But some have lately become ashamed of the term Protestant, as if it were a negation only, commissioned to destroy, and not at all to build. As members of the Protestant Church of England, we can permit no such merely negative meaning to a word which has passed into ecclesiastical formularies, parliamentary acts and documents, royal declarations, and coronation oaths. That it is destructive only, is refuted by these facts-involving greater ones-that it has a Church and State, nay, Churches and States, of its own; it has therefore tended to edification, nay, it has edified; it is accordingly an affirmative existence, and negates nothing but the corruptions and abuses of a preceding order, that had fallen into decay and refused to be repaired. Moreover, it has long ceased to oppose the Church of Rome, it now seeks only to supersede her; on the other hand, Rome, by resisting reform, became Protestant, in the negative sense of the term, which she has still continued to be, having no abuses and corruptions in the Church of the Reformation to denounce, or which she has cared to denounce, or, in fact, been able to denounce, knowing how easily she might be recriminated upon. Consequently, the Protestant attitude is maintained by Rome, at the expense of her own catholicity; but by the Anglican Church, to the gain and increase of her's. On this and other accounts, she is entitled to take her place as a co-ordinate and independent institution. It is for these reasons that the present writer is inclined to object most strenuously to the Church of England being considered as a mere via media-between the papacy at the one extreme, and ultra protestantism at the other. This is at best to degrade the Church of England from a high catholic, to a mere syncretic condition, not at all desirable, and even prejudicial. There are proofs enough, in the following Life, that the two extremes, of which the Church of England is supposed to be the mean, exist, and have always existed, in the Church of Rome herself-Apostolicism on the one hand, and even Atheism on the other. Similar opposites are found in the Church of the Reformation at large, together with every shade of opinion between high-church Episcopacy and Socinian dissent; and the Church of England confessedly includes every variety of faith, from Newmanism to Calvinism. We thus see two or more complete orbs forming part, it may be, of the same general system, but each distinguished from the other, and maintaining its separate integrity, having its own revolutions and distinct sphere of existence. The true via media, therefore, is not to be sought in any one entire Church, as the centre between that and other Churches, but in each Church, as the point of agreement, where all her members meet in conformity. There is a large moderate party in the Anglican Church connecting the two extremes, which, in fact, represents her true spirit and tendency as an institution, the tenets of which are abstracted, not only from her Articles (subject, as these prove to be, to every variety of interpretation), her formularies, and the authoritative interpretations of her bishops and clergy, but also from the Holy Scriptures them-selves, and the comments of men of letters in general; to which should be added, the influence of moral essayists, critics, historians, philosophers, and poets, all whose works have great authority with the educated mind, and modify even its religious convictions. Every work designed for the perusal of this large class of Christians must imply every one of these data among the principles of its construction, without which it will equally fail to accomplish the demands of intelligence and the ends of charity. CONTENTS. The Church disunited-Nicholas V.-Superstitious prac- tices-Family and birth of Savonarola-Tutored by his grandfather Michele-Physiology and psychology- Mysticism embodied in Italian life and art-Calixtus III.-Pius III.-Canonization of Catherine of Sienna Savonarola taught after ten years of age by his Father -By professional teachers-His rapid progress-Ac- PAGE Savonarola studies Thomas Aquinas-Primitive teach- ing of the Apostles-Savonarola's dissatisfaction with the world, and his determination to be a monk--The Dominican Order-The rationalè of monastic institu- Savonarola's poetic studies-His religious enthusiasm— Difference between his and his father's dispositions- State of the world and the Church-Specimen of Savon- arola's lyric poetry-Festival of St. George at Ferrara Savonarola in the monastery employed in teaching the scholastic philosophy-Studies Jerome, Augustine, and Cassian-Hesitates to accept priest's orders-His pro- |