desired it. Dr. Wordsworth might have known this: we really are almost compelled to believe that he has deliberately misunderstood the place he quotes, which is this: "It is the rule or custom of Christ's body, the Church, that we communicate under one kind; his [Satan] under both. It is the rule or custom of Christ's body, the Church, that we communicate under both kinds; his, either under one or neither." Who but Dr. Wordsworth could have failed to see that the Cardinal is putting two conditions before us, with neither of which Satan would have been satisfied? The object of heretics being, not communion in both kinds, but the destruction of the Church; for how can we ever believe that they were sincere in desiring the cup, when they were destroying the priesthood by which alone the Sacrament could be had?

In pp. 147, 148, we have this: "Pope Gelasius condemned the practice of half-communion as sacrilegious. For this assertion he quotes Gratian, de cons. ii. 12. Comperimus. We find it impossible to explain upon what principle Dr. Wordsworth reads books. The title of the canon he quotes, and the gloss upon it, forbid us to read it as he has done. The canon forbids the priest to abstain from receiving the cup, and that abstinence it calls a great sacrilege." It is the celebrant the canon condemns, not the lay-communicant; and the rule of the Church is no more condemned by it than it is by the statute of mortmain or the reform-bill.

Page 281, in a note, Dr. Wordsworth says, " One of the decrees of the Council of Constance is, that 'faith is not to be kept with heretics to the prejudice of the Church. (Sess. 19.)" To this we give a flat denial, and defy any one, except the Canon of Westminster, to explain that decree to mean anything but that faith must be kept with heretics and all others to whom it is given.

Page 314. "No Romanist archbishop can consecrate a church, or confirm a child, without receiving the Pallium from Rome. This assertion Dr. Wordsworth supports by a quotation from the Pontifical, and the words which he considers equivalent to "confirm a child" are chrisma conficere, which mean, not confirmation, but the blessing of the oils on Maundy Thursday. Such is the learning of a man who writes a book of more than 300 pages on the destructive character of the Church of Rome!

We conclude our ungrateful labours with a historical inaccuracy of our scholar, which may be found in p. 285, where he says, "that the Pope not only indirectly deprived Louis XVIII. of his crown, but that he placed it with his own hands on the head of Napoleon. It is very well

known that Buonaparte saved the pope this trouble; for, says M Thiers, he "saisit la couronne des mains du Pontife, sans brusquerie, mais avec décision, et la plaça lui-même sur sa tête." (Hist. du Consulat. liv. 20. tom. v. p. 266. Paris, 1845.)

In his first edition of these Letters he gave extracts from a document purporting to be a confession of faith propounded to converts in Hungary. In the second he gives the whole document. Dr. Wordsworth considers it genuine, or he does not; that is all we shall say on this point. He describes it in these words: "The following document is a public and an authoritative one; it has even taken its place among the 'Symbolical Books' of the Church of Rome, and I cite it from one of the most recent editions of the dogmatical collections of that Church." (p. 68.) He then gives his extracts, which are in themselves evidence enough of the forgery, one of them being this, "that they who communicate in both kinds receive nothing but bare bread, " which is simply an absurdity. Dr. Wordsworth says that this confession has authority, and "has even taken its place among the Symbolical Books of the Church of Rome." The Church of Rome has no "Symbolical Books." That is a Lutheran possession; and if a Protestant chooses to print our canons and catechism, and call them Symbolical Books, we have no help for it: if people will force principles upon us which we abhor, we must submit. In the advertisement to the second edition of his book Dr. Wordsworth tells us, that these Symbolical Books were "edited by two learned members of that Church, Streitwolf and Klener." Whether Streitwolf was a Catholic, or not, matters little; he had nothing to do with editing this confession. Klener calls him "a minister of the Word." He died in 1836. Klener published what Streitwolf had collected, and added to them the whole of the second volume, where this confession is found; and there is no evidence that Streitwolf ever saw it, or knew of its existence. Klener's religion is not very clear; he seems upon the whole to belong to Bunsen's "Church of the Future," to which, or some

thing like it, he dedicates his book, published two years after Streitwolf's death. But what makes the whole affair ridiculous is this, that this confession was drawn up, it is said, by the Jesuits. It seems to be the satirical composition of a Protestant, or of a Catholic representing the Protestant's apprehensions of the Catholic religion: at all events it represents Dr. Wordsworth's.*

Page 147. "It is the practice of the Church of Rome to celebrate the festival of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, and therefore original sin is no longer, in her case at least, an article of faith, but the contrary." Now, what can such a sentence as this mean? does our belief in the immaculate conception of the Virgin-Mother interfere with the doctrine of original sin? If it does not—and who will say that it does?-such writing as this can have no other issue but the stirring up of the spirit of reviling and blasphemy. It might as well be said, that our belief in the removal of Enoch denies the fact that we must all die. It is almost despairing to see such a work as this arrive at a second edition, and to hear of its being recommended by estimable and amiable people. Surely, if the Anglican communion be in the right, it has no reason for calumniating. If it must be defended, why should it have recourse to untrue accusations against its enemies? If the Catholic Church be a lie, let those who think so abstain from lies themselves. We ask for justice and truth; our books are open, our churches too, let people see and judge whether we are so wicked and abandoned of all grace as our enemies represent us to be. Let them act upon their own principle of judging for themselves, and not listen to

* As an illustration of the learned Canon's temper, we give an extract from this Confession in his own version: "We confess that the most holy Pontiff ought to be honoured by all with divine honour (honorari divino honore), with more prostration than what is due to Christ Himself." We should have thought it much safer to translate it thus: "with the greater genuflection, due to Christ Himself-majori cum genuflectione, ipsi Christo debita. The Doctor's own version is doubtless more fitted for his purpose, though in disregard of grammatical laws. Did he leave out the 17th clause because it was overlooked? It is this: "We confess that the Blessed Virgin Mary is worthy of greater honour from angels and men than Christ Himself, the Son of God;" or would the insertion of this clause make the forgery too transparent even in Exeter Hall?

pompous and pedantic writers, who through wickedness or weakness will not understand what we say. Dr. Wordsworth demands our pity and our prayers: he labours in a miserable work, and in these letters has committed more blunders than we have exposed. He believes the Pope to be Antichrist (pp. 242, 300), and, consequently, the Catholic Church to be the body of Satan; and yet dare not be consistent enough to call on M. Gondon or any other foreigner to leave the communion, which, on his principles, must carry all its members to everlasting ruin. Anglican divines have opinions, and propound theories, but they have no grasp of truth: they shrink from their own conclusions as soon as they have uttered the premises, and make strong assertions, but they do not, cannot believe what they say.

ART. IX." The Nation's Guide to Scripture;" a Sermon preached at Chippenham, July 13, 1846, at the Visitation of the Venerable Thomas Thorp, B. D., Archdeacon of Bristol. By the REV. JOHN EDWARD JACKSON, M. A., of Brasenose College, Oxford; Rector of LeighDelamere, Wiltshire. London, Rivington, 1846.

Hatever attempts may have been made by Anglicans to raise up a theory in defence of the authority of their own Church, it is certain that the majority of them regard Scripture as the sole rule of faith, and resent the introduction of any other authority as an insult to the dignity of that rule. Still, a sermon like that prefixed to this article, does moot the question of some standing guide to the Scripture, a question the importance of which some of those to whom it was delivered must feel to be very vital, though all mention of the Catholic Church as that guide be avoided, and in its place is substituted a name more grateful to ears that hate the Pope, to wit, that of "the Established Ministry of the Church." The reason of this substitution is, that the Church, which is the living promulgatrix of the books, and the books themselves, are assumed to be testimonies adverse the one to the other: hence as the Scriptures were to be retained, the only definite 'guide' to them was rejected. The assumption of

such contrariety between the two, obviously rendered this rejection necessary; and a most unsettled state of belief amongst Anglicans has thus been the natural consequence of that assumption.

The fact is, that men inadequately acquainted with theology and the depths of Scripture language, are yet very unwilling to submit to any suspense of judgment. A habit of hasty judgment springs up in the place of this patient suspense: hence when abstruse positions, such as theology inevitably contains, are presented to the mind, if it fails to see clear Scripture warrant for them, it pronounces them untenable, and uses them as reasons against paying reverence to the authority of the Church. There is nothing left in a mind of this sort to secure the Church a hearing and it therfore takes refuge in Scripture as a rule of faith, perfectly assured that there it will find in all doubtful cases a shelter for any variety of opinion which may please its own capricious judgment.

The Church, on the other hand, speaks definitively upon controverted points, and when she has spoken she is standing close by, as being a living body, to see that her sentence is neither evaded nor misunderstood. A book like the Scripture, written so long ago, by authors so differently educated, and upon subjects so diversified, cannot but be open to mistakes and to sophistry of almost infinite variety. When the authors themselves, the apostles and evangelists, are no longer alive to defend themselves against such contrivances, what then hinders a man, who has once thrown off his respect for those who inherited their authority, from making whatever use of their writings he pleases? which are thus found, from the diversity of their matter and their unprotectedness, to be a very welcome refuge for false teachers and unbelievers against the stringent control of the Church's direct reproof, as Mr. Jackson tells his congregation in the following sentence (p. 10) of his Sermon:

"The ulterior object of the more designing part is; that under shelter, and by the aid, of this plausibly-sounding principle, they may by and by persuade the people of this country to discard that particular spiritual authority and teaching, which, apostolically derived, the legislature acknowledges and upholds in short, to get rid of the Established Ministry of the Church."

How serviceable for them it is made to be, we see from