but not contented with this, he attempts further to exhibit their practical ill effects in the present, as he considers it, lamentable condition to which the existing Church of England has been reduced by them. He speaks of them, as if they had arrested the growth and repressed the expanding energies of our system, at a time when, humanly speaking, it could not possibly have attained perfection, and when no one pretends that it had done so; as having preclu

appeal to private judgment was accepted beyond their wishes by curiosity and enthusiasm. Since the days of Luther and Calvin a secret reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the Reformed Churches: many weeds of prejudice were eradicated, and the disciples of Erasmus diffused a spirit of freedom and moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed as a common benefit and inalienable right; the free governments of England and Holland introduced the practice of toleration, and the narrow allowance of the laws has been enlarged by the prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise the mind has understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows which might amuse the child, can no longer satisfy his manly reason. The volumes of controversy are overspread with cobwebs; the doctrine of the Protestant Church is far removed from the knowledge or belief of its private members, and the forms of orthodoxy are subscribed with a sigh or a smile by the modern clergy. Yet the friend: of Christianity are alarmed at the boundless impulse of enquiry and scepticism; the predictions of the Catholics are accom plished; the web of mystery is unravelled by Arminians, Arians and Socinians, whose members must not be computed from their separate congregations; and the pillars of revelation ar shaken by those men who preserve the name without the sub stance of religion, who indulge the licence without the tempe of philosophy." Chap. 54.

ded every subsequent generation of Churchmen from the exercise of rights, the necessity of which to the Church's welfare, nothing but the attainment of such perfection would have superseded; in short, as having acted the part of a petrifying stream, of having found us living, and left us stone. The governors of our Church, he contends, have been in every age between this and the Reformation, just as competent, in point of authority, to decide the questions settled in the Articles as their framers themselves were; and the intervening period has been just as likely to suggest matter for reconsideration and change, as that was which suggested the necessity of any Articles at all. Yet things have been so arranged, that, arise what new matter there may for consideration, the only authority competent to consider it is disqualified for doing so: the Articles which our bishops have subscribed are the condition of their remaining members of the Church, and should any thing come before any one of them to shake his belief in the accuracy of any one of these Articles, he has no alternative but to withdraw. Thus the body, who are to judge of the Articles, must remain for ever, one and all of them, firm believers in these Articles; for the act of disbelief cancels ipso facto the right of judgment, and all in consequence are excluded from the tribunal, except those who remain pledged to decide one way. The self-perpetuating system which results, gives occasion to the following remarks:

"It is an abuse of terms, to speak of the Church

In

of England as a body capable of collective views and opinions, capable of improvement, and able to remove whatever defects either time or the weakness of men have brought upon her. The Church of England, as by law established, consists in certain formularies,-words, put together by four or five men, and acquiesced in by a large portion of the then existing clergy......I do not reject those formularies; but I object to their having supreme and irrevocable power over the living Church. the present state of things, the formularies are above the Church. That they are so, is proved by the fact that the living congregation of christians, who by law are called 'members of the Church established in these realms,' are and must be perfectly passive...... The dimensions and shape of the mould into which the law has fixed them, must be the dimensions and shape of their minds. Although it is not pretended that the framers of the mould were infallible, the mould itself is by law supposed to be unalterable. Whoever attempts to touch it must go out of the Church. There may be something wrong, there may be something superfluous, there may be much that is ill adapted to our times. Nevertheless the Church, the now-existing Church, like a geological petrifaction, must remain what it is for ever......That such men as conceive themselves endowed with infallibility, should provide for the perpetuity of their opinions, is natural. But that those who never pretended to it, should contrive to make their views a law as immutable

as those of the Medes and Persians, is a curious and melancholy instance of the force of theological prejudice."

So far, Mr. B. White's argument applies generally, without reference to subject matter, to all Protestant confessions and subscriptions, as imposed by one generation of Churchmen, confessing themselves fallible, on successors who are not likely to be one whit more so. There remain, however, according to his view, other and still greater objections to them, arising out of the subject-matter with which they are for the most part occupied, and which he considers to be such, as in the nature of things, to refuse human explanation. The subjects, he argues, which are brought before our contemplation in Scripture, if regarded in reference to our capacity for apprehending and explaining in our own language what is told us about them, are distinguishable into two very broad classes. One class relates to matters of which human experience takes cognizance-to historical facts-to the conduct and motives of men-to the passions which seduce, and the principles which should be cultivated to guard them. All these and similar, are such as to admit of being set before us in a very distinct and intelligible manner. The words and phrases in which Scripture speaks of them, are used in their ordinary and literal sense, standing for all they stand for in common language, and for nothing more; and hence the ideas they convey may be complete and accurate, just as much so as those

conveyed in correct conversation, or in well written books, and will just as much admit of being restated in other language, without any risk of being, from this circumstance, mutilated or distorted. If the idea intended to be conveyed in Scripture is distinctly apprehended, a strict adherence to Scripture language is not necessary in the expression of it; we may explain our meaning in whatever terms seem best calculated for the purpose, and exhibit it in as many points of view as we please; and, since in those parts of Scripture where the language is literal such distinctness is attainable, there is nothing irrational in a person, who thinks he has attained it, undertaking to paraphrase and interpret for the benefit of other people. So far, then, as this class of subjects is concerned, creeds and articles, regarded merely as paraphrases of Scripture, are perfectly unexceptionable, open as they may be to objection on other grounds.

But then the class of subjects to which such formulæ principally relate, are very far from being of this character. Those subjects, which, from their falling under the cognizance of experience, can be treated of in literal language, have attracted, comparatively speaking, but little notice from the framers of confessions, who, on the contrary, have been almost entirely taken up with things far removed from our senses and knowledge;—with things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard ;— the mysterious essence of the invisible God and the interminable scheme of His providence. And with