wrong. This habit, like any habit, was only to be got rid of by another's taking its place: and thanks to the better spirit, which has everywhere grown up in religious matters, and of which Oxford seems to be the organ, it has been got rid of. The habit of thinking or speaking all manner of evil against the Catholic Church, falsely, has given place, in a manner altogether wonderful, to inquiring about the truth and acknowledging it. So the first step is already taken, and, as I have said, the road to Rome, for men of 'Catholic minds,' is greatly shortened here from what it is yet in England; that is, at least for individuals, for of course the re-union of the Anglican Church with _Catholic Christendom is far easier than that of the 'Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States.'

"If, moreover, serious men among Episcopalians here, any more than their brethren with you, have not yet agreed, or perhaps discovered 'quæ erga Deum et homines agere et dicere deceat,' what regard should be paid to God and to men in our words and actions, at least they are beginning to feel it is time to make up their minds. They are quite satisfied that something more is wanted than human laws, or human respects, or 'religious institutions,' both for individuals and for the public, in an age like this, when men, whose daily bread is an accident, or perhaps an alms, affect waste and luxury, and when the intellectual, and the cultivated, and the high in place and fortune are among the foremost in vice and profligacy, and even the low crimes of forgery and theft. These men, all of them, feel the necessity for themselves, and often still more for others, of a yoke other than material, or political, or ad arbitrium alicujus. And no man of any mark amongst them but is ashamed of the absurdity of private judgment's going along with creeds and articles, or even moral codes; and sees, with honest indignation, the fruits of what people have been pleased to call 'Evangelical doctrine.' They may have let their wives or daughters' play the spider and weave meshes' round their outward man, but their intellect or their heart has never been 'captivated' in the illwoven web of Protestantism; not even their honor or their pride is entangled in it. They are uncommitted, in general, at least, by any act of their own, and often take little trouble to conceal even from Catholics their most reasonable want of rev. erence for a system of negations, a visible body without a visible head; sovereignty without unity; authority in spirituals (that is, to bind men's consciences) with the claim even to infallibility or indefectibility. How many a time have you and I, in our days of what we rejoiced to call 'churchmanship,' heard from men, who never doubted they were staunch Protestants, sober acknowVOL. XXXIV — 3D s. vol. XVI. NO. I.

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ledgments of the utter inefficiency, and insufficiency of their Church, and frank, if not cordial admiration of the sacred majesty of the Catholic rite; of the sublime charity of the Catholic religion; of the never ending triumph of Catholic martyrs, and of the everywhere parent authority of the Catholic priesthood, with its consolations and its counsels, its indulgences and its restraints! Such men, with you, may be kept where they are by hopes for their Church, but there are no such hopes here, nor does the deceitfulness of such hopes blind them. Nor is it the future struggle, the horror difficultatis, the labor certaminis, that holds them back, but their spiritual as well as religious isolation, the stare super seipsum and I verily believe there are hundreds and thousands of Episcopalians that would be glad to hear it said by all around them, we will go into the house of the Lord.' Could the religious atmosphere of Oxford be created in any Protestant community here; could the religious dispositions which, thank God, have always existed among the female portion of the Anglo-American race, begin to exist among the male; could the men of that communion here, be led to seek the grace of devotion and to practise acts of Christianity, they would not wait for the civil power nor for their Church to 'return to the reverential faith of other ages-to that high, and holy, and self-denying spirit of devotion and charity, which visibly embodied itself of old in our cathedrals and our abbeys of England, and to the Church which only is ever and forever practically in possession of it, the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of Rome. The Anglo-Americans are eminently a straight-forward people ;-in right or wrong, en avant is their motto, and just as soon as they become animated by Catholic feelings will they cease to be satisfied with Protestant communions. And so far as we are concerned on this side of the Atlantic, I, for one, care not if no new work of controversy be written from this day forever. Episcopalians may use their own edition of our sweet Thomas Kempis, (alas, that they should be so different from the true one!) they may use their own beautiful Oxford prayers for unity—and even read their own 'Catholic-minded' authors; I have no fear but that those, who are really ready to take up their cross and follow the Redeemer, will be led by him to the holy city."

How this controversy between the High and Low Church parties in the Episcopal Church in this country will terminate, it is at present impossible to predict. If it were on any other soil than that of America, the natural course of things would be for the High Church doctrines to bear down the Low, as

they will naturally enlist the clergy in their favor, and according to the ecclesiastical constitution of the Episcopal Church, the clergy virtually have the power. No effectual resistance can be offered, as we conceive, except by a resort to the republican elements of the body, which would be in fact a dissolution of its present organization.

Since we commenced this article, Bishop Whittingham has published another discourse, which we suppose he means to have considered as explanatory to the other two, entitled, "Emmanuel in the Eucharist." This will be considered, we believe, by most persons, as shifting the ground of the real presence from Christ's human to his divine nature. Inasmuch as Christ is the incarnate Jehovah, who is essentially omnipresent, he must be present in the Eucharist. In the course of it he says, "The bread and wine, I hardly need say, are not the flesh and blood, but bare signs; their reception then is not in itself the eating and drinking the things signified, that too is merely signified by the outward act.'

This reference to the human and divine natures of Christ leads us to speak of the general doctrines of the Episcopal Church on this subject. Mr. Johns tells us in his preface, that "he believes that more than human wisdom guided the men who arranged the services of the book of Common Prayer." Of the general excellence of the forms of the Episcopal service, supposing it conceded that it is expedient to have a form, there can be but one opinion. There is a very good reason why they should be excellent. They consist principally of extracts from the Bible. No person, who has any devotional feeling, can listen to that service without being impressed with the conviction that those parts of it, which are of human origin, were composed by men of deep piety as well as of admirable judgment. The tone of it all is worthy of all praise, equally removed from mechanical coldness and wild enthusiasm.

There are some parts of it, however, which we think no one, who has adequate ideas of the nature of the Deity, or who has carefully studied the Old and New Testaments in the original languages, can hear or read without astonishment and pain. He will hear the Supreme Ruler of the universe, who filleth immensity and eternity," with whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning," addressed in such strange language as this: " By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation, by thy holy Nativity and Circumcision," the circumcision of God!!

"By thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation," the temptation of God!!. "Who CANNOT be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man." "By thine Agony and bloody Sweat, by thy Cross and Passion." We will quote no more. What idea of God does such language as this suggest and inculcate of that Being, who at the moment of the birth and death of Jesus, was superintending the myriads of worlds, which revolve around the eighty-five millions of suns, that shine upon us nightly from the blue depths of space! We exclaim in our hearts, Christian brother, early habit and religious reverence have made you insensible to the import of the language you use, and led you to forget that " God is a spirit," and not one of these terms, when applied to him, can have any meaning.

Turn from the service to the Catechism, and the most ordinary mind, which examines and reflects, immediately meets with traces, not of "more than human wisdom," but of human fallibility. The catechumen is made to recite the substance of his belief, in the form which has come down to us under the name of the Apostle's Creed, a form certainly of great antiquity, but which has no satisfactory claim to come from the hands of the apostles. The best evidence of its antiquity is the fact, that its very structure shows that it was framed antecedently to the establishment of the doctrine of the Trinity. There is no allusion in it to the Deity of Christ, nor even his preëxistence. He is not made the Creator of the material universe, even as the instrument of the Almighty. That is all attributed to God the Father Almighty. "I believe in God," - most of the ancient forms have it, "in one God, the Father Almighty. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; the the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting."

The most remarkable thing about this creed is its antitrinitarian character. Not only is there no allusion to the dogmas of the preexistence, and the creation of the world through Christ, but his being is dated no further back than his conception.

The only thing in it, which can be thought to imply any superior nature, is the phrase "only Son." This is evidently taken from the similar expressions, "only" and "only begotten," in the Hebraistic Greek of the New Testament, which are in turn not expressions of singleness of being, but of peculiar endearment. They are the translations of the Hebrew word T, unicus, praestans, which is applied to Isaac, when he was not the only son of Abraham, but his dearly beloved son, as much beloved as an only son usually is. And it is in this sense of endearment, we believe, that these epithets are always applied to Christ in the New Testament. If any one wishes to learn the meaning and use of the phrase "only begotten," in the time of the apostles, he has only to turn to the seventeenth verse of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promises, offered up his only begotten son." He had another son at the same time, Ishmael.

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But we read on a few sentences, and we find the modern comment on this ancient document. And what does the author of the Catechism make the catechumen to have been taught by the creed? Ques. What dost thou chiefly learn in these articles of thy belief? Ans. First, I learn' to believe in God the Father, who hath made me and all the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind." God the Son! Where can such an expression, or anything equivalent to it, be found, not in the creed alone, but in the whole compass of the Bible? It may be said, that it is found in the phrase, "Son of God." "Son of God." But though they sound somewhat alike, there is not only a difference between "Son of God," and "God the Son," but an infinite difference. "God the Son," must necessarily be God, but "the Son of God," must as necessarily not be God. The Son of God must necessarily be a derived being, and the Deity of course be as complete without him as with him.

This brings to view a fact, of which the superficial readers of the Bible do not seem to be at all aware, that the Trinitarian hypothesis cannot be sustained for a moment, without taking the most unwarranted liberties with the language of the Scriptures. Take for instance, the words God and Father. When applied to the Supreme Being, they comprehend the whole Deity. And if this idea is uniformly kept in view, all conception of a Trinity is excluded from the word of God.