Geraldine, a Tale of Conscience. By E. C. A. London: Dolmar. 1840.

THE work which we here notice will not be new to our readers. It is here complete: the three volumes being printed in one, in a smaller shape. We have already expressed so fully our opinions as to this book, that we need not now repeat them. The conclusion is melancholy enough, and as abundant in sophistry as the two previous volumes. We do, generally speaking, dislike religious novels; they are sad mixtures, and seldom edifying. What, therefore, we say of this individual work, we would apply also to its class.

The Illustrated Commentary. Vols. 1, 2, and 3. London: Knight. 1840.

AMONG the many commentaries which appear in this commentating age, we do not know a more pleasant or a more useful one than that which Mr. Knight has given us. It is, we believe, very well known, that the Commentary and the illustrations are those which were used in the "Pictorial Bible." Thus, then, those who admired that work, but thought it either too large or too expensive, may now provide themselves with both the notes and the pictures. It is a good idea, and we hope it will succeed; and succeed to a sufficient extent as to encourage Mr. Knight to put forth other books in the same. style.

Narratives and Tracts. Series of Children's Books. Little Mary. THESE are the titles of useful little books, published by Burns. We wish them well.

Bible Stories. The Child and the Hermit. Darton and Harvey. THESE, also, are pleasant and good books for children.

AMONG the many pamphlets laid before us, we would especially direct our readers to an excellent little digest upon Mythology, by Mrs. Smith; to a Sermon on Education, by the Rev. F. W. Faber; and to a still more valuable essay on the same subject, by the Rev. Henry Hopwood, of Queen's College, Cambridge; to a most able and valuable tractate upon the present condition of the Scottish Church.

We have lying before us an address, delivered by the Rev. Dr. Rudge, to the New Zealand emigrants at the depôt, Deptford (Painter). It is distinguished by piety and good sense. May it be made useful.

Gregory VII.; a Tragedy: with an Essay on Tragic Influence. By R. H. HORNE. London: Saunders and Otley. 1840.

WE are hardly prepared to agree with Mr. Horne in his "Essay on Tragic Influence." We do not deny that, were the drama and all its adjuncts under proper management, it might be made eminently useful, but we despair of seeing that proper management brought into action. With regard to Gregory VII., we cannot speak in terms of very high praise. It falsifies history, and that without gaining any advantage; the diction is faulty, and the characters by no means well drawn. Moreover, we look in vain for any vivid bursts of poetry, any high and noble feeling, any strikingly dramatic situation. Mr. Horne has certainly mistaken his way when he betook himself to tragedy.

The Divine Economy of the Church. By the Rev. John Jebb, M.A., Prebendary of Limerick, and Curate of East Farley, Kent. London: Duncan and Malcolm. 1840.

OUR space will not allow us to give our readers an analysis of this work, which is, however, very sound and orthodox. Mr. Jebb is a son of the late Bishop Jebb, and it would seem that he has inherited no small portion of that excellent prelate's spirit.

We have frequently received letters on subjects treated of in the "Church of England Quarterly Review," subsequent to the date of the numbers in which the articles alluded to appeared. Had they been sent earlier they would have been of great utility. In order to obviate this inconvenience in future, we shall give a list of some subjects on which we intend to treat in the ensuing numbers of the Review.

WILLIAM EDWARD PAINTER, 342, STRAND, LONDON, PRINTER.

THE

CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Quarterly Review.

APRIL, MDCCCXLI.

ART. I.-Records of Wesleyan Life. By a LAYMAN. London: Hamilton and Adams.

1840.

2. The Centenary. By THOMAS JACKSON. London: Mason. 1839.

3. Wesleyan Methodism, Considered in Relation to the Church; to which is subjoined a Plan for their Union and more effective Co-operation. By the Rev. RICHARD HODGSON, M.A., Evening Lecturer of St. Peter's, Cornhill. London: Hatchard and Son. 1841.

LIVING among us, agreeing generally with our Church in doctrine, and affording her political support, while at the same time they withhold from her ecclesiastical allegiance, there is a body of men, important both from number and intelligence; yet this body is, strange to say, less understood and less fairly appreciated than any other class of dissidents. There is no difficulty in ascertaining their doctrinal views-for they have their standards of interpretation; or their opinions and practices as to discipline-for they have their fixed and unvarying rules; or their politico-religious sentiments-for they have their official organs. Yet, while they far outnumber all the members of other "denominations" united-while they are equally superior to them both in intelligence and Christian feeling-and while also, by their system of union and centralization, their importance is indefinitely greater, there are yet comparatively few out of

VOL. IX.-S

their own communion who know what the Wesleyan Methodists believe, or how they reduce their faith to practice.

The reason of this is manifest. Their doctrine, whether correct or not (and into this we shall presently enquire), is systematic -it is worked into a whole; it is not a mere accumulation of separate and independent articles; it is capable of being studied -for no man among the Wesleyans makes his creed for himself. Again, their form of internal government is both complicated and sagacious: it is not the hasty fruit of excitement, neither is it the bitter fruit of enmity; it is not to be understood without some trouble: and hence, because the members of the Church have rarely had occasion to investigate the Methodist polity with the attention it requires, few of them know more than that there is such a body as that of the Wesleyans-that it is both numerous and powerful-that it takes its denomination from John Wesley-that its ministers travel about, at stated times, from place to place-that they wear neither gown nor surplice -and that their sermons are, without exception, extempore. When, however, we learn that there are of this denomination, in England alone, upwards of 300,000 individuals, and that they have very lately celebrated the first centenary of their corporate existence; that they possess 3,000 buildings for public worship; that these are so secured that, without the consent of the whole body, not one of them can be appropriated to other purposes; and that among their ministers-all for the most part well educated-there are not a few highly accomplished theologians; we shall see that a consideration of their history and system will be by no means a misemployment of either our time or that of our readers.

We need not here enlarge on the fact-which we have proved amply in the four preceding numbers of this Review-that the great revival of religion in this country, which commenced in the middle of last century, was a simple outpouring of God's Holy Spirit upon the nation; that it began within the pale of the Church, and that its progress was not less extensive, though more quiet, among Churchmen than among Dissenters.

When, therefore, we are told that the Church owes her present state of efficiency to the workings of Methodism or Dissent, in any shape, we utterly repudiate the assertion, as both incorrect in point of fact, and not seldom dictated by an ungodly spirit of rivalry. To Wesley himself and his first associates we give all due honour, for they were both good and able men; and had he continually resisted the schismatic spirit which grew up among his followers, and ultimately cut them off from the Church, we should not have hesitated to inscribe his name on the roll of

Reformers as second only to Luther. As it was, he placed himself in a remarkably anomalous position: he allowed his followers to become schismatic, while he never became so himself; sanctioned one line of conduct by his permission, and another by his example; and lowered his station from the lofty one of a Reformer of the Church to the unhappy one of the leader of a sect.

From these introductory remarks it will be easily seen, first, that we consider the Wesleyans as a highly respectable body of well-informed and well-principled men; but that, in the second place, we also view them as being in a state of schism. Yet their very schism is tempered with Christian feeling; and very earnestly do we wish that the observations and the occasional strictures which we shall make upon their polity and discipline may be received by them in the same spirit in which we offer them. Would that we could persuade some among them to return to the visible Catholic Church.

Religious differences are all resolvable into heresy or schism. Now it is possible for a person to be a heretic and not a schismatic-it is possible also to reverse this case, and to be a schismatic without being a heretic. Heresy is a corruption of the faith, and the danger of it is, therefore, measurable by its extent. The man who, like the late Dr. Adam Clarke, disbelieved the doctrine of the Saviour's eternal Sonship, is heretical; and so was he considered by the Wesleyan body: and the contrary position ably maintained by Mr. Treffry. But the heresy is of a widely different character from that of the man who denies the divinity of the Saviour. The guilt, therefore, as well as the danger of heresy, varies according to the character of the doctrine corrupted; but the sin of schism, which consists in separating from the Church Catholic, is always the same. Nay, the nearer the doctrines of the schismatic person or body approach those of the Church, or that branch of the Church from which he or they have separated, the greater the guilt. There is no inconsistency in this statement: the same sin will have one degree of guilt in one case, another in a different case; and as the Wesleyans themselves will allow that those who differ much from the Church are dangerously in doctrinal error, so we must be permitted to add that those who separate, or willingly remain separate, from her (their doctrinal differences being little or nothing), are needless guilty of the sin of schism.

We have said that heresy and schism are not inseparably connected we have heard of more than one bishop of our Church, in days past, who entertained very lax views as to the doctrines of grace (we do not mean the doctrines of Calvin)---of