bear with them. But if I, or an angel from heaven, preach anything but what you have believed, let him be accursed.'

'What a contrast is the system of Rome to that of Christians, who, having received the testimony concerning eternal life, were full of heaven, eating their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, having favour with God, and all the people, while the Lord added to them daily such as were saved.' But the monkish saints of Rome look as if they had issued from the tombs, and no one would suspect that the order of La Trappe had ever heard of glad tidings. Yet this is the genius of the religion which pretended Protestants would persuade us to substitute for salvation by grace. They have caught the atmosphere of the catacombs, and would fain lead us there. Having, by their own confession, no authorised hope, they would rob us of ours. Ere we consent, they must show us a more excellent way.'

6

The genius of their religion is awful. At the shade of a cathedral, the mere echo of the word church, these writers draw their cowls over their brows; and put off their sandals, afraid to tread on holy ground. A hint, a surmise, a possibility that Timothy was, as a priest, intrusted with some secret deposit, fills their imagination with visions of purgatory, and all the terrors of the shades. Awe-stricken they renounce all hope from the covenant of grace, and fly to unfathomable depths' of secreted possible mercy in unknown worlds. Their church is a crypt, their music is a funeral dirge, their psalm the miserere mei, their cross is made of cross bones, their surplice is a shroud, their altar a tomb, their hope despair, and their faith that of devils, who believe and tremble. But, glory to sovereign grace, we joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation.'

-pp. 248-240.

In our reference to the subject of the sacraments, we shall be brief. Mr. Newman differs as to these from the Church of Rome chiefly in reference to their number; and even on that point the difference is only this, that while Rome says there are seven, Mr. Newman does not determine how many, but that two have been specially appointed by Jesus Christ. If baptism be the only means on earth by which men may obtain the 'absolute pardon of sins,' we do not see that the Church of England has any advantage over that of Rome in wanting extreme unction, but the contrary. Baptism and the Eucharist are described by Mr. Newman as 'justifying rites,' 'generally necessary to salvation,'' instruments of communicating the atonement.' The relation which they bear to faith, in justification, is that they are the primary and immediate instruments, faith the secondary and subordinate; and faith being the appointed representative of baptism, derives its authority and virtue from that which it represents; it is justifying because of baptism.'

In his chapter on the sacraments, Dr. Bennett goes to the root of that erroneous method of interpreting Scripture, by which the dogma of sacramental virtue is supported. He shows, that, as

there is in scripture a style of language appropriate to parables, so there is a style peculiar to symbolical ordinances, or sacraments, as they have been termed from the Latin; and that to apply to it the rules of unfigurative speech would involve the grossest misinterpretations. The fact that so plain a principle should have been overlooked in its application to the sacraments rather than the parables of Scripture, is partly explained by the consideration, that parables had only to be understood,―ordinances had to be administered by an order of functionaries in the church, with whose spiritual power the ideas entertained concerning the said ordinances were found to have a very close connexion. But we must connect with this other circumstances, in explanation of the origin of these errors-the false and puerile principles of biblical interpretation which directed even the early fathers of the church; and still more the strange commixture of notions, judaical, oriental, and pagan, philosophical and mythological, which incorporated itself with primitive Christianity, and grievously changed its spirit and its institutions. So undeniable is the fact as to render it, prima facie, far more easy to account for the origin of any error in the early centuries of the Christian era than at any period subsequent to the dark ages, even though the particular facts should not be capable of being ascertained with historic authenticity. The rise of the sacramental superstitions is thus sketched by Dr. Bennett; and with the passage we must conclude our extracts.

The Eleusinian mysteries had filled the minds of pagans with awful notions of the power of mystic rites. Ablutions, and feasts of the gods, had been supposed to give men a new existence, and to introduce them into communion with the immortals. The philosophers, who had run the round of sects, and been initiated into all mysteries, and still remained unsatisfied, saw that Christianity had evidence while paganism had none, and owned their conviction, as idolaters now do by means of our missionaries, who sometimes see plainly that these are the semiconverts of reason, destitute of the grace of God. But a philosopher was too often caught at, as a valuable proselyte, who could defend the faith against a Porphyry or a Celsus. While yet no Christians at heart, or if Christians, but half-learned in the school of Christ, and not half unlearned in the mysteries of pagan philosophy, men were made teachers who 'yet needed to be taught what were the first principles of the oracles of God.' To such orators the mysteries, the mysteries, were the grand attraction. Rites, more mystical and more divine than those of Ceres, flattered their pride, and inflamed their imagination; and thus the tremendous mystery' was the phrase for the Lord's supper, which was therefore to be hidden from the uninitiated. Odi profanum vulgus et arceo,' was quite philosophical, and therefore must be made evangelical language. The Christian mysteries must save and sanctify, because the heathen mysteries claimed that power, and it would be profane to suppose the new rites were of inferior efficacy to the old.

6

When Julian, who had received the tonsure, renounced Christian baptism, he is said to have had recourse to another, which was to regenerate him; that, born again into a new heathen world, he might be a son of the gods. Had not his uncle's family been extinct, he would have occupied a pulpit with the same superstitious spirit with which he filled the throne; only he might then have come down to us as St. Julian instead of Julian the apostate. Apostate! he had as much real Christianity when a persecuting emperor as when a hypocritical monk.

Thus, by pretended converts to Christianity, she was really converted to paganism, and the signs of Christian blessings were put for the things signified, or these were supposed to be so identified with the sacraments that no ordinary mind could make the necessary distinction. Nor were there many who suspected the error into which they rushed.' --pp. 226, 227.

It needs not be disguised that the movement emanating from Oxford has awakened no small measure of anxiety for the interests of truth in the friends of evangelical religion, both within the Establishment and out of it, and in that anxiety we acknowledge we have participated. How long the impulse given to the Anglican body ecclesiastical may last, to what extent it may be propagated, whether its maximum has been already reached, and in what results it shall issue-are questions which it would be premature confidently to answer. We see nothing at present to increase our alarms—we incline to the opinion that the receding movement cannot be far distant, if it have not already begun. There are both general and special grounds for a favorable augury, on which we are disposed strongly to rest. The chief is, the unadaptedness of the system of opinions propounded from Oxford to command any deep or general sympathy in the minds of the people of this nation. That they should have made progress in a body so scholastic as the English clergy, is not much to be wondered at; and even this fact, we apprehend, has been mainly owing to the concurrence of the system with that resistance to the spirit of the times, which, as a measure of ecclesiastical policy, was forced upon the clergy by their fears. But for a nation so practical, not to say so secular, in their tastes as the English, the system carries an air too antiquated and monastic; and in vain is a return attempted to mystical theology or morbid pietism, to a repose in obsolete opinions, or a confiding veneration for priests. It can gain the full sympathy only of religionists of a certain class, and that a limited one. It is too solemn for the gay, too ascetic for the indifferent, too bereft of hope to be rested in by those truly anxious about salvation, too refined for the illiterate, and too destitute of solid claims to commend itself to those in whom the principle of implicit faith has been destroyed by education. We imagine, too, that the course of political parties will work strongly against the extension of the principles of Puseyism. We do not say that these had their origin in any recent evolutiono f party politics.

The leaders have endeavored to place the merits of the system on grounds distinct from existing alliances between the Church and civil governments. But it is evident, that, in this most political nation, every movement, even religious, in the parties which compose it, becomes political. It is evident also, that there is a marked alliance between the spirit of Puseyism, and the principles of a certain party in the State, and that the one has worked into the machinery of the other, adding impetus to its revolutions. But has the influence of that party increased of late? Is it now increasing? The reverse is notorious. In the discomfiture of the high church political party, the allied principles of a high church religion must ultimately participate; for nothing brings a system of speculative opinions sooner into neglect in this nation than their exclusion from influence upon the actual business of society. Nor can we suppose that the avowal of doctrines opposed to the great evangelical principles of the Reformation, can accelerate the advance of any party by which it is made. Mr. Newman appeals to the opinion of religious men, if not divines,' as in favor of his doctrine of justification. But, whatever may be the private notions of men as to the grounds on which they shall be dealt with by the Almighty, sadly vague and unscripturally selfrighteous as these too often are, they are constrained by a sense of truth and honesty to apply a different rule of judgment to sentiments assuming the form of a theological creed, and in that form brought into comparison with the plain words of Scripture, and the formularies of a church. Mr. Newman's attempts to harmonize his doctrines with Scripture, are too forced, and even puerile, to be regarded with respect by the unsophisticated common sense of the community. Nor is it to us doubtful that the present development of doctrines directly at variance with that reformed theology embodied so clearly in the articles, will bring the public mind to a pause as to the honesty of the adherents of this new school, and prove the beginning of its downfal.

Especially will such expectations be realized if that portion of the clergy in the Church of England which adheres to evangelical sentiments, exert themselves as the occasion demands, and as they have not yet done. The worst augury for religion, in the progress of the Oxford party was the leaning to its opinions-indicated by not a few of those who had preached the doctrines of popular 'protestantism.' The cause was doubtless to be found in their readiness to concur in that contest for exclusive apostolicity by which the Church of England sought to stem the course of liberal opinions, bearing so rapidly towards religious liberty and equality among all parties; and perhaps they knew not how far the alliance might safely proceed. Those of them whose spirituality was not so pure as that of others, or whose religious sentiments were not so fixed, might perhaps be ready for a transference of

their attachments, under cover of that resemblance which the two parties now bear to each other, in the external habits of serious piety. But surely it may be expected even of such that they will say, thus far have we come, but no further,' when called to abandon truth which probably commends itself to their own sciences, while it never will cease to commend its preachers to the people. But the truly pious and devoted cannot proceed to Mr. Newman's conclusions. The Milners, the Newtons, the Cecils, the Scotts of the present day, cannot abandon the cardinal doctrine of justification by faith. And will they temporise, or countenance by silence, this attack upon the purity of gospel truth, and the dearest interests of their church? We trust they will not. We will hope to see them, more generally than has yet been the case, bearing public testimony to the fundamental doctrines of the reformation, the great foundation of human hopes. They will make the real division that exists between themselves and the Oxford party more conspicuous to the public view. They will labour from the press as well as from the pulpit. They will inform the Protestant laity of the established communion, among which their strength lies, in the extent of their principles and the grounds on which they are based. They will not refrain themselves from declaring their opinion where their voice can best be heard; and will not leave a deliverance to arise from another quarter which ought certainly to come from themselves.

Art. V. First and Second Reports of the Select Committee on Railways. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, August,

1839.

FIFTY years have not yet elapsed since that gigantic minister

of man, steam, has been yoked to his car, and compelled to carry him by sea and land with a rapidity and certainty which almost realize the supernatural powers of the wonderful carpet in the Arabian tale. Only five and thirty years have passed since the first locomotive engine ever employed for transport was sent on its eventful course at the railroad in Merthyr Tydvil. On 'the occasion of its first trial, in 1804,' says Dr. Lardner,* it 'drew after it as many carriages as contained ten tons of iron, a 'distance of nine miles, which stage it performed without any 'fresh supply of water, and travelled at the rate of five miles an hour!' Such is the infancy of art, and such the gradual manner

The Steam Engine Explained, p. 168.