the people one; since all the things that he enumerates are examples of unity, for they agree in all things." (Comment. in cap. iv. Ep. ad Ephes. t. iii.)

On the death of his brother Satyrus, having related his escape from a storm, and the desire he felt to return solemn thanks to God, St. Ambrose adds-" When he got to land, he sent for the bishop of the place; but aware that true faith alone was acceptable to Heaven, he inquired of him, was he in communion with the Catholic bishop? for the country he knew was infected with schism. The bishop at the time had withdrawn himself from our communion, and though he was in banishment for his faith, yet in schism there could be no faith. He had faith towards God, but not towards the church, whose members he permitted to be torn asunder. For, since Christ died for the church, and the church is the body of Christ, they by whom his passion is made void, and his body is torn asunder, cannot hold his faith." (De Obitu Fratris Satyri, t. iv.)

This one fact demonstrates more than any reasoning on the subject of union could do, how great was the horror then entertained of schism, or of departing from the faith or discipline of the church.

If the space allotted us would admit, we might also cite Optatus, Jerome, Chrysostome, Augustin, Theodoret, the Council of Calcedon, &c. They are all unanimous in their interpretation of the sacred Scriptures on this important point; and they are equally strong with our foregoing authorities from the days of St. Clement downwards, in holding the absolute necessity of union in the church of Christ.

We cannot forbear here to add to the foregoing authorities the opinion of Baxter, the great oracle and organ of dissenters, but not a Nonconformist.

"He who is out of the church," he says, "is without the teaching, the holy worship, the prayers, and discipline of the church; and is out of the way where the Spirit doth come, and out of the society which Christ is related to. For he is the Saviour of the body; and if once we leave his hospital, we cannot expect the presence and help of the physician. Nor will he be pilot to them that leave his ship; nor captain to them that separate from his army. Out of the ark there is nothing but a deluge, and no place of rest or safety for his soul."

We think that it would be impossible to pen aught stronger or truer than this last extract. It is evident that Baxter felt and understood the important fact, that wherever there is a wilful separation from the communion of the church of Christ, there, according to the ideas entertained by the primitive church and the recorded opinions of the Fathers, a division of Christ's mystical body takes place; and there the sin of schism is to be found. Such sin consists in a disunion of the members of the church,

occasioned by the want of obedience to the government, which Christ by his Apostles settled in it, and a consequent separation from its communion in contravention of the Divine plan of its establishment.

Still, despite of reason and Scripture, and what we have shown to be the practical belief of the early ages of Christianity, sectarians of various denominations continue to exist and to start up afresh, often merely from the love of novelty, the pride of argumentation, the pleasure of making proselytes, and the obstinacy of contradiction. For these causes will they violate charity and disturb that peace which our Lord bequeathed to his church. But no plea and no pretext can justify a departure from that christian harmony of which our Saviour set the example, the necessity of which we find recommended from his sacred lips, and which he bequeathed to his church to be observed and maintained, without condition or alteration unto the end of the world. "My peace I leave you-my peace I give you; not as the world giveth do I give you." (John xiv. 27.) Many of the dissenters affirm, that they do not differ in essentials from the Established Church, and yet will deny many of her articles of faith. Either they must hold them essential, or they do not. In the latter case their separation is unjustifiable, and evidently shows that they misunderstood the maxims of the gospel: they rend the seamless garment of Christ without cause. Is it not impiety, for trifling reasons, to disturb that harmony which Christ ordained should subsist between the members of his church, to discontinue to hold communion with the Establishment, and set up a conventicle of their own? Communion, union in society, should not be broken, ne in minima particula. But the Nonconformists of the present day shut their eyes to the necessity of union in the several respects we have spoken of, although this christian unity would seem indispensable, and to hold out its own reward, by forestalling ("not to speak it profanely") that reunion hereafter, which the faithful in Christ confidently anticipate. It would be the perfection of christian churchship, the reign of Christ upon earth. What a beautiful picture of piety is presented in idea when we contemplate all human beings, whatever their age, sex, or station, spiritually united in one churchhearing and following ministers of the same true doctrine, and eating the bread of life with one heart and one soul! Would it not be to realize the symbol or emblem represented by the oak of Mamre, planted according to ancient tradition by the patriarch Abraham? Under that famous and sacred tree, which Sandys, in his "Travels in the Holy Land," speaks of as then still existing, on one yearly day of festival pilgrims of all the nations of the hither East, and professors of all its different creeds, assembled in peace and concord. There, under the shade of its widespreading branches, they gathered together as brethren under

the tent of a common parent, forgetting or suspending all difference in their love and veneration of that in which all agreed. They met around the massive trunk as a living monument, dedicated to common recollections and mutual respect, inspired by the numen loci, the genius of the place. Alas! from the reign of the first Charles, in which this amiable poet and traveller flourished, even to our own days, by how many has the interesting narrative been perused with a sigh, as a poetic fable,—a pleasing allegory-the expression of a humane wish in the disguise of a pretended fact! Only let such a state of christian optimism, as we have conceived and insisted on,-only let mankind approach Christ by that union in this world, which is the type of an hereafter, and the emblem would be more than realized; the fable, if fable it be, would become fact; nor need we cross the seas to find the confirmation. Oh! if it be, as it appears, and as we firmly believe, the design of the Almighty that all his creatures should be one in Christ, it is an end proposed to man which challenges emulation as the grandest achievement of his spiritual exertionit would be to give to airy nothing a positive existence, a significant meaning to the oak of Mamre.

After having bestowed a more attentive perusal on Mr. Kemp's admirable little volume, we cannot close this second notice without adverting for a moment to one or two points we briefly touched upon in our former article.

In the first place, it is but fair to the reverend author of this Refutation to guard the reader against any misunderstanding in respect to our animadversions upon his frankly avowed wish, that reforms were attempted in various departments of the Church. Mr. Kemp is certainly not to be confounded with reformers, in the common acceptation of that word; and would, we are convinced, be as staunch an opponent as ourselves of all innovation which he considered ill-advised. The alterations which he suggests in the Prayer Book, for instance,-because, to use his own words, "it is not a work of absolute perfection,”—are far from being intended as concessions to dissenters. He knows well that concession would be the teeming parent of fresh demands, urged with greater importunity-that increase of appetite would grow by what it fed on-that Dissent is lynx-eyed in spying out imaginary imperfections in the Establishment, and that herein the "wish is father to the thought." Not with the absurd and impossible view of conciliating dissenters are these alterations proposed by Mr. Kemp, but because improvement, abstractedly considered, must be desirable and beneficial to the immortal interests of the Church herself. We shall content ourselves with again objecting, that let the revision of our incomparable Common Prayer Book be ever so wisely and carefully effected, however great an improvement it may or may not be in the eyes of the enlightened and educated portion of the community, it

would certainly come like an earthquake upon nine-tenths of our poorer fellow church-goers, to whom, in their simplicity, all parts of the service of the Church are the same-all true-all unimpeachable all incapable of amendment. It would unhinge their faith. They would marvel what meant the tampering with the words of eternal life. To the conceptions of the intelligent churchman, the grand mystery of godliness, with all its subsidiary truths, would still present themselves with unaltered form and aspect; whilst to the poorer members of Christ's congregation they would come in a strange garb,-one with which their youth and their manhood were not familiar, and which their hearts would fail to recognise. We are persuaded that Mr. Kemp would be the last man to regard with indifference or to despise the prejudices of piety. We know that the unlettered, more especially in rural districts, are apt to invest with something approaching to papal infallibility every syllable that proceeds from the pulpit and the reading-desk; and in our judgment it is good that it should be so: aught which might in the remotest degree affect this characteristic trait of a population destined along the sequestered vale of life to keep the noiseless tenor of their way, would be much better avoided in this age of headstrong innovation. In attempting the task recommended by Mr. Kemp, we cannot too strongly insist upon the necessity of pious caution. The majority of our brethren conceive that the faith of the Church of England rests on "sure and firm-set" ground. Thanks be to Christ, its corner-stone, it does so; and let us not, in lieu of this conviction, induce a sense amongst the simpler minded, but ill informed, of insecurity and vacillation.

The next point to which we wish to advert, from having incidentally broached it in our previous paper on this subject, relates to an opinion we were inclined to entertain, that to multitudes of educated dissenters the volume of Mr. Kemp will impart little of which they were not already just as conscious as himself. Perhaps we expressed ourselves too unlimitedly in this respect. There is no doubt that very many individuals, who remain without the pale of the Church, are already cognizant of most of the arguments which Mr. Kemp has adduced, and in the secret recesses of their soul acknowledge their cogency; but when we remember the elaborate and ingenious train of reasoning to which Mr. Conder, and such writers as he, have recourse, we are impelled to the belief that they must be conscientiously convinced of the truth of their sophistry, and in consequence do really require to be supplied with such an invaluable antidote, exposure, and confutation, as Mr. Kemp's excellent treatise is so well fitted to afford. Moreover, it may fairly be assumed, that till the dissenters be convinced that they are in error as subverters of the Establishment of the Church, they will never cease to agitate the question of dissolution, however much it may include, as they

conceive it to be a duty of divine obligation. And we must also confess, that however indispensable the disposition of the heart, of which we spoke, to the reception of divine truth, the inculcation on the mind of the sense of Scripture, with a display of its terrors and rewards, is unquestionably no small means of preparing the heart for its reception.

To prevent any misapprehension of our meaning, we have thought it due, not so much to Mr. Kemp as to ourselves, and to that holy cause which we have both equally at heart, to write the above in explanation of our former article; and as we are, above all things, anxious for the dissemination of such principles as are contained in the volume we have under review, we again earnestly recommend it to the attentive and candid perusal of every individual (whether churchman or dissenter) who may read these pages. Without that care and attention, which it so eminently deserves, its merits cannot be duly appreciated; and we confidently trust, that those of our subscribers, to whom it was before a stranger, will thank us for making them acquainted with it. Here our limits warn us to conclude the second notice of the Refutation. We have exhausted perhaps the patience of the reader, but not the subject. Our examination of the work has as yet made small progress: there remain important chapters that will occupy us in our future Numbers; and meantime we shall feel happy if we could but think that the foregoing slight and cursory outline, which we have thus attempted, of a mere section of this cheap and felicitously executed little manual, shall excite a salutary suspicion in their minds of our dissenting brethren, and induce them henceforth to receive with extreme caution and doubt the evidence of certain of the most popular teachers, who, in many weighty points, have been, we may almost say, convicted of all the arts of calumny, misrepresentation, and falsehood. But this is an important topic, and should not be brought in at the end of an article. Its exposition in our next Number will form the subject of our continued review of Mr. Kemp's treatise.

ART. VI.-Deism compared with Christianity, in an Epistolary Correspondence between a Deist and a Christian; intended as a Book of Reference: containing all the principal Objections against revealed Religion, with their Regulations. By EDWARD CHICHESTER, M.A. Rector of the Parish of Kilmore, in the Diocese of Armagh. Second Edition, enlarged. 3 Vols. London: Rivington. 1834.

THE arguments on both sides are here impartially considered. The Deist argues, that reason is sufficient to enable us to discover the existence of God, and that from the fitness of things his moral attributes are derivable; but the Christian maintains