personal hostility or Academical discontent. Those who then acted a most painful and trying part, certainly took every means in their power to guard against such a misconception. And again, speaking for myself, I am sure that the language I have used in the British Critic towards Mr. John Mill, whom his writings have compelled me to charge with far worse unbelief than Unitarianism, may shew that I have no desire to join in an indiscriminating and fanatical outcry. But surely it is one thing to make every allowance for individuals, under the fearful eclipse which the truth now suffers, or even to be ready and anxious in displaying all courtesy and considerateness in our private demeanour; and quite a different, or rather a very contrary thing, to allow them to forget that we consider the matter at issue between us as infinitely momentous, or to give them public honour in an institution founded on Christian belief. The very contrary thing, I say; for it is precisely that feeling of personal considerateness and tenderness inclining us to the first, which would also at once forbid the last. They may be wholly blameless in their unbelief; it is impossible to form even a guess whether they are not so; but we cannot be blameless, if, seeing the truth, we take one single step which may lessen their sense of the importance of seeking it."

Indifference then to the very central Verity of the Gospel being prevalent among us, to the fearful extent I have endeavoured to describe, we cannot wonder, however keenly we may mourn, at the decline and fall of dogmatic theology. When the faith itself becomes again precious in our eyes, so also will that superhuman science, which alone can defend and secure it. As it is, the great body of 'high Churchmen' seem hardly more alive to its preeminent dignity than others. For example, Mr. Newman's translation and notes on St. Athanasius' doctrinal treatises, have hardly excited the least sensation; though that work (to say nothing more) is certainly

uSeeking it: I mean, of course, not by Scripture exegesis or free inquiry, but by more earnestly acting on their existing principles; by self-discipline, much prayer, devotional reading of Scripture and studying the life and the belief of holy

men.

the most remarkable accession to dogmatic theology that has been made within our memory, and is perhaps the greatest of all his works. Nay, and the very authorized education for Orders seems to consist far more (a thing that would have been thought incredible in other ages) in the exegetical interpretation of Scripture, or else the discussion of such merely ecclesiastical subjects as episcopal jurisdiction and the validity of lay Baptism,-than in the scientific analysis and exposition of those great Mysteries, the Trinity and the Incarnation; those Mysteries, the science of which has ever been considered in the Church the one fit and adequate object for the Christian intellect, as the thought of them is the life and happiness of the Christian soul. All our attention seems directed to the outworks; while we leave the world to wonder, what can be the cause of that jealous care with which we labour to preserve them, when we ourselves speak so little, and seem to think so little, of the very treasure which they were given to defend. Dr. Wordsworth, as one symptom of this, publishes a volume, (Theophilus Anglicanus,)' the occasion and object of which,' so his preface tells us, 'is to supply a book suited to the purpose of catechizing scholars in the highest class of a Grammar School' such as Harrow. The whole work is, if I may use such a phrase, ecclesiastical: no methodical teaching about-sin, original and actual; the efficacy of prayer; the gift of grace; the union of the Divine and Human natures in our Blessed Lord; the mysterious Trinity in Unity; or whatever else most closely concerns the inward life; but all his energy is directed to such matters, as 'lawful ministry,' 'uninterrupted succession,' 'Church and State;' topics in themselves quite essential to be considered in due time and place, but which cannot surely be made the prominent features of any exhibition of Christianity, 'without causing our notions of religious faith and precept to be stiff, barren, and most distressingly formal.'

I cannot be supposed to mean any thing disrespectful to Dr. Wordsworth personally; for I am merely citing this work as an example, ready at hand, of a method of procedure, which seems even on the increase among us, as high-church'

principles advance. And what can be the result of all this in our pulpits and general teaching, except that, according to a quotation I lately cited from the Christian Remembrancer, doctrines are held by our flocks, according to the accident of their locality and opportunities, irreconcilably discordant from each other on matters which are the most intimately bound up with the life of the soul: nay, on all matters, except only our Church's immaculate purity and Rome's incurable corruptions. And hence it further follows, by necessary consequence, as I said in the second chapter, that to a miserable extent the people fall into a habit of hearing religious words without attaching to them any definite meaning, and the voice of the preacher becomes to them almost as 'sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.'

Such being the practical disbelief of English Churchmen in the truth, which they consider themselves to prize beyond all others, it will not astonish us that in particulars, which they themselves consider less important, as till greater indifference exists. The doctrine, which may be perhaps considered to come nearest in practical moment to that which we have been discussing, is the Indwelling of the Holy Ghost. This is almost in terms denied by numbers, who preeminently claim the character of spiritual Christians; they plainly profess, that our works done under the Gospel are, as a matter of doctrine, 'filthy rags:' or in other words, are not intrinsically acceptable to God. Since then they cannot believe that the Holy Ghost is the Agent of these works, they are led to confine his office to the inspiration of good desires; and since it is certain that Christians have the Holy Ghost in some distinct sense from heathens, the more clear-sighted and consecutive are led on to Luther's shocking sentiment, that the heathens had no good desires. So few are sometimes the steps, which lead, from abstract heresy, to practical paradoxes the most repulsive and demoralizing. Yet even of those among us who are not avowedly infected with this heresy, numbers are so far at least tainted as to shrink from calling it heresy; or, in other words, to be unconscious of its utter irreconcilableness with the most essential principles of the Gospel. In like manner,

a doctrine which, as belonging to natural religion, is even more primary than the most sacred of Revelation, I allude to future judgment according to works, is formally repudiated as antichristian by multitudes of the same class; and even those who do not proceed to such utterly fanatical and immoral lengths, are sometimes slow, in positively affirming that our future reward is proportioned to our works done in the Holy Ghost on earth; and still oftener slow, in affixing the brand of heresy on the error which denies this.

We cannot wonder then that a dimness of spiritual vision, which could not beforehand have been thought possible in ordinarily serious Christians, does in fact characterise great part of the more religious among ourselves. Nothing, e.g., is more common, in attacking Roman Catholics, than to say that Purgatory (as it is more ordinarily received among them) is a frightfully cruel doctrine, because it speaks of purgatorial flames as being equal in intensity to those of Hell. Roman Catholics answer, that souls in purgatory preserve not faith only and hope, but even the love of God; and that this makes the widest possible difference between the two cases. But such a reply is continually treated as a 'hair-splitting' subterfuge, a mere evasion. Yet St. Alphonsus, like other spiritual writers, not once only, but repeatedly expresses the sentiment, that where love of God exists, there must be really happiness, whatever the accompanying pain; and that where it is absent, there must be misery, whatever the accompanying pleasure. The distinction then between having and not having the habit of love, is not merely not unimportant, but beyond all others important; yet Protestants (even some who appear not destitute of religious seriousness) continually speak, as though the very idea of the happiness caused by this habit were a stranger to their mind. What I have said will probably recall to the reader's mind a number of similar instances, which are perhaps more often met in this particular controversy than in any other; but which it is not necessary to specify.

Lastly, when a Church not only omits to take the necessary means for teaching othodoxy, but manifestly and in

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the face of day tolerates heterodoxy, a still graver matter is suggested for our consideration. It is a notorious fact that from the Reformation downwards three parties have, in varying measures, divided among them the English Church; the high-church,' the evangelical,' the latitudinarian :' and all have received practical toleration. Those who graft the Gospel on natural religion,-those who have devised or inherited a Gospel which contradicts natural religion,—and those who deny that there is any one assemblage of doctrines which possesses an exclusive right to be called the Gospel,-all .these it has been sometimes, in the blindness of our arrogance, made a matter of boast that the English Church includes within her pale. And to go to other controverted questions, (not so vitally important indeed as these, but still of exceeding importance,) the experience of the last few months shews, that a public denial of Sacramental grace, and an assertion of the right possessed by each man to draw his faith for himself from Scripture, may be publicly and formally put forward by a number of her ministers, with no censure from ecclesiastical authority. The extracts again, which I made from Archbishop Whately, have received no formal censure or disavowal; nay, a writer, whom the present Bishop of London characterises as a Socinian, died a Bishop of our Church. A Society so ordered, may be still, by God's inscrutable mercy, a channel of Divine grace, as our Church is; but it is literally unmeaning to speak of it as a Dispenser or Witness of religious Truth. We cannot learn doctrine from the English Church, if we would; for she teaches no uniform doctrine to be learned.

6. So powerless has our Church been to train her children in these most essential of all requisites, an obedient life and an orthodox faith; it is no matter of wonder then that we see among us so few who exemplify, nay, who possess the power of appreciating, the true Catholic character. For we

Bishop Hoadley. The Bishop of London compares with this case that of Pope Leo X., whom he represents to have been an infidel. Waiving the historical controversy, such an opinion could not be based on his writings or on any overt act, but only on surmises and rumours, well or ill-founded. But this makes the whole difference between cases which a Church can notice and those which it cannot. Bishop Hoadley's heretical opinions were plainly avowed, and yet not censured.