churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them, or any of them."

Thus the Queen promises by her Coronation Oath, to maintain the Church of England in its utmost integrity. But her Majesty is Queen of Scotland as well as of England; and, aware that the cardinal principles of Protestantism rest on the paramount supremacy of the Word of God, and believing, as I have no doubt she does, that the benefits of Christianity are not confined to one form of church government, surely we of the Church of England ought not to take offence at Her Majesty's willingness to show becoming respect to the Established Church of her kingdom of Scotland. But the question, I would repeat, which mainly concerns Protestants, and indeed all Christians, is not merely whether Episcopacy is the best form of church government, but whether it is so divinely appointed as to supersede all other forms; and further, whether the Church of England is as perfect as a pre-eminently Protestant Church ought to be; a church which professes to impose nothing on the consciences of her community, whether lay or clerical, which is not in accordance with Scripture. There doubtless may be valid Scriptural reasons for preferring Episcopacy to any other form of church government, and for preferring the Church of England to any other national church; and fairly may it be hoped that a nation which already has carried the Bible into almost every nook and corner of the earth, is destined to be chiefly conspicuous among the nations of the world, when the period shall arrive for the fulness of the Gen

tiles to come in; a period so magnificently shadowed forth in the forty-fifth Psalm, and so plainly characterised by St. Paul, that there is no unfulfilled prophecy at all to be compared with it in distinctness.

"If the fall of them," says that great Apostle of the Gentiles, "be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness." (Rom. xi. 12.)

Is it, then, any wonder that we look forward with some impatience to the coming in of the Jews to the faith of Christ? By their conversion the grand scheme which God has been carrying on for the salvation of mankind, in His various dispensations, will be made manifest, and the completest evidence afforded to the Gentiles of the truth of the Gospel.

The restoration of the Hebrew Church to the rights of a wife to the situation of the Queen Consort in Messiah's kingdom upon earth, has accordingly been shown by Bishop Horsley, in his four admirable sermons on the above-cited Psalm, to be the constant strain of prophecy. In the latter part of the second chapter of Hosea, Jehovah, after discarding the incontinent wife, and threatening terrible severity of punishment, adds, that nevertheless the time should come when she should again address her offended lord by the endearing name of husband. "And I will betroth thee to myself for ever. Yes; I will betroth thee to myself with justice, and with righteousness, and with exuberant kindness, and with tender love. Yes; with faithfulness to myself I will betroth thee." "The prophet Isaiah speaks to the same effect, and describes the Gentile converts as becoming,

upon the reunion, children of the pardoned wife." To expound these predictions of the ancient prophets, or St. Paul's declaration to the Romans, that "blindness is in part only happened unto Israel, till the time shall arrive for the fulness of the Gentiles to come in," 66 of any thing but the restoration of the natural Israel, is to introduce ambiguity and equivocation into the plainest oracles of God."

In the above sermons, as elsewhere, Bishop Horsley has shown how the fortunes and destiny of the British Empire are connected with some of the most important prophecies in the Bible; and greatly as I deplore his most eccentric defence of the interpolated clause in the Apostle's Creed, yet his writings must have done infinite service to the cause of Christianity; and when his great powers of imagination are in subjection to a judgment, for the most part sound, his elucidations of prophecy are rendered doubly interesting by the splendid imagery with which he has invested them.

The following peroration of his four sermons on the forty-fifth Psalm is solemn and impressive:—

"By inditing this marriage song, the Psalmist hoped to be the means of celebrating the Redeemer's name from age to age, and of inciting the nations of the world to join in His praise. The event has not disappointed this expectation of the holy prophet. His composition has been the delight of the congregations of the faithful for little less than three thousand years. For one thousand and forty it was the means of keeping alive in the synagogue the hope of the Redeemer to come; for eighteen hundred years since, it has been the means of

perpetuating in Christian congregations the grateful remembrance of what has been done,-anxious attention to what is doing,—and the cheering hope of the second coming of our Lord."

Now if these things be so, "what manner of persons ought the members of the Church of England to be in all holy conversation and godliness; looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God?" If they sincerely believe that their church is not only a faithful branch of Christ's Church, but that she approaches nearer to the apostolic model than any other national church, what ought to be their tenour? Ought they to be self-satisfied and exclusive? or ought they not rather to weigh well the causes of dissent, and seek to remove whatever thorns and briars there may still be defacing this otherwise beauteous garden of the Lord?

The present clergy of the Church of England will bear comparison with any body of men whatever, in learning and piety, and the consistent purity of their lives; and they are thus entitled to take their place in the van of Christ's militant church on earth. But let them not forget, that they are but a branch of the universal Church of Christ, and that other churches are engaged, around the standard of the Bible, in the same spiritual warfare with themselves.

Unfortunately, every candidate for the Holy Orders of our church has two contradictory conditions to encounter in limine. He is required to search the sacred Scriptures, and make them the test of right and wrong in all things; whilst he is likewise bound to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, not in a spirit of compromise,

66

but willingly and ex animo, simply and unequivocally, and to acknowlege all and every Article to be agreeable to the Word of God. "Thus only," a late learned bishop has declared, can a person offer himself at the table of the Lord, as his minister, with safety; thus only can he expect a blessing upon his ministry." There are, moreover, besides thirty-nine Articles, canons, and creeds, and two books of homilies, as well as ritual observances, to which he is bound to conform, in order sincerely and zealously to enforce those points of faith and practice which our church declares to be the revealed Word of God, in contradistinction to other churches, or to other sects of Christians. All this the candidate for Holy Orders must subscribe, and that ex animo, notwithstanding the very doctors of our church are at variance, and one bishop thinks differently from another, even with regard to Baptism and the Lord's Supper.

"Non nostrum tantas componere lites."

Nevertheless, with respect to the vexed question of Baptismal Regeneration, I cannot help referring my readers to Professor Browne's complete exposition of Article XII. and the four preceding Articles; for I am certain that an attentive perusal will make dispassionate minds shudder at the intemperate discussions which have taken place, in high places, respecting the precise import of words declaratory of the vital doctrine of Christianity; for such unquestionably is the regeneration of fallen man. To the unsophisticated Christian it is as clear as the sun at noonday, that the efficient cause of regeneration is