the profession of apostolic doctrine, and experimental union with them in the enjoyment of God, and mutual love, with obedience to their express and plain command.

The remarks, p. 226, on the anathema pronounced by St. Paul against false teachers, are weighty and unanswerable. “The members of the Church are here addressed as persons competent to determine whether what they heard from another teacher did, or did not, coincide with what they heard from St. Paul. If not, this language of his would be utterly meaningless and vain. Had they been bound to receive whatever a teacher ordained in the regular succession told them, then the true ground of warning would have been against unaccredited teachers: but, instead of this, the apostle makes the supposition of an angel from heaven teaching, or of himself teaching, a different doctrine from what he at first taught them; and even then, fixing the attention and judgment of the people on the doctrine taught, so supremely, that if it did not harmonize with the gospel already received, even the angel, or the apostle himself, was to be rejected with horror. . . . In giving a list whereby false prophets might be distinguished from the true, St. John says nothing about succession: strange omission! if real apostolicity consist in regular succession; unaccountable neglect in an inspired apostle; if the true mission of a Christian teacher consist in his ordination. . . . Therefore, clearly, the inspired test of true apostolicity is not, succession or no succession, but truth or not truth of Christian doctrine. And as clearly, the judges of what was taught, whether true or false, to whom the apostle appeals, were not councils of the teachers, but congregations of the hearers, who were thus encouraged, not to continue babes, nor unskilful in the word of righteousness, but to cultivate discernment and discrimination, and to have their spiritual senses exercised by reason of use, to discern both good and evil, both truth and falsehood."

But this test of apostolic doctrine, leads to an examination of that doctrine of development, by which the appeal is practically eluded and set aside. Here we meet with separate remarks of great force, but the subject does not seem to us to be treated with such convincing power of argument as most others. This is due, perhaps, to the intricacy of the labyrinth in which Mr. Newman and his allies have sought to involve us. They have confounded together true and false development; and again, the development of the infallible standard itself, and of the apprehension of its truths by individual minds, or the general body of the faithful; and finally, the development of the elements essential to a Christian profession, and of all those truths which contribute to the

perfection of Christian wisdom. There is a real progress or development, in the providence of God, and in the apprehension of revealed truth and its consequences, by successive ages of the Church, as viewed in their wisest and holiest members, or in every separate Christian. But there is no development, either of the infallible standard of inspired truth, or of the essentials of Christian faith; and there is a false development, which contradicts the inspired oracles, while it apes their infallible authority, and is thereby proved to be a wicked and hateful corruption.

Mr. McNeile does not enter fully into these distinctions, which need to be unfolded at length, before the sophistry of the Romanizers can be thoroughly exposed. He thus fails, we think, to grapple closely with the plausible aspects of the system. But his statement of its necessary results is pointed and unanswerable. "We have admitted an authority said to be equal to the Scriptures, but because alive and present, practically superior; and we cannot consistently appeal from it back to the Scriptures again. 'No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.' Men cannot serve holy Scripture, which asserts its own inspired sufficiency, and a Church, which claims a deposit of plenary inspiration. It is right and proper that the alternative should be fairly viewed, and that men should not deceive themselves by an unexamined fancy, that they can hold to such a Church without despising such a Bible."

The insufficiency of all external marks, as a security against error, is then unfolded, by a striking and powerful appeal to the analogous history of the Jewish Church. The correspondence of privilege, in each case, is traced with great clearness; and the plain conclusion to which it leads, is exhibited with uncommon simplicity and power.

They all condemned him to be guilty of death! Such was the unanimous decision of this council, the catholic consent of this infallible Church; that instead of being the Son of God indeed, Jesus was an impostor, and advanced his pretensions with such arrogancy as amounted to blasphemy. By their law death was the penalty of the convicted blasphemer, and thus they arrived at the conclusion, and gave forth the sentence, that the prisoner at their bar was guilty of death. This brings the matter to a crisis. If they were right, then Jesus was not the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed, but an arrogant blasphemer. If Jesus was indeed the Christ, then their decision was awfully wrong. If their decision was right, where is Christianity? If their decision

in such a matter was wrong, what becomes of ecclesiastical infallibility?"

There is one correction only, which we venture to suggest, in this important and powerful argument. It is assumed, p. 276, that the decision of the Sanhedrim was equivalent to the assertion that Messiah would never come. But here the true force of the negative is overlooked. If Mr. McNeile will read carefully "Wilson on the New Testament," he will be led to a more accurate statement of their real sin. They believed in, and expected, a human Messiah, but they did not believe in a Divine Messiah, a son of David, who would be also, truly and properly, the Son of God. It was not the first, but the second claim of our Lord, which led to his abrupt condemnation. And this only renders the lesson more deeply instructive. It was not mere wilfulness, but their ignorance of the Scriptures which led them astray. It was not a palpable act of mere injustice, in contradiction to their own professed creed; but a false and defective creed, on the nature of Messiah's person,-a creed which was drawn from the Scripture by authorized and professedly infallible expounders, and yet was radically unsound; which blinded their eyes, deceived their judgment, and brought the curse of awful and obstinate unbelief on themselves and the whole nation.

The chapter which closes the first part of the work, on the security and visibility of the Church, continues the same line of thought, and contains a powerful refutation of the claims advanced by the Roman Church. The observations on the standing appeal of her advocates-the words of our Lord to Peter, are very effective, and should be enough to convince every candid mind. We may add one brief remark. The claims of the pope to infallibility are often made to rest, by his ablest advocates, on this one text. But besides the other logical defects of this argument, there is another, less commonly noticed, of a moral and personal kind. Every Romanist, who makes this appeal, is guilty either of perjury, or apostacy from his own church. For he swears, if a priest, or professes, if a layman, in the creed of Pope Pius, that he will not interpret the scriptures "except according to the unanimous consent of the fathers." Now there is no fact of history more certain than this, that all the fathers do not expound the rock to be St. Peter. Most of them openly adopt a different interpretation, as Tertullian, Origen, Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Augustine. The Romish priest, therefore, who alleges this text, in proof of the Pope's infallibility, is a convicted perjurer, and the layman, an apostate from his own profession.

But we must close our review of this valuable and seasonable

work, by which Mr. McNeile has established a fresh claim on the gratitude of the Church. We cannot now enter on the second part, which is scarcely inferior in its interest, and treats on the outward ordinances of Christian churches, in their militant and mingled state here below. The field of thought, indeed, is so wide and various, that it is vain for us to attempt here a complete survey of the whole. We desire earnestly that the work may be read and studied by all our clergy, and by thousands of their congregations, as well as by the leaders of thought among our Dissenting brethren. Here and there it may contain a questionable interpretation, a doubtful inference, or a too sweeping and broad assertion. But as a whole, it is worthy of the author, and, we might almost say, worthy of the subject itself. In point of style, it retains haps too much of the Mosaic, as it clearly embodies the substance of many sermons, and the transitions are sometimes harsh and abrupt. But for scriptural soundness, original thought, and a vigorous and bold expression of gospel truth, with a powerful and effective exposure of the Antichristian delusions that now assail us, there is no work of the day which deserves a higher place. May the great Head of the Church bless it abundantly, that it may recover many from the snares of the last days; build up many believers in their most holy faith; and help on the cause of truth, peace, love, and righteousness, among all the churches of the Gentiles.

SHORT NOTICES.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CRITICAL STUDY AND
KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.
HARTWELL HORNE, B.D., &c. &c.

Ninth Edition.

octavo. London: Longmans. 1846.

By TнOS.
Five vols.

SUPPLEMENTARY PAGES to the Seventh and Eighth Editions of An Introduction," &c. London: Longmans. 1846.

6.

MR. HORNE has taken the opportunity offered, by the need of a new edition of his great work, to render it more complete than heretofore, on the subject of the Apocryphal Scriptures.

His new chapter on this topic,-published separately for the use of the possessors of previous editions,-exhausts the whole question. The following is his division of the subject :—

"DERIVATION OF THE TERM APOCRYPHA.

REASONS WHY THE APOCRYPHAL BOOKS WERE REJECTED FROM THE
CANON OF SCRIPTURE.

I. They possess no internal authority to procure their admission into the
Sacred Canon.

1. Not one of them is extant in Hebrew.

2. They were all written subsequently to the cessation of the prophetic spirit.

3. Not one of the writers, in direct terms advances any claim to inspiration.

4. The Apocryphal books contain many things which are either fabulous, or contradictory to the Canonical Scriptures in facts, doctrines, and moral practice; and also contradictory to authentic profane history.

II. The Apocryphal books possess no external evidence to procure their admission into the Sacred Canon.

1. They were not received into the Sacred Canon by the ancient Jewish Church, and therefore were not sanctioned, either by Jesus Christ or by his divinely-inspired Apostles.

2. No subsequent Jewish writers have recognised the Apocryphal Books as forming part of their Canon of Scripture.

3. The Apocryphal Books were not admitted into the Canon of Scripture in any catalogue of the Sacred Books recognised by any council of the ancient Christian Church; nor in any catalogues published by the fathers or ecclesiastical writers of the first four centuries.

4. Testimonies of the principal later divines of the Eastern, or Greek Church, and of the Latin or Western Church, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, that the Apocryphal Books form no part of the Canon of Scripture.