The Duke, above every bias of partizanship, prosecutes his purpose on what we may call scientific grounds only, a course worthy of a large and magnanimous spirit. His treatment of his theme may not solve the problem; does not quite satisfactorily solve it, as we think. But it has this to recommend it, that it will please no party; to recommend it, we repeat, for it may fail and yet please none,-it must have failed if it had pleased any. We shall follow our noble Author's example in aiming at, if we may not hope to reach, a just impartiality, while we proceed to state our views freely, as our own only; that is, those of one living groper in this dim twilight of things.

We have not been able, in the course of the "Essay," to discover any specific enumeration of those "principles and tendencies of the Scottish reformation," which the Duke of Argyle deems to be "the growth of accidental circumstances," therefore "local in their origin, and as local in their meaning," If we do not misapprehend the scope of his pages; however, they may be reduced to three-the jus divinum of Presbytery-the broad distinction traced betwen Church and State from the date (1578) of the Second Book of Discipline downwards, and the peculiar view of the headship of Christ which sprang up towards the end of the sixteenth century. Perhaps to these we should add the ritual ordination, impositione manuum, of the clergy, which was discarded by Knox and his coadjutors in 1560, because, said they, "seeing the miracle is ceased, the using of the ceremonie we judge not necessarie." But although our noble author frequently alludes to this remarkable fact, he does so more for the sake of illustration and evidence, than as if he held it to be of any special moment in itself. Such, at least, is our reading, in which we are most anxious to be strictly correct.

1. With regard, then, to the jus divinum of presbytery-the Duke of Argyle distinctly maintains that, so far from being a primary or essential principle of our reformation, it was not even held by the first reformers and founders of our Church. He accordingly accepts Sage's historical argument to this effect,* as conclusive in the question; and regards the proud and perilous dogma of exclusive divine right as an unhappy defensive result of the struggle which was forced on the Church of Scotland by the usurpations of Episcopacy. In this view of the case, we are on the whole disposed to acquiesce. No doubt, the earliest arrangements adopted by the Scottish reformers, were unequivocally antiEpiscopal no doubt also, a positive enough claim to this jus might well be supposed to remain, latent and in silence, under conditions which could scarcely have suggested, much less provoked its assertion; and for these reasons it might be very plausibly argued that Knox and his friends would, in similar circumstances, have taken up the same ground which was afterwards occupied by his successors. But there are recorded facts and statements which, to say the least, seriously embarrass such an opinion; and on whatever side the probability may lie, we are satisfied that the question of exclusive divine right was never, during the earlier movements of the Reformation, formally and articulately entertained for solution at all. Faith in this dogma, therefore,

* Presbytery Examined. Enquiries, I, and II, p. 9 &c.-Spottis. Society edition.

could not have been one of the forces by which these movements were urged on. Nor was it otherwise in England. The jus divinum of Episcopacy was most assuredly no article in the creed of Cranmer, and others, his fellow-labourers; nor was it heard of among their successors, until it was assumed by the Anglican Church as a defensive position in the vestiarian controversy. Whatever we may think of the doctrines of the Covenant to the north of the Tweed,-the high church views of Laud and others, to the south of it, involved a grave and as it proved, a disastrous departure, from the great guiding principles of the English Reformation.

We regret that our space, or rather the want of it, will not allow us to quote the Duke of Argyle's glowing paragraphs, (p. 143, &c.,) relating to this subject, and we must make haste to be done with it ourselves. An express statutory institution, such as that communicated through Moses to the Jews, would clearly constitute the very highest order of jus divinum, but this, we imagine, few if any, will have the hardihood to assert in favour either of Episcopacy or Presbytery. "When we speak of divine right," says Bishop Hall,* "we mean not an express law of God, requiring it upon the absolute necessity of the being of a church, what hindrances soever may interpose; but a divine institution warranting it where it is, and requiring it where it may be had." This definition, describing with sufficient accuracy, we presume, the doctrine that is still prevalent, gives obviously a much lower view of the subject. But the Duke of Argyle will not concede even so much: "with its claims of jus divinum," he says, meaning those of Presbytery, "in the abstract, we have as little sympathy as with the same claims when made by bishops," (p. 216.) Of our readers, this will probably alarm some, and displease others. Let them be patient; his Grace, and those who think with him, may be good Presbyterians nevertheless. "Its claims of right"-those of Scottish Presbytery"are still broadly based on the natural rights of the Christian society. Its jus divinum is still so far true that it rests on jus humanum; and every natural right which is really such, is in some sense a jus divinum,” (p. 226.) In discussing so delicate a topic, we might have selected a more anxiously guarded phraseology than that employed by the Duke; but it is clear that in his judgment, the Presbyterian polity is "founded on the word of God and agreeable thereto,"-nay, that of all administrative systems, it is decidedly the best and most advantageous for the action and development of the Christian life in its social or church capacity. This is a jus divinum, too, though of the lowest order. Those who contend for more are welcome to their opinion-their own misgivings will cause them trouble enough, without the help of our objections. But we may hazard a single word of advice. If they have resolved to persist in their present views, let them be careful to read the controversy only in works which have emanated from the highest of the high-church Episcopal party. At least we have found that the works of thorough-going partisans on either side of the question had quite a wonderful influence in convincing us that their authors were wrong.

† Vol. x., p. 282, Edit. Oxford, 1837,

Nor do we believe that this strange experience of ours was by any means singular.

2. With reference to "Church and State," we have to beg the best attention of our readers to the Duke of Argyle's own language.

"The common idea,' says he, of the distinction between Church and State is founded on a priestly idea of the nature of the Church.' It could not therefore find any natural place in the minds of the first Scotch Reformers. Their notions of civil government were not easily separable from their notions of the nature of the Church. Popular representation, at the root of both, left not much room for any superstitious distinction. Accordingly, there are no indications of it in the first book of discipline. The true idea of that distinction-that which is not dependent on any priestly notion, and which is therefore not the common one-even this appears in a comparatively dormant state." (p. 37.)

"It is impossible, indeed,' he adds, further on in his work; for we are compelled, most reluctantly, to omit some of his paragraphs; it is impossible, indeed, to examine the proceedings of the Reformers in 1560, without sceing throughout, that the idea of a definite separation between civil and spiritual power had not yet acquired shape or consistence in their minds. The elements of the idea indeed existed. The external circumstances of Christianity in the world, the unreality of most men's religion, the gap between the service of God and that of Mammon, the necessity of keeping Christ's Church as independent as possible of Satan's world, and last, not least, the instinct of defending their own belief from all external authority or control; these things soon taught them that the church, like every other society having distinctive interests, must trust her government to a legislature and executive exclusively her own. But in the summer and autumn of 1560, the first Scotch Reformers were an enthusiastic and hopeful company. They trusted that Christ's law, as their own ardent dispositions had interpreted it, was to be adopted and engrossed in man's law, and thus that Scotland was to become, under an opened gospel, as one of the kingdoms of God and of his Christ.' But before the first year of the Established Reformation had expired, they had already, in some degree, discovered their mistake. The council would not ratify the book. The State thus suggested that it was indeed, separate from the Church. The latter had no resource but to fall back on her instinctive sense of the difference of her province, and of her independence in it; and that public sanction which the council refused the General Assembly gave." (pp. 41, 42.)

Our author proceeds, through a succession of paragraphs which we earnestly recommend to the consideration of our readers, to illustrate, which he does with remarkable force and clearness, the gradual development of the idea thus brought into action,-the changes, speculative and practical, to which it led,—and the effort which it made to retire upon a basis of abstract principle, or in other words, to entrench itself behind scriptural anthority. In the second part of the "Essay," the subject is resumed, and, if we remember rightly, finally dismissed,

thus:

Presbytery is still anti-sacerdotal in its nature, though sometimes priestly in its words. Its government is still based on the representative system. Its office-bearers are still only the office-bearers of its people. Its

ministers are still destitute of the character of an order. They are not above the church, but of it; not lords over God's heritage' but only members of the same. They have not the power to constitute themselves a priesthood, even if they had the will. It is forbidden by their history. For a considerable time after the Reformation, they were not even set apart, as they now are, by the ceremony of ordination, but only by election confirmed with prayer. Therefore, we may feel assured of this, that whatever may be the extravagance of its language, a church resting on such a basis must ultimately find that it cannot, consistently with its own nature, rest its claims on any higher ground than the natural right of every society to govern itself; a right which is not, and cannot be, absolute or invariable in the amount of freedom it involves, but dependant, like the same rights in political society, on its relations to time and circumstance. Presbytery may not always remember this, but others will infallibly remind it of the fact. It may speak of the distinction between Church and State,' just as if the Church were a priesthood, or in any way separate from the whole body of believers. But we know that such a definition is incompatible with the conditions of its own existence. We know therefore that the distinction which rests upon it cannot be ultimately maintained. We know that the Assemblies of Presbytery are in no mystical way distinct from the Assemblies of the State. We know that the only distinction which obtains between them is wholly the result of two characteristics in the nature of the former. 1st, That they are exclusively composed of men who are members of the same religious body; and 2ndly, That the subject of their deliberations is the regulation of ecclesiastical concerns. It is unquestionably true that these circumstances do constitute a distinction only too apparent, and only too likely to continue to demand always what they demand now-a separation between Christians met to legislate for the visible society of Christ, and Christians met to legislate for the society of the world. But we know that these distinctive circumstances arise, the one from the fact of religious divisions, and the other from the fact of religious principle being so dissevered from the practical affairs of life. These are the only facts which divide the Church' from the State. They are facts which will probably continue to divide them, in some measure at least, to the end of time; but it is a division which, so far from flowing from the will of God, would be utterly done away were his will even tolerably fulfilled. (pp. 226, 228.)

We have quoted on this subject, more than we could well make room for; because it is here that the Duke of Argyle is liable to, and has actually incurred the gravest misapprehension. We are no apologists of his Grace, who neither wants nor would accept, our services in that behalf. But whatever may be the truth of the matter at large, we have to observe, first of all, that here is no confounding of the Church with the State; nothing at all that could warrant, or even suggest to the mind of a candid critic, any sneering connection of doubtless, devout secretaries of State" with "the spiritual kingdom and the discipline of the soul." Our author recognizes as clearly as mortal man or human speech can recognize, the ineffaceable organic distinction between the secular and ecclesiastical jurisdictions: he holds that distinction however to be merely organic,-and would to God it had never been otherwise esteemed among Protestants. For what is excluded by this view? Not the outward, formal difference between the two; but merely the supposition of what his Grace calls a superstitious" idea,—the idea, viz. of a peculiar clerical, or church-court

zagua, investing, apart altogether from the subjects treated of and the mode of their treatment, the governing ecclesiastical body, whatever that may be, with the prerogatives of a superhuman authority. He leaves to the church its own functions and its own functionaries; stripping these however of all assumed, or in his own phraseology, superstitious sacredness, as a thing imagined to be inherent in the organ. His reasons for taking up this position are clearly enough indicated in the preceding extracts, and will fall to be more specially noticed hereafter. Meanwhile we have to observe, in the second place, that here at least is no Erastianism. Whether the Duke of Argyle belong to that school, or no, is not the question. His principles, no doubt admit of an Erastian application and development,-a slavish subjection of the ecclesiastical to the secular power. They do so; but he has made no such application of them; and his incidental remarks lean very decidedly the opposite way. But however that may be, he has taught no Erastianism; and his views of the relation between Church and State, no more imply that subjection of the former to the latter, than the British constitution implies a subordination of one House of Parliament to the other. A Christian legislature-a convocation or an assembly which represented the nation in its ecclesiastical capacity and its spiritual interests, might, for any thing we can see or have ever heard, possess and maintain its own independent privileges, side by side with the parliament which represented the nation in its civil capacity and its secular interests. Nor, though they might severally consist, to an indefinite extent, of identically the same members, need the perfect freedom of each be in the slightest degree fettered or disturbed by that fact. Whether such a state of things be desireable, and if so, whether it be now attainable,-these are questions regarding which there will, of course, be variety of judgments. But nothing else than a palpable misapprehension of our author's meaning could lead any man to suppose that he either confounds the Church with the State, or proposes that the latter should be suffered to subjugate and absorb the former.

For the rest; the Duke of Argyle has been obviously much indebted for his views of a right Church polity to the teaching of Arnolda teaching whose fragmentary, incomplete state, as it has reached us, and was left by him, is greatly to be lamented. But in the points wherein the Duke has followed him, Arnold himself was probably indebted to certain passages in the writings of a still greater master of reason and eloquence. "We hold," says Hooker,* if indeed the latter books of the work which bears his name may be regarded as really his" that seeing there is not any man of the Church of England but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England, therefore as in a figure triangle the base doth differ from the sides thereof, and yet one and the self-same line is both a base and also a side; a side simply, a base if it chance to be the bottom and underlie the rest; so albeit properties and actions of one do cause the name of

* Ecclesiastical Polity, Book viii. 3, and 6.