essential to their triumph over their evangelical rivals, as well as their dissenting opponents; while the Evangelicals were equally convinced that their whole strength against Dissenters lay in their High-Church principles - which the spirit of the times required them to advance to the utmost pitch of extravagance. Against the Erastianism of the Church of England, the Tractarians and the Dissenters, from different points, and with their hostility to each other unabated, have directed all their energy,and thus the progress of the former to the Church of Rome has been accelerated ;the Dissenter standing all the while on the immoveable rock of the sole sovereignty of Christ in his Church, and the spirituality of his kingdom, which can never be amalgamated with the priestly hierarchies or civil polities of this world.

If there be among Churchmen or Dissenters those who charitably hope that men, spiritual men, in the official sense of the term, can have no deliberate intentions or purpose to betray into the hands of her worst enemies, the church in which they occupy high stations and retain lucrative preferments, we admire their simplicity and appeal to facts. But we trust their innocence will not carry them so far as to make them self-deceivers and tacit conspirators against the civil and religious liberties of mankind. "Church principles" is only another phrase for "priestly domination." Obedience, absolute obedience, -prostrate, slavish, unintelligent, mechanical obedience to mother Church,-nothing short of this will satisfy the Gresleys, the Pagets, and the Sewells of the Anglican Establishment. But before they can achieve this they must un-Protestantize their Church; and no longer Protestant, why may she not embrace her “Latin sister," or rather her mother, so graphically described in the Apocalypse.* Of

*What is gained by claiming a sisterly relation to the Church of Rome and repudiating her maternity? This is not only undutiful, but impolitic. For, after all, Rome is the most creditable source from whence the Anglican

the Church Principles which prevailed in England, before it was brought under the dominion of Rome, by the mission of Austin, under the pontificate of Gregory, we know absolutely nothing. We have romance, but no authentic history. Even tradition fails us. The present Anglican Church is a schism, or a separation from the Church of Rome,-or it is nothing; and if it cannot stand on the independent principles of its Protestantism, a return to Rome is its only alternative. Infallibility is the only key-stone for an arch of Church Principles,-and where is this to be found except in the Church of Rome?

The union of the two churches is necessary to the consummation of that spiritual despotism which has been so long the aim of both. Of this the Jesuits of the Tractarian movement were aware from the beginning. With more boldness than subtlety they commenced their operations by an open avowal of prejudices and principles in favour of Romanism. These they now find it politic to veil, under the mask of great zeal and devotion, as the members of the Church, whose emoluments they receive, and which they affect to regard as more pure or apostolic than their recently eulogized Latin sister. But all this is mere affectation and pretence; and that to diffuse Romanism through the length and breadth of the land, is as much the object of the Novelists, who are the successors of the Tract writers, as it was of the Wards, the Palmers, and the Newmans,-cannot be doubted by any who are acquainted with their insidious publications. They have changed their tactics, only the more effectually to accomplish their original purpose. What that purpose was, and is, the following extracts more than intimate. Saint Froude, not yet canonized, but in the full odour of sanctity, says: "I am every day becoming a less and

Church can derive her orders and her Church Principles: it is to be preferred to any of the churches of an anterior origin commencing with what the Tractarians call the Nicene Period.

...

less loyal son of the Reformation . . . I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more. . . . That deplorable schism." Again: "I can see no claim which the Prayer-book has on a layman's deference, as the teaching of the Church, which the breviary and missal have not in a far greater degree." Mr. Ward deeply regrets "our Church's present corruption and degradation;"-hears with pain the words "pure and apostolical" applied to her. Mr. Palmer is equally candid: "I utterly reject," he indignantly remarks, "and anathematize the principle of Protestantism as a heresy, with all its sects, forms, and denominations! and if the Church of England should ever unhappily profess herself to be a form of Protestantism (which may God of his infinite mercy forbid !) then would I reject and anathematize the Church of England." From the commencement of the series of the Oxford Tracts, and other publications by the same party, up to the period of their interdiction by the Bishop, and some very significant intimations from the highest ecclesiastical authorities, a volume might be filled with similar quotations, all disparaging the Reformers and the Reformation, and describing the present Church system as an incubus upon the country," and as "the body of death which Hammond, Andrews, and Hooker, bore about in patience, as the penalty of sins, which they inherited from the age before them."

Of the direct Romish tendency of the Tractarian movement, we have irresistible evidence. Mr. Newman has very consistently acted out his principles. It cannot be said of him, that "he recks not his own read." It is true, it was somewhat late in the day, and not till he had familiarized his infatuated pupils of a Protestant communion to a guilty dalliance with forbidden sweets, that he left them on the enchanted ground, not doubting but that they would soon be allured by his example, and enrol themselves with the Neophites of Rome. In his letter to Dr. Jelf, we see him ready to

commence his journey. The dome of St. Peter's glitters in the distance,-he feels its attraction,—having inflicted by Tract XC. a deadly blow on the Church, he wishes to destroy; and that he may witness its fall at a distance, he longs to depart. "The age," he tells us in this letter, "is moving towards something, and most unhappily the one religious communion among us which has of late years been practically in possession of this something is the Church of Rome. She alone, amid all the errors and evils of her practical system, has given free scope to the feelings of awe, mystery, tenderness, reverence, devotedness, and other feelings, which may be especially called Catholic."

The history of the celebrated Tract XC. is not altogether involved in mystery. In his letter to Dr. Jelf, already quoted, the author gives us to understand, that his object in writing it was "to keep members of our Church from straggling in the direction of Rome." To him this could not be matter of regret, nor to those who were associated with him, in a nefarious conspiracy against the Church of England. But the truth is, so many, and some of them men of eminence, were found not only straggling in the direction of Rome, but actually uniting themselves to her communion, that the complacency with which the leaders of this movement were viewed by their superiors, was changed into alarm;—the opiate became an irritant. It was seen, that instead of retaining stragglers, it stood, like a Janus-faced Jesuit, at the door of St. Peter's, inviting their apostacy; saying to each, "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord, why standest thou without?" The real object of this last of the Tracts was, to show that the Thirty-nine Articles might be interpreted so as to make them consistent with the decrees of the Council of Trent,-a Popish Council, be it observed, and not oecumenical and nearly coeval with the Reformation. Besides, like Noah's ark, the Church is made by it a receptacle of beasts, both clean and unclean. As against the Tractarians,

this Tract will remain a monument of disingenuousness and dishonesty worthy of the Order of Jesus; and must, we imagine, have been concocted in the Jesuit College, where Mr. Newman was known to be a frequent visitor. The doctrine that articles may be subscribed in a nonnatural sense, or in any sense the subscribing party may choose to put upon them, is too monstrous, even to be stated, without exciting indignation in every mind not utterly perverted and debased. To what does it amount but to a dishonourable surrender of a Protestant Church into the hands of any enemy, Papist, Jew, Turk, or Infidel, who may possess himself of its emoluments, without renouncing his principles. In this last daring attempt to subvert the foundations of truth and righteousness, the Tractarians were soon taught to feel that they had

overshot their mark. Their diocesan was affrighted from his propriety;-with the smile and the frown strangely alternating on his face, he ventured to forbid their further circulation. But though tracts were prohibited, the press was still open. Cautiously, and feeling their way at every step, advancing timidly, and receding precipitately, yet steadily ad hering to their purpose, they have changed their tactics, and are very unscrupulous in the means they employ, with a view to lull suspicion, and at the same time diffuse their poison. What these tactics are we shall show in our next paper, as they are exhibited in their novels and tales, and other insidious publications, which, since the tracts have been withdrawn, swarm

WHEN We consider the afflictions of Jesus Christ, either in the dignity of the sufferer, or in themselves, or in the redemption which they wrought, nothing appears wanting; and we are satisfied that neither men, nor angels, nor, if we dare say so, God himself, could add aught to them. Neither was anything wanting to the afflictions of Christ as to the end for which they were destined. All that sufferings could work for our redemption, those of Jesus Christ have wrought they are complete in that respect; and to say that ours are necessary, in the same sense, would be more than to diminish the work of Jesus Christit would be to annihilate it. Were there another name under heaven by which, if but in part, we could be saved, and that name were our own, then were we not completely lost; and Jesus Christ would then be our fellow-worker-our helper,

but not our Saviour. Neither the fall, nor the raising up again, can be in part. If we are not stripped of all our glory before God, we still possess all our glory before God. If we have one merit, we have all merit; if we are not completely lost, we are not lost at all; if Jesus Christ is less than a perfect Saviour for us, he is no Saviour; if he leave us something to suffer, he had no need to suffer for to say that our sufferings can do something for our redemption is to say that they can do everything. Man is quite prepared to draw such conclusions as these; and they would be legitimate. You may be sure that, if you allow him to be a sharer in the work, he will not long be satisfied to share in it; if you are willing to give him something, he will take all; and if you take away the least from Jesus Christ, you leave him nothing. The gospel is as positive, ab

solute, and exclusive as it is possible to be. Whatever importance it may attach to our sufferings, it has never attributed to them the virtue of expiating our sins. Jesus Christ, by his sufferings, is the only and the perfect Saviour. That which he came to seek and to save was lost-not in part, but totally. It is with his stripes, and not with our own, that we are healed. He is, alone and without us, the propitiation for our sins, and for the sins of the whole world. But why multiply these declarations? The Scripture is full of them; and if the text should be found to say the contrary, it would contradict a thousand others, not to seek farther than the writings of St. Paul.

How, then, can there be aught "behind of the afflictions of Christ?" It is thus, my brethren: Christ is still here below; Christ is still detained in a mortal body. His glorious resurrection, indeed, has snatched him personally from the power of the grave. His glorious ascension has removed him from the view of earth. All is accomplished, inasmuch as what he has done satisfies for all. But Christ (so to speak) succeeds himself, in the person of the church. The church is a body of which the Head is in heaven. The church militant has inherited the condition of Christ, humbled and suffering. She represents here below her Divine Head, as the Son of man; and will so represent him till the end of the ages. Without doubt, she is only to Jesus Christ what the body is to the head, which communicates the movements, and controls all the actions; but she is not less closely united to Jesus Christ than the head is to the body. She does nothing by herself; but whatever she does on earth she does by him. She continues his work; but by him and for him. She is simply the body-she is not the Head; and while the Head reigns in the peace and glory of heaven, the body remains upon earth, and suffers upon earth that which Jesus Christ would suffer were he still below. For, having the same spirit, and offering to error and sin the same combat, she must needs provoke the

same enemies, encounter the same obstacles, excite the same animosities, suffer the same agony. She must undergo all this, or she is not the Church. As the Head lives, so the body must live; and, living upon the earth, must live a terrestrial life—which is, to suffer. This is that which is wanting, or which remains to suffer, after Jesus Christ has suffered. This is the sign that his work is done upon the earth; this is the burning but glorious seal which the Master stamps upon those that are his. And here we ought to observe that the term which St. Paul used does not simply signify to finish, but also to correspond. It is to continue Jesus Christ-to return to him what she has received from him. Christ is the oblation of the church; and the church is (in a very different sense) the oblation of Christ. Besides, the church is the servant of Jesus Christ; and if she does not suffer it is because she does not act for she cannot act without suffering. And if she does not act, she will not correspond to her Head; she will not serve her Master, who, on his side, will appear to forget or to disown her. In all these respects there wants, and to the end of time there will be wanting, something to the afflictions of Jesus Christ: undoubtedly, not to his personal sufferings, which are complete in every sense; but to those which he has determined (if we may so speak) to endure in the persons of the faithful to the end of the ages. In truth, what we have just said of the church is necessarily applicable to the faithful; that is to say, the faithful are called upon to suffer as the church. How can she suffer but in her members? or how can we conceive of a sorrow in the church of which her true members are not partakers? Christ did not by his sufferings exempt us from suffering, nor by his death exempt us from dying. And if these are needful for us, what comparison is there between the light afflictions of this present time and the eternal weight of glory reserved for us in heaven? No; Christ is not come to deliver us from suffering and death, but rather to

teach us how to suffer and to die. He has done better than to suppress these evils: he has made them useful, useless as they are in themselves. What do I say? Useful! How feeble is that word! He has rendered them so precious, that their preservation, in the case of the faithful, is one of the gifts of God.

This is why the Christian neither suffers nor dies against his will (malgré lui ;) be earnestly desires to do all the will of his Master. Necessity is changed for him into liberty. He knows he must be stripped of all, and come to Jesus "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked;" and he rejoices that God assists him so to strip himself. He knows that he must die; and he anticipates death by dying to himself daily. The suffering and humbled member of Jesus Christ knows that, if one is dead all are then dead-that, to be united to Jesus Christ living he must be united to Jesus Christ dying. He then receives humiliation and suffering as pledges of adoption; and his sense of this adoption is never so lively as when he is afflicted and abased. He understands; he does more—he sees, that in proportion as the blows of adversity spend themselves upon him, the "old man," which must die, dies in him more and more; and he ends by fully comprehending the import of those astonishing words of the apostle, that "he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin." Thus afflictions and death are in his eyes only the natural consequence and the necessary completion of the afflictions and death of Jesus Christ.

The church does not profess to be the ally and accomplice of the passions, but the contrary. There is enmity between her and the vices of the world, and also between her and the virtues of the world. The wise, who are not wise according to her wisdom, hate her as much as the foolish do. Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, the church is ever a stranger in this world; she is continually obliged to fight for, and to conquer, the place she occupies. She lives (if one

dare so speak), not on a secure income, but on the bounty she receives from day to day. She is not established in the world-she is encamped in it. While every man coming into the world belongs to society, she has no citizens but those snatched from the world. By the power of truth, and its harmony with the nature of things, she has imposed upon modern nations many of her maxims, a new civilization, and even her own name. The people who call themselves Christians form in reality one nation, in the face of those who are not such. But this application of Christianity, which the world adopts, is not the fundamental principle, but a secondary idea. The world does not fix in its soil the roots of the tree of which it gladly gathers the fruit. These roots-I mean the truths which are the basis of the church's faith -are repugnant and hateful to the natural man; and so long as this natural man predominates in the world, it is evident that the church must maintain a conflict, dispute for her life, and thus, consequently, suffer as her Head has suffered. This aspect of Christianity may, at first sight, appear very sad, and even appalling; but if you love Jesus Christ you will understand how these sufferings are at the same time a necessity, a blessing, and a glory. Without love you will comprehend nothing of all this; with love, you will understand how one may sacrifice even life for the church,-even as the love of country has perhaps taught you how gladly one may abandon all for the good of the State. You will see all these afflictions converted into joys; because, in proportion as the outward man decays the inward man is renewed. You will find that God still leaves you much happiness in store, and that "godliness hath promise of the life that now is," as well as "of that which is to come." If you love, you will comprehend this, and will say, with St. Paul, when speaking of himself, "Who now rejoice in my sufferings!"

The church needs your sufferings, because she needs your services. She has