or shortly after, it appears to have been customary in all parts of the Church. The first person who objected to such prayers was Aerius, who lived in the fourth century, but his arguments were answered by various writers, and did not produce any effect in altering the immemorial practice of praying for those that rest. Accordingly, from that time all the Liturgies in the world contained such prayers. These facts being certain, it becomes a matter of some interest and importance to ascertain the reasons which justified the omission of these Prayers in the Liturgy of the English Church for the first time in the reign of King Edward VI. Some persons will perhaps say that this sort of prayer is unscriptural; that it infers either the Romish doctrine of Purgatory, or something else which is contrary to the revealed will of God, or the nature of things. But when we reflect that the great divines of the English Church have not taken this ground, and that the Church of England herself has never formally condemned Prayers for the Dead, but only omitted them in her Liturgy, we may perhaps think that there are some other reasons to justify that omission.

"The true justification of the Church of England is to be found in her zeal for the purity of the Christian faith, and for the welfare of all her members. It is too well known that the erroneous doctrine of Purgatory had crept into the Western Church, and was held by many of the clergy and people. Prayers for the departed were represented as an absolute proof that the Church had always held the doctrine of Purgatory. The deceitfulness of this argument can only be estimated by the fact, that many persons at this day who deny the doctrine of Purgatory, assert positively that the custom of praying for the departed infers a belief in Purgatory. If persons of education are deceived by this argument, which has been a hundred times refuted, how is it possible that the uneducated classes could ever have got rid of the persuasion that their Church held the doctrine of Purgatory, if prayers for the departed had been continued in the Liturgy? Would not this custom, in fact, have rooted the error of Purgatory in their minds? If then the Church of England omitted public Prayer for the departed Saints, it was

to remove the errors and superstitions of the people, and to preserve the purity of the Christian faith....

"It was therefore relinquished, and the happy consequence was, that all the people gradually became free from the error of Purgatory. Thenceforward the Catholic doctrine prevailed in England, that the righteous after death are immediately translated to a region of peace, refreshment, and joy; while the wicked are consigned to the place of torment from whence there is no escape. And, when the doctrine of Purgatory had been extirpated, the English Church restored the Commemoration of Saints departed in the Liturgy;" [viz. at the end of the Prayer for the Church Militant;] "which had been omitted for many years, from the same cautious and pious regard to the souls of her children 1." 1 Chap. iv. § 10.

OXFORD,

The Feast of the Epiphany.

[FOURTH EDITION.]

These Tracts are continued in Numbers, and sold at the price of 2d. for each sheet, or 7s. for 50 copies.

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TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

ON THE INTRODUCTION OF RATIONALISTIC PRINCIPLES INTO RELIGION.

It is not intended in the following pages to enter into any general view of so large a subject as Rationalism, nor to attempt any philosophical account of it; but, after defining it sufficiently for the purpose in hand, to direct attention to a very peculiar and subtle form of it existing covertly in the popular religion of this day. With this view, two writers, not of our own Church, though of British origin, shall pass under review, Mr. Erskine and Mr. Jacob Abbott.

This is the first time that a discussion of (what may be called) a personal nature has appeared in these Tracts, which have been confined to the delineation and enforcement of principles and doctrines. However, in this case, while it was important to protest against certain views of the day, it was found that this could not be intelligibly done, without referring to the individuals who have inculcated them. Of these the two authors above-mentioned seemed at once the most influential and the most original; and Mr. Abbott being a foreigner, and Mr. Erskine having written. sixteen years since, there seemed a possibility of introducing their names without seriously encroaching on the province of a Review.

It will be my business first to explain what I mean by Rationalism, and then to illustrate the description given of it from the writings of the two authors in question.

VOL. III.-73.

B

§. 1. The Rationalistic and the Catholic Spirit compared

together.

To rationalize is to ask for reasons out of place; to ask improperly how we are to account for certain things, to be unwilling to believe them unless they can be accounted for, i. e. referred to something else as a cause, to some existing system as harmonizing with them or taking them up into itself. Again, since whatever is assigned as the reason for the original fact canvassed, admits in turn of a like question being raised about itself, unless it be ascertainable by the senses, and be the subject of personal experience, Rationalism is bound properly to pursue onward its course of investigation on this principle, and not to stop till it can directly or ultimately refer to self as a witness, whatever is offered to its acceptance. Thus it is characterized by two peculiarities; its love of systematizing, and its basing its system upon personal experience, on the evidence of sense. respects it stands opposed to what is commonly understood by the word Faith, or belief in Testimony; for which it deliberately substitutes System (or what is popularly called Reason,) and Sight.

In both

I have said that to act the rationalist is to be unduly set upon accounting for what is offered for our acceptance; unduly, for to seek reasons for what is told us, is natural and innocent in itself. When we are informed that this or that event has happened, we are not satisfied to take it as an isolated fact; we are inquisitive about it; we are prompted to refer it, if possi ble, to something we already know, to incorporate it into the connected family of truths or facts which we have already

received. We like to ascertain its position relatively to other things, to view it in connexion with them, to reduce it to a place in the series of what is called cause and effect. There is no harm in all this, until we insist upon receiving this satisfaction as a necessary condition of believing what is presented for our acceptance, until we set up our existing system of knowledge as a legitimate test of the credibility of testimony, until we claim to be told the mode of reconciling alleged truths to other truths already known, the how they are, and why they are; and then we rationalize.

When the rich lord in Samaria said, "Though GoD shall make windows in heaven, shall this thing be?" he rationalized, as professing his inability to discover how Elisha's prophecy was to be fulfilled, and thinking in this way to excuse his unbelief. When Naaman objected to bathe in Jordan, it was on the ground of his not seeing the means by which Jordan was to cure his leprosy above the rivers of Damascus. "How can these things be?" was the objection of Nicodemus to the doctrine of regeneration; and when the doctrine of the Holy Communion was first announced "the Jews strove among themselves," in answer to their Divine Informant, "saying, How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" When St. Thomas doubted of our LORD's resurrection, though his reason for so doing is not given, it plainly lay in the astonishing, unaccountable nature of such an event. A like desire of judging for oneself is discernible in the original fall of man. Eve did not believe the Tempter, any more than God's word, till she perceived that "the fruit was good for food."

So again, when infidels ask, how prayer can really influence the course of God's providence, or how everlasting punishment consists with God's infinite mercy, they rationalize.

The same spirit shows itself in the restlessness of others to decide how the sun was stopped at Joshua's word, how the manna was provided, and the like; forgetting what our SAVIOUR suggests to the Sadducees," the power of God."

Rationalism then in fact is a forgetfulness of God's power, disbelief of the existence of a First Cause sufficient to account for