The Calvinistic Clergy, therefore, in the reign of Elizabeth, as also in those of her two immediate successors, regarded a conformity to the Liturgy as implying only the reading it from the desk, whether they believed in its doctrines or not. But no Clergyman of the present age can take refuge in such explanations. By the Act of Uniformity, which passed on the Restoration, it is required that all Clergymen, within two months after their admission to a Benefice, shall make the following declaration, openly in the church, in the presence of the congregation to which they are appointed. I do here declare my unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained, and prescribed, in and by the book intituled the Book of Common Prayer.' Now, my Lords, when a Clergyman declares his unfeigned assent to all and every thing contained in the Book of Common Prayer, he necessarily declares his unfeigned assent to the doctrines therein contained. It is not true, therefore, that the Thirty-nine Articles are the sole standard of faith for the Clergy of the Established Church. But though the Petitioner has failed in his attempt to exclude the Liturgy from all participation in the standard of national faith, your Lordships cannot fail to remark the principles which are displayed in this allegation. In 1641, when similar principles prevailed with regard to the Liturgy, the House of Lords appointed a Committee of religion, the only instance, I believe, on record. The first resolution of this Committee was, that the five points, as they are called, should be explained in the Calvinistic sense. They then undertook to reform the Liturgy and not long af terwards the Liturgy was abolished. My Lords, I sincerely hope, that our Liturgy will not be abolished again. But of this I am certain, that Petitions to the House of Lords, in which such principles are revived, must prepare the way for it." P. 18.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh allegations refer to the old charge of introducing a new standard or doctrine. The Bishop of Peterborough briefly shews the inaccuracy of the petitioner's language, and the unfounded nature of his accusation. But as this part of the question has been formerly before our readers, we proceed to less beaten ground.

"The eighth Allegation is, That the Royal Declaration asserts no less that

no man shall put his own sense or com. ment to be the meaning of the Article.' "My Lords, I cannot deny that these words, when taken by themselves, appear at least, to militate against interpretation generally. For if no man shall put his own sense upon the Articles, no sense whatever can be put on the Articles. Such an assent to Articles of Religion would indeed be a very unmeaning as sent: it would in fact be an assent to nothing. But if the words, quoted by the Petitioner, are taken in connection with what precedes and follows, the effect is very different. The sentence from which he has extracted a few words, is as follows, And that no man hereafter shall either print or preach, to draw the Article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain and full meaning thereof: and shall not put his own sense, or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense. From this sentence your Lordships will perceive that the Royal Declaration is so far from prohibiting an interpretation of the Articles (which would be a perfect absurdity) that it prescribes even the rules of interpretation. It enjoins that the Articles shall be interpreted in their literal and grammatical sense ;' that they shall not be drawn aside from this sense; and that no man shall put on them any other meaning, than their plain and literal meaning. My Lords, these are rules of interpretation, from which I have never swerved. They are rules, which I have uniformly and zealously maintained, as the Petitioner himself might have known, if he had read his Diocesan's Lectures on Interpretation.

"But in the Answers to my Examination Questions I have met with woeful instances of departure from these rules. I have met with instances, in which the words, both of the Liturgy and of the Articles have been so drawn aside from

"The words at the latter end of the

sentence, but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense,' shew that they are opposed to the words immediately preceding. When it is said, therefore, that no man shall put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article, we must understand the words own sense or comment' with reference to the subjoined restriction. Consequently the words quoted in the 8th Allegation must denote, not that no sense whatever shall be put on the Articles, but that no sense shall be put on them which is inconsistent with their literal and grammatical sense.

Lest this should not be considered

a sufficient answer to the favourite

where a latitude of opinion might be allowed, but on points of doctrine, which are too clearly expressed to admit of doubt, and too important to be regarded as not essential to the Established Church”. And I can solemnly assure your Lordships, that in the few instances, in which my duty has compelled me to reject on account of doctrine, I have never done it for deviations of the former kind, unless accompanied by deviations of the latter kind. And as my conduct in this respect has been grossly misrepresented, I beg permission to add, in answer to the charge of undue severity, that I have spared no pains to recover those, who had departed from the doctrines of the Church. And my endeavours in this respect have been so successful, that the total number of rejections on account of doctrine has, in the course of five years, amounted only to threet." P. 26.

"This may serve as an answer to the charge of undue severity. But I had hardly known what answer to give, when I am charged with want of toleration in the use of these Questions. Toleration is a term, which applies only to dissenters from the Established Church. It is quite inapplicable to those who profess conformity to the thirty-nine Articles, which were published for avoiding diversities of opinions.' Though we can understand therefore what is meant by the toleration of dissenters, when they have perfect liberty

to preach their own doctrines in their own places of worship, we involve ourselves in a contradiction, when we speak about the toleration of dissent on the part of those, who are bound by Articles, for the establishing of consent touching true religion.' But if the toleration, which the Examination Questions are supposed to infringe, denotes the privilege of preaching dissent from the doctrines of the Church, as well in our own pulpits, as in licensed meeting-houses, it is a species of toleration which would shortly end in the destruction

tenth allegation (the ninth being mere repetition and tautology) affords his lordship an opportunity of saying a few words respecting Laud, which must have astonished his deeply learned ecclesiastical opponents.

"The tenth Allegation, still in reference to my Examination Questions, is, That no similar attempt has ever been made since the time of Archbishop Laud, when it produced the most serious consequences, alike affecting both Church and State.'

"My Lords, I cannot deny, that the Prelate to whom the Petitioner alludes, did make a similar attempt.' The Royal Declaration, prefixed to the Articles, was prefixed at the suggestion of Laud, when Bishop of London. And that Declaration has the same object with my Examination Questions, namely, literal and grammatical interpretation. The Declaration also gave as much offence to the Calvinists of that age, as my Examination Questions in the present age. The former prepared an Address to the King against the Declaration; and it seems a similar Address is now Questions. Nor is it improbable that in contemplation against the Examination the fate which attended Archbishop Laud, would befall the Bishop of Peterborough, ascendancy in the Church. Be this, howif the same party should again obtain the ever as it may, I shall not be deterred from the performance of what I believe in my conscience to be my bounden duty." P. 32.

The plan which Lord Dacre condescended to father was thus completely done He had been perup. suaded to move for an address to the throne to enforce the royal declaration of Charles I.-rather a strange proposition to be made by

of the Church. The foundation indeed might thereby be widened: but it would be widened with materials, which would soon let down the whole superstructure."

"Though the motion for an Address was changed into a motion for a Committee, there is a parallel also to this motion, in the Committee of Religion appointed in 1641. See the Remarks on the fourth Allegation."

圈

1

vour. From assurances, which I still pos sess, I know that they were approved by learned and orthodox divines: and if that approbation has been lately checked, it is the infirmity of human nature, which recoils at the approach of danger." P. 36. Such is the Bishop of Peterborough's triumphant "defence, and we are heartily glad that it has been published, because we consider the attacks upon his Lordship as parts of a system for governing by menace and intimidation.

Whenever a clergyman opposes or displeases certain parties, they threaten him with Mr. Wilkes and a prosecution, or Lords Dacre, Holland, King, &c. and a Petition to Parliament. The effect thus

produced is greater than it ought to be. But in the case before us the Bishop of Peterborough has done justice to himself and his cause-and at the same time has afforded that degree of explanation which was desired, and is deemed satisfactory by real churchmen.-One instance we have already noticed- —a second is contained in the following passage, which is added to the work as a note, and which acquaints us with all the alteration which has been produced by the incessant, and virulent invectives of his Lordship's opponents.

“My original object in sending the Examination Questions to Candidates for

Orders, before they appeared personally in the Ember week, has been greatly misunderstood: and that which was intended as an act of kindness, has been represented as an act of harshness. I sent the Questions, that the Candidate might have time to consider them, and answer them at his leisure; that if his answers were found to be at variance with the doctrines of the Established Church, I might have an op*portunity of writing to him, and explaining in what respect he deviated from the doctrines of the Church; and lastly, that if he persevered in doctrines which were irreconcileable with the Liturgy and Articles, he might be refused without undergoing the public disgrace of a rejection in the Ember Week. But my conduct in this respect has been so misunderstood, and the openness with which I have acted has by many persons been so abused, that REMEMBRANCER, No. 45.

I have been compelled to relinquish it.At my last Ordination the Examination Questions were answered at Peterborough: and so they will be in future." P. 12.

A Sermon preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary Le Bow, on Friday, Feb. 15, 1822. By the Right Rev. William, Lord Bishop of Llandaff. IT is impossible to do justice to this discourse by a mere analysis of its contents, or by selecting one or two of its principal paragraphs. The whole is so well conceived, and ably executed, that those who have a due sense of the importance of Christian Missions, and are desirthe Church, should lose no time in ous of seeing them conducted by making themselves acquainted with this excellent Anniversary Sermon.

His Lordship commences by shewing that St. Paul's conduct and language both to Jew and Gentile was suited to the peculiar circumstances of each. With respect to the Jews, he indulged them in their regard for the Mosaic law, and endeavoured to convince them out of the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. To the Gentiles, while he treated them in a different manner, he spoke different languages.

"It is evident that such reasoning as this would have been altogether misplaced in preaching to the Gentiles. To impress them with any reverence for the Jewish Scriptures, an entirely different process would be necessary; and to give them any adequate conceptions of the nature and design of Christianity, or of its Divine pretensions, not only much preparatory instruction would be requisite, but au almost total change in their religious views and sentiments. How, then, did St. Paul conduct himself in this most arduous part of his office?

"When the ignorant multitude at Lystra, astonished at the miracle wrought by Paul and Barnabas, would have done sacrifice to them as Gods, what arguments do the Apostles use to dissuade them from 4 B

such wretched impieties? They exhort them to tarn from these vanities to the living God, which made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are there in,' and who had never left himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. These were proofs, from the works of Creation and Providence, level even with the grossest understandings, when set before them in their true and proper light.

"When, again, at Athens, he found himself surrounded by a more enlightened audience, the learned frequenters of the Areopagus, and the teachers of philosophy and morals, he opened his commission in a similar way;—' declaring' that' UNKNOWN Gon,' whom they ignorantly worshipped; setting forth His power as Creator, His spiritual nature, and His providential and moral government of the world; deducing from these, by an obvions and easy inference, the absurdity of that idolatrous worship which even these men of wisdom either embraced or connived at; and then openly asserting that momentous truth which they were wont to ridicule, the Resurrection of the Dead." P. 8.

The Bishop then comments upon the Apostle's writings, and shews in masterly summaries of the principal epistles, that the rule already mentioned is strikingly exemplified in all of them. We extract his Lord. ship's remarks upon the Epistles to the Romans and the Corinthians, and his proof that the same system was always observed in the dissemi

nation of divine truth.

"The great question discussed in the two former of these Epistles, is that which relates to the connection between the Law and the Gospel;-how far they were, either or both of them, necessary to salvation, and compatible with each other. Two opposite parties felt an interest in this question; the Jews, who held that none could be saved but by the law of Moses; the Heathen, who believed the light of nature to be sufficient, without either Moses or Christ. Although the argument, therefore, appears principally to concern the Jews, yet St. Paul, in writing to those who lived among the Heathen, found it necessary to adapt his reasoning to both. He shews, that all had sinned, both Jews and Gentiles; and that neither could the latter be justified by the law of

*Acts xiv. 15-17.

nature, nor the former by the law of Mo ses. On this ground, he establishes the necessity of redemption, of justification, and of sanctification, through some other means; and then brings forward the proofs, that these had been accomplished by Je sus, the Author and Finisher of our faith.* His argument is conducted sometimes with reference to the proud pretensions of Heathen philosophy, or the gross delusions of Heathen superstition; sometimes, with considerations more directly adapted to the Jewish worshipper." P. 11.

"Corinth was the head-quarters of voluptuousness, vice, and false philosophy. In opposition to these, and especially to the last, St. Paul descants upon the insufficiency of human knowledge as a guide to spiritual truth. He contends, that the world by wisdom knew not God ;" and that what the Heathen philosophers deemed weakness and foolishness in those who preached the Gospel, had proved to be wiser and stronger thau their efforts to overthrow it, being supported by the sig. nal power of God *: This is the substance of the earlier part of the Epistle. Towards the latter part, his mode of illustrating the doctrine of a Resurrection of the Dead affords another instance of this appropriate mode of teaching. The objections to sical, partly by moral evidence, as well as the doctrine are refuted, partly by phyby insisting upon the established fact of

our Lord's Resurrection t. To the Jews, there was no need of urging such considerations as these; since all, except the Sadducees, admitted the truth of the doc trine; and the Sadducees our Lord himself but by an appeal to the Books of Moses, had silenced, not by philosophical proofs, which they professed to believe." P. 14.

"The rule, then, which the Apostle laid down for his own observance, in the words of the text, was strongly exemplified in every part of his conduct. In addressing the Jews, he invariably assumes the first principles of religion in general, and even some of the main doctrines of revealed religion, as already known and admitted on their part. In argining with the Gentiles, he begins with laying down the most simple and obvions maxims of moral and religious truth, and from thence leads on his hearers or his readers to the plainest evidences of the Gospel, and gradually to its sublimest mysteries. Nor was this mode of teaching peculiar to St. Paul. It was characteristic of his fellow-labourers in the same cause it was characteristic of their heavenly Master himself: it was cha+ Ibid. xv.

1 Cor. i. 18-28.
+ Luke xx. 37.