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character of her who was highly favoured and blessed among women, by representing her as actuated by such fantastic notions as those on which she is supposed to act, without regard to either right or justice-nay, in contradiction to them (pp. 216, 502). And, still more, we might grieve over the picture, not only of our Abba Father, but of Him who loved us, and gave Himself for us-our Brother-the tender sympathies of whose human heart, we read, were moved even to tears at his brethren's sufferings. But these are points rather for our readers to meditate over than for us to enlarge upon in these pages. We will but add the eloquent and touching words of one of the deepest thinkers of the day, embodying conclusions which he drew from his experience of Italy, and the system there practically prevalent.

'The beautiful conception of the Virgin,' writes Mr. Gladstone, 'as affording the tenderness and intensity of feminine sympathies to be our medium of communication with the transcendent glory of the Son, disguises a reality of infinite danger. It is the very reverse of the method taken with children, which hides bitter but wholesome drugs under some sweet confection :'Succhi amari ingannato ei beve

E dall' inganno suo vita riceve.'

For here poison is carried to the lips under an exterior the most attractive. The practical upshot, though I cannot believe it to be, even in the extremest case, the conscious intention, of the whole is a tendency infinitely various in degree, but sometimes direct and absolute, to extrude our Saviour, in the view of the believer, from many or even all of His redeeming functions, and to leave Him only in the stern unapproachable character of a Judge. To her will, by some strange process, the effectuation of His coming is referred, as if it had been not an instrument merely, but a cause. The habitual communion with Him into whose Body we have been incorporated by Baptism, and who, through the medium of that Body, becomes the sustenance of our daily life, is made to pass through the intervention of her person. The constant application of His Blood and merits, whereby alone we can for a moment stand in the place of sons, and realize the spirit of adoption, is exhibited as dependent on her prayers, to which we are to resort for habitual aid. In short, she is practically exhibited as the Way, and He as the Truth and the Life, mainly or even alone approachable by that way. Hence it is, that common devotion seems to revert naturally to her in a thousand secondary forms, where to us it would seem that the privileges of the covenant, as well as the necessities of our condition, carry us directly to our Redeemer. As though all human sympathy were not absolute deadness in comparison with the exquisite sensibility of Him, whom in all things it behoved to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High-priest, touched with the feeling of our infirmities, in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. As though all human love were not shallowness itself in comparison with the unexplored profoundness of those yearnings of affection, which, with more power than superstition ever ascribed to magic charms, did draw down the sun of heaven from its throne, did clothe the Very and Eternal Word with the form of a servant, with the likeness of men, so that He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. As if the Maker of woman did not possess in inexhaustible abundance those treasures of tenderness from and out of whose overflow it is that He has adorned the loveliest of His works,' -Church Principles, vii. 34, 35.

John and Charles Mozley, Printers, Derby.

AN EXAMINATION

OF THE

REV. R. I. WILBERFORCE'S CHARGES AGAINST

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,

CONTAINED IN HIS

'INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLES OF

CHURCH AUTHORITY.'

AN ARTICLE REPRINTED FROM

'THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER' OF APRIL, MDCCCLV.

WITH A REPLY TO HIS SEVEN LETTERS.'

LONDON:

J. AND C. MOZLEY, PATERNOSTER ROW;

EDINBURGH: R. GRANT AND SON; DUBLIN: W. CURRY AND CO.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE

REV. R. I. WILBERFORCE'S CHARGES AGAINST

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,'

&c.

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THERE is nothing new in the present Inquiry' except its name. We doubt if there is a single fact or thought contained in its pages which has not previously appeared in one or the other of Mr. Allies' two works on the same subject. Indeed the whole book may be said to be an expansion of the Preface to Mr. Allies' See of St. Peter.' At the same time, though Mr. Wilberforce has brought forward no new facts, and has discovered no new principle to give an altered complexion to facts previously known, his present book is by no means deficient in merits of its own. It is excellently arranged. A theory is put forward, and facts are marshalled in such a way as to fit in with the theory as well as is possible. Whether this has been done fairly or unfairly, whether counterbalancing facts have been duly noticed or omitted, whether the facts which are selected have been stated with all their qualifying circumstances, or whether they have been so strung together as to lead a reader to draw a conclusion from them different from that which in themselves they would naturally suggest, are points which we propose presently to consider.

Besides the merit of arrangement, Mr. Wilberforce has also the advantage over Mr. Allies in good-temper. Mr. Allies was full of his feelings as a 'free man,' of the 'infamy,' 'degradation,'

11. An Inquiry into the Principles of Church-authority; or, Reasons for recalling my Subscription to the Royal Supremacy. By R. I. WILBERFORCE, M.Å. London: Longmans. 1854. Pp. 284.

2. Papal Supremacy tested by Antiquity. By the late Rev. JAMES MEYRICK, M.A. London: Longmans. 1855. Pp. 84.

'naked infidelity' of Anglicanism: the 'virus of the Reformation' was 'flagrant;' and the English Church was a 'hideous phantom.' Nothing of this sort is found in Mr. Wilberforce. There is one quiet hit at Dr. Wordsworth (p. 17) and another at the Queen (p. 279): otherwise personalities are avoided. Again, Mr. Allies began by showing his teeth in the first page, and by setting his reader as a Protestant' at the extremest point of opposition to himself the Catholic.' More wisely Mr. Wilberforce begins with what his reader is likely to hold with himself,- You 'believe in the Church-you believe that the Church hath "authority in controversies of faith-you believe the Episcopate 'to be the medium of Church authority-you think a Hierarchy 'useful-you don't object to acknowledging a certain kind of 'Primacy-won't you hold the Supremacy? This is more telling than Mr. Allies' fashion; not that one way or the other way ought in reason to have influence with a man of clear thought; but we know that we are all more disposed to go along with one who takes us for a part of the journey in the direction in which we are desirous of travelling, and we are less likely to mark the slight divergence of his and our path at the outset, than when it is prominently brought before us, that the spots to which they lead are thousands of miles apart.

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Setting out on this principle, Mr. Wilberforce avoids startling his reader in his first chapters. His weapon here is exaggeration. For example, it is true that the Church is not a mere congeries of individuals,' and that it does 'possess a collective character;' but to illustrate this Mr. Wilberforce uses a metaphor which will naturally lead the mind to accept the doctrine of development: By a wall is meant a certain arrangement of 'bricks, which, when united, are nothing more than bricks still, 'but a tree is not merely a congeries of ligneous particles, but 'implies the presence of a certain principle of life which com'bines them into a collective whole' (p. 2). Mr. Wilberforce's first proposition should not be established on a metaphor which does not only suggest the idea which is needed, but adds to it another idea to which Mr. Wilberforce finds it necessary to have recourse in his after pages (p. 99, &c.). Again-as specimens of the same method-in the second, third, and fourth chapters we find propositions laid down and elaborately proved, with which we heartily agree, but before Mr. Wilberforce leaves them he pushes them on into being something quite different from what they were when he started with them. For example, because we hold with Mr. Wilberforce that the Church hath authority in controversies of faith' (p. 7), and that the Church is a witness to truth, and also that in matters of conscience its authorities have a claim to attention' (p. 8), we are not herefore bound to cast aside all those other means of arriv

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