of Christ finally subdued that enmity? as an old English writer (Donne) admirably says concerning Saul, "Christ was the lightning flash that melted him, Christ was the mould that formed him."

For many, who are called Christian, demonstrate, to this very hour, the truth of Mr. Burke's saying. They do not love religion; consequently they hate it. Whatever be their courtesy, their kindness, their compassion for the poor, their strict integrity, their youthful amiableness, their filial attachment; yet their conduct, their conversation, their prevailing taste and studies, will prove that the religion of Christ, as developed in the New Testament, is the object of their real, however unsuspected, hatred. That hatred may assume, in turn, every possible disguise. It may pass for philosophy, good taste, common sense, a due regard to our intellectual soundness, to innocent pleasures and relaxation, and (though last not least) a fixed dislike of every approach to Calvinism. Still it is plain to those who make the Scriptures the standard of religious truth, that with these and like pretences will consist an essential enmity to that religion which animates and commands the heart, and whose breath is love, supreme love, to our Redeemer. (See 1 John iv. 8.)

If now the delusion of such persons be as impenetrable as an autumnal mist, it will quickly fly at the presence of that Almighty Judge, who cannot be deceived by appearances, since " he knoweth the secrets of the heart." To every candid reader I would point the solemn admonition, "If these things be so," dare to search your heart; test your principles and your practice, not by erring tradition, but by the unerring word of God. Go not to the world for your religion. In a region so full of shadows you can discern nothing in its true shape and character. Of the world our Lord testifies (and it is, alas, unaltered in our day) that it rejects the Holy Spirit (John xiv. 17), and consequently refuses Christ, as the only Saviour of the soul. Therefore "to the law and to the testimony." Implore, like the royal Psalmist (Psalm cxix. passim) that light which cometh from above, that so you may "understand the Scriptures." Beseech the Lord to "cleanse the thoughts of your heart by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit, that you may perfectly love him and worthily magnify His holy name." When alone, think of eternity, think of Heaven, think of Jesus. And if you are not grown old in the love and service of the world, I would fully and fondly hope that at length you will be "taught of God," that "they who do not love religion hate it," and must, therefore, be made new creatures by the grace of Christ, before they can enjoy that glory which He has prepared for them that love Him. He who freely saves us, positively claims our hearts.

Πίστις.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF ENGLISH RITUALISTS.

For the Christian Observer.

In our Number for April we inserted a list of English ritualists, and penned some biographical notices of several of them, with remarks upon their writings. Leaving out of the range canonists, such as Bishop Gibson; devotional commentators, such as Comber and Nelson; and also writers of church narrative, such as Strype and Bishop Burnet; the substance of what is most necessary to be known respecting the English ritual may be found in Wheatly and Nichols, combining with their Anglican elucidations, the works of Bingham, as laying the basis of our own ritualism in that of the Church Catholic. These were the chief writers on the subject during the last century, and we entered into considerable detail respecting them. We had purposed adding some account of the ritualists of the preceding century; but few of them stand out distinctly as ritualists in the same way as Nichols and Wheatly. Bishop Andrews and Bishop Cosin were deeply versed in liturgical inquiries; but they did not publish any distinct treatise upon the Anglican liturgy. Dr. Nichols, however, printed their valuable manuscript collections; which were, and we suppose still are, in the Bishop of Durham's library. There is also in that repository an interleaved Book of Common Prayer, of the date of 1619, which contains manuscript notes, supposed to have been made from the collections of Bishop Overall, by his chaplain; a copy of which falling into the hands of Dr. Hickes, he printed a portion of the remarks in the Preface to his "Christian Priesthood." In the same library is a Prayer-book with the collections of Bishop Cosin. Dr. Nichols also had access to a manuscript volume of three hundred pages by the same prelate, entitled "Liturgica, sive annotata ad divina officia, præsertim ea quæ publicâ authoritate celebrantur in Ecclesia Anglicana."

Bishop Overall had deeply studied ritual questions, and attached to them an importance which does not abstractedly belong to them, important as they are relatively, and necessary to be considered in regard to church order, with due reference to time and place. Overall was one of the precursors of that school which Archbishop Laud elevated above genuine Anglicanism, and which, by its excessive spirit of overwrought ceremonialism, did more to cause a prejudice against the Church of England, than all the declamations of the Puritans. He was a warm stickler for the expunged peculiarities of the first Prayer-book of King Edward, and greatly lamented the improvements in the revised service; such as the suppression of the word " altar." In urging the duty of prayer, he speaks in a way to disparage preaching, which he seems to represent very much as a puritanical performance. For example, speaking of the daily public service, he says: “Here's a command that binds us every day to say the morning and evening prayer. How many are the men that are noted to do so? 'Tis well they have a back-door for an excuse to come out at; for, good men ! they are so belaboured with studying of divinity and preaching the word, that they have no leisure to read these same common prayers." This is a very ugly way of writing. The injunction is that "the curate that ministereth in every parish church or chapel, being at home, and not being otherwise reasonably hindered, shall say the same in the parish church or chapel where he ministereth." The question what is reasonable hindrance must be determined by each man's own conscience; and Overall was to be commended for enforcing what he considered a too much neglected duty; but why write in a satirical manner about the clergy being "belaboured with studying divinity, and preaching the word." This Romanist disparagement of the divine ordinance of preaching, which was, and is, so common among divines of the class of Bishop Overall, placed a powerful weapon in the hands of the Puritans, and caused the Church of England to be popularly branded with the stigma of ceremonialism and superstition. Does not faith come by hearing; and did not the Apostle Paul enjoin Timothy both to study divinity and to preach the word ?

The following are among the chief notices of Overall's life. He was born in 1559; and received the rudiments of his classical studies at the Grammar School of Hadley, whence he was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge; but afterwards removing to Trinity College, was chosen fellow of that society In 1596, he was appointed Regius professor of divinity, when he took the degree of D.D., and, about the same time, was elected master of Catherine Hall. In 1601, he succeeded Dr. Nowell in the deanery of St. Paul's, London, at the recommendation of his patron Sir Fulk Greville and Queen Elizabeth; and, in the beginning of James's reign, he was chosen Prolocutor of the Lower House of Convocation. We had lately occasion to write of his Convocation book, and therefore pass over that portion of his life and labours.

In 1612 he was appointed one of the first governors of the Charterhouse Hospital, then just founded by Thomas Sutton. In April 1614, he was made Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry; and in 1618 was translated to Norwich, where he died in May 12, 1619, and was buried in the cathedral of that see. After the restoration of Charles II., Cosin, Bishop of Durham, who had been his secretary, erected a monument to his memory, with a Latin inscription, in which he was declared to be, "Vir undequaque doctissimus, et omni encomio major."

He was a deeply read scholastic divine; and Cosin, who perhaps may be thought to rival him in that branch of learning, calls himself his scholar, and declares that he derived all his knowledge from him. He was also a man of devout as well as studious habits. In the controversy which in his time divided the reformed churches, concerning Predestination and Grace, he inclined to Arminianism, and helped to pave the way for the reception of that doctrine in England, where it was generally embraced a few years afterwards, chiefly by the authority and influence of Archbishop Laud. Overall had a particular friendship with Vossius and Grotius. He laboured to compose the differences in Holland, relative to the Quinquarticular controversy; as appears in part by his letters to those two learned correspondents, some of which were printed in the "Præstantium et eruditorum virorum epistolæ ecclesiasticæ et theologicæ," published by Limborch and Hartsoeker, as an historical defence of Arminianism.

But he is known in England chiefly by his "Convocation-book," of which Burnet gives the following account: "There was a book drawn up by Bishop Overall, fourscore years ago, concerning government, in which its being of a divine institution was positively asserted. It was read in Convocation, and passed by that body, in order to the publishing of it; in opposition to the principles laid down in the famous book of Parsons the Jesuit, published under the name of Doleman.' But King James did not like a Convocation entering into such a theory of politics, so he wrote a long letter to Abbot, who was afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, but was then in the Lower House. By it he desired that no further progress should be made in that matter, and that this book might not be offered to him for his assent; there that matter slept. But Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, had got Overall's own book into his hands; so in the beginning of this (King William's) reign, he resolved to publish it, as an authentic declaration that the Church of England had made in this matter; and it was published, as well as licensed, by him a very few days before he became under suspension for not taking the oaths (October 1689.) But there was a paragraph or two in it that they had not considered, which was plainly calculated to justify the owning the United Provinces to be a lawful government ; for it was there laid down that when a change of government was brought to a thorough settlement, it was then to be owned and submitted to as a work of the providence of God." But what gave this book much consequence on its revival was, that Dr. Sherlock acknowledged that he became reconciled to take the oaths to the new government, at the Revolution, by the doctrines above-mentioned in Overall's work; so strange is the effect of re-action in such controversies.

Another matter in which Dr. Overall's opinion appears to have had great weight, in his life-time and afterwards, was the question of hypothetical ordination. One great obstacle to the reconciliation of the Dissenters was, that the Church of England denied the validity of Presbyterian ordination, and required re-ordination. Bishop Overall, and after him Tillotson, endeavoured to meet this difficulty by an alteration in the words of ordination, as "If thou beest not already ordained, I ordain thee," &c.

Bishop Montague of Norwich, who was a great admirer of Bishop Overall, frequently and confidently affirmed that Vossius's Pelagian History was compiled out of Overall's collections. Overall also is named among the translators of the Bible; and he had a share in compiling the Church Catechism, of which he is said to have written what regards the Sacraments.

Bishop Cosin, though a zealous ritualist, we pass over, as he did not publish specially on the subject. He was popularly suspected of being a Papist at heart; but without any just reason, except as the doctrines of the school to which he belonged have always tended towards Rome, and driven disciples thither, though the masters may not have followed. He however sustained a severe calamity for he justly deemed it such-in his son's becoming a Papist, and receiving orders in the church of Rome; but how could he be surprised when he had caused him to be educated in a Jesuits' college? He was one of the leaders of the Laudite party, and upheld the Primate's measures. He persecuted Puritans, and was in turn persecuted by them; for in those perilous times the tyrant of to-day was the victim of to-morrow; as happened in the instance of Cosin and one Smart, a prebendary of the Cathedral of Durham, whom he took the lead in prosecuting, for a sermon which he preached from the text, "I hate them that hold of superstitious vanities;" in which he probably glanced at some of the opinions and practices which Cosin zealously advocated. He was degraded and deprived of his preferments; but Cosin, in his turn, shared asimilar fate; being ejected from his appointments, and impeached at the bar of the House of Lords, on the charge of being Popishly affected; though he cleared himself and was acquitted. In 1642, he was deprived of the Mastership of Peter-house, Cambridge, for aiding in sending the plate of the University to the king, CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 60. 5 A

[DEC. at York. After the Restoration he was made Bishop of Durham.

His publications, chiefly posthumous, are numerous and learned. His notes on the Prayer-book, published by Nichols, are useful to the student; but they take the same line of ultra-ceremonialism with those of Overall. He maintains that among the ornaments, vestures, and emblems, which the rubrics enjoin, are "Two lights to be set upon the altar or communion-table; a cope or vestment for the priest and for the bishop; besides their albs, surplices, and rochets; and the bishop's crozier-staff, to be holden by him at his ministration and ordination;" and he does not forget the "corporas," which assuredly the Church of England does not sanction, and the very name of which is offensive, as connected with the doctrine of transubstantiation; the priest being said to place the body of Christ upon a cloth, with some allusion perhaps to his burial. The same term occurs in the Scotch Liturgy; which, though, as we lately remarked, Laud did not compile, but the Scottish bishops, he superintended; and both he and they were of one mind in the matter.

We must not omit the mention of Bishop Sparrow; whose "Rationale upon the Book of Common-Prayer of the Church of England," was the precursor and model of the larger works of Wheatly and Nichols; but it contains some things not found in them. His "Collection of Articles, Injunctions, Canons, Orders," &c. is a very useful work of its kind, and has not been superseded.

Dr. Anthony Sparrow was born at Depden, in Suffolk, and was educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, of which he became scholar and fellow, but was ejected in 1643, with the rest of the Society, for their loyalty and refusing the Covenant. Soon afterwards he accepted the rectory of Hawkedon, in Suffolk; but before he had held it above five weeks, he was again ejected for reading the Common Prayer. After the Restoration he returned to his benefice, and was elected one of the preachers at St. Edmund's Bury, and was made Archdeacon of Sudbury, and a Prebendary of Ely. Being chosen Master of Queen's College, he resigned his charge at St. Edmund's Bury, and the rectory of Hawkedon. In 1667, he was consecrated Bishop of Exeter, and, on the death of Dr. Reynolds in 1678, was translated to Norwich, where he died in May, 1685.

Bishop Sparrow, like most of the ritualists whom we have mentioned, overstated the claims of ritualism. We question whether even the great majority of the priesthood of the Church of Rome are accustomed to attach as much significance to symbolical representation, as divines of this class in the Church of England. As their notions have of late been revived and extended, and many readers are much interested in the subject, we will copy what Sparrow says of the hieroglyphical import of the various parts of a church. Such minute typifications are fanciful and puerile; they derogate from the simple dignity of Christian worship; they are an unauthorised and superstitious parody upon the Jewish temple; and they oppose the anti-typical spirit of the Gospel, which regards the building in which the faithful assemble for prayer and praise, and for the administration of the Word and Sacraments, as an edifice to be conveniently adapted for such purposes, with meet comeliness, and not disdaining such cost and magnificence as are compatible with the circumstances of the case, and if designed only for reverence, and not proud or meretricious; but rejecting the pettiness, worthy only of the monks of the