In Florence, the Church is strong enough to awaken obsolete statutes, and apply them to those who preach contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church;" but yet in Florence there is rebellion among the clergy, and excommunications had fallen upon twenty-eight of them so far back as September, 1860. The consequences are suspension from performing the rites. of the Church, and a gloomy prospect of the future. Those priests, however, would not be available as instruments for effecting any church reformation. Few are the instances in which the priests' lips keep knowledge. It would be difficult to find in the whole of Italy, for the last thirty years, a volume of sermons worth reading; or indeed any volume at all, except those of Barbieri, the former Professor at the University of Padua, and who died some years ago at the age of eighty. And yet Barbieri was so ignorant of our theological literature, that, by way of giving a specimen of preaching divines, he translated the sermons of Laurence Sterne.

Sufficient, we think, may be gathered from these facts to enable us to conclude that the once hopeless land of Italy may be yet destined to pass through a religious reformation. Within a period of eighteen years, that peninsula has passed from an Egyptian bondage to the dawn of a day of freedom. The fetters which have bound the generations of a thousand years have been unrivetted in less than a thousand days. Twenty millions of souls have been restored to civil liberty, and placed in a condition to become free indeed under the reign of the Gospel. That genius with which the Italian race is endowed has twice restored literature and the fine arts to civilization; but for want of a concurrent knowledge of God's truth, no social rank or moral power has ever been made good in that garden of Europe. The struggles which have been made from time to time for liberty of thought, the bitter cries which have proceeded from great minds oppressed, have been but the presage of sinking in the merciless waves. If signs of spiritual life appeared in a Vittoria Colonna, an Olympia Morata, an Antonio Paleario, or a white friar who had caught some glimpses of celestial light through the grating of his cell, quickly were such untimely manifestations crushed, and the hand of the persecutor waved in triumph over the silent victims. "They tell us indeed," said Brofferio in the Italian Chamber in 1861, "that the precious treasures of learning were preserved within the walls of convents, and that the civilization of which Europe boasts is the result of a conservative power, which men now seek to destroy. It may be true, that at one period of the world the only light which remained on earth shone in the cell of some intellectual recluse, or wandered in the halls of a literary fraternity; but they took good, care that none of that light should escape through the gates of

their monasteries, lest it should penetrate among the people, whose ignorance was the safety of the priest's power and the tyrant's dominion. They might be conservators of learning for themselves, but they were confiscators of it for the people. Hence it is that every new discovery in science, and every eminent work of literature, has been proscribed by the ecclesiastical censor of the so-called Sacred Palace at Rome. The "starry Galileo" was consigned to a dungeon; poets and philosophers were anathematized; every invention of human genius which stirred the dormant spirit of the people, and appealed to their reason, was condemned; and it is only at last, by pressure from without and from necessity within, that the wonderful agents of steam and electricity have been admitted in the country over which Rome has held sway. And yet what do we see within a few short years? This nation rising as one man, and restored to a rational liberty, civil and religious; the light of God's Word breaking in upon the darkness of a thousand years; men daring to doubt and inquire, where, through an hereditary bondage of ages, they dared not to think; the evangelist kneeling and praying, where the priest trampled his opponent in the dust; the Word of God disseminated, where the inquisitor kept his instruments of torture; cheerful countenances crowding the streets of cities, where lately downcast and despairing looks told you of oppression and wrong. A long pent-up desire for instruction has broke out on all sides, and books are eagerly sought for and read by the educated portion of the people. Tracts, written and published by the Italians themselves, are widely circulated and read, although they are generally directed against the established ecclesiastical system, sparing neither the abuses of discipline nor the errors of doctrine. But in any attempts to effect a religious reformation of the Church, it must be borne in mind that there is a general aversion to any interference at present with religion from without. Neither the civil nor the ecclesiastical authorities willingly brook any interference; but where Italians are led, either by reading or by the persuasion of others, to join either the Waldenses or the Evangelical Christians, they are protected in their profession by the spirit rather than by the laws of the Constitution. The priest is powerless now in this respect. The Church no longer directs the arm of the secular power, and consequently heretics and schismatics are judicially safe. Information in the history of religion in other countries, and a better knowledge of what foreign reformed churches are, may before long induce some of the Italian clergy of a higher grade to ask for counsel, and may-be for aid. But at present they desire no knowledge of our ways; and the best assistance we can render to the people of Italy as they are, is to give them the Scriptures in their

own tongue, to spread among them the books which contain our reformed form of worship, and to support those enlightened Italians, few in number, who, having gained understanding, are anxious to impart a better knowledge of divine things than now prevails among the millions of emancipated Italy.

VIGILANTIUS.

A COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS.
By DANIEL BAGOT, B.D., Dean of Dromore, &c.

[Continued from page 11.]

CHAP. i. 5. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,

6. To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved:

7. In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace;

8. Wherein He hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence;

HAVING spoken of the election of sinners in the 4th verse, the Apostle now proceeds to speak of God having predestinated those whom He had chosen, to the enjoyment of special and important blessings. Having chosen them to eternal salvation through Christ, or in order that they, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, might become an holy temple in the Lord, for an habitation of God through the Spirit, it was needful that, as a wise architect, He should prearrange and ordain a plan, according to which this spiritual edifice might be constructed; and this PLAN is what the Scriptures speak of under the name of predestination. This is always referred to in connection with blessings, either the blessing of conformity to the moral image of Christ now, or the blessing of eternal salvation hereafter. Those who shall be finally lost, shall be lost in consequence of their own sins, and not in consequence of any Divine decree which rendered it impossible that they could have been saved. There is a strong contrast between the manner in which sinners shall be involved in death, and that in which believers in Christ shall be exalted to everlasting life: the former shall be condemned as the natural and inevitable result of their own transgressions; the latter shall receive eternal life as the free and unmerited gift of God, for "the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. vi. 23.) Whatever discussions and diversities of opinion there may now be among

Christians with respect to this mysterious and inscrutable doctrine of Predestination, all the saints in glory will cordially agree in ascribing their happiness to the electing love of the Father, the redeeming love of the Son, and the sanctifying love of the Holy Ghost. The burden of their everlasting song will be this,-"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory, for Thy mercy and Thy truth's sake." The great privilege to which believers are here said to be specially predestinated is "the adoption of children." The term "adoption" relates to a custom which prevailed especially among the Romans, of persons who had no children of their own, selecting the children of others, and conferring upon them a legal right and title to their possessions. Thus God in His mercy selects from amongst our fallen race those upon whom He bestows the appellation, and distinguishes and dignifies with the privileges, of children, and over whom He exercises the mild and loving superintendence of a father. This blessing is conferred upon the sinner when, by receiving and believing in Christ, he is born again, and acquires the elements of a new and spiritual nature; and it gives him a title to the enjoyment of those other inestimable blessings that appertain to the children of God, even to an inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. (John i. 12, 13; 1 Peter i. 3, 4.) What an inconceivably rich and glorious distinction! Well might even the beloved apostle feel at a loss for words with which to express his sense of God's condescending mercy in raising sinners to such exalted honour, and exclaim, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the Sons of God." (1 John iii. 1.)

We may here remark, that the term "adoption" is elsewhere used in another sense, as referring to the redemption of the body which shall be effected at the second coming of Christ. It is in this sense that the word occurs in Rom. viii. 22, 23,— "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now; and not only they, but ourselves also which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." The creation here spoken of is the material creation, which has been involved in the same curse with man, and of which the bodies of believers constitute a part. But as it was not the Saviour's object to effect any physical renovation of the material world at His first advent, believers are now groaning under the pressure of a body which still remains under the curse, although they have received in their souls the firstfruits of the Spirit, even "the Spirit of adoption," which "beareth witness with their Spirits that they are the children of God." (Rom. viii. 15, 16.) When the Saviour

shall come again, He shall change this body of our humiliation into a likeness to His own glorified humanity: but this redemption of the body, which is the object of hope, and is thus described by the term "adoption," is not to be confounded with the adoption of the soul which the believer now enjoys, in consequence of God having sent forth the Spirit of His Son into his heart, enabling him to cry, Abba, Father. (Gal. iv. 6.)

This adoption is "by Jesus Christ." The apostle is earnestly careful to trace up every blessing through Christ to the Father. The love of the Father, and the gracious interposition of the Son, are equally necessary for effecting our salvation. There is a peculiar force in this declaration, "that it was the purpose of God that we should receive the adoption of children by Jesus Christ." We were not taken into His family at once, but there was an intermarriage, as it were, between the Son of God and our nature, and thus we become the sons of God by Christ becoming our elder brother. What a mystery of grace is here! God was determined that sinners should be saved, and received as adopted members of His family; but this great purpose of His love could not be effected by conferring directly upon them the Godhead nature, which His only begotten Son possessed in communion with Himself, and therefore Christ assumed our nature into union with His own, and as those whom God had predestinated to be His children were partakers of flesh and blood, He likewise Himself took part of the same, and as the Father is well pleased in His only begotten Son who is not ashamed to call us brethren, we are thus distinguished with this great privilege of adoption by Jesus Christ. (Heb. ii. 11, 14.)

The original source from which this blessing springs is the unconstrained and sovereign will of God, "according to the good pleasure of His will." There was nothing whatever to render it obligatory on God to show mercy to sinners. So far from this, they were altogether unworthy of His merciful interposition in their behalf.

In the 6th verse, the apostle states what is the final cause of our having been chosen in Christ, and predestinated to the adoption of children-" to the praise of the glory of His grace." Whatever God does is necessarily to manifest the glory of His character and attributes, as well as to promote the happiness of His creatures. The glory of His wisdom, and power, and benevolence is seen in creation; the glory of His holiness, in giving the law; the glory of His justice, in consigning the rebel angels to punishment; but in the Gospel the glory of His grace is exhibited in the rich provision which He has made for the recovery of sinners from the moral ruin of the Fall, so as to call forth our most ardent ascriptions of gratitude and praise.