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honest adherence to that covenant, the present stir would never have arisen. It is true, that " new mischiefs came upon the stage," but the writer of the Quarterly does not state what they were. The real mischief, as we shall presently show, was a direct breach of faith with the "absorbed " clergy, on the very point on which by a solemn covenant-concession they had been conciliated even to absorption. If there was any covenant to which the hierarchy should have held as men of honor more rigidly than to others, it was surely that arrangement by which they had brought the English clergy out of a state of separation. They retained the complete power of nominating the two houses of convocation, and consequently of legislating for the church. A manly fairness demanded of them, that such legislation should never, for a moment, be used to compromise the terms and principles of the concordat; or to alter the positions of men taken, or the relations of property expended, on the faith of an arrangement made by solemn canons. Yet this was precisely the course adopted. Just when, as they say, "the absorption was all but complete," the six bishops and twelve presbyters constituting the two houses for the government of the church, leaped forward to shut the door by which the English clergy had entered, to open the door upon the very enclosure from which they had a pledge that they should be excluded, and to apply to them the very painful pressure which must attend a charge of raising a disturbance in the communion which they had so recently joined. If ever there was mala fides, it was in the retrocession of the Synod of 1838, from the conciliatory canons of a previous period. Of this more by and bye. The altered canons of 1838 attracted little attention, for they who could be touched by them had nothing whatever to do with their formation, and they were too deeply engaged in active pastoral labour to be "looking out for squalls." Those canons however had other objects, which at length brought them into notice. Mr. Drummond it appears, had a prayer-meeting among his people; which, however it might be regarded as objectionable in some quarters, could not be touched by the law as it previously stood. It was not then illegal. The Synod, therefore, of 1838, framed a new law-the twenty-eighth canon-directly applicable to the case; and it was under the pressure of the application of that special law to his special casethat Mr. Drummond yielded somewhat hastily to the harsh and unnecessary, and certainly anti-English coercion, and fell into the snare of those who had assailed him, by withdrawing from his pastoral charge in the Scottish Episcopal community. We speak advisedly, when we say this, because we have reason to know that

at a particular crisis of the discussion, Mr. Drummond expressed a willingness to return; and it was very plainly told him, that his separation was final, and was more acceptable than his re-union. So incorrect, then, is the statement, that Mr. Drummond did "thus summarily, and almost eagerly quit, his post."

But now comes the great turning point of the controversy. At this painful crisis, in order properly to consult his English friends, Mr. Drummond did among other papers send up to them the altered canons of 1838, and then it was that the real object of this new legislation was discovered. The terms of the canon relating to the Scottish communion-office, had been altered, so as to deprive the English clerk of the liberty which had been conceded with a view to "absorption; " and it was found, that while the way had been most courteously smoothed for Tractarian clergy; and the name very of a "Protestant" Church-that hated namehad been renounced; language had been forced upon the English clergy, which, however quiet and uncontroversial his spirit, it was impossible that a clear-headed and sound-hearted member of the English Reformation Church could ever approve. The doers of this did not probably contemplate a schism. In this respect, they had counted too eagerly on the elasticity of modern conscience; but they did contemplate the shutting the door against any further influx of real "Protestant" clergy; and they did prevent, in the case of some chapels, the members from exercising their right of election, because they could not elect a pastor, whose views were in accordance with the evangelical founders of the chapel.

After therefore, the door had thus been summarily shut, as we have stated, not by Mr. Drummond, but by the Bishop, a reason arose before the mind of Mr. Drummond, which fully justified to him a step, which otherwise he regarded with much distress,-a reason, which although there had been no difference on the score of discipline, must at any time, if it had been brought before him, have led inevitably to secession. Clergymen may sign that canon. For we know that clergy do go much further, and hold together "all Roman Doctrine," and all their lucrative preferments;-but no man who sincerely approves the distinctive views of the Church of England on the Eucharist, and feels the true character of his ordinational engagements, can. He would know, that he was committing himself to that class of opinions at least, which are involved in the condemnation pronounced by Sir H. J. Fust's judicial decision; and further than this he would know that the expressions of that modern office-for it really is an office of very recent compilationand never was the Eucharistic office of a national Church,-do go further than even the nonjuring peculiarities; and to one who is

exact in weighing the import of words, do involve those who use it, as much as any Eucharistic office in existence, in the tenet of Transubstantiation. In this-" the placid way of the Scotch indigenous theology," an expression by which the reviewer himself admits, that there is a difference from that of Anglican growth, Mr. Drummond could not walk. And although this discovery might be somewhat posterior to his own secession on other grounds, it became him, when he saw the error,-it became him the more, -seeing that he had been, in a measure, by a want of watchfulness, mixed up with it, to speak out upon the real merits of the case. That which the reviewer calls, "the authorized and established communion office of the Church," had never been such to him. When he acceded as an English clerk to that Church, he knew that the canon provided a safeguard for such as have avowedly an English conscience. His attention had now been turned to the fact of the recent radical alteration; and though he had left the communion, there was a solemn duty incumbent on him to testify to the evil which he had then but recently ascertained,--to the want of good faith by which the terms of communion had been altered, and to the utter impossibility, now the evil was declared, of any sound Protestant remaining under the government of the Scottish Episcopate. If evil has arisen, if agitation has spread throughout the land, if the Anglican party has increased and is increasing, of which there can be no question, it is only what the right reverend "six" and the very reverend "twelve" ought to have contemplated. They should have foreseen this agitation, and been content as they were; but instead of this, eager to avail themselves of the "all but complete absorption," and eager on that vantage ground to arrest the flowing tide, and to secure the victory of their nonjuring notions and usages, they ran the ship headlong on the rock of their "indigenous theology," and split it; and it will be well for them in the end if they do not founder altogether. Had they possessed common foresight, they would have perceived how vain it was to attempt so oblique a move without its obtaining ultimate notoriety, that nothing is so calculated to rouse hostility as an attempt to trick men into a new position,- that nothing is more serious than tampering with the deliberate terms of a concordat for intercommunion; and that their little bark had too lately got through the breakers, to unfurl as yet so much sail in that which might not even now be open sea. Doubtless they are learning this lesson now in the face of the large congregations gathering round the dissidents. Probably they have yet other painful results to encounter. But were it only the secession of such men as Messrs. Dunbar, Drummond, and Miles, they have

lost with them much of their standing in the Christian world,much of the sound religion and true spirituality of their body,much of that "salt of the earth" which is the great safeguard against premature decay; and though the decorated Gothic of their chapels may still echo to the pealing chaunt, and hearers may gather" for the music there;" they may yet find in a testing crisis, that it is no light matter to have put away from their society all who were distinctively and heartily devoted to truly Anglican and Reformation views. In France the working of the same tendencies put the Huguenots "hors de combat;" and not satisfied with this, removed, in the person of the Jansenists, all the true piety of the land. The residuum had not vitality enough to keep itself from dissolution. It withered from the centre outwards, by the contagious spread of formalism and infidelity.

It is easy to say in the pages of a review, apart from the scene of action," Mr. Drummond imagines that the facts of political history vindicate his present ecclesiastical position." Mr. Drummond takes no such ground. All Scotland knows that it is the inflexibility of an honest conscience, improperly interfered with, that vindicates his position-that he has no wish for that position; but that he is just as much driven to it in respect to the doctrine of the Scottish episcopacy, as are my Lords of London or of Exeter in respect to the claims of Rome. He is no more schismatic in one respect than they are in the other. Doubtless he and his friends would take their stand upon the paragraph quoted from the Quarterly Review at the opening of this article, and say"Those are the notions to which the canons of 1838 would commit us: and they are not the principles of the Church of England. We appeal to the plain, literal, and grammatical interpretation of our documents, whether any such view is entertained in them. We say it was most unwise to drive us into such a corner. We may be in a somewhat anomalous position, but it is only the position in which our brethren were for two centuries before us. We may have our difficulties; but we are thrown upon them inevitably by the gratuitous acting of an ecclesiastical treachery, by forcing upon us the recognition of a formula which it was well known we disapproved, and for which disapproval they had hitherto provided. You may call upon us for submission; but "whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye ?

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These reiterations of the merits of the case are painful. They arise necessarily out of the glozing of the article in question. is essentially a party statement: we deeply regret that it has been made; still more that it should have appeared in such a quarter.

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We did hope that so important a periodical would have paused before it so openly embraced the notions of the nonjuring school; and we yet hope to see the incautious step retraced. In many papers that Review has done valiantly for the Church of England; and we would fain hope that some little maneuvering has been needful to get it so far on a wrong tack. Of this we are sure, that the article has done essential injustice to the parties it assails; for it keeps back altogether the fact of that synodal tampering with the terms of communion, which is at the bottom of the whole dispute. Let any conclave, however had in honour, take upon themselves in the same way to remodel our twenty-eighth Article on the Sacraments, in order to meet the Tractarian view of it, and the Church would be convulsed through all its borders: Drummonds and Dunbars would rise up on every side,—a national clamour would break out,-a national schism would follow. Many venerated men would depart, and if they did not carry a mitre with them, they would be driven ex necessitate to assume a position analogous to that of the Scottish dissidents, and wait in patient submission to the providence of God, but in conscious rectitude, for the Divine guidance.

We know that south of the Tweed there are men, like Mr. Gresley, weak enough to ask for, and if they had influence, to hurry forward such a crisis, and hardy enough in these peculiar times to think coolly of the secession of another "two thousand" as a light matter. We regard the very suggestion, -the lightest threat on this subject, as awfully serious. At a time when the storm is gathering in some quarters of dissent, and penny sheets of attack by the half million are falling thick as hail around our venerable edifice; at a time when the great national institution for the education of the poor lies under strong suspicion, and is at least put upon its trial before the country; at a time when the common sense of the laity is calling loudly on the fathers of the Church to speak out ex cathedra upon the nefarious attempt to unprotestantize the church, to restore idolatry, and mariolatry, and auricular confession amongst us; at a time when the men who have a salutary and powerful hold upon the public mind, are they whom Mr. Gresley holds up to scorn as "evangelicals,❞—at such a time, few things could be more fatuitous, or in the issue more fatal, than to emulate the injudicious course of the Scottish Episcopal Synod, and to try the experiment of a stumbling-block for tender consciences. Such a measure might promise to the fortunate men who repose in cathedral stalls," peace in their day;" but it would promise but deceitfully. The evangelical clergy stand between them and the onset of the crowd. Only satisfy the

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