dence being in favour of its truth." This service we ourselves have seen bound up with an ancient Prayer-book. Our author next gives us in full "The order of consecrating plate for the altar." This was composed by Andrewes, and has recently been republished in the Anglo-Catholic library. Both wise and seasonable is the observation with which Dr. Blakeney introduces this to our notice. "The Reformers," he says, "expunged such services from the English ritual. This service has not a particle of authority, and its use would be absolutely illegal." The same remark applies, with still greater emphasis, to the grosser and more evidently idolatrous additions in our. own times. Several Prayer-books, and works of devotion professing to be of the Church of England, have recently been published, of a decidedly Romanistic character. In some of these are found doctrines essentially and unmistakeably, as our Reformers would have called them, the ware of Babylon. Here we have prayer for the dead, the corporal presence, and adoration of that corporal presence in the Sacrament. Surely it may be said of all who presume to introduce again such exploded delusions, that after professing to have come out of Egypt, already in their rebellion they have returned to their bondage.

Here for the present we must close our review of the important volume before us. We will not now take even a glance at the Second Part. We rise up from the perusal of this history of the Prayer-book with a still deeper impression than we ever had before, of its genuine and essential Protestantism, both in tone and character. It is the exhibition of this distinguishing feature of the Prayer-book which makes Dr. Blakeney's new work so peculiarly seasonable for the present times. About nine months have only rolled away since, with all the pomp and pageantry of a Romish funeral for one of her princes, the silent grave was opened to receive the first Cardinal Archbishop that had ever been tolerated here in England since the completion of the Reformation. Upon that occasion the funeral oration over the departed Cardinal was pronounced by one of the most conspicuous of all the perverts that, since the Tractarian movement, have passed from the light and liberty of Protestant England, to the darkness and bondage of Papal Rome. Dr. Manning once professed to subscribe ex animo to the Book of Common Prayer. He professed to believe, what we do actually believe, that "the worship of the Virgin Mary, as now practised by the Church of Rome, is idolatry;" and that "the sacrifices of masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits." In his funeral sermon for the departed Cardinal, Dr. Manning selected his text, as

the fallen Church is wont to do, from the Apocrypha. These were the words according to our translation: "And among the elect was Neemias, whose renown is great, who raised up for us the walls that were fallen, and set up the gates and the bars, and raised up our ruins again." (Ecclesiasticus xlix. 13.) He wished to point out a close analogy between Nehemiah and Cardinal Wiseman. The great praise of Nehemiah was this: after the Babylonians had burnt the temple, and thrown down and demolished the walls and the gates and the bars of the holy city, it was the happy lot of Nehemiah to restore all things, and to build them up again. A like praise Dr. Manning conceives to belong to the late Cardinal. He thinks the corrupt and apostate and idolatrous Church of Rome is the temple of God; and that the Romish hierarchy, and the Romish persuasion, is the household of faith, and the commonwealth of Israel. This temple, he thinks, was wickedly demolished ; and all the walls and gates and bars of the holy city, in this Protestant country, were rudely overthrown, and pulled down, and reduced to ruins, at the Reformation. But Cardinal Wiseman devoted his life to the mighty task of counteracting the Reformation, and bringing back this country to its former subjection to Rome. Dr. Manning thinks that he wonderfully succeeded in his design; and that England is now in a state of transition from the prostration into which, by her heresy, she has fallen, to the former happiness and glory of her Papal days. Because the late Cardinal has thus far succeeded in bringing back the wandering nation to the feet of the Pope, he conceives that his renown is great, and that his name will be had in everlasting honour. But, unhappily for Dr. Manning's analogy, the work of the Romish cardinal and that of the Persian governor were as diametrically opposite as darkness and light. Nehemiah came to comfort, and to restore, and to liberate those who had long groaned under the heavy yoke of literal Babylon. The work of the Cardinal in this country—

"Never did Cardinal bring good to England!"

was to bring back a nation, that had clean escaped from the tyranny and idolatry of the mystical Babylon, once more to crouch like a slave under the feet of the mighty oppressor, and again to groan under the miserable bondage and the degrading superstition of "the Babylonian woe." They who have drunk the wine of the sorceress cannot discover it; and they who are blinded by the smoke of Rome will not perceive it; but we simple members of the Protestant Church of England, by God's mercy established in this kingdom, both perceive and know the true character of the Church of Rome. We see "upon her forehead a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth. Is it then, we ask

with all solemnity, a blessed thing, or a cursed thing, to raise up and to build again the walls, and the gates, and the bars of the devoted city, after once they have been so marvellously and so gloriously demolished? Good Bishop Hall, who left this watchward for the Protestant Church of England, "No peace with Rome!" shall give a full answer to the momentous question we have just proposed. These are his words:-"If any nation under heaven could either parallel or second the land of Israel in the favours of God, this poor little island of our's is it. The cloud of His protection hath covered us. The blood-red sea of persecution hath given way to us, and we have passed it dry-shod. The true manna from heaven is rained down abundantly about our tents. The better law of the Gospel is given to us by the hand of his Son from heaven. The walls of the spiritual Jericho are fallen down flat before us, at the blast of the trumpets of God; and cursed, cursed shall he be that goeth about to build them up again."

What then, in conclusion, can we think, and what can we say, of those who, with the open Bible in their hands, and the history of the past before their eyes, prefer the Romish Missal to the English Prayer-book? Surely, unless they had quenched the light which they once enjoyed, and had been "given up to strong delusion to believe a lie," (2 Thess. ii. 11,) it would have been impossible, utterly impossible, for them to have preferred the darkness of Papal delusion to the light of Protestant truth; they could not have put the bitterness of antichristian bondage for the sweetness of Christian liberty; they could not have called the true faith, which is drawn clear as crystal from the oracles of God, evil, and the lying wonders and blasphemous fables of that Man of Sin, good. Let all who are in any danger of being blinded by the smoke of Rome, or intoxicated with the wine of fornication, ponder in their hearts very seriously, how unmistakeably they are exposed to "the Babylonian woe," in all its tremendous severity: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isa. v. 20.)

LORD ROBERT MONTAGU'S "FOUR EXPERIMENTS IN CHURCH AND STATE."

The Four Experiments in Church and State. By Lord Robert Montagu, M.P. London: Longmans.

BEFORE a man sits down to write a book, he should first fix not only the subject, but the object. What Lord Robert Montagu's object was in the work before us, it would be rather

difficult to say; but he has at all events supplied a subject on which others may write with an object.

There is no one question on which more confusion of thought prevails than respecting the union of Church and State. What does that familiar expression, "Church and State," imply? Does it imply two distinct Powers acting in concert under a compact? or does it denote, under two names, one and the same thing? Is it an alliance which may at any time be dissolved? or is it an essential union like that of the body and the soul, in which the action of the one is the life of the other?

Dissenters, and all who are disaffected towards the National Church, wishing not to see the question in its true light, are more or less guilty of confusing it with their own objections. They will persist in speaking of the "alliance between the Church and the State," because they wish it to be viewed only as an "alliance;" they will accuse the Church of being under "State patronage;" and then, with all the abuses of patronage, private as well as public, before them in misapplied revenues and unfit appointments, they have a fine subject for railing and misrepresentation by which to prove their zeal for religion. But all this, though they think not so, only serves to prove how little they understand their own ignorance.

He will be doing good service to religion (for it is one part of religion to speak the truth) who shall strip this question of all false representation, and place it before the community in its native simplicity, undisguised alike by priestly assumption or sectarian prejudice. We know not that we are equal to the task; but we will at all events endeavour to place the question in the dry light of fact.

Before, however, we proceed to the discussion of our subject, we will dispose of the author who has supplied us with it, considered as a writer and a legislator. We have said that he hardly seems to have had any distinct object in view in his book: we are at a loss to tell why the book was written, or what it proves. If we might hazard a conjecture, we should say that his object (so far as he had any) was to prove that he could write a book; and that, as he was just starting as a legislator, he thought an imposing octavo volume, on such a stock question as "Church and State," would of itself be a good capital on which to embark in his new enterprise. The House of Commons often hears his voice, youthful as he is: whether it will ever suffer its cold indifference to the National Church to be modified by the gulf-stream of his warm wisdom, it is beyond our power to determine. It is hard for any man to alter the temperature of the times in which he lives.

We have a friend of our own, who once inflicted the caustic remark upon ourselves, "I always set a man down for a fool who writes a book." Our own reply to this was, "Fools write

books, but wise men read them." It is far from our purpose to intimate by this that Lord Robert Montagu is a fool. He has probably calculated correctly as respects himself, though not as respects the House of Commons. That august body is never at any one time young, neither is it middle-aged, nor old, but always in a condition of unchangeable constancy, according to the nature of a permanent body composed of transitory parts. Hence its "collective wisdom" is always, in its own esteem, the highest possible exhibition of wisdom. The comfort with regard to our author is, that, though young now, he will, as time speeds on its course, grow older.

There are two things, and two things alone, any one of which will redeem a book; these are-either the thought, or the style. Where there is a good style, it will excuse the want of brilliant or original thought; where there is striking thought, it will compensate for the want of a finished style. But where there is neither thought nor style, what shall we say? What the style of the book before us is, may be judged by the last sentence in it, which is as follows:

"For negociations are studiously concealed; and the secret is carefully kept and defended by multiplied circumvallations and impreg nable quadrilaterals of deluding Blue Books, and obfuscating ministerial explanations."

So ends a work on the "Four Experiments in Church and State." Should it not be, Experiments on patience?

The very first thing a writer who intends to publish should study, is a good style. Unless an author has learned to express his thoughts clearly, and without encumbrance, he had better not publish at all. For why should the public be perplexed to make out what the author did not seem to understand himself-or, at all events, knew not how to explain?

This question of "Church and State" is a very simple one, and yet it may be made one of the most perplexed. It is very simple if looked at in the light of fact, and not of theory. What is the fact in regard to the National Church, as it is found existing among us? Was there ever a time in the history of the country when the State took the Church into union with itself? Can any one point out the precise period? Rather, did not the State itself take the new character of the Church when it became Christian? Is not the Church simply the consecrated form of the State? or the State acting in a religious capacity? It has been well said, that constitutions are not made, but grow. The State, as it exists in England, undoubtedly grew to be Christian. The leaven of Christian sentiment spread and spread, till the whole lump was leavened. Just as in a family, when the head of it becomes a Christian, or rather, the head of it being a Christian, all the regulations of it become Christian; so the governing Power of the country