a mathematical demonstration, the object of a moral intuition cannot be fulfilled without such authority. Mr. Parker would, we suppose, contend that a moral intuition was of itself sufficient for all purposes of obligation, independently of any external authority with which it might be allied. That, at least, is the proper mode of stating his side of the case. Now it seems to us, on the contrary, very clear indeed that there are circumstances under which external authority, because it is external, is especially appropriate and useful. It may be employed to strengthen the obligation which the intuition itself involves. A sense of obligation is by the necessity of its character capable of indefinite increase. Authority acts upon us in obedience to moral, not intellectual, principles. Its effect may be deepened and rendered more influential by the greater variety and impressiveness and frequency with which its intimations are conveyed. It is not like a mathematical demonstration, whose functions are discharged when its proof is admitted. It implies something to be done. It leaves us, therefore, open to the presentation of motives different in their nature and degree, in order that that which should be done, may be done. External authority may also be employed to give sanction to truths which are not matters of intuition. There are such truths intimately connected with the subject of religion,-truths of which the persons to whom they are presented are ignorant until the presentation is made by another. There may be various causes which hinder those who thus come under the influence of fresh instruction from accepting the instruction offered, upon its inherent merits alone. Wherever such causes exist-and nothing can be easier than to prove their existence and operation in the case of Christianity-an external proof of divine authority is an instrumentality bearing upon the difficulty. We are very far from saying that in every such instance the employment of such an instrumentality would be justifiable. That depends upon the importance of the object to be accomplished. What we say is, that if that object be sufficiently important to justify its use, a miraculous sanction in favour of a published truth will add to the force of other efforts which may be made to produce moral conviction. Mr. Parker throughout his work assigns far too great a weight to man's natural ability for the discovery of moral truth, and his inclination to obey it. His view of human nature is, in this respect, pre-eminently one-sided. It does not answer either to the philosophy or the facts of the subject. It is as dangerous on account of the false hopes to which it will give rise, as it is on account of the disbelief which it is meant to support. Though we were to reject Christianity, it could not be in order to place the kind of trust in human nature which is here advocated. Man is not by any means the being of perfect moral perception that, for the disparagement of supernaturalism, he is here represented to be. There are many religious truths which he cannot of himself find out and establish. There are many truths which he knows to be such, but which he refuses to obey. There are many truths with which he has naturally but an imperfect acquaintance, and as to which he entertains dangerous errors and commits great evils. These things must in all fairness be taken into the account, when the value of external religious authority is to be estimated. That authority is not at all unnatural. It is, even in its miraculous form, but a confirmation of the inward principle of divine obedience which Mr. Parker justly supposes to have been implanted in the hearts of all men. If nothing but the inward intuition be necessary to our practical observance of the divine will, how comes it to pass that God has created so many outward means in the construction and arrangement of the natural world for leading us to moral obedience? These laws of nature, to which, for moral purposes, we are all subjected, are manifestations of divine authority; and, as such, are not in accordance with Mr. Parker's principles. If they have been added to the internal principles of human action, then, on the same grounds and for the same reasons, others of a supernatural character may be added also. Revelation, in our view of it, serves the same purposes with regard to religious truth, as the facts of nature do with regard to scientific truth; and both concur in their moral effect upon man's heart and life. Mr. Parker's argument as to the impossibility of adding to a moral intuition, may be stated, in an application to the natural and providential government of God, as correct as that which it is made to sustain to the peculiar machinery of Christianity. The world around us exerts upon us an influence very different in its respective relations to mathematical demonstrations and moral intuitions. To the former it adds nothing; but the force of the latter is incalculably increased by it; and what is within the power of one class of external instrumentalities, cannot, on account of their external character, be denied to another. We are obliged, somewhat reluctantly, to close our observations at this point. We do so by repeating our high sense of Mr. Parker's talents and character. We regard the man with profound respect and admiration, howsoever widely we may dissent from some of his opinions. With all his disbelief, he is undoubtedly a man of pure and deep religious feeling, which he endeavours honestly and earnestly to apply to the concerns of human life. This is manifest throughout the work on which we have been remarking, and is at least as apparent in his late discourse entitled The Idea of a Christian Church. We mention this discourse here, because it was our intention to have taken some notice of it in the course of the present paper. That intention, with some others, we must, however, altogether pass by. We do not regret we, on the contrary, rejoice at the appearance of such productions as these. We have no dread of their influence in opposition to Christianity; and it is to us a gratifying fact, that those who reject what we think to be essential to the Christian system, are still influenced by the divine love and fear to which the instrumentalities of that system are designed to be subservient. г. CHURCH ESTABLISHMENTS. EVERY Church Establishment is a mighty joint-stock company of error and deception, which invites subscriptions to the common fund, from the largest amount of hypocrisy, to the lowest penny and farthing contribution of acquiescence in what the conscience does not entirely approve. Yet these last contributions form the true strength of the Establishment.-Blanco White's Autobiography, II. 194. A VICTORY! BY REV. R. E. B. MACLELLAN. (From Douglas Jerrold's Magazine.) THE joy-bells peal a merry tune The crackling bonfires turn the sky A little girl stood at the door, Sudden her cheek turns ghastly white, And, rushing in of doors, she screams- A mother sat in thoughtful ease, Plying the needle's thrifty task She tore her few grey hairs and shriek'd, 66 My joy on earth is done! Oh who will lay me in my grave? Oh God! my son! my son!" A youthful wife the threshold cross'd, A smiling infant nestling lay In slumber at her breast. She spoke no word, she heaved no sigh, The widow's tale to tell; But like a corpse, all white and stiff, And thousand joyful voices cry, An old weak man with head of snow, One scalding tear, one choking sob- LEARNING OF THE CLERGY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. SIR, My time has of late been a good deal occupied in perusing the Manuscripts which are contained in Dr. Williams's Library. I have, in the course of my examination of them, met with several curious and interesting documents, particularly one entitled "A true Copy of Bishop Hooper's Visitation Booke, made by him A. D. 1551, 1552." In the hope that a few extracts from the Bishop's Visitation Booke may be interesting to some portion of your readers, I will, with your leave, occupy a page or two of the Christian Reformer upon the subject. "Hooper, John, was born in Somersetshire in 1495, and educated in Merton College, Oxford. He was for some time a member of the order of the Cistercians, but having imbibed the principles of the Reformers, he quitted a monastic life, and went to Swisserland, where he was married. On the accession of Edward VI., he returned to England, and was made Bishop of Gloucester, to which was added the Bishopric of Worcester in commendam. Here he laboured with great zeal till the restoration of Popery under Mary. Bishop Hooper was now thrown into prison, whither the good old Latimer also was sent soon after. Here he was exceedingly ill-treated, underwent a mock trial, and was condemned to the flames through the means of the infamous Gardiner."* The account of the torture he endured is too horrible to relate; suffice it to say that the diabolical act was perpetrated in the year 1555. The Bishop's Visitation Booke begins with his Letter to the Clergy of his Diocese, printed in the Appendix to Strype's Cranmer, p. 135. Then follow" Articles concerning Christian Religion, given by the Reverend Father in Christ, John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, unto all the singular Deanes, Parsons, Prebends, Vicars, Curates, and other Ecclesi-asticall Ministers within the Dioces of Gloucester, to be had and retained of them, for the Unity and Agreement as well for the Doctrine of God's Word, as also for the Conformity of the Ceremonies agreeing with God's Word." The Articles are fifty in number, and are principally directed against Popish ceremonies. Article 27. No man ought to receive the Communion of the body and bloud of our Lord for another, neither yet one for many, but every man for himselfe, ffor no more dothe the Comunion prevaile, being take of one for another, then doth Baptisme. Wherefore the Communion ought not to be kept or celebrated within the Church, unlesse that the whole Congregation (or at least a good part of the same) do receive it. And Article 28. That such doctrines doth plainly approve that the Popish Mass is a mere enemy against God's word and Christ's institution. albeit it doth retaine in it certain lessons of the Holy Scriptures, yet it is nothing better to be esteemed then the verses of the sorcerer or inchanter, that be nothing the more to be esteemed for certaine holy words murmured and spoaken in seacret. Next to the Articles follow "Injunctions given by John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, in his Visitation in the Yeare of our Lord God a Thousand Five Hundreth Forty-and-one, and in the Fifth Yeare of the Reigne of our Soveraigne Lord, King Edward the Sixte, to be observed and kept of all Parsons, Vicars, Curates and Ministers within the Dioces of Gloucester." The Injunctions are thirty-one in number. First. That they nor none of them teach, upon the paines of God's displeasure and the King's, any other doctrine, faith, prayer or religion unto the people necessary for salvation, then such as they can duely, justly and manifestly prove out of the Word of God. The Injunctions as well as the Articles contain bold attacks upon the Popish Mass. 15 Item. That ye be diligent and carefull yourselves, and also exhort the Church Proctors and Wardens, with all other that be appointed for the continuance and preservation of true religion and godly conversation in your parishes among the people, that no man nor woman maintaine openly or privately by talking, reading, preaching, disputation, argument, or other reasoning, the defence of Transubstantion of the bread and wine in the Sacrament of Christ's pretious body and bloud, any corporall, fleshly, bodily or reall presence of Christ's body in the Sacrament, any use or necessity of Masses, Prayers unto Saints, Purgatory, Pardons, Indulgence, Beades, Images, or such other Superstition as is most justly condemned by God's Word and the King's Majestie's authority. Then follow "Interrogatories and Demands of the People or Parishioners and their Conversation, to be required and known by the Parsons, Vicars and Curates." The Interrogatories are twenty-eight in number. First. Whether they be diligent, willing and glad to hear and learne the Commandments of God, the Articles of the Christian Faith, and the Lord's Prayer, called the Pater Noster? 15 Item. Whether any man do occupie any such Primers, or Bookes of Prayers in Latin, as be forbidden by the Lawes of the Realme, or any Beades, Knotts, Reliques, or any such other Superstition; or whether any man pray in the Church his private and own Prayer, whiles the Common Prayer is a saying, to the trouble or hinderance of the understanding thereof? Next are "Interrogatories and Examinations of the Ministers and of their Conversation, to be required and known by the Parishioners." First. Whether your Minister be Parson, Vicar or Curate, and how long he hath been so? 2 Item. If he be a Parson or Vicar, whether he be resident or not; and if he be not resident, what is the cause he is not resident; and whether he have left for him in his absence a sufficient and lawfull Minister to discharge his cure? 3 Item. Whether all such images as heretofore hath been in the temple, be burned and destroyed? These Interrogatories are sixty-one in number, and shew the determined hostility of the Bishop to Popish ceremonies, and his anxious desire to remove them from the Church. We cannot wonder that so formidable an enemy of Popery should have been among the first marked out for destruction, as soon as the Catholic faith was again triumphant. Such, however, was his attachment to the principles of the Reformers, that though the Queen's pardon was set before him if he would recant his opinion, he cheerfully endured the most cruel torture, and manifested a fortitude almost incredible, till death released him from his agony. The Visitation Booke concludes with an Examination of the Clergy of the Diocese of Gloucester in the Ten Com |