reading or interpretation of the Scriptures-no creeds-no articles -above all, no sacraments: ergo, there is no dependence of man upon man in the things of God. This is the Christian, this the primitive model !

"In the whole matter of Christian ministry (observes Mr. G.) as its author, conductor, inspirer, and theme, and above all as He who teaches us immediately by his Spirit-our Lord Jesus Christ is, and ever will be, our ALL in ALL. Could we but renounce our dependence on the systems, forms, and contrivances of men, and put the fulness of our trust in His wisdom, love and power, there is every reason to believe that his truth would spread with wondrous energy and mightily would that blessed day be hastened when the kingdoms of this world' shall become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ.'"'

What this means, in Mr. Gurney's mouth, our readers need not be told, but we believe we do not wrong Mr. G. when we say that, pushed to its legitimate conclusion, the sum of his treatise is this "Renounce your visible forms, your human inventions, your Episcopacy, your orders, your prayers, your sacraments-renounce all these, and cast yourselves simply upon the Spirit: in other words, adopt the "peculiarities" of the Friends, and then all will be well; but so long as you adhere to your human inventions, you are all, though in different degrees, substituting human wisdom and authority, for pure divine truth. You are all abetting a system which places man under the rule of man in matters of religionand whether Papist, Puseyite, Episcopalian, Wesleyan, Independent, or what not, it is but a question of degree-Antichrist is among you. "Between the fulness of the authority of man, and the fulness of the authority of God, in matters of religion-there is, as I believe, no permanent resting-place." Such, we repeat, is the sum of Mr. G.'s argument. To a great extent, with the exception of the chapter on Antichrist, his "Puseyism traced to its Root," is but a re-edition of his "Peculiarities," and this we must say is not fair dealing, or likely we think, to be very successful, for

purpose designed in our present stage of warfare. Let us give a single connected extract from the chapter "on the Christian Ministry," to show how little careful Mr. Gurney is to single out Puseyism as the counterpart of Popery, and with how little discri

1 We ought perhaps to have specified the_chapter" On Justification and Sanctification," in which we have much that is truly admirable, but we would beg Mr. G. seriously to reconsider the following statement-"On this subject we are competent to say, that as sinners we are justified (i. e. we receive the pardon of our sins) by faith in Christ without the deeds of the law: and that as believers we are justified by good works."-p. 97. We present the passage in this detached form, for reasons which will at once suggest themselves to so acute a mind as Mr. G.'s. We are happy to believe that these words do not express Mr. G.'s real view, when fully brought out; but that he builds simply and entirely for himself (though with some confusion of thought) on the one foundation, Christ Jesus-the Lord our Righteousness. We regret that we cannot quote his satisfactory summing up from pp. 99, 100. The passage is a very beautiful and touching one.

mination he writes, in blending together the Papal, and what he means to designate as the (Protestant) Hierarchical System. Puseyism, let us again remind our readers, is never once singled out for an example-but " the Protestant Clergy" comprehensively, "of various grades and denominations," are "the type," as a sort of mixta persona "of the Romish priesthood."

"We have already," he says, "found occasion to observe, that Rome spiritual lays claim to the continuance, under her auspices, of the sacerdotal system. No sooner have the ministers of religion, within her borders, received full ordination at the hands of the bishop, then they become priests, in the sense not of presbyters only, but of mediators and sacrificers.... But there are other parts of the system of ministry, adopted by Rome spiritual, which are maintained, and that with no small measure of zeal and determination, by Protestants themselves.

"The Romanists in the whole matter of ministry, depend on what they call apostolical succession: and the means which they adopt in order to secure this succession, is episcopal ordination:-i. e. an appointment to the ministerial office by the laying on of the hands of the bishop. Thus, from generation to generation, there is provided a supply of persons who shall be devoted to the service of the temple, and who are regarded as a perfectly distinct class -constituting the Church itself, or at any rate, its essential life-its living, acting, and governing head or soul. A large proportion of the links of this sacred chain, and especially the earlier links, are merely imagined or supposed. History makes no mention of them: and some of them, in all probability, have been entirely wanting; but the Church decrees that the succession has been unbroken, and her ipsa dixit is sufficient for her purpose.

"On the other hand, history does afford the most explicit evidence that many of these links have been composed of extremely base metal-that many of the Pope's prelates who have been the means of continuing this succession, as well as multitudes of the inferior clergy themselves-have been men of notoriously corrupt and vicious lives. Nevertheless, ecclesiastical romance takes it for granted, that, through this vitiated channel, the pure stream of the Holy Spirit has quietly flowed on from age to age, as the true course of the clerical office. The Romish Church boldly assumes for herself the continuance of the well-known apostolic miracle, and openly pretends that by the laying on of the hands of the bishop, the Holy Ghost, as the ever-flowing fountain of ministry, is bestowed on every approved candidate for sacred orders. Here we have, first, a recognition of the promise of the Spirit: secondly, a restriction of that promise, so far as gifts are concerned, to the clerical class and thirdly, a practical mockery of sacred things, in the notorious fact, that no such miraculous communication of spiritual gifts is believed in, or really thought of, either by the supposed giver, or the supposed receiver the ordainer or the ordained.

"It is certainly a remarkable circumstance, that these gross and dangerous superstitions did not perish under the axe of the Reformers, and that they are still maintained by the Protestant episcopal churches-at any rate by the most respectable and powerful of those bodies-the Church of England. Like Rome herself, that church pleads the apostolic succession as the authority for her ministry: and she does not hesitate to confess that this succession is derived to her through the medium of that corrupt parent, from whom she separated herself. Like Rome also, the Church of England professes to convey to her ministers from generation to generation, by the laying on of episcopal hands, the gift of the Holy Ghost.... It ought to be observed, in thus making mention of the Holy Ghost, as the true qualifier for the ministry, the bishops of the churches of Rome and England profess a sound and Scriptural principle: yet they are evidently liable to the charge of irreverence,

in pretending to the exercise of a miraculous power, of which they know themselves to be destitute. The ceremony of the laying on of hands is also practised by the generality of other Christian sects: but they lay no claim to the apostolic faculty of bestowing spiritual gifts. Among the Independents, Baptists, and others, the ministers of the respective congregations are chosen by the churches, and ordained by their elder brethren in the work. Among the Wesleyan Methodists they are both chosen and ordained by the already existing body of ministers-the clergy of that denomination-who hold in their own hands the power of discipline, together with the trusteeship of all the property belonging to the society. Thus it appears that not only the Romish Church, but almost all the churches and sects which have been formed since the Reformation, have given their countenance to the setting apart, by human authority, of a particular class of men out of the whole community of Christian believers, on whom alone are to devolve the various functions of the Christian ministry. They are separated from their brethren as much as the Levites were in days of old; they are ordained to be preachers by their fellowmen, and by them are appointed to the care of particular congregations: and wholly abstaining as they do from the pursuit of any worldly calling for their own support, they are maintained either by compulsory ecclesiastical provisions, under the law of the land; or at the voluntary expense of the brethren who provide them with salaries. For the most part they are distinguished by a particular dress, and often by robes of office when they are publicly engaged and under a variety of titles, from the Right Rev. Father in God, down to the simple Reverend, they are, with little exception, even among the dissenters, called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. A calm consideration of the subject may serve to convince every reflecting mind, that the Protestant clergy of various grades and denominations, are a modified type, and yet a typeof the Romish priesthood. While the generality of them do not profess to be priests in the sense of lepêis, or sacerdotes, they nevertheless assume, in various degrees, (the degrees varying with the character of the denomination) an authority over the flock, a mediatorship between God and his people, an exclusive handling of sacred things, and a claim on the temporal support of their brethren, which are all more or less connected with the notion of an Aaronic succession, and all form integral parts of the Papal and hierarchical system." (p. 55-57.) 1, g

6

Such is the basis, and such the argument of Mr. G.'s treatise. We know not how it may strike others, but it certainly does strike us as very dangerous trifling-or, what is still worse, a grievous offence against the generation of God's children-thus to confound things which differ; and, while professing to trace a pestiferous heresy to its root, to pass it over without a single specific notice, and blend in one common mass the faithful Protestant witnesses of various communions as a type of the Romish priesthood,' and as retaining among them the integral parts of the papal and hierarchical system.' We are not unmindful of the many kind and charitable things Mr. G. has said of the individuals who have constituted in past days, or who are now constituting, this great clerical fabric,' Roman Catholics included,' and even those who disclaim all sectarian distinctions' not excluded-but excess of charity is often allied to great infirmity of judgment, and may involve a man in as serious error on the right hand as on the left. Thus speaking of the heathen, Mr. G. has the following passage

"Nor can it be reasonably doubted that even among the nations which have no direct knowledge of revealed religion, there have been many persons in different ages of the world who have believed in God, according to the measure of the light of the Holy Spirit immediately bestowed upon them, as a guide and rectifier to their consciences. These also, as we may fully believe, have been justified by faith, through the Mediation and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ."-(p. 96.)

15.

This opinion Mr. G. grounds on Acts x. 25, and Rom. ii. 13Let us contrast with this view (if we may be pardoned the digression) the following statement from Mr. Hugh McNeile.

"Consider your warfare. It is against strong holds indeed. The heathen millions of the human race are fast held in worse than iron bondage. They are led captive by the devil at his will. Even their religions, or what they call their religions, are no exceptions to this. The things which they offer in sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God. Their attempted remedies are themselves pollution. The light that is in them, or what they esteem light, is darkness. How great, then, how hopeless is their darkness! Their moral state is a state of alienation from God-nay enmity itself against God. They are dead in trespasses and sins. Guilty, they are obnoxious to God's justice: corrupt, they are odious to God's holiness. There is, and can be, no true holiness among them. Holiness is moral conformity to God the Holy One. Without communion sustained in the spirit, no such conformity can be produced in man; and without a satisfying knowledge of his pardoning mercy, and a grateful response of love to him who first loved us, no spiritual communion can be experienced.

"The heathen have no knowledge of God's pardoning mercy. They worship imaginary tyrants-cruel blood-thirsty deities. They experience no response of grateful love: therefore they can enjoy no spiritual communion; and therefore they can imbibe no real holiness.

"Let the awful fact, thus simply proved to every spiritual mind, sink deep with its overwhelming solemnity into all our souls. There is not, among the hundreds of millions of our immortal fellow-creatures in heathen lands-there cannot be-one holy man. And how then, can there be a really happy man-a saved man? Salvation is holiness. If salvation consisted in pardon, it might be extended to those millions, through the glorious, all-sufficient atonement, though they had no present knowledge of it; but pardon, and the knowledge of pardon, are but means towards an end. The end is holiness, and from the nature of the case, holiness, which involves a conscious change, cannot be imparted without the knowledge of him who receiveth it.

"Your warfare, then, is against the strongest holds of sin unto

death, eternal death, in which Satan has entrenched himself in the minds, and wills, and hearts, and habits of our fallen fellow-men. It is a noble and glorious warfare: identified, in its great object, with the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ himself. For this purpose, saith the beloved disciple, the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.”1

We must indeed (to adopt the language of Mr. Bliss in his unanswerable Strictures on Mr. Gurney) take leave to submit to Mr. G.'s "serious consideration whether, unconsciously, it is not the effect of an understanding unsubjected to the Divine authority," that he affirms with so much confidence what in this and other instances is so manifestly opposed to the clear testimony of holy writ, while at the same time he does not hesitate to run counter to the testimony of ages as to simple questions of fact, which, for evidence rest on the same substantial basis as the essentials of our common faith. Whether indeed Mr. Gurney's views in regard to a standing ministry and the two sacraments (so called) are not subversive of the entire fabric of the Church as founded by our Lord, and by consequence too, subversive of every branch of Christian evidence, is a question which deserves the most serious consideration. But here we must leave the subject, simply quoting from

1 Anniversary Sermon before Church Missionary Society, 1845. We cannot forbear adding, though in a note, one more passage from this truly Protestant writer:

"In the good providence of God, our country is exalted into a position at once to have and to give the gospel. Protestant England possesses in herself, and Commercial England can extend throughout the world, the richest blessings which God has mercifully bestowed

on man.

"You have a freely circulated Bible in your native language: a ministry of the word of truth, and of the ordinances of the Christian Church: you have Christian principles advocated, and Christian practices exemplified: you have Christian men, living witnesses for God, faithful ambassadors for Christ, holy temples of the Spirit. These are the missionary springs, from whence, as from a fountain opened in our favoured land, streams of evangelical light and truth flow forth into all the world. These are still yours. But why say-still? Is there any fear as to their continuance? I speak as to wise men: judge ye what I say. These are Protestant blessings: and instead of saying simply and absolutely, without any note of time, England is Protestant, we are now compelled to say, England is still Protestant. Our national institutions were so deeply entrenched within scriptural principles that it requires a vast deal of breaking down to leave the country wholly unprotected: but the process of breaking down has begun, and threatens the sources of our missionary purity, the sinews of our missionary strength.

66

My Christian brethren, are we not still in a position to use means to prevent this? should not the missionary voice of Protestant England be heard pleading on behalf of millions of heathens still to be supplied, that the sacred home-springs of our missionary enterprise may not be polluted: that Romish error, destructive to the human soul, may not be nurtured among us? Oh, as you value real Christian Missions in the purity and simplicity of the Gospel; as you feel for the benighted millions of the heathen world; as you desire to be fellow-helpers in the blessed work for which Christ died: exert your lawful influence, each in your station, relative and domestic, to preserve England Pro

testant.

་

The Obligatory Nature of the Sacraments; or, Strictures on Mr. Gurney's remarks respecting Baptism and the Lord's Supper.' By the Rev. George Bliss, A.M. Perpetual Curate of Funtington, Sussex. Hatchards, London. We fear this excellent pamphlet is out of print, but could not omit this opportunity of calling attention to it.