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intimation of what was passing in the dying man's mind, even in its incoherence, when he cried out, God, God, God! three or four times;" with the counsel which the woman, with the utmost simplicity, tells us she gave him: "Now, I to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God: I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet." How wonderfully in these few words has Shakespeare exhibited the feelings of the unrenewed mind, which is enmity with God;" and also the popular delusion that it is not necessary to think upon God, till it is too late to think of any. thing else. The narrator dreams not that there could be two opinions upon the subject; she relates with perfect complacency the advice she gave; she does not conjecture that any person could suppose that a man would think upon God except as a matter of necessity; it might be requisite if he were in the very article of death; but why should he" trouble himself" '—a most apt expression to convey her idea-with such reflections, so long as a ray of hope remained? It comes out also for Shakespeare is evidently painting from nature— that such was, and I fear still is, the advice given by ignorant, officious persons to the sick and dying. In numberless cases it is not till there is urgent danger, or perhaps till the sufferer expresses such alarming apprehensions about his soul that the attendants find themselves unable to "comfort him" after Mrs. Quickly's fashion, that a clergyman is sent for to visit him; unless a desire for temporal relief antedated the request. And then, when the minister of Christ has faithfully discharged his office, he no sooner perhaps quits the chamber, than some Mrs. Quickly strives to " I comfort' the sufferer by undoing all he has attempted to do; urging him not "to take on so;" that he has lived a good life- -or if that is not decently predicable, that he is not worse than many others; that there is time enough before him, and that "there is no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet." I was once sent for to "pray to" a farmer's wife, who had just been confined with twins, and was considered in danger. Of course my visit under such circumstances was short and unexciting; and consisted chiefly of a few kind words and exhortations; the suggestion of one or two suitable texts, and a brief prayer for herself and her babes. Upon calling next day, the nurse, with a a low courtesy, thanked me for my kind intention, but said she was happy to say that Mrs. did not need to be prayed to now, as she was much better. I doubt not she had tried to "comfort" her by bidding her not think of God. She was however more honest than Mrs. Quickly, for she did send for the clergyman when she considered the case desperate; whereas Shakespeare's gossip tells the dying man there was no need to trouble himself about religion yet, when she knew well "there was but one way." Would that nurses, and doctors too, were not still addicted too often to this sin of uttering conscious falsehood beside the beds of the sick and dying.

The language put by Shakespeare into the lips of Mrs. Quickly is the more striking, because he is making her speak in character, as an ignorant irreligious woman; her being dissolute does not touch the question, for he might have caused her to speak thus without her being grossly vicious. I say that he is making her speak in character; for when, a few pages further on, Henry V., whom he means to represent as a reflecting, religious, and high-souled man, is describing how a sick person should feel and act, very different are the sentiments. CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 38.

Speaking of the wicked lives of too many soldiers before they entered the army, he says:

"Now, if these men have defeated the law, and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip man, they have no wings to fly from God: war is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that men here are punished for before breach of the king's laws, in now the king's quarrel where they feared death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation, than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; as not dying, the time was blessedly lost, wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think, that making God so free an offer, he let him outlive that day to see his greatness, and to teach others bow they should prepare."

In this passage, which might have been written by Jeremy Taylor, there is nothing of its being time enough to repent when we are dying. The time, he says, which men accounted lost, was "blessedly lost," wherein such preparation was gained. He vents no such folly as the popular notion that a sick man is to seek his comfort in banishing serious reflection.* Shakespeare, though irreligious himself, knew, as a matter of information, that it is the wicked who say unto God, “Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways."

Accordingly, in our very first introduction to him, we find him conjuring the Archbishop and the Bishop of Ely to give him honest and religious counsel as to what were his rights and duties in regard to his claims upon France. He says, "We charge you, in the name of God," not to "fashion, wrest, or bow" their reading to pervert truth; but to speak faithfully:

"And we will hear, note, and believe in heart,

That what you speak is in your conscience, washed

As pure as sin by baptism."

He tells his ambassadors not to dilute the Dauphin's words, for fear of irritating him; for,

"We are no tyrant, but a Christian

king,

Unto whose grace our passion is as subject

As are our wretches fettered in our prisons."

He checks himself in his remark of

what he hoped to do in France, by interjecting by God's grace;" equivalent to "If the Lord will." He makes prayer go before and follow his designs, not allowing his absorption of mind to cause him to neglect this duty, but viewing the duty as an indispensable preliminary to action:

"Therefore, my Lords, omit no happy hour,

That may give furtherance to our expedition;

For we have now no thought to us but France,

Save those to God, that run before our
business."

Scriptural allusions seem familiar to
him thus the base and treacherous
treason of Cambridge, Scrope, and
Grey, who had been honoured and con-
fided in, he says, "Is like another fall
of man;" and when it is discovered, he
attributes bis deliverance to God, who
"So graciously hath brought to light
This dangerous treason,"
and he adds,

"Let us deliver
Our puissance into the hand of God;"
and on another occasion:

"We are in God's hand, brother, not in theirs :"

and when he seemed to wax self-confident, he checks himself:

The righteous man-the true believer-finds comfort in thinking upon God; though alienated by nature, he is brought nigh by grace; though he fell in the first Adam, he is restored by the second; though he had destroyed himself, yet in God is his help; his offended Creator has become his reconciled Father in Christ Jesus; God is his shield, and his exceeding great reward; he has followed the advice which Elephaz gave to Job in his affliction, and has enjoyed the blessing which he predicted should follow: "Acquaint thyself with Him, and be at peace; thereby good shall come unto thee." This was sound and salutary advice, not only to a sick man but to mankind under all circumstances; though in Job's days, as in all other ages, there were those who would have pronounced a contrary opinion, urging him not to "trouble himself with such thoughts," at least not yet; and indeed his own wife seems to have been of this, or even a worse, way of thinking, when she bade him "curse God and die." Thus have "foolish women," and men, spoken in all ages; sometimes with scornful profaneness like Job's wife; oftener with fear arising from the consciousness of guilt; and with aversion, from alienation of heart to his laws. When we reflect that man was made in the image of God; and that his highest bliss in a state of innocence was, as it will be in heaven, and is already in his regeneration upon earth, to enjoy communion with his Creator, we may infer how great must be his degradation and misery in his present fallen condition, when to comfort a sorrowful soul the sufferer is popularly recommended to turn his mind to pleasing objects, and not to think upon God. How different the language of the renewed heart. "When I am in heaviness," said the psalmist Asaph (Ps. lxxvii. 3; Prayerbook translation,*) "I will think upon God." And so also David: "My meditation of him shall be sweet." Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee."

The rendering in the Bible version is directly opposite: "I remembered God and was troubled." Without undertaking to decide between these translations, I will only remark, that either is consistent with facts; for though the believer's solace is in God, yet when bowed down by conscious guilt, and not exercising faith in His promises, he will shrink from the contemplation of the Divine purity and justice; just as Adam and Eve after their fall sought to conceal themselves from their Creator amidst the trees of

Five hundred poor I have in daily pay, Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up

Towards heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built

Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests

Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do:

Though all that I can do is nothing
worth;

Since that my penitence comes, after all,
Imploring pardon.”

The

the garden. The pious commentator Scott observes upon this passage: "It is probable that conscious guilt gave Satan the occasion of exciting in him dismay and distress, when he reflected upon the Divine perfections. thoughts of the Lord's mercy and truth, his former kindnesses, and the comfort which he had experienced in religion on other occasions, instead of giving him encouragement, served to enhance his disquietude, now that God hid his face from him, and seemed to become his enemy."

ANCIENT LITURGICAL FORMS, FROM THE APOSTOLICAL

CONSTITUTIONS.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THE investigation of Christian antiquity is a pursuit which must at all times prove interesting and instructive to the theological student; but in these our days his attention seems more especially called to it. In his encounter with Romanism, an intimate acquaintance with the earliest authorities is required to confute her ill-founded pretensions to Catholic consent, and to the possession of that primitive verity, which must of necessity have prevailed in the Apostolical churches, before sufficient time had elapsed to permit the insinuation of error, or perversion of corruption; and the discussions which have of late arisen within the pale of our own church, render it most important to ascertain the sincerity and value of the floating traditions generally current in any given period of the first five centuries of Ecclesiastical History, that we may thus detect and clearly expose the gradual and stealthy progress of superstitious innovation in its successive stages. One of the most useful documents for this purpose will, I am persuaded, be found in the so called Apostolical Constitutions and Canons, falsely attributed to Clement the associate of St. Paul, but yet certainly old enough to have acquired a character of considerable authority, when Epiphanius published his work on Heresies, about the year 370; and which, therefore, we may fairly assume to present a correct exhibition of the state of the Church before the close of the third century. As this work comprises ample specimens of the liturgical forms employed in that early age, and a body of directions bearing upon almost every point of the rites and discipline of the Church, it necessarily exhibits a full portraiture of the very form of that church; and the information it affords must therefore claim an importance and authority, as to the views then prevailing among the Christian body, far superior to any that can be obtained by consulting the writings of any individual fathers. The working of the whole system, in all its parts, must also be brought far more distinctly into view, than if we look on them through almost any other medium. Yet I do not believe that these documents have ever been laid before the English reader. The pious Bishop Beveridge, indeed, thought it no unworthy employment of his time to illustrate "The Canons " of this collection with a very learned and elaborate Commentary; but this, according to the fashion of scholars in his day, was published in the Latin language.

If, from the specimen now annexed, you should agree with me in opinion, as to the interest and usefulness of such a plan, I propose to contribute, to your esteemed periodical, a monthly series of extracts, which may illustrate the most important points as to the real spiritual condition of the Christian church at the close of her third century. I shall commence the series by those portions of the work which set forth the earliest known liturgical forms; convinced that we may best appreciate the state of any church, from the manner in which she directs the addresses of her members to her head and Lord. From these extracts your readers will be able to form their own judgment as to the real complexion of ecclesiastical affairs in that day. Were I required to state the impression on my own mind,

it would be, that undoubtedly some seeds, which afterwards ripened into deadly fruit, had already been sown, and began to disclose their earliest shoots; even now the church could no longer be justly typified as "the milk-white doe, unspotted and unchanged;" but yet, as compared with the corruptions of the Roman church in a later age, she might still almost boast to have neither spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing. It would be injurious to the interests of true religion, if we were to take even those early forms as our sacred standard, without strictly testing them by their agreement with the only indisputable Apostolical traditions, the writings of the Apostles themselves; but they are most valuable, as demonstrating, by their wide and irreconcileable discrepance from many of the Romanist innovations, the absurd futility of the claim of the latter to primitive antiquity. Though certainly not absolutely free from every trace of principles which afterwards grew to gross corruptions, still I think the great bulk of these services will be found to exhibit pure offerings, holy and acceptable to the Lord. They probably preserve the substance of the devotions of the Church, if not from the very days of the Apostles themselves, yet from the age which immediately succeeded them; for they will be seen to present the common skeleton on which every subsequent Liturgy has evidently been constructed, by variously filling up the subordinate parts. The first sources of corruption in the progress of Christianity, appear to have arisen from the natural tendency of minds trained in, and from the dawn of reason deeply imbued with, the Gentile superstitions, to transfer to the new ideas which they derive from a purer faith on their conversion, some foreign colouring from the infusions which had so entirely tinctured their own souls. The craving of the soul for religion was doubtless strongly and sincerely experienced by many a heathen mind. Such persons earnestly sought peace with the heavenly powers by the blood of sacrifices, and regarded the solemn and imposing mysteries of their gods with devout awe. Now minds animated by these natural feelings of devotion would, when the sublime truths of a pure religion were preached in their ears, have ever been the most ready to listen and believe. Such persons, however, might naturally have been expected not to have seized at once all the spiritual simplicity of their new creed; but quite innocently and unsuspectingly to have mingled with it some of the leaven so long working in their own souls. To such, therefore, the Christian minister would still appear as the sacrificial Priest, the 'Iɛpevs; his Bishop as the supreme Pontifex, the Apxupevs; and the bread which they broke, and the cup which they blessed, not as a mean of grace conveying to the souls of the faithful the efficacy of the one great sacrifice once offered, but as a repeated sacrificial oblation (Ovata, the victim or Host,) presented in order to obtain by its influence, as offered at the time, the objects of their prayers. The rite by which the catechumen was engrafted into the Christian church became in such minds associated with the impressive forms of initiation into their former mysteries, and familiarly received the same title Munois. The external splendour of the Gentile ceremonies was also coveted, and the imposing effect of rich sacerdotal rites required to add dignity to the ministrations of those whom they had already invested with the sacerdotal character.