reasonably afford room for hope, that eventually, under God's blessing, he and his may take up a position on which we may safely ask a blessing, and on the strength of it establish ecclesiastical relationship with them. They who see ground for entertaining and expressing confidence in M. Czerski will do well to give a proof of their confidence, which will cost them little, and serve at the same time to test the grounds of that confidence; namely, by sending to M. Czerski some copies of the British Liturgy in the German language, and prevailing with the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to allow him, free of cost, as many as he shall think fit to demand. It is my firm opinion, that the distribution of our Liturgy throughout Germany, and the presence of one of our bishops in that country, would do more to uphold the tottering thrones of Germany, to arrest the progress of revolutionary opinions there, and to save it from horrors unutterable, and so to preserve the peace of Europe, than any measures which the wisdom of the wisest at Vienna, Berlin, Wirtemberg, or Baden can suggest. And if M. Czerski is the man he is believed by some in England to be, he seems to be the very instrument marked out by the hand of God for effecting these blessed objects. But I must confess, myself, that I heard little in Germany to warrant this exceeding confidence in M. Czerski's integrity or firmness of purpose: and even since the foregoing lines have been in type, I have read in the public papers an announcement from Silesia, only too confirmatory of the distrust I have expressed: namely, that he and M. Ronge have had another conference, and are again united on terms out-latitudinarianising, if that be possible, those which I have just cited."-(pp. 19-24.)

3. The third point is,-The position of the British Church in regard to the Foreign Communions." That be might have the best opportunities of ascertaining this, Mr. P. observes,

"I determined previously,-1st, never to officiate in any but a fitting place of worship, until all proper application for the use of one should have been tried in vain; 2ndly, in places where there might be a bishop exercising legitimate and canonical authority, not to officiate until (if he were accessible) I had made application to him for his formal permission to do so; founding my application upon the ninth of the canons, which pass under the name of the fourth Lateran Council, and are received by the Roman Church, in which it is ordered, that where there are in one place persons professing the same faith, but of divers rites and languages, the bishops of these places shall provide clergy to administer the sacred offices according to the diversities of language and of rites. For I considered, that as the British Churches profess all the creeds received by any portion of the Catholic Church at the time of the passing that decree, 1215, no refusal could be canonical unless it were based on personal exceptions against myself; and was therefore quite prepared to consider and treat a refusal founded upon our non-recognition of the Italian usurpation, or non-reception of the heretical decrees of the Tridentine Council, as having no claim upon my canonical obedience. My clerical character in the British Church was attested by my letters of orders, which I carried with me and exhibited; while my passport proclaimed my office of chaplain to the British crown. I took with me surplice, scarf, and hood for the decent celebration of divine worship according to our customs: but failed to take (which I mention as a caution to others) a portable service of communion vessels, which I had great occasion to regret."-pp. 24-26.)

The results we cannot give in detail. Suffice it to state that at Haarlem, Utrecht, Cologne, Holdesheim, and Weimar, Mr. P. applied in vain to Romanists, Greeks, Calvinists, and Lutherans, for the use of a regular place of religious worship, though with much

profession of good will, &c., on all hands, except from the Russian Chargé d'Affaires at Weimar, who met the proposal with an abrupt and peremptory "Impossible "-and this though the hereditary Grand Duke was at the trouble of coming into Weimar to use his personal influence in favour of Mr. P. and the British Communion.

"That influence," observes Mr. P., "though generally esteemed to be paramount, was unavailing in this case. And the subjects and fellowcommunicants of the sovereign of the British empire at Weimar, for receiving the most sacred rites of their religion, were only allowed a school-room, in such a state of dirt that the charge for cleaning it out for each Sunday amounted to six shillings sterling, equivalent, according to the difference of prices, to eighteen shillings in England; and this cost, as well as that of the maintenance of two policemen for each day, was actually saddled upon us. The only thing approaching to civility towards our communion was the permission, reluctantly conceded, to use their vessels for the communion, for which I had made request when I asked for the building. But I thought it better, after such treatment, not to be beholden to them in such a matter at all; and therefore purchased new every thing necessary, from the very tables down to the kneeling-mats, which I left in safe charge at Weimar, for the use of any of our clergy who may have the charity to afford to our people there another opportunity of pure and catholic worship.

"That impartial persons may be better able to form a correct judgment of these extraordinary proceedings, it is right that I should state, that in addition to all the customary marks of respect to the local authorities expected of strangers arriving at Weimar, e. g. waiting on H. R. H. the Grand Duke at his levee, and at dinner upon H. I. H. the Grand Duchess, I had sought to propitiate good-will by making presents of books to the grand ducal library; and that with a view to leave behind as favourable an impression as might be, the whole of the collection at the offertory, after deducting the expenses of cleaning the room and of the police, was paid over to the proper authorities for the benefit of the poor of the place; though I believe I am speaking correctly when I say, that had it been applied to defray the cost of the tables and vessels necessary for the service, it would have been more strictly in accordance with the intention of the offerers, who (I believe) enlarged their offerings with that view.

"I may not quit the subject without publicly acknowledging the great courtesy and attention which both our Church and myself personally received at the hands of Doctor Weissenborn, who, though not a member of our communion, was unremitting in his endeavours to procure one of the churches for us; and when he found the difficulty about proper vessels, freely offered a handsome Hungarian cup which had never been used; and when he found that both from its material (being glass), and from its large size, it would not be desirable for that purpose, pressed it on me individually as a token of his good-will."-(pp. 32-35.)

4. Mr. P. next gives us some account of the general state of ecclesiastical or religious feeling in Germany, as far as fell under his observation.

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I found," he says, "1. among respectable people, of all classes and all communions, a very intense and painful apprehension of some impending fearful revolution, the atrocities of which, they seemed to expect, would cast those of France into the shade. Infidelity, they said, had eaten into the very heart of the people, and there would be nothing whatever to restrain them if ever they should get power into their hands, which from the Prussian system of training every man in the kingdom to the exercise of arms, they anticipated could not much longer be delayed.

"Few things can show more strongly the alienation at present subsisting between the different classes of society in Germany, and the extent of the oppressions under which the lower orders groan, than the simple fact that. a mere act of justice on the part of the King of Hanover, in punishing a gross act of cruel oppression, committed by an officer in high rank in the army, was spoken of as a wonderful event, not merely in Hanover, but in all places. The king's conduct in the affair, it was said, had alienated the affections of the upper orders: but it had won for him the love and confidence of the rest of his people, who were beginning to see that old Ernest,' as he is commonly called, might have had their interests at heart when he refused the project of Reform' presented to him on his accession, which the world, in general, at that time, when the Reform mania was at its height, regarded as unprincipled despotism.

2. "I found the beneficial effect of the unobtrusive piety of the better class of English travellers, telling upon persons in ranks of life upon whom it would not at first seem likely that such an impression would be made. The landlords and waiters at the hotels, for instance, recounted with admiration, and apparently sincere gratitude, the traits of piety they had noted in the English: the books they used: their reference to the Supreme Being in cases of illness; their private devotion: their religious observance of the Lord's day their unexceptionable morality: all tending to dispose them in the most favourable way towards our church and nation.

3. "I found the religious among the upper classes teaching their children English, for this especial purpose, that they might have the benefits of the works of piety and devotion with which the press in our happy land teems... 4. "I found the memory of the British missionaries, by whom the whole of that country was converted to the Christian faith, still held and cherished among all classes. The poorest peasantry in the neighbourhood of St. Suibert's shrine could tell me that he came from Britain. All these circumstances concur in disposing the religiously-inclined among them very favourably towards us and our Church; so that when I broached, as I did among all classes and all communions, the idea that was ever present to my mind, namely, that as the German Church was built at the first by Britons, and their Episcopate derived from us, so now their Episcopate would be renewed and their Church rebuilt from the same quarter; and that this would give religious peace to Germany, and stave off the horrors of the sanguinary revolution at the expectation of which they trembled: not the remotest offence seemed taken, certainly none was expressed by any. Some, as the hospitable R. C. Dean of considered it far from improbable: others, like the venerable R. C. Dean of —, regarded it as a prospect too blessed to be realized.

5. Further, I found that at Amsterdam, where our Liturgy had been performed in the Dutch language, in a spacious church, holding several thou sand persons, the building had been crowded, and the utmost attention manifested. And both here and elsewhere I found that a very large proportion, if not the majority, of the communicants in our congregations was composed of persons who had joined us from some of the foreign communions, and whom, in the absence of any bishop,—for even an occasional visit of one of which order request had been repeatedly and earnestly made in vain,-our clergy in those places are compelled, much to their own uneasiness, to admit to communion without episcopal imposition of hands."-(pp. 35-39.)

From all these circumstances, Mr. P. concludes.

"It seems not unreasonable to entertain the hope, that the measure which the religious destitution of our own people in those countries renders it imperative in us to adopt for their sakes only, may, under the Divine blessing, be attended indirectly with the happiest results upon the Germans themselves, in allaying their now restless religious agitation: in arresting the pro

gress of sanguinary and unprincipled revolution in drawing together with the surest bonds, nations of kindred race: and ulteriorly, in rebuilding the sheltered fabric of the Christian Church, and restoring religious peace and re-establishing catholic communion throughout the world."―(pp. 31, 40.)

Here, Mr. P. proceeds,

5. To suggest the institution of a British Bishop for Northern Europe, with a view to the "relief of the spiritual destitution and spiritual danger of the members of our own communion, now scattered, like sheep without a shepherd, among the wolves of irreligion, scepticism and superstition." For the title of his See, he thinks that "if the civil authorities offer no objection, the island of Heligoland, belonging to the British Crown, offers an unexceptionable designation, there being nothing in the terms of capitulation on which that possession was ceded to us by Denmark to interfere with such an arrangement. For the residence of such a Bishop, if his charge is to extend (as is desirable) over Holland and Belgium, Northern Germany, and the shores of the Baltic, including St. Petersburgh, the free town of Lübec offers, he conceives, advantages not to be met with elsewhere." "For the institution

of such a Bishop," Mr. P. reminds us, " a fund has been opened at the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts: the British factories in Europe having been one of the objects for the provision of which that Society was at the first employed," and further suggests that if means "for establishing two bishops be provided, it would be well to appoint a coadjutor to the Bishop of Heligoland, to have his residence in the free town of Frankfort on the Maine, . . . and to superintend the congregations of the British Communion in South Germany, Switzerland, and the dominions of the Emperor of Austria."

"At present," he observes, " for want of a proper bishop, the consuls and civil employés of the British Crown are sometimes in a manner obliged to exercise the functions of a sort of lay episcopate a position which must needs be as painful to every right-minded and well-informed person among them, as it is plainly subversive of the first principles of an ecclesiastical polity.

The present year, 1846," Mr. Perceval proceeds under this head, "is the 300th anniversary of that which witnessed the promulgation of the Decree of Trent concerning the Sacred Scriptures, of which something has been said above. Rome is preparing to celebrate it, on the very spot where the iniquity was perpetrated, with empty fanfaronade and display. Let Britain also prepare to celebrate it, even by introducing into the country what was polluted by that decree, the germ of a free Episcopacy: and by extensively promulgating, in the native language of the same, the pure compendium of Primitive and Catholic worship, which is to be found in the Book of Common Prayer, according to the rites of the British Churches, in the excellent edition lately published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

"This year is also remarkable as being the 300th anniversary of the death of one concerning whom it may well be asked, whether his method of oppos

ing the errors of Rome has not occasioned more vital injury to Christianity in the countries which have adopted his principles, than the very corruptions against which he bore his earnest and painful testimony.

"The natural and necessary progress of Lutheranism, from the first principles broached by the founder of the sect, to the full development' of infidelity by which the face of once Christian Germany has been overspread, and which has in this very month been celebrated with rejoicings by the followers of that extraordinary man, has been traced in a manner only too convincing by Mr. Dewar, the present British chaplain at Hamburgh.

"If those of the clergy and theological students at our two great universities, who purpose taking recreation on the Continent in the course of the present year, would divide Germany between them, Oxford taking the North, where one of her members has already broken ground, and Cambridge the South: each university arranging that every portion of its allotted field should be visited: the missionaries taking with them copies of our Liturgy, in German, for general distribution, and seeking out in every place the heads of religious communions or communities, with whom to enter into frank and affectionate, respectful, but unflinching communication on religious subjects, they would find throughout a soil in a fit preparation to receive the good seed which they might sow and might look, under the Divine blessing, to behold its produce at the day of the great harvest, and rejoice therein for ever with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.' Let it plainly be put to the simple Germans, whether they are willing to receive at our hands anew that pure doctrine which our British fathers in the faith, St. Willibrod, St. Suibert, and St. Boniface, whose shrines are to be found respectively at Utrecht, Kaiserswerth, and Fulda, once proclaimed, and in behalf of which the black and white Hewalds, and many others, were content to shed their blood upon the plains of Germany, and leave their bones to enrich her soil: and who that knows the noble character of that nation can doubt the hearty and generous response which, at such an appeal, would ring through all their borders, from a people as much disgusted with the infidelity of the Rationalists, as they are with the (mis-called holy) frauds of the Papists: and who only have erred from the faith through want of true and faithful guides? The Cambridge men will probably find ample exercise for their clear heads among the keen Jesuits of Bavaria; while, among the unjesuitical Romanists of Silesia, the Oxonians would meet with men of fervent piety like their own, well qualified both to receive and to repay the utmost exertions they might use. Let this be Britain's mode of celebrating the ter-centenary of the blasphemous Tridentine decree concerning the sacred Scriptures, and of the death of the Rationalising Luther, and who can tell how vast a progress one single year may witness towards the restoration of religious peace and of a catholic communion throughout Europe, and throughout the world! For the kingdom of heaven is not like those of earth, of every one of which it might be said, as we say of Rome, that it was not built in a day:' concerning It the prophet has foretold her instantaneous growth, saying, Who hath heard such a thing? Who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.' (Isa. lxvi. 8.)"

6. Such are the general views of Mr. P. His last chapter is on the state of the Episcopate in Northern Europe.

1. "Holland.-The Dutch episcopate is legitimately and canonically exercised by the Archbishop of Utrecht, and the Bishops of Haarlem and Deventer, by whom the succession is carefully maintained. Rome. . . . sends in her own bishops (in partibus infidelium) to set up schismatical altars and jurisdiction.

2." Belgium.-There is no Belgian episcopate. The Belgian sees are not filled up. Episcopal functions are exercised there by Roman bishops in partibus infidelium.