return must own his goodness; all our bones must say, "Lord, who is like unto thee!" for " he keepeth all our bones, not one of them is broken."

When we retire into solitude, to be alone walking in the fields, or alone, reposing ourselves in our closets, still we must be waiting on God-still we must keep up our communion with him, when we are communing with our own hearts. When we are alone we must not be alone, but the Father must be with us, and we with him. We shall find temptations even in solitude, which we have need to guard against. Satan set upon our Saviour when he was alone in the wilderness. But there also we have opportunity-if we know but how to improve it -for that devout, that divine contemplation, which is the best conversation, so that we may never be less alone than when alone. If when we sit alone and keep silence, withdrawn from business and conversation, we have but the art, I should say the heart, to fill up those vacant minutes with pious meditations of God and divine things, we then gather up the fragments of time which remain, that nothing may be lost, and so are we found waiting on God all the day.

The Popery of the Twenty-sixth Article of the Church of England.

Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacrament.

66

"A

LTHOUGH in the visible church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving of the sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ's ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God's gifts diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the sacraments ministered unto them which be effectual, because of Christ's institution and promise, although they be administered by evil men. Nevertheless, it appertaineth to the discipline of the church that enquiry be made of evil ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences; and finally being found guilty, by just judgment be deposed."

Here are two propositions which, if they were now put forth for the first time by any but Papists and Ritualists, would excite astonishment and grief amongst all true Christians. Only imagine certain evangelical bishops, deans, and rectors, that we could name, publishing in a locale of their own these statements of this Article, what an outcry there would be of "Sacramentalism," "Popery," etc., "among the prophets ;" and how would godly churchmen exclaim, "What next?" But the article is three hundred years old, and has been subscribed by a hundred thousand good, bad, and indifferent clergymen of every school, and "what everybody says must be true;" that is, a corporate conscience cannot be wrong, especially when it is the corporate consciences of good men. Need I remark that such a conscience God does not recognise? We shall be judged, not as communities, but as individuals, and, therefore, "we should count money after our fathers," lest a paternal mistake should ruin us.

Let us, then, look at the said article from the standpoint of to-day, and examine it as freely as if it had just issued from the Convocation of 1869.

First. It is affirmed, ex cathedra, "that sometimes evil men have chief authority in the ministration of the Word and Sacraments, and that they minister by Christ's commission and authority.”

Now, it is obvious that by "evil men" here we are to understand, not such veiled hypocrites as Judas, but openly wicked ecclesiastics, drunkards, fornicators, gamblers, and such like; for no oracle would be needed to tell Christians that they may 66 use the ministry" of men who, whatever they may be in reality, to all appearance are good and true.

But is this shocking statement scriptural? Nay, is it not blasphemous ? What! an adulterer, impenitent, and still breaking the seventh commandment; yea, a murderer, preaching, baptising, and administering the bread and wine, "by the commission and authority of Christ!"

According to the canons, the holiest saint in the world, who finds fault with the Prayer Book is excommunicated" ipso facto," without judge or jury-but according to this article the filthiest sinner on earth, who is in "holy orders," though his filthiness be notorious, may continue his ministry, "by the commission and authority of Christ," until he be found guilty in open court, and "be deposed." What is this but to make Christ himself responsible for the scandal of such ministers? and what is this but blasphemy?

Secondly. As a corollary to this proposition, it is declared that Christians "may use the ministry" of these "evil men" both in hearing the Word of God and in receiving the sacrament," of course, if they preach, and administer the ordinances "by the authority of Christ." But what a reductio ad nauseam! A child of God "may" (according to the canons he must) listen to the known hypocritical preaching of a child of the devil, in "holy orders," and receive the Lord's Supper from his visibly filthy hands. This too is fathered on Christ! who "promises" the " grace of God's gifts" to all believers, through "the ministrations of evil men."

If all this is not the very quintessence of Popery, which makes office and rite everything, officer and administrator nothing, then the question, "what is in a name?" has no force, and Popery called Protestantism loses name and character together.

Nay, if all this is not blasphemy, then "Christ and Belial" have "fellowship" in the most sacred offices of religion. Baptismal regeneration and episcopal confirmation are bad, very bad; but the doctrines of this Twenty-sixth Article are incomparably worse.

After this, I need not add one word about evangelical clerical subscription, or evangelical lay sanction.

I'subscribe myself,

Reviews.

A PENITENT EX-SUBSCRIBER.

Cobbett's Legacy to Parsons. Charles Griffin and Co., Stationers' Hall Court. One Shilling and Sixpence.

THE re-issue of this book, by William Cobbett, is quite a sign of the times: it shows the serious questioning which exercises the public mind as to establishments in general, and the English church in particular. In all Cobbett's political sentiments no man can uniformly agree, for he demolishes to-day what he built up yesterday, and only a chameleon mind could keep pace with him; but his style is gigantic, Titanic, tremendous; his language is so simple and Saxon, that no one is ever troubled to know what he means, and yet so forcible that one feels as if each sentence would knock you down. He smites like a huge steam hammer. The clergy, in his hands, are kneaded like dough. The State church is like an egg-shell on an anvil. He is conscious of such an excess of strength that he plays with his victims as a cat with a mouse. What he was himself in religion we do not know: we should imagine that religious enthusiasm never gained admission into his cool, self-reliant mind. He is nothing as a teacher or repairer of breaches, but he is a splendid battering-ram, and that

happens to be an instrument in large request just now. His designs were very remote from ours, and his notions of the benefits bestowed by the old monastic system we smile at; but as to the Anglican establishment, the man is very near the truth, and his hard-hitting is richly deserved. His Legacy to Parsons consists of six letters, dedicated to James Blomfield, Bishop of London, who is very cooly told

"It is now become a question seriously, publicly and practically entertained, whether you and your brethren of the established church should be legally deprived of all your enormous temporal possessions; and also whether your whole order should not, as a thing supported by the law, be put an end to for ever. These questions must now be discussed. They are not to be shuffled off by commissions o enquiry, or any other commissions; the people demand a discussion of these questions, and a decision upon them; the Parliament must discuss them; and this little book, which I now dedicate to you, is written for the purpose of aiding us all in the discussion, so that we may come at last to a just decision."

The first letter answers the question, how came there to be an established church? The importance of the question is stated very plainly: :

"PARSONS,-This question ought to be clearly answered, because on it must turn the great practical question now at issue, namely, has the Parliament the rightful power to assume to take possession of, and to dispose of, the tithes and all other property, commonly called church property, in whatever manner it may think proper? You and your partisans contend that it has not this rightful power; I contend that it has.”

Cobbett, after stating the tenure upon which the church of Rome pretended to hold its position, demands very peremptorily:

1

"But, parsons, has your church any such pretensions? I have a high opinion of that quality in you which is usually denominated "brass;" but do you pretend that this establishment was founded by Jesus Christ and is apostles? Do you pretend to hold. your possessions immediately by a grant from God; and that they are as much yours as my life and my limbs are mine? Why, yes, you are, at this time, very curious to relate, endeavouring to set up a something savouring of these pretensions, and are positively asserting that you hold your possessions, and to the exclusion too of all other Christian. sects, by a right of prescription; that is to say, a right which existed before all' written laws."

After some very plain_talk upon Harry the Eighth, and his deeply pious motives in setting up his Protestant-Popish church, he tells us :

"In the second year of the reign of Edward the Sixth, who was now only eleven years old, who was at once supreme spiritual head of the church, and secular sovereign of the State, this Protestant church and religion were established. The Roman Catholic religion having been abrogated, having been protested against, and declared to be idolatrous and damnable, all men were let loose to choose for themselves, each having the Bible in his hands, One sect had as much right to the churches and the tithes as another sect; but this would never have done for the aristocracy. The remaining tithes, the oblations, the bishops' lands, the college lands--these were too valuable to be suffered to be scrambled for, and though the aristocracy had protested against that church, to which they had belonged, and for the support of which they had been given, still they had no quarrel with the things themselves; they had not protested against the tithes, and the lands, and the oblations; they had only protested against their being in hands other than their own. The Catholic religion was idolatrous and damnable; but they saw nothing either idolatrous or damnable in the lands, the tithes, and the oblations. These, therefore, they resolved to keep; but to keep them they must have another church, and to that church all must yield tithes and oblations, however contrary its creeds might be to the faith which the Scriptures taught them to adopt, or which they had been taught by their fathers from generation to generation. The preamble of the Act of Parliament, first and second Edward the Sixth, tells us that the king, in his great goodness, has appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury (Cranmer) and others to draw and make one meet, order, rite, and fashion of common and open prayer and administration of sacraments, to be had and used in his Majesty's realm of England and Wales, the which at this time, by aid of the Holy Ghost, with one uniform agreement is of them concluded, set forth and delivered to his highness (eleven years of age) to his great comfort and quietness of mind, intituled, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, after the use of the Church of England.' Wherefore, the Lords spiritual and temporal in this present Parliament assembled, considering as well the most godly travail of the king's highness (eleven years of age) of the Lord Protector, and of other his highness's council, in gathering and collecting the said archbishop and learned

men together, as the godly prayers, rites, and ceremonies in the said book mentioned; and the considerations of altering those things which he altered, and retaining those things which he retained in the said book, but also the honour of God and great quietness, which, by the grace of God, shall ensue, do give his highness most hearty and lowly thanks for the same.'

"Bearing in mind this assertion about the aid of the Holy Ghost, in this work, let us now come to the enactments. You, parsons, found the church's prescriptive rights upon the assertion, that there never was any Act of Parliament for taking the benefices away from the Catholics and giving them to Protestants; that the Catholic parish priests were never ousted from their benefices by Act of Parliament; that they became converted in their several parishes, or continued to exercise their functions as before till the day of their death; or that they went away from their benefices without force; so that, as they had unquestionably a prescriptive right to their benefices, the present parsons stand fairly in their shoes, and have a prescriptive right too. Now, then, let us see how this matter stands. The king had put forth a book of homilies and catechism. Priests had been permitted to marry; and an act was soon after passed (2nd and 3rd Edward the Sixth, chapter 21) to allow priests to marry. Every inducement had been offered to withdraw the parish priests from their religion; but still, with very few scandalous exceptions, they remained firm in their faith and their practice, at the time of the passing of this Act. The Act, therefore, provided that if any rector, vicar, perpetual curate, or other priest, with benefice, should in future say mass in the usual manner, and not use the Common Prayer Book, he should forfeit to the king one year's revenue of his benefice, and be imprisoned for six months; that for a second offence he should be deprived of his benefice, and of all his spiritual promotions, and be imprisoned for one whole year; for a third offence, imprisonment during his natural life; that if the priest had no benefice, he should be imprisoned for six months for the first offence; and for the second offence should be imprisoned for his natural life! Thus did this gentle Christian church begin; thus did the angel of charity, humility, and humanity, preside at her birth. But the Act did not stop here, it went on to the laity; and it enacted that if any one should, by interludes, plays, songs, rhymes, or by other open words, declare or speak anything in derogation, depraving, or despising, the said Book of Common Prayer, penalty after penalty were to follow, till at last came the forfeiture of chattels to the king, and imprisonment during the natural life of the party!

"Here we have a faithful account of the BIRTH of this famous church, which simply put it to the priests and the people: Here is this church; take it; or, take pecuniary ruin and imprisonment for life;' and in the face of these undeniable facts, is there any one base enough to say that the Catholic priests were not ousted by force and by Act of Parliament? The Act provides for the depriving of the party of his benefice, and of all spiritual promotion whatever, unless he apostatise from the Catholic religion; and it authorises patrons to appoint Protestant ministers to succeed him, in just the same manner as if he were dead. Will SIR ROBERT PEEL call this a 'a reformed Catholic church,' then? Will he again say, that the Protestant parsons stand in the prescriptive shoes of the Catholic priests?

"But, the reader will say, did this Common Prayer Book always continue in use, after this Act was passed? Oh no! And now we have to see what sort of men those were who made this new church, and to see well what their motives were. For very much depends upon this, when we are estimating the character of this church.

"This church-making king died at the end of about seven years, and was succeeded on the throne by his sister Mary, who was a Catholic; and who, proceeding upon the settled constitution and laws of the country, resolved upon restoring the Catholic religion. The Common Prayer-Book aristocracy, exceedingly alarmed at this prospect; not so much alarmed, however, for the almost certain loss of the Common Prayer Bo k and the new church, as for the possible, and even probable loss of that immense mass of property of the church and the poor, which they had got into their possession, by the means before mentioned, entered into a negotiation with the queen, agreeing to give up their Common Prayer Book and their Protestant religion; agreeing to bring back the Catholic religion into the country, and to punish parsons for not being Catholics, as they had punished them before for not being Protestants; agreeing to confess themselves to have been schismatics; agreeing to receive absolution from the Pope for having rebelled against his authority; agreeing to reinstate him in all his power in England, which they before designated as abominable usurpations; agreeing, above all things, to abrogate as schismatical that very Common Prayer Book which they had before declared in the preamble to an Act of Parliament, to have been composed by the aid of the Holy Ghost,' and which was, they said, made to the honour of God;' agreeing to all this, if the queen would obtain the consent of the Pope, and give her own consent, to suffer them to keep the immense masses of property in land and in tithes, which, during the two preceding reigns, they had grasped from the church and the poor! This is something so monstrous, that I would venture to state it upon no authority short of that of an Act of Parliament; and yet it is by no means the worst that we have to behold on the part of these men who called themselves noblemen and gentlemen, and whose descendants coolly assume the same appellations!"

"But the second Act (1st ELIZABETH, chapter 2) brought back the Prayer Book again. The horrible men, whose conduct we have been reviewing, had condemned their Prayer Book as schismatical; had abolished it by their Acts; and had reinstated Catholic priests in the churches. They now, in the Act of which I am speaking, ousted them again; reenacted the Common Prayer Book; and inflicted penalties upon the priests who should refuse to apostatise by becoming Protestants and using this book in their churches. For the first offence, such priest was to forfeit a year's revenue of his benefice, and be imprisoned for six months. For a second offence he was to lose all his ecclesiastical preferments and possessions, and was, besides, to be imprisoned during the remainder of his life. If he were a priest without a benefice, he was to be imprisoned, for the first offence, during a whole year; for the second offence imprisoned during his whole life. For speaking in derogation of the Prayer Book; or to ridicule the new religion, by songs, plays, jests, of any sort, the offender was to forfeit a hundred marks for the first offence; four hundred marks for the second offence (equal to two thousand pounds of the money of this day); and for the third offence, to forfeit to the Queen all his goods and chattels, and be imprisoned for life. Every person was compelled on Sundays and holydays, to attend at the church, to hear this common prayer, under various pecuniary penalties, and in failure of paying the penalties, to be imprisoned. Bishops, Archdeacons, and other ordinaries, were to have power for inflicting these punishments. This Act of confiscation, of ruin, of stripes, of death, was enforced with all the rigour that imagination can conceive. The Queen reigned for forty-five years, and these forty-five years were spent in deeds of such cruelty as the world had never heard of or read of before; and all for the purpose of compelling her people to submit to this established church."

The following sentences we place in capitals, and call the earnest attention of thoughtful men to their assured truth and solemn importance :

"THE MAIN THING, HOWEVER, TO BE KEPT IN VIEW HERE, IS THE FACT, WHICH ALL THESE ACTS OF PARLIAMENT SO FULLY CONFIRM, THAT THIS CHURCH WAS CREATED BY ACTS OF PARLIAMENT: THAT IT HAS NO EXISTENCE AS A CHURCH, THAT IT HAS NO RITE, NO CEREMONY, NO CREED, NO ARTICLE OF FAITH, WHICH HAS NOT SPRUNG OUT OF AN ACT OF THE PARLIAMENT; AND THAT THERE IS NOTHING OF PRESCRIPTION BELONGING TO IT, FROM ITS FIRST BEING NAMED AMONGST MEN, UNTIL THE PRESENT HOUR."

"How came there to be people called Dissenters?" is responded to in letter II. and then in letter III. the question is discussed, " What is the foundation of the domination of the church over the Dissenters?"

Many of the remarks upon this head have now happily lost their force by reason of relief granted by our legislature; but the greatest of all grievances still remains, and is well put in true Cobbett style:—

"All these exclusions, however, great as the injuriousness of them is, unjust as they are towards the great body of the people, and degrading as they are in their tendency, are, all put together, a mere trifle, compared with the compulsion upon the Dissenters to give the fruits of their estates and the fruits of their earnings, for the purpose of supporting the established clergy and church. Is there anything that can be conceived more hostile to natural justice, than for men to be compelled to take away from the means of supporting their families a considerable part of the fruit of their labour, and to give it to men for preaching a doctrine in which they do not believe, and for performing a service in which their consciences forbid them to join? If there be anything more hostile to natural justice than this, I should like to have it pointed out to me. To be sure they are no longer compelled, on pain of banishment, or death, to go into the churches and call God to witness that they reverence that which they abhor; but they are compelled to give their money or their goods in support of it; and this indeed was all that the banishment and the hanging were intended to insure. If the church-makers of Edward and Elizabeth could have obtained security for getting money of the Dissenters, as quietly as it is now got, they would never have had any Acts of Parliament to compel them to go to church; they would have been as liberal' as our present parsons now are; the flocks might have roamed where they had liked, as they do now, the shepherds having taken care to secure the fleece."

Allowing for the fact that this trenchant treatise appeared more than thirty years ago, and is therefore in many of its expressions, a little out of date, we still think it very seasonable, and believe that a liberal distribution of it would do much to aid the progress of public sentiment towards perfect and universal religious equality. The Anglican State Establishment is a standing insult to Dissenters, its forced support is downright oppression, its ascendancy is glaring injustice, its very existence is a crime. Delenda est Carthago.