begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God." Nothing can be plainer than this. To forfeit "everlasting life," that is, to "perish," is here declared to be the lot of him who refuses to believe in the doctrine of the Incarnation. So far forth as a man rejects that doctrine he is "condemned already"--that is to say, he has, ipso facto, placed himself beyond the pale of salvation.

This is our Lord's teaching, and the whole scope of the New Testament confirms it. When the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" the Apostle replied immediately, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." John the Baptist certainly enjoined "works meet for repentance" on those who flocked to consult him by the banks of Jordan; but he also said, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." "The disciple whom Jesus loved" is equally urgent as to the necessity of a true faith. "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." And again; "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son hath not life." Not to have life is to "perish," and therefore perdition is declared by S. John to be the inevitable doom of those who reject the doctrine of the Incarnation. And he deemed this truth so paramount, that it was the principle motive of his writing his Epistle. "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God." Again: "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God. But every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God." Again: "Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh this is a deceiver and an antichrist." Once more : 'Look to yourselves, that ye lose not those things which ye have wrought; but that ye receive a full reward. Whoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son." To the same purport is S. Peter's denunciation of those "false teachers" "who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways (raîç àπwλriaię); by reason of whom the way of truth shall be blasphemed." Here the denial of the Incarnation is said to be a “damnable heresy” (aipéoerg àπwdeíars), leading to "swift destruction." And the same doctrine is taught by the Apostle as the direct inspiration of the Pentecostal gift. Immediately after the outpouring of Pentecost he told the Jews that in "the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth alone" was salvation to be found: "for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." Will any one tell me the difference between this Apostolic doctrine and the much-abused proposition of the Athanasian Creed: "Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly"? The large-hearted S. Paul, too, who was willing to be "accursed" for the sake of

his people, tells us that "all" are to be "damned, who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness"; that is to say, the deliberate rejection of the truth is in itself unrighteousness. There could not be a stronger assertion of the immorality of unbelief. And, as I have noticed above, "the unbelievers are reckoned by S. John among those who shall "have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the Second Death." "Antichrists," "liars," "false prophets," "deceivers," "seducers," "grievous wolves,"-such are the terms in which heretics are described by our Lord and His Apostles; one of whom he who is emphatically called "the disciple whom Jesus loved "does not hesitate to say that the sacred rites of hospitality ought religiously to be denied to him who impugns the doctrine of the Incarnation. "If there come any unto you," he says, "and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God-speed; for he that biddeth him God-speed is partaker of his evil deeds."

To my mind these passages-and I have by no means exhausted all that might be quoted in the same strain--are absolutely identical in meaning with the "damnatory clauses" of the Athanasian Creed. They must all alike be understood with the qualifications which common sense suggests, and on which I have dilated to some extent already; or they must all alike be condemned and abolished. There is no other alternative. And therefore let the assailants of the Athanasian Creed look to it. (pp. 164-8.)

The statement also of that eminent and greatly respected Unitarian minister Rev. J. Martineau, adduced by Mr. MacColl, is very remarkable. We quote the passage as it stands; without intending of course to imply any sympathy whatever with Calvin, or Whitby, or Charles Wesley.

"I am constrained to say that neither my intellectual nor my moral admiration goes heartily with the Unitarian heroes, sects, or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to writers not of my own Creed. In philosophy I had to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early text-books and the authors in chief favour with them. In Biblical Interpretation I derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham. In Devotional Literature and Religious Thought I find nothing of ours that does not pale before Augustine, Tauler, and Pascal. And in the poetry of the Church it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley, or of Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor and cold. I cannot help this. I can only say, I am sure it is no perversity; and I believe the preference is founded in reason and nature, and is already widely spread amongst us. A man's 'Church' must be the home of whatever he most deeply loves, trusts, admires, and reveres, of whatever most divinely expresses the

-

:

essential meaning of the Christian faith and life and to be torn away from

the great company I have named, and transferred to the ranks which command a far fainter allegiance, is an unnatural, and for me an inadmissible fate." (pp. 172-3.)

So far then we warmly sympathize with Mr. MacColl and his friends we think that the cause of religious truth is importantly advanced, in proportion as a larger number of Anglicans agree with Mr. MacColl and contend against his opponents.* But it is quite a different question, how far Mr. MacColl acts reasonably in this or that way of promoting his desired end. Now he is not content with holding Athanasian doctrine; he is urgent for retaining in his communion the compulsory recital of the Athanasian Creed: and we cannot see how he is here to be defended. The clergy, it is true, have to sign the eighth article; but far the chief strength of those who oppose the Athanasian Creed lies with the laity, who do not sign the Thirty-nine Articles directly or indirectly. The case then is this. The enormous majority of Anglican laymen hold doctrines inconsistent with the Athanasian Creed; † and they are aware that they constitute the enormous majority. It does seem a reasonable inference from this fact, that they shall not be compelled to recite a formulary which anathematizes their cherished doctrines. Let Mr. MacColl take active measures for procuring the expulsion from his communion of such misbelievers-and we entirely understand his proceeding; or rather such a movement is his only legitimate course, so long as he accounts that communion part of the Catholic Church. But he has no thought of doing this; he is quite content to remain

* Mr. Maskell, whose admirable pamphlet we notice a little later on in the text, thus speaks in p. 9. "The ritualists must bear to be publicly told, whether they like it or not, that Catholics do not . . . . believe that they really teach all truth, more than their neighbours in adjoining parishes, who preach perhaps Socinianism, or perhaps the Lutheran idea of justification, or perhaps adherence to the nine articles of Lambeth." Certainly no Catholic thinks that high-churchmen "teach all Catholic truth" but surely they teach much more of it, than do preachers of Socinianism, Lutheranism, Calvinism.

"Mere Protestants have seldom any real perception of the doctrine of God and man in one Person. They speak in a dreamy shadowy way of Christ's divinity; but when their meaning is sifted, you will find them very slow to commit themselves to any statement sufficient to express the Catholic dogma.... When they comment on the Gospels, they will speak of Christ not simply and consistently as God, but as a being made out of God and man . or as a man inhabited by the Divine Presence. .. .. Such is the ordinary character of the Protestant notions among us on the divinity of Christ, whether among members of the Anglican communion or dissenters from it, excepting a small remnant of them.”—F. Newman "To Mixed Congregations," fourth edition, pp. 346–7.

in full communion with a swarm of persons, whom he must himself account heretics. All he desires is, that he may force violently upon those heretics the external recital of a formulary, which at heart they abhor. We do not see how it is possible for a Catholic to sympathize with so singular an agitation. Meanwhile Mr. Mac Coll retorts on Catholics

as to

their own supposed defects in the matter. He thinks they would be more satisfactorily circumstanced (p. 14), if they chanted the Athanasian Creed (in Latin ?) at "the office of Benediction." He regrets (ib.) that a certain "good English" Catholic "tradition" has been "encroached upon by foreign devotions of a less masculine type"; and that the Athanasian Creed "has been elbowed out by devotions of a more emotional character." He thinks (ib.) that Catholics "suffer a great loss, by seldom or never hearing the Creed in congregational worship." He considers that there has been a movement among English Catholics against any prominent exhibition of the Athanasian Creed, which is in fact a movement against "the sober Catholicism of their Church" (ib.) in favour of "Ultramontanism" (ib., note). He thinks (p. 168) that Italian liberals might be perhaps less shaky in their Catholicity, if they had oftener heard the Athanasian Creed (in the vernacular?) in congregational worship. All this is to us very surprising; but we should be carried too far if we refuted it in detail.

Dr. Pusey has announced, that if the authorities of his communion "tamper" with the Athanasian Creed, he shall no longer account it the same communion, and will seek safety elsewhere. Mr. MacColl, in a letter to the "Guardian" of September 18th, says that "if the Church of England with her own hands alters the Athanasian Creed or the rubric which prescribes its use, a secession is certain": and he knows from letters he has received, that in such secession Dr. Pusey and Canon Liddon "would have a considerable following." Considering the patristic professions of Dr. Pusey's school, we had hitherto regarded their ecclesiastic position itself as so amazing, that nothing fresh they did could possibly be more so; but this last step certainly is a surprise. That they should regard as a branch of the Catholic Church, a communion, so saturated with omnigenous heresy,-so incapable of teaching (we will not say the Catholic Faith, but) any one doctrine whatsoever *— this is one astounding fact. But that their faith in its divine authority, after having been proof against all these crushingly adverse notes, should succumb to the mere disuse of one for

* In a later part of our article we dwell on these characteristics of the Established Communion.

mulary-this is an even greater bewilderment. It is as though some passenger firmly believed in his ship's security, while the sea was rushing in on every side and rapidly sinking her; but his confidence should suddenly collapse, on observing that dinner-time had arrived and the bell had not rung. Certainly high churchmen are blinded by pen-and-ink theories to the plainest facts, in a degree utterly unapproached by any other Christian sect on record.

Such

However the two Anglican Archbishops, in answering Lord Shaftesbury's memorial, have indicated their intention of "tampering" with the Athanasian Creed, if they possibly can; and Dr. Pusey with his friends must therefore account his communion as on the verge of formal apostasy. Under these circumstances, we should have thought they had enough within their own pale to engage their attention; and we are a little surprised, that two of them should have chosen such a moment for an assault on the Roman Catholic Church. however is the fact. They call their pamphlets indeed "Church of England Defence Tracts"; but we pointed out in our last number (p. 204)—and F. Addis (p. 41) repeats the remark that they do not contain one syllable in defence of the Anglican communion; that if their historical allegations were tenable, it would follow-not at all that the said communion is part of the Catholic Church-but that the Catholic Church has ceased to exist (p. 206).

The second indeed of these Tracts contains a defence of Anglican ordinations, and so far does attempt something positive. But, as we further observed (pp. 204, 5), if its whole argument were conceded, the only inference would be, that the English Establishment possesses one characteristic, which every high-churchman admits to be possessed by various bodies denounced by him as heretical. We shall not here enter on the question; because Canon Estcourt has advertised a volume dealing with it expressly, which is sure to be filled with valuable matter, and which will be the obvious occasion for any remarks of our own. Here therefore we will only quote some most admirable observations made by F. Humphrey, in the valuable work which we have named at the head of our article.

I need scarcely encumber my letter by any remarks upon the subject of "Anglican orders," as, if you have followed my argument, you will agree with me, that it has but little bearing on the real issue; it is a matter which may be interesting to antiquarians, but, as a practical question, it is valueless.

If the ministers of the Church of England have valid orders, and ar ereally priests, their position is worse, than we, who believe them to be amiable and cultured laymen, at present regard it. It would still remain that they are