persons to take their place; and these persons represent them, and may be considered with reference to us, as if they were the apostles." Such apostles as we contemplate, whether of ancient or modern times, represent Christ and Christ only, directly and immediately, his life being in them as the light of their life, shining, however, not in darkness, but in glory. Such an apostle will not deny to himself or others the presence of God's Spirit, but will humbly and piously acknowledge its perpetual influence, as the source of every moral act, the fountain of a priori reasoning, the giver of every good and genial gift, the parent in the soul of man of all wisdom and knowledge, the interpreter of dark sayings in the volume of the Book, and the veritable Word of God which maketh them to whom it comes sons of God, nay, gods-“at all times and in all places."

How much more consonant with reason, then, is such an interpreter of the Bible, than that proposed by the Protestant divines.-Their outcry, however, for the necessity of an interpreter is even louder than the Church of Rome; and their depreciation of the Holy Scriptures, more unequivocal than any yet ventured upon by infidels themselves. Were not, indeed, our Magazine, from its philosophical character, especially addressed ad clerum, we should scarcely dare hazard the insertion of passages in proof. As it is, we may be privileged to a step that could scarcely be permitted to a publication designed for the less instructed reader.

Our summary must be short. The Godhead of the Holy Ghost is nowhere literally stated in Scripture, yet is taught by the Church. Baptism, though often mentioned in the epistles, and its spiritual benefits, yet its peculiarity as the one plenary remission of sin is not insisted upon with frequency and earnestness-chiefly, in one or two passages of one epistle, and there obscurely-(in Hebrews vi. and x.) The doctrine of absolution is made to rest on but one or two texts (in Matt. xvi. and John xx.) with little or no practical exemplification of it in the epistles, where it was to be expected.-The Apostles are not continually urging their converts to rid themselves of sin after baptism, as best they can by penance, confession, absolution, satisfaction. Christ's ministers are no-where called priests, or at most, in one or two obscure passages, (as in Rom. xv.) The Lord's supper is not expressly said to be a sacrifice. The Lord's table is called an altar but once or twice (Matt. v. and Heb. xiii.) even granting these passages to refer to it. The consecration of the elements is expressly mentioned only in one passage (1. Cor. x.) in addition to our Lord's original institution of them. Only once or twice express mention is made at all of the Lord's supper, all through the New Testament, and where there is, chiefly in the same epistle. Very little is said about ordination-about the appointment of succession of ministers-about the visible Church (1 Tim. iii. 15.)-only one or two passages on the duty of fasting. In fine, as to all these dogmas, every one must allow that there is next to nothing on the surface of scripture, and very little even under the surface of a satisfactory character. Scripture, in all these respects, being deficient, the authority of the Church comes in as supplementary.

To exalt this supplementary authority is it necessary to depreciate so

much the original record? It seems that the delinquency of the Bible is augmented by the fact, that it also contains texts actually inconsistent with the system supported by the said supplementary authority, "For example, what can be stronger against the sanctity of particular places, nay of any institutions, persons, or rites, than our Lord's declaration, that God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth? or against the Eucharistic sacrifice, than St. Paul's contrast in Heb. x. between the Jewish sacrifices and the one Christian atonement? or can baptism really have the gifts which are attributed to it in the Catholic or Church system, considering how St. Paul says, that all rites are done away, and that faith is all in all?" Of course in all these cases the Bible is wrong-and particular Church authority right! We shall see- -See?-why is not the case given up when its advocates resort to the argumentum ad hominem, appealing to the passions and prejudices of Churchmen, not their reason. If we are to believe the Bible, religion is simply mental and moral, not ceremonial and ritual— nay, "it is plain that all external religion is not only not imperative under the Gospel, but forbidden." We confess that we apprehend no terrors-even in such a conclusion-but we know it to be over stated. What is forbidden is not external religion-but a religion exclusively external and not at all internal, such a religion as the Oxford Divines (?) advocate. We must also give up not the Sabbath only, it seems, but the Lord's Day also, there being nothing on the surface of Scripture to prove, that the sacredness conferred in the beginning on the seventh day now by transference attaches to the first. This is also over stated.

Our space will not permit us to pursue the subject before us in the elaborate detail in which the lectures on which we are animadverting present it. Never, perhaps, was the argument more powerfully sifted than in this pamphlet-(Tract No. 85)-shewing, in fine, that the authority and creed of the Church and canon of Scripture stand or fall together. Nothing could justify, indeed, the extreme arguments here taken, but the position that unless the two first are defended, the last must fall. "Sectaries," says the writer, "commonly give up the Church's doctrines, and go by the Church's Bible; but if the doctrines cannot be proved true, neither can the Bible; they stand or fall together. If we begin we must soon make an end." Again. "The prayer-book rests upon the Bible, and the Bible rests on testimony; the Church, on doctrines which are to be gathered from Scripture, and the books of Scripture which make up the Bible are to be gathered from history; and further, those doctrines might have been more clearly stated in the Bible, and the books of the Bible more clearly witnessed by antiquity." Again: "The canon of Scripture rests on no other foundation than the Catholic doctrines. Those who dispute the latter should, if they were consistent,-will, when they learn to be consistent,—dispute the former; in both cases, we believe, mainly, because the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries unanimously believed; and we have at this moment to defend our belief in the Catholic doctrines, merely, because they come first, are the first objects of attack; and if we were not defending our belief in them, we should, at this very time, be defending our belief in the canon."

With this object in view, and under this impression, the writer argues

with great logical exactness, that there are no difficulties in the creed of the Church which are not to be found equally in the canon of Scripture. Thus he tells us, that, if we are compelled to allow that the fathers are credulous and childishly superstitious, for recording certain narratives, we must next surrrender the gospel accounts of demoniac-possession-together with the Pythoness of the Acts-also, the Pauline assertion, as to the sacrifice to devils, and fellowship with devils; and all references to the mysterious interference of evil spirits in human affairs. Should we indulge in a laugh at the legends of the middle ages-or assume for a moment that any one of them is intrinsically incredible, and therefore the necessity of examining into evidence is superseded-we must also scoff at the account of the serpent speaking to Eve, or its being inhabited by an evil spirit; of the devils being sent into the swine; of Balaam's ass speaking; of the Holy Ghost appearing in a bodily shape, and that apparently the shape of an irrational animal, a dove, as fanciful and extravagant. Nay, the phrase, “Lamb of God," is ludicrous and grote que in the tract writer's estimation. There is something repugnant, he asserts, to our present habits of mind in calling again and again our Saviour by the name of a brute animal. Unless we were used to it, he continues, "I conceive it would hurt and offend us much, to read of "glory and honour" being ascribed to Him that sitteth upon the Throne and to the Lamb, as being a sort of idolatry, or at least an unadvised way of speaking. It seems to do too much honour to an inferior creature, and to dishonour Christ. You will see this, by trying to substitute any other animal however mild and gentle." A little after, he adds, that "the ancients formed an acrostic upon our Lord's Greek title, as the Son of God, the SAVIOUR of men, and in consequence called him from the first letters, ixous, or fish." Hear how a late English writer speaks of it. "This contemptible and disgusting quibble originated in certain verses of one of the pseudo-sibyls..... I know of no figure which so revoltingly degrades the person of the SON OF GOD."* Such is the nature of the comment made in the further East on the sacred image of the Lamb. The two objectors may settle it with each other."

In like manner, the tract-writer proceeds to argue on the strangeness of the brute creation being symbolically used in connexion with God's spiritual and heavenly kingdom. The four beasts of the Apocalypse-the lion, calf, man, and eagle, the cherubim of the Jewish law-the representation of angels under brute images, are quite as odd and out-of-theway to him, as the cleansing of sin by the water of baptism, the eating of Christ's body in consecrated bread, the use of oil for spiritual purposes, or in an English coronation; and such like doctrines of the Church not to be primarily derived from the letter of the word, or on the surface of the text. Do we dispute the use of any outward sign, or that water applied to the body really is God's instrument in cleansing the soul from sin?---then away go, at once, the credibility of the angel giving the pool at Bethesda a miraculous power-of Naaman bathing seven times in the Jordan-of the tree which Moses cast into the waters to sweeten them -of Elisha's throwing meal into the pot of poisonous herbs-and of our Saviour's breathing, making clay, and the like. "Unless we were used

* Osburn on the Early Fathers, p. 85.

to the sacraments we should be objecting, not only to the notion of their conveying virtue, but to their observance altogether, viewed as mere badges and memorials. They would be called Eastern, suited to a people of warm imagination, suited to the religion of other times, but too symbolical, poetical, or (as some might presume to say) theatrical for us; that there was something far more plain, solid, sensible, practical, and edifying, in a sermon or an open profession or a prayer."

But what if we question that the hands of bishop or priest "impart" a power, a grace, a privilege-or object to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist or "deny that the Blessed Virgin, whom all but heretics, have ever called the Mother of God, was most holy in soul and body, from her ineffable proximity to God?" O then we must decidedly object to the accounts of virtue going out of our Lord, and that, in the case of the woman with the issue of blood, as it were by a natural law, without a distinct application on his part-of all who touched the hem of his garment being made whole; and further of handkerchiefs and aprons being impregnated with healing virtue by touching St. Paul's body-and of St. Peter's shadow being earnestly sought out; or consider the whole as mythi.

And what if we should dispute the credibility of some of the martyrologies, or call some of the doctrinal interpretations of some of the fathers obscure and fanciful? Why, then we must likewise stumble greatly at the accounts of our Saviour's bidding St. Peter catch a fish in order to find money in it, to pay tribute with-of the blood and water that issued from our Saviour's side, particularly taken with the remarkable comment upon it in St. Jude's epistle-of the occurrence mentioned by St. John xii. 28, 29,-of the deluge, the ark and its inhabitants of Jonah and the whale-and of Elisha and the axe-head, 2 Kings vi. 1-7.

"I conceive," continues the writer, "that, under the same circumstances, men will begin to be offended at the passage in the Revelations which speaks of the "number of the beast." Indeed, it is probable that they will reject the Book of Revelations altogether, not sympathising in the severe tone of doctrine which runs through it. Again, there is something very surprising in the importance attached to the Name of God and Christ in Scripture. The name of Jesus is said to work cures and frighten away devils. I anticipate that this doctrine will become a stone of stumbling to those who set themselves to enquire into the trustworthiness of the separate parts of Scripture. For instance, the narrative of St. Peter's cure of the impotent man in the early chapters of the Acts:-First, 'Silver and gold,' he says, 'have I none; but such as I have, give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.' Then, "And His name, through faith in His name, hath made this man strong." Then the question, By what power, or by what name, have ye done this?' Then the answer, By the Name of JESUS CHRIST of Nazareth... even by it doth this man now stand here before you, whole. . . . There is none other Name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.' Then the threat, that the apostles should not speak at all, nor teach in the Name of JESUS.' Lastly, their prayer that God would grant that signs and wonders might be done by the Name of his holy Child, Jesus.' In connexion with which must be considered St. Paul's declaration, that at the Name of JESUS every knee should bow!' Again,-I conceive that the circumstances of the visitation of the

* Acts, iii. iv. Phil. ii. 10.

Blessed Virgin to Elizabeth would startle us considerably, if we lost our faith in Scripture. Again,—can we doubt but that the account of CHRIST's ascending into heaven will not be received by the science of this age, when it is carefully considered what is implied in it: Where is heaven? Beyond all the stars? If so, it would take years for any natural body to get there. We say, that with God all things are possible. But this age, wise in its own eyes, has already decided the contrary, in maintaining, as it does, that he who virtually annihilated the distance between earth and heaven on his Son's ascension, cannot annihilate it in the celebration of the Holy Communion, so as to make us present with Him, though he be on God's right hand in heaven."

We have thought fit to quote the foregoing passage in extenso; as we would not take the responsibility of a single statement in it. So much for the equality of difficulties on the part of the canon and the creed,

As the records of revelation are to be defended according to these divines, in the defence of clerical dogmas, we will not now engage in the reconciliation of the apparent contradictions in Holy Writ itself; rather we are concerned in the seeming anomalies that exist between Holy Writ and more Holy Church. We shall arrange these in parallel columns-premising that the statements and assumptions on both sides are the property of the tract writers, not ours--w s--whatever logical use we may make of them afterwards.

Doctrine of the Bible.

There is no system in the New Testament. The word Trinity is not in Scripture. The verses of the Athanasian Creed are not distinctly set down in Scripture; nor particular portions of the doctrine,- such as, that Christ is equal to the Father, that the Holy Ghost is God, or that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father and the Son.

When we turn to Scripture, we see much, indeed, of certain gifts; we read much of what Christ has done for us, by atoning for our sins, and much of what he does in us; that is, much about holiness, faith, peace, love, joy, hope, and obedience; but of those intermediate portions of the revelation coming between Him and us, of which the Church speaks, we read very little. Passages, indeed, are pointed out to us as if containing notices of them but they are, in our judgment, singularly deficient and unsatisfactory; and that, either because the meaning assigned to them is not obvious and natural, but (as we think) strained, unexpected, recondite, and, at best, possible, or because they are conceived in such plain, unpretending words, that we cannot imagine the writers meant to say any great thing in introducing

Doctrine of the Church.

There is a system in the Church. The word Trinity is in the Prayerbook; so is the Athanasian creed, and the entire doctrine on the subject.

We are told in the Prayer-book of a certain large and influential portion of doctrine, as constituting one great part of the Christian revelation; that is, of sacraments, of ministers, of rites, of observances; we are told that these are the appointed means through which Christ's gifts are conveyed to

us.