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pentance, and amendment of life, he cannot be said to be again regenerate, without a grievous misapplication both of the language of scripture, and a total departure from the doctrine of the primitive Church. A nominal Christian is still a member of the Christian covenant, though his privileges are in abeyance and the Lord's Supper is a means of resuming them without making the covenant afresh."-(p. 93.)

Whatever Mr. T. may be as a scholar, we certainly cannot say much for his theology; and we deeply lament that with the revival of theological study at our Universities, there should be no check upon such teaching as this. Let it be understood, however, that this manual has not the imprimatur of the University, and therefore is not to be regarded as an ex cathedrá instruction of our youth in the doctrines of the Liturgy. We hope better things of the authorized teachers at our own Alma Mater.

APOSTACY DEVELOPED; or England's Shechinah Departing. 1846.

THIS short pamphlet, reprinted from a Dissenting publication, is a simple appeal to British Churches on the signs of the times, with reference to the religious declension of our beloved land. It is written in a tone of deep feeling, simple piety, and wise and scriptural zeal for the preservation of our national faith, pure and undefiled by the corruptions of Rome. It were well for our country if the sentiments which it contains were engraven on the hearts of our statesmen. We commend the whole very cordially to our readers. It may serve to refresh and deepen their convictions on those great duties, which press on every sincere Christian in our land at the present hour. May that verse never be fulfilled against us: "Yea, woe unto them, when I depart from them."

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCHMAN'S MONTHLY REVIEW. DEAR SIR, I will readily answer, so far as I can understand its drift, the question, which your correspondent Y. Z. has put to me in the last July number of the Churchman's Monthly Review. At the same time, I will frankly confess, that I am by no means clear that I do understand it.

In reply to a challenge from his contemporaries, Augustine produces certain passages from Cyprian, Gregory-Nazianzen, and Ambrose, which vindicate, he thinks, his peculiar and hitherto unheard-of view of Election.

My answer to this was: that the passages, produced by him, afforded no evidential vindication of his gloss: BECAUSE other passages, written by these same authors, directly contradicted the gloss put by Augustine upon the produced passages.

My answer is quoted by your correspondent and yet he asks me; "Who can tell, what Augustine's opinion as to their meaning might have been?"

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This is the question, of which I do not clearly understand the drift. I can only say that, if Augustine himself had thought them to his purpose, he would, I suppose, have quoted them along with the others. At any rate, it is quite evident, that nobody else had ever deemed them inculcations of Augustine's peculiar doctrine and it is equally evident, that that doctrine, when promulgated early in the fifth century, could by no possibility have been a feeble and openly declared NOVELTY, if it had been UNIVERSALLY taught in the Church from the beginning, and thence by a plain necessity had been UNIVERSALLY familiar. So far as I can understand the principle of evidence, the palpable result is, that Augustine was the inventor of a doctrine, which, till he propounded it, had never been heard of.

I have only to add, that I as little understand the drift of the question with which your correspondent concludes his letter, as I understand the drift of the question proposed to myself.

Sherburn-House,
Aug. 3, 1846.

G. S. FABER.

DEAR SIR,-When I opened the Churchman's Monthly Review for July, the first article, which caught my eye, was the letter on the last page, containing the questions of your correspondent

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Y. Z. I thought it right forthwith to give an answer: and the answer was written and sent off, before I perceived that you yourself had also inserted a communication on the same subject.

To enter afresh, at any great length, into a perhaps interminable controversy, I must decline: yet, if I noticed the paper of Y. Z. and took not the slightest notice of your own, it might well seem to argue a disrespect alike unbecoming on my part and undeserved on your part.

Your defence of Mr. M'Neile's argument is ingenious and plausible: but, as an honest man, I must fairly tell you, that it works no conviction in my mind.

I. In the first place, you misrepresent, no doubt unintentionally, my very principle of reasoning.

You say of me: "His reasoning implies, that the Scriptures "are quite ambiguous, and the Fathers entirely free from ambi"guity."

I know not what reasons you can have for asserting such a totally groundless implication: for laying his finger upon which imaginary inconsistency, you praise Mr. M'Neile. So far from this being my principle, I have absolutely avowed, again and again, the very contrary. I have repeatedly stated, for the purpose of anticipating the charge now brought against me, that, on all essential points, the Scriptures, to a really honest inquirer, are most abundantly clear: but, nevertheless, I was compelled to add, that, in regard to NAKED FACT, we do find very different interpretations put upon

What, then, is to be done in this case? my principle goes on to ask: just as Tertullian asked many ages before I was born. I reply, precisely as he did, in my own judgment, most rationally : We must resort to external evidence, wherever we can find it; not, however, I may add, mere evidence as to what the Fathers taught (for the purely personal opinions of the Fathers I deem not a whit more authoritative, than those of either Mr. M'Neile or myself), but evidence as to what, by their concurrency of statement so far back as we can ascertain, they jointly testified the Catholic Church to have held from the beginning as the true sense of Holy Scripture.

The strongest evidence of this kind is found in the various, but perfectly harmonious, Creeds or Symbols of the Ancient Church : yet the agreement of the Ecclesiastical Writers, where they agree both with themselves and with the Creeds, affords, in my judgment, a most powerful subsidiary evidence.

This, as I have stated it till I am fairly weary of the subject, is the often-explained amount of my principle: but, as for the absurdity of my describing the Bible as " quite ambiguous," while

the Fathers are "entirely free from ambiguity;" such an imagination never flitted across my brain.

From the inherent imperfection of all languages, I know full well, that a determined quibbler can drive a coach and six (as the phrase runs) through any testimony, whether biblical or patristic; whereof we have a splendid specimen in Mr. Newman's criticism, which determines, that, when the Roman Clement pronounces that We ARE NOT justified even by works, which we have done in holiness of heart, he really means that We ARE justified by works thus performed: but, unless we choose to introduce an universal scepticism, I see not, why the necessary imperfection of language should preclude us from adducing the testimony of Antiquity, as any plain man would understand it, to be our umpire touching the disputed sense of Doctrinal Scripture.

II. In the second place, I really cannot follow you, in the case which you would make out for Mr. M'Neile's interpretation of Scriptural Election rather than for mine.

Every person who reads the Bible, must hold the Doctrine of Election.

Here, I suppose, there is no dispute.

But then the question is immediately raised: How are we to understand the Scriptural Doctrine of Election?

Now here comes in what I am constrained to call your paralogism.

The case, when correctly given, stands thus:

Mr. M'Neile, as an honest man, reads the Scripture and he feels sure, that it teaches Election in his view of the Doctrine.

I, on the contrary, with equal honesty of purpose (I trust), read the Scripture, not running away with single texts, but comparing passages with passages: and I feel morally certain, quite independently of the evidence of Antiquity, that it teaches Election in view of the Doctrine.

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For myself, I claim no infallibility: but then neither do I allow it to Mr. M'Neile. Yet the whole of your argument, if I rightly understand it, works on the ground; that, touching this particular point, there is no ambiguity in Scripture; and, THEREFORE, that Mr. M'Neile's interpretation must be right, and that my interpretation must be wrong.

This strikes me, as a logical non sequitur: for just according to the prepossessions of him who employs the argument, it will indifferently prove either Mr. M'Neile or myself to be in the right. You, as a Calvinist, very naturally say, that Mr. M'Neile has confuted me by the mere cogency of his reasoning from Scripture. An Anti-Calvinist, on the other hand, I make no doubt would say,.

that Mr. M'Neile had totally failed in his attempted confutation from Scripture: and he would add, what I know to have been repeatedly the ease, that, by calling in the evidence of Antiquity upon this long-disputed question, I have completely settled the true sense of Scriptural Election.

Thus again we come to a stand-still. You assign the victory to Mr. M'Neile others assign it to me. Neither of the parties, I suspect, is quite an impartial judge: but, at all events, I cannot perceive, how your argument demonstrates Mr. M'Neile's interpretation to be the true one.

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So far as evidence is concerned, I have read Clement and Ignatius and Hermas, just as duly as Mr. M'Neile has done and I fully allow, as indeed I state in my Work on Election, that they all mention Election, if we can be satisfied with a mention of it. But, unless they specify their view of it to be that of Mr. M'Neile, I see not what he gains by the adduction. According to the extent of my own knowledge, the first, who entered upon the subject, in what is now called the Calvinistic sense, was Augustine: and, most indisputably, he propounds Mr. M'Neile's view of the Doctrine. But forthwith arises a difficulty, which I should be glad to see either you or that gentleman fairly grapple with. The difficulty is this:

Augustine gives an explanation of the Scriptural Doctrine of Election and, immediately, a respectable body of his contemporaries, without any recorded tradition on the part of the Church Catholic, while they compliment him for his labours against Pelagianism, express their regret, that, to serve a turn in controversy, he should have introduced a novel interpretation of Scriptural Election which had never before been heard of.

Now, here, I submit, there is no patristie ambiguity, respecting which we have been told so much. When those good men said, that Augustine's interpretation had never been heard of before: they could not, unless Mr. Newman's plan of expounding language by the rule of contrary be adopted, have really meant to say, that the interpretation was quite familiar to them, inasmuch as it was the accredited interpretation of the Universal Church from the apostolic age downward. On the contrary, if language has any definite meaning, the uncontradicted assertion before us is distinct and positive and it could by no possibility have been made, if Augustine's interpretation had been notoriously the universal and familiar and unvarying interpretation received and delivered by the whole Church and if Clement and Ignatius and Hermas, when they use the scriptural word election, had always been understood to use it in the sense which Mr. M'Neile somewhat gratuitously

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