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true is it to all, whom philosophical refinements have not besotted, that humanity itself is endangered, if we allow the circumstances that conduce to guilt to steal away our natural horror of the guilt itself. Rigidly speaking, all guilt is but the result of previous circumstance. To neglected education, to vicious example, we may trace the crimes which send the thief to the hulks and the murderer to the gibbet."

Comment on this would be worse than useless-and we are gladly spared the task; nor shall we further extend our citations, except to notice a little blow at what the reviewer calls "Puseyism." It occurs in a review of Faber's "Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches" (not George Stanley Faber, but Frederick William Faber) :—

"A favourite scheme of our Puseyite traveller is the establishment of monastic orders in England. His ancient friend has a plan ready cut and dry for the purpose, and recommends particularly the location of little colonies of monks and nuns in the manufacturing districts. As Mr. Faber says nothing against the scheme in his imaginary dialogues, he must be supposed to agree in its propriety. If so, why has he not the courage to say so? Why, rather, has he not the honesty to throw up his Oxford fellowship at once, and avow himself the zealous devotee to the faith of Rome which every page of his book shows him to be? Why does he remain in even ostensible communion with a Church of which he speaks in these terms?

"Am I then to believe, what I have been told on many sides, that your Church is but a dream, and your Churchmen dreamers, with an unrealized theology, not a branch of the Catholic vine, true, healthy, strong, vigorous, growing, pliable, gifted, tangible, substantial? Have you not made an illuminated transparency, a soothing sight for quiet times, and sat before it so long and so complacently, that you now venture to call it a Catholie Church? While you talk so largely of your own Church, you put no faith in her? This it is which angers It is a kind of hypocrisy. You do not believe that she dare loosen the pegs of her tent-cords, in order to enlarge it, lest a rough wind should blow it over in the mean while.'

me.

"These words, it is true, are put into the mouth of the resuscitated personage of the middle ages; but the worthy Puseyite has not a word to say in reply, but that he is determined never to leave his Church, be her sins what they may. In this prudent determination the whole spirit of Puseyism is concentrated. The revenues of the Anglican are to be held conjointly with the tenets of the Roman Church."

This is somewhat startling. Let it be granted that every one who agrees with any doctrine held by the Romanists, must be a Romanist, and we shall soon prove that there are none but Romanists in the world. We allow that there is much in Mr. Faber's book that tends towards Rome-that he is himself far more Roman than Anglican at heart; but we believe that his is

unconscious Romanism, and that he sincerely looks on himself as a faithful son of the Anglican Church.

And now let us digress for a while, and see how others of our contemporaries handle their weapons of criticism-see how the redoubtable Times mangled Robert Montgomery's "Luther;" now the reviewers in that journal are, for the most part, Christains and Churchmen. But it is not sufficient that they should be such to be good critics; there is required something more than sound principles to constitute a well qualified reviewer. First, there is requisite a great portion of gentleness towards mere literary faults. We do not say that they are to be excused or passed over without notice; we have no objection to a sweeping condemnation of a whole book, simply on the ground that it is trash. We enter not here into the merits of Montgomery's poem-we have done that in another place; but we maintain that, even had the book been as worthless as the critic in the Times represented it, the critique would not have been justifiable. Had it been merely said that the work was unworthy of purchase, we might have differed with the reviewer in opinion, but we could not have condemned his conduct. Justice to the public required the free, unbiassed expression of an opinion, whether favourable or otherwise; but it is obviously wrong for mere literary faults to be elaborately severe. The Times stood not alone in this instance: the Athenæum, the Morning Post, and many others, took their cue from the "leading journal.” It was a condescension on the part of the Times, and an unchristian one.

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We have mentioned the Athenæum, and this may be taken as affording an additional proof of the correctness of our motto, men, not measures." We by no means deny the ability with which the journal is conducted; but there runs throughout every number the same tone of cold philosophism-the same disregard of Church authority and Christian ordinances-the same determined "right of private judgment," which cannot help sneering at every assertion of a higher principle than man's will. Now and then we have a little praise of a volume of sermons, if it come from a Dissenter; but even this is done with an air which seems to say "How liberal we are; we praise even sermons, and we like the Dissent." We do not impute any particular blame to the conductors of a periodical which we have already allowed is an able one. The worldly-mindedness, the coldness, the mental sneers, the want of a high ennobling and all-pervading principle, is a circumstance which they (only they would use a different phraseology) would esteem an advantage. Our ideas of a reviewer's qualifications are very far apart

from theirs; and, according to our views, they are not in possession of such qualifications. This, they may say, is praise; if so, let them take it; they have abundance of ability-but they are not Churchmen. Nor are we necessarily satisfied with the criticisms of Churchmen. There are artists in this line no more to our taste than even the reviewers of the Athenæum.

Severity may be, and doubtless is, not unfrequently necessary; but it should be exhibited towards faults of principle, not mere literary faults; a mediocre book will die of itself, it needs no killing, still less does it need killing with a tomahawk such as the Thunderer wields, or a butcher's knife such as (metaphorically speaking) a soi-disant Church reviewer alluded to delights to flourish.

But we must conclude this digression, and return once more to the Foreign Quarterly, under its "useless knowledge” management. We object to its principles, and we have given our reasons. We object to the deluge of French and German impieties with which it purposes to flood us; and we object to the guise in which these continental atrocities are presented to the English public. We have stated also our grounds for entering upon the investigation, and have disavowed the false delicacy which would shrink from doing so.

We have now gone through our charges against the present conduct and position of the Foreign Quarterly; and we should never have gone so apparently out of our way, as we have already said, had it not been for the circumstance, that, as if homemade republicanism and scarcely masked infidelity were not enough, we have here a vent made for the outpouring of French and German abomination among us. There is something very captivating to the mind in the idea of a community of feeling with intellects afar, and being, as it were, a part of a vast progression, tending to a degree of light and diffused intelligence, now hardly to be imagined, much less described. And such is the feeling conveyed to the mind of many ill-disciplined enthusiasts by a revelation to them, that there are in lands, where other languages are spoken, philosophers as unphilosophical, minds as ill-disciplined, as their own; and thus they flatter themselves with the notion that they are the majority, and that the majority are right, and that the world will soon awake to the monstrous iniquity of Churches and States, and a time peradventure come when Liberalism shall reign, "and laws be all repealed." And this deification of the evil passions of human nature-this apotheosis of pride, and self-sufficiency, and selflove, and self-will-is a great evil, and a spreading one; it is the form which the practical infidelity of our day takes, and

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which it makes a 'vantage ground at once, as an eminent writer observes, "against Christ and his altars-against kings and their thrones." It has been exemplified in France; and the principle has reigned there till all principle is defunct. It is now reigning in Spain; and the consequence is, that if you ask a Spaniard what his opinions may be, as to religion, he will probably answer somos Protestantes ; and by this he means, not that Spaniards are Protestants in our sense of the word, but infidels. In Germany the state of affairs is no better: education, i.e., secular education, flourishes to an unparalleled extent. You cannot go into any society without meeting a flock of doctors of philosophy. And there unquestionably is more profound learning diffused among the inhabitants of the north of Germany than in any tract of equal extent throughout the world; but every man claims to decide for himself, as much in matters of religion as in anything else. Christianity and theology are taught alternately from the same pulpits; and it is deemed as much a matter of choice to prefer Krummacher or Strauss, as it is to prefer Sauterne or Moselle. Is this desirable? Can we forget, that if one side be right, damnation must be the lot of the other. The contest is about divine things; and we fear that indifference like that which we have alluded to, is not less awfully ridiculous than what Lord Byron described merely as a piece of profanity-Satan professing his personal regard for St. Michael, notwithstanding the difference of their political opinions. But we have none of this Liberalism; we feel that our duty compels us to speak out, and boldly to condemn every publication which wars against divine truth. Let us not be told that periodicals are not fair game. We reply, that they are fair in an especial sense; for, if we are bound to condemn a single volume, in which we detect very thinly disguised republicanism, and its necessary concomitant, practical infidelity, we are, à fortiori, more bound to condemn a continued series of four volumes a year of such materials. Besides, too, we deem that there is the more necessity to write plainly on an occasion like this, because the object of the review is not apparent-it professes to give the English reader an account of foreign literature, and it brings before him the worst productions of the most incorrect writers-it speaks of marriage as "a certain institution," and of the socialism of la jeune France as "peculiar opinions." We could find many passages like those we have already quoted, to show the dangerous tendency of this Review, but we shall now be silent. Let us return to our principle, that no man who is not a Christian and a Churchman can be depended upon for correct opinions, even in physical science; far less, then,

in politics; less still in ethics; and, as to theology, St. Paul has shown us that of these he knows nothing at all, "because they are spiritually discerned." Can we trust Mr. Carlyle as a politician? Can we trust Lord Brougham as a classic? Can we trust Dr. Vaughan as an historian? Can we trust Dionysius Lardner as a moralist? Can we trust Dr. Bowring as a diplomatist? Can we trust Captain Elliot, of Canton, as an admiral? Can we trust Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer as a philosopher? Can we trust Commodore Napier as a representative? Can we trust Lord John Russell as a Church commissioner? Can we trust Whiggism-Liberalism-literary or political, ethical or philosophical? "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”

ART. IX.-A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Exeter, at the Triennial Visitation, in June, July, August, and September, 1842. By HENRY LORD BISHOP of Exeter. London: Murray.

2. A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Salisbury. By EDWARD DENISON, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY, at his Second Visitation, September, 1842. Third edition. London: Rivingtons.

3. A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of London at the Visitation in October, 1842. By CHARLES JAMES LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. Fourth edition. London:

Fellowes.

OUR confidence in the stability of the Church rests on the promise made by her Divine Head after he rose from the dead, and when he was about to ascend into heaven-“ Lo I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." And our confidence in the promise assures us, not only of her stability in a general sense, as if it were a blind expectation resting on vague expressions, and to be fulfilled we knew not how, but we are assured of the manner in which the promise shall be fulfilled, on the same all-sufficient authority by the same infallible word. Christ had declared himself to be the Ambassador or Apostle of the Father, sent down from heaven to make known the will of God; and he, before his departure, commissioned others to be ambassadors or apostles to men, carrying on continually the glad tidings or embassy of peace which he first came to declare

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