This is true and good as far as it goes, but it is not complete. The Church of England should be coupled with that of Rome throughout this passage; for whatever applies to the one applies to the other also. Superstitions respecting the sacraments, feasts and fasts, and the whole ritual of our church, indirectly tend, by exalting the clergy, to increase the influence of the Hierarchy; and superstitions respecting tithes. &c., tend directly to increase its wealth; so that it becomes "the business of the English clergy, not to introduce indeed, &c. &c." And again, if the original source of superstition be in man's heart, is it not the duty of his spiritual guides so to arrange and vary all outward ordinances as that there may be the least possible danger of encouraging a notion of any inherent sanctity in any of them? Did not Christ aim at this in what he said of the washing of hands and the giving of gifts? And had not Paul the same object in what he wrote concerning the Lord's feast at Corinth? And does the church coöperate with or contravene the Scriptures in appointing holy persons, and holy places, and holy times, however strenuously her best prelates may argue and warn against a superstitious abuse of such institutions?

The mention of holy persons leads us on to Dr. Whately's second chapter, on Vicarious Religion. The argument against the existence of two kinds of religion, one for a certain class and another for all, is triumphant. It is founded on the true explanation of the term "mystery," and our only wonder is that one who adopts that explanation should still hold the doctrine of the Trinity as the basis of that faith whose object is to make manifest that which had before been concealed. Of course, the existence of this doctrine must be manifest to our author, though the meaning of any thing so inexplicable cannot be, and (as he owns) is not manifest. We differ from him in two ways. We

hold the Apostle's meaning to be, not that the existence but the nature of religious doctrine is made manifest by the Christian revelation; and we not only do not discern the doctrine of the Trinity in the gospel, but we discern that it is not there. Though some think us blinded, like the people of Dothan, who saw nothing of the glory which was apparent to the servants of God, we rather liken ourselves to the Nazarenes who searched the temple of Ephesus and found no supplementary Deity within the shrine. Knowing that Jehovah was there, they knew that Diana could not be there too. As long as any dogma is taught as a part of Christianity, on which the understandings of the people are at fault, while they see their teachers disputing about that which it is acknowledged they cannot understand, there will exist a powerful temptation to hold a vicarious faith. While they see some as carefully guarding against Unitarianism as others against tritheism,- Magee against Sherlock, and Whately against Magee, on points on which the people can come to no satisfactory decision themselves, the greatest possible encouragement is given to them to repose their faith in despair on their clergy; and thus, to use the words of our author,-"the unprofitable, absurd, presumptuous, and profane speculations of scholastic theologians (not all of them members of the Romish Church,) which are extant, afford a melancholy specimen of the fruits of this mistake as to the Christian mysteries this corruption from the simplicity that is in Christ." (p. 83.)

The inference which our author draws from the distinction (familiar to every reader of the original gospel) between Hiereus and Presbyteros, Priest and Elder only needs to be extended to answer our purpose as well as his. He proves that there never was and never can be any priesthood connected with genuine Christianity; that the

priests under the Jewish law held a special office, to whicl there is nothing analogous in the new dispensation; that the priesthoods of Paganism were of the same distinctive character as that of Judaism; and that the Romish church is therefore either Pagan or Jewish, and decidedly Antichristian, in this one of her institutions. But what better can be said of the constitution of the Church of England? What is the meaning of ordination? What is the transmission of the Holy Ghost? Why have we such a term as "holy orders"? May or may not any good man, imbued with gospel wisdom, mount the pulpits of our cathedrals? Do or do not our prelates enjoy legislative and other privileges on account of their episcopal rank? Are or are not the pastors of the church chosen by the people to instruct them, and guide their devotions, -as professors of arts and science are ostensibly chosen, because they have qualified themselves for the office, and for no other reason? There is no use in recurring, for a justification of the negative, to apostolic times. Beyond the few, specially authorized by the gifts of the Spirit, we read of no investment with office but that which was subservient to the division of labor. The bishops, presbyters, and deacons were like the different ranks of officers in our universities, or our government departments, or our army and navy, or any of our institutions,

except our church. However, as Dr. Whately insists as strenuously as we can do on there being no priesthood in Christianity, we have only to ask him why he countenances an establishment which assumes the principle of a priesthood; and why, discerning so clearly as he does the proneness of the multitude to vicarious religion, he upholds a system which affords the utmost conceivable encouragement to this vice. If it must needs be that the offence cometh, who would assist the means by which it comes?

If Dr. Whately sees that true Christianity has no priesthood, and believes that the primitive church government (of which his own is but an indecent caricature) was an institution of expediency, meant to be modified by time and circumstance, he must discern the approach of the day when every man shall serve at the altar, (since that altar is the heart of every man ;) when every man shall be brought up to a divine profession, (since gospel wisdom is a pursuit of individual attainment ;) when the only ranks in the Christian hierarchy will lie in different degrees of spiritual accomplishment? Why retard this happy time? Why take all possible pains to propagate and confirm by the practice, while the lips and the pen contradict, the impression that there is an order of servants of the altar, that there is a peculiar divine profession, that there is a divinely authorized gradation of ranks in the Christian community? Not all that the archbishop can do in explaining the character and offices of Christian ministers; not all his advocacy of the education of the poor for the sake of promoting personal religion; not all his careful explanations of the professional distinction between clergy and laity; not all his clearly defined appreciation of what it is in which Christian pastors are to be an example to their flocks, will nullify or greatly mitigate the pernicious influence of his sanction of a system which upholds every one of the abuses he labors to expose. Does he remember that there have been Romanists as candid, as sagacious, as exemplary as himself, who have with equal earnestness separated the pure truth of their system from its entanglements, only to have the web woven round again as closely as ever, when they were called away from their work? Fenelon possessed the spirit of the gospel in much strength and purity, and through it became a benefactor to society but he was a Romanist archbishop; and through his office became a pattern of

superstition, and in so far, the enemy of the race for whom he would have laid down his life. Whately

but we

leave our readers to make out the parallel for themselves, once more offering our conclusion in the author's words. "Now if the Jews be justly condemned who crucified our Lord between two thieves thus studiously numbering with the transgressors' of the vilest kind the only man who never transgressed—it is awful to think what. account those will have to render at the last day who labor to vilify his religion by confounding it with the grossest systems of human imposture and superstition, in those very points in which the two are not only different, but absolutely contrasted." (p. 110.)

In charging the Church of England with the same vices that characterize the Romish, we do not mean to convey that they subsist in so monstrous a form, or to so pernicious an extent. The progression of ages forbids that they should. But the amelioration of practice is no proof of a rectification of principle; though it may and must lead to it, and be in its turn acted upon by it. Pious frauds are, from their very nature, dependent for their extent upon the darkness of the age. With an equal disposition to be fraudulent, knaves of every class must calculate their measures, and estimate their success by circumstances beyond their own control, by the light of the age, and the advancement of the people they have to do with and no church, however illconstituted, could now rival the enormities in the way of pious frauds which were perpetrated by the Romish church in the dark ages. But institutions which foster the disposition, and multiply the temptations to such frauds are not therefore the less pernicious. Of these we hold the Church of England to be one. There is pious fraud involved in her plea for her gains. She connives at pious fraud in all the distinctions she originates between the clergy and the