tenets, which it has been the object of these pages to refute. These tenets, indeed, appear, after a close and impartial examination, to be so utterly untenable, upon any ground whatsoever, that it is extremely difficult to conceive the possibility of their reception by any one, who is permitted to read and to meditate upon the uncorrupted word of divine truth. That the illiterate and humble peasantry of the Romish communion, in any country, should implicitly believe whatever is told them by their teachers, few will be disposed to deny; and that the ill-informed and half-educated priests, who are poured forth from the College of Maynooth to uphold the Popish doctrines in Ireland, should receive, almost as divine, the instructions which have there been instilled into them, may also be readily allowed; but that the more respectable portion of the priesthood, who have had time and opportunity to examine the real merits of the doctrine of Purgatory, and also that laymen of rank and education should calmly and unresistingly embrace it, without scruple, as an article of faith, are intellectual phenomena, for which it is scarcely possible to account.

"Still, in expressing surprise at such an instance of credulity, it is both unjustifiable and unnecessary to impugn the sincerity of individuals; but if, after a candid perusal of the arguments adduced against the doctrine, they remain unconvinced of the fallacy of the grounds upon which it is maintained, it is scarcely possible, with the utmost stretch of Christian_charity, to reject the conclusion, that God has judicially blinded them, and sent upon them 'strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.' Having corrupted the bread of life, through their vain traditions, it would seem that the Lord has given them up to feed on ashes;' that a deceived heart has turned them aside, that they cannot deliver their souls, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?' Under this impression, both for teachers and taught,-for those who so grossly mislead others, and those who are so fearfully misled,it is the duty of the true believer in the perfection of Christ's atonement to be ready at all times to offer up the expansive and charitable petition of our Litany that it may please God to bring into the way of truth, all such as have erred and are deceived!'

"In bringing the discussion to a close, therefore, it will not be out of place to express an earnest desire that every Romanist, casting off the deadly doctrine of temporary torture after death as a satisfaction to the justice of the Almighty for sins committed here, will hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, as set forth in the Scriptures. To this end, in respect to the doctrine which has been long under examination, he will do well to reflect seriously upon the following passage from one of the Homilies of our English Church: The only Purgatory, wherein we must trust to be saved, is the death and blood of Christ; which, if we apprehend with a true and stedfast faith, it purgeth and cleanseth us from all our sins, even as well as if he were now hanging upon the cross. The blood of Christ is that Purgatory, wherein all Christian men must put their whole trust and confidence: nothing doubting, but if they truly repent them of their sins, and die in perfect faith, that then they shall forthwith pass from death to life. If this kind of purgation will not serve them, let them never hope to be released by other men's prayers, though they should continue therein unto the world's end. He that cannot be saved by faith in Christ's blood, how shall he look to be delivered by man's intercessions? Hath God more respect to man on earth, than he hath to Christ in heaven? "If any man sin," saith St. John, "we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins." But we must take heed that we call upon this Advocate, while we have space given us in this life; lest, when we are once dead, there be no hope of salvation left unto us. For as every man sleepeth with his own cause, so every man shall rise again with his own cause. And look, in what state he dieth, in the same state he shall be also judged, whether it be to salvation or damnation.'

466

Hear ye this, O priests; for judgment is toward you, because ye have

been a snare on Mizpeh, and a net spread upon Tabor!' Oh, that the priests of the apostate Church of Rome,-the supporters and teachers of this delusive doctrine, would lay these things to heart, and tear away in time the fatal vail, by which the brightness of divine truth is hidden from their minds! Would, indeed, that they were so 'nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine,' as to 'refuse profane and old wives' fables,' lest the sentence of the Prophet should be judicially and eternally fulfilled against them! 'Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks! Walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand;-ye shall lie down in sorrow!'"'-(pp. 389-393.)

And thus, having performed the duty of a critical arbiter in faithfully summing up the evidence, we would impannel our readers as a jury, and call upon them to give sentence respecting Mr. Hall's work. But we fearlessly anticipate their verdict. They will find him, we are sure, 66 NOT GUILTY of increasing the existing stores of theological literature with an unworthy or unseasonable production; they will find him "NOT GUILTY" of having misrepresented his opponents, or misstated their opinions; "NOT GUILTY" of having compromised a single passage of Scripture, or a single doctrine of his own orthodox church! They will pronounce, on the contrary, that he has rendered signal service to the cause of truth by a most acute, able, and unsparing exposure of error; and their only condemnation would be contingent on the supposition, that having written so well, he should refuse to write more. We do not affirm that they, or that we ourselves, in the exercise of the sterner functions of our office, could discover no inaccuracies of language, no faults of style, no expressions, which we could desire to be changed, or corrected, or expunged; but we have no disposition to look for minor blemishes where there is so much of sterling excellence. We hope that Mr. Hall will permit us to look upon the present volume only as one of a series. There are other dogmas to be examined, other heresies to be refuted, other fallacies to be exposed, in the creed of Pope Pius, and in the other authorized formularies of the Roman Catholic Church, or rather we should say of the Roman Church which is not Catholic. And we sincerely trust that the laurels which Mr. Hall has already gathered in this field of controversy are only the earnest of those, which shall hereafter be woven into an imperishable erown.

***During the preparation of this article a work has been laid upon our table of peculiar interest and importance in the present stage of the controversy, and of which we hope to furnish an analysis in our next number. It is entitled, "A Defence of the Reformation," by the REV. C. S. BIRD; a gentleman to whom the cause of Anglican Protestantism has already been brought under the deepest obligations by his admirable "Plea for the Reformed

Church." This pamplet is entitled "a Second Plea ;" and we had not glanced over many pages before we were enabled to characterize it, as being, like Tydides, MELIOR PATRE. Our present object, however, is simply to illustrate the importance of Mr. Hall's work, by pointing out, under the head of what Mr. Bird aptly designates the "Development Theory," what may be considered the first attempt to restore among us the dogmas of the Pope's supremacy, saint-worship, purgatory, and celibacy. "What is this," asks Mr. Bird, and our readers will echo his question, "What is this but fighting the battle for the Romanists?" Hear-not the Church, but the periodical which would fain be considered as its organ or its oracle!

"How far the spiritual prerogatives, attached from the very first to the Roman see, would prepare us for the circumstance as healthy and natural and designed by God's providence, that St. Peter's chair should obtain an unprecedented and peculiar authority; or how far the honour paid in early times to martyrs, marks the existence of a principle which, when the special ages of martyrdom have past, would display itself in honours to saints and to the mother of God; or how far the idea, universally prevalent in the early church, OF SOME UNKNOWN SUFFERING TO BE UNDERGONE BETWEEN DEATH AND FINAL BLISS, WOULD HAVE ITS LEGITIMATE issue in the doctrine, so far as it is common to east and west, at the time of the council of Florence, as to the INTERMEDIATE STATE;-or what light the primitive view of celibacy would throw on later periods; or what light is thrown on the general question of doctrinal development, by the whole history of the very doctrine discussed in this volume: -these are questions which depend for their solution on an intimate, impartial, and clear-sighted view of early church history." 2

1 St. Athanasius.

2 British Critic, lxiv. p. 409.

CHRISTIAN UNITY. By HENRY WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, M.A., Incumbent of Walmer. London: Burns. 1842.

We most entirely go along with Mr. Wilberforce in the chief object of this tract, an object, we think, far too little sought after in these days, and in pursuit of which men do not make the efforts and sacrifices which it demands and deserves. Yet we think the tract itself open to objection, in three particulars, namely: That it gives incorrect views of the primitive Church, as compared with the Christianity of our own times:

That it illogically and unjustly assumes that all the guilt of "causing divisions rests upon others, rather than upon the rulers, in past and present times, of the English Church :

Thirdly, however, and chiefly-that Mr. Wilberforce apparently does not see, and we suspect, is not prepared to follow out, the logical results of his own positions.

In the first place we remark, that Mr. Wilberforce gives a most imperfect, and therefore incorrect, view of the state of the early Church, in the matter of Unity, as compared with modern Chris

tianity.

After reading his tract, an ill-informed person would naturally conclude that every thing in the primitive Church was harmony and union, and that schism was an evil only known by name, and in theory, until after the Reformation. His representations are as follows:

"There was a time, before Satan had succeeded in severing the east from the west, in setting up the south against the north, and in dividing each against itself, there was a time when they were, in reality, one body. The Church, which now lies shivered, and only here and there reflects from one or another of her fragments a spark of the Divine glory, was then one unbroken mirror, giving back, although from an earthly substance, the very image of her Father which is in heaven. Then was there no geographical religion, such as our eyes see; no English Church, and French Church, and Roman Church, and Greek Church, except inasmuch as the different portions of the same society happened to dwell, strangers and foreigners, among the inhabitants of one or another nation. Then were all Christians one, wherever they dwelt; and wherever they journeyed they found brethren. Then was it not, as now, that a christian bishop, or priest, or layman, by crossing a river or a mountain should find himself among men of another communion, from whose altars and worship he is shut out, and by whom his place in the Church (whatever it may chance to be) is denied him: but, furnished with letters of peace from the Church at home, he might travel from Britain to India or Ethiopia; and in every city, wherever he went, he was acknowledged, loved, and honoured, according to his place and station in the Church, as a father, or a son, or a brother, as the case might be, by every MARCH, 1843.

2 B

Christian throughout the world. He might wander, indeed, among men of other tongues, and a strange language, but in every place he found the words of the prophet fulfilled, that even in the land of Egypt there were cities speaking the language of Canaan :-he found the Church to be, indeed, a heaven upon earth."-(pp. 12, 13.)

"Therefore do I believe and profess, with all saints, and with every Christian man, in every nation of the world, for more than fifteen hundred years after the Ascension of our Lord, that all Christians are bound to be joined in ONE VISIBLE CHURCH; and that the existence of any sects or denominations among them is a work of the flesh, which we must cast aside.”—(p. 14.)

"In the primitive Church, when schism at last infested it, the opposite plan was tried. The bishops and pastors of Christ's Church, instead of inviting all sects to co-operate as far as might be, while they yet remained separate, faithfully warned them of the sin of schism, and bade them, as they valued their salvation, return to one communion: and although the Novatians and Donatists were as obstinate and intractable as any schismatics with whom we can have to do, yet, by God's blessing, the result was PEACE. He, for example, whom God raised up as the champion of free grace against Pelagius, the blessed Augustine, had just before toiled and prayed with equal earnestness, and with like success, in behalf of the unity of the Church, then violated by the Donatists. How great must now be the joy of those holy men by whom this early wound was staunched in time-this lamentable evil averted! Let us follow their example, and we may hope for their success. God's word, if faithfully spoken, shall not return to Him void; it shall accomplish that whereunto He sends it, and there shall yet be "peace and truth in our time." —(p. 29.)

Certainly, we repeat, the general effect of these representations, upon an ill-informed mind, must be, to produce an impression, that for a very long period, at least, in the early ages of the Church, divisions and schisms were unknown, and that, excepting the one controversy between Rome and Constantinople,-the idea of divisions and separations, among real Christians, was quite unheard of until the days of the Reformation.

Now this is so entirely at variance with historical fact, that we cannot avoid adverting to the positive disproof which meets the student's eye in every page of all ecclesiastical records.

To begin with the apostolic days, the days when, if ever, division and separation must have been wholly inexcusable, we find these evils existing in every part of the Church. They are distinctly adverted to in Rom. xvi. 17; 1 Cor. i. 11; Gal. i. 7; Ephes. iv. 2, 3; Phil. ii. 1-4; Col. ii. 4, 8; 2 Thess. iii. 6; 2 Tim. ii. 14; Titus i. 10; James iii. 1, 16; 2 Pet. ii. 10, 18; 3 John 9, 10. Not a single apostle, not a single church, enjoyed immunity from this evil. And if we remove a step lower, and open the writings of the apostolic fathers, the same scene meets us wheresoever we turn. Clement begins his epistle by lamenting a "wicked and detestable sedition," which had been "fomented by a few heady and self-willed men." Ignatius warns against "divisions and false doctrines, for there are many wolves," &c.; and in