the one Holy Catholic Church, which, among other places, is allowed by her Divine Master to manifest herself locally in England, and has in former times been endowed by the piety of her members. That the State has but secured by law those endowments which it could not seize without sacrilege, and in return for this supposed boon, has encumbered the rightful possession of them by various conditions calculated to bring the church into bondage; that her ministers, in consequence, are not bound to throw themselves into the spirit of such enactments; rather are bound to keep themselves from the snare and guilt of them, and to observe only such a literal acquiescence as is all that the law requires in any case, all that an external oppressor has a right to ask. Their loyalty is already engaged to the Church Catholic, and they cannot enter into the drift and intentions of her oppressors without betraying her. For example, they cannot do more than submit to the statute of premunire; they cannot defend or concur in the present suspension in every form of the Church's synodal powers and of her power of excommunication; nor can they sympathize in the provision which hinder their cele

brating five out of the seven daily services, which are their patrimony equally with the Romanists. Again, doubtless the spirit in which the present Establishment was framed, would require an affectionate admiring remembrance of Luther and others, for whom there is no evidence that the author of these volumes ever entertained any reverence."

This extract will put the reader in possession of the great object of the author's wishes and hopes, and the constant employment of his thoughts and writings-the restoration of the British Church. And when we look around at the desolate and decayed aspect she now presents, despoiled of her ancient patrimony, shorn of her ancient privileges, and deprived of her ancient power; when we view the effect this has produced on the habits and feelings of the people; the low opinion they form of her station and her rights; the cool apathy and indifference of the laity who still adhere to her forms and ordinances; the insulting language of the sectaries towards her; the manner in which this

church, so weakened and disfigured, has been placed, with all her sacred offices, her mysterious gifts, her holy claims, at the feet of a semi-laic commission; when we find the very persons who, by virtue of this tenure of office, have a disposal of her emoluments, and should be the jealous guardians of her rights, taking praise to themselves because they are not hostile to her; when in fact we see the evil produced throughout the body of the people by the disuse of church discipline, and the loss of her spiritual authority; when we contemplate the wretchedly cold, lifeless, hopeless indifference

At

and carnal-mindedness with which the services, as they are called, of the church are partaken of by the people; the dishonouring of the sacraments; the exaltation of the sermon, and the rage after Gospel-preachers; we say, considering such things, we want no apology for the expression of the very strong feelings we meet with in our author's writings, seeing, that if we go not with him to the full extent of differing from him as to their soundhis opinions, and that not so much ness or correctness, as by reason of their being hopeless to accomplish under present circumstances,—we are yet convinced of the rectitude of his judgment, and of the absolute necessity of many of the changes and restorations he so fondly advocates. present, however, the appointment of political bishops, and the institution of political parsons to the Crown livings, and the new tithe-bill, and the church-rate question, are all tending the contrary way. We know what end what we called liberal men come to; and it will not be difficult to foretel the end of a liberal church. As a specimen of the extent to which this pseudo-charity has reached, even among the watchmen of Israel, we heard a late-instituted bishop declare that his pride should be to adhere to the steps of his predecessor; and yet we know that this predecessor had declared over and over again that he would live and die in the opinions of Hoadly! *

The first volume of this work contains, the Private Journal of the Author-Letters to Friends - and Occasional Thoughts. The journal shows the deep attention which he paid to the regulation of his thoughts and actions in accordance with the precepts of Christianity; his attention to the religious duties of prayer and fasting; his dissatisfaction with the state of his temper and conduct: while a considerable degree of eccentricity and singular thoughts and confessions, more or less, pervade the whole journal. We must give a short specimen of the Occasional Thoughts, in which many subjects connected with religious faith are discussed with great clearness and power of reasoning, but are too long

to transcribe.

"Feb. 19. He remarked in a sermon yesterday that, in the same sense as the Jews were nationally elected into God's household before other nations, and likewise some Heathen nations before others, without any other apparent or assigned reason than the good pleasure of God, we all have been individually elected, insomuch as no reason can be assigned for our having been born in a Christian country rather than a Heathen, except the good pleasure of God. In this sense, and in this alone, can the Calling' and Election' of individuals be called arbitrary. Whether in the other sense we are elect, depends on what we ourselves are, whether we are leaning on the arm of God, outstretched to help all to whom it has been revealed, on condition that they will lean on it. It is God that worketh in us to will and do of his good pleasure, but not so as to leave us nothing to do ourselves; while it is he that will, we have the power not to will.

"June. "Arogiai, about Absolution, Anathemas, &c. When our Lord breathed upon the Apostles, he said to them, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.' What are we to understand was the nature of the power com

municated unto them? Was the validity of their sentence to depend upon the truth of its grounds?-It is not easy to conceive the contrary: by it, supposing them to be correct, we believe that their effects would follow them independent of any authoritative assurance. So that a scoffer might say, What does the sentence of the Church come to? for you do not seem to assert its validity except in cases where you would allow the sentence of any one else to be equally valid : its authority does not ensure its execution, unless without authority it would have been equally executed. It seems to me altogether a very puzzling difficulty: an excommunicated person is either worse off, or not worse off than he was before. If he is not, how can it be looked upon as an evil and a punishment?-it degenerates simply into a matter of expediency."

So far the author, from which we must remark that if the remission or retaining of sins by the Apostles were accompanied by any acts of power, such as readmission into the Church, or excommunication, the effect of that power might be very different, from the simple conviction that pardon or punishment would hereafter follow, according to the religious dispensation of God with Man and the declarations of Scripture. But if no act of power further than the announcement, authoritatively declared, of the spiritual state of the person follow; then it might be considered as a gift bestowed on the Apostles to corroborate their faith, and convince them of the high powers bestowed on them; and also as a proof of the power Christ had bequeathed to his Church here on earth. In both cases a distinct and important object is gained.

We end our brief extracts from these Occasional Thoughts, with the concluding passage :—

"The array of talent' which has marshalled itself on the side of the Romanists as regards their political claims, is pointed out to us as a two-fold argument for

gence of their supporters is urged as an authority to which we should in common modesty defer; our inability to do without them as a reason why we should court their services on their terms. I do not mean to admit the power of either separately; but what I assert is, that both together, they are utterly untenable. When the authority of these persons is used, their friendship is assumed, while their threatened desertion supposes them disaffected. As to the first point, it is here presumed that they are quoted against us, not to shake our principles, but our mistaken way of supporting them. The weight, then, which we should attribute to their advice must depend on their attachment to our principles. We must know what they intend to support, before we can rely on them as supporters. Next, it would be no very consistent display of attachment to abandon the principles themselves, to punish the deluded obstinacy of their unenlightened adherents. No folly which we can show will alter the character of the ends we have in view; and he who will not desert them, cannot desert us. I shall assume, then, that whatever may be the inexpediency of our present line of conduct, no part of that inexpediency arises from the chance of detaching from our cause any true friend, however enlightened. They who support the Romanists, to advance the interests of the Church, will not adhere to them, in spite of its interests; nor suffer it to sustain unnecessary injury because they cannot benefit it their own way. On these grounds, then, it seems to me quite evident that those whose services must be bought by concession, can have no authority as advisers. may be true that all the talent of the country' hold the safety of the Established Church second to their theories of political convenience; and to such talent we may submit as conquered enemies, but we can never coalesce with it as allies."

It

His opinion on church matters may be gathered from many such short passages and hints as the following:

P. 250.-"All the Methodists in these parts are cocking up their ears at the news of his approach. May he escape becoming a Gospel minister. I have read the lives of Peacock and Wickliffe in Strype; but must read much more about them and their times before I understand them. At present I admire Peacock and dislike Wickliffe. A great deterioration seems to have taken place in the spirit of the Church after Edward the Third's death.

I have been very idle lately, but have

taken up Strype now and then, and have not increased my admiration of the Reformers. One must not speak lightly of a martyr; so I do not allow my feelings to pass the verge of scepticism; but I really do feel sceptical, whether Latimer was not something in the Bulteel linewhether the catholicism of their formulæ was not a concession to the feelings of the nation, with whom puritanism had not yet become popular, and who could scarcely bear the alterations which had been made; and whether the progress of things in Edward the Sixth's minority may not be considered as the jobbing of a faction. I will do myself the justice to say, that those doubts give me pain, and that I hope more reading will in some degree dispel them. As far as I am gone, I think better than I was prepared of Gardiner and Bonner; certainly, the 90s of the Reformation is to me a terra incognita, and I do not think that it has been explained by any one that I have heard talk about it."

Again,

"I have been looking into Strype's Memorials and Burnet a good deal without finding much to like in the Reformers, but I do not see clearly the motives of the different parties. The sincerity of the leading men on both sides seems so equivocal that I can hardly see what attached them to their respective positions. I have observed one thing, and only one, in favour of my guessedat theory, that is, that Cranmer had a quarrel with Gardiner about admitting poor people's children to a foundation school at Canterbury; the latter insisting on their exclusion. Certainly, this was a change in the tone of the high church party since William of Wykeham's time.

The only anois on which I can put my hand, as having resulted from my travels, is that the whole Christian system all over Europe- tendit visibiliter ad non esse.' The same process which is going on in England and France is taking its course everywhere else, and the clergy in those Catholic countries seem as completely to have lost their influence, and to submit as tamely to the State, as ever we can do in England."

But we must change the subject. In a letter from Rome he makes an observation on the use of coloured stone in architecture, which we ourselves had strongly felt when we first entered St. Paul's with the recollection of St. Peter's fresh in our mind.

'Before I came here I had no idea of the effect of coloured stone in archi

tecture; but the use M. Angelo has made of it in St. Peter's, shows one at once how entirely that style is designed with reference to it, and how absurd it was in Sir Christopher Wren to copy the form when he could copy nothing more. The coloured part so completely disconnects itself from the rest, and forms such a decided and elegant relief to it, that the two seem to be independent designs that do not interfere. The plain stone-work has all the simplicity of a Grecian temple and the marbles set it off, just as a fine scene or a glowing sky would. I observe that the awkwardness of mixing up arched and unarched architecture is thus entirely avoided, as all the arched work is coloured, and the lines of the uncoloured portion are all either horizontal or perpendicular. So Michael Angelo adds his testimony to my theory about Gothic architecture."

One more quotation, and we must, per force, abstain:

"P. 306. Monseigneur --, the head of the College, who has enlightened me on the subject of our relations to the Church of Rome. We got introduced to him to find out whether he would take us in on any terms to which we could trust our consciences, and we found to our dismay that not one step could be gained without swallowing the Council of Trent as a whole. We made our approaches to the subject as delicately as we could. Our first notion was that the terms of communion were within certain limits under the control of the Pope, or that, in case he could not dispense solely, yet at any rate the acts of one Council might be rescinded by another; indeed, that in Charles the First's time it had been intended to negociate a reconciliation on the terms on which things stood before the Council of Trent. But we found to our sorrow that the doctrine of the infallibility of the Church made the acts of each successive Council obligatory for ever; that what had been once decided, could never be meddled with again. In fact, that they were committed finally and irrevocably, and could not advance one step to meet us, even though the Church of England should become what it was in Laud's time, or indeed what it may have been up to the atrocious Council, for M- admitted that many things, e. g. the doctrine of mass, which were fixed then, had been indeterminate before. So much for the Council of Trent, for which Christendom has to thank Luther and the Reformers. declares, that ever since I heard

this, I have become a staunch Protestant,

which is a most base calumny on his part, though I own it has altogether changed my notions of the Roman Catholics, and made me wish for the total otherthrow of their system. I think that the only Toros now is the ancient Church of England;' and as an explanation of what one means,-' Charles the First and the Nonjurors.'"

There are in the volumes, besides what we have already mentioned, some very good Sermons, and an exceedingly ingenious and interesting essay on Church Architecture and the Rise of the Pointed Arch. A few pieces of poetry are also preserved, from which we make the following extract :—

"DANIEL.

"Son of sorrow! doom'd by fate
To a lot most desolate,

To joyless youth and childless age,
Last of thy father's lineage-
Blighted being! whence hast thou
That lofty mien and cloudless brow?

"Ask'st thou whence that cloudless Bitter is the cup, I trow; [brow?

A cup of weary, well-spent years—
A cup of sorrows, fasts, and tears;
That cup whose virtue can impart
Such calmness to a troubled heart!

"Last of his father's lineage, he,
Many a night on bended knee,
In hunger many a live-long day,
Hath striven to cast his slough away;
Yea, and that long prayer is granted,
Yea, his Soul is disenchanted.

"Oh! blest above the sons of men,
For thou, with more than prophet's ken,
Deep in the secrets of the tomb
Hath read their own eternal doom;
Thou, by the hand of the Most High,
Art sealed for immortality.

"So may I read thy story right,
And in my flesh so tame my spright,
That when the mighty one goes forth,
And from the east and from the north
Unwilling ghosts shall gather'd be,
I, in my lot, may stand with thee."

We leave these volumes with every feeling of respect to the author's memory. His mind was strong and ably exercised; he had a powerful intellect and a discriminating taste; while every page of his writings bears witness to the virtuous principles which regulated his conduct, and the strong religious faith which it was the object of his life to maintain and to dif

fuse. Fortunately, the manuscripts left by the author have found an editor who has performed his somewhat delicate task with the very qualities which it was desirable for him to possess, but so difficult to find-affection for the author's memory, similarity of sentiments among important questions touched on, and an intimate acquaintance with all the points connected with their discussion.

The Primitive Doctrine of Justification investigated, &c. By George Stanley Faber, B.D.

THIS volume has had its origin in some opinions advanced in the works of the late Mr. Knox, on the subject of justification, which Mr. Faber was solicited by some of his clerical brethren to examine, and to communicate to them the result of his inquiry. The subject itself, it is needless to say, is of the greatest interest that can possibly come under investigation; those who maintain the different systems are persons of eminent learning, piety, and character; and the argument is conducted with such feelings of respect as are due to the sanctity of the subject and the respectability of those who are conscientiously examining it for the discovering of truth. We must give a very short outline of

it in Mr. Faber's own words:

"The one system (that of Mr. Knox and his followers) grounds our justification upon our own intrinsic righteousness infused into us by God, through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; the other system grounds our justification upon the extrinsic righteousness of Christ, appropriated and forensically made our own by faith, as by an appointed instrument. The one teaches that we are not only reputed, but actually made righteous to an amount sufficient, through this precise medium, to procure and effect our justification before God; the other teaches that we are justified only on account of the perfect righteousness of Christ, through the medium of faith, which we have imputed to us (as the apostle speaks), instead of righteousness which we have not. The one identifies the righteousness of sanctification, which is inherent but not perfect, with the righteousness of justification, which is perfect, but not inherent; the other carefully distinguishes both in office and character and order of succession the perfect righteous

ness of justification, which is Christ's, and the imperfect righteousness of sanctification, which is our own. The one maintains that the confessedly imperfect, but inherent righteousness of sanctification justifies those, who, before the infusion sin - intermingled quality, were among of that heaven-born, but in the world the impious and ungodly; the other maintains that, although the imperfect and inherent righteousness of sanctification is ever present (as the writer of the Homily speaks) with those that are justified, yet it has no hand in procuring and effecting their justification, inasmuch as the one follows after the other, and therefore in the very nature of things cannot be its antecedent cause; for each system alike the authority of Scripture is claimed.”

Mr. Faber, in the following section, shows with what just impressions of the subject, he enters on the inquiry :

"So far as I am able to judge, a difference thus marked, and thus important, requires for each individual's own

satisfaction, a sifting as complete as an union of honesty and labour can render it; and this sifting is the more necessary, because the difference lies not between religion and irreligion,-not between seriousness and profaneness,-not between caution and carelessness,—not between a strong intent and a real indifference,-not between a holy regard of God's word and an unholy disregard of it; but between men alike impressed with the importance of the gospel,-alike aiming in all sincerity at the practice of godliness, and alike claiming Christ as their only Lord and Saviour: in a word, between the departed piety of Mr. Knox united with the living excellence of his adherents, on the one hand, and the departed piety of Hooker united with the living excellence of Hooker's disciples, on the other hand."

In St. Paul's sense, says Mr. Knox, "to be justified, is not simply to be accounted righteous, but also and in the first instance to be made righteous by the implantation of a radical principle of Righteousness." This doctrine Mr. Faber thinks was first propounded by Peter Lombard in the 12th century, and Thomas Aquinas in the 13th, and adopted by the tridentine divines. The difference between the two schemes lies in the procuring cause of Justification. Mr. Knox and the tridentine fathers, and the schoolmen, make the procuring cause of justifi