of deaths, is not the pressure upon the limits of food obviously working its results in both ways? But we must lay down this unwelcome theme, to notice the closing days of the excellent man whose theories we do not feel bound to espouse from respect to his virtues. He had retired, as we have stated, to Belfast, his health being much injured by his parliamentary labours, especially in the Factory question. But though ailing, and subject to much nervous excitement, he continued his habits of close study and of irregularity in his meals and exercise. At length he was attacked with "inflammation of the heart," and became persuaded he should not recover. He had long been well acquainted with the doctrines of the Gospel, and had given evidence that he felt their truth and importance. But now he applied them to his own circumstances, with keen self-examination, and with repentance the most deep and self-abasing. The Scriptures were seldom out of his hand; his conversation was on the one topic; and he was en gaged in earnest and vehement prayer by night and by day. He did not, says his biographer, weigh his charitable actions against his sins, hoping that the atoning sacrifice of Christ would balance the account. He resorted not to such "refuges of lies;" but reposed by faith in the sacrifice of Calvary. And this faith shewed itself in many ways in his deportment, and gave "abundant evidence of a real and rapidly progressive work of Divine grace in his heart." He repeated such passages of Scripture as “I know that my Redeemer liveth," &c.; and "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," &c., as expressing his own feelings. He expressed most touchingly, when he was near death, his sense of his own utter unworthiness, and his entire dependence on the atoning sacrifice of his Saviour, adding-these being nearly the last syllables he uttered Take my poor heart, and let it be VIEW OF PUBLIC SIR R. Peel is proceeding victoriously with his scale of Commercial Imposts, which completes his outline of economical policy, in its three-fold application to the corn-laws, an income tax, and the relaxation of the duties upon articles of import. Objections have been urged against particular items in his tariff; especially by portions of the landed interest against the admission, at a moderate duty, of sheep, oxen, and other animals for food; and by particular classes against other relaxations affecting themselves; while, on the other side, the advocates of free trade have endeavoured, in various instances, to reduce the proposed scale; but upon the whole the great majority of the House of Commons and of the country seem convinced, that taking the three measures together, there is an equitable adjustment of conflicting interests, and that the scheme will work well, and promote the public welfare. AFFAIRS. The opprobrious and demoralising practice of Bribery at Parliamentary Elections, has at length come before the legislature and the nation, in so rampantan attitude, that we begin to hope some really efficient effort will at length be made to abolish it. Having often from our earliest volumes written on this subject, and having already alluded to the enormous bribery at the late elections, (Christian Observer for last Oct. p. 639), we need not repeat our remarks. We will only add that the briber is even more culpable than his victims; and no apology can be made for the practice, which would not justify poaching, smuggling, and other criminalities. For the conservation of public morals we would gladly consign both the tempter and his dupe to the tread-mill together. A Queen's Letter has been issued for a national collection " in aid of the sub scriptions entered into for the relief of the working classes in some districts in England and Scotland." Such a measure is not free from difficulties and it may be objections in regard to the management and assignment of contributions; for severe distress is not confined to a few specified places or neighbourhoods; but where, as in this instance, urgent want is known to exist, the hand of Christian charity ought to be widely opened to relieve it; - we should rescue the famishing and dying first, and adjust our statistics, political economy, and prospective remedial measures afterwards. We might appropriately include the May Meetings of Religious Societies among the topics of public intelligence; but they are far too numerous, and their proceedings too extensive, to admit of a passing glance at them. Some of the most striking points we shall notice on other occasions; but we rejoice to see the divine blessing so largely outpoured upon these blessed institutions, while we deeply regret that they should in various instances be impeded in their glorious course, especially in the instance of the Church Missionary Society, by the inadequacy of their pecuniary resources to the great work which is opening before them. We said, at the commencement of the year, that it had often in former days been our duty to urge Church-reform and Church-defence; but that the special motto at the present moment is Church-extension. We repeat the remark; and greatly do we rejoice at witnessing the mass of important facts which the recent anniversaries have disclosed in this regard: as for example, Churchbuilding, Church-schools (augmented in number, and upon improved plans, and with training establishments); Churchaids for promoting pastoral efficiency; Church-missions, for the colonies, for the heathen, for the Jews, and for the revival of the decayed Oriental churches; Church ordinances and Church discipline, as exemplified in appointing bishops in distant lands, and translating and circulating the formularies of the Anglican branch of Christ's Holy Catholic Church; and we refrain not from adding, as the basis of all, the cosmopolitan circulation of the lively oracles of God, whether specially by our own and other communions, or, as in that truly Catholic institution the Bible Society, by the united efforts of all who desire to forward "the common salvation." ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. M.; J. F.; W. W.; B. J.; D. E.; A. S.; L. B.; Πιστις ; are under consideration. We inserted last month a paper signed No PUSEYITE, (with the exception of a scrap of quotation which was obliged to be omitted, owing to a few words being blurred in the manuscript, but which we will add if the writer thinks it worth while to supply it), and we appended some remarks to it; and there we shall leave the matter; for we do not feel ourselves bound to print a second letter from the writer in further proof of the anti-Scriptural, anti-Anglican, and mischievous statement, that there is not any real difference between justification by faith, and justification by works (for that is really the upshot of his argument); or to shew that Mr. Newman and Mr. Faber mean the same thing, a coincidence which neither of those able controversialists has himself discovered; and to convict Hooker and Mr. Faber of absurdity, in maintaining that justification by our own works, even though God be our helper, is justification by works after all, and not justification as set forth in Holy Writ. Hooker knew well, and so does Mr. Faber, the perplexed maze which the Papists tread; and the labyrinth becomes more wildering and dangerous, when specious efforts are made to reconcile justification by man's righteousness sness (however infused) with the scriptural doctrine of justification by faith, onl only through the sacrifice of Christ. To deal faithfully with our correspondent, we consider that he is cherishing an awful delusion, and we cannot consent to be parties in perplexing the weak and unskilful with "sophistry" in favour of it. We have written so often and largely on this very point during many years, that we will not dilate upon it at present; but we take the opportunity of reminding our readers, that they will find some very able remarks relative to it in a treatise upon "Justification by Faith only," by a living writer, Dr. O'Brien, of Trinity College, Dublin, lately promoted to the episcopal office, whose work we reviewed in our Volume for 1836, p. 285, and whose word "sophistry" we have adopted, as expressing our own opinion. His Lordship justly remarked: Ill grounded fears of the moral consequences of proclaiming, as the Gospel does, full and gratuitous pardon to all believers, send such persons (namely, certain philosophical objectors) in search of conditions to clog the freeness of this acceptance, or to limit its fulness. Faith, in its true Scripture sense, will serve this purpose badly; but obedience [infused holiness] is found in the Bible to be the unfailing characteristic of believers; and this, which should in fairness shew that God has himself guarded effectually against the consequences apprehended, is misused to suggest the human safeguard of enlarging the meaning of faith, and to supply some of the weak sophistry by which the proceeding is defended." As to the signature which our correspondent has chosen of "No Puseyite," the epithet "Puseyite" was not ours; we never write it; but as to the essentials of the system thus popularly named, there are many who may say, "Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose (Puseyism) sans que j'en susse rien;" though, from the caution with which some of them call themselves No PUSEYITES, we fear they will not add, "Et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela." In what does our correspondent materially dissent from Dr. Pusey ? SURRIENSIS says that he is not much the wiser for our remarks last month upon the recurrence of Sundays and Saints'-days; and that on the first of May he was puzzled, as usual, to know whether to take the Sunday service or that for St. Philip and St. James, or whether to select parts of both; and A SENIOR CLERGYMAN informs us, that he never reads any part of a Saint's-day service on Sunday, considering that the Lord's day supersedes it; and that the occurrence of Apocryphal lessons, in some of the Saints'-day services, is a proof that our Church could not intend the whole of those services, and therefore not any part of them to be used on Sundays. To SURRIENSIS we reply, that we did not intend to make him wiser; for we said, and we quoted the Ritualists to prove, that the rubrics do not solve the difficulty; and that therefore each clergyman must act as he thinks best till the question is decided by the appointed authorities. To a SENIOR CLERGYMAN we submit that he cannot carry out his own principle, however much he may wish it; for on some occasions there are no lessons but those for the Saint's-day; and though he may take the Sunday first lesson, he must take the Saint's-day second lesson. But in every instance he may take the whole Saint'sday service without borrowing from the Sunday service; and though this would sometimes introduce Apocryphal lessons, yet it is only matter of inference that they were not intended to be used, on such occasions, on a Sunday. We heartily wish we were rid of them altogether; and though we rejoice that they do not occur among the Sunday lessons, yet, in strictness, the principle is much the same, if we use them in the public service of God on any other day. We have then, in the cases under consideration, three courses open to us; first, we may use the whole Saint's-day service without borrowing from the Sunday; secondly, we may take the Sunday service so far as it goes, but then we must borrow the second lesson from the Saint's-day; thirdly, we may mix the two services according to our fancy. This last does not seem to be a regular or legitimate proceeding; we are reduced, then, to one of the first two courses. If the Church had made provision for the whole Sunday service in such cases, without the necessity of borrowing from the Saint's-day, we might consider that it was intended to set aside the Saint's-day; but as this is not the case, and as the Saint's-day service is complete in itself, we think the Church must have intended it to be used; but as there is no rubric to that effect, and, as the best Ritualists allow that the Clergy must exercise their discretion till the point is authoritatively settled, we think it cannot be wrong to exercise this discretion so far as to exchange a Saint's-day Apocryphal lesson for the Sunday Canonical lesson. It is only about three times in a year that Saints'-days fall on Sundays, and each Saint's-day occurs but once in several years; so that there is only only a very slight interruption to the usual services, and not greater than constitutes a profitable variety; nor is the Sunday Collect lost, as it is used all the week. Both DIACONUs and SOSIPATER have somewhat mistaken the drift of the paper in our last Number, upon Mr. Wordsworth's appeal to the Apostolical Fathers in support of his views of penance. Mr. Wordsworth preached and published pu an elaborate Sermon, mistitled, "Evangelical Repentance," in which he contended for the necessity of the confessional, priestly absolution, and corporeal penance. In reviewing his Discourse, we offered some remarks to the general general effect of the general arguments used by our Reformers, and other Protestant writers, in replying to the notions of the Romanists upon these points; and we were content there to leave the matter, as Holy Scripture has left it; for between the Tractarian doctrine and the Tridentine doctrine we can discern no material distinction; the chief difference being, that the Romanist carries out his principles consistently to their results; he arms the confessional with the powers which it req requires, and attempts to interpose checks to its abuses; he also defines what sins are venial and what mortal; and he very properly upon his system makes penance a sacrament; for if Baptism is a sacrament for a primary justification; the Lord's Supper a sacrament for continued and enlarged justification (the very terms are incongruous), there ought, according to this sacramental religion, to be a third sacrament for recovery after the loss of justification which is predicated of the commission of more than one offence after Baptism. In this the Papist has a manifest advantage over the inconsistent Tractarian, who hovers between Popery and Protestantism. Yet we believe that the inconsistency is more apparent than real; that the Tractarians think it necessary to avoid directly and verbally contradicting the language of the Articles to which they have subscribed; that they do consider Penance to be (and this Mr. Newman has intimated in No. 90) a sacrament; and that, therefore, the seeming difference between them and the Papists is only in their reserve of expression; so that if a Romanist were to upbraid Dr. Pusey, Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Newman, with not duly carrying out the doctrine of penance, they would take pains to convince him that they go quite as far as he does as to the principle, though as Anglican Protestants (we beg pardon, not Protestants) a little shading off of phrases is decent. But to return to our correspondents. Mr. Wordsworth published, subsequently to his Sermon, an elaborate Appendix ad Clerum, in which he endeavours to prove that his opinions upon penance have been those of the Church Catholic in every age. For ourselves, we account very lightly of this style of argument; for first, as Bishop Jeremy Taylor and numerous other writers have clearly proved (if indeed it needed proof), the judgment of the universal Church can rarely, and only on a few points, be clearly ascertained, for Fathers oppose Fathers, and Councils Councils; and even if it could, man's opinions are not authoritative; so that it is only going laboriously and uselessly out of the way to collect what every body everywhere believed, as if Vox populi were Vox Dei, instead of repairing at once to the inspired fountain of infallible truth, Upon this matter we abate nothing of what we have always maintained; but still, if a doctrine could be proved to have been generally held by the earliest Fathers, it would not be unreasonable to ask whether they might not have had some warrant for it, and the query would send us back to search the Scriptures whether these things be so. So again, though as members of the Church of England, our authorised formularies are subordinate to holy Scripture, our only standard of appeal; yet we might be fairly led to re-consider our construction of them, if it were proved to be contrary to that of the broad stream of our most eminent divines. Again, many persons, whether from sincere diffidence as to their own ability to examine controverted questions for themselves, or, from whatever other cause, are more disposed to look out for "authorities" than to weigh arguments. Now in all these cases the Tractarians gain much by an ostentatious shew of authors; but as they often quote loosely, unsatisfactorily, and, we must add, one-sidedly and unfairly (for Mr. Newman allows that if they find a passage which appears apt to their purpose, they do not think themselves bound to ascertain whether the same author writes otherwise elsewhere), it is well to deprive them of this advantage against truth, by tracing them to their sources, and shewing that, even if their alleged authorities were authorities, they would not prove in their favour. This useful service an able and learned correspondent commenced last month in regard to Mr. Wordsworth's appeal to the apostolical Fathers, and he has concluded his argument in our present Number; though, if we thought our readers would consider their time and ours well spent in continuing the collation down to the divines of our own Church, we would undertake to shew that Mr. Wordsworth claims as on his side authors who did not hold the peculiar opinions advocated in his Sermon; and that he applies to ecclesiastical penance what was meant of evangelical repentance. Not that opinions akin to those under consideration did not early prevail, for superstition and priestcraft had begun to infect the Church before the close of the second century; nor do we deny that some divines also, whom circumstances connected with the Anglican communion, held sentiments not Anglican or Scriptural; but we reject the conclusion, as our Church does in her sixth Article, that we are bound to receive anything as a matter of faith that is not proveable by Scripture; and we are sure that Mr. Wordsworth's notions upon the absolute necessity of auricular confession to a priest, of penance prescribed by him, and of his plenary absolution, are not so proveable. We are not, however, the less thankful to the able correspondent who has rescued the apostolic Fathers from the embrace of the Tractarians. Of Hermas, whose testimony is much relied upon by Mr. Wordsworth, but whom our correspondent has shewn to be an inadmissible or worthless witness, we need only repeat what we said to Mr. Newman more than five years ago, when Dr. Pusey quoted it for the same purpose as Mr. Wordsworth. (Vol. for 1835, p. 147.) THE IN my last paper, it was suggested that the generality of men are unacquainted with God, even in his natural attributes. Much less can we suppose them to be acquainted with God in his moral, spiritual, and essential nature. "No man," we are told on the highest authority, "hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." "He hath declared him," by concentrating in bright constellation, but with tempered and shrouded effulgence, the varied and opposite attributes of the Divine character : by exhibiting in his own person, freed from all their jarring asperities, and softened into the harmony of love, yet each standing out with all the definiteness of an isolated and characteristic grace, attributes, which to the finite mind of fallen man must have otherwise appeared irreconcileable. Let us accompany the meek and lowly Jesus to the hall of judgment, and there contemplate the beamings of Deity from beneath the robe of mockery or crown of thorns: or to the guest chamber, where, girded with a towel, heaven's "Lord and Master" washed his disciples' feet : let us follow him to Bethany, and, while the tear of tender affection and unrestrained sympathy glistens in His eyes, uplifted in secret devotion and fervent thanksgiving to the Father, hear Him, with the quickening voice of Omnipotence, speak to the dead, "Lazarus, come forth!" let us follow him to Calvary, and, with his timid disciples, stand afar off, to view, with awe and wonder, the process of that mysterious conflict, waged for the sceptre of the universe, and for the soul of man: let us watch, as the full vials of God's wrath against a rebellious world are successively poured out upon the innocent Lamb, while, fettered to the cross, His pure soul is tormented by the assaults of unclean spirits; and, in this hour of "the power of darkness," the Father's presence is withdrawn : let us hear, in solemn awe, when, in the agonies of spiritual desertion, sinking nature is compelled to cry out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" In all these different passages of the history of "God manifest in the flesh," we see traced, as by the pen of Deity, with all the characterising distinctness and precision of truth CHRIST. OBSERV. NO. 55. 3 D |