of the country from the time of the Rebellion to that of William the Third; for worldliness rather than heresy was then the growing evil among them. A more dangerous time, however, was at hand, probably the most dangerous time of trial the Church of England has ever gone through; and the results proved very damaging to the soundness of her clergy. But here we prefer quoting from the volume before us a passage which expresses better than we could hope to do, all we would say on this point.

"After a while came on the Revolution; an event which shed a much more disastrous influence on the taste for patristical learning, because a more enduring and insidious one, than the Rebellion. 'What we did at the Revolution,' says Dr. Johnson, 'was necessary, but it broke our constitution.' Much more might he have said, that it broke our Church, which, however, was possibly what he meant. Henceforward-Presbyterian form of Church government was to be recognized and supported by the law of the land in one division of the Island, as clearly as the episcopalian in the other. The King and Parliament were, henceforward, taught to halt between the two; and the great landed proprietors who had estates in both countries, or even private persons who were connected with both by ties of marriage or of trade, were neutralized upon questions of ecclesiastical polity, which would heretofore have been thought vital, and of which the Fathers were the undeniable witThe Non-jurors were the representatives of the old Church feelings of the country.”.

nesses.

We have put the latter words in italics, for it is a point to which attention is not sufficiently given, that whatever was the deterioration of the Non-juring body at a later period, its theology at the period of its dislocation from the Church as established by law was plainly the traditional doctrine of the Reformation, and fairly represented the opinions of the great majority of those who ventured to have opinions at all among the clergy. Our author continues to say that they

"became, in consequence of their sentiments, now out of fashion, dislocated from a generation which had no sympathy with them; carrying away with them (though not entirely) that regard for primitive times, which with them was destined by degrees almost to expire. Convocation, which might have tended to keep it somewhat alive, by encouraging a learned clergy, and by bringing habitually before the laity ecclesiastical topics, which, from the long absence of such a monitor, have now faded so entirely from their minds as simply to call forth, if by chance produced, their supercilious dismissal; Convocation soon ceased to have a voice. The Church sunk into the Establishment; and the fruits of the change soon began to discover themselves. By the time of Wesley, the high and holy spirits, which had once animated it, had so far degenerated into the secular, that some revival of it was seen to be plainly necessary. But it was attempted in an age when the ancient ways were forgotten, and consequently in a spirit new and revolutionary.

The old Catholic usages (as distinguished from the Popish) instead of being sought out again, and quickened into wholesome action, were set at nought, and a system then devised, vigorous for the day, but which, having no foundations low in the depth of time and sacred precedent, has long since given tokens of decrepitude and decay; and, so far as it is likely to survive at all, seems destined to do so as a schism. It has had, however, its effect on the Church itself; and has helped to harden many, even of its clergy in that contempt, or at least dislike, for antiquity and its witnesses, which the other events I have touched on had so grievously engendered already."-P. 23.

The quotation is rather longer than was necessary for our present object, but we were unwilling not to bring before our readers the whole of the passage, speaking so forcibly as it does of the progress and declension of that schismatical body which in our own day represents the spirit of lawlessness and contempt for the past. And although it might be thought somewhat harsh to connect the Methodist system with Socinian principles, yet we must confess to feeling strongly that the almost wholly subjective form of personal religion which it has so mainly helped to nourish in the present day, is one very nearly allied to the practical religion—as far as either of them may be so called-developed by that heresy; and that while the laxity of belief in one case is not very unlike the definiteness of unbelief in the other, the actual results are such as to be capable of very little distinction indeed. Not that this is peculiar to the Methodist body: it is the fate of every body professing to be a self-contained Church, but yet really wanting in the very essentials, to lose sight of their real LORD, and to substitute an imagination of their own-as much a phantasm as the invention of the primitive Docetæ.

From the ejection of the non-jurors down to our own generation the works of the Fathers have been a sealed book to most Englishmen. The regular students of their writings probably died out with Pearson, Bull and Beveridge; and only here and there have been found men of scholarly minds who felt that the gifts of education were not to be lavished on the writings of heathen antiquity alone. Comparatively few copies of the costly editions in which alone they were then available were found in the private libraries of the clergy: and of the many Church libraries provided by the pious spirit of the preceding generation, there are few which were not treated as useless lumber during that benighted period, and few of which we have now much more than the relics to show what they once were.1

1 All Saints, Northampton, has the remains of such a library in the large vestry belonging to that church. It now occupies a portion of one wall of the room, and is carefully preserved; but it is known to have covered more than four times the space, and to have been the habitual resort of the women who lighted the vestry fires for many years. At Stamford another was lately discovered, which had been actually walled up in recent times, to get rid of it.

Taking into due consideration the causes which have led to a disuse of the Fathers in later days, which is acknowledged on all sides to have been the case, we look upon the line adopted by Professor Blunt in the Lectures before us as one chosen with great judgment. The first series is occupied with a refutation of the too well-known work of Daillé, the French Protestant, and of which the same title has been chosen for the volume before us. In Daillé's case that title is as dishonest as the rest of his work, for his main endeavour is to fill his readers with so strong a prejudice against everything written by the Fathers, that they may never be likely to use them at all. Of this, he whom we may now call the great refuter of Daillé, was himself in some degree an example; for when saying that the work in question has certainly been read by thousands who never troubled themselves to look into a page the Fathers for themselves, he adds, that after reading it, they would probably feel small inclination to do so. "And I well remember that all the early years of my life, my impression of these authors was wholly that which Daillé had given me; as almost all the labours of my later years have tended to efface it."1

of

The second series is occupied in like manner with a refutation of Gibbon's misstatements on many portions of ecclesiastical history, and of the Socinian heresies respecting CHRIST and the Sacraments. Probably there will be many who, on first thoughts will be disposed to think that a modern Professor of Theology at one of our Universities was behind his age when he thus undertook a laborious confutation of works a century old and more, as the best way of initiating students of theology into the right use of the Fathers. But, as we said before, it seems to us that there was profound wisdom in this. Daillé has been and is still (as a quite recent translation shows) a book in extensive circulation in this country; Gibbon's great work is universally read by the educated classes, and the virus of both has eaten deeply into the constitution of higher class intellects among the clergy and the laity too. Again, in upsetting the rationalist dogmas of the Racovian Catechism, our author strikes at the very roots of modern laxity on the subject of sacramental grace, showing in the naked forms of that document the real heresy which lies hid under a cloud of words in the more modern phases of the same principles. The following paragraph, referring to the doctrine of regeneration in baptism, will show the animus in which this line of treatment is followed up:

1 The eradication of these prejudices from Professor Blunt's mind would probably have been more complete had he lived a few years longer; and in that case he would probably have submitted more entirely to the dicta of the Fathers respecting the sanctification of the elements in the Holy Eucharist than he has done at p. 562. A similar remark applies also to a few lines on Holy Baptism at p. 542. These passages are, however, the only instances of anything like faltering or inconsistency that we have observed in a careful perusal of the volume.

"I certainly cannot see how Socinian notions of this Sacrament could have possibly established themselves had the study of the Fathers been habitually pursued, and that weight been attached to their testimony on such a subject which can hardly be denied to persons who lived so very soon after JESUS had uttered the command, Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the FATHER, and of the SON, and of the HOLY GHOST.' And I do think that they take upon themselves a deep responsibility who discourage the reading of these authors; and that at their door may be laid much of the Socinian heresy, which, under a modified form, has affected, and still does affect, the opinions of Churchmen, even of those who, in the abstract would be shocked at the idea of being partakers with that sect."-P. 541.

And the very practical use of the Fathers, in opposing the shallow notions of modern days, is still more emphatically shown in the sixth Lecture of the first series, of which we shall extract a concluding paragraph as our last quotation. After declaring his conviction, that the modern jealousy of Patristic Theology arises from the opposition evidently offered by it to the latitudinarian notions on religious matters which have established themselves in England and elsewhere, and quoting several racy passages from Tertullian, which read as if written against modern latitudinarians, he goes on to add :

"How shall those who regard the Eucharist as no more than a commemorative Supper, be content to give currency to the opinions of those who speak of it as an ordinance consisting of two parts, an earthly and a heavenly; as in some sense or other an oblation, perhaps such in the unconsecrated elements, perhaps such in the representation of the Passion, or perhaps such in both; or again, who love to enlarge upon it as the Communion of the Body of the LORD, the Communion of His Blood; as that which having received the Logos of GOD imparts it to the soul, and through it immortalizes the body; with more to a like effect, which may be examined on a future occasion? How can those whose theology inclines them to depress the virtue of the Sacraments as the appointed means of grace, look with favour upon authors who exalt those Sacraments so emphatically? Or how, again, can those who either reject our Book of Common Prayer, or partially assert it, or consent to bracket it, regard with any other feelings than those of distaste primitive writers who bear witness both to the general style of it, as well as to the early observance of Saints' Days; of Daily Prayers in the Congregation; of Fasts; of an Offertory; and much more? How very few of our newspapers, by which our theology is now a good deal regulated, would approve of any part of this evidence; or have any opinion of men who had left such matters on record."P. 156.

It is highly gratifying to find that such principles as are here indicated, have been so long inculcated upon the theological students at Cambridge; and it is a consolation, under the loss which

the Church suffered by Professor Blunt's premature removal, to feel that his Lectures must have produced lasting impressions of the highest tone, on many who were going forth to reproduce his influence in a greater or less degree upon the world outside of the University. The volume, which now brings these Lectures into a permanent form, is one which may be expected to interest all who heard them delivered, and to induce them to carry on still further the study which is advocated throughout its pages. For such a purpose the fulness of reference at the foot of the pages will be found exceedingly valuable; and while the Fathers at large are yet available to a comparative few, we look to these Lectures as one of those valuable compendia by which even busy clergymen may attain a sound knowledge of their teaching, and be imbued with their Catholic spirit.

But there is a charm of style about most of Professor Blunt's writings, and especially about these lectures, which leads us to hope that their circulation will not be limited to the clergy. Thoughtful and religious laymen might well be directed to this volume as one in which they could not fail to be interested; and we do not know any book which might be more usefully put into the hands of those who from the prejudices of education or position, hold aloof from the Church or from orthodox doctrine and practice, and are yet of a sufficiently impartial mind to inquire what is to be said on the side of those with whom they do not at present agree.

As we have stated already our concurrence with the opinion of Professor Blunt, that the decline of the study of Patristic Theology has been at the root of modern laxity, so we are willing to believe that much of what we and our readers are so thankful for at present, owes its revival and spirit to the re-installation of that Theology in the position of authority which it ought to occupy. Perhaps there is, however, room for a warning in respect to the choice of authorities among those who have gone before us in the Church. There is a disposition among young writers of a certain class to refer abundantly to authors who have never been contemplated by the Church of England as a part of that great body of witnesses for the faith who usually go by the designation of the Fathers. It is not unusual to find youthful correspondents in newspapers interspersing their own dogmata with "as said by S. Alphonso," or "as that holy Father Bonaventura declareth," and evidently flinging the testimony of these doubtless highly respectable authors in the face of all opponents with as much confidence of overwhelming authority as if they had been quoting Irenæus or Clemens, Chrysos tom or Augustine. We are not willing to suppose such writers to be more familiarly acquainted with treatises of favourite controversialists of a distinctively Ultramontane tone than they are with the labours of the Catholic Fathers, but perhaps we are within the limits of fair criticism when we say that this little trait of our