There were no other means of enabling the multitude to reject false creeds, but by requiring their faith in true ones. The true method of the Church's warfare was creed against creed, when she felt her authority to put them forth without flinching. The shelter, too, afforded to the unlettered multitude of those stormy times, by this creed, must have been just what they needed; for even now the simple reader of the Bible never calls the creed of St. Athanasius in question. But in those periods when Christianity was on undefended ground, exposed on all sides, and every petty foe could strike to its wounding, the only safety to its simple follower could often be found in the decisive out speaking, condemning declarations of an Athanasian crecd. We have errors enough now? and if we have not the same old ones repeated over and over again, we owe it to the efforts of past defenders of the faith, who have fought the battle for us-taken possession of the enemy's bag and baggage, and left them without hope in the contest-for the Church gave, and they have defended our creeds.

That this creed (whenever actually published) embodied the true faith of the pure part of the Church, as held from the apostles' days, we entertain no doubt. On points so vital to Christianity, in assaulting which its foes never slept at their posts, we may surely trust that for the few generations who had lived and died since the last apostle put forth his divine version of these truths, some there were who could trace it back to that living voice. Moreover, neither Gibbon's sneers at the Nicene council, nor Dr. Jortin's coarse description (a mere fancy painting) of its component parts, can shake our conviction that the superintending providence of God was not wanting to his Church in this hour of its need, when employed in building a harbour of refuge for the thousands of weak vessels which were coasting in that stormy sea. We know that all mixed assemblies are made up of the wheat and the tares; yet are there always in such assemblies some master-mind, or minds, whose divine commission it is to lead on to an effectual statement and defence of opinions which form the common creed. It is the gift of but few to do fit justice in the seasons of turmoil, and in the presence of crafty foes, to deep truths, although the lives of all may have been framed upon them. When, however, the ruling mind puts forth the statement of these truths, all can find a response to it in their own convictions, though all could not so have given such bodily form to them. Thus it is seen in art, that many are exquisite judges of a beautiful painting, who are themselves

wanting in the easiest elements of the practical artist; and many can feel the beauty of the loftiest poetry, who cannot realise their own conceptions according to the metrical laws. And, in like manner, though this creed was probably drawn up by one or two master minds, yet the moral perceptions of the council would have rejected it, had it not represented their convictions.

When, too, the imaginary evils of retaining this creed in our Church's confessions of the faith are urged with all those painful arguments which the idiosyncracies of particular temperaments sincerely force upon them, we must not forget its past services and its present advantages. We think it almost certain-we are ourselves without one doubt upon the subject -that numbers of wilfully erring or careless readers of the New Testament have been rescued from the maelstroom of Socinian errors by the awful out-speaking language of this creed. They have been at once turned away from tampering with this heresy which flatters human reason by offering to make all faith bend dow before it, by simple terror at the awful dangers set forth in it of false conclusions. It is still, too, the harbour of refuge to the unreasoning but confiding son of the Church. It happens to ourselves to recollect the case of a clergyman, of high human attainments, who suffered this heresy to creep out so palpably into his pulpit-teachings, that one of the churchwardens (we believe) set before the bishop the teaching of the creed on one side, and of the pulpit of C parish on the other, and asked which was right. The clergyman subsequently gave up his benefice, and retired into a private station. If, then, this creed were removed, to meet the scruples of some with whose sincere convictions we deeply sympathise, we should feel as if one mighty pillar of the Church were taken down t

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Moreover, it is our conviction, that the periodical publica tion of this creed from the reading desk supersedes almost entirely the necessity of laboured attempts from the pulpit tó prove its dogmata. Surely, a preacher must know but little of the capacity of congregations for comprehending subtle argu ments, not to be thankful that the full faith of his flock relieves him from the thankless task of formally) establishing the di vinity and personality of the Holy Spirit. We should be sorry to have to deal with a faith in this sublime mystery which had been solely formed by what are called proofs (!). If the amount of a faith so formed was to be measured by the amount of the comprehension of the true force of the proof, it would be found utterly unequal to bear the burdens

imposed upon it by the orthodox teacher. Should a minister, then, be asked to quell certain doubts upon these mysteries, in individual cases, we would advise him to proceed thus:State the authority of this creed: then read such portions of it as the case suggests; and, finally, read the usual quotations from the Scriptures. The doubt might then be left to its natural course. This would be a proper application of the philosophy of tradition, and of the Sixth Article; and why should this be less objectionable than quotations from Mr.sermon, and Dr.- -'s dissertations?

We have but one more remark to make. It is after a contemplation of the endless dangers and most subtle errors which Christianity, by divine permission, had to encounter in its earliest infancy-of the freedom of thinking and acting, which is allowed to all-of the permission given to his own people. to experiment upon Christianity, to gratify the unsubdued cravings of intellectual pride, and to stand forth, as Bethshemeshites, to warn others that there are hallowed precincts, visibly defined, into which the reason may not enter without paying the penalty of judicial inflictions which shall make its movements uncertain as the wanderings of the blind idiot; it is after this contemplation that we have arrived at the conviction which we can no more deny than we can our own nature, of the reality of a Church of Christ to which the gracious promise belongs, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it;" which illustrates- rather demonstratesthese maxims of the divine government, "men which are thy hand, O God;" "the wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of it (when the next step would really hurt his Church) thou wilt restrain." It is, further, this contemplation that has led us to the conclusion, that, out of all, the superabundance of evils which that state of human society inevitably (according to its own undisturbed laws) produced, a superintending Providence, which rides the tempest and the storm, brooding over this dark chaos of evils, brought forth, in their purity, those grand elements which, in their proper combination, shapen forth to the eye of sense this his Church-viz., the two sacraments of baptism, and the Lord's supper-the canon of Scripture (selecting it out of all those false histories to which St. Luke alludes)the creeds of Christ's divinity and humanity, and of the Holy Spirit's divinity and personality --and the episcopal form of Church government, to counteract that most destructive of all elements in religion, the democratic principle, which deifies even the most beggarly specimens of human reason, setting it up in judgment both upon God and

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man; the womb and the cradle of such human passions as pride, avarice, ambition, and the evils of Popery without its counterpoise: for granting, as of course we do in a world where evil and good are as inseparably connected as light and darkness, the temptations afforded by the episcopal principle to misrule; yet, between a choice of evil, it is surely better to take that which may corrupt the few, rather than that which must, ultimately, corrupt the whole mass; for, should the democratical principle of Church government be ever allowed to supersede, for our sins, the episcopalian principle (we are not dealing with prelacy), then would it require as palpable a series of miracles, to conduct the Church of Christ in such a state of oppression, humiliation, and degradation, through this waste howling wilderness to a Canaan of rest, as was required to defend the descendants of Abraham, in the real wilderness, against those physical evils whose precise tendency was to effect their utter destruction. But the episcopal form of Church rule is one of the earliest creeds of the Church.

We are unwilling to leave all this, to mere assertion, though it is against our wishes to set down proofs. We mean, then, that men who come reeking from their shops and countinghouses to sit in judgment upon the qualities and creed of a minister, cannot be trusted."Sin sticketh close to buying and selling; a false balance is an abomination to the Lord." The peremptory and all important questions from such inquisitors to a candidate-do you believe in justification by faith alone, without works?-that all our works are filthy rags?-are most suspicious; for certainly the recent discoveries of the "tricks of trade," which the new bankrupt laws have brought to light, make us tremble for the moral purity of such as are exposed to severe competition. We do not suppose that tradesmen—the professedly Christian tradesmen—are purer now than they were sixty years ago. And of professedly Christian tradesmen, the late Rev. R, Cecil, Minister of St. John's Chapel, somewhere has recorded his belief, that there were few into whose legers the eye of God could look without condemnation. Again he says:- Among the great body of tradesmen, professing themselves religious, what do you see but a driving, impetuous pursuit of the world; and, in this pursuit, not seldom mean, low, suspicious, yea, immoral practices." * Again, he says, religion cannot, tolerate what many tradesmen, professedly religious, require: "They would deceive themselves with certain commercial maxims, so far

Cecil's Remains, by J. Pratt. Ed, 6, p. 220.

removed from simplicity and integrity, that I have been often shocked beyond measure at hearing them countenanced and adopted by some religious professors." These are the opinions of one who was endowed with that too rare ministerial gift—a thorough knowledge of human nature-whom the childish gauderies of life could not dazzle' intó a belief of falsehoodfrom whose searching eyes the costly painted sepulchre could not conceal the "dead men's bones 'within. He comprehended these words:- -"But Jesus' did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man."

We could point out a chapel in one of the most populous localities in England which, during the former ministry of one who mainly dealt in sublime generalities, was crowded by an admiring congregation of the wealthier commercial classes. His successor, an able and faithful man, saw the real defects of his flock, and occasionally preached to them from such texts as this:"A false balance is an abomination to the Lord," illustrating his statements by some too homely examples. The consequence was, that much of the old congregation gradually melted away, and was succeeded by one of a different stamp Had the democratical principle prevailed here, the order would have been reversed; that is, instead of the preacher shelving the e 'congregation, the congregation would more summarily have shelved

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human nature should countenance its real opponent. It cannot be that men, who will not permit their own friends to reprove them for their bosom sins, should choose a minister who would dare to do it. font?

ART. III. Stubborn Facts from the Factories. By A MANCHESTER OPERATIVE. Published and Dedicated to the Working Classes by W. RASHLEIGH, Esq., M.P. London: Ollivier. 1844. 510 575 9dt 29929€ senji z "IN the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” Such was part of the sentence pronounced by the Almighty against man in the day when he fell from his allegiance. Though this sentence was modified and mitigated in the covenant which God made with Noah, yet it has continually received its fulfilment in the multiplied forms of suffering that accompany the toils of labour, c

Servitude is the lot of all, and is as necessary to the well-being of the world as it is honourable in itself. It is justly due from