that counted among its heroes Sir Everard Digby, of Gunpowder Plot notoriety. The discovery of an annotated copy of the Douay Testament was the match that ignited the tinder; the notes being evidently prized above the text. For a while the flame smouldered, the Oxford High Church influence of those days tending rather to dull it than otherwise, much on the same principle as vaccination keeps off the small-pox.

But an accidental rencontre with a certain Father Beaumont, one of the émigrés of the French Revolution, disposed of the transubstantiation difficulty, the only obstacle that had ever seriously barred the road to Rome; an appeal to the virtual consent, through silence, of all the Christian centuries being evidently quite sufficient for a mind only too wishful to believe in it; the silence itself being all the while taken for granted rather than proved. A rhetorical passage from Chrysostom settled the sense of "This is My body," and the conversion was complete. Of any agonising doubt, of any spiritual crisis, of any resulting peace of conscience, as connected with this momentous change in religious belief, the record bears no trace. Indeed, there are traces enough of a merry-making spirit that seems strangely at variance with the professed purport of the book. The hits at supposed Protestant inconsistency and disunion are plentiful enough, but seldom fail to admit of a tu quoque reply. "What is the creed of the Church of England?" We may ask in reply, "What is the creed of the Church of Rome? Who knows whether it will be to-morrow what it is to-day?" "Whether the Church of England allow the exercise of private judgment or claims infallibility, disputes are endless?" Here, likewise, we may assert, "The Church of Rome claims infallibility, and disputes are endless." The unfairness of some of the arguments is, however, palpable. All heretics must believe that those belonging to the body from which they parted are in danger of damnation, because on no other ground could they have ever determined to leave it! The Anglican catechism says that only two sacraments have been ordained as generally necessary to salvation; therefore it means that there may be four or five others not generally necessary! This is of a piece with the argument that because Christ said the sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven, "neither in this world nor in the world that is to come," therefore some sins may be forgiven in the next world that are not in this; therefore there may be a purgatory. Or with the stale, flat, and unprofitable inference that because there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth, therefore we may pray to saints.

The common sense of the book appears to be confined to the concluding note by the editor, in which he seeks to demonstrate the utter untenableness of the Anglo-Catholic position. Of the rest

we may say, as the Romish priest said of penance, "If it does not do much good, it will not do much harm."

A Few Facts and Testimonies Touching Ritualism. By Oxoniensis. London: Longmans, Green and Co.

1874.

THIS is a summary of the views and principles of the Ritualists, principally gathered from their own writings, and will be useful to those, if any such remain, who need to be enlightened as to their true character and tendency. The statements here quoted from Mr. Gresley, the Revs. O. Shipley, W. J. E. Bennett, W. Maskell, W. Dodsworth, &c., plainly establish the position with which the compiler sets out, and confirm the current opinion concerning Ritualism, that "the aim of its advocates is not to lead to the Church of Rome, per se, but to Romanise the Church of England. Should they succeed in this, they hope to go a step further, and effect the reunion of the Church, in its corporate character, with Rome at least, if not with the Greek Church also." The instincts of the Evangelicals were right when, on the first blossoming of Ritualism, they pronounced it to be naught, and declared that only apples of Sodom could be expected from such a tree. Who will say now that the words of the Bishop of Calcutta, uttered many years ago, were at all too strong: "My firm persuasion is that if this system should go on, we are lost as a Protestant Church, that is, we are lost altogether?" One hopeful feature of the case is that the danger is now on all hands acknowledged. The bishops, who at first appeared to temporise, are to a man convinced of the peril to which the Church is exposed, and have spoken out with a manliness which is reassuring. The Romanisers themselves have felt this so keenly that, from having at the outset adopted as their motto “ οὐδὲν ἄγευ ἐπισκόπου,” they have come latterly to indulge in an unmeasured vituperation of those who are over them in the Lord. The law-courts have also pronounced against the system. And now Parliament is taking up the matter. The firm Protestant attitude of Mr. Disraeli is being imitated by Mr. Gladstone; and while some appear to doubt the sincerity of either, we would on our part gladly credit both statesmen with a good conscience in taking steps towards which, as far as we can see, no selfish political considerations need be supposed to have impelled them. Yet the danger is not past. It must not be forgotten that learning, zeal, ability, material resources and the vantage-ground of a prominent ecclesiastical position are to be found on the side of these men; nor that all the frivolity, sentimentality, and worldliness of the age, if we may not indeed say all the propensities of unsanctified human nature, favour the form of religion which they are bent on

Literary Notices.

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bringing in. The following remarks of the Rev. J. M. Capes, in his To Rome and Back, are well worth attention : 'I attribute the diminution of the old anti-Roman bitterness of the English middle and higher ranks, to a certain extent, to that interest in the Mass music of the great composers which has now become general with almost all persons of musical cultivation. . . . In every case the idea of the Roman sacrifice of the Mass is associated with conceptions of purity and beauty; and a very marked lessening in the fervid Protestantism of both singers and audience is the inevitable result. . . . Once come to love the music, and the mind insensibly ceases to think of the doctrines it expresses with any controversial fierceness." Not, of course, that musical tastes should be neglected: it is not by going to the opposite extreme of Puritanical contempt for God's good gifts that any headway can be made against the seductive misuse of them. The worship of God should be so conducted as not to offend the most refined taste, but elaborate choral services which appeal only to the ear and effectually stifle the sense of devotion in the effort to produce fine artistic effects, should be avoided everywhere, in the Establishment and out of it. In so far as it is lawful, and only so far, the Ritualists should be met with their own weapons. They must be outdone in all the good they strive to do, and it must be admitted that many of them do strive to do good according to their light, if the evil they are doing is to be "put down." Legislation may do much, but it cannot lay a spirit so subtle as this, if once the nation be infected with it. The new court will be as inoperative against Romanism inside the Church of England as the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was against Romanism outside it, unless the heart of the nation be soundly Protestant, that is Christianly spiritual. Let us hope that such may be the issue of the present crisis!

Two notes we must make in conclusion. The compiler calls attention to the distinction that should be made between the genuine old High Church party, of which there are still many representatives, and the Ritualists, who would willingly number them as belonging to their party. Though we do not sympathise with the views of the High Church section, we recognise their standpoint as essentially different from that of the Anglo-Catholics, and cannot but express the hope that, seeing the extravagant conclusions deducible from their own tenets, the holders of them may draw back farther from the edge of the gulf, and approach nearer to those who are really their brethren, whether of their own communion or not.

A statement, quoted on the thirty-eighth page, as reflecting on a Christian body with which this review stands closely connected, must not be passed over without notice, although the error contained in it is one that has been pointed out a hundred times.

The passage in question is from Gresley on Confession, in which, acknowledging the evils that have sprung therefrom, he says, "profligate priests have made the confessional the means of pandering to their passions, and artful women have beguiled unwary confessors. All this, I fear, is most true. Satan has contrived to poison the uses of this most important ordinance, as he has done many others. But I do not know that scandalous cases are more common amongst Roman Catholic priests who hear confession than they are with Wesleyan preachers or ministers of other denominations, perhaps rather less so!" When will it be understood that there is absolutely no resemblance between the Wesleyan class-meeting and the confessional? The class-meeting is not a private but a social means of grace; its business is not therefore and cannot be confession; neither, indeed, are its regular conductors Wesleyan ministers, who only exercise an occasional supervision, but godly laymen, themselves following the ordinary avocations of life. We believe it is customary for females to make their confession veiled; how many of them could a "Wesleyan preacher," even if he tried, prevail upon to make the same confession with unveiled faces in the presence of a dozen or more of their own friends and relatives of either sex? And what scandalous cases does Mr. Gresley remember to have heard of, as arising from a form of Christian fellowship he knows so little of, which will surpass in number and magnitude those he freely admits to have occurred in connection with the confessional? It is strange he cannot see that the vice is in the system, not a rare accident, but a necessary consequence of secret conversation on topics which, according to real apostolic authority," ought not to be so much as named." Certain it is that should a scandalous case be proved in connection with any Wesleyan preacher, he would instantly be suspended from all his functions, and, unless he retired of his own accord, be publicly and ignominiously expelled by his brethren: whereas the priest, similarly offending, might only be removed to some distant place, because his orders are indelible! But outsiders must not complain of misrepresentation, when the bishops themselves are treated with scurrility.

Biblical Expositions: or Brief Essays on Obscure or Misread Scriptures. By Samuel Cox, Author of "The Expositor's Note-Book," &c. Hodder and Stoughton. 1874. WE are glad to give our welcome to Mr. Cox's new volume of Expositions. It may seem ungracious to criticise the title, but we cannot help thinking that the description "Brief Essays on Obscure or Misread Scriptures," is hardly justified in this interesting volume; inasmuch as the Scriptures commented on

are often not those specially obscure or misread, the comments on them are rather sermons than essays, and sermons often anything but brief. For example, the twenty-third Psalm, the text of the Christian's Homily, and the passage 2 Cor. v. 19, are hardly obscure, and the sermon on the last verse is elaborate to a degree. But it were not worth while to make this comment did we not hasten to add that what we most prize from Mr. Cox, and most look for in a new volume from him, is just these same "Brief Essays on Obscure Scriptures ;" and we would fain exchange some of the longer sermons on texts often expounded for his instructive and happy elucidations of difficult passages. There were more of these to be found in the earlier volume, such as are represented in this by notes on verses from the Epistle of St. James, and one or two passages from Jeremiah. Mr. Cox's knowledge of the Bible, derived from long and patient study, is combined with so great a felicity and variety of illustration, that his flashes of light on dark corners of interpretation are doubly valuable.

We would not be understood to depreciate the sermons (more strictly so called) before us, though here our author is not on the ground where he especially excels. That on the twenty-third Psalm is so thoroughly expository in its character; is enlivened by so many fresh and original touches; and above all is so thoroughly practical in its contrast of the calm confidence of the Psalmist with the anxious harassed spirit of our modern life, that none can read it without profit.

"Think what our life should be if God is in very deed the Shepherd of men. With what quiet, loving confidence, with what cheerful constancy of spirit ought we to eat our daily bread, and go about our daily tasks, looking up indeed if the road be steep and bare, or if we scent danger in the wind, to be quite sure that our Shepherd is with us, and that we are following Him, but utterly refusing to murmur or fear because He is with us, and His rod and His staff they comfort us. If all things are in His hands and He is with us and for us, what can harm us, what can really be against us?

What a

"Contrast with what our life should be what it is. race against time! What a selfish competition with each other for what we account the safest place and the sweetest grass, and the purest water! How fretted and tormented with fears-fears for to-morrow, if not for to-day; fears lest our fellows should injure us, or we should injure ourselves, nay, fears of the very Shepherd who goes before us, lest He should abandon us to the wolf, or lest the crook with which He guides and defends us should be turned into a rod of judgment. Oh, it is pitiful to see how, all for want of a little faith in God, or a little more faith, we mar and waste our lives, exchange the peace and security of well