what he very coolly calls the "final result of the Protestant Experiment." He then comes to Unitarianism. This, in his opinion, is not wholly evil. It has a "positive" as well as a "negative" side, and the fundamental ideas on which it rests are just. "To suppose that there is nothing positive in Unitarianism," he says, "that it derives all the popularity it has ever enjoyed from its denials, is a plausible, but a serious mistake. It has been embraced by a number of earnest minds, which never could have had any sympathy with a system merely because it rejected what other men believed. I do maintain," he adds, "that something deeper and more solid lay beneath their not-belief; that it is very important to know what that was, not only for their sakes but for our own; not only because the only way of extricating any man from a falsehood is to do justice to his truth; but because by this course the history of the church and the plans of God, so far as we may be allowed to examine into them, become far more intelligible."- p. 126. The first great principle embodied in Unitarianism, according to him, is "The strong inward conviction, that the unity of God is a deep, primary truth, which no words can explain away, no experiences of ten thousand minds can make unreal, no dogmas of ten thousand generations turn into a nullity; that it has stood its ground and asserted itself in defiance of all such words, experience, dogmas; that everything which is true in the teachings which men have received has tended to bring it into clearer manifestation." pp. 127, 128. The second grand principle of Unitarianism he recognises "in the conviction, that the idea of the love of God is an absolute primary idea which cannot be reduced under any other; which cannot be explained away by any other; which no records, experiences, dogmas, if they have lasted for ten thousand generations, can weaken or contradict; which must be the foundation of all thought, all theology, all human life. With such a conviction," he adds, "I believe it is as dangerous to trifle as with that respecting the divine unity."— p. 129. 66 To these two principles the teachings of nature lent their aid, telling us that He," who created the sun and moon," was also the Father of the children of men, and they could not be in all their generations "the subjects of a curse.' The author does not do justice to Unitarianism, and he has fallen into some mistakes respecting it; but the above extracts will show that he is far from descending to that vulgar, indiscriminate abuse of it with which our ears are so often pained. If Unitarianism has been connected with materialism in philosophy, that philosophy was recognised, he asserts, by those who assailed, as well as by those who defended it. It was the phiVOL. XXXV. - 3D s. VOL. XVII. NO. I. 15 losophy of the times. That philosophy, he admits, has been now thrown aside, particularly in North America, to which he refers for an example of modern Unitarianism. "The coating of dry materialism with which it (Unitarianism) was associated, and from which it appeared inseparable, has been cast away; and the orthodox systems are charged by the modern Unitarians with a disregard of man's spiritual nature and his spiritual powers." Viewed as a system, however, Unitarianism finds no more favor in his eyes than Quakerism, and what he terms "Pure Protestantism," and he talks in a similar way, and with a true Churchman's complacency, of the "final result of the Unitarian Experiment," though from his own pages it may be gathered, that American Unitarianism, with all the Pantheistic tendencies attributed to it, is not yet dead nor dying. "The Americans," he says, "are craving for something which is Catholic, and not sectarian. This system appears to have that merit, and it is a common opinion, that either Unitarianism or Romanism will overspread America, or that the two will divide it between them. If there be no Catholicism which is not identical with one of these schemes, I cannot doubt that they are right." — p. 147. England has been the centre of all the religious movements for the last hundred years, as France has been of the political, and Germany of the philosophical movements. Thus Methodism rose in a sort of antagonism to Unitarianism, which was essentially "impersonal," and in a sense reasserted the principles of the Reformation. So says the author. But we cannot follow him in his comments on Methodism, on the Materialism of the eighteenth century, on recent changes, on the old and new Rationalism, or political movements, and education. The conclusion to which he arrives is, that "the principles asserted by the religious societies which have been formed in Europe since the Reformation, are solid and imperishable," as those of Quakerism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism; but "that the systems in which those principles have been embodied were faulty in their origin, have been found less and less to fulfil their purpose as they have grown older, and are now exhibiting the most manifest indications of approaching dissolution," this is true alike of the Quaker, the Pure Protestant, and the Unitarian systems. The author goes for the whole. Where then is to be found the one universal, spiritual kingdom, body, or constitution, which is to defy time and the elements, earth and hell? Where but in the glorious English Church, the like of which never has been, or shall be? Has not this all the signs, as above enumerated, of a true Catholic Church, a "universal and spiritual constitution ?" And does it not con tain within itself, and express in its forms, the "ideas and principles," of "Quakerism of Calvinism, of Lutheranism, of Unitarianism? To be sure it does, and to render it perfect, it has, as before said, its "national side" too. It is indissolubly united with the State," embodied" in it. It thinks too for the people, and that is a great thing. "I have contended," says the author, "that the Bible without a church is inconceivable, that the appointed ministers of the church are the appointed instruments for guiding men into a knowledge of the Bible, that the notion. of private judgment is a false notion, that inspiration belongs to the church, and not merely to the writers of the Bible," and so on. Yet the writer denounces Romanism ! These matters occupy some three hundred pages and more. As to the argument used, it will appear convincing, we suppose, only to those who need not to be convinced. Yet with all the author's complacency in his own views, and glorification of his own church, we cannot find it in our hearts to be angry with him; we are amused rather. We like his good temper, and cheerfully bear testimony to his freedom from all acrimony, which forms a delightful feature of the volume. He has some visions we should be sorry to disturb. Yet we must say, that if Catholicism is to be the religion of the whole world, it will not, we feel very confident, be the Catholicism of the English Church, or English Episcopacy. It will be either Roman Catholicism, or the Catholicism of Unitarianism. Between the two, there is, as it seems to us, no medium, no stopping point, no secure resting place. If Romanism or Unitarianism is likely to divide America, or one of them to overspread it, why not the whole world also? 13. batt The Mount Vernon Reader for Junior, Middle, and Senior Classes. By the Messrs. ABBOTT. Boston, B. B. Mussey. 1843. We desire to speak a good word for these new School Books, the Junior Reader, the Middle Reader, and the Senior Reader, a regular series for the youngest and oldest reading classes. They are prepared by the "Messrs. Ab bott," and have all the interest which these excellent authors have given to their other works, being partly compiled and partly original, and having particular reference to moral influence. This most important object has been so sadly overlooked in most of our School Books, and even defeated in many, that we hail with gratitude these volumes so replete with intellectual and moral instruction combined. They are also well fitted for common readers in a family. We cannot say they are perfect; there are a few instances noticed in a hasty perusal where we should differ in judgment; but we can and do advise, that parents and teachers examine them for themselves. We can also, with entire confidence and heartiness, commend the new juvenile series which Jacob Abbott, author of the Rollo Books, has just begun under the taking title of Marco Paul's Travels and Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge. Save the author's single fault of minuteness and diffusion, here is everything a child can want in such books, and much that parents have reason to be thankful for. A Letter to the Right Rev. Father in God, Richard, Lord Bishop of Oxford, on the Tendency to Romanism, imputed to Doctrines held of old, as now, in the English Church. By the Rev. E. B. PUSEY, D. D., late Fellow of Oriel College; Regius Professor of Hebrew, and Canon of Christ Church. From the Second Oxford Edition. New-York: J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall. 1843. Dr. Pusey's Sermon. The Holy Eucharist a Comfort to the WE may hereafter go more fully into the merits of some of the questions raised by these pamphlets; at present we can do little more than notice their appearance, as among the tracts of the times. The Sermon of Dr. Pusey, seeing it proved the occasion of the suspension of the learned author from his office as preacher in the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford, is the most interesting of these documents. As a sermon it would deserve no notice, except, perhaps, a rebuke for its rather unusual dulness. It is only because the reader is in search of heretical opinion, that he makes out after one or two failures to master its paragraphs. After having read and digested it, our wonder is not, as it seems to have been with so many, that a good and true Episcopalian should have written or published it, still less, have arrived at the opinions it discloses, but that the Vice Chancellor of Oxford should have committed the blunder of rebuking him for doing so. It would seem as if that dignitary in taking the step he has, was not very familiar with the fathers of his own church. Drawing our patristic lore chiefly, not wholly, from the sermon and its appendixes, and the letter to the Bishop of Oxford, nothing can be plainer than that in broaching the opinions contained in the Sermon, Dr. Pusey is merely announcing himself a disciple of a host of the most learned, pious, and till now, orthodox Archbishops, bishops, and lower dignitaries of the Church. If the names of Archbishops Sharp, and Wake, of Bishops, Wilson, Ken, and Bramhall, and a score of others, are to be cast out as heretical, then may that of Pusey come under the same condemnation, but not before. If the church is not ready to renounce or defame them, it cannot consistently touch the Oxford professor. They are heretics or true churchmen together. So with those who in New-York have made the attempt to censure Mr. Carey for his Romanism, and so noisily protested against his ordination on that ground. They have taken the same false step with the Vice Chancellor, and seem to have been little aware whom they were charging with tendencies to Rome and Popery, when they leveled their weapons at the candidate. Messrs. Anthon and Smith are clearly wrong; wrong not only in their resistance of the authority they had bound themselves as churchmen to obey,—and rightly so bound themselves, if their bishop is by divine right and apostolical descent their spiritual father and lord, but wrong also, in imputing to Mr. Carey, as damnable heresies, opinions held by martyrs and saints without number of their own church. If our eyes have not been covered by mists and darkness while we have read, few things can be plainer than that the sentence of the Vice Chancellor, pronounced inconsiderately we suspect, - will be revoked, or reversed by some higher authority, if higher authority there is, and also, that the imitators here of the greater actors there, will quietly withdraw their opposition, and suffer the subject and the strife to go to sleep. This we are persuaded will be the course pursued both in England and in our own country; and in a short time we shall hear of Puseyism only as the rather high high-churchism of some middle-age dreamers, some sincere and devout lovers of church antiquity, who may adopt opinions and restore practices that indeed look like Romanism, but are in truth nothing more than opinions and practices belonging to pure ages of the ancient church, and which fathers of the English Church have held time out of mind without imputation cast on their Orthodoxy or their Protestantism. |