fessing, thus or thus, in any question affecting its credit and welfare. As a layman, I have no secular interests at stake in ecclesiastical questions. I have nothing but truth to care for. And, moreover, my actual connexion, by education, and otherwise, with dissenters, may be accepted as giving to my decisive opinion in favour of the established church, the value, whether more or less, that may attach to principles that have resulted altogether from serious reflection. And I will here take leave to remind you, that, in declaring myself some years ago on this side, I did so with a freedom of remark, in regard to the church, which precluded my winning any favour from its stanch adherents, or public champions. In fact, and I hope you will allow me on this occasion to make the profession, my convictions, on this subject, have been so powerful and so serious, as to lead me to put out of view every personal and secondary consideration.

None will imagine, my dear sir, that, in addressing these pages to you, I have, in any way, compromised your personal or profes

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sional character, or involved you in any sort of responsibility, in regard to what they may contain. All the burden rests on my own shoulders. You are clear; and while I am much gratified in being able to refer to the expressions with which, from time to time, you have honoured me, of your Christian regard and friendship, I am anxious to preclude the supposition that you have done more than generally approve of my purpose to engage in the present discussion, and to express your confidence in the soundness of my principles and the rectitude of my inten

tions.

It now only remains for me to disclaim every hostile or acrimonious feeling towards the accomplished, and, I have no doubt, thoroughly sincere writers of the Tracts for the Times. If compelled to range myself among their opponents, I owe them no grudge; and am very ready to admit the importance of the services they have rendered to the church, in reviving some hitherto slighted principles; and particularly, in bearing a testimony, with great ability, against modern rationalism. I

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admire, moreover, and would fain imitate, the mild and Christian temper in which, for the most part, they write; and should deeply regret the inadvertence, should it appear that, instance, I have allowed an expression to escape me, that might seem to carry an unpleasant and personal meaning, or to be more pungent than the serious import of the argument would have demanded.

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It is true that I have a deep impression of the mischiefs and dangers attending, or likely to arise from, the diffusion of the principles which these divines are so zealously, and, as it appears, so successfully advocating; and this conviction must be held to justify the most determined style of opposition. In this, however, there is no breach of Christian charity. The writers must be accounted sincere and devout, although it should appear that they will have involved the church and the country in the most serious dangers. The spread of these doctrines is, in fact, now having the effect of rendering all other distinctions obsolete, and of severing the religious community into two portions, fundamentally

and vehemently opposed one to the other. Soon there will be no middle ground left; and every man, and especially every clergyman, will be compelled to make his choice between the two. What practical decision can be more momentous, or demand more deliberation and impartial research?

I indulge the hope, then, my dear sir, that I shall be able to afford some aid to those, especially among the younger clergy, who may actually be halting between the two opinions; and I well know that, while giving myself to my laborious task, I shall have the benefit of your cordial good wishes and prayers that that aid and blessing may be afforded me, apart from which, no endeavours can be fruitful of good.

It is, my dear sir, with every sentiment of respect and esteem, that I subscribe myself

yours,

STANFORD RIVERS,

Feb. 20,

1839.

THE AUTHOR.

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY,

&c. &c.

THE great questions agitated but not determined three hundred years ago, are now coming on to be discussed, and under circumstances as auspicious altogether as they were lately unexpected. The reproach of the reformation, that it did not fully ascertain its own principles, as well as the opprobrium of the church in later times, that little or nothing has been amended since Luther, Cranmer, and Knox went to their rest, are now, at last, very likely to be removed.

While many are looking with terror at the unchecked spread of Romanism around the English church, and with alarm at the prevalence of opinions within its most sacred precincts which apparently contravene the labours of the reformers, there is, as I think, room to admit a very different feeling in relation to these signs of the times, I mean a feeling of exhilaration and hope as to the probable, and almost inevitable result, as well of the busy zeal of the Romish clergy as of the conscientious labours of the authors and favourers of the "Tracts for the Times." I must profess to regard the former, and still more decidedly the latter of these features of our religious condition, when looked at in their remoter; though not distant tendencies, as indicative of good, and such as should awaken to a new activity all who are pi