of others, became stronger and stronger as she saw eternity more nearly at hand. She not only addressed earnest exhortations to those who visited her, but in one instance was taken to see a friend in dying circumstances, on whose account she felt much. But the individual who appeared to have the largest share of this pious solicitude was her own brother. Not long before her decease, she addressed a short letter to him, which breathes the ardent affection she cherished for him, and her strong desires for his eternal peace. She said: "You are very near my heart. I cannot forbear telling you what the Lord has done for me. He has prepared me for life as for death. All is right. Blessed be his name for it. It is worth a thousand worlds. You know that only you and I are now left; and if I go first, yet you must soon follow. If I never write to you again, may the Lord bless you with the joys of his salvation! O seek him while in health! You know that without him you cannot be happy, either in this world or the next. I hope you will read this with a heart as full as mine. We shall all, I trust, meet in heaven at last." Some little time after writing this letter, she was taken to her father's house, where she remained for a fortnight, with no advantage to her own health, but much to the Christian comfort of herself and friends. At times, all her thoughts and feelings seemed to be absorbed by the manifestations of the divine goodness with which she was favoured, and which bore her above all pain and sorrow. Her return home was hastened, lest it should become impracticable, from her increasing weakness. When she had returned, she began evidently to sink with rapidity; but she was preserved in great peace. She observed once, "I have now nothing to do but to go." On one occasion, being carried to her bed in a state of painful exhaustion, and observing that her friends were weeping, she tried to check their tears, and said, "The change has to come, and will not be delayed long; but He will never leave nor forsake me." The day before her departure, being engaged in solemn prayer, she raised her voice, and said, "Glory to Jesus, glory to Jesus!" She added, after a brief pause, "O I am happy; I am happy!" She continued, after this, very peaceful, but too weak to converse; till at length nature was exhausted, and she expired as if falling asleep. Mrs. Teal was a young woman of good understanding, and considerable strength and activity of character. She was respectful and obedient as a daughter, and as a wife affectionate and attentive. As a mother she was tender and assiduous. In domestic life she was thoughtful, industrious, and economical. She seemed to present a pleasing combination of Mary and Martha; and if sometimes Martha seemed to preponderate, it was owing to her conscientious exactness in the performance of every duty. As a professor of religion, she was steady and uniform, never separating from the people whom she had in the first instance joined, and never wickedly departing from her God. Simple in her manners, candid in her disposition, she won the affection and esteem of all who knew her. Her race was short, but it was nobly run. JAMES BROMLEY. MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. THE REVIVAL OF PRINCIPLES, ESSENTIALLY POPISH, IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, ILLUSTRATED. (For the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine.) THERE is no fact of ecclesiastical history, especially of English ecclesiastical history, which requires to be more fully kept in the view of the religious public of England, at the present day, than this,-that in the accomplishment of the Anglican Reformation, and in the construction of the Anglican Episcopal Church, there were two influences at work, very different from each other, but each possessing considerable power. The Church of England, as at length established by law, is not the simple, consistent result of one set of principles, but presents the combination, often the very inconsistent combination, of principles diametrically opposed to each other. The Church, as an existing fact of the present, cannot possibly be understood without distinct reference to this most certain fact of the past. The real friends of the Church ought, to be well acquainted with this subject. The day is past for blind admiration of the Church as a whole. There is much that is evil in the entire system, and utterly indefensible, as well as much that is excellent, and worthy of imitation and support. Nor will it do to go on endeavouring to reconcile what are, in fact, and in principle, irreconcilable. The Church of England is a mixture, not merely because she was constructed by human, and therefore fallible, men; not merely because that which is good has been forgotten, or weakened, or corrupted: these are customary causes of change; but the evils to be traced to them in the Church are, comparatively, only of subordinate character. The greatest evils in the Church, though now, perhaps, more commandingly visible, because more largely developed, are evils which have existed, in principle, from the beginning; and were, at the beginning, occasions of grief and complaint to those who were the Church's best friends, and among the most laborious and faithful of her builders. There were the true Protestant Reformers, the successors of the martyrs of the Marian persecution, who desired to establish a pure evangelism, and who contributed to such establishment, all that they were allowed to contribute; and there were the Queen and her courtiers. The days of the Reformation in England were days of high prerogative. The leading Reformers believed that it was the duty of the Prince to see that true religion was established. But instead of holding to the duty of the Church to reform itself, and of the Prince to aid her in doing her own scripturally described work, they placed the Church under the control of the civil power, and submitted to its authority and direction. The Church was made, therefore, not what its most evangelical labourers wished it to be, but what Queen Elizabeth chose that it should be. And from this circumstance have proceeded results which, from the study of their causes, might, â priori, have been anticipated. In the composition of the standard formu laries, the evangelical Reformers were largely concerned; the disciplinary arrangements were mostly decided by the Queen and her courtiers: in the former, therefore, we see most of the good; in the latter, most of the evil. And as it is the workers, especially when possessing power, who give to the 4 L VOL. III.-FOURTH SERIES. work the most of its actual character, so the workers in the Church of England, too often holding principles, and governed by feelings, very different from those laid down in the standard form of appointment, have frequently given to the actual and living Church, a character very unlike that which is to be gathered from the documentary Church. The standard documents-the Liturgy, the Ordination Services, the Articles, and the Homilies are essentially and decisively Protestant. There are, indeed, some variations, for which it is not difficult to account; but the general character, both in principle and development, is thoroughly evangelical; so completely so, that the variations, in all honest consistency of interpretation, must never be permitted to overrule the general character, but be always and decidedly subordinated to it. But here is the root of all the mischief. The Reformers were deeply convinced that an inward, divine, personal call to the ministry was the only proper foundation of the outward appointment. Their language, in the writings they have left us, fully proves this. But the great proof is found in the Ordination Service. The very first question proposed to the candidate for Holy Orders distinctly refers to this. He was solemnly and publicly to declare, that he believed himself to be-not merely providentially led, (though that would have been, at such a time, and in such a service, a very weighty profession, not to be made except on such grounds as would bear religious scrutiny as in the very presence of God,) but-"inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost." The question is too solemn to admit of a merely formal reply. It was evidently meant by the compilers that they who could not reply in truth, should never present themselves. Jewell expressly says that to all who are not thus called, God will say at the last, "Who made thee a steward?" And this was completely a Protestant doctrine. It was not a relic of antiquity merely adapted by the Reformers. It was the expression of their own deliberate judgment, founded on the letter and spirit of Scripture, as they understood it, and suggested by the very nature of the office, as, with their enlightened and spiritual minds, they regarded it. Nothing like the question is found in any of the ordination services of the ROMAN PONTIFICAL. It was originated by the Anglican Reformers; and honour is due to them for their explicit testimony to the great doctrine of Scripture, that the Christian ministry is not a profession, in which a man may engage from his own choice and will, but that he must be inwardly moved of God to do so. To our Lord Jesus Christ, not as having once dwelt on earth in the flesh, instituting a ministerial order, and leaving it to his church to fill it up as she should choose, but, as still abiding in his church, and governing it by his ever-present Spirit, was the power exclusively given, of sending labourers into the vineyard; the office of the church being only recognitive and ministerial. Well had it been for the Church, and for the whole nation, had this theory been firmly and rigidly reduced to practice. To the Church and to the nation a ministry such as the Ordination Service supposes, would have been an immeasurable blessing. But the discipline of the Church by no means carried out the doctrine of the Church: in too many instances the doctrine of a personal and inward divine call was completely overlooked, and men were admitted to the ministry who came to it as a profession, with the view of pecuniary profit, and of secular advancement,-men who could not have experienced the call to the ministry, because they had not experienced those inward movements which bring the heart to God, overcome the world, and issue in devoted love to the truth of God as spiritually dis cerned, and in earnest compassion for souls whom Christ has redeemed by his most precious blood. And as such persons have been, unhappily, the numerical majority, so have they been, as was to be expected with all the force of an expectation resting on moral certainty, most active in seeking that for which they entered the ministry: employing all their influence, and using all such methods as seemed best calculated to accomplish their object, they have aimed at the best livings and the highest honours of the Church. And too often has the Church itself been considered by the statesmen who have had all its honours, and so much of its wealth, at their disposal, as an institution for the reward of political service, for the attainment of political influence, and for the secular advancement of such members of their own families, or of those of their friends, as had chosen the ministerial profession. The Church was numbered with Bar, Army, and Navy, as a profession in which wealth and honour might be sought. Unhappily, the Church is an institution differing in principle from all others. A man, spiritually unrenewed, may dispense justice on the bench, and act heroically by sea or by land: but he cannot preach the Gospel; for he not only is insensible to its proper motives, but does not even understand it. Such a man will either be thoughtless on the subject altogether, or his views will rise no higher than his capacity. The religion of an unspiritual man will itself be unspiritual. It will be a religion of form, devoid of all vital power; while that power, as denying the religious character of the mere form, will be itself denied, and rejected as false doctrine in opinion, enthusiasm in feeling, and irregularity in practice. Here, in fact, is the grand evil. The only two aspects of personal religion, possessing any degree of self-consistency, are those of spiritual evangelism, which only the spiritually-renewed can understand and relish, and of essential, primary externalism, differing from Popery in some real points of discipline, and, apparently, in a few points of doctrine ; but, in principle and result, identical with it. Whenever such persons, therefore, gain ascendency in any Church, Popish manifestations become apparent. Of late years, the principles of these manifestations have been so extensively spread in the Church of England, that at length they are reduced to system; and among the characteristics of the party who have embraced it, tendencies to Rome and Romanism are most decided. Many have so cherished these, as to yield to them altogether; while others content themselves with displaying them. By some they are boldly avowed from the press. Mr. Ward's case at Oxford will not soon be forgotten, nor Mr. Oakley's, in London. There is, however, another, which has not attracted so much attention, but which, in our view of it, is as strongly marked as any we have had the opportunity of noticing. It is that of the author of a volume of poetry, the title of which is given below.* From this poem we propose to give a few extracts, for the purpose of illustrating the character of those tendencies of which we have spoken. The poem is designed to furnish a double meaning to the reader. It is an Sir Lancelot. By the Rev. Frederic William Faber, M.A., Rector of Elton, Huntingdonshire. Foolscap 8vo., pp. xxiv., 542. Rivingtons. Mr. Faber has since joined the Roman community; but this makes no difference to our argument. The book was composed and published by him while he was a Minister of the English Church, and called forth no rebuke of which we have ever heard. The slightest expression of sympathy with Protestants not possessing an Episcopal regimen, is at once marked and censured. Popery may be held, practised, and published; and if the people are quiet, so that no disturbance takes place, nothing is said about it. allegory: and they who choose may rest in the first incidents. But the author intends more than this. He says in his preface,-"I have endeavoured, as well as I could, to realize my own idea of what an allegory should be, namely, a consistent narrative, having a perfect significance and interest in itself, literally taken, and capable of being so read and dwelt upon by such as do not wish to go farther, or fit a second meaning to the narrative, especially when that meaning might be one which they disliked." There is therefore "a second meaning" to be found in the narrative, or fitted to it; that is, we are not to listen to Sir Lancelot, of whose history the poem treats, but also to the narrator, the Rev. Mr. Faber. Sir Lancelot De Wace, a Crusader, in a sudden fit of passion, has slain his rival. Released from the civil penalties due to his offence, except the forfeiture of his estates, "the unbending Church With merciful severity had laid Her censures on him; lest his soul, through sin Too soon effaced, should perish in the end." He returns, therefore, to England, to undergo his penance, which extends through several years. He then obtains absolution, and dies. The ten cantos of the poem are occupied with the penance, the circumstances connected with it, and the reflections which they suggest. In the course of the work, Mr. Faber speaks very plainly of Rome and Romanism; and that he utters what really are his own sentiments, is evident, not merely from the manner in which they are stated, but from the intended double meaning so unequivocally avowed in the preface. A few instances we now proceed to give. What Mr. Faber wishes, is declared without any allegory, speaking in his own proper person, in the concluding pages of the last canto. The desire for a general return to Rome and Romanism, is expressed without the slightest reserve. "So have I sung as one who greatly fears Lest the' uncouth aspect of his real wish, And urgent clamour of bold words, should scare A mighty end, whose safety and whose strength By inward thought, the test of outward act, And secret anguish of some dreadful hours That lean'd their weight on one most feeble truth, Rumours of actual conflict, or the wound Of personal strife, have rent the figured veil, Weary of its disguise, hath broken forth, With the shrill Present drowning those soft strains To make the surface of my song reflect, By poor conventions overlaid, hath dared * * * * * * |