edifying conversations, by such laics as the pastor or moderator shall approve of.

The confession and liturgy adopted for the present are those originating at Breslau. In the matter of dogma there is little, if any, positive divergence from the Nicene Creed, though it is possible that there is no great disposition to affirm that body of truth which the Nicene Creed has handed down to us. The negative part of their confession is most forcibly conceived, and is as Anti-popish as possible. The Holy Scriptures are affirmed to be the one and sole basis of Christian faith. The investigation and interpretation of the Scripture is freely given to every "understanding, penetrated and moved by the Christian idea." All sacraments except two are declared to be optional observances; they deny corporeal transubstantiation, but affirm a real presence in the holy Eucharist; they administer the communion in both elements, but allow the communion in one kind as valid; they reject compulsory auricular confession, but recommend the voluntary confession of penitents to their own pastor; they deny the priests' authority to give absolution, and reject the imposition of definite penances, while they encourage the penitent to have recourse to his own pastor for ghostly counsel and comfort; they reject compulsory celibacy and monastic vows, but honour those who conscientiously adopt and virtuously abide in single life; they hold priestly benediction to be necessary to the validity of a Christian's marriage. Pilgrimages and indulgences they reject, counting it, nevertheless, profitable to honour the holy departed, and their mortal remains, although they do not admit of prayer being addressed to them, nor acknowledge them as mediators; they reject the doctrine of purgatory, but acknowledge some cleansing or clarifying (läuterung) of the soul after death-similar to that, we suppose, which many of the German Protestants believe in; they affirm that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of his Church, and that the Holy Ghost is his only representative, or "locum tenens" (Stellvertreter) on the earth. They, therefore, cast themselves loose from the Bishop of Rome, and utterly deny that he is the divinely-appointed visible head of the Church.

Their determinations assume only a temporary and provisional force, and they look forward to a general German council. They reject beforehand all concessions which by possibility can be made by the hierarchy for the purpose of bringing the free Church under its yoke again. In the meantime the German governments have presented a neutral or even a favour

able aspect to the new sect. In Saxony a small sum of money has been voted for its support, while, on the other hand, the late proceedings at Leipsig have left an unfavourable impression upon the Prussian government.

These facts are all interesting. They show where the Popish shoe pinches, especially among the Germans, who, while they are capable of the nicest distinctions in philosophy, have a hatred of those subtleties by which the conscience can be made to sail close to the most dangerous shore without shipwreck. They also indicate how universally men's minds have been invaded with the passion for throwing themselves loose from authority and from the claims of existing institutions; how entirely men have let slip all true notions of the divine source and being of the Church of Christ; and how ready they are to transfer to the resolution of an accidental human majority, that reverence which is due to a divine command.

We have said that we are unable to sympathize with those who boast of this movement as a parallel of the earlier steps of the German reformation. We cannot discover in it either the piety or the broad solid theology of Luther. It has much more of an intellectual than of a spiritual character. Luther had a cure of souls: he found the market of indulgences, which was carried on at his own door, a hindrance to his spiritual work. The consciences of his flock were taken out of his hands. He was not permitted to save his flock by ministering the Gospel to them. When he sought to dispense the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, he found it set aside by the published grace of our Lord God the Pope. He raised his voice for his people, for his ministry, for the law of God. He vindicated for Jesus Christ that place of Saviour which the Father had given to him alone. But here is a priest with no flock to watch for, who, having offended his ecclesiastical superiors by a violent article in a newspaper, is suffering the natural and just consequences of his imprudence; and who, while he might have been well employed in his retirement in learning to rule his own spirit, was instead, casting his eyes abroad, to see at what vulnerable point he could best gratify his irritated feelings, by striking a blow at her to whom he was bound by deliberate vows of the most sacred description. Bishop Arnoldi of Treves furnished the occasion, and laid bare the point of attack. Ronge was not ignorant of the secret feelings of his intelligent fellow-countrymen. He saw that he could now strike a blow which would. surely tell.

"The day of my release arrived, which I had been long expecting, and with increased impatience and assurance the nearer it approached.

Our feelings oftentimes outrun all reason, and my confidence of ultimate release had been rising ever since I left the seminary. The day at length arrived!-the first day of October, 1844. From the moment when I saw my article in print (I trembled lest it should be interdicted) I felt as if the month of May were come, and spring were budding in my fatherland. The hope of ultimate emancipation from the yoke of Rome, to which I now look forward with confident assurance, was excited by the slaves and blinded servants of the Roman hierarchy and of the Jesuits, on seeing the extremes to which they carried their mockery of religion and trial of the patience of the German people."

But not only was the spring of the movement little better than a state of personal feeling-its object also was more of an intellectual than of a religious character. Thus he speaks to his countrymen :

"The nations—and above all the German nation-ought to call a free ecclesiastical convention, composed of laymen freely chosen, and of honest priests, to sweep away for ever all Jesuitism and priestcraft -to establish freedom of conscience on the ruins of hypocrisy-to purify religion, and to show the Church her actual calling, imposed upon her by the spirit of the times and the exigencies of our people; namely, the reconcilement of the higher and the lower classes of humanity, the reconcilement of the nations and the peoples of the earth, by improving and ennobling them, by universal love and freedom......Arise, then, men of Germany and of France; men of Great Britain, Italy, and Spain, arise! Men of Europe and America! Let us unite with our governments in the noble enterprise. To the work like men-the work of peace and freedom! The hour is come! Let us break the yoke imposed upon faith and conscience-drag down lying priesthood and the hierarchy-annihilate disdainful Jesuitism, insulting God and man-and usher in the glorious reign of truth, and light, and righteousness-of virtue, of freedom, and of love! Let us usher in the true reign of Christ upon the earth!"

That is to say, let our understandings be free: let all henceforth think for themselves: let human reason and conscience be henceforth their own guides: let no instructor speak with authority let even him who addresses us in the name of God do so as if he were advancing a private man's opinion: let the boldness of positive faith be changed into the modesty of probable persuasion: let Christ no more demand, by his ministers, the obedience of disciples; but let ministers be his advocates, standing along with the advocates of any human or of any devilish claim on man's attention; and let him, by them, plead for him⚫self, a winning or a losing cause as it may happen, at the bar of the reason of the creatures of his own hand.

It would be easy, if our limits and the value of the subject permitted, to adduce, from the writings of Rousseau and of the

free-thinkers, many passages of the same spirit under the influence of which this German priest has addressed his countrymen, and to show that their object and his were the same, namely, to vindicate the liberty and supremacy of the human intellect liberty, not from unauthorized controul, not from tyrannical dictation, not from doctrines and traditions of menbut liberty from teaching; liberty from revelation, which is divine teaching; liberty to weigh and measure the words of God himself, and to regard his words, not as guides of reason, and as information of the understanding, but as the subject of human determination, approbation, or rejection; liberty, in short, whose detailed exploits would be social anarchy, pride and folly substituted for the obedience of faith, for filial reverence, for the docility of pupilage, for every wholesome form of obedience, subjection, worship.

Does any one now ask the question-Is benefit to be anticipated from this movement for those who share in it, or for the Roman Catholic Church? We think not. First, as to those who take a share in it, and who become integrant parts of the so-called German Catholic Church, is it not manifest that they have no principle by which they can be held together? Their's is a religion without any religation. Their constitution and their doctrine are the creatures of the word of a majority. There is not even the security which the canon law demanded, that the majority should be "Major ac sanior pars"-the saniority as well as the majority. That which the word of a majority has made, the word of a majority, of course, can unmake. Had God allowed that such a principle should guide human affairs, is it not plain that the world would long ago have sunk into utter barbarism? The most remarkable majority of which we read in history is that by which our blessed Lord himself was denounced for crucifixion. Would not the dark ages have voted all divine truth out of the world, and extinguished the Church of Christ? Nay, would not intellect itself have been crushed under the weight which its own pride and pretensions had brought down upon it? Has not even science made its way against the arrogance of the reason of the majority? And then it is a most novel and curious decision of the new Church, that the minority are not bound by the decision of the majority. What a dissolution is this of the ties even of reason itself! For what principle is better established by the uniform practice of civilised mankind, or more palpable to the common. sense of every one, than that, in an organised community, there must be submission of some to others? It is a law of nature, prior to all law, and presupposed in all lawgiving. But here

we have rulers, yet no one bound to obey; a decision, but nothing decided. And what a mischievous moral training is that, in which a man is never met by the hand of controul; in which his better will is never helped in its struggle for the mastery over evil inclination; and responsibility-whether of the creature to the Creator, of the subject to the king, of the child to the parent, of the servant to the master--is made to appear an arbitrary thing, a fruit of the mutable will and choice of each individual! Such are the practical evils and absurdities, which the daily course of human life will evince, as the legitimate result of errors in constitutional principle. There are many who think that if the Gospel be preached, it is very little matter how the Church is constituted. We have, on the contrary, shown how the most essential ethical principles must be endangered, by the substitution of human contrivances for the ordinances of God, in the management of the Church.

We pass by as too palpable a falsehood, the assertion that the Holy Ghost is the locum tenens of the Lord Jesus Christ; but, we ask, what must be the fruit of such a view as the following?

"They know not, and they do not desire to know, that the Church means all mankind, and mankind here on earth......... This is a vineyard of the Lord, where the cars are ripe for harvest, and where labourers are required. These labourers need no authority from Rome, no outward consecration-it must be in their spirits-they must have consecrated hearts! When they appear, the people will acknowledge them, although they wear no Roman symbols."

In short, contrary to the decision of the apostle, that a man may preach, though he be not sent; that a man, any man, may take up the serving of God, in the most delicate and perilous of all offices, that of delivering God's message, unto the eternal life or death of men, while he is yet unable to say, "he that heareth me heareth Christ; he that despiseth me despiseth Christ" that he may take it up at his own hand, without any assurance in himself, and without any judgment by another, that he is called thereto. Moreover, that, there is no difference between those who are baptised and those who are not-they are all alike the Church-they are all under the same responsibilities, and the word is the same to them all. What deep ignorance does not this manifest that the God of grace is also the God of nature and providence; that to him every man must refer even his social position and his calling in this life; and that baptism is a separation unto new relations, new duties, and new powers!—and what confusion, intolerable alike to God and