the sacred rites of unction and exorcism, reservation of the host for the sick and dying, the communion of solitaries in one kind, the mingling of water with the sacramental wine, prayers for the dead, penance, fasting before the eucharist, and the minor orders. This argument may possibly have some force against Tractarians who idolize the fourth century; to the consistent disciples of our Church, who believe "it is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one and utterly like," the whole will appear childish folly. In a writer who has subscribed this very statement, ex animo, "in the plain and full meaning thereof," we will not stay to inquire what epithet it deserves. But even if the objection were brought with cleaner hands, we are not careful to answer the votaries of Babylon in this matter. Our church will do well, in spite of all enemies without and traitors within, to disclaim the authority of such precedents drawn from that very age when, by the bypocrisy of legend-mongers, many were departing from the faith, and lending their ears to the doctrines of demonworship. Her real want is not a strict conformity to Nicene usages, but a more watchful, tender, and diligent care for the wants of our own age, and the duties, the dangers, and necessities of the actual population of the land. The division of our enormous parishes is alone worth ten thousand extinct ceremonies, even though all the tomes of the fourth and fifth centuries were thrown into the scale. But the semi-papal votaries of the Nicene age care much more to adorn their idol than to save the perishing souls of the heathen in our Christian land.

The next main assault is aimed against "the Lutheran doctrine of justification." The subject is too vital and important for us to enter upon it here; it would rather demand a full and separate inquiry. There are two great truths which lie at the basis of the whole subject, the contrast between the unholy and the redeemed creature, and the deeper contrast between every fallen sinner and the thrice holy God. The latter is the great truth for which "the Protestant doctrine of justification is the perpetual witness; the former truth is that which, the same doctrine, when rashly and ignorantly stated, has often tended to obscure. We are fully alive to the frequency and danger of such a perversion. But this painful fact cannot remove, and will scarcely lessen our indignation against the ignorant and wild invectives of our author. It reminds us of nothing but Saul of Tarsus, when he was breathing out threatenings against the truth of God. All its defenders, as Mr. Ward modestly assures us, are marked by "extraordinary intellectual feebleness," and the doctrine itself has his "intense abhorrence." Of Luther's Commentary on Galatians he observes

that, "never was his conscience so shocked and revolted by any work, not openly professing immorality," that it shows no spirituality of mind whatever, but exhibits his doctrine in its "naked deformity," that it contains "miserable shifts,”—and that intellectually and as a theological effort, it is "one of the most feeble and worthless productions ever written," and that Luther was "in no true sense, a religious man." "No consecutive thinker could adopt this doctrine," he further tells us, "without being prepared to plunge into the lowest depth of depravity; and the whole has his unbounded and indignant reprobation." These railing reproaches following an ex animo subscription, are indeed a singular comment on the superior tenderness of conscience which the writer claims as the result of his own views. We trust that the time may come when the sin shall be forgiven, and when with deeper experience, greater modesty, and more spiritual discernment, this zealous champion of holiness and reviler of the gospel may find, in the depths of his own heart, the harmony of those truths which he now seeks to arm against each other.

But we hasten from a subject too large and too weighty for a passing review, to the practical inquiry which the work suggests. By what new code of honesty does a person who hates the English Reformation, abhors the doctrine of the articles, and longs for our submission to the pope, continue a clergyman of the English church? By what maxims of discipline can such a work pass without public censure, and practical steps to remove the enormous incongruity? Mr. Ward has discovered "how lax and utterly inoperative our Articles are!" Three years have passed since he said plainly that in subscribing those Articles he renounced no one Roman doctrine; yet he retains,-it is his own boast, the fellowship which he holds on the tenure of subscription, and has received no ecclesiastical censure in any shape. Certainly there seems some excuse for the contempt he loudly professes towards "his own immediate mother," when such a statement can be made

"Pudet hæc opprobria nobis

Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli." Let us place the opinions of our author, and his subscription, side by side. The following are the articles of his creed. He "believes that no single movement in the Church, except Arianism in the fourth century, is so wholly destitute of all claims on our sympathy and regard, as the English Reformation." (p. 45.) He "regards that miserable event with deep and burning hatred." (p. 44.) He thinks there is "a most unassailable reason for preferring the Roman to the English system; a reason wholly

untouched by any amount of practical corruption, which Englishmen attribute to the Romish church; and that Rome has preserved in the main, and we have not, the high and true ideal of what a church should be." He asserts confidently that "ever since the schism of the sixteenth century, the English church has been swayed by a spirit of arrogance, self-sufficiency, and selfcomplacency, resembling rather an absolute infatuation than the imbecility of ordinary pride." He is "crushed and overwhelmed by respectful mention of our existing system." On the other hand, his opinion with regard to the Psalter of Bonaventura is thus expressed, "So long as a high-churchman acts carefully up to the principles he has been taught, and in so acting feels no-way attracted toward these ways, so long it would be plain sin in him to resort to them." The sin of idolatry, it thus appears, consists only in practising it against one's own inclination: once delight in it, and then it becomes a virtue. Again, the teaching of the English Church, in his view, is a term without meaning. (p. 68.) The teaching of the Prayer-book, indeed, has an important and definite sense; and "considering that it is mainly a selection from the Breviary, it is not surprising that it breathes a most edifying, and deeply orthodox spirit." The Articles also, excepting the five first, "breathe one uniform, intelligible spirit." But "these respective spirits are not different merely, but absolutely contradictory; a student of Greece could as well have imbibed at once the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies, as a member of our Church learn his creed both from prayer-books and articles." In other words, the articles, in their natural scope, are most heterodox and pernicious. The author, with admirable naïvetè, adds the following sentence, which let our readers ponder well. "The manner in which the dry wording of the Articles may be divorced from their natural spirit; how their prima facie meaning is evaded, and the artifice of their inventors thrown back in recoil on themselves; this, and the arguments which prove the honesty of this, have now been for some time before the public." Still he does not seek to encourage discontent with our Church herself, but only with "the miserable system to which she has been committed for three hundred years." And even granting that frank and bold protests against the English Reformation, in some cases, may hasten or even cause a separation from our church, "it is intolerable that individuals should be less diligent and energetic in their protests against heresy in their own pale, because the effect is that a few orthodox form a foreign communion." It was "the miserable sin of the Reformers " to violate "the high sacredness of heredi tary religion”—a principle well maintained by our author's own

bitter invectives on the creed of his fathers; and the result has been "a radically corrupt and heretical system." "The Church of England, in her authoritative teaching"-all subscribed ex animo by the writer-" encourages her children to despise or revile the graces of austerity, celibacy, and voluntary poverty;" nor does she even "tolerably fulfil the very primary object for which the Church was founded." "At the time when the Church of Christ was harassed, and outraged, and insulted by the foreign Reformers, within the Church appeared the spiritual exercises" of Ignatius Loyola, a work the author will not class with the other excellent works of Roman Catholic devotion, because "its wonderful insight has led many to think it inspired, in a lower sense of the word." Though "nothing would be fraught with more mischief, or incur God's heavier displeasure, than any attempts to introduce generally among us at the present time those devotions to the Virgin, which occupy so prominent a place in foreign churches;" still "this implies no adverse criticism whatever on foreign systems as they exist." If indeed a religious observer could "realize and sympathize with the habitual emotions, desires, and aspirations" of foreign Romanists, and his opinion afterwards were unfavourable, "it would justly deserve the greatest attention." In other words, when, after gaining a full sympathy with idolatrous practices, and learning to delight in them, your judgment of them is still unfavourable, then, and not till then, may idolatry be condemned. With regard to images, indulgences, and habitual invocation of saints, he "has never advocated their introduction," because "it would be travelling out of our way to notice them." But "no greater proof can be given of our degraded and unchristian temper of mind, than to suppose that saints, in using the glowing language of their writings"-as St. Bonaventura, for instance, in his Psalter-"have made even the most distant approach to superstition or idolatry!" Surely the force of madness can go no further. Again, he "subscribes the 19th Article in this sense. It affirms that every local church contains members, not only who act wickedly, but also who err on one point or other of belief. If this appears the solemn enunciation of a mere truism, he quite admits the fact, and thinks this renders the interpretation more likely, though he is also "quite aware that many will consider the whole argument as dishonest special pleading." We believe this with all our heart; for a more silly and worthless quibble was never invented than the writer's exposition. The words are these: "As the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith." Now Mr. Ward reasons thus: "There would be no mean

ing in the assertion that the abstract Church of Rome hath erred in their living; it must be certain of her concrete members; and therefore it is certain of her concrete members who have erred in matters of faith." Was there ever a more childish solution of a conscientious difficulty? Let us try a parallel case, and see how the argument works. "The English nation hath sinned, not only by their thefts and forgeries, but also by cruel and unjust wars." What should we think of a special pleader, who should maintain with a grave countenance, that the national wars of the country could not be intended, but only the private feuds of Saxon or Norman barons? Well may the writer add, after such discoveries, that "recent investigations have proved, to his own complete satisfaction, that subscription to the Articles is really very far from a stringent test," although he allows that some others "do not at all admit those methods of interpretation, which give the Articles so extraordinary a latitude."

We must quote a few sentences more, to complete the picture. There is a probability, he thinks, of the opinion being well founded, which has so generally prevailed in the Church, that "a special and divine help is continually imparted to her supreme authority, whatever that authority may be, enabling it to decide on doctrines with unfailing accuracy." (p. 21.) On the other hand, "Protestantism is intellectually just as Lutheranism is morally-the subtlest and most extensively poisonous of heresies." (p. 41.) Visible unity is "the main evidence of our religion, and the sign of our spiritual adoption; whereas we English despise the Greeks, and hate the Romans, and turn our backs on the Scotch, and smile but distantly on the Americans; and, ipso facto, forfeit all claim to be considered catholic at all, as if we did not cease to be Christians if at any time we ceased to have brethren." A Tractarian manual contains a prayer to God, to remove all scandal and offences, and among these, "the scandalous use of images in divine worship." (p. 124.) Our author is in arms at once. What a false position, he exclaims, for members of our Church, when they exercise their private judgment on antiquity, and dare to speak against the Church abroad? "What would have been thought in early times, if a local Church had abrogated usages which prevailed through the Church Catholic, and an individual member had the presumption to call those usages scandalous?" The Lutheran doctrine is "a hateful and fearful type of Antichrist," and "the very phrase, justification by faith only, invented by Luther for his heresy, is incorporated in Article xi." "Our twelfth Article is, as plain as words can make it, on the evangelical side; of course I think its natural meaning may be explained away, for I subscribe it myself in a non-natural sense; but I know no article which Romanizers have to distort so much,