or rather indeed it is the only demonstration. Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. vii. Oper. p. 757. The Tone of Clement is so marvellously like the Tone of reprobated Protestantism. 3. "Respecting the divine and holy mysteries of the Faith, not even a little ought to be delivered without the authority of the Holy Scriptures. Neither ought any thing to be propounded, on the basis of mere credibility, or through the medium of plausible ratiocination. Neither yet repose the slightest confidence in the bare assertions of me your Catechist, unless you shall receive from the Holy Scriptures full demonstration of the matters propounded. For the security of our Faith depends, not upon verbal trickery, but upon demonstration from the Holy Scriptures." Cyril. Hieros. Catech. iv. p. 30. The Tone of Cyril, again, is so provokingly like the Tone of the National Church, that the one, I fear, requires quite as much the operation of Unprotestantising as the other. Our ancient Catechist, in the instruction of his pupils, seems to have had no very clear idea of what our modern Tractarians recommend: the duty of blind submission to a priest's teaching and of unhesitating belief on insufficient evidence. 4. "If ye are disciples of the Gospels, walk according to what is written. But, if you choose to allege any other matters beyond what is written: why do you contend against us, who will never be persuaded either to hear or to speak a single syllable beyond God's Written Word"? Athen. de Incarn. Christ. Oper. vol. i. p. 484. Athanasius is scarcely a more favourable patristic witness than Cyril. 5. "As for the letters of Bishops which either are written or were written after the confirmation of the Canon; if peradventure there be found in them any deviation from the truth, we may freely correct them, either by the weightier discourse of more skilful theologians, or by the better instructed prudence of other Bishops, or by the collective intervention of Councils. So again : national or provincial Councils ought, indisputably, to yield to the authority of plenary Councils, which are collected out of the whole Christian World: and plenary Councils themselves may often be amended by later Councils; when, through better experience, that which was shut is opened, and that which lay hid is known." August. de Baptism. cont. Donat. lib. ii. c. 8. Oper. vol. vii. p. 37. "Therefore, whether concerning Christ, or concerning his Church, or concerning any other matter which appertains to our faith and our practice: if an angel from heaven shall announce to you any thing beyond what you have received in the Scriptures of the Law and the Gospel; let him be anathema." August. cont. liter. Petilian. Donat. lib. iii. c. 6. Oper. vol. vii. p. 115. What St. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, may say or think, is little to the purpose: but, since, along with him, Mr. Goode's reviewer has appealed to St. Augustine, as teaching the duty of implicit uninquiring acquiescence in whatever the Clergy deliver under the name of the Church's instruction, it is not quite useless to hear the Bishop of Hippo speak in his own proper person. IV. On the principle laid down by the reviewer, it is difficult to understand, why, at this present moment, he himself is not a dutiful member of the Romish Church, which once, as we all know, was the National Church of England. Had the plan of implicit uninquiring acquiescence in whatever the priests delivered, under the bold asseveration SEMPER hæc fides in Ecclesia Dei fuit, been acted upon in the day of the Reformation: it is quite clear, that no reform could have taken place, but that we must have gone on to the end of the chapter devoutly believing all that was told us, on the extraordinary ground, that "unhesitating belief on insufficient evidence is absolutely the only course left" to us for the purpose of ascertaining the truth. Now the aboriginal error, of adopting the condemned protestant Tone of inquiring before we yield our belief to what the Clergy may teach us, is not less an error, because three centuries have passed over its head: and, since the reviewer would avowedly have us retrace our steps, and, instead of the protestant Tone, adopt the Romish Tone; the natural question is; Why does not he himself set us the example, like Mr. Spenser and Mr. Wackerbarth and Mr. Sibthorp, and yet more recently Mr. Bernard Smith, by honestly going over to the Church of Rome, where doubtless he will find a rich abundance of "insufficient evidence" to warrant his most unhesitating belief? Will he say, that the Tone, which he recommends in his project of unprotestantising us, is not the Tone encouraged throughout the Romish Church? In that case, we must beg him explicitly to define the Tone which he recommends in preference to the Tone which he reprobates as that of the Reformed Church of England. "What is the intellectual system of Popery"? asks Dr. Todd's reviewer in the Quarterly for December 1842. "Instead of the reception of truth, its fundamental axiom and primary condition of salvation is the submission of reason to authority. A mind that will never rebel, which surrenders itself blindfold to be led away passively in any direction and to any point, is its first demand." Quarterly Review. Dec. 1842. p. 212. Where is the difference, between the system of Popery thus graphically described, and the system of Tractarianism as recommended by the enterprizing writer in the British Critic? "Christianity", remarks Dr. Todd's reviewer, "demands faith: but it also makes evidence and the possession of proof, essential to the full perfection of faith in cultivated minds; that we may not only believe ourselves, but be able to give reasons for our belief to others." p. 213. These are the words of truth and soberness. But, how Christianity, as it is thus accurately described, differs from the Tone of our National Church, or rather in truth, yet additionally, from he Tone of the Cyrils and the Augustines in the Early Church, it is passing hard to comprehend. But, says the tractarian reviewer, we must unprotestantise the National Church: and he explains his meaning to be" the infusion into her system of a new spirit"; which spirit or tone or general disposition, so far as his language is intelligible, is perfectly identical with what the writer in the Quarterly Review justly calls the Intellectual System of Popery. To unprotestantise the National Church, then, is really to unchristianise her: for, if the Tone of Christianity be what the Quarterly Reviewer pronounces it to be; assuredly, to unprotestantise the National Church is neither more nor less than to unchristianise her. V. Before I lay down my pen, there is another matter which I must not pass over: I mean the not very creditable Tractarian System of calumniating opponents by a false ascription to them of errors which they hold not. Of this unjustifiable practice, we have some pregnant specimens in the two Articles of the British Critic now before us. an Because Anglican Protestants see no reason, why, without inquiry, they should receive the dogmatical teaching of any body of Clergy, whether Romish or Tractarian or Reformed: they are actually charged, with "a prevailing absence of Christian Faith," with " abandonment of the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration," and with "a denial of the grace of the sacraments"!! p. 224, 86, 238, 239. I marvel, that prudence, at least, if not a better principle, did not stay the course of these truly adventurous divines in their raid into what they deem an enemy's country. 1. If, to acknowledge the Holy Scriptures as the undoubted Written Word of God, and daily to search them, with every aid that can be obtained, for the purpose of rationally ascertaining, whether the doctrines, either attributed to them or superadded to them, can justly be received; if this be "a prevailing absence of Christian Faith": then were the divinely lauded Berèans an evil synagogue of infidels; then did St. Paul grievously err, when, instead of recommending to his Thessalonians an "unhesitating belief on insufficient evidence," he charged them to prove all things and hold fast that which is good. 2. As for the strangely asserted "abandonment of the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration" and "denial of the grace of the sacraments" (for the two may justly be classed together), I have lived well nigh to the age of man, and certainly never chanced to meet with a single Anglican Protestant who ever dreamed of perpetrating such incredible absurdities. The truth is, whether innocently or not, our tractarian accusers evince, in their language, a total Ignoratis Elenchi. The question is not, Whether Spiritual Regeneration EVER attends upon the sacrament of Baptism (which nobody, that I ever heard of denies), but Whether it always attends upon it: not Whether the sacraments are EVER the channels of grace (which, again, nobody, I suppose, dreams of denying), but Whether they are ALWAYS such channels. Our National Church, in its present unprotestantised state, rules this question most scripturally and therefore most rationally. "In such only as WORTHILY receive the sacraments, they have a wholesome effect or operation." Art. xxv. See also Art. xxviii, xxix. Thus does our Church teach us to understand and interpret the language of her offices; not a letter of which would any Anglican wish to be changed, who has really studied the subject: and, as I have shewn ex abundanti in my Primitive Doctrine of Regeneration, the Early Church, particularly as reported by the great Augustine, theologised in the very same manner. Truly, any other doctrine is substantially the opus operatum of the Roman Church: in which the sacraments are held to act mechanically, altogether by the mere virtue of their canonical administration, and without any regard to the worthiness or unworthiness of the recipient. Such, however, so far as I can understand them (and their accusation of their opponents is no bad key to their own sentiments), is the essentially popish doctrine of the tractarians: for otherwise, why blame they those, who hold with the Church of England and not with the Church of Rome? Nevertheless, if, with us Protestants of the Anglican Church, they really hold, that The benefit of the Sacraments is suspended upon the worthiness of the recipient: then, why do they vilify us for maintaining the very same doctrine as themselves? And, of course, conversely, if they deny the prerequisite of worthiness, and teach the sure mechanical effect of the sacraments ex opere operato: then why do they not honestly tell us that such is the case; and openly avow, sans phrase, that, so far forth at least, Tractarianism is completely identical with Popery? Since they have thus accused us of "abandoning the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration" and of "denying the grace of the Sacraments," let the gentlemen themselves, touching themselves, speak out distinctly and definitely, instead of trying our patience with long wordy dissertations, the object of which seems to be an insinuation of their opinions with the least possible amount of any thing tangible which might be quoted against them in controversy. Let them, in short, give a precise answer, YEA or NAY, to the very simple question: Do they teach, that the Sacraments operate MORALLY; or do they teach, that the Sacraments operate MECHANICALLY? We of the as yet unprotestantised National Church say openly and at once, missis ambagibus, that we believe the Sacraments to operate MORALLY alone: for so we are taught in our protestant Articles; and we maintain, that the Church, as a witness of facts and as a keeper of Holy Writ, has authority in controversies of Faith; subject, however, to the restriction, that she decrees not any thing against Holy Writ, and that, besides the same, she enforces not any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation. Art. xx. Let the writers in the British Critic either distinctly affirm or distinctly deny, that They believe the Sacraments to operate MECHA NICALLY. This plainness will save much trouble: and the Public will then understand, what ground we respectively occupy. Sherburn-House, Jan. 19. 1843. G. S. FABER. DANIEL-Chap. iv., Verse 27. BY W. SHERMAN. My heart aches, as I every day behold Poor wretched children standing in the street, England, thou many marvels hast performed, But these are not the brightest deeds that shine, Glitters above them all, the choicest gem! Turn, then, to these thine own, who loudly crave These little ones, whom Jesus died to save, And prove thy love to Him, by keeping his commands. TEE-TOTALISM. TEE-TOTALISM, and many other isms, of which our ancestors lived in happy ignorance, are now making, if we may believe the reports of their propagators, rapid strides; but, whether for good or for evil remains to be seen. We intend to confine our remarks to the subject named at the head of our paper; and by which is usually understood the entirely abstaining from the use of wine, and malt or spirituous liquors of any kind, except in cases of urgent necessity, and by medical advice. It must not for a moment be supposed that we are opposed to temperance-far from it; in the words of an excellent writer, we have subscribed to that pledge promulgated more than eighteen hundred years ago, or rather which has existed from the beginning amongst the really religious. But we wish now to call the attention of our readers to a few remarks on this modern adaptation; for we cannot call it an invention, there having been, in ages long since past away, Nazarites who vowed to abstain from the use of strong drinks, for a longer or shorter season, and sometimes for life. It appears to be the desire of these teachers of abstinence to proselyte all persons to their extreme opinions; and so earnest are they in the praise of their watery system, that we should not be at |