interpreting them would be considered as "evading their sense," and defeating their object; the act of signature would evidently amount to a pledge on his part against that mode of interpretation. If, in virtue of a preceding signature, he were already exercising his ministry, his going on, without protest, to do so, after such warning, would virtually come to the same thing: it would be equivalent, as I said before, to a continued signature; unless, indeed, he could obtain from the imposers, express or implied dispensation for his own case, which would remove the sin, and if made public, would remove the scandal also.' -pp. 25, 26.

But Clerical subscription differs from Academical, in this important respect that it is not quite so easy to determine who are the real imposers of it, and what kind of declaration on their part is to be regarded as authoritative. Thus far, however, all Catholics are agreed that a synodical determination of the Bishops of the Church of England, with or without the superadded warrant of the State, (on whose prerogative in such causes I would refrain from here expressing any opinion,) would be endued with unquestionable authority, and it may seem at first sight as if nothing less could be so; as if the supposed limitation of meaning could only be enacted by another synod of London: just as in the University, it would require an act of the Senatus Academicus.

"But would it not be dangerous, under present circumstances, to press this rule very rigidly?-to insist on the literal meaning of the phrase animus imponentis, so as to demand, that the party modifying should be formally, as well as substantially, identical with the party enacting?

"Would it not be taking unfair advantage of the unhappy condition of our Church, and of the real or supposed inability of her Prelates to legislate for her, independently of those who happen to be ministers of State for the time?

It certainly seems as if, to a person really reverencing the Bishops as the Apostles' successors, there might be declarations of opinion not synodical, which would oblige him morally, if not legally as for example-if all our Prelates should severally declare, ex

cathedra, their adhesion to the view which has just been expressed at Oxford; by the Hebdomadal Board) or if not all, yet such a majority, as to leave no reasonable doubt what the decision of a Synod would be. In such a case would it not be incumbent on those who abide by the Catholic exposition, yet wished to retain their ministry, to protest in some such way, as that the very silence of our Bishops permitting them to go on, would amount to a virtual dispensation as regarded them?

More especially, if the Bishop, under whom we ourselves minister, did, in any way, lay on us his commands to the same effect: (as a public official declaration of his opinion would amount to a virtual command, and ought, I imagine, to be obeyed as such:) these are considerations, which would make our position a very delicate one indeed.'-pp. 26, 27, 28.

"It is very possible that I may overlook something which materially affects this question, and which may be plain enough to other persons; but it does seem to me, that in the case supposed, (of a public censure, and dispensation refused,) loyalty to the Church, her Creed, and her Order both, could only be maintained by one of the two following courses: either we should continue in our ministry, respectfully stating our case, and making appeal to the Metropolitan, or, as Archbishop Cranmer did, to the Synod, and that publicly- which course one should be slow to adopt, except in a matter which concerned the very principles of Faith, and of Church Communion; or else we should tender to our superiors our relinquishment of the post which we held under them in the Church, and retire either into some other diocese, or, if all our bishops were agreed, into Lay Communion.

"It seems on the whole, that.... this resource of Lay Communion, painful and trying as it must be in most cases, both in a temporal and spiritual sense, would be the only one properly open to us.' "

cles, on subscribing which they had been admitted to their cure, seemed to have been censured.' This, and more to the same purpose which follows, renders it necessary to state briefly the opinions which I entertain on this matter of subscribing.

"I consider that the Articles do contain a system of faith :' that system, according to which those who subscribe them are bound to regulate the tenor of their ministerial instructions.

"That any could hold a different opinion, I should never have conceived, if I had not read the following sentences. (In Dr. Pusey's Letter.) • There has been a recent tendency to set up the Reformers as the founders of a system of faith, and the authorised expositors of our belief. This is the real point at issue. Men must lean upon some anthority; they cannot guide themselves. The only real question is, from whom we shall learn the meaning of the Scriptures, whether from ancients or moderns. It will not, then, I conceive, be generally objected to any of us as a grave error, that we hold that the Articles are to be interpreted according to the teaching of the Church Catholic.'

"If I rightly apprehend the argument here, a clergyman may preach or teach what manifestly contradicts the 'true, usual, literal, meaning' of the Articles, if he thinks he can support his doctrine by the teaching of the Church Catholic.

This obliges me to say, that I understand the articles subscribed officially before me, as articles, not of the Universal Church of Christ, but of the United Church of England and Ireland, of which the subscriber is a member. They do not therefore admit of interpretation borrowed from any remote or undefined authority, professing to be that of a church calling itself, or imagined to be, the Church Catholic. But they contain the true doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God's word.' And we'receive them on the authority of our immediate mother.' We cannot consistently evade that obligation by appealing to the authority of the Jerusalem from above, who is the' common mother of us all.'

"Lest, therefore, silence should be misconstrued, I think it needful to say that in my judgment a clergyman would be departing from the sense of the Articles to which he subscribes, if he were to speak of THE CHURCH as 'a life-giving ordinance of divine appointment, one vast sacrament:' (British Critic, No. LIX., p. 26.) and not as 'a congregation of faithful men.'Art. xix.

"To speak of the Romish Church as having erred in matters of faith, so as to imply that it is no longer in error. Art. xix.-(Dr. Pusey to Dr. Jelf, p. 22.)

"To speak of Ecumenical Councils as infallible, because the term used in Art. xxi. is not Ecumenical, but general. (Ib. 24. Tract 90, p. 21.)

"To speak of Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, or extreme Unction, as in any sense to be counted sacraments of the Gospel.'—Art. xxv. (Ib. 32. Tract 43.)

"To speak of the consecrated elements as not remaining simply what they were before, and what to sight they seem.' Art. xviii.—(Ib. 44.)

"To speak of the celebration of the Lord's Supper, as a propitiatory sacrifice offered by the priest.-Art. xxxi. 'An offering for the quick and the dead for the remission of sin.' (Ib. 60. Tract 63.)

"To speak of Purgatory, Pardon, Adoration of images or relics, Invocation of Saints, as only condemned according to the Romish doctrine on these points, and otherwise admissible. -Art. xxii. (Tract 25.)

"To speak of Justification by Faith, as if baptism and newness of heart concurred towards our justification: or as if a number of means go to effect it.' Art. xi. (Tract 90, p. 13. Letter, 141.)

"To speak of Forgiveness, or works of mercy,' as 'availing to obtain remission of sins from God.'-Art xii. xiii. (Tract, p. 16. Letter, 145.)

"It does certainly require an elabo rate system of argument, such as is attempted in the writings referred to, in order to prove that persons holding the opinions here excepted against, are consistent members of the Church of England."

Before laying down the notes to Bishop Bird Sumner's Charge, we will quote another passage, in which his Lordshipanticipated the very remarks which we made last month, on a passage of Mr. Gladstone's; and as we had not then seen the Charge, we feel doubly assured that our statement was correct.

"It is well that those who are inclined to carry Church authority to a height for which there is no scriptural warrant, should be aware of the consequences which follow. And the principle I have here combated is thus

laid down in a recent publication, which may justly be expected to derive

extensive influence from the character of its author. (Mr. Gladstone's Church Principles.)

"It is in the Church that we have our religions life, derived to us not as individuals, but by virtue of incorporation into her body.' 'God has not chosen to establish bis relations with each of us on a distinct and individual footing, but has constituted us in a body to derive from its source of life a portion of its general life.'

"If we receive this doctrine, we must re-write the Scripture. For if there is a truth which is declared throughout the whole New Testament, it is, that God has established his relations with man through the medium of individual faith in Jesus Christ, and that we have our religious life by virtue of union with him, of which

union faith is the instrument."

"I examine the word of God, and there I find all its promises annexed to individual faith. Can I venture to turn aside from this, and claim the promises as a member of the Church? To look for religious life,' or peace with God, by virtue of incorporation into her body?'

66

Especially when the danger of such doctrines, when generally propounded, is neither slight nor doubtful. They have been again introduced, and maintained, and disseminated, in defiance of all the lessons of experience, and all all the warnings of example. Such a person as the author of Church Principles,' may be out of the reach of such danger, and even imagine that a high doctrine concerning the Church would have the opposite effect from obstructing our contemplation of the Redeemer : would bring men more palpably near near to Christ, and greatly promote their sacred and vital union with him. But it cannot do so, if the doctrine be not true and scriptural. And practically, it never has done so. It has done the very contrary. The majority of mankind will take occasion from such doctrines to satisfy themselves with the external relation, and substitute it for individual faith; as the annals of the Jewish and the Roman Catholic Churches too fatally demonstrate. Such is, in fact, the natural bias, which needs to be constantly opposed."

We have quoted largely from the Bishop of Chester's Charge, not only on account of the weight which his observations derive from his Lordship's station and charac

ter, but for the intrinsic value and importance of his arguments, more especially those which relate to the two chief objections which he so justly urges against the Tractarian doctrines, and which have been too much lost sight of in the tumult of discussion upon a variety of small details. It is only, or mainly, because the Tractarian system is so concatenated, that all its ceremonials, gestures, vestments, devices, windows, pillars, the location of fonts, and the form and azimuth of reading-desks, are meant to be emblematical, that we have ever devoted much time sometimes petty, matters; and or space to such secondary, and then only under protest, as not hinging the essentials of the great question upon points of minor

controversy.

We will now briefly advert to the other pamphlets on our list, several of which, from their utility, would deserve a fuller notice, if opportunity allowed, and we had not on many former occasions dwelt largely upon most of the topics.

The pamphlet on "Resignation and Lay Communion is important and seasonable; particularly as exhibiting Mr. Keble's view of the position and duties of the Tractarians, and applying his statements to the matter of the Oxford Poetry Professorship. We have already quoted largely from Mr. Keble's Letter to Mr. Justice Coleridge, as extracted in this pamphlet; but we had long ago seen Mr. Keble's letter, and made notes of its contents, although, for the reason before mentioned, we did not review it. As, however, the Letter, as we before remarked, was authentic, official, and "legally and morally" published by wide and highly influential circulation, lay and clerical, academical and episcopal, and without any notification of confi

dence or secresy, we think Mr. Bricknell was well warranted in referring to its contents, in his appeal to the Convocation. The Letter not being on sale, we will further apprize our readers of some of its specialities from our note-book. He says that there was prima facie need to reconcile the Anglican Articles with the "Catholic faith; that he read No. 90 "in proof, and strongly recommended its publication;" seeing that "Persons embued with the principles, and desirous of carrying out the views which they seemed to have learned from sacred antiquity, were in some points staggered by the tone and wording of the Articles." For example, remarks Mr. Keble, "To say that a man is justified by faith, might appear to contradict St. James, and to be at variance with the constant use of the terms justification, MERIT, and the like, in the writings of the Fathers." As to the alleged appearance of contradiction to St. James, if we are to rescind the eleventh Article, because it asserts that we are justified before God " only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings," we must also rescind the writings of St. Paul, and in truth the whole Bible: for even the Old Testament sacrifices were not rendered efficacious without faith. We are not careful to answer in this matter; for there is no real contradiction between St. Paul and St. James; and any "alleged" contradiction ought not to be reconciled by the rough expedient of suppressing one revealed truth because it is alleged to oppose another. But,forsooth, Mr. Keble and Tract 90 do not suppress the Article ; they merely explain it," so that the declaration that we are justified only for the merit "of our Lord," is made to agree with the doctrine alleged to be gathered

from certain Fathers, that we are justified by "merit" of our own. With this moderate "explanation" a Catholic Tractarian can sign it; that is, for "Only" read "Not only," but with something else, namely, human " merit ;" the very element which it was the direct object of the Article to exclude. But we thank Mr. Keble for at last admitting, what we have been called slanderers for intimating, that the offence of this Article in the sight of the Tractarians is, that it disclaims human "merit" as the ground of a sinner's justification. It has been asserted again and again that the Tractators do not regard human "merit" as the ground of justification; but we have now Professor Keble's authoritative appeal to the Fathers, in proof that in denying human merit as the cause of man's justification, the Article contradicts "Catholic doctrine."

He has many other objections to the Articles, to remove which required the arguments of No. 90. He cannot consent without No. 90 to the title of the sixth, which declares "the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation,” because "It might seem at first sight to dispense with the Church's office as a keeper of holy writ, and an enunciator of the rule of faith." Certainly to declare that there is but one rule, does look very like denying that there are two; aud to say that "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary for salvation," sounds like an assertion that the Church, though, in a just sense, it is both " a keeper of holy writ, and an enunciator of the rule of faith," is only to

keep" and "enunciate;" not to add to "holy writ," or to make another " rule of faith."

Again, "the description of the visible Church, Art. xix. if taken as a strict definition," demands, says Mr. Keble, the aid of No. 90