between them. Now, conceive, that both parties are equally illuminated in their rights and duties; and the question of delegation or representation would not arise. There would be such an agreement in opinion, and such a unity of mind and purpose, that one party would freely and fully confide in the spontaneous views and measures of the other. Even such is the Christian's liberty! The apostles imposed no mere delegation on their alleged successors, nor gave them any specific commission; but simply sanctioned them by permitting their association during their own life, who, thus sanctioned, continued to teach after the death of the first teachers, both trusting in the ONE SPIRIT, by whom alike the first and second, and all subsequent teachers have been, are, and shall be sent, to the end of time. To talk of " the representatives of the first representatives" is nonsense. It were as if one member of parliament represented his predecessor instead of his constituency! Whom, then does the Christian teacher represent? Whom, but the Christ? And what less is represented by the humblest, if sincere, Christian, that ever lived? That man is sent to be an apostle, in whom lies the capacity and the desire to teach, and for whom providence has prepared a field of labour.

Even under the law, all apostleship was not confided to the hereditary priesthood. Necessary to the Hebrew economy was a school of prophets, in addition. Nor were all prophets instructed in the same school-yet Amos has a place in the Scripture as well as Isaiah. So careful has Divine Providence been, in all its dispensations, to preclude the pious from trusting in mere historical sanctions, mere institutional arrangements. Nor has the Christian scheme been left destitute of defenders-nor the Church without its wardens and warners-among the laity of every age and clime. For the wise men and prophets of old, we have had our philosophers and poets. Had not Erasmus prepared the way for Luther? Was it not also entrusted to a Bacon and a Locke to carry out the science of induction concurrently with the principles of the reformation; and without which Protestantism had long, ere now, been a dead letter? And that science, being carried to a prejudicial extreme, have not a Kant, a Fichte, and a Coleridge, been raised up to counteract its exclusive influence by the opposition of an elevated philosophy; and this, too, in concurrence with a clerical attempt to restore ancient Unity-an attempt which must fail, unless it substantiate itself in the truths evolved by the new and improved transcendentalism that now pervades, in one shape or other, the walks of literature? In this philosophy, the Oxford divines will find that support which history cannot give them; and also the interpretation of the blind aim that is now to them as a dream that perplexes them and their opponents, because understood not by either.

In literature we dare not substitute Learning for Inspiration, neither must we in the Church. But the scheme of the Orielites goes to shut out inspiration altogether, granting it to the first apostles only, and conveying the effects of it, by some means of magical transmission, to the evil and the good, by the simple laying on of hands. It is a monstrous hypothesis-a limitation of the Divine influence, for which there is no authority either in Scripture or reason.

Institutions can be none other than partial, incomplete, and temporary-but the basis of all is the same-one, perfect and permanent. We are of St. John's mind on these subjects. In the Beginning was the Word, in whom was Life, and the Life was the Light of Men. Yet, albeit this veritable Light is even that which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, we hold with the Evangelist, that in many men it shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. But to those who have and perceive this Light, power is given, to become the sons of God-nay, to such "Scripture that cannot be broken" has even ascribed a higher title, "calling them gods, unto whom the WORD of GOD came." By such sons of God-nay, even by such gods-at sundry times, and in divers manners and places-GoD spake from the earliest periods until the last days, when he spake unto us by THE SON, whom he hath appointed heir of all things; and in, and by whom also, he constituted the ages. By men like these, as both sacred and profane writ agree in declaring, the institutions of Religion and Government, of Church and State, were founded.

a

It was not by means of a written book, nor by any process of natural science (of which the earliest books contain no traces,) that the Word of God came to these founders of temples and cities, but by immediate inspiration of the Spirit of God; namely, by the revelation of that light which is in all men but which in few shines in light, though it may in every man; and the perception of which, makes a rightful legislator of him who perceives it. For its first revelation is the conscience, or self-intelligence, as the law coeval with being, whence that power has always and everywhere been recognised as the voice of God-the Divine principle in the heart of man: and is even that Spirit in and to the will, the renewal of which is the regeneration of man. That voice or principle, developed according to the measure of human and individual capacity, becomes the reason, the great fontal power of ideas, which are the correlatives of laws, whether moral or natural; moral laws being only the manners, modes, or forms of spiritual developement, and natural laws but the application of such to the material universe, as the rules for judging of phenomena in the integrity of their manifestation.

Thus accomplished with legislative power, and invested with authority over the body and the external world, man proceeds to govern rude nature in his flesh and in the world. From universal principles and ideas, which, as Coleridge remarks, "are not so properly said to be confirmed by reason as to be reason itself;" all rules and prescripts of action, whether private or public, directly and visibly flow. "Every principle," says the same authority, "is actualized by an idea; and every idea is living, productive, partaketh of infinity; and (as Bacon has sublimely observed) containeth an endless power of semination. Hence it is, that science which consists wholly in ideas and principles is power."

Again; "The first man, on whom the light of an Idea dawned, did in that same moment receive the spirit and credentials of a lawgiver; and as long as man shall exist, so long will the possession of

that antecedent knowledge (the maker and master of all profitable experience) which exists only in the power of an Idea, be the one lawful qualification of all dominion in the world of the senses." Again: "The Old Testament teaches the elements of political science in the same sense in which Euclid teaches the elements of the science of geometry, only with one difference arising from the diversity of the subject. With one difference only, but that one how momentous! All other sciences are confined to abstractions, unless when the term science is used in an improper and flattering sense. Thus we may speak without boast of natural history; but we have not yet attained to a science of nature. The Bible alone contains a science of realities; and therefore each of its elements is at the same time a living germ, in which the present involves the future; and in the finite the infinite exists potentially. That hidden mystery in every the minutest form of existence, which, contemplated under the relations of time presents itself to the understanding retrospectively, as an infinite ascent of causes, and prospectively as an interminable progression of effects;-that which, contemplated in space, is beholden intuitively as a law of action and reaction, continuous and extending beyond all bound: this same mystery freed from the phenomena of time and space, and seen in the depth of real being, reveals itself to pure reason as the actual immanence or in-being of all in each. Are we struck with admiration at beholding the cope of heaven imaged in a dew drop? The least of the animalcula to which that drop would be an ocean, contains in itself an infinite problem, of which God omnipresent is the only solution. The slave of custom is roused by the rare and the accidental alone; but the axioms of the unthinking are to the philosopher the deepest problems, as being the nearest to the mysterious root, and partaking at once of its darkness and its pregnancy."

But enough of citation, both concerning the legislative power divinely invested in man, and the record of its exercise in the earliest ages, among a chosen people. Enough of both has been given to suggest to the philosophical mind, how that every form of institution is an image of such ideas and principles; and, that man, without such, could have had no science of government: indeed, neither science nor government at all. Symbols of such, we therefore recognise in all institutions of society-in all the establishments of church and state-and are careful to preserve them intact and sacred, even while suggesting the ideal standards in whose radiance and majesty they look pale and mean. Nevertheless, never shall we less esteem of them, than as the emblems of majesty and power; and of these the sacerdotal and the aristocratic, as enshrining the holiest and the best, shall receive from us marked reverence and studious veneration.

What then? Shall we, therefore, substitute these images for the ideas? God forbid! We repeat, God, who trusted not the Jewish

In-being is the word chosen by Bishop Sherlock to express this sense. tract on the Athanasian Creed, 1827.

N. S.-VOL. I.

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See his

priesthood, but set over them the watch and ward of his specially sent prophets, both in school and out of school-both taught and untaught even that all-wise God, in his infinite mercy, forbid such idolatry! Should not the priesthood of every age study the example of Aaron? A political priest, though distinguished by an immediate divine call, what were his failings-his errors? How worse than his, the follies and vices of his successors? In them the principle of historical succession was thoroughly carried out, and in the hereditary form. But in the christian system that was changed for a spiritual filiation demonstrated in a spiritual call.

We have seen that Hooker demanded for the special sending the evidence of sensuous miracles, which we were bold enough to supersede by higher wonders. The Oxford tract-writers are bolder still-they get rid of the miraculous altogether. "As miracles," say they, "have long ago come to an end, there must be some other way for a man to prove his right to be a minister of religion."* And what does the reader think is this other way? "A regular call and ordination by those who have succeeded to the apostles."!! And thus to the bishops, these divines give every thing-the call as well as the ordination! God has so parted with his rights to these successors of the apostles, that he has left to himself nothing-not even the privilege which he claimed and exercised by miraculous interposition in the apostolic age, that of calling the candidate whom the apostles should ordain. To their successors, therefore, according to this assumption, God has rendered greater power than ever the apostles had-and all, forsooth, because the age of miracles is past! What other proof have we of this fact than that the lower types have been suspended in the higher reality? And what is this proof but an evidence that we live in an age when greater wonders than those of old are daily done? Who shall then say that the age of miracles is past? Moreover, where is the record in corroboration of the dogma of these Oxford divines, that to the successors of the apostles has been granted a power of calling, not possessed by the apostles themselves? Surely nothing less than a miracle must be vouched by them in favour of this grant-the last and greatest miracle-which, being accomplished, the divine function of performing miracles might well cease for aye; as in that case all the privileges of Deity would have been therewith made over to the Anglican priesthood in fee-simple for ever.

Why, this is more than the Romish priesthood ever claimed-but then to be sure, the Church of Rome acknowledges still the possibility of miracles, and the perpetual presence of the Spirit in the Church;both of which hypotheses are precluded by this argument of the Orielite Divines! Verily, a pious critic, eaten up with zeal for the Lord of Hosts. might here exclaim, "Ye blaspheme, seeing that ye first make yourselves equal with God; and then proceed to dethrone him, even in his very heavens, which in their seven-fold perfection, are none other than the Church of the Holy One!"

Our tract-writers, however, are aware that this is dangerous ground:

No, 15, p, 2-see also No, 24,

-an usurpation of the privileges of God naturally has the effect of invalidating their own. An objection is brought, they tell us, that as the apostolic authority is grounded in Scripture upon the possession of miraculous powers, it necessarily ceased when those powers were withheld. Can the tract writers, we demand, possibly be satisfied with the manner in which they have met this objection? They respond, that "there is no essential difference between the apostolic age and our own, as to the relation in which God's ministers and his people stand to each other." "I do not say," writes one of them, "that the ministers of His word in these days can feel as sure as the apostles could, that in the commandments which they give, they have the SPIRIT of GOD: very far from it. But I do say, that neither can the people feel sure as in those days of miraculous gifts, that they have the SPIRIT of GOD with them, and thus the relation between the two parties remains unaltered.”*

Reader! can you believe your eyes? This and none other is the answer to the fatal objection above cited-an answer which divests both priest and congregation of God's Spirit-an answer which acknowledges in express terms, that the Church which these divines seek to establish, is one that shall have the Form of Godliness, but not the Power thereof! Astonishing blindness, but doubtless judicial.

True enough it is that, as they say, the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit were not confined to the appointed Teachers of the Church, but were shed abroad upon the congregation at large, upon the young and old alike, upon the servants, upon the hand-maidens-and true enough it is that if denied to the taught, they must be denied to the teachers too. O pregnant conclusion! And do these divines really believe that the Form without the Power of Godliness is all that is needed for or will be granted to these last days? We wonder not at Irvingism and fanaticism of all kinds spreading, while such are the opinions promulgated by Oxford Doctors of Divinity, The wildest enthusiasm were scarcely a counterpoise to such heartless, soulless, spiritless dogmatism-which, if encouraged will provoke the other as its inevitable opposite.

That both extremes may be seasonably averted, we take advantage of our peculiar position to effect a philosophical mediation. That which was in the beginning is now and ever shall be the Word of God endureth for ever. The light that once lighted every man that came into the world, is now the light that still lighteth and shall light every man that cometh and shall come into the world. Every truth is eternal-and this is a truth revealed by the Eternal!-a permanent miracle identified with the intelligence of the human being-witnessing in, and to the conscience of every Christian, that he is Christ's representative, whether he be priest or layman, and, as such, an apostle, whenever the voice of God in his conscience shall call upon him to go forth and preach in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost! It is amusing to read in one page of the tracts before us, that the apostles "were like Christ in their works, because Christ was a witness of the Father, and they were witnesses of Christ." And in the next page, that the same apostles "did not leave the world without appointing

No. 24. p. 9-10.

No. 10, p. 1.

No. 10, p. 2.