cathedral church of so far as they concern me. So help me GoD and these Holy Gospels." The form of enthronization is the following: “I, Dean of by the authority committed to me by virtue of this instrument [holding forth the mandate], do induct, install, and inthrone effectually, and in full episcopal right, you, the Right Reverend Father in God, by Divine permission, Lord Bishop of elected and confirmed into the real, actual, and corporal possession of the Bishop of and cathedral church of —, with all and singular its rights, dignities, honours, privileges, members, and appurtenances whatsoever, and do assign this episcopal seat or stall in this quire, usually and of old assigned and appointed to the Bishop of, for the time being, to you, and do place you [here the bishop ascends the stall or throne assigned to the bishop] thereon, according to the custom of this cathedral church, and do give you all and all manner of possession, authority, and jurisdiction which to the Bishop of do usually belong, in the Name of the FATHER, and of the Son, and of the HOLY GHOST." The form at Chichester was: "Pater noster. "Salvum fac servum Tuum, Domine, episcopum nostrum. "Mitte ei auxilium de Sancto. "Et de Syon tuere eum. "Domine, exaudi orationem meam. "Et clamor meus ad Te veniat. "Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. "Oremus. Concede, quæsumus, Domine huic famulo Tuo, episcopo nostro, ut prædicando et exercendo quæ recta sunt, exemplum bonorum operum animos suorum instruat subditorum, et æternæ remunerationis mercedem a Te, piissimo Pastore, percipiat, per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen." (Ordo Cicestr. Book E, p. 14.) His oath ran thus: "In Dei nomine. Amen. Nos, permissione Divinâ Cicestr. Episcopus, juramus quòd jura, statuta, libertates et privilegia, antiquas etiam approbatas et assuetas consuetudines istius ecclesiæ nostræ Cicestr. observabimus, quòdque possessiones ejusdem ecclesiæ congregatas conservabimus, dispersasque et injuste alienatas pro posse nostro congregabimus, Sicut nos Deus adjuvet et hæc sancta Dei Evangelia. Amen." (Reg. Storey, fo. ii.) ETERNITY OF PUNISHMENT. 1. The National Church. By HENRY BRISTOW WILSON, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton. (In "Essays and Reviews.") 2. A Pastoral Letter addressed to the Clergy and Laity of his Province. By CHARLES THOMAS, Archbishop of CANTERBURY. London: Rivingtons. 3. A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy and Laity of the Province of York. By WILLIAM, Lord Archbishop of YORK. London: Murray. 1864. 4. A Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, on that portion of his recent Pastoral Letter which affirms "the everlasting suffering of the lost." By the Rev. H. H. DOBNEY. Maid stone. 1864. 5. A Letter to the Right Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of London, in reference to the Controversy on the future state of Sinners. By FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A. Macmillan & Co. 1864. THE various opinions which have been held concerning the punishment of the wicked may be conveniently summed up under four heads: 1. The belief of the Christian Church in all ages, that at the day of final judgment a separation shall be made between the righteous and the incorrigibly wicked, the former entering on the uninterrupted enjoyment of eternal life, the other doomed to endless misery, not by any decree of God's will, but by the selfdetermination of their own wills to evil. 2. The Universalist theory held by Origen, and (in a less intelligible form) by Mr. Maurice,-that every created being, without exception, shall eventually be saved, and evil shall be, not "subdued," as Holy Scripture says, but rooted out and banished from the universe. GOD will strive with evil till He has saved all who suffer in and from it, and make it cease to be. 3. That at the Last Day the wicked shall be annihilated. 4. Mr. Wilson's novel and peculiar theory,-that at the Judgment Day mankind shall be separated into three classes—the good, the reprobate, and, intermediate between these, "germinal souls,' whose development will go on in some future state, and who will at last "find a refuge in the bosom of the Universal Parent." Let us examine these theories, beginning with the last, as the one which has been the irritamentum malorum of recent controversy. All that Mr. Wilson has written on the subject will be found on the last page of his Essay, and is, in fact, contained in the following extract: "The Roman Church has imagined a limbus infantium; we must rather entertain a hope that there shall be found, after the great adjudication, receptacles suitable for those who will be infants, not as to years of terrestrial life, but as to spiritual development-nurseries as it were and seed-ground, where the undeveloped may grow up under new conditions-the stunted may become strong, and the perverted be restored. And when the Christian Church in all its branches shall have fulfilled its sublunary office, and its Founder shall have surrendered His kingdom to the Great FATHER; all, both small and great, shall find a refuge in the bosom of the Universal Parent, to repose, or be quickened into higher life in the ages to come according to His Will."1 This, no doubt, is very vaguely expressed, and might be quoted as committing Mr. Wilson to a belief in the ultimate salvation of the whole human race. But the Archbishop of York has reminded us2 of an important fact, which we believe escaped the notice of most persons until the publication of his Grace's Pastoral Letternamely, that Mr. Wilson in his defence, explained that his words had been pressed beyond his meaning; that, in his mind, the "all," of which he predicated salvation was restricted to the "germinal souls," who died with characters "undeveloped," and was not meant to embrace the utterly reprobate. So that what Mr. Wilson really holds is simply a shadowy hope in the existence of a purgatory prolonged indefinitely beyond the general Judgment. And to this purgatory he consigns those "neutral characters," "without praise or blame," existing rather than "living," whom Dante found immured hopelessly and endlessly in the first circle of Hell. We share the Bishop of London's satisfaction, that "such a hope," fanciful and wild as it is, "is settled not to be actually punishable by the laws of our Church;" and if the facts of the case had been generally known, we believe that this part of the Privy Council Judgment would have caused no alarm whatever. The alarm was really caused by the Lord Chancellor's reasoning, which besides being exceedingly flimsy in itself, was also faulty in this respect, that it covered more ground than Mr. Wilson contended for, and, in fact, placed the question on a false issue. The real question before the Court was, whether a clergyman might with impunity hope that some "undeveloped" "germinal souls" might even after the resurrection find a refuge in the bosom of the Universal Parent, whatever that may mean. But Lord Westbury argued for the eventual salvation of the whole human race. now known, however, that Lord Westbury's reasoning formed no part of the Judgment of the Court. His opinions on the subject will therefore carry with them that amount of weight which his character and theological learning will lend to them; but they are simply his lordship's private opinions, and the Church of England 1 Essays and Reviews, p. 206. 2 Pastoral Letter, pp. 18, 19. It is is happily no more committed to them than she is to the opinions of Confucius or Zoroaster. To our mind the most serious part of Mr. Wilson's Essay is his opinion,1 expressed with studied ambiguity, that mankind is descended from "distinct centres of creation," and not from " a single pair." This, of course, implies the denial of original sin, and therefore of the Incarnation and Redemption,-in other words, it is a denial of Christianity. We are free to confess that Mr. Wilson's Essay, as a whole, as well as his "Introduction" to some crude speculations on Inspiration by an anonymous layman, leave on our mind the impression of a man whose Christianity sits very loosely upon him. But though this is the impression which Mr. Wilson's Essay must make on the mind of any impartial reader, and though there can be no doubt that he rejects as mere "legends" some of the fundamental verities of the Christian faith; it is almost, if not quite, impossible to pin him down to any specific statement; so ambidextrous is the style, so Protean the language, in which his ideas are clothed. It may be a subject of regret that any English clergyman should be deficient in that good English quality of saying out in a straightforward manly way what he really means; but to us it would be a subject of far deeper regret if a clergyman were condemned on mere moral evidence, however strong and convincing,-any evidence, that is, which failed to convict him of having clearly infringed the letter, no less than the spirit, of his engagements. It is better that a few crafty transgressors should now and then escape punishment, than that a precedent should be established, under cover of which the innocent might be made to suffer injustice. The theory which maintains the annihilation of the wicked has lately been stated temperately and with some ability, in a Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, by the Rev. H. H. Dobney, whom we take to be a minister of some form of Dissent. "It is quite conceivable," in Mr. Dobney's opinion, "that the creature may so choose and cling to evil, may become so incorporated and identified with it, and it may come to be so thoroughly both the warp and woof of his inmost self, (for our real love is our real life, we are, in other words, according to our real likings,) as that, so far as we can see, there could be no destruction of the evil without destruction of the creature." We thoroughly agree with Mr. Dobney in this statement, and we believe that Mr. Maurice's habitual blindness to the mysterious law of human character here indicated, lies at the root of what we are very sorry to be obliged to call his mischievous speculations on this subject; of which more by-and-by. But while we accept Mr. 1 Essays and Reviews, p. 201. Dobney's premisses, we entirely dissent from his conclusion. We believe with the heathen moralist,' that habitual self-indulgence will result in a character so steeled into wickedness, as to preclude all hope of amendment,-a character which has so absorbed sin into its very substance, that the substance itself has become wholly and irretrievably evil. We believe that a will thus ripened in sin may be broken, but cannot be bent; we believe that a human being thus transubstantiated into evil may be destroyed, but cannot be saved. So far we go with Mr. Dobney; but we think that he has utterly failed to show, either on antecedent grounds, or from the teaching of Revelation, that because a man may become axóλaσtos in wickedness, he must of necessity be annihilated. Mr. Dobney makes light of the argument for the immortality of the soul, derived from the universal voice of human nature. We agree with him that "it is impossible logically to prove the immortality of man ;" but then it is equally "impossible logically to prove" the existence of a GOD. Is, therefore, the consensus of mankind in favour of the first article of the Creed of no account? All nations hold the major premiss, that there is a GOD, to whom worship is due, though they may disagree as to the minor; and surely as regards both the immortality of the soul and the existence of GOD, vox populi is vox Dei, either speaking to the collective heart of humanity intuitively, or as the echo of a revelation made in Eden, and thence floating onwards with the nations, in song and proverb, in myth and sacrifice, here faintly, there more audibly, according as the natural law of conscience was obeyed or slighted. We prefer the ô yàp Tãσi doxe doctrine of Aristotle2 translated into the grander language of Hooker,3 to the cold logic of Mr. Dobney. At the same time we are quite willing to follow Mr. Dobney in his appeal to the "Law and the Testimony." Whether he holds that the devil and his angels equally with wicked men shall be annihilated, he does not tell us ; but he must clearly understand, in limine, that he is bound 1 Arist. Eth. II. ii. 7; III. x. 2 Eth. X. ii. 4. 3 Bk. I. viii. 3. The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of GOD Himself. For that which all men have at all times learned Nature herself must needs have taught; and GoD being the Author of Nature, her voice is but His instrument. By her from Him we receive whatsoever in such sort we learn. 4 Except by implication, as in the following passage: "He is the FATHER of our spirits,' and there is not one of His intelligent creatures in any world, who is forbidden at any moment to lift up to Him the eye of faith and hope. The parable of the prodigal son is of universal application; for the fatherhood of God, which is a relation, reposes on the fatherliness of GOD, which is a quality or affection.” The words which we have italicised must certainly include the devil and his angels, and the reasoning of the whole passage is founded on a fallacy. Of what avail is it that GOD does not "forbid" those that awake, like Dives, on the wrong side of the impassable gulf, to lift up to Him the eye of faith and hope, if their rebellious wills are evermore impotent for good? It is but small comfort to a man to tell him that he is "not forbidden at any moment to lift up his eyes," after he has made himself stone-blind. The rich man was not “forbidden” “to lift up the eye of (so called) faith and hope," but what did it avail? Mr. Dobney's remark about "fatherhood and fatherliness" is nonsense. Outside of Revelation we know nothing of |