sight, a little startled with the reference of Anglicus to Article 32d, lest I should have been guilty of any degree of Image-worship, by "marrying at my own discretion, judging the same to serve better to godliness;" which no one but an Owenite would say was a fond thing vainly invented."

166

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.

SIR,-Will you allow me to correct an inaccuracy into which, through haste and inadvertence, I was betrayed some months ago. You are aware of my decided hostility to certain parts of the Tracts for the Times, but I feel that an act of justice is due from me towards them. I believe it was in the CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER of last July that I quoted the heading of page 29 of the 73d Tract as follows: "The Atonement not a satisfaction to God's justice." It was afterwards pointed out to me that I had made a wrong quotation. I was then in the country, and had not the Tract by me; but, on returning to town, and referring to it, I found the heading of the page thus: "The Atonement not a manifestation of God's justice." Now it is not, Mr. Editor, that I think this sentence much less objectionable than the other, for I believe it is the first time such an opinion has been maintained by any Anglican divine of note since the Reformation, and I still believe that the Atonement was necessary "to declare (or manifest) his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth on Jesus;" and I likewise feel sure that startling assertions such as these, regarding fundamental doctrines, can serve no good purpose, unless it be, as Mr. Froude says, "to set people agog." It is not, therefore, with any view of vindicating the 73d Tract that I write this, but it is to express my concern for my hasty carelessness.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,

PHOENIX.

ON ADMINISTERING THE SACRAMENT ON GOOD FRIDAY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.

MR. EDITOR,-In the early ages of Christianity, and, I believe, up to this day, in the Roman and Greek Churches, the feast of the Holy Communion is never celebrated on the solemn fast of Good Friday. Archbishop Magee is decidedly opposed to it; and I should feel much obliged, if any of your correspondents could inform me when this error, for such I hold it, crept into the Church, and whether it has ever received Episcopal sanction.

Yours,

AN INQUIRER AFTER TRUTH.

CAUSES OF THE RECENT GROWTH OF POPERY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.

SIR,-In my two former letters, I trust I have done something in conformity with the principles and practice recommended in the able and learned work of Dr. Hopkins, the Protestant bishop of Vermont, who, everywhere, calls the bishops in communion with the Church of Rome his brethren in Christ, to show the folly of the mode in which the controversy against that Church is now almost exclusively carried on, and the mischiefs thence arising. The charges of idolatry, sabbathbreaking, and apostasy, so often made against her, must be abandoned, and she herself treated as a branch (although, alas! a very corrupt one) of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church,-or something more than our own consistency must be given up. The Church of England rejects the pretended orders of all foreign Protestants; does not allow any English dissenting preacher to officiate in her churches, treating him and the dissenters as cut off from her communion,-in fact, as Jews, heretics, schismatics, or infidels; nay, even treats in the same rigorous spirit of exclusion the Presbyterian ministers of the Scotch Establishment, an Establishment upheld and patronized by the same government which recognises her own legal establishment. If the Church of Rome were really apostate, as the controversialists of the Reformation Society pretend to treat her, then not only would this conduct of our Church, which does recognise her orders and baptism as valid,—be most dangerous, but it would be a positively impious act, and a partaking of the sin of apostasy which it thus countenanced. We recognise the orders and ministrations of the Romish Church as valid acts of the Church Catholic; we do not recognise those of any other protestant or dissenting community. This alone condemns of utter inconsistency, nay of something worse,-of a departure from the order of a Church to which they have sworn allegiance, all those clergymen who suffer themselves to be led away into the senseless nonsense of the Reformation Society (so called)! A Romish priest would be at once admitted as a priest in our Church, upon his conformity, without re-ordination; but Dr. Chalmers, the presbyterian, must be ordained by one of our bishops, and till then be treated as a mere layman: a conforming papist would be neither re-baptized, nor confirmed again; a dissenter, or even a Swedish protestant archbishop,-seeing the Swedes have lost the apostolical succession,-would probably be rebaptized, and again confirmed. These are facts which show better than a thousand ingenious arguments of ultra-protestants to prove the Church of Rome to be apostate, and the pope to be the man of sin; what is the real view of the present position of the Church of Rome which a consistent member of the Church of England should take, and which he cannot consent to modify or abandon without an utter condemnation of his own Church. But, after all, when we talk of the Church of Rome as if she were one and indivisible, we are really speaking of that which has no existence. The Churches of Spain, of Germany, of Italy, ana France, which are in communion with the bishop of Rome, by no means

form one compact and homogeneous body; on the contrary, they differ from one another in many, and very important respects, and especially in the degree of obedience which they yield to the papal see. Thus we have lately seen the Chapter of Cologne taking part with the Protestant king of Prussia against their own archbishop and the pope; and the present condition of the Churches of France and Belgium, which is secured by formal concordats with Rome, is far more dependent on the civil power than the Established Church of England. At the present moment, the Irish papists, in all ecclesiastical matters, are in the habit of virtually setting at naught the rescripts of the Vatican, whenever they do not suit their liking; and we surely should never have seen the scenes which have lately been enacted in Spain, on the suppression of monasteries, and of the tithes, and other resources of the parochial clergy, had the Liberals of Spain feared, or even paid common heed to, the old man on the seven hills! A united Church of Rome, then, is in reality a non-existence; and those Protestants who speak and act on this supposition, most egregiously mistake the whole question in which we are really interested.

The events of the last two generations have shown that the papal power and authority have every thing to dread from the ascendency of democratic opinions; but the Romish priesthood, or at least an active portion of them, have, in certain countries of Europe, where their interests or bigotry were likely to be gratified. by such an amalgamation, been found ready to rush into the embraces of democracy. This has been attempted in France, partially succeeded in Belgium, and in Ireland is now in its full vigour, and dragging England, more or less, at the chariot-wheels of popery. Should democracy ever gain the upper hand, the papal system must be crushed by it; but the power which it would exercise for that purpose would probably have previously crushed all other forms of law and religion. It is, therefore, to its political power and chances that the attention of every Englishman should be directed; and the principal reason of these remonstrances against the modern mode of viewing the controversy as one of an entirely theological character, arises from the fact, that such a view, and particularly with the adsurdities and exaggerations, and impotent fury of the Reformation Society, makes us really blind to the quarter where the real danger lies. Much as the Evangelical party within the Church, and the dissenters beyond its pale, condemn popery, yet it would be well for them all to consider, if, by upholding such men as Lord Roden, in his attacks on the Universities, and Lord Henley in his crusade against cathedral establishments, and by their open and ostentatious support of measures both religious, philanthropic, and political, which are esteemed liberal, but at the same time are notoriously opposed to the principles of the Established Church, they are not adopting the surest means of clearing the way for the future aggressions and ascendency of Romanism?

I think, in my last, the predisposing cause of the growth of popery was, with great probability, shown to be the spread of evangelicism within, and without the Church. Dissent has for a long time been in a state of violent change-of transition; the original vitality has long passed away from it, and nothing remains but a dry caput mortuum of

opinions. Now all the tendencies of the age had long been leading men to see the absurdity, the narrowness, and insufficiency of the wretched systems of dissent, and of the equally exclusive and wretched theology of such men as Newton and Scott. Men evidently began to want something more universal, more catholic; they wanted a church, something which should be not confined by the narrow bounds of evangelical theology; but of such a body, evangelicism knows nothing; they wanted a religion, but evangelicism gave them nothing but the skeleton- the dry bones-of a starved and hungry theology; a mere set of opinions adapted only to certain excited and diseased imaginations. No wonder, then, that men were led by the loud and absurd pretensions of Rome to embrace a system which, however imperfectly, did minister to these wants of the human heart; no wonder that they were led to overlook the claims of the Church of England, seeing that so many of her own Clergy had endeavoured to obliterate every trace of her peculiar features as still a branch of the Catholic Church, though now reformed, and to reduce her down to the vulgar level of one of the sects by which she was surrounded. Had not there been that in the Church of England which made this suicidal task impossible, and a revival of her claims to the affectionate allegiance of every true Catholic possible, as has lately been shown, the effects would have been disastrous. As it is, we have to bless God that the defections to the Church of Rome have been almost entirely from among the Scotch presbyterians and the English dissenters and evangelicals; and we would have the latter specially meditate on the instructive fact mentioned by Dr. Hook, that the meetings of the Reformation Society are occasionally followed by the perversion of thirty Protestants to popery. G. P.

P.S. I do not like to enter into questions which are purely speculative; but I am tempted now to do so, in respect of the position in which we might reasonably now have been placed, had Wesley and Whitefield not have violated the ordinances of the Church by irregular proceedings. The third generation of dissenters have generally ceased to be such; and we might, therefore, have hoped that we should be now assailing the huge mass of ignorance, of misery, and sin, which surround us on all sides, on the principles of the Church; instead of that, evangelicism, which may be easily traced up to them, is calling off our attention to the discussion of such questions as these,-questions, however, which must be first settled,-whether there be any Church at all? whether there be any real sacraments, or divinely-commissioned ministry? whether Johanna Southcote were an inspired woman (for, really, on the principles I am now considering, I do not see how we can fairly blink this question); or Dr. Chalmers, and his employers, the Christian Influence Society, be right in looking on the Church of England as a mere Establishment, the creature of (first) kings, (secondly) aristocrats, and (lastly) of the varying majority of the present House of Commons?

By what is said above as to the indications afforded by the tendencies of the age, is meant, that the desire to break through the narrow bounds of the old sects in order to form large Societies for great and universal objects, and affectation of a certain liberalism and even cosmopolitism, which are the characteristics of the religion and politics of the day,desires which can only be rightly and safely satisfied by the doctrine of