main peculiarities of the system. The truth is, nothing can be really spiritual, but as it is made up of the things of the Spirit of God.' We may mount up on wings as eagles; but the wings may be only of imagination, or passion, or presumption; and yet may carry us so far into the clouds, that our flight may seem very heavenly, and our path bright with the light of God. But only take another way of reconciliation to God, and another way of holiness, than that which God hath made known; and all the mists you can cloud it in, and all the poetic beauty you can cast around it, and all the exalted language of Scripture you can describe it by, cannot

raise it one least step above the dead level of earth and of man's unsanctified nature... The material which will ever be found the readiest to receive the mould of this form of doctrine, is that of the mind which has a serious sense of the need of religion, and little knowledge of what religion is; which understands enough to know that religion must be spiritual and elevated in its contemplations and desires, but has too little discrimination to perceive the difference between the poetry of religion and its spirituality; between the mysticism of man's imaginings, and the mysteries of God's revelation; between a zeal for the Church as a thing of external organization, and zeal for the Church's Great Head and Life, as the Alpha and Omega of all saving religion." (Pp. 31, 32, 34.)

We here close our extracts, earnestly trusting that our readers will obtain the Charge for themselves, and add it to the invaluable testimonies of a similar kind we have had from some of the prelates of our own Church. We have given it here a greater prominence than the latter, both because of its very recent appearance, and also from the circumstance of its being not so likely to be extensively known in this country as a Charge of one of our own bishops.

Appended to the Charge is a note, containing the Bishop's remarks to his CONVENTION on the painful occurrence that has recently taken place in the Diocese of New York, in the ordination by the Bishop of that Diocese of a young man of directly Tractarian sentiments. The subject is of too much importance to be taken up incidentally as it were in this place, and therefore we will only observe that the Bishop's remarks upon it strike us as peculiarly just, wise, and temperate. He is evidently quite alive to the gravity of the occurrence, and the important consequences which it involves to the well-being of his Church. He sees clearly that the ordination of a person holding the sentiments avowed by Mr. Carey, goes to destroy its vitality as a herald of Gospel truth; and therefore he feels himself bound to enter his "most solemn protest" against it. It is pleasing to observe that the Convention to which his remarks were addressed, recorded upon their minutes a "hearty response to the sentiments of their diocesan." The occurrence has created, the Bishop tells us, a great deal of excitement, anxiety, and alarm throughout their Church. This is a hopeful sign that its true character is appreciated, and that something will be done tending with God's blessing to stay the progress of the plague. The future purity of that Church depends altogether upon the course of its proceedings with regard to this case.

Thus is the daughter equally troubled with the mother through the pestiferous teaching of the Tractarian divines.

Earnestly do we pray that God will give to both, wisdom and grace, fearlessly and faithfully to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, and to realize more and more the vital importance of our distinctive tenets as Protestant Churches.

The conflict commenced by the Tractarians is one pro aris et focis; and, as they themselves tell us, "on the issue hangs the destiny of our Church." (Pusey's Letter to Archbishop of Canterbury.) The very