moral, when the singleness of the truth must be the same in both cases. It is as impossible that there should be two ways of interpreting the scope and design of the Almighty, and both right, whether in the Bible or the newer revelation, as that there can be two products of an arithmetical equation. There is no question, ifany man, by inspiration or an elaborate process, were to strike out some important result in figures, that all the world would be unanimous in certifying the truth; and yet, although "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish" are threatened "unto them that are contentious," and do not suffer themselves to be guided into all truth by the Holy Ghost-and that truth be the same at this day as when St. Stephen testified for it unto death-still do men differ respecting it, as if it bore a myriad of appearances, as if the knowledge of the truth were not solemnly enjoined on the disciples of Jesus, and as if they were not told "to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

We must request the reader to cast his eye back to the query we set out with, although, if he shall discern our drift, it will be, we fear, a force d'ennuyer. He will, however, favour us with his patient attention, while we attempt to elucidate our argument and to show its cogency.

Why should there be this distinction between moral and mathematical proof? We are aware of the answer ever ready on the lip of the smatterer of a college, who with selfcomplacency raises his brow and shrugs his shoulder at our simplicity. We shall not, however, indulge him with the solution of the schools, but favour him with our own view of the matter. The truths which admit of being demonstrated after a mathematical process are to be worked out by the operation of the HEAD, whilst every moral certainty is the highest link in the chain of probability, but which cannot be brought to quadrate with aught in the understanding of another. Its proof must be involved in its own perception, and can only be reached by the feelers of the heart. Now we all know that "the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." It will, if it be possible, obstinately close itself to conviction. It is not merely the headstrong will, but the passions that require to be silenced ere we can hearken to the voice of truth. To indulge a single vicious inclination (and how few do not!) were insensibly to bias us to reject or misrepresent whatever is inconsistent with it; and any hope of that illumination, without which no man can apprehend aught to good purpose, will be out of the question." None of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand." Dan. xii. 10.

There is this specialty in moral and spiritual evidence which can have no place in the demonstration of the mathematical affections, magnitude and figure. We are taught that an upright heart is an indispensable preliminary to receiving divine truths.

Unless we turn unto the Lord with all our heart, and be wholly inclined unto him-unless our souls be offered up as a whole burntoffering without a particle of mental reservation, and unpolluted by a single hypocritical equivocation, we shall, however we may flatter ourselves, be as much abroad as ever was Pilate, when startled, but not enlightened, he demanded, "What is truth?" Whosoever would make a compromise of Christ and Belial in his heart, utterly incapacitates himself for understanding "the doctrine whether it be of God." It is not possible for us ever to arrive at the truth of salvation, or feel what God hath done for us, and what he requires of us, until our hearts be first reformed, and thenceforth be kept with all diligence." Only the man that is of God understandeth with the heart, and therefore is of the truth, and apprehendeth the truth, and heareth the voice of Jesus." It is he that gives us an understanding heart, but we must first consider what he hath done for us."

It is thus that, whilst mathematical demonstration is apprehended in the same single point of view by the weakest and the strongest intellect, by the worst or the best of the human race there being neither degrees of evidence nor degrees of belief-the certainties of faith or the truths of Holy Writ can only be seized by that exquisite tact, the antenna of the heart, which, be it remembered, cannot consist with bitter envyings and strife. The wisdom that is from above is peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy; and the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. It will be easily perceived what a vast majority of the descendants of the apostate Adam must, by the above definition, be excluded from the knowledge of the truth. But if there be a body of men in the country against which more than another the text of the apostle would seem to be pointed, it is composed of the numerous sects of nonconformists, who, of whatever discordant elements composed, have banded themselves together in a wicked confederacy (scelerate consensionis fides) for the prostration of the Establishment, the dissevering of that connexion between Church and State whereby a mutual benefit is conferred; and by which the former sanctifying, so to speak, the polity of the latter, gives dignity and stability, and receives protection in return. Över the outworks of the Establishment is flung the broad shield of the nation, securing her ecclesiastical rights, and preserving to the people free from fluctuation and caprice a great system of spiritual instruction.

From this Church, according to whose lovely ritual their fathers for the most part offered up the sacrifice of a contrite heart, and which will (it is our fervent aspiration!) hereafter witness the worship of their children and of their children's children, it hath seemed meet to a large section of the people to dissent. "These be murmurers, complainers, makers of

sects;" their ends are distraction, their pretence and colour reformation. They, have separated from the christian community, and, as it were, have excommunicated themselves upon divers grounds. They are avтокатάкρIто-not judged by us, but by their own doings. As their motives are, to all intents and purposes, contradictory, it is obvious that they cannot all be right; and it is the object of the excellent little work, the title to which we have prefixed to our present paper, to demonstrate that by that very separation they act in opposition to Scripture; and to call upon dissenters, in consistency with their profession, to return to the bosom of mother church, and unite with her ministry and members. This work is replete with good sense; and the occasional energy of the author's language is strongly significant of his abhorrence of the principles of dissent. He manages his general argument, both from Scripture, reason, and the apostolic Fathers, with force, simplicity, and brevity; but is not always so perspicuous as might be wished. The conception is good, and moreover executed in a way that any Christian, of discernment to apprehend the train of thinking, cannot fail to approve. That this labour of love has at all events been composed in a candid spirit, is manifest from the following somewhat bizarre declaration in the introduction.

"I am not blind to the imperfections of the Church to which I belong, nor averse to her improvement. I venture to believe that I do not differ from a vast majority of her truest sons in my opinion, that her creeds, and forms, and discipline may, with somewhat of plausibility, appear to some minds too open to parliamentary influence."

It may be owing to the absence of perspicuity; but we confess we cannot divine what the reverend author would have us understand. We cannot recognise any just cause of complaint in respect to these matters. That reformation be required, we are painfully conscious; but it is in ourselves-we are the error. We no longer are endowed with that simplicity and fervency which characterised the apostolic times. We are degenerate, and have reason to exhort with St. Gregory, "ОTερ μεv Yevéμela-but contrariwise, as respects the alteration threatened by Mr. Kemp, we are more inclined to exclaim—μévwμev ötερ ἐσμέν.

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He then proceeds, "Neither do I shrink from the confession that her Prayer-book is not a work of absolute perfection. I am not unconscious of dissension among her ministers, nor am I insensible of evil in her discipline. I believe that alteration might be effected in various departments of the Church; not merely some to accommodate scrupulous consciences, but others to advance the cause of truth; and I frankly avow my wish that such reforms were attempted."

If we once begin to meddle with the liturgy and service of

the Church, out of regard to the supposed scruples of ignorant prejudices or bigoted dissenters, we would be glad if Mr. Kemp would tell us where we are to stop. Have we not innumerable divisions and subdivisions of fanaticism and folly, of vice and unbelief? and may we not be told by the advocates of each that some little modification of a rite or ceremony would remove their scruples and promote their welfare? Why, the very Socinians would be enabled to join regularly in the established worship, and be saved the expense of supporting teachers of their own, were the clergyman ONLY authorized to omit all the collects and all. the creeds, the litanies and the graces, the prayers and the praises of the Church. What can the author of the Refutation have been thinking about? In the unadvised spirit that dictated the passage we have cited, the legislature might go through every page of the ritual, and alter and add, omit or modify, according to the infinite caprice of mankind. The very Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, might come to feel an equal delight in the dogmata, and partake in common in the worship. of such a truly catholic communion! If parliament were to consent to alter the Prayer-book for one scruple, upon the same principle it must heed every scruple; and it is evident, a measure concocted under such circumstances, instead of being of a liberal character, would turn out an act of maimed and imperfect justice, unworthy of the countenance of a christian communitya reflection upon the equity of parliament, upsetting ancient landmarks, irritating ancient prejudices, shocking holy feeling, mixing profane and sacred things in one undistinguishable mass;all for the purpose of giving, not relief to scruples of conscience, but superiority of strength to enable our enemies to overturn our protestant Establishment.

Mr. Kemp immediately after observes, that the rulers of our Church are fully competent to the execution of the task. The rulers may be intellectually and morally competent, but they certainly are not legally so. Nay, we are not sure whether our prelates, after having proposed to violate the corporate and special endowment of the minor canons of St. Paul's, and to appropriate those revenues, which, ever since the reign of Richard the Second, have belonged to those reverend subalterns,we must say we entertain strong doubts whether the mitred rulers of our Establishment, however amiable and to be respected, would be the fittest individuals to whom we should entrust a reform of the church of England. At all events, it is beside the question; for, as we before observed, they are legally incompetent. They have no more power to make alteration, agreeably to the recommendation of Mr. Kemp, than the three estates of the realm, would have to stir in the matter without the con.currence of a still higher authority-an authority, which, in conformity with the laws of England, ought to take the initiative

in every case of ecclesiastical reformation. The sad consequences which have resulted from not having adhered to this sound constitutional practice, in certain late mischievous meddlings with ecclesiastical affairs, are around and about us-it is no vague theoretical hypothesis, but a fact of practical and melancholy experience, forcing itself on the perception of the most obtuse individual in the British dominions. It is the idea which is the most painfully objective in the reflections of every lover of his country. We have been legislating for the Church without that warrant which is required to ratify our acts; and we have only to turn our attention to the anomalous situation of the sister kingdom, to make us tremble at our presumption.

Whether measures trenching upon the rights and immunities of the Church, and as we affirm illegally concocted, be binding upon the nation at large, we entertain strong doubts; but it is evident to us, at least, that they need have no stringent influence upon the Church itself, for whose reformation or regulation they were specially passed. We hold that the Church is legally exonerated from all obedience to acts of parliament bearing upon her interests, which have not received the preliminary sanction of the ecclesiastical estate. A fatal blow has been inflicted on the Establishment-we were going to say irremediable, but we trust in God otherwise. We believe indeed that she is only stunned, not inevitably destroyed. But a dreadful precedent of innovation hath been tacitly acknowledged. She who was most interested in every reform, whether of her external relations or internal constitution-who was, of course, more intimately aware of her deficiencies, her errors, and her wants, than any lay body whatsoever-she, forsooth, was to have, and had, no voice in a matter which affected her rights; which, mainly devised by her open enemies, aims as it were at her existence; which concerns the religious weal of the entire community, not merely for the present generation, but for unborn ages;-she was passed by, as if the acts relating to the ecclesiastical economy were of no higher concern than the regulation of a railroad or the repeal of an obnoxious impost; and as if she had not a recognised constitutional voice in the legislature, represented by the convocation summoned by the king as temporal head of the Church. This first estate of the realm-(for, according to the usages of our wise and pious ancestors, no enactment which bore upon the interests of the Church could be valid without having been introduced to the notice of the legislature by the convocation)—this first estate represents the whole ecclesiastical body, bishops, dignitaries, and the inferior clergy. Therefore is it that we are of opinion that Mr. Kemp is wholly unwarranted in recommending to the episcopal bench the task of making divers alterations in various departments of the Church. If such reform