Adam's guilt, the elect were equally involved in its consequences with the condemned. Thus the grossest injustice is imputed to God, in making all equally guilty, and yet rewarding guilt in some, and punishing it in others.-The seventh proposition is extraordinary; for if men be fore-ordained to be punished for sin, they must necessarily have been fore-ordained to commit sin; and that this should have been deemed worthy of the glorious justice of God, indicates a prodigious preponderance of feeling over intellect, in those who could propound to the world a doctrine that frees man from responsibility, and holds up God as a capricious, cruel, and senseless being! As if a glimpse of the consequences rationally arising out of their doctrine had been caught by the oppressed intelligence of the wondering and bewildered divines, whose own destructive feelings joined to an imagination that they themselves were assuredly elected, they concluded this part of their confession with the eighth and last proposition. "The doctrine of this high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence and care, that men attending the will of God revealed in His word, and yielding obedience thereunto, may, from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election. So shall this doctrine afford matter of praise, reverence, and admiration of God, and of humility, diligence, and abundant consolation to all that sincerely obey the gospel." To conclude that men by obedience may be certain of effectual vocation, after taking vast pains to declare that whether men obey or not, their destiny has been fixed from all eternity, does not make it appear that the divines were disposed to use the prudence and care which they recommended to others. Am I to believe this doctrine or not? I cannot believe anything that darkens the slightest ray proceeding from the glorious attributes of God. S. ART. IV.-ONE TRACT MORE, OR THE SYSTEM ILLUS- THIS 'One Tract More,' is attributed to Mr. Monckton Milnes, a gentleman who in some volumes of poetry, whatever may be thought of their power, has given proof of the possession of the true ethereal temperament, and of a gentle and generous spirit. Mr. Milnes is a reputed Tory and Puseyite,—a Tory, however, rather of the literary than of the political class, an æsthetic Tory, a lover of quiet, of order, of antiquity, fearful of change because it is tumultuary and rears an upstart spirit, in the insolence of its self-confidence, disdainful of the solemn and mighty Past, and a Puseyite, for much the same æsthetic reasons, because too refined for an Evangelical,-too earnest and spiritual for a Church and King man,-and too much a worshipper of the outward, too sensitive to Art and all external impressions, too enamoured of Cathedrals and the vague solemnities of Authority, for a Dissenter. Where indeed in the Establishment is there a nook of refuge for religious minds of Mr. Milnes' order except in Puseyism, and how comfortless and unconfiding must have been their repose upon her bosom, until the Catholicism of the English Church began to develop itself? The Evangelical Clergy are Churchmen only by accident; Salvation by Doctrines is the essence of their Christianity, and the external administration the merest circumstantial; and the narrowness in which all the evidences of the true spirit of Christianity in the soul are reduced by them to one spiritual experience, must revolt all philosophic and Catholic minds. The High Church party, however moral and sincerely devoted to the Ethics of Christianity, are rather a religious police than a spiritual Church. With them the Church is subordinate to the purposes of the State, and Religion is not an independent interest of the soul, the supreme affection and authority. With a merely doctrinal Church assimilating in all essentials with the Evangelical Dissenters, or with a merely ethical and political Church in which spiritual life and its developments are not the supreme concern, minds of Mr. Milnes' class can have but little sympathy. They desire earnestness, spirituality, fervour, the acknowledged supremacy of the religious affections, in combination with all artistical and imaginative influences, with a mystic ceremonial, a consecrated priesthood, a traditional authority. An intense life in the in ward affections, with external provisions for repose and security, and the absence of Doubt, are the demands of such minds. The living action of the Heart, and the voluntary stillness and inaction of the Intellect, is their desideratum in Religion;-an impossible requirement. For such minds Puseyism (we follow Mr. Milnes in our use of the word) provides but an airy and temporary habitation. The Intellect never long consents to be a sleeping partner in spiritual concerns. It will awake and disturb the Heart, demanding harmony between the affections and the powers of thought. The proper sphere for such minds is, we will not say Dissent, for that is negative, and moreover would only suggest some one of the existing forms of Dissent, but independence in Religion, freedom for individual development; the Religion, not of an external Church but of an inward soul; the authority, not of an arbitrary and undefinable era in ecclesiastical history, but of the spiritual nature quickened into the intensest sympathy with Christianity, and speaking as with the spirit of the Lord. It is unmanly and effeminate for such minds to cling to the Authority and Catholicism of the Church; not because their Intellect and higher powers are lifted to God, but because their Imagination is awed and soothed, and the lowest class of the rational faculties artistically affected. Dissent requires minds like Mr. Milnes' to bring into it, Grace, and Art, and all the æsthetic influences in which it may be deficient; and no less does Mr. Milnes, and men of his order, require the freedom and individuality of Dissent, to set the Intellect at peace with the Imagination, to baptize the whole higher being into Religion, and to feed the Heart and the Imagination by the highest powers of thought. Authority, in the sense of Infallibility, such minds do not require: it has been an accidental accompaniment of the artistical and poetic influences which have been their essential demands. It would be a noble mission for such minds, intensely religious, and at the same time intensely ideal and imaginative, to unite all the powers of the soul in the worship of God, to reconcile Grace with Truth in Christianity, and with individual liberty to associate the Heart's indispensable demands for the solemn, the tender, and the lovely. Would to God they would break through their cobweb Catholicism and manfully take it up! 9 66 Mr. Milnes declares that he has taken up the defence of the Anglo-Catholics because they are prohibited from defending themselves. Now that "the expression of the desire of a single Bishop" has arrested the series of 'Tracts for the Times,' a layman offers apologetically to public notice this One Tract more'." We do not understand, on his own principles, with what consisVOL. III. No. 14.-New Series. 2 F tency a layman, any more than a clergyman, can hold himself justified in disregarding episcopal divines. Mr. Milnes, as a good Anglo-Catholic, should have observed that submissive silence which his religious guides and superiors have not dared to break. Shall a layman intrude where Priests are forbidden to venture? Neither can we find that safety to the commonwealth which Mr. Milnes discovers in that "element of unconditional submission to ecclesiastical rule which will effectually check any extravagant excursions of individual fancy, and any illegitimate assumption of individual will." In the collisions and corrections of “individual wills," we could find the proper protections against individual fancies and individual tyranny,—but in an "unconditional submission to ecclesiastical rule," we can only see a whole nation prostrate before the fancy and the will of a few individuals,—our only security being that the Bishops still retain their individualities, and possess, upon this subject, conflicting fancies and discordant wills. The professed object of this 'One Tract more,' is to supply a fair Criticism, presupposing no opinions, and implicating no doctrines, but simply inquiring into the true meaning of Puseyism, its relation to the past, its connection with the present, and its tendencies for the future. This task, however, is executed in the spirit of an advocate, rather than of a critic. The unity of the Church of England is at once abandoned, and the three parties into which it is split graphically delineated. Mr. Milnes, with a little more of oratorical artifice than can be natural to so earnest a mind, speaks of these as the "three very distinct aspects under which the Church of England shows itself to different minds,"—as if it was precisely the same object that produced these different impressions on different minds. But does not the same mind distinctly perceive these three parties in the Church? Mr. Milnes is an individual, yet he can see, so as very vividly to describe, these conflicting aspects in the uniformity of the Church; the Evangelical, or low Church; the Church and State, or High Church; and the Puseyite, or Catholic; and to show how clear to his individuality are the lines of demarcation, we shall give his own accurate and instructive descriptions. "The Evangelical section necessarily feels a very subordinate interest in any part of Church history, which is not of a purely spiritual nature. Accustomed to study the sacred records themselves in a passive mood, and being far less anxious to realize the historical events with critical care, than to discover in each passage some secondary and suggestive meaning applicable to some known state of mind in themselves or others, the Church of the Fathers, of the Middle Ages, and even of the English Reformation, is little more to them than any other social institution. If they do turn their attention that way, it is to follow out certain doctrines, or rather the single doctrine of justification by Faith, according to the prominence or obscurity of which the Church is held to be pure or polluted. The ministerial Functions and sacramental Ordinances of the Church are hardly necessary for the completeness of this religious system, which can with consistency only receive them as designating or exciting certain internal processes: neither can the ties of church-membership be very strong where the chief sympathy is with spiritual experiences, without relation to external communion. The English Church appears in truth, to such minds, but as a happy accident, a wise dispensation of Providence, showing forth, in a visible institution, the vital truth which is in the hearts of men. Thus with them the interest of the Reformation increases, the further it separates itself from the hierarchy of Rome, until it finds in Calvinism its complete exposition: thus too the early Puritan divines share, if they do not supersede, the attention given to the writings of the fathers of the English Reformation, and their favourite reading embraces a large range of subsequent Dissent, from Nonconformity to Methodism. In this point of view, therefore, the Church of England is simply useful as a public recognition of Christian faith, as ordering and facilitating the public offices of Christianity, and perhaps as preventing some other absolutely injurious or dangerous shape of hierarchical authority from occupying its position in this country. 66 The High Church party in England has always comprised two very discrepant elements; the one secular and political, the other philosophical and religious. The theory of the former is what is usually called Erastianism the Church is there the creature of the State-a high police, established by authority and organized by law. Accepting as a fact the religious desires and wants of the Community, it is requisite that some power should exist in every well-ordered society, which should provide at once for their satisfaction and discipline. In ancient Heathenism the State was in one sense the Church, and the worship of Minerva of the Parthenon, and of Capitoline Jove, was the most solemn act of citizenship, as the hereditary assumption of the Pontificate was the principal form of the imperial usurpation over the Roman world. Christianity, however, being from its very nature the religion of baptized men of all nations, a national Christianity seemed almost a contradiction in terms, and the Church and State could only be identified under such conditions of universal empire as the Popes of the middle ages attempted to carry into effect. If there was to be a fusion of the temporal and spiritual authorities, then, the spiritual authority being Catholic, the temporal authority must be Catholic also, and kingdoms and principalities must be held by the same tenure as ecclesiastical dignities and trusts. This experiment failed: the will and wit of mankind were never directed to so mighty an object, and the struggle continued through a large tract of History with more or less purity of motive, and more or less probability of success; but the practical truth seems gradually to have worked itself out, that all union of Church and State implies the subordination of the former to the latter. The mere doctrine of the Papal supremacy had no power to prevent this consequence, although it has been the most clearly demon |