that the developments of Christianity made in the Creeds of Nicæa, and St. Athanasius, give the smallest support of precedent or analogy to such baseless and extraordinary claims as these? They identified and combined the doctrines already held, and held from the first, by the universal Church: these nullify primitive apostolically descended authorities, claim for a process of lateappearing centralization a divine sanction, and proceed to endow the local see thus elevated to a height not only unknown before, but actually denounced by a former pope as unchristian and unholy, with the sovereign and divine attribute of infallibility!

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There is absolutely no likeness whatever between the cases. Identifying and combining developments of already possessed truth, are absolutely dissimilar to aggressive ones of new

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Gregory the Great most vehemently inveighed against it, calling the name he strove for (i. e. that of universal bishop) a foolish, frivolous, proud, new, profane, pestiferous, superstitious, perverse, wicked, yea, a blasphemous name, a name which he discoursing of, breaks forth into this expression: "But I confidently affirm, that whosoever calls himself, or desires to be called, an universal priest or bishop, is in his pride the forerunner of Antichrist, because he proudly prefers himself before others; a name which, as he saith, none of his predecessors in the Bishopric of Rome would assume unto themselves nor accept of from others."-v. Bp. Beveridge on the 37th Article, where all the passages are quoted at length from S. Gregory's Epistles.

doctrine, involving usages and worship before unheard of: and the claim of Church authority, exercised by independent bishops in all the world, is entirely destructive of the subsequent claim of a developed monarchy, in which the bishop of Rome is represented as the single bishop of the Church, the king of kings, Christ on the earth.

It may be observed in conclusion, that the very peculiar and extraordinary nature of Mr. Newman's theory seems to throw a still greater shadow of mystery over the many secessions to the Roman Catholic Church which we are lamenting, than lay upon them before.

It is as inconceivable that other minds have been swayed to take the same step on the same argumentative ground, as it is that the authorities of the Roman Church should sanction and approve those argumentative grounds.

The book is an idiosyncrasy. It contains Mr. Newman's intellectual confessions; but those confessions cannot conceivably depict the state of other minds, or at least not of many besides his own. As well might you attempt to pursue the exact track of a bird through the air, or through a wood, as to find other minds to reach Rome through the same devious intellectual course which Mr. Newman has traversed. Earnestly convinced, a few years since, that the English Church held a true, independent, Catholic posi

tion, he has been distressed and shaken by the "fertility of thought," the many theories, the "more hopeful position of infidelity" in these days. He has sighed for an infallible guide; he has felt the absolute need of a living governor, from whose lips he might receive the full detailed rule of faith and practice, without doubt or question. He has been disposed to hope that the absolute necessity which he felt of such a spiritual supremacy formed a good argument to prove that it was actually given. And then a passage or phrase of M. Guizot has fallen as a spark upon this prepared state of mind and feeling, and produced this melancholy explosion. No matter if the very theory itself is unknown to the Roman controversialists. The theory itself may be applied to heal its own defects. Implicit tenets may well have been defended by implicit arguments.

But where shall there be found another mind which has known all this experience, and traversed all this course? a mind, which, having originally been attached to the low, or evangelical view of doctrine, was afterwards so lucidly and learnedly convinced of the soundness of the Anglican theory; a mind so distressed and agitated in its intellectual depths by the aggression of infidel dangers; a mind so yearning for a position of spiritual slavery, as the only intellectual dry land out of the flood of unbelief; a mind ready to take up a hint from a modern philosopher, and spin it into a bridge to

pass the chasm that separates popery from primitive Christianity; a mind so stored with learning, able to press to its purpose so vast a variety of illustrative matter, and to urge an argument with so lucid and forcible a logic; a mind capable of reading history all of a sudden with new eyes, and representing facts and statements distantly relevant to its point, in the very light which it has itself recognised and described as uncandid and untrue before?

And if this be so, then what is that other secret, unexplained cause which has led so many others—friends, colleagues, pupils, alas! many of us do most sorrowfully recognize among their number, to take this bold, this fearfully bold and dangerous step, and cut themselves off from the unity of the Church in which they were baptized and bred?

I believe it to be, in many cases, a genuine yearning after holiness; a genuine desire to be good, to be devoted, to be self-denying; not an intellectual, but a moral and devotional craving, which has led to this melancholy consequence. They have no sense of infidel pressure; they have no deep intellectual struggles which which must find a bottom in papal infallibility, or be lost in the ocean of scepticism. They were living in peace of mind, and endeavouring to make their heavenly calling and election sure, in the state of life to which God had called them, till the report

of greater helps to holiness in the Roman Communion, and the example of one man whose life had exhibited the picture of sacred devotion, led them to forsake all they knew,-the Church of their baptism, the hopes, the thoughts, the lessons, the principles of their youth, and take this desperate plunge.

Alas! for them, then, for they have been deceived; and, alas! for those, if there be any, who in the same true, but unchastened love of God and holiness, shall yet follow their steps! They have left a position in which God placed them; in which they had duties, and helps, and sacred hopes of an eternal inheritance; in which, if there were corruptions of practice around them, and imperfections in the full carrying out of the primitive institution of the Church, yet these things might have tried their simple dutifulness of heart, have tested their patience, have given them scope for being instruments of great blessing to the Church of their baptism. But they have chosen otherwise. They have fretted' themselves into impatience and undutifulness. They have plunged desperately for what they will not find. They have condemned the English Church without sufficiently deliberate trial; they have taken it for granted, without the possibility of trial,

'Fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil.Ps. xxxvii. 8.