“I would observe that no one sanction can be adduced from scripture, whether of precept or example, in behalf of the practice of stimulating the affections, (e. g. gratitude and remorse,) by means of the doctrine of the atonement, in order to the conversion of the hearers; that, on the contrary, it is its uniform method to connect the gospel with natural religion, and to mark out obedience to the moral law as the ordinary means of attaining to a christian faith: the higher truths, as well as the eucharist, which is the visible emblem of them, being reserved as the reward and confirmation of habitual piety," &c. &c.-See Newman's Arians, pp 51, 52.

These pernicious sentiments are ably examined and exposed by Mr. Townsend, and although we do not coincide with all his views upon some collateral points, we warmly approve and admire the bold, faithful, and uncompromising manner in which he refutes and denounces errors so dangerous to the souls of men. In reply to the chief topics by which, in a very involved and circuitous manner, they endeavour to urge their views, namely, from the example of Christ, the moral government of God, and the custom of the primitive church, Mr. T. shows that they have absurdly committed the error of confounding the gradual instruction which God imparted to man, before revelation was completed, with reserve, and warns his hearers against such theology as unscriptural, unchurchmanlike, and indefensible. He justly observes, that the question is, whether we, the teachers of Christianity, are to possess the power of withholding, at our pleasure, in the public worship of God, or in the general instruction of the people, any part of the mysteries of religion, or the whole counsel of God? Are we to be entrusted with the tremendous power of saying to our congregations, "God has revealed to mankind certain truths respecting his divine nature, and the manner in which alone the fallen race of man can be reconciled to him, but you are ignorant, weak, and unlearned, and I will teach you these sublime truths, with a reserve, of which I will be the judge, and you the victim?"

The attention of our readers is solicited to the following extracts, which are not only written with considerable force and cogency, but will have added weight, considering the quarter whence they come. Mr. Townsend is the more to be commended in this respect, as he was one of the first to speak, and that, as he intimates, in consequence of the silence of his official superiors, who ought to have undertaken the duty which he has here so well discharged.

"We are to teach the whole counsel of God; and if the principles of this tract be adopted, our services must be reconstructed—our congregations classed like large schools, according to their knowledge, talents, power of expression, and general proficiency. Pride of intellect would succeed to holiness of heart. The submission of reason to revelation, in which so large a portion of our moral probation consists, would be ruined by the subtilties of a disputatious philosophy. The clergy would be invested with an authority which the world, I trust, could not again bear; and the worst evils from which the intellect and the soul have escaped in this christian England, would be imposed upon the church and people. I have thus as briefly as possible submitted to you, my christian brethren, the evil which I deeply regret to see begin to prevail in the church, the perversion by learning, of the simplicity of christian teaching. I would not have ventured thus to address you, if I had not believed it to be my bounden duty to yourselves and to the church-to God and his glory -- to my blessed Saviour and the cause of his Holy Gospel. The plague has begun. In

spite of the loathing of these doctrines, on the part of so many of the most attached and zealous of our laity, our brethren at Oxford are continuing to revive the obsolete - to recommend the foundations of the old and unendurable pretensions on which all the power of Rome was founded, and to render therefore the Reformation, which is nothing but the re-establishment amongst us of spiritual and scriptural Christianity, a bye word and a reproach. ... I charge you, as you value the salvation of the people-the spirit of the ordinances of the church- the happiness of your own souls-peace of conscience, and the faithful discharge of your solemn sworn duties, to preach the doctrine of the atonement, without reserve, on all occasions, explicitly and prominently, as the foundation of all your hopes of usefulness. I charge you in the name of Christ, and as the last tones of the dying jurisdiction which enables me to address you to shun these novelties, to despise such teaching, to abhor such perversions of learning as these of which I have now spoken." -p. 41.

In the Appendix to the Charge, these pointed observations occur. "I shall only add-the Oriel School of Theology must be rendered uninfluential. If it is not, the incipient schism in the church will increase, till those unhappy days again return, when while some good men would lay their heads on the scaffold, not only for the church as it is, but for the changes they propose in its services; others would be driven to Popery, because of its discipline and repose; and others to Puritanism, because of its pretensions to superior spirituality and liberty. We shall do well, I again say, with the Reformers of past times, and with the best friends of the church in the present times, to take as our watchword-THE CHURCH AS IT IS."- pp. 58, 59.

Mr. Townsend quotes also, with approbation, the following reference to the wretched fallacies of the Tracts for the Times, from a Visitation Charge, printed anonymously, which is not, we believe, the usual practice.

"Nevertheless it has been said of late by good, and conscientious, and able men, that this truth is to be cautiously and sparingly brought forward; and because God is a God that hideth himself, manifesting his glory to whom and when he will, that we are at liberty, acting upon this warrant, to keep back or to communicate the lights of his revelation. It is an awful and dangerous delusion. Daring must that man be, presumptuous in the extreme, who would venture, in the blindness and ignorance of human policy and prudence, to hide from the people the splendour of the cross. And then again, as if the Scriptures were insufficient for our guidance, we are sent to the writings and traditions of the early Fathers, under colour indeed of seeking comment and information, but in a tone and spirit which gives to those uncertain and questionable records, the stamp and character not of evidence, but of authority. Beware, my reverend brethren, of such novelties. Ask of the Scriptures whether these things be so; and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage."-pp. 57, 58.

Enough, it is hoped, has been advanced already, to convince our readers that the opposition we have urged against the pretensions set forth in the Tracts for the Times, is not factious or splenetic, but founded upon a full and deliberate conviction that the principles themselves, and the system of priestly ascendancy, which they are designed to advocate, are fatal and destructive delusions. Were we actuated, as we are sometimes supposed to be, by a spirit of mere sectarian and partizan hostility against the establishment, we might exult in witnessing this outbreak of error among the clergy, as one proof among many that the love of her sons for the doctrines of the Reformation was more apparent than real; and even compliment our own prophetic sagacity at having anticipated that the popery lurking in

her system would not fail, like a slow poison, sooner or later, to be fully developed. We might reiterate the often alleged fact, that her boasted creeds, her Liturgy, her Articles, her "divine episcopate," and her "holy succession," as the Tractists are pleased to call it, no more avail to keep out the worst forms of error from her pulpits, than a bulwark of straw or rushes could obstruct the flowing of the tide. We might triumph in the assurance that so many of her members are infected with these pestilential dogmas, and echo Dr. Pusey's boast respecting "the almost electric rapidity with which these principles are confessedly passing from one breast to another, from one end of England to another," as certain presages, not to be mistaken, that the sun of her prosperity had long since touched its meridian, and that the period of her decline was at hand.

it

" from a

But it is not in this spirit that these remarks have been penned. We cannot take pleasure in seeing the doctrines of Christ obscured or perverted in any communion; and even while openly denouncing this incipient heresy, as the fearless antagonists of error, wherever it meets us, we nevertheless lament to see the Church of England so divided upon essential points, that reverend divines of her own body should find Recessary to put forth visitation charges, addressed to the sons of the apostolical succession, warning them against withholding from the people the truth as it is in Jesus, and actually enforcing upon them the duty of preaching the doctrine of the atonement, in order to guard against insidious recommendations to the contrary, most influential quarter."* This is an ominous state of things, and we may be permitted to join our sincere regrets, with those of many within her pale, who yet hold by the faith of the reformers, and mourn in secret over the artful introduction of a scheme of teaching, which, if carried out, would systematically obliterate the glories of the cross, and permit the wonderful transactions of Calvary for human redemption to be preached or held back, to be partially exhibited or entirely veiled, according to the fancy or caprice of any recreant subscriber to articles and liturgies he disbelieves, in a professedly Protestant church! That we are not alone in this view of the bearing of the Tract in question, is evident from the language of the Quarterly Reviewer, who, while he selects it for more special commendation, guardedly admits that it may "seem to border on a recommendation of a suppression of the truth;"+ and that truth, be it remembered, is the doctrine of the atonement. Mr. Townsend might well exclaim, THE PLAGUE IS BEGUN ! but when and where it is likely to end, in the present temper of the times, neither he, nor any of his brethren, we suspect, can possibly divine.

Here, however, an important question arises. How can individuals who do not adopt the semi-papistical notions which are said to be the principles of the Church of England, and who revolt from its exclusive claims, connect themselves with the establishment? Or how can those, who having entered it with moderate and evangelical views, continue in it, when they find it differ in such important particulars from the sentiments in which they may have been trained? At this point Mr.

* See Townsend's Charge, p. 13.

+ Quarterly Review, Oxford Theology, cxxvi. March, 1839, p. 531.

Binney takes up the question, and without stopping to decide which party is right in the debate, applies himself, with all his peculiar power of searching analysis, to the inquiry, what there is in the known formularies of the church, which may be likely to prevent a truly religious and conscientious man from enrolling himself among her ministers. This introduces the next work on our list, entitled,

III. CONSCIENTIOUS CLERICAL NONCONFORMITY, BY

THOMAS BINNEY.

THE REV.

This discourse was preached April 15th, 1839, on occasion of the re-opening of a chapel at Pentonville, for the use of Ridley Herschell, a converted Jew, who having renounced Judaism was admitted into the christian church by the rite of baptism, which he received accor ding to the forms of the episcopal branch of it. His first friends in England, being all ministers or members of the establishment, it might have been expected that he would have taken orders in the national church, a step to which he was not without inducements. Much lay on the side of conformity; much to attract, if not to tempt him. "One thing, however, in his case," said the preacher," was not therea good conscience; and for the sake of that he dissented, and is here." This gives Mr. Binney an opportunity of discussing the difficulties which lie in the way of men truly conscientious, who might be willing to conform but cannot, on account of the peculiar constitution of the church as by law established; a task which he has accomplished with signal ability and success, and in a manner worthy of the very high reputation he deservedly enjoys.

An apology may perhaps be due to our readers, that we had not noticed this production before, an omission which certainly did not arise from any thing like indifference to the subject of the discourse, nor to the acknowledged genius of its author, but solely from the pressure of other claims upon our immediate attention. Other journalists, whose space is more ample than ours, from whatever cause, appear to have been strangely remiss; but in spite of the almost total silence of the periodical press, the sermon has won its own unaided way, and two large impressions have been sold, the copy before us being the third edition, and we have reason to know that a fourth is in contemplation; a proof it seems that as our verdict cannot always give fame, so neither can our silence retard it. Oxford says that the multitude cannot teach or guide themselves, and that an injunction given them to depend on their private judgement is both cruel in itself and doubly hurtful. But the experience of years has taught us that the public have generally a keen eye to their own intellectual wants, and a tolerably quick perception of the most available source of supply, without waiting the slow dictation of any tribunal, however infallible, or even that of our own, And now that the case has been remanded for the decision of the judges, we feel that nothing remains, after a careful scrutiny, but to confirm the verdict which public opinion has already pronounced upon this celebrated discourse; nor can we doubt that it will be permanently reverted to as one of the most remarkable

* Advertisement to Tracts, Vol. i. p. 6.

2

ཟ

productions which the controversy has occasioned. No collection of works, bearing on the general question, would be complete without this discourse, but it has a unique value from its own intrinsic excellence quite distinct from that circumstance.

The course pursued by Mr. Binney is at once novel, ingenious, and convincing. He first proposes to show what there is to tempt a man to enter the church, supposing he had no insuperable objection to an establishment and next, what there is to preclude a man of evangelical views and strict religious feelings, from becoming one of its ministers.

Under the first, he draws a portraiture of the attractions possessed by the state church, which might induce a youthful scion of the aristocracy, or some well-disposed individual from the humbler ranks of the community, to wish to serve at its altars; and he certainly gives a tempting exhibition of the forbidden fruit. He supposes it likely to attract him from its comparative antiquity, its accordance with his early feelings, and his natural attachment to the institutions of his country. He specifies in his glowing and graphic, yet "idiomatic English," for which even the British Critic honours him, the long array of its secular advantages; the degree of public respect, as well as political and moral influence it secures, simply because it is established, by means of which he might hope to rise to eminence in his profession, and perhaps to attain for himself, and bequeath to his children, a place and status in society among the privileged classes. He farther supposes this pious aspirant after earthly dignities in a religious guise, who takes the church as the nearest stepping-stone to the world, to look down from some high cathedral tower, and, surveying its vast and valuable domain, to exult in the thought of the benefits which conformity would secure. from being indifferent to the architecture and accidents of the sacred edifices themselves, their arches and pillars, their religious light and grave aspect, their melody and their choral anthems, he is so feelingly alive to them "as almost to imagine, that to divest religion and reli gious worship of such accessories, would be like stripping nature of her robes and coronet, of the colours of earth and the stars of heaven."*

Far

In a note, Mr. Binney says, "I have an indistinct recollection of having seen something like a thought of the enquirer on the summit of a cathedral, from the pen of Mr. Prebendary Townsend."-We believe it occurred in a speech delivered at a public meeting of the clergy, and was considered, at the time, one of Mr. Townsend's most successful appeals to the feelings of his auditors. We beg to remind Mr. Binney, that the following passage, from Bishop Hacket's Defence of Cathedral and Collegiate Institutions, addressed to the Speaker of the House of Commons in Cromwell's time,-in which he describes the church as a fortune for younger brothers,-would sufficiently corroborate the statement. "But put into the scale with these cities [in which cathedrals stand] that respect which is to be had to the young branches of the whole kingdom, and the weight will be very ponderous. All men are not born elder brothers, and all elder brothers are not born to be inheritors of land. Divers of low degree have generous spirits in them, and would be glad to make themselves a fortune, as the phrase is. What hopes have they to achieve this in a more ready way than to propose unto themselves to lead a virtuous and industrious life, that they