nature's poetry, as they watched the setting sun; and we know that such as these, who are best worth writing for, value most what tends to enlarge and stimulate their minds. And such, in religion, must be the master-teachers, or none. As to the mode of offering portions of these teachers in a cheap form to the multitude, Hooker is already prepared for the purpose in Mr. Keble's excellent selections. Long ago a worthy man published Pearson's summary statements of the doctrine of each different article of the Creed in a duodecimo of twelve or fourteen pages. The number of summaries of that great theological work is such as to leave no difficulty, but that of choosing a longer or a shorter. Why, among devotional books, is there no such a manual as Archbishop Laud's Prayers? Is Bramhall's Defence of the English Consecrations quite out of date now? Are we afraid, while the Scottish Free Kirk emissaries are running to all quarters of the land, to meet them with his Fair Warning of Scottish Discipline? Is the name of Hammond lost to memory, to veneration, and love? God deliver us from the tangled maze, which has carried so many a waverer from his simplicity, and made him find thorns and briars in his way!

At least if this were done, it would save the Society's list from being, as it is at present, of much the same use in another way, as the Roman Index Expurgatorius. We should not be able to pick out a good theological library from the names of the prohibited and condemned. And unless this is done, we see from what has passed, that the progress of compromise must go on unchecked, till one by one the old defenders of truth are maimed or exiled, and in the want of them the Church itself will wonder how, without its will, it has become, by easy stages, Lutheranized, Calvinized, Socinianized.

It is no trifling step that has been made towards this ultimatum by the admission upon the Society's list, of No. 619. Let those who know what the character of the theology of Bishop Wilson, Ken, and Robert Nelson, is, calmly peruse this tract, and say whether they are prepared to take this brochure of sixteen pages as an earnest of the new doctrines that are in future to be enlisted under the same colours! Let them ask their fathers before them, whether this is not a first instalment of that resuscitated Puritanism, which, for a century and a half, it has been the work of this Society, with God's blessing, to withstand, and effectually to control! Let them, we say, peruse this tract, and see how it swindles away the sense of one half of the pages of revelation, that it may build its false and unreal system on the rest! Let them see how it speaks of the opening sentence, with which the Church at Morning and Evening Prayer invites the contrite sinner to come to God, as not expressing the Gospel message!* Let them steadily mark how it wrests and garbles other texts of Scripture! And then let them ask themselves, whether the self-complacent gentlemen, who so coolly put the affront upon the late good Vicar of Fulham, ought not, in

* Ezek. xviii. 27. See pp. 4, 5 of the Tract.

deference to the principles they have outraged, to be made to withdraw this tract from the list on which it has been so indecorously inserted.

It is not merely because its presence, where it is, makes the theology of the Society as harmonious as the Temple-pulpit, when Hooker preached in the morning and Travers in the afternoon. It is not merely because the Society has thus furnished the modern Puritan with a hand-grenade to strew in the path of every orthodox clergyman in his parish round. Far less is it because the stamp of the Society's approbation, conducted as it has lately been, adds one grain of authority to the "stammering language of ambiguous tracts which it disseminates. But it is because, as all experience proves, the act of those who proposed the addition of this tract to the list has been an act of open aggression on the catholic teaching of the Church; because its appearance there is a manifesto of war against the Church's liturgy and discipline; and the tract itself, poor and self-contradictory as it is, is a brief digest of that doctrine, which, as it confounds the eternal differences of good and evil in its theory, has ever shown its deadness to the distinction in its practice.†

Things cannot remain as they are. The miserable want of principle, which has opened the door to all this mischief, was disguised, perhaps, from some of the main agents of it, till the result was manifest. There is no doubt that the progress of it has exceeded their anticipations. But the cause that purchases itself a reprieve from any pressing danger by a compromise, whether in meal or malt, by corruption or concession, has already signed its own death-warrant, and only lives on by sufferance from hour to hour. The Interim, or interregnum, has finished its term by this last consummation of base connivance. There is a thick gloom upon the face of the Church at present; but we are of good hope, because the real state of things is known. And when it is known, it would be a want of faith to suppose that the remedy can be long delayed.

NOTE. Since this Article was sent to the press, we have read the following statement, in the Ecclesiastical Gazette, respecting Bishop Ken's" Manual of Prayers," which is said to have been read at the last meeting of the Society in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and authorized by the Standing Committee:

"It appears that 'Ken's Manual of Prayers for Winchester Scholars' was placed on the Society's Catalogue in the year 1776.

"In 1819, the Tracts on the Society's Catalogue were numbered; and in the Report for 1820 appears: No. 21. Ken's (Bishop) Manual of Prayers.'

* 66

It is a fact, that this very tract has been delivered at almost every house throughout a whole district in London, where the clergyman is supposed to hold the doctrines of Bishop Bull."-Appeal, p. 46.

+"A plain Catechism can more instruct a soul, than the whole day's prate, which some daily spit forth, to bid men get Christ, and persecute his servants." ZuveTOĴOL. (From the Pref. to Jer. Taylor's Golden Grove.) We do not know whether this golden Preface is reprinted in No. 247 of the Society's Tracts, or whether it is "so antiquated in expression as to render it less adapted to general use in the present day."

"In 1826, Archdeacon Hale, upon his own account, and without reference to the Society, made use of Bishop Ken's Manual for the purpose of forming from it a Manual for young persons in general. This Manual, under the title of A Manual of Prayers for Young Persons; or Bishop Ken's Winchester Manual adapted to general use,' he published with a Preface, to which his initials were affixed, stating that alterations and omissions had been made in the original work.

"Archdeacon Hale's work having been recommended in the usual form, and referred by the board to four members of the Society, was in the course of the same year placed on the Catalogue with the Preface above-mentioned. It does not appear that any directions have ever been given, that the Winchester Manual' should not be reprinted in its original form: but the work, as altered and adapted, appears to have taken the place of the original work, and is found from that time as No. 21, on the permanent Catalogue; under the title, in some catalogues, of 'Ken's Manual of Prayers,' in others, of Manual of Prayers for Young Persons, or Bishop Ken's Winchester Manual adapted to general use.'

"This latter title has been retained in the title-page of every edition of the work which has since been published by the Society; but the binder has inadvertently placed on the outside cover of the illustrated edition in cloth, the title, Ken's Manual of Prayers.'

·

"The Standing Committee have given directions that in future the proper title shall be given both in the Catalogue and on the binding of the book, so that the Manual adapted to general use' may not be mistaken for Bishop Ken's original work: and both the books will henceforth appear in the Society's Catalogue distinguished by their proper titles."

This statement is so far satisfactory, that we have a promise that the injury done to Bishop Ken is shortly to be redressed. It is satisfactory, also, that it entirely exculpates Archdeacon Hale, as indeed might have been expected, from any participation in the process, by which his book has been circulated under a false title. But we must say, that on the main point it is any thing but satisfactory. The reader is very properly reminded, that in 1819 the books and tracts were numbered, and Bishop Ken's original work received its proper number among the rest. Archdeacon Hale's work was placed on the catalogue six or seven years later, and, of course, with a different number assigned to it. How a book, not only with a different title, but with a different number, should have been intruded into the place of the original work by mere accident or carelessness, it is not easy to conceive.

We have also this question to ask of the Standing Committee:If Archdeacon Hale's work was admitted in the year 1826, as we are left to suppose, (for their statement specifies no year, but this is the last mentioned,) how happens it, that neither in that year, nor in any year till 1832, as far as we can discover, is one word said about its admission in the Annual Report, and that till that time it is not mentioned in the Catalogue? Every new work admitted on the permanent Catalogue is regularly entered in those Annual Reports; but not a word is said of "Hale's Ken," or "Hale's Manual." The title of" Bishop Ken's Manual" stands, as for sixty years before, No. 21 on the list. It is certainly incumbent upon those who made or authorized this statement to furnish the Society with a copy of the minute made when the Archdeacon's work was admitted.

289

The English Churchman. No. 59. London, 1844.

WE have frequently of late adverted to the Ecclesiastical State of Scotland; nothing can exceed the importance of a right understanding of the whole subject: although, therefore, we have said so much, we make no apology for two articles in our present number, which are connected with it.

We see with pleasure that the Clergy of the Diocese of Aberdeen have addressed their Bishop strongly against the innovating movement which is going on, on the subject of the Scotch Communion service. The remonstrance is ably and judiciously worded, and

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR REVERENCE,-We, the undersigned Presbyters of the Diocese of Aberdeen, beg leave respectfully to address your Reverence on a subject very deeply interesting to us as Scottish Churchmen.

"We have seen with surprise and deep regret that attempts have recently been made, in more than one Diocese of this Church, either to procure the entire abrogation of Canon XXI., in which the orthodoxy of the Scottish Communion Office is asserted, or otherwise so essentially to modify that Canon as to derogate from the primary authority with which that Office is invested in the Church of Scotland.

"Now we, your Reverence's faithful Presbyters, actuated by the earnest desire to obviate, if possible, any similar attempts-attempts which, we are well assured, will never meet with any sympathy from your Reverence-as well as to strengthen, so far, the hands of those Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of this Church, who desire to maintain the authority and use of the national Office, as recognised and warranted by Canon XXI., beg leave respectfully to lay before your Reverence the following reasons which have prompted us to address you with this expression of our sentiments:

"I. Although, as your Reverence is aware, more than one of the undersigned Presbyters have availed themselves, from various circumstances, of the permission by Canon XXI., and administer according to the usages of England, yet they cordially unite with their brethren who use the national Office, in expressing their decided conviction of the decided superiority of that Office, inasmuch as therein the great Eucharistic doctrines of the Real Presence and Commemorative Sacrifice are more fully developed, by which its identity with the Divine model appointed by our Lord in Holy Scripture is clearly evinced. These characteristics of the Scottish Office have commanded for it the approbation of all ritualists of orthodox and patriotic principles; and, therefore, we prize it, not only as a mark of the integral as well as independent character of the Scottish branch of the Church Catholic, but also as a rich inheritance handed down to us by our fathers in the faith, and therefore to be by us faithfully transmitted to our children, and those who come after us.

"II. We desire to express our dissent from the idea of those who would seem to erect the principle of Liturgical conformity as the one great note of union and communion, and would remind them that the Catholic Church in Scotland is not a mere appendage to the Catholic Church in England, but, though unestablished, still a national Church; that every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church, ordained only by man's authority, so that all things are done to edifying;' and that in primitive times, almost every diocese had its own particular liturgy prescribed by its bishop, and yet, that a more efficient intercommunion was maintained between the several portions of the primitive Church than has been secured to the various branches of the later Church.

"III. Although we are unwilling to contemplate the possibility of the abrogation, or even the remodelling of Canon XXI., yet, in such an event, we should feel it our duty to protest against the sin which, in abandoning the Scottish Office, the

touches the important points of the question. It is signed by twenty names; a very large portion, we apprehend, if not almost the whole, of the Clergy of that Diocese. We have no doubt that

a very strong feeling is entertained in the same direction in other dioceses also; and if this movement passes off, as we trust confidently it will, the first feeling that, we expect, will arise in the minds of the Scotch Clergy, will be that of extreme wonder and astonishment that it should have arisen at all, and curiosity to discover whence and how, and from what peculiar turn and position of things, a small knot of agitators have acquired the strength they have, and that deliberate and serious attention to their proposal which appears to be given and thought due to it.

relinquishment of such an amount of Catholic truth would involve; for that it would involve such a relinquishment, the undersigned cannot escape from the conviction, seeing that the present clamour against the Scottish Office originated with individuals who demanded its abolition, not chiefly because it is expedient to assimilate ourselves to the sister Church of England, not chiefly because uniformity is desirable but principally and avowedly because, in their eyes, it is deeply tainted with Popish idolatry and superstition.

"IV. In order to guard ourselves against any chance of misconception, we deem it right to declare our conviction, that the Communion Offices of Scotland and England teach the same holy and scriptural truths; both equally remote from the Romish dogma of a corporeal presence, and the ultra- Protestant error of a mere commemoration, in the holy Eucharist. We are satisfied that the distinctive doctrines of the Eucharist are contained in the one Office, by plain implication, obvious inference, and statements more or less explicit; while in the other we see them clearly and broadly enunciated, and without the possibility of heretical perversion. No disciple of Zuinglius or Hoadley could subscribe to the Scottish Communion Office. It is only when these distinctive doctrines are denied, an opposite and uncatholic sense attempted to be put upon the English Office, and the abandonment of the Scottish Office demanded as a consequence, that we feel it our duty to resist the repeal of the Canon which recognises that Office, and for the reasons above stated, solemnly to declare that, in our eyes, its relinquishment would be tantamount to an apostasy.

"That your Reverence may long be spared to preside over this diocese, and to the Church whose Primacy you so worthily hold, is the devout prayer of, may it please your Reverence, your Reverence's dutiful and faithful Presbyters,

JOHN CUMMING, Dean.

P. CHEYNE, Presbyter, Aberdeen.

DAVID WILSON, Presbyter, Woodhead.
ARTHUR RANKEN, Presbyter, at Deer.

WILLIAM WEBSTER, Presbyter, New Pitsligo.

WILLIAM ROBERTSON, Presbyter, Old Meldrum.

CHARLES GRANT, Presbyter, Meiklefolla.

JAMES CHRISTIE, Presbyter, Turriff.

JAMES SMITH, Presbyter, Forgue.

ALEX. HARPER, Presbyter, Inverary.

ALEXANDER COOPER, Presbyter, Portsoy.

ANDREW RITCHIE, Presbyter.

ALEXANDER BRUCE, Presbyter, Banff.
GEORGE HAGAR, Presbyter, Lonmay.

CHARLES PRESSLEY, Presbyter, Fraserburgh.
A. Low, Presbyter, Longside.

JOHN B. PRATT, Presbyter, Cruden.
NATHANIEL GRIEVE, Presbyter, Ellon.

"I beg to express my hearty concurrence in the above address.

"CHAS. WAGSTAFE, Junior Minister of St. Andrew's, Aberdeen, and late Curate

of Arundel, Sussex."-English Churchman, p. 97, Feb. 15.