self of abuses, which in length of time had crept in, she protested against the Church of Rome which continued them; and she became Protestant further, by denying the usurped jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome over her. Should however the Roman Church reform herself, and the Bishop of Rome cease his unfounded pretensions to supremacy over the Christian Church, the Church of England would then, as far as Rome is concerned in her Protestantism, cease to be Protestant.

But since the time of her protest against the sister Church of Rome, she has had occasion to protest against societies of Christians who have apostatized from the Faith and fallen away from their allegiance to the Catholic Church; and, in respect to them she is also accidentally Protestant; for on their conversion to the Faith, and restoration to the privileges of Church-membership, she would also, in another way, cease to be Protestant.

And this consideration naturally brings us to the second part of our proof, namely,

that the teaching of essentially Protestant Christian Societies is irreconcileably opposed to the teaching of the Church of England, and so to that of the whole Catholic Church. And in making good this allegation, extracts from the formularies and liturgy of the Church of England will be placed side by side with extracts from the confession of faith, and other formularies of the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland. The Kirk has been selected as the object of contrast with the Church of England, for several reasons; as, its' being for the most part identical in doctrine and discipline, with the leading foreign Protestant Societies of which it is an offshoot, its' taking higher ground than any other essentially Protestant Society in the British dominions, its' being the original antagonist of the English Church, and its' being now put forward prominently as a society with which the English Church should make common cause. That it takes higher ground than other British Protestant Societies, will amply appear in the quotations following;

so that in making out our case against it, we make, by implication, our case against all Protestant Dissenters.

A few extracts will also be given from an elegantly written pamphlet, lately published under the title of "An Apology for the Church of Scotland," by Mr. Cumming of the Scottish Kirk in London; for the purpose of showing the sentiments of Presbytery towards Independent congregational dissent. And it will be seen from them that, although, as external to the Catholic Church, Presbytery and Independency form to the eye of the Faithful one body, yet the jealousy of the one sect against the other is not very different from their common jealousy against the Church. But it would be improper to mention this pamphlet without bearing testimony to the hearty earnestness with which its author pleads, to a point beyond what could have been hoped from a Presbyterian, against sectaries and for Catholic discipline. Persons avowedly belonging to the Church of England, and holding Catholicity of

spirit, to be a belief in the truth, at one time, of several religious opinions directly contradictory of each other, may find from Mr. Cumming's statements that even Presbytery refuses to sanction such a theory'.

1

"It is therefore my deliberate persuasion, that without an episcopate, or ecclesiastical control, extending over ministers and people, there is wanting one of the first external developements of that unity existing in the Church of Christ, as well as of that great presiding power which is recognized in the institutions of man, in the workmanship of God, and clearly implied in the sacred canon. Isolated inde

pendent communities are a miserable mimicry of the Catholic Church. They are fragments of it, indeed; but, like all fragments, severed from the great body to which they naturally belong; and moved away from the regulating and adjusting laws under which they ought to move, they are placed in the utmost peril. They are in their very constitutions, violations of the analogies of nature, and anomalies in the spiritual world." Mr. Cumming, pp. 17, 18.

"The man that conceives, justly or unjustly, that he has a call from God to enter on the ministry, has only to bring together a few as wild and well-meaning as himself, and, in a twinkling, be registered as the Rev. Mr. Such-a-one, Minister of the Church assembling in such a chapel."-Ibid. p. 26.

There are, however, many passages in Mr. Cumming's pamphlet which no sincere churchman can countenance and of these one shall now be shortly noticed. There is also an expression towards which we feel very differently, which shall be mentioned by itself.

First, Mr. Cumming calls the Church of England and the Kirk, "Sister Churches." If truth, if the foundation of all Christian Communion, were not at stake, happy would the Church of England be to call the Kirk a sister Church, forgetting all the injuries and violence which she has sustained from Presbytery. But we must, with all personal kindness and consideration, remind Mr. Cumming and his respectable brethren, that the Church of England, like all other Catholic Churches holds the Divine order of the Episcopate to be marked out in Holy Scripture, and

"I do believe that without an episcopacy no one national branch of the Catholic Church can exist, and no one congregation can put out a claim to be any more than an assembly of Christians."—Ibid. p. 12.