predominant,-it could not be otherwise than that some correct notions of toleration should be elicited. Thus, liberty of conscience, so far as it was attained, was rather an incidental result, than a main, definite purpose of the Reformation.

Real intolerance, the intolerance of the heart is seldom or never seen by the possessor in its true light. It is sincere, indeed; but there can be no more hurtful form of bigotry than that of deluded fanaticism. Instigated by this spirit, men are guilty of unrighteous oppression, and verily think they are doing God service. Persecutors and persecuted, in multitudes of instances, have been alike animated with sincere zeal for what they considered the right. "There can be no doubt," says the persecutor, "that my views are correct, and that he who does not adopt them endangers his spiritual welfare. It must be a benevolent act to appeal to the temporal interest of my neighbor for the good of his soul. Therefore I am bound to try, by pains and penalties, yes, if it be necessary, by the menace of death itself, to bring him from his errors into the true faith; and if the actual infliction of death upon him will deter others from injuring their own souls by the same or like errors, does not philanthropy require the stroke?" One of the popes, in a letter enjoining all true followers of the church to ferret out heretics, and punish them with death if they proved obstinate, sustains his injunction by the following argument: "The man who takes away physical life, is punished with death. Now, faith is the source of eternal life; for it is written: The just shall live by faith.' How much more guilty, then, than a common murderer, and how much more worthy of death must a heretic be, who robs people of their faith-of eternal life!"

Such is the sophistry with which intolerance has, in all ages, deceived, or sought to defend itself. Once set up in the heart as a proper principle, it is almost impossible to dislodge it. It finds nutriment in the worst passions of human nature. When we have come to call evil good, or good evil, there is but little hope of reformation. We cannot doubt that excellent and pious men have cherished a spirit of intolerance. How far, even among the Catholics themselves, it may have been prompted by genuine zeal for supposed truth, it belongs to God alone to determine. Let us not be intolerant ourselves in considering the history of intolerance. We may denounce the principle, but it does not follow that we may universally denounce those as thoroughly wicked who practised it. A good man may,

with mistaken views of duty, be actuated by this spirit of the devil. While we estimate aright the evil influence of the deed, let us always do justice to the sincere intentions of the doer. "The heart is deceitful above all things." Of many sincerely intolerant men, it may be said, no doubt with truth, that, could they have seen the real springs of their intolerance, they would have exerted themselves as sincerely to get rid of it. Could they have seen that in truth they were cherishing a criminal disregard for the rights of others, a proud spirit of infallibility, inconsistent with the meekness that Christ inculcates, -in fine, that their intolerance was a wolf in sheep's clothing,they would not have rested till they had acted in accordance with their new views of duty.

ARTICLE VII.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND.

In the number of this journal for July, 1840, we attempted to give some account of the present condition of the English established church, and particularly of the views which are now earnestly promulgated by the writers of the Oxford Tracts for the Times. It seems to be a fitting and an important inquiry: What has occasioned the rise and prevalence of these peculiar views? To what causes are we to ascribe the statement and inculcation of doctrines, against which some of the best men in the English establishment so loudly and indignantly protest? How is it, that in reformed England, in a Protestant university and in the nineteenth century, dogmas should be propounded which would lead us back, as many think, to the iron times of Papal absolutism?

One ground of the appearance, or rather re-appearance, of the doctrines in question, is, in human nature itself. The Oxford writers are the representatives of a class of men now rapidly diminishing, that worship the Past-that fall down before the graven images of antiquity-that repose on authority and precedents, and linger among the monuments of the mighty and

the sainted dead. They are the antitypes and counterparts of thousands in the Protestant world, and of millions in the Papal, who have submitted their reason to the dicta of some real or imaginary great men, to councils falsely called ecumenical, to traditions turbid and uncertain at their very source, or to formulæ and creeds, not drawn up by apostolic men, but by some melancholy misanthrope, or furious bigot. We should, however, recollect, that it is original temperament which is concerned, at least in part. There are idiosyncrasies, or native peculiarities, over which the individuals themselves have but a partial control. Common candor demands that we should make all proper allowances. A considerable measure of this conservative spirit is, also, one of the principal elements of the English character. It is no more unphilosophical to expect, sometimes, a sudden outbreak of it in Britain, than it is, in our country, to behold, occasionally, choice specimens of democracy. The well-being of the British empire may depend on this earnest love of the Past.

Again, the perversion of the Protestant principle of free discussion accounts, in a measure, for the recent developments of the Oxford tractators. They have seen the evils of Dissent. They have gazed on the bitter conflicts of non-conformists, contending for the right of free discussion-for the privilege, every man for himself, of interpreting the Bible. The Wesleyan has been arrayed against the Whitefieldite, the Congregationalist against the Plymouth Brethren, and the close communion Baptist against his more liberal brother, Toplady anathematizing Wesley, and Wesley leaving Toplady to the uncovenanted mercies of God, Hall and Kinghorn measuring their weapons together, Fuller lifting up his huge battle-axe against all and several who should wilfully impugn the standard Calvinism or the primitive mode of baptism, while some old Scotch claymore was ever and anon falling upon every Southron indiscriminately, who would not canonize John Knox, or sturdily maintain the divine right of ruling elders. At this horrible braying of arms, the retired Oxford Fellow stands aghast. He is amazed that these men, who are all agreed in renouncing the apostolical succession, should so belabor and bespatter each other. The riddle is not expounded till he remembers the unsoundness of the great doctrine of the Wittenberg reformer, viz., the right, inalienable, of every man, to read and expound the Bible as he pleases. This is the Pandora's box, whence issue all forms of

mischief. This is the secret of the everlasting din of arms, the "confused noise" of dissenting warriors. The axe, therefore, must be laid at the root of the tree. The Protestant principle is radically corrupt. Men have not the right of private judgment. They must put their faith in the exegesis of the church They must sit, docile learners, at the feet of their gray-headed and reverend mother. Into her hands are committed the keys of knowledge, which Luther, sacrilegiously, wrested from her. Such is the course of reasoning by which the High-Churchman of Oxford is led to denounce what he contemptuously terms the "right of private judgment;"* or rather, such is the partial observation of facts, which leads him to repose more complacently than ever, on the loving bosom of the holy and apostolic church. The quarrels of the Dissenters have thrown him off his guard. He reasons from the perversion of a principle. He gathers up the abuses of a good thing, and on them builds his theory. When all sects, except his own dear communion, and even some small fragments of that, are contending with each other, as though Christianity itself were at stake, he looks around for a firm footing. He is not satisfied till he has re-affirmed more strongly than ever, that the church, THE CHURCH is the only authorized expounder of God's truth. Whoever sets up for himself in this perilous business of interpretation is a sacrilegious intruder. He takes hold of the ark with unconsecrated hands, and will be terribly smitten for his presumption. Thus, the disputes of the various dissenting denominations in England, we have no doubt, are a prominent cause of the Oxford development. One extreme has produced its opposite.

Another cause of the new movement at Oxford may be found in the Episcopal church herself. To a certain extent, this movement falls in with the genius of the established communion. The whole tendency of the Tracts is to exalt the authority of the bishops, to magnify their office, to show the sin and folly of resistance to their commands. Now, it is not in human nature, nor in Christian nature, unless it has received an extraordinary degree of sanctification, to be displeased with that, though it be somewhat irregular, which promotes one's own dignity and spiritual power. This circumstance may explain, in part, the silence of the great body of the bishops of the English church, or their tacit approval of the Oxford views. We

See Eclectic Review, 1839, 1840.

recollect but two or three of the prelates who have uttered a syllable of condemnation, and one of these is Daniel Wilson, of Calcutta, who was formerly ranked almost among the Methodists. Why have not the bishops of Oxford and of Bristol interfered? Why has not his lordship of London looked into the matter? If the Christian Observer is to be credited, the Oxford innovations do not concern rites merely. They do not pertain to the position of the body of the minister in prayer alone, or to the number of his vigils. They trench upon the vital doctrine of justification by faith. They implicitly, if not openly, set up the notion of the efficacy of human works. They bring forward long and ingenious essays to show that there should be great reserve in communicating religious knowledge, that the proclamation of redeeming love is to be made known cautiously. In other words, the teaching of the Oxford doctors is silently undermining the evangelical system, and substituting in its place fasts, penances, painful postures of the body, reliance on tradition, and many other similar requisitions. In such circumstances, why do not the Right Reverend fathers in God utter their admonitory and authoritative voice? When cardinal doctrines are in danger of being obscured or nullified, why do not their legitimate defenders say so at once? Or, if they accord with the views propounded at the ancient university, why do they not commence a course of ecclesiastical discipline against the conductors of the Christian Observer and other similar prints, as false accusers, as those who have slandered the fair fame of their co-presbyters? The truth is, that the position of the bishops is not the most enviable. They are manifestly embarrassed, and find it to be the safer course to say nothing at all. The subject is one of extreme delicacy. They cannot condemn the Oxford gentlemen in mass, for thus they would be laying rude hands on some part of the sacred edifice which they have sworn to uphold. They cannot sanction, indiscriminately, the positions of the evangelical school in the establishment, for the founders of this school verged, in some important respects, towards dissent. They are not ready to join in the warfare which the friends of Newton, Venn, Milner and Scott are waging against their Oxford brethren, for these last are really justified in a part of their movements by the language of the rituals, and by the early or the later usages of the English church. Besides, the Tracts strenuously maintain the comfortable doctrine, that "our present bishops are the heirs