"Rejoices that the recent Judgment (on which it otherwise writes sensibly) has done at least some good things." A passage from Dr. Williams, of which it says the Court approves (or more correctly has not condemned), contains, it tells us," a most important truth, and one which we hope to see now brought prominently forward, after being for years obscured by Protestant fiction. It gives a death-blow to the assertion, so long unquestioned, of "The Bible and the Bible only.' It contains a great Catholic and Primitive truth. It asserts the antecedent and coordinate authority of the Church. Let us examine it more closely; we are speaking of course of the New Testament. According to the Protestant theory, the New Testament contains in itself, without any external aid, a full statement of all doctrine, and a full guide to all Christian duty. If so, we may ask what was the state of Christianity before the New Testament canon was completed, or gathered, as we have it, into one volume? and what was the condition of the more distant churches before the New Testament was translated into the vernacular? If it be answered that there were inspired apostles to teach, we may reply again, this gives up the whole question, for it asserts the very fact we contend for, viz. the authoritative teaching of the Church without the Scriptures of the New Testament."

No, it gives up no such question; it does not assert the authoritative teaching of the Church, but of the apostles. The Church is built upon the foundation of the apostles, with the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone; and the last of the apostles had not passed away to his reward in heaven, before the Church showed many symptoms of a disposition to decline from the doctrines they had taught. But the writer proceeds to remind us we are not constantly with the apostles, nor ever had them at hand, to teach each particular Church; that the Canon of the New Testament was not complete until all except St. John were dead, and so on; and he concludes with assuring us that—

"So far from all doctrine being clearly stated in the New Testament, we may plainly see that it is not so; e. g., the great doctrines of the Trinity, and the nature of the Incarnation; the doctrines of the Three orders of the Ministry, of Infant Baptism, of Communicating Women, &c., would surely not have been left in the uncertain manner that they are, if the Bible, and the Bible only, was to be our guide."

Now, whatever our obligations may be to those ancient theologians who drew up the Creeds, we are not yet convinced that we owe to them, in any degree whatever, our knowledge of the doctrine of three coequal persons in one ever blessed God; and we feel almost equally disposed to smile at the folly, and to stand amazed at the profanity, of such a daring assertion. But this of the Trinity is a favourite illustration; we have heard it years ago, and nearly in the words which follow :

"It is perfectly true, that the Church antecedently holding these articles of faith, and acting on the principles, will find all the abovementioned doctrines confirmed in the New Testament; but she will not find them stated there as Articles of faith-she will find, e. g., the doctrine of the Trinity confirmed in the Baptism of our Lord, but she will not find the statement of that doctrine, as enunciated in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, propounded in any part of the New Testament." But how did the Church herself get on before the Creeds were drawn up, particularly the Nicene and Athanasian? She must, indeed, to use the words of this writer, have been "in an awful maze of uncertainty and doubt" for nearly two hundred years, just as he maintains she would have been "on the Bible and the Bible only theory." Did the Church know nothing till then-not of the word Trinity, which is of no consequence to the argument, but-of the doctrine of the Trinity? Or was it in possession of some knowledge upon that awful and mysterious subject, which it afterwards embodied and expressed in the Creeds? Let us for a moment assume this; then the doctrine, in its highest and most perfect form, is in the Creeds, and not in the New Testament. We could have made it out clearly from the former; we could not have discovered it in the latter. Of the two, then, the Creeds are the better authority. They reveal the doctrine; the New Testament only confirms it, when it has been revealed. Are the advocates of the antecedent and coordinate authority of the Church (the italics are their own) prepared to accept this monstrous conclusion? Or if not, will they tell us, on some future occasion, how it may be avoided?

Supposing we admit the fact. The Church was before the Bible. The Church wrote the Bible. What then? Is it proved that the Church is therefore the antecedent and coordinate authority? Let us try the argument upon some other than a consecrated tilting-ground. Then,

Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote a volume of Lectures on Painting. Therefore Sir Joshua Reynolds lived before this volume of Lectures was written.

And therefore, again, he is an antecedent and co-ordinate authority.

Did a lamer argument ever hobble through a syllogism? Can any man in his senses with a grave face defend it? Is it true that Sir Joshua Reynolds is an antecedent authority, or a co-ordinate authority, or any authority whatever, apart from and superior to the book which he has written? Must we invoke his shade before we can gather information from his book? And yet this is a much better case for the "antecedent" theologians than their own. For the fact is, that Reynolds was the author of his Lectures; but the Church was not the author of the Bible. The Church was, according to its own account, a secretary, and nothing more. "Holy men of old wrote as they were moved by the Holy

Ghost." Let Protestants give up this ground, "the Bible and the Bible only," and their case is lost. Nothing remains but Popery on the one side, or blank unbelief upon the other.

We leave some other points untouched. They chiefly concern the clergy and laity of the diocese. While they are silent, we are not disposed to interfere. The points on which we have written concern the whole Church. They strike, some of them at the rights of the Church of England, others at the first principles of the Reformation, and we dare not hold our peace. We cannot write in anger. Indignation gives way to a feeling of deep shame and sorrow, that amongst the leaders of our Church any can be found to propound such doctrines, and amongst the clergy any who can listen in silence and seeming acquiescence. What trials may be in store for us, we cannot tell; but such attempts to exalt the Church at the expense of the Bible will surely bring down the heavy displeasure of Him who will not give His glory to another, nor allow even His Bride to dispute with him the honour of His Word. In the words of Mr. Barne, "We fear that what the Bishop has delivered from the Episcopal Chair may encourage a movement which we dread from our inmost soul."

CAPTAIN BURTON'S ABBEOKUTA, &c.

Abbeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains. By R. F. Burton, Captain, &c. &c. Tinsley Brothers. 1863.

CAPTAIN BURTON, the well known traveller, and her Britannic Majesty's Consul at Fernando Po, has added another to the list of his records of foreign travel, in the book whose title heads our notice. Captain Burton's books are not generally of the class which obtain any lengthy notice in our columns; for whatever the merits of his History of Scinde, Mecca and El Medinah, and Explorations in East Africa, as records of the habits and customs of the people amongst whom he has wandered, they have hardly pretended to throw much light upon that class of questions in which we are more particularly interested. On this occasion, however, Captain Burton's explorations have been upon ground not wholly terra incognita to us. In the Yoruba country, and in Abbeokuta more especially, our missionary societies have long maintained a comparatively large and very trustworthy missionary agency; and the settlement of Victoria in Ambas Bay, and almost at the foot of the Camaroons mountains, has long been known to us as the fruit of that shameful persecution by the Spanish authorities at

Fernando Po, which drove some hundreds of negro Christians to seek a settlement on the mainland. Through a portion of both of these districts our author has wended his way, and his observations extend also to Sierra Leone, though his visit to that colony seems to have been made at an earlier date. But before we hear Captain Burton on Abbeokuta, or indeed upon any other place, it is essential, if we are to gauge his information to much practical benefit, to understand the point from which he looks at men and things. This might be difficult with some authors, but with him it is otherwise. Whatever the faults that go far to nullify the many admirable qualifications which he possesses for an explorer of little known lands, Captain Burton has certainly not that of keeping back from the reader any secret bias by which his investigations are influenced. He speaks plainly, and speaks out. A whole chapter devoted to something more than an apology for the grossest of Mahomedan customs, and frequent evidences of an adherence to Mr. Darwin's "development" theory in its grossest materiality, (vol. i. pp. 110, 111, 203, 208,) sufficiently indicate the influences which colour his narrative. It is specially necessary to bear in mind the prejudices which such principles naturally create, when we have to deal with that portion of our author's account which has reference to missionaries and their work; prejudices which have led him, in one instance, into the strange contradiction of condemning in others, "as sublime in its impudence," that which he has put forward for himself as one of the leading objects which impelled him to his adventurous enterprise. (Preface, p. 9, and pp. 267-269, vol. i.) We have, however, some pictures of Abbeokuta, and the river route to it from Lagos, in Captain Burton's usually graphic style; and his powers of observation, whether in reference to the zoology, geology, or botany of the country, or the superstitions, customs and habits of its inhabitants, have been as vigorously exercised as in any of his previous travels. Of course, he differs a good deal from most that has been written upon these lands before; and when he comes across anything which has sprung from a missionary source, he seems to feel in duty bound to pen his objurgations the stronger. The wellknown Rev. D. Crowther, for instance, is classed among the credulous, when he testifies to the custom of human sacrifice amongst his own (the Egba) tribe, (p. 206); although his censor confirms in the strongest manner the accuracy of his testimony in a subsequent part of the work. (pp. 7, 9, vol. ii.) So, when Miss Tucker, or rather her artist, in her frontispiece to "Sunrise within the Tropics," paints rather a cheerful picture of that every day event, Captain Burton finds it necessary to assure us of its incorrectness, and proceeds to paint us another, in a form something analogous to a London fog. So our

author, in his wish to demolish Miss Barker, for the statement in her little work, "Ostrielle," to the effect that "the murder of infant children, and other such vices of heathenism, are unknown amongst the Africans, forgets all about "credulous" Mr. Crowther, and tells us that such things" are the rule, not the exception," and that "even in favourite Abbeokuta a man is annually sacrificed; and within the walls of Ikriku a victim is offered up to the Ogun every six years!" Little contradictions of this kind abound, and few opportunities are passed over of derogating by inuendo from the results and character of missionary labour. For instance, the inhabitants of Wasimi, a Christian village contiguous to Abbeokuta, are "meddlesome," and their superiority to their pagan neighbours evidenced only "in the number of their rags." The persecution of Christian converts in 1850 is referred to as probably brought upon themselves;" and an ostentatiously profound note tells us that "the proceedings of new converts in the old haunts of idolatry may serve to throw no little light upon the causes of the great persecutions under Nero, and other enemies of the Church !'" We think we can throw a truer light upon this subject by a simple reference to the causes which led to the persecution unto death of the Holy and the Just One, to the martyrdom of the apostles, to the tumults in the city of "Diana of the Ephesians.' When the ways of righteousness and justice are preached in the palaces of wrong-doing and oppression, it is not surprising that the occupants of their high places wonder and become afraid as to "whereunto this thing may lead;" and endeavour to put it down accordingly. When light and truth gain influence in the strongholds of superstition, the "craft" of too many is in danger; and hence the tumultuous insult and outrage to which unoffending converts are exposed, and the facility with which authority describes such tumults as occasioned by them. It is the principle in man, of a love of darkness rather than of light, "because his ways are evil," to which we must attribute the persecution of Christianity, whether under Nero or the Alake of Abbeokuta. Captain Burton will find any other explanation fall short of the truth, even though he tries the patience of converts under ill-usage by an angelic rather than a human standard.

Passing, however, to the more trustworthy features of the book, we have the following description of the scenery on the river route from Lagos to Abbeokuta :

"On this day and the next we enjoyed a fine opportunity of studying African river scenery, so impressive at first, and, until the eye becomes accustomed to it, so greatly diversified. But presently it waxes palling and monotonous; it is the face of an Irish beauty