the hollowness, the falsehood, of retaining certain doctrines in the letter, which were denied in the spirit-and this for the purpose of conciliating the people he drew the key-stone from the arch, which I had taken for granted was unassailable, and to stand for ever."

"The sister lands have each a humour of their own, and proved it in nothing more than in their mode of protesting against the Roman Hierarchy," observed Mr. Everard.

"But it has always struck me," said Geraldine, "as out of keeping with the usually calm and cautious Scotch, to dash everything to the ground at I should have expected this impetuosity more from the English mob."

once.

"And from the mob' in England you would have found it," replied Mr. Everard, "had they originated the Reformation. But here was the difference between the two countries. In England, the people received their faith from their rulers and pastors, and the change was comparatively temperate and gradual

"And attempered by a pleasing variety," interrupted Katherine, laughing, "as these rulers and pastors, under succeeding sovereigns, changed their faith four times. Few of them, comparatively speaking, choosing to leave their benefices, instead of their opinions. Worthy brethren of the Vicar of Bray !"

6

"Miss Graham," said the Warden, at length roused to lay down his book, " these light assertions are not borne out by historical evidence. The Church of England has had, it is true, to mourn over faithless sons; but, when more instructed on the subject, you will find that, even in the trying circumstance of hereditary popish succession, her confessors and martyrs were not few!"

"I am sufficiently instructed," replied Katherine,

VOL. I.-14

"to know that, even during the reign of odious Mary, the number of the persecuted, including clergy and people of the Church of England, did not exceed seven hundred, while of the nonconformists to that Church, two thousand clergymen in one day preferred ruin and exile to the adoption of all the ceremonies forced anew on them: and of the laity who suffered then and since for nonconformity to the Liturgy of England, no calculation could be made: those who chose exile, left the half popish, half Protestant, and wholly savage, tyranny of the English Star Chamber, for the freedom of America, and carried their pure faith to a new world.

Aye, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod,

They have left unstained what there they found,-
Freedom to worship God!'"

"Very_pretty_lines," and very well repeated," said Mr. Everard; "but an account of the modern Churches in America would damp your enthusiasm respecting unstained freedom,' and the present 'holiness of the soil!'"

66

Well, my dear," said the old gentleman, turning to Geraldine, who, during the latter part of this discussion, had laid aside her book, "how far have you proceeded, and what are your impressions on reading Joseph Milner a second time?"

"I have read to the end of the third century," replied Geraldine, " and I am confirmed in the impression which I had received from my uncle, that this work, pious and interesting though it be, is very imperfect as a history, inasmuch as it contains so many more sentiments than facts. Here is a passage which nearly induced me to lay down the book, as one quite unsuited to me, in my search after records of the past:- What I cannot believe,

I shall not take the trouble to transcribe; what I can, where the matter appears worthy of memory, shall be exhibited.' Here, then, you see, is not given to me the whole harvest field in which to glean; but Milner has already gleaned for me; nor is this all. I am again displeased with him for his strange inconsistency, when dwelling on 'Regeneration, or the new birth' in baptism, the belief in which he calls 'poison itself' and then wishes (page 431) that Christian people had never been vexed with a controversy so frivolous as this about baptism; as if a controversy could be frivolous, which related to poisonous doctrines! Then again, in another part, he declares that he fully believes, that this regenerating work of the Spirit did accompany the Sacrament of Baptism in the early ages. After all this confusion and contradiction, I cannot but think very moderately of Joseph Milner, either as a theologian or historian." Geraldine here turned again to the book in question, and read for some time in silence, till at length she exclaimed, "Oh! uncle! oh! Mr. Everard, listen to this,Milner actually asserts that the apostles themselves, had it not been for St. Paul, would have declined from the right faith,' and this after the descent of the Holy Ghost! Does Milner then pretend to be wiser than the Holy Spirit! What blasphemy!and how am I to trust to the accounts he will soon give me of the apostacy of the Church, when he can venture thus far to broach impossibilities. I shall read no more:"-and closing her book, she pushed it from her with indignation, not to be mollified by Mr. Everard's smiling excuses for one necessarily warped by party prejudice, and bewildered by having sworn fealty to a Church, which was not sufficiently Calvinistic for his principles.

6

"Then," replied she, "warped' and 'bewildered' men should not venture to write history!"

"If you succeed in finding a perfectly unbiassed and dispassionate historian," said Mr. Everard, "you will indeed possess a prize. The only way to act, in the mean time, is to persevere in your determination to lay up a store of facts, from historians of opposite parties in politics or creed, and then to form your own conclusions. Go on with Milner's account, and then try Mosheim; and you will do well to take notes of each, and compare the two records, on the point you have most at heart, namely, the affinity of the Church of England with that of the early Church Catholic, or Universal."

CHAPTER XIII.

She cries aloud for aid

To Church and councils, whom she first betrayed.

DRYDEN.

DURING the next few weeks, Geraldine was accordingly busied in the perusal of the Church histories, recommended to her: and, dissatisfied as she had been with the first volume of Milner, she nevertheless went steadily through the whole work, particularly noting the belief and practice of the Christians, during the ages acknowledged to be pure by the Church of England, of which the Rev. Joseph Milner was an ordained minister. "Well might Mr. Everard warn me not to expect to find just the doctrines of the Thirty-nine Articles, and nothing more, in the early centuries," cried she, as she closed the last volume of the work, and turned to the notes, which she had previously made, of the instructions of the learned Warden, her retentive memory having enabled her to recal and fix his very words..."The Church of England refers her sons to a standard of interpretation, collected from the authority of ages. The appeal is made to a pure and holy time in the Universal Christian Church, against this brawling self sufficient age ;" and then followed, in reply to some inquiry," She (the Church of England) receives all the primitive creeds, and the first four General Councils, and submits to the common assent of the Fathers, during the first five centuries of the Catholic Church."