interested, but has subjected us to some sacrifices. But although the work will not affect the Voluntary controversy on the merits, it will not, one would fain hope, yet be without results. Its exposure, calm, statistical, irrefragable, of the errors, abuses, and corruptions, inveterate, inerradicable, all-pervading, of the Church of England, cannot, one would willingly believe, be without issue. Let the work only be read, and it must inevitably tell. The mental and moral condition of that man who, after perusing this volume can remain conscientiously satisfied with his position as a minister, or even a member of the Church of England, we cannot easily conceive. We bring no railing accusation against a neighbour,—we will not judge another, but for ourselves we feel we could as easily justify our continuing in any course of iniquity, in the face, too, of any amount of expostulation, as we could remain in the Church of England after reading Mr. Noel's volume. The corruptions of the Church of England are so numerous and gigantic, and they are in this volume dealt with and denounced in a manner so minute in detail, while so masterly in the aggregate, and our space is so very limited, that we feel very much at a loss how to give our readers any proper conception of the work. | Some of the exposures of the corruptions and heresies of the Book of Common Prayer will, however, we think, form the best subject for citation. Other abuses may be alleged to be incidental, or at least not fundamental to the Anglican Establishment, but those of the PrayerBook are vital, and concern not less the laity, who respond, than the clergy who repeat, its offices. The Liturgy is the boast of members of the Church of England. If it should then turn out that the Prayer-book is unsound, they have little assuredly of which to boast. tion, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church." The child grows up displaying all the unregenerate, unsanctified passions of our corrupt nature: nevertheless he is taught to regard himself as regenerated and sure of heaven: and to all who question him as to the means or mode of such wondrous change, he is taught by the catechism to answer, "My baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." Now what is the meaning of all this? Perverse or professional criticism we grant may attempt to evade the literal meaning of these words, or even to educe another meaning from them, but we put it to any man's conscience, if the plain grammatical sense of these words is not that every person baptized in the Church of England is regenerated, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, in simple virtue of the opus operatum of baptism? This is the only legitimate sense of the words, and what is more, this is the sense intended to be conveyed by the words; for all the offices and services of the Church of England, as we shall show, proceed upon the assumption, that all who are baptized are regenerated. What other basis than this is there, 2dly, For CONFIRMATION, in which the bishop is taught to say, in regard to all and every one upon whom he lays his hand,—“Almighty and everliving God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by water and the Holy Ghost, and hast given unto them forgiveness of all their sins, strengthen them, we beseech thee, &c."? But all the while the parties who are thus unconsciously made partakers of such ineffable blessings, may think no more about it than did the lady who told us, the only thing she remembered about it was, how soft the bishop's hand was as it rested upon her head. Or they may regard it as a charm or amulet, like the old women mentioned in our last number, who were naturally very anxious to receive confirmation, because they befollow-lieved it "good for the rheumatiz." And that the Prayer-book is unsound will abundantly appear from the ing citations: 1st. The BAPTISMAL SERVICE teaches that every infant baptized at an Anglican font is regenerated. "We yield to Thee hearty thanks, (says the officiating minister at the close of the service, returning thanks to Almighty God,) we yield to Thee hearty thanks, Most merciful Father, that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adop 3d. After confirmation comes, let us suppose the COMMUNION, of which every individual in the parish is expected to partake, in simple virtue of having been regenerated in baptism, and strengthened in confirmation. The man may be in life openly profligate, and in opinion so heterodox that, like the case of the Arian mentioned by Mr. Noel, the minister refuses to sit with him as a member of the Bible Society Committee; but let the one or the other present himself kneeling | at the rails of the altar, as happened in the latter case, and the minister dares not refuse him the communion. No, the profligate he would not admit into his family, the heretic or the Infidel he would not sit with on a Committee, he must admit to the Lord's Supper. His vices and his errors, notwithstanding, the man was regenerated in baptism, and is consequently entitled, as a member of Christ and a child of God, to all the ordinances of God's house. .... 4th. The man thus regenerated in baptism, strengthened in confirmation, and made a partaker of Christ's body and blood in the communion, at last dies, and then, in beautiful and consistent harmony with all that preceded it, the minister, standing beside his grave, looks around on the sorrowing relatives, and with unfaltering tongue says: "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we, therefore, commit his body to the ground . in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life." And then, lifting up his hands unto heaven, he says: "Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord.... we give Thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world," and, of course, as all will conclude, receive him into heaven. The man's life may have been such as would scandalize a decent heathen; but the moment he is dead the parish minister must certify his salvation, and render thanks to God for his admission into heaven! We know something of the attempts making by the "Record" and the "Christian Observer," and which have been made by the Simeons and the Scotts of other years, as well as by the Bickersteths and Beamishes of more recent days, to explain away the plain, simple, and literal meaning of these expressions of the offices of the Church of England, and extort from them a sense more in harmony with the evangelical system, but we have never witnessed the attempt without a growing conviction of the hopelessness of the task, and an increasing uneasiness that good men should commit themselves to such an undertaking. The man who can prove to his own satisfaction that the Prayer-book does not teach regeneration by baptism ought to find no difficulty in proving that the Epistle to the Romans does not teach justification by faith. The man who can convince himself that the Prayer-book does not teach that the Holy Ghost is imparted to all who receive confirmation and orders, has no right to condemn the Socinian for not seeing the divinity of Christ in the Gospels. The man who can maintain that the Prayer-book does not teach priestly absolution and universal salvation ought not to find transubstantiation or purgatory in the decrees and canons of Trent. We wish not to judge others; to their own master we leave them; but for ourselves, we could as soon and by the same means, too, evince that the Scriptures do not teach regeneration by the Spirit, justification by faith, forgiveness by grace, or any other doctrine called Evangelic, as we could prove that the Prayer-book does not teach baptismal regeneration and the other Romish tenets in dispute between the Evangelicals and High Churchmen. Grace may prevent the conscience from being defiled and the judgment from being corrupted, notwithstanding the forensic dexterity that must be employed to extort evangelical sentiments from the Prayer-book; and grace, we verily believe, in numerous instances, does prevent it; and yet the practice is not the less perilous than it would be to follow Peter in his dissimulation, or David in the matter of Uriah, because grace in those cases preserved conscience uncorrupted, and mercy pardoned their sins. The man of evangelical opinions, who has satisfied himself that the Prayer-book expresses his sentiments, ought not to wonder that a Papist can read the Bible and yet remain in the Church of Rome. But we must close these observations with a reference to the following pages in the work before us, where the subject is very fully treated, 271, 293-6, 325, 431-7-9, 514, &c. The other corruptions of the Anglican Establishment we can hardly touch. All our space allows us is but very little more than to enumerate a few of them. And 1st. OF PATRONAGE. This is one of those abuses whose very existence would be incredible, were it not witnessed on every hand. That a heretic or an Infidel, in mere virtue of holding a juridical or political office, should have the power to appoint all the prelates of a Christian Church--that a God-despising profligate should have the right to force a minister upon a people, and (for in many places it amounts to that) prevent them from attending upon any other pastor that the right to preach the Gospel, or to appoint those who are to preach it, or to preach anything else in its stead, should be connected with the soil or bought with money-that an abuse so monstrous, a violation of Christian liberty so very extreme-that simoniacal trafficking in the souls of men so utterly abhorrent should not only exist for centuries, but should be tolerated, nay, should be defended by Christian men and evangelical ministers, is one of those facts to which the adage is peculiarly applicable, "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction." Have those who can tolerate such an utter abomination, execrable to God and man, any right to censure the spiritual serfs of the middle ages! 2d. ERASTIANISM. There never was on earth a community so enslaved as the Church of England. History does not mention a fact more curious than that men so jealous of their civil rights should remain contentedly deprived of the veriest vestige of religious freedom. Just contemplate the following facts:-"The Crown," says Mr. Noel, p. 175, after having cited his authorities at length, "the Crown has all such spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction that has ever been exercised by any spiritual power or authority, whether Pope, Synod, prelate, or Church. 2. That the Crown may, therefore, exercise all such discipline for the correction of heresy, schism, and sin of every kind. 3. That Bishops and pastors have no manner of spiritual jurisdiction within the Church but from the Crown. 4. That the Crown may delegate its spiritual authority to ecclesiastical lawyers, who may exercise all ecclesiastical discipline within the Church in its name. And by the canons above mentioned, all ministers of the Church of England must acknowledge this supremacy of the Crown in spiritual things, must faithfully keep and observe these statutes by which it has been declared and confirmed, and must not impeach any part of it, on pain of excommunication.' It is but to repeat in other terms what has already been said, to state the Church of England can neither make nor unmake nor alter any of the laws by which she is regulated. All this is done by the Crown and Parliament. Convocation cannot meet but by a summons from the Crown. When met, it cannot frame a canon but by warrant from the Crown; and, when framed, the canon cannot be enacted but by authority from the Crown; and when enacted, it cannot be executed but by the Ministers of the Crown. No act is criminal in a clergyman but what the State has enacted to be a crime. No clergyman can be deprived of his orders or benefice, let his vices be what they may; but by a process emanating from the Crown, and conducted generally by lay agents. No man can be deprived of ordinances but for legal crimes, proved to be such by legal tribunals. In one word, the Church of England is fettered, manacled, paralyzed, lying incapable of action, unconscious of a wrong, at the feet of the State, hugging its fetters, innocent of a wish to be free. "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction." Before the Church-of-England man can condemn the civil serfship of the Russian, or the spiritual slavery of the Papist,-let him assert his right to censure other slaves by first breaking his own chains. But we must close this topic, and we cannot do it better than by citing the following passage, which will give a specimen of Mr. Noel's objections to the Anglican Establishment. He had shewn in the preceding pages the manner in which the evangelical ministers of the Church of England either satisfy conscience or silence its remonstrances against the errors of the system. One of the subterfuges employed is to look away from the corruptions of the Church of England to the grosser corruptions of the Church of Rome :-" But (while thus launching their thunderbolts at the corruptions of the Romish Church) the ten thousand practical abuses within the Establishment wake no such indignant thunders-the nomination of worldly prelates the exclusion of the Gospel from thousands of parishes in which by the union ungodly ministers have the monopoly of spiritual instruction-the easy introduction of irreligious youths into the ministry—the awful desecration of baptism, especially in large civic parishes-the more awful fact that 13,000 Anglican pastors leave some millions of the poor, out of a population of only sixteen millions, utterly untaught the hateful bigotry of the canons, which excommunicate all who recognise any other Churches of Christ in England except our own-the complete fusion of the Church and the world at the Lord's table the obligation upon every parish minister publicly to thank God for taking to himself the soul of every wicked person in the parish who dies without being excommunicated the almost total neglect of scrip tural church discipline-the tyranny of the licensing system (by which the prelate may withhold or withdraw his license from any curate, and thus silence him within his diocese, and by consequence everywhere else) the sporting, dancing, and card-playing of many clergymen--the Government orders to the Church of Christ to preach on what topics and to pray in what terms the State prescribes the loud and frequent denunciations of our brethren of other denominations as schismatics-the errors of the Articles, and of the Prayerbook, and the invasion of the royal prerogatives of Christ by the State supremacy-the total absence of self-government, and therefore of all self-reformation in the Establishment, &c., &c., all these enormous abuses are tolerated and concealed. . . Some eagerly search into the future, compel unfulfilled prophecy to reveal to them the fate of distant generations, but majestic and momentous events passing before our eyes are overlooked. They keenly discuss what Jerusalem is to be in the Millennium, but do not ask what Scotland and the Canton de Vaud are now. . . . . The evils without the Church are delineated with vehement fidelity, but the evils within nestle undisturbed (pp. 301-3), &c.;" with much more to the same purpose often repeated, indignantly denounced, and mournfully deplored, for which, however, the reader must consult the volume for himself. What (is a question which meets us in every society) what will be the practical effect upon the Church of England of Mr. Noel's volume, and of the still more striking fact of his secession? And we must answer, we fear very little, if indeed any that can be made cognizable. With any other clergy but those of England, Greece, and Rome, the effect would be vast, instantaneous, irresistible. By any other clergy, indeed, such corruptions as pervade the Church of England would never have been for an hour endured. But the Anglican clergy have grown up under the deadening and defiling influence of the system, and they manifest the deleterious consequences of such training. The Anglican, like the Roman, does not think; he abjures thought as a sin, or at least a temptation. He enters a Church that forbids him to judge for himself. He receives with uninquiring submission a stereotyped system. He resigns his natural and civil privileges into the hands of his bishop and the Crown, and makes a merit of sacrificing them as a proof of his dutiful confidence in Mother Church. With the administration of the Church's affairs, he knows he is not to be allowed to intermeddle; that belongs only to prelates and proctors in the Ecclesiastical Courts. His duty is absolute passivity. His duty is, without asking a question, without interposing a doubt, to do whatever a prelate bids him, to baptize and so regenerate every infant or adult that applies to him; to administer the Lord's Supper in public or private to every applicant, whether a total stranger or a too notorious malefactor, if only he lives in his parish and is not excommunicated; to thank God for his mercy to every dead, and, while dying, impenitent reprobate; in short, his duty, and only duty, that for which he is paid by the State, that to which in consequence he is pledged to the State, is to do whatever he is bid by prelate, proctor, or parishioner, and as he tenders his hope of a mitre, a golden prebend, or a comfortable home, to eschew useless reasonings, which would only tend to disclose abuses and ruin his fortune. Such is the training of the Anglican minister; and having brought his mind to a passive acquiescence in the maxim' whatever is, is right,' what hope is there that he will agitate, and still less suffer, for a reformation? (See pp. 290)—304.) But will not the people be induced to demand a reformation in the Church of England? No, we answer; no more than the clergy. The English, as a people, have never interested themselves in ecclesiastical affairs. When Laud, indeed, began to slit noses and crop ears, to imprison and fine the lieges, John Bull became restive; but the moment Churchmen were restrained from interfering in civil affairs, and were confined to church matters, John Bull relapsed into his usual ecclesiastical apathy, and let prelates, patrons, proctors, and priests, manage their own affairs in their own way, without exciting any other token of his feelings than an occasional growl when some new church rate was levied, or an intermittent grunt when some greedy parson was fleeced of his dues. Such being the dition of England, what hope is there of a reformation in the Church? Others more sanguine may hope for it, or more lynx-eyed may fancy they see it approaching, but for ourselves we confess we see not a symptom of it at present. Our apprehension, indeed, is that the Church con of England is not to be reformed, but is | work. to be destroyed. Will this work then produce no results? Why, yes, it will leave the "Record" and the "Observer" and the other Evangelical apologists of the Anglican Church more inexcusable. The papers in the "Record" we know not whether more to pity for feebleness, or denounce for disingenuousness. But at the same time we are sorry to be obliged to confess Mr. Noel has injured his own cause by his extreme opinions. He is become in principle, and indeed even in detail, an Independent. His definition and ideas of the Church are altogether Independent. (pp. 9, 509, 566.) His ideas of the discipline of a Church, i. e., that members should be admitted or extruded, and that even ministers should be inducted and deposed by the people, are as popular as old Robert Brown himself would have had them. (Pp. 206, 217, 283-7, 428, 460-9, 472.) Nay, he even argues against creeds and confessions of faith with the usual Independent arguments or sophisms. (Pp. 426-8, 553.) Indeed, if Mr. Noel will reason out his premises legitimately, we think he must become a Baptist. Nor is all this to be wondered at, although much to be deplored. The recoil that sends a man out of the Anglican Establishment will generally project him beyond the golden mean. Horrified at the indiscriminate admission of all applicants to the Sacraments, the natural effect is that he should become too restrictive and exclusive. Offended at the impunity of clerical criminals through the entrenchments thrown up around them by the civil courts, it might perhaps be anticipated that in his anxiety to drive the wolves from the fold, and the drones from the hive, Mr. Noel should deliver the power of jurisdiction into hands to which Christ never committed it. Finding such corruptions in connexion with the State, and as existing in the Ecclesiastical Establishment confirmed by the State, and seeing no way of purifying the Church but by dissolving its connexion with the State, it was perhaps not wonderful that our author should advocate the absolute sinfulness, in the abstract, of the union between Church and State, and should of course condemn it under all circumstances. All this was perhaps very natural, and we make every allowance for it, and yet we not the less deplore it. We are satisfied it has done incalculable damage to the practical effects of the Had a middle position been pointed out, such as Presbyterianism as manifested in the Free Church of Scotland, or the Irish Presbyterian Church, or our own Church, where seceders from the Anglican Establishment might find a resting-place, the prospect of a secession might not appear so formidable and forlorn. But now, when there would appear no resting-place for the Anglican seceder, short, on the one hand of the despotism of Popery, and on the other of the democracy of Independency, so abhorrent to Anglican ideas, the tendency will be to reconcile Anglicans to the position they now occupy, despite of its acknowledged abuses, or at least to deter them from entering upon investigations and a course of action which might tempt them to so painful and perilous a transition. But notwithstanding these our regrets at his work, our admiration of Mr. Noel is not one jot abated. The selfdenial and the courage, the regard to conscience and the love of truth he has displayed, are above all praise. The circumstances of his birth and education, of his family and fortune considered, we know not a more glorious confessor in the present age. He has preferred the martyr's cross to the prelate's mitre. The palace and the peerage, the power, the patronage, and the princely fortune, which might be considered fairly within his reach, he has resigned for obscurity and obloquy, the turning askance of once friendly faces and the tearing asunder of life's most cherished ties; and all this many a man might shrink from who would not blanch at the stake. Nor shall he lose his reward, not even in this world, not, most assuredly, in the world to come. He shall have here peace of conscience, which the world could not give, and in the end the victor's crown for the martyr's cross. The Seventh Vial. Second Edition, revised, corrected, and enlarged. John Johnstone, London and Edinburgh. THE soundness of interpretation, clearness of statement, and felicity of style, have caused this book to take its place already among the standard works on the exposition of the Apocalypse. We are glad that so soon a second edition has been called for, which contains, with other additions, a supplementary chapter, bringing down the historical exposition to December of the past year. |