to decide whether a church proposes or not "doctrines of uncertain authority," and then his private reason is constituted superior to the Church, and a judge over her decision; or else the decision of any foreign Episcopal Church has as much right to controul the individual judgment of each person, and then Protestants in Catholic countries are acknowledged to be heretics. In the first supposition, Dissenters are not heretics nor schismatics with regard to the Established Church; in the second, the French Protestants are bound to subscribe to their belief in Purgatory and Transubstantiation, which the Anglican Articles condemn. In either, the writer in the Critic has, we imagine, a hard alternative. To use his own words, "we differ from him in logic, as much as in divinity." (p. 397.)

Let us place the question under another aspect. These High Church divines say, that their Church draws its explanations of Scripture from antiquity, of which it is the witness and depositary. It builds therefore upon this testimony its belief in the Eucharist, and its interpretation of the words employed by our Lord in its institution. But the Catholic Church, that is, the union of many other Churches appeals to precisely the same authority and test for its interpretation and belief. This is not a question of first principle, as whether any thing is to be enforced or not which is not clearly proved from Scripture: it is a matter of application of a rule equally admitted. The Zwinglian maintains the Eucharist to be a naked symbol, a merely commemorative rite. The Catholic and the Anglican contradict him; the former says that tradition has ever taught in his Church, a real and corporeal presence of Christ in that sacrament; the Anglican that his Church has learned from the same source to believe in a real but not a corporal presence. Who is to decide between the two? Is it the duty of the individual to unravel the mystery for himself, and trace out the testimony of tradition through the first ages? Then private judgment again comes in, and again is exalted as the umpire between conflicting Churches! Shall the Anglican Church have the preference? But she renounces all claim to infallibity. And what other plea can she urge which shall not assume her being the only true Church, and her principle of faith being the only correct one,-which is the very matter of inquiry?

The fact is, that there is no middle point between private judgment and the infallible authority of a living Church, which being universal, can command particular Churches as well as individuals. We would willingly exclude the name of Mr. Blanco White from our pages, but he seems to us at this moment to be a "sign," though not a "wonder,”—a monumental

record of this principle, practically illustrated in his double apostacy. He seems to us to have satisfactorily demonstrated, that on the march from Catholicity to Socinianism, and the unlimited use of private judgment, the Church of England presents no resting place. It may indeed be passed through on the road, and its curious imitations of the place just left may detain the wanderer's and outcast's attention for a brief space, as it did Mr. White's; but on he must go, if he be borne forward by a consistent principle, till he reach the other extreme.*

Many observations which have come before our minds we have been compelled to omit, for really there is no end to the incoherences and impracticabilities of the High-Church scheme. It presents one inextricable confusion of rights belonging to the Universal Church with those of particular parts or national establishments. The Church is ever spoken of as indefectibleas the depositary of truth-the voice of antiquity,—and all this is said of the Universal Church. But when we come to the deference due to it in consequence of these prerogatives, by a process of logical jugglery, the Anglican contrives to step in to receive it as its right. If these divines would keep the two distinct in their argument, they would find it miserably lame.

We were not a little surprised to see the vulgar misstatement repeated in the Critic's pages, that Catholics believe their Church empowered to create articles of faith (p. 383). They claim for her no more authority than she exercised in the early ages, that of defining what had been believed within her from the beginning, and thus declaring articles of faith. The symbols of the ancient councils, as we have before observed, were only framed against heresies as they arose; and certain points were thus defined and proposed, for the first time, in clear formal terms, to the acceptance of the faithful. Other matters, such as the Eucharist, grace, justification, were omitted, because on them there was no error. Had any existed, the doctrine regarding them would have been as clearly laid down. And there can be no doubt but that a new obligation would thus have fallen upon all Christians, to believe definitively with the Church, on points whereon, before the definition, they could not be so well instructed, nor so accurately know the faith of the Church dispersed. Hence it is not an uncommon remark of judicious and primitive writers, that the Fathers spoke more loosely upon certain subjects before they had been clearly defined by the Church. If this declaration of matters, ever believed, but not before defined, be called a creation of new articles, we have no

* See his "Observations on Heresy and Orthodoxy," p. 7.

objection to the Critic's phrase. But if by this term is signified that, according to Catholics, their Church may propose that to be believed which before was not believed, it is a gross perversion of truth to apply it to us.

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In fact, we believe the Church, in regard to her authority, to have no past and no future. She is always one; and whatever she had ever a right to do after the Apostle's time, she has a right to do at present. When the Critic, or Mr. Keble, sends us back to antiquity as the rule of faith, joined to Scripture, and thereby means the doctrine of the three or four first centuries, we beg to remind him, that these times were once the present of the Church. The faithful of those days did not, could not, look to antiquity," which then was not, but to the living Church. What was their rule of faith is ours; three hundred years, or eighteen hundred, from the time of Christ, cannot make a difference in a principle; it was nowhere appointed, or decreed, or foretold, that for so many centuries the existing Church should teach, and that, after that time, she should lose her guaranty, and be only the witness to antiquity. Yet so much must the Critic pretend, by boasting that the Catholic "gives to the existing Church the ultimate infallible decision in matters of saving faith... and the Anglican to antiquity, giving authority to the Church as being the witness and voice... of antiquity." What that antiquity held, we hold, for it could not acknowledge any authority but the existing Church.

Moreover, the High Church principle only removes the difficulties of Protestantism, or as the divines prefer calling it, of ultra-Protestantism another step; but it does not obviate them completely. Antiquity, as deposited in the writings of the early ages, is a dead letter as much as the Bible: it requires a living interpreter, no less. It has its obscurities, its perplexities, its apparent contradictions as much; it requires a guide no less to conduct us through its mazes. It cannot step in and decide between conflicting opinions and rival claims; it can, at most, be a code which requires a judge to apply it. It is more voluminous, more complex, more uncompact than Scripture; it needs more some methodizing and harmonizing, authoritative expounder. If national Churches can separately fulfil these offices, and sufficiently discharge these duties, they surely ought not to come to contradictory conclusions. Yet the Anglican stands in stark opposition to every other Episcopal Church throughout the world; its own daughter in America excepted.

And yet narrow as are the limits of this Church, its principle of faith has not secured to it the blessing which should be its destined result, a steadfast unity of belief among its members.

We speak not merely of the prevalence of dissent, but of the vast differences which the controversies, treated of in this article, have shown to exist between the members of the Anglican Church. The British Critic proposes a synod of that Church, as the best means of settling its present difficulties. Once more we say; let it be called, and we shall see how the Kebles and the Russells, the Newmans and the Arnolds, the Puseys and the Bickersteths, will agree in defining the first principle of faith, the ground on which all other controversies should be decided.

At the same time, comprehensive, nay, vast as is the pale of Catholicity, and embracing, as it does, every zone, and every quarter of the globe, let a council be called of its pastors, and you would see how differently its rule has attained the end of its existence, in the universal harmony it has produced in belief and practice. There you might interrogate a Bishop from New Spain, or a Vicar Apostolic from Sweden, a professor of the Sorbonne, or a country curate from the Abruzzi; you might consult the catechism taught to the child in Ireland, or to the native convert in the Philippine Islands, without discovering any wavering or hesitation on the question of church authority, or on any doctrine by it defined.

And by this comparison, it may be seen how in the Catholic Church the manifestation of the Son of Man, and the living Word of the Father, is," as the lightning which cometh out of the east, and shineth even into the west," one single, indivisible and unsearchable blaze of light, pervading the entire heaven of human intelligence, from hemisphere to hemisphere. But if, on the one hand, when we are told, "Lo! he is in the desert," in camp-meetings and fields, preachings and revivals, amidst the mad exuberance of ultra-Protestant zeal, 66 we go not forth ;" so, on the other, we hope to be pardoned if, on being modestly assured that "he is in the secret chambers" of one or two colleges in Oxford, where alone his doctrines may be had in their purity, "we believe it not."*

There is one point on which we fully agree with the Critic, and as it forms the beginning of his article, so it shall form the conclusion of ours. In common with many recent writers, he is of opinion that the controversies between our two Churches are only now fairly commencing. He thinks justly, that hitherto we have been assailed "rather by the power of the civil sword than by the arguments of divines." (p. 374.) The privilege of even attacking has been till now all on the other side, and we have been condemned, as a caste, to the ignobler labours of apology

Matt. xxiv. 24, 26.

and defence. The staff of the oppressor hath now, however, been broken, we stand upon more equal ground, and it is our own fault if we follow not up our advantages. If the battle, of reason, we mean, and argument, has now to be fought, we, at least, will not steal away from the field; our habits and feelings would suggest another course, and prompt us, like Tasso's shepherd, to seek seclusion from the war, in the humbler task of our own improvement, or of mere domestic duties. But there are times when every citizen is a soldier, in the spiritual as in civil warfare; and a crisis like this is one. The course which we shall pursue shall be consistent and persevering. We seek not the wealth of our Anglican neighbours, nor their establishment, nor their political power, nor their usurped influence. All these things we esteem as dross. But we covet their brotherhood in the faith, and their participation in our security of belief and their being bound to us in cords of love, through religious unity. For these things, we will contend, unceasingly, and to the utmost of our power; and GOD DEFEND THhe right!

ART. IV.-1. Report on the Civil Government of Canada, 1828.

2. Petition of the House of Assembly of Lower Canada for a Redress of Grievances. March, 1834.

Petition (the Second) from the Assembly of Lower Canada. December, 1834. With explanatory Remarks (by H. S. Chapman). March, 1835.

Existing Difficulties of the Government of the Canadas. By J. A. Roebuck, M.P. 1836.

5. The last Session of the Provincial_Parliament of Lower Canada. By E. B. O'Callaghan, M.P. April, 1836.

6. Petition (the third) from the House of Assembly of Lower Canada. 1836.

7.

Seventh Report of the Committee on Grievances (Upper Canada.) Toronto. 1835.

8. Canadiana; or, Sketches of Upper Canada: and the Political Crisis. By W. B. Wells, Esq., Member of the Parliament of U. C. 1837.

9. Reports of the Commissioners to Lower Canada. 1837. 10. The "Times" Newspaper of the 7th and 9th of March, and April 15th. "Debates on Canada."

THE great similarity of the evils which pervade the government of

liberal Irish reader: first, from the HE Canadian question has more than ordinary claims on