expressions of our Saviour and of St. Paul, which recommend celibacy as the more excellent way, so as to give honour to those who voluntarily so abode, that they might wait on the Lord; and in particular, to assume that the Clergy should rather of the two be unmarried than married; he will not permit the prejudices of a later time to hinder him from honouring those whom his Lord so delighted to honour; he will consider that the same cast of thought which leads men to scorn religious celibacy, will certainly prevent marriage also, which they profess to honour, from being strictly religious. Should he find that ́the records of the Fathers bear witness in every page to their literal observance of the duty of Fasting, and the high importance which they attached to it; it is not the titles of Jewish, Pharisaical, self-righteous, nor yet that of Ascetic (more widely dreaded than all) which will deter him from obeying his conscience in that particular. Should he perceive that the counsels and demeanour of the holy men of old, towards heretics and other sinners, correspond much more truly with the Apostolic Rule, Put away from among yourselves that wicked person, than with the liberal and unscrupulous intercourse, which respectable persons now practise, for peace, and quietness, and good nature's sake; it is a conviction which cannot but widely influence both his judgment of other times, and his conduct towards his contemporaries; it will lead to many a sentence that will sound harsh, and many a step that will be counted austere ; it will cause him often to shock those by whom he would greatly wish to be approved; and yet, thus he must judge and act, if he will be true to his own principle, and conform himself throughout to that will of God, which the consent of those purer ages indicates.

Another very distinguishable circumstance in the tone and manner of the early Church is its reverential Reserve with re

gard to holy things; of all its characteristics apparently the most unaccountable to the spirit of the present age. This also we may expect to discover in a true, courageous, consistent follower of the ancients; not so much by any conscious endeavour of his, as because it will come to him instinctively, as some birds are said to contrive ways for enticing observers away from their nests. And because it is Reserve, we may expect now and then to be startled at the very form of it. The nature of the thing excludes conventional expressions, and drives people often on such as are rather paradoxical; deep reverence will occasionally veil itself, as it were, for a moment, even under the mask of its opposite; as earnest affection is sometimes known to do. Any expedient almost will be adopted by a person who enters with all his heart into this portion of the ancient Character, rather than he will contradict that Character altogether by a bare, unscrupulous, flaunting display of sacred things or good thoughts.

Once more: he who makes up his mind really to take Antiquity for his guide, will feel that he must be continually realizing the Presence of a wonder-working God: his mind must be awake to the possibility of special providences, miraculous interferences, supernatural warnings and tokens of the divine purpose, and also to indications of other unseen agency, both good and bad, relating to himself and others: subjects of this sort, if a man be consistent, must fill up a larger portion of his thoughts and affections, and influence his conduct far more materially, than the customs and opinions of this age would readily permit.

Other particulars might be mentioned; but these which have been enumerated are surely sufficient to teach persons a little caution, how they apply the readily occurring words, “overstrained, fanatical, ascetic, bigotted," to no

tions and practices such as have been now alluded to. Previous to examination, they cannot be sure that any such notion or practice is not a developement of the Character, which our Lord from the beginning willed should be impressed on His Church. If we have not the boldness to take it on ourselves, and follow the Lamb, whithersoever He goeth, at least let us not throw stumbling-blocks in the way of those who are more courageously disposed. When a thing is fairly proved superstitious, uncharitable, ascetic in a bad sense, unwarranted by Scripture and Antiquity, then let it be blamed and rejected, not before; lest we incur such a rebuke as he did, who with more zeal than knowledge would have prevented our Lord Himself, as these would the least of His Brethren and Members, from taking up and bearing the Cross. It was in love to Christ that he remonstrated; yet what was Christ's reproof? Get thee behind Me, Satan; thou art an offence unto Me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

The subjects, and ways of thinking, above indicated, are all such, that an uncompromising follower of Antiquity might be expected, more or less, to incur in regard of every one of them such censure as the Author of these Remains has incurred; and therefore, in each case the only real question will be, Is he with Antiquity or not? If not, if in substance or in tone he contradict the Early Church, the penance can hardly be named so severe, to which he would not have wished himself condemned; but if on the contrary his seeming paradoxes should be found but to repeat her teaching, his supposed eccentricities and harshnesses but to reflect her aspect; then it will be a comfort, by and by, not to have given way to first impressions, in rejecting or disliking them unexamined, but rather to have suspended our judgment and enquired patiently. It is at least possi

ble that what offends us may be one of the points, in which this generation and the primitive age cannot be both right; and until this is ascertained, positive censure and deprecation are better perhaps withheld. We have read of one who came" in fallen times, "neither eating bread nor drinking wine," and whether it were the duty of every one to receive him implicitly at once, or no, yet surely it was better for such as refrained from saying, "He hath a devil."

Assuming this then as our ground and first principle, that a Churchman's adherence to the doctrine of Universal Consent is to be strictly and really uncompromising, it seems no hard question, what is to be done, should the principles and practice of the age we live in appear on inquiry in any material respect contradictory to those of ancient Christendom. Clearly each one in his station is bound to take his part, not with the new Error, but with the old Truth. No one will dispute it; for it will even be granted in a case much more painful and perilous, yet, as things are, but too probable. It will be granted that even where the National Church, to use a modern phrase, which any one belongs to, insists as the condition of her communion on something contradictory to the known consent of Antiquity, such communion can no longer be embraced with a safe conscience. This must be granted, for it is the very reason why we are not and cannot be Romanists; and why our brethren of the Scottish Church are not schismatics in declining to communicate with the adherents of the State Religion there. Now a discrepancy which would justify the incurring of excommunication, supposing it embodied in the formularies of any Church, will a fortiori justify remonstrance and censure, and warning of all sorts consistent with charity, when it only exists as a theological school, or tone of opinion, in almost all places checked and dis

couraged, and in none more than doubtfully warranted, by the authoritative voice of the Church we belong to. This, the writer of these Remains thought (and so far all lovers of Antiquity among us appear to agree with him) was the case of Protestantism as distinct from true Catholicism, here in the Anglican Church. In her teaching and practice for the time, it seemed to him dominant; while in her authorized laws and rites, though he could not conceal from himself that he saw certain traces, or rather negative effects of it, he found nothing to commit her ministers and members to it, but very much of a contrary cast. In regard of these, therefore, he found all reason for "diffidence"; (that is his own word): but in regard of the fatal perversion of them, and consequent lowering of Catholic Truth, and neglect of Sacramental Grace, which he found almost every where prevailing; there was no reason why he should not speak and write as keen minds do of deadly errors and irreverences, usurping authority and displacing divine truth: nor was the severity of his censure any reason for suppressing it, provided the matter of it were sound and valuable directed as it invariably was against parties and opinions, not against individuals any further than as they might be considered types of the parties and opinions.

Thus far of his strictures on contemporary errors; we will now so far change our ground, as to suppose the adherent of Antiquity looking back on other times; must he not, if he will be consistent, pass the same kind of censure on the same unauthorized errors in former generations, more especially if he found them continually appealed to as authority by the religionists of the present day? Surely he must; nor ought he to be silenced by any praise, which may be due to the former maintainers of such error, for services performed in another direction. If we granted that Baxter wrote well against Independents, and Lardner