his religious conscience at the arbitrary will of his superiors? Or is not such compulsory violation needless, cruel, oppressive, and revolting? Does it not tighten the cord of discipline almost to breaking? 5. When heretics lend themselves to the Church of Rome to build her edifices, or to swell the pomp and pride of her processions, and to give an imposing effect to her superstitions; does she really hold them in honour and grateful estimation for their obsequious services, or does she simply use them as convenient tools, and then laugh at and despise them for their truckling and tergiversation? 6. With Priests and Nuns preceded by heretical Hussars, flanked by heretical Grenadiers, and followed by an heretical band of music; Grenadiers, "each with his musket and fixed bayonet," as if ready to defend idolatry to the death; band" playing most beautifully," and yet, band, grenadiers and hussars, all of them, in her judgment, hereticshas not the Church of Rome come down from her assumed altitude, in condescending to avail herself of such auxiliaries, and has not the time been when she would have rejected and abominated such attendance and accompaniment ? 7. But now, will she not, does she not, profit by these abandonments of Protestant principle, to magnify herself in the eyes of her deluded slaves, to blind their eyes the more, to rivet the bonds of their vassalage, by making to them this triumphant appeal, " See how even these heretics are constrained to pay homage to our holy faith." Alas! for those who are answerable for results so painful as these; alas! for those, who, enlisted under the banner of truth, fight the battles of error, give to superstition the sanction of authority, lend to her shows meretricious allurement, and aid in fastening the manacles and fetters which Popery has forged for the minds of their fellow beings! The Count Forbin Janson, Bishop of Nancy and Toul, has been in this province about a twelvemonth, vigorously working to prolong the reign of superstition among the French Canadians, by the majority of whom, and especially by the ignorant Habitans in the country parishes, he is firmly believed to be a worker of miracles. Quebec, July 1841. ANTI-PAPALIS. ON THE APPENDED SERVICES IN THE PRAYER-BOOK. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. I WAS surprised to find your correspondent, "A Lover of Church Order," in his remarks on the Accession Service, speaking of the rubrics in that service as if their authority were exactly the same as that of those in the Book of Common Prayer. "A Lover of Church Order" should have been aware of the difference. Will you, then, allow me to state a few facts respecting this particular service. The four services, always bound up with our Prayer-Book, are not a part of the book itself. But the Accession Service has not the same force and authority as the other three for the three were sanctioned by Convocation, though not by Act of Parliament, whereas the Accession Service has no other authority than that of a Royal Proclamation. I should certainly use the service, but I do not feel that I am compelled to do so, "" as a Lover of Church Order" intimates that there was a service for the sovereign's accession sanctioned by Convocation in 1640, but not the service now in use; so that, as I have just stated, this last has no authority except that of a Royal Proclamation. Even were it the same as that of 1640, there might be some doubt respecting its authority on two grounds; first, that the Convocation acted, and sanctioned the service in question, after the dissolution of Parliament, contrary to practice certainly, and probably to law; and secondly, that all the proceedings of that Convocation were subsequently set aside by Act of Parliament. It is, therefore, clear that the only authority of the Rubrics in our present Accession Service is that of the Crown; consequently, that your correspondent should not have spoken of them as he has done in his letter. CLERICUS, M.A. REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. THE NESTORIANS; OR THE LOST TRIBES. The Nestorians, or the Lost Tribes; containing evidence of their identity; an account of their manners, customs, and ceremonies; together with sketches of travels in Ancient Assyria, Armenia, Media, and Mesopotamia, and illustrations of Scripture Prophecy. By ASAHEL GRANT, M.D. London, 1841. CONSIDERABLE interest has been excited by the successful issue of the secret expedition sent out by the East India Company to explore the Euphrates and Tigris; it being ascertained that those rivers, so long celebrated in history, are capable of being navigated by steam vessels, and thus of opening a passage for the introduction of commerce, civilization, and the arts and habits of cultivated life, into the interior of Turkey, Persia, and the neighbouring countries, including the regions, hitherto inaccessible to European influence, of the Ancient Assyria, Armenia, Media, and Mesopotamia. But as Christian Observers, we have thought the occasion favourable for urging the spiritual claims of these interesting countries upon Protestant Christians, especially upon Britons, and the members of the Episcopal Church; we say upon Britons, because our wealth, power, enlarged commerce, oriental influence, and eminent civil and religious blessings, render peculiarly incumbent upon us the duty of endeavouring to revive the decayed Christian Churches of central Asia, as well as of introducing the Gospel to the Mohamedan and heathen population; and we add, upon the members of the Episcopal Church, because the Asiatic Christians, however corrupt in doctrine or practice, adhere, like ourselves, to Scriptural episcopacy, so that we have great facilities for hopeful labour among them. When the American missionaries, Mr. Smith and Mr. Dwight, visited, in 1831, the Nestorian Christians in the West of Persia, among whom Dr. Grant has extended the valuable researches described in the volume before us, the people with whom they conversed were greatly scandalised at those deviations from primitive church order which their pious and benevolent visitors accounted a restoration of the Gospel to its Scriptural purity. We find Mr. Dwight and his companion admitting this. Thus, for example, they say that one Nestorian bishop, on learning that we acknowledge only priests and deacons, was unable to imagine how they could be ordained without bishops;" and of another it is remarked, "Our consecrating the elements in unconsecrated places, seemed also to stumble him ;"-as, indeed, it might "stumble him" that these writers employ, without scruple, the word "consecrated," that is, set apart to holy use, in reference to the elements of bread and wine, in the very same sentence in which they "stumble" at the consecration, or setting apart, of churches. In regard, also, to fasting, the use of the cross, and various other things, the prejudices of these worthy American missionaries were serious stumbling-blocks to the people. The apostolical doctrine of the Church of England respecting episcopacy, and its primitive rites and customs, would have been bonds of union, instead of causes of difference. Upon the report of Smith and Dwight to the American board of missions, by whom they had been employed to make researches with a view to the establishment of missionary sta tions in the East, that excellent society sent several missionaries, among whom was Dr. Grant, to Oormiah, in Persia, to labour among the Nestorian Christians. It was an arduous and untried field of exertion, but it was fraught with hopeful promise. We have freely expressed our opinion that a brotherhood of episcopalian missionaries would have enjoyed more common points of sympathy, and have had fewer difficulties to contend with, than a congrega. tional or presbyterian body; and we cannot, even now, but state our apprehension that serious inconveniences may arise from the introduction into the Nestorian Churches, in which episcopacy and many primitive and edifying observances are still retained, of a body of modern Dissenters (we do not mean Dissenters from an established church, but Dissenters as respects the points just alluded to) whose piety, zeal, learning, and pecuniary resources, will give them great power, which cannot be confined to the furtherance of the common objects upon which all the faithful are agreed, but must necessarily bear upon matters of church government and ecclesiastical regula tion. The great majority of the people will naturally regard the religion of the missionaries as a whole, and their own as a whole. They will not understand how they can throw off Nestorianism without also rejecting episcopacy; for they see their new teachers do both; and their example will speak, even though they refrain from words. If the missionaries did not obtain influence, error would not be corrected, or piety revived; but in proportion to their influence, valuable and primitive institutions will be endangered, and a foundation will be laid for schism and secession. This must almost inevitably be the result where a revival in a corrupted and degraded church, is promoted through the instru mentality of those who differ from that church not only where it is wrong, but sometimes where it is right; thus causing an injurious blending of truth and error. Now in all this we mean not one word of disparagement either of these excellent missionaries, or of their benevolent and devout employers. It was truly noble and Christian in our Ameri can Congregational or Presby terian brethren, to cast an eye of pity upon the desolated churches of the East, who had lost their first love, who had followed gross delusions, and whose candlestick had in equitable retribution been removed. We fully acquit them -if we may use so cold and invidious a word as acquittal-of narrow-minded and sectarian purposes; they desire to promote the glory of God and the salvation of souls; they regard matters of church discipline as of comparatively little importance; they have no wish to promote ecclesiastical strifes; but to bring back the churches of the East to the obedience of the faith, in the renunciation of their errors, and the embracing of vital Gospel truth. And not only do we vouch for their right and holy intentions, but for the excellent spirit in which they have carried them into effect. The missionaries at Oormiah are stated to have conducted themselves with great meekness, forbearance, and discretion; not as subverters but amenders; doing much good, and avoiding causes of unnecessary jealousy. The Rev. H. Southgate, an American episcopal missionary, who visited them, states as follows, in his interesting "Narrative of a Tour through Armenia, Kurdistan, Persia, and Mesopotamia :" "During my visit, I had a full opportunity to become acquainted with the policy and the prospects of the mission. Although, from the reports which I had heard and read, I had formed very high expectations concerning it, they were surpassed by the reality. Its policy is highly conservative. It aims not at the overthrow of the Nestorian church, to which its labours are almost exclusively directed. The missionaries do not interfere, in the least degree, with the religious practices of the Nestorians. Even those under their immeCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 45. diate charge are left free to attend the its fasts and festivals. They aim only worship of their church, and to observe to impart religious knowledge drawn from the Word of God, and secular learning of a useful character. This is as it should be. It is the most politic, as well as the most catholic system. It is to be hoped that they will persevere in it." offence to Such being the facts, we intend no our American brethren, in wishing that the projected commercial and political enterprises up the Tigris and Euphrates, may be the means of introducing English episcopal missionaries among the Nestorian, Armenian, and other decayed oriental churches. There is land enough to be possessed, without interfering, either by undue proximity or in rivalry, with the missionaries at Oormiah. It But the blessed results of our intercourse with the Syrian Christians in India, shew that the Anglican church enjoys special encouragements in the prosecution of brotherly missionary labours among the Eastern churches. is free from the corruptions of the Latin, the Greek, and the oriental communions; while it holds that Apostolical system of church government, which the Eastern churches enjoy, but which the non-episcopal churches of the Reformation lost. The basis of our own liturgy, and of those of the Asiatic churches, is the same; it is not Papistical, or Anglican, or Armenian, or Nestorian, or Abyssinian, but scriptural and catholic. In attempting, by God's blessing, to revive sound doctrine and true piety among any of these bodies, we have not to erase the foundations of their whole ecclesiastical edifice; there is much unscriptural doctrine to be eradicated; superstition to be rejected; neglected truth to be introduced; but the process is reformatory not revo 4 A lutionary; conciliating not irritating. If American non-episcopal missionaries have laboured, and with such good effect, not to subvert whatever they can conscientiously tolerate in the Nestorian church, our task would be easier, and the issue more hopeful. For as soon as the Nestorian Christians, by the reading of the word of God, and the faithful instructions of their American friends, begin to perceive that their church has departed from the purity of Apostolical faith and practice, the question will arise, To what extent and then, if the missionaries are consulted, and speak according to their own views of the nature and progress of the corruptions in the church of Christ, they may feel it their duty to include episcopacy, a liturgy, and national church establishments among those corruptions; and even if they do not formally, yet their own example is itself a standing witness, which the people will not be slow to comment upon; the religious portion of them rushing to the extreme of rejecting what is good as well as bad in their own system; and the irreligious clinging . with fonder tenacity to their errors and superstitions. Our non-episcopal friends may refrain from destroying; but they cannot conscientiously build up: they may tolerate episcopacy and a prescribed liturgy; but if they regard them as unscriptural devices, they cannot make due use of them as instruments for the establishment and edification of a Christian church. If they went to the heathen, and their mission was prosperous, they would found a communion which had neither bishops nor liturgical service; and which could not connect itself with the State as a national church. They might in the East wish to be neutral in these respects; but neutrality will not long be practicable when the people come earnestly to debate such questions; and hence may arise many inconveniences and evils. While then we rejoice in the labours of our non- episcopal brethren, and wish them God's speed; and while we honour their self-denying and forbearing spirit; we think it not unbrotherly to mention these things, in order to exhibit what appear to us to be the special duties of the members of the Anglican church in reference to the Eastern churches. It is not that others ought to do less, but that Anglican Christians ought to do more; and the enlarged commercial and influential intercourse with the interior of Asia which it is proposed to open by means of the navigation of the Tigris and Euphrates, and probably of other rivers, induces us to press the subject upon the consideration of our fellow churchmen. Our missionary societies are unable, in the present exhausted state of their funds, to undertake new objects; but if, in the providence of God, important spheres of labour are opening before them, it is the duty of British Christians to recruit them to the extent of the exigency; so far at least as they are able; and we are as yet a long way off from this limit. It is not easy to decide with perfect clearness what were the specific tenets, in their minuter shades, of the Nestorians, or perhaps of any other of the schismatics or heretics whose opinions infested the early church. Printing, which has given to important documents a permanent form and wide diffusion, was unknown; oral statements were liable to misconception or misrepresentation; controversy exaggerated and embittered whatever it touch |