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purity and straightforwardness; for he whose objects and motives are sincerely, though imperfectly, conformable to the revealed will of God, must uniformly make it the rule of his conduct and conversation. He dares not overstep a commandment under the idea that he may win a soul; nor will he attempt any good that involves opposition to the voice of an enlightened conscience. Accordingly, while he spreads around him the net of Christian charity, that so he may successfully become "a fisher of men," he ventures not to tread the paths of worldly dissipation, in the hope of possibly rescuing, by means of timely admonition, some who unhappily pursue them. Nor will he even talk with them of their many "pomps and vanities!"-the dance, the theatre, the opera, the race, -in order that, by "innocently unbending," (as it is still falsely called) he may prove the mildness and cheerfulness of the Christian system, and thus chase away their prejudices against it, and melt down their opposition to its holy precepts. He has not "so learned Christ." And though he finds it next to impossible to fix that precise boundary between religion and the world, that shall never, in any degree, or even in appearance, be overstepped, he still so adheres, through grace, to the broad principles of the Gospel, and so continually watches unto prayer, that he neither courts worldly society, nor surrenders himself to worldly rules and fashionable customs. His study is to be habitually "harmless and without rebuke, as a son of God in an evil and crooked generation." To offend the world by singularity is a far lighter evil, in his account, than to offend God by inconsistency. He says, like the great apostle, (1 Cor. iv. 3, 4,) "With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment...... He that judgeth me is the Lord." Such a "soldier of Jesus Christ" will also determine, like St. Peter, (Acts v. 29,) “We ought to obey God rather than men." He would "let his light so shine before men that they may see his good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven."

Worldly conformity is totally opposite in its proceedings. As its object and its motive are both alike secular, so it is prepared to venture on any sacrifice of conscience, or any violation even of the Divine laws, so long as neither may affect his present interest or reputation. Follow the man who surrenders himself to these false and carnal principles, and you will find him bending to circumstances, and not to Scripture; going down the stream with the thoughtless, if not with the ungodly; talking with unbecoming freedom of vanities, if not of vices, -in short, mixing himself up with the society in which he may be placed, and without any remembrance of that ear that hears all things, or of that eye which penetrates the heart, or of that day on which all its "secrets" shall be judged according to the Gospel (Rom. ii. 16.) Religion is with him a mere mask. Like the talented yet audacious Roman, who, by rousing the indignation, fired the eloquence, of Cicero, he will assume, perhaps, a tone of gravity with the grave, of levity with the young, and accommodate himself to all tastes and to all principles, as far as may consist with the real maintenance of his own with the security of his present ease, and of his credit with the worldly multitude. Πίστις.

(To be continued.)

TESTIMONY OF FOREIGN PROTESTANTS TO THE ANGLICAN

CHURCH.

For the Christian Observer.

We took occasion, in our last Number, in alluding to the King of Prussia's sponsorship to the Prince of Wales, to exchange a word with those who would unchurch all the Protestant non-episcopal churches; and we mentioned that not one of the Archbishops of Canterbury, from the days of the Reformation, Laud excepted, had the "iron heart," -as one of them, Dr. Wake, expresses it-to follow the opinion of "certain raving writers who affirm that the Reformed Churches have no valid sacraments, and so pronounce them scarcely Christian."

From this view we never wish to shrink; but remembering that the candour with which the Anglican Church regards other Christian communions is not always now-a-days returned in just reciprocity, it is necessary not to be slack in vindicating the claims of the Church of England. Against the Romanist on the one hand, and some bigoted members of the Reformed Churches on the other, we have to defend not only our doctrines and practices, but our holy orders; while with the Protestant Dissenter we have the additional task of urging the scriptural warrant for a national ecclesiastical establish

ment.

Thus circumstanced, we may seem to be placed in a false position, while allowing to others more than some of them are willing to allow to us; and there are not wanting those within our own pale who accuse the truly catholic-minded Anglican of treachery or inexpedient concession, in that, while he asserts the excellence of his own church, and the Divine sanction upon which it is based, he does not carry out his doctrine to conclusions which he believes to be unwarranted. This unbrotherly and unjust charge he must be content to bear; but it is not pleasing to him to find, that while endeavouring to keep "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" in regard to other churches, and exposing himself to reproach for so doing, he has to fight the battle of his own with some not very scrupulous out-door enemies-especially Protestant Dissenters.

Against opponents of this class it might be a useful office to collect some of the most striking testimonies of foreign Protestants in former days, to the excellence of the Anglican Church; and as a specimen of what might easily be adduced, we will give a few shreds of quotation.

Calvin, in his work on The Necessity of the Reformation of Churches, says that "In a hierarchy in which bishops so hold their dignity that they do not refuse to submit to Christ," in contradistinction to the usurpations of Romanism, “no anathema is too great for those who shall not regard such a hierarchy reverently and with the greatest obedience." He also says, in one of his letters to Archbishop Cranmer: "Te præsertim, ornatissime Præsul, quo altiore in specula sedes in hanc curam, ut facis, incumbere necesse est. Scio enim non ita unius Angliæ haberi abs te rationem, quin universo orbi consulas." He goes on to enjoin him to discharge his function, as specially committed to him by God.

Beza said (Resp. ad Saran. c. 18) that the Anglican Reformed

Church was supported "by the authority of Archbishops and Bishops;" and he prayed for a blessing upon their function, and that it might be perpetual. He declared that the people ought cheerfully to obey their authority : " Præsulibus ex animo obsequantur. Majori pœna digni sunt qui auctoritatem tuam aspernabuntur." The learned Isaac Casaubon-a Genevese, and the son of a Reformed pastor-was pleased to say that "No church in the world doth come nearer the form of the primitive church than the Church of England, "having followed the middle path between excess and defect, so that those who envied it were constrained to praise it." Upon witnessing a consecration of bishops at St. Paul's Cathedral, in London, he writes: "Vidi illos ritus et impositionem manuum, et preces in eam rem. O Deus, quanta fuit mihi voluptas! Tu Domine Jesu serva hanc ecclesiam, et Catharis qui ista rident da bonam mentem."

Spanheim, the Genevese professor of divinity, extolled the bishops and clergy of the English Church for their accurate writings in defence of the true faith, and affirmed that himself and the church of Geneva embraced the Anglican bishops and pastors, and prayed for the prosperity of those who sit at the helm of the Church, that they might enjoy the divine blessing, and that the episcopal authority might continue. (Ecclesiarum vestrarum Præsulibus sua autoritas.)

Proceeding from Switzerland to France, we find the elder Du Moulin writing to the Bishop of Winchester that the martyrs who suffered in the days of queen Mary were in no respect inferior in zeal to the most eminent servants of God in Germany or France; which none, he says, will deny who is not blind in day-light. He elsewhere adds, speaking in the name of the French Protestant Church, "The Bishops of England, after their conversion to the faith, (from Popery) were faithful servants of God, and ought not to desert their office or title of Bishop."

Thus wrote many eminent members of the foreign Protestant churches, concerning the Church of England; for it would be easy to add largely to such testimonies. If our modern Dissenters, who speak a very different language, say that they do not see anything beyond friendly candour and courtesy in such expressions of respect, we only ask that they would be equally candid and courteous.

As for those professed Anglicans who are trying to unfeather the nest in which they were reared, and to unroof the goodly mansion which shelters them, we will merely say that their proceeding is as novel as it is ungrateful and inconsistent. The divines whom they appeal to as the brightest links in the golden Anglican catena, never expressed a wish to unprotestantize the Church of England; nor did they carp at its formularies, or reverse their averments, after the fashion of the sect of the Ninety Tracts, under the insulting pretext of thereby exalting them to catholicity, which otherwise they would lack. Whether from pride or prudence, from a sense of decency, or, as we believe, from sincere conviction, they professed to approve and admire the Church of England as it is. Were we to select from among the divines of this school one who may be regarded as its most far-going and uncompromising advocate, it would be Doctor Peter Heylin; who out-Lauded even his admirer and patron, Archbishop Laud. The manner in which he argued in the schools at Oxford, in 1627, the negative of the question "An ecclesia possit errare was a prelude to his future course; and we cannot think without horror of the wicked, though able, treatise which he composed, to please Laud, against the Divine obligation of the Lord's-day, and in favour of the proclamation for Sunday Sports, which Laud judged an admirable expedient for supporting the Church of England, and putting down Puritanisım.* But even Heylin did not speak of the Church of England after the fashion of the Tractarian school, as though it were a miserable abortion, rather too good for ultra-Protestantism, but not good enough for Popery; a cruel unnatural mother, in whose service we work in chains; a torpedo that benumbs all that is devout and fervent; and, to use the mildest words, a church so uncatholic in its spirit, that it requires much good sophistry to enable any sound member of Christ's holy Catholic Church to continue in its communion. We will only quote one brief passage from Heylin, to shew how far he was from agreeing in this matter with the "British Critic" and the author of No. 90, the statements of which Dr. Pusey, Mr. Keble, and Dr. Hook have made their own. He says, in the preface to his "Ecclesia Vindicata :" "Reader, if thou art of the same persuasion and opinion with me, I doubt not but thou wilt... find much comfort in thy soul for thy adhesion to a Church, so rightly constituted, so warrantably reformed, so punctually modelled by the pattern of the purest and most happy ages of Christianity; a Church which for her power and polity, her sacred offices and ad. ministrations, hath not alone the grounds of Scripture, the testimony of antiquity, and consent of Fathers, but as good countenance and support as the established laws of the land could give her." So thought even Laud's Heylin and Laud himself. It was left for the Oxford Tractarians to discover that the Church of England is not " warrantably reformed and punctually modelled by the pattern of the purest and most happy times of Christendom."

* Heylin had good cause in after years to mislike the Puritans for the persecutions he underwent at their hands during the reign of their faction; for like our modern Dissenters they became political religionists; nor were they satisfied till they overthrew both the Church and the Throne. His (first) biographer, the Rev. George Vernon, says of him in after-life, that having been "betrayed by a zealous She-Puritan, one Mrs. Munday," under the protection of whose husband, a zealous cavalier, he had placed himself, "he ever after observed it for a rule never to come within the doors of a holy sister, whose house may be compared to that which Solomon describeth, the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death." The anecdote, and the unjustifiable language in which it is narrated, are more monitory than pleasing. They shew the spirit engendered by the fierce strifes of unscrupulous partizanship, whether in politics or religion; but most

when by passion and prejudice they are made to inflame each other. Among these "She-Puritans" and "holy sisters" were many truly holy and admirable women; among the persecuted and proscribed "cavalier-doctors," as Mrs. Munday called Dr. Heylin, were some of the most learned, exemplary, and pious divines, that ever adorned any church or country, as was especially seen at the Restoration. When we view the contentions of the present day, and the manner in which they are too often carried on, we sometimes forbode lest there should supervene such a state of affairs as that which convulsed the people of this highly-favoured land two centuries ago. There are some Churchmen, we fear, and some Dissenters, who would precipitate us into this disaster; but our trust, under God, is in the better spirit of the influential majority on both sides, who have no wish to carry their measures to such nefarious extremes.

LAYMEN NOT AUTHORISED TO READ THE LESSONS IN CHURCH.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

"to

In the various Articles which formerly appeared in your pages, on Laymen reading the Lessons, I do not remember to have noticed an argument, which yet seems to me calculated to set the question at rest, as far as regards the lawfulness of the practice in our own Church. It is this: -Though the Rubric, in the Order for Morning Prayer, merely directs "Then shall be read the first Lesson," without specifying by whom it shall be read ;-and though the phrase "He that readeth," at first sight seems actually, if not designedly, indefinite; yet the note to the Rubric directs that "Before every Lesson the minister shall say, 'Here beginneth such a chapter,' &c. This direction plainly shows that the Lessons are to be read by " the Minister;" and it is needless to add that by this term our Church means only a bishop, or priest, or deacon; nor does it seem at all likely that our Church intended to allow laymen the very privilege which she expressly confers on deacons at their ordination, -“ Take thou authority to read the Gospel in the Church of God;"-and, be it observed, this is the whole of the privilege of public teaching which is absolutely committed to a deacon by ordination; for liberty preach the same" Gospel is conditional, " if thou be thereto licensed by the bishop himself." It seems to me very probable that the compilers of our Liturgy used the phrase, "He that readeth," as equivalent to "the Reader," the minister in the Church, before the Reformation, who performed this part of the public service. I am not aware whether they copied the Rubric in question from the Breviary; but if they did, such was undoubtedly the case: and if they did not, still the circumstance of their being so familiar with the office of Reader, as distinct from the Priest, most likely led them to adopt the phraseology in question. May we not also trace to this source the custom of others, besides the regular officiating minister, occasionally reading the Lessons? In consequence of that part of the public Service having been, before the Reformation, performed by an inferior minister, it seems not unnatural to suppose that it became to be considered allowable for some one besides a bishop, or priest, or deacon, to perform it, after the office of Reader was abolished; especially as the direction of the Rubric was apparently vague and indefinite.

Still this custom of the earlier Church-even if it indirectly gave rise to the practice alluded to--affords no sanction for laymen reading the Lessons. "The Readers" (as seems clear from Bingham, "Christian Antiquities," Book III. Chap. V.) were regularly ordained to their office, and reckoned among the inferior clergy. He shews, in the first place, that the office of Reader was not instituted till the third century; Tertullian being the first author who mentions it. Before that time, it seems that the Lessons were read by deacons, presbyters, or bishops; as was also occasionally done in some churches even after the institution of Readers; the Church of Alexandria being the only one which allowed laymen to officiate in this part of the service. "Tertullian," says Bingham, "writing against the heretics, objects to them that their orders were desultory and inconstant; "hodie Diaconus, qui cras Lector;" which implies that

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