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"in the New Testament these appellations have the same meaning," and thus convert the Scottish Presbytery into a bench of Bishops. Nor must we forget to congratulate the High School of Edinburgh, inasmuch as, despite Mr. Patterson's avowed predilection for University College, London, where the Gospel is excluded, they persist in "devoting an additional hour every Monday morning to the Greek Testament."

ART. II.-Vérité Catholique, ou Vue générale de la Religion considérée dans son Histoire et dans sa Doctrine. Par M. A. NAULT, Ancien Procureur-Général. Bruxelles, 1838. 12mo. pp. 176.

FOR a Roman Catholic, and more particularly for a Roman-catholic layman, to write on the evidences of Christianity, must surely be a task of no ordinary embarrassment. We have here a little manual, which, with the exception of some half-dozen pages, in which the Papal errors are more prominently displayed, we should gladly place in the hands of a Protestant; but with what kind of consistency it can be sent forth, with all the formality of an imprimatur from the Vicar-General of the diocese of Malines, it is somewhat difficult to conceive. The book is really a good one; the external and internal evidences are developed in a clear, concise, and convincing epitome; and it is only when the author feels himself in duty bound to say a good word for the infallibility of the church, and a bad one against the "grand schism of the sixteenth century," that a weak cause is upheld with a weak argument, or rather with no argument at all. Now it is well known that Belgium is the stronghold of the Papacy; that the ignorance of the lower classes, the intolerance of the higher, and the tyranny of the priesthood, is about on a par with the state of things in Ireland; and that the interdiction of the Scriptures is absolute and peremptory. How is it then that M. Nault can ask of his readers, with reference to the intrinsic excellencies of Christianity, "Qui contestera aujourd'hui que ces caractères ne conviennent qu'à la Bible ?" (P. 24.) Allowing him, however, to ask the question, how is it possible that persons to whom the Bible is a sealed book, should be competent either to admit the point, or dispute it? It is true that a certain number of authorities are given in the footnotes, and some texts even quoted at large from the Latin Vulgate; but here again we ask, cui bono? since his readers are not at liberty to verify the one, and cannot understand the other. Above all, what business has M. Nault himself, as a layman, to be prying into these hidden mysteries; and with positive heresy, according to his own creed, to tell his readers to do likewise? "Ouvrez le Testament nouveau: il

n'est pas une parole du livre des Chrétiens qui ne tende à approfondir cette double science, source de toute lumière, et fondement de toute morale." (P. 83.) Open the New Testament!! Doubtless the "Book of Christians, the source of all light, and the foundation of all morality," will not avail much except it be opened; but surely the injunction is neither more nor less than rank heresy in the mouth of a Romancatholic layman. Indeed we have but to turn over a few pages, in order to convict the writer out of his own book. "En tractant ces matières," says M. Nault, "le prêtre catholique, indépendamment de l'efficace attachée à sa mission, a un avantage surtout autre scrutateur du cœur humain : c'est d'avoir lu, dans l'exercice de son ministère, une page mystérieuse qui n'est ouverte (the very word!) qu'à lui.” (P. 102.) One of two things is here abundantly clear. Either M. Nault has been dipping with unlicensed freedom into this mysterious page; or he has undertaken a task for which he could not be duly qualified. We suspect that he must hold by the first horn of the dilemma; for the book is undoubtedly, exceptis excipiendis, a very good manual of the evidences of Christianity. These exceptions, as we have already remarked, occupy but an inconsiderable portion of the work. One of them, which strikes us as very funny, we will quote: "En ce qui touche la femme, c'est encore sous la loi évangélique qu'elle a trouvé le pouvoir de vivre vierge et honorée. Du moment où il a été libre au sexe faible de se consacier à Dieu pour mener une vie spirituelle et sainte, tous les liens terrestres de sujétion qui retenaient la femme ont été brisés: elle est devenue l'égale de l'homme." (P. 100.) This would almost seem to throw M. Nault upon the other horn of the dilemma. We should think he would be somewhat puzzled to find authority in the New Testament for any one of the three positions which this dictum either insinuates or asserts. The state of virginity is nowhere marked with especial honour, but rather marriage is an honourable estate, as signifying the mystical union between Christ and his Church; the "subjection" of the woman is nowhere cancelled, but enforced; and as to a lady being made equal to a man by going into a nunnery, perhaps nothing more may be meant, than that a monk and a nun are on a par in respect of wisdom and morality, and therefore we shall not venture to argue a matter of such extreme nicety. A more direct objection against Protestants is that "ils ont culte sans sacerdoce," because they have abolished the sacrifice of the mass, and where there is no sacrifice there can be no priest. The fact is, that the Papists have no notion of a spiritual sacrifice, any more than of a spiritual worship. A pompous idolatry is the very essence of their system. We could wish that the only other cavil in the book were not founded in fact, however inapplicable it is to the purpose which it is made to serve. That there are numerous sects among Protestants is equally true and lamentable; and we fear that those who dis

sent from a National Church without just cause are guilty of a woful sin. Admitting the fact, however, it is a very different thing from throwing off the abominations of an idolatrous communion, to secede from a Church of acknowledged purity in its faith, on account of some minor points of discipline. We have noticed this work, chiefly as affording an example of the inconsistencies to which even the ablest advocates of the Papal theology are driven and which, though they lie upon the surface of almost all their publications, are particularly prominent in those wherein a direct reference to the Scriptures is almost unavoidable.

ART. III.—Remains of the late Rev. Richard Hurrell Froude, M.A. Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. London: Rivingtons. 1838. 2 Vols. 8vo. pp. xxiv. 497; 423.

THESE Volumes are of a very varied and miscellaneous character; and, as they will be better understood from a knowledge of this fact, we here lay before our readers a synopsis of the Contents.

Vol. I.-Private Journal.-Occasional Thoughts.-Essay on the Age favourable to Works of Fiction.-Letters to Friends.-Poenis.—Sayings in Conversation. Extracts from Journal.

Vol. II.-Sermons, XX.-Portions of Sermons.-Miscellaneous Papers.

We must confess that we hardly ever felt the difficulty of stating our opinion of a work greater than on the present occasion; a difficulty not altogether arising from the varied and miscellaneous nature of the subjects, which touch more or less upon almost every prominent point of Morals, Religion, Politics, Taste, Science, and Literature; but that it would be utterly impossible, in our limits, or indeed without a far more minute and extended analysis than would be fitted for a periodical, and above all a religious publication like THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCer, to state our opinions without extreme danger of being misunderstood or misrepresented, on the one side; or of doing injustice to the talents, the opinions, and the very remarkable character of the author, on the other.

This gentleman was intimately connected with the writers of the "Tracts for the Times," in the University of Oxford, to which series of publications also it appears he was himself a contributor; and these "Remains" are now published with a design (to use the expression of the Editors) of "completing the idea of him as a witness to catholic views." They, however, add this caution; that "while they of course concur in his sentiments as a whole, they are not to be understood as rendering themselves responsible for every shade of opinion or expression."

We can conceive nothing more utterly startling to the generality of

readers, than the opinions embodied in these Remains. The writer's conviction of the jus divinum of the christian priesthood is so great, that it leads him to prefer the Puritans above Queen Elizabeth and the bishops of her day, although on every other point there is not even the least shade of sympathy with Puritanism; and the same feelings, more or less, have induced him to speak in terms of no very gentle import of the early Reformers, and of other names which are generally regarded by Churchmen with the utmost veneration. His sensitiveness to the evils and abuses which have grown out of the alliance between the Church and State; his very unfavourable judgment of the state and system of our Colonial Church; his ridiculing the notion, so prevalent in society, that the Clergy ought to be gentlemen ;-these opinions will all perhaps tend to place him, in the judgment of some, among the adherents of the "Voluntary System." Others, again, will find in his strong notions on certain points, and in his favourable judgment of Monastic Institutions, a tendency and fondness for Romanism; and will not give themselves the trouble of making those distinctions between Catholicism and Popery, which would explain the whole difficulty. A great boldness and independence in his mode of thinking, allied to a fearless openness of expression, which little heeded consequences, or admitted of cautious guarding against misconception, are peculiarities of the writer, which must be borne in mind, or we shall certainly be liable to form a very erroneous estimate of his real opinions. The boldness, singularity, and apparent paradox of many of them, render this caution any thing but unnecessary.

His declarations on numerous points, and particularly about the Reformation, and the agents in that great revolution, will hardly escape giving offence even to those who on many other points are nearly agreed with him. In this respect, perhaps, he felt himself in a similar situation to that of many persons who, at this time, speak any thing but favourably of those great political changes-Emancipation, Repeal of the Test Act, and the Reform Bill-and yet were once the steady promoters of those measures. They have so far failed of answering the ends proposed, as to leave the mind at liberty now to scrutinize the hollow pretences, the selfish ends, the base compromises by which they were carried; and to lament the dangerous and unholy principles which were mixed up with them, and gained footing by their means; although at the time it was felt that some such changes were required. And so the writer before us would, undoubtedly, have been keenly alive to all the abominations of popery, and to the need of reformation, had he lived three centuries ago; although he now judges of the agents in that reformation, with a harshness which is hardly consistent with a fair and candid allowance for the imperfection of human nature, the imbecility of human virtue, and the short-sightedness and contracted views

even of the wisest and the best. However, we will say no more, but lay before our readers such copious extracts from the work as may prove food for rumination, and enable them to judge of the writer for themselves.

The following extracts from the very able Preface seem necessary for a due understanding of what is to follow.

The author of the volumes now presented to the Christian reader, was the eldest son of the Venerable Robert H. Froude, Archdeacon of Totness, and was born and died in the parsonage-house of Dartington, in the county of Devon. He was born in 1803, on the Feast of the Annunciation; and he died of consumption, on the 28th of February, 1836, when he was nearly thirty-three, after an illness of four years and a half. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, having previously had the great advantage, while at Ottery Free School, of living in the family of the Rev. George Coleridge. He went to Eton in 1816, and came into residence as a commoner of Oriel College, in the spring of 1821. In 1824 he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, after having obtained, on his examination, high, though not the highest honours, both in the Literæ Humaniores and the Disciplinæ Mathematicæ et Physicæ. At Easter 1826, he was elected Fellow of his College, and in 1827 was admitted to his M.A. degree. The same year he accepted the office of Tutor, which he held till 1830. In December 1828 he received Deacon's orders, and the year after Priest's, from the last and present Bishops of Oxford. The disorder which terminated his life first showed itself in the summer of 1831; the winter of 1832, and the following spring, he passed in the south of Europe; and the two next winters, and the year between them (1834), in the West Indies. The illness which immediately preceded his death lasted but a few weeks.

He left behind him a considerable collection of writings, none prepared for publication; of which the following two volumes form a part. The Journal, with which the first commences, and which is continued in the Appendix, reaches from the beginning of 1826, when he was nearly twenty-three, to the spring of 1828. The "Occasional Thoughts" are carried on to 1829. The "Essay on Fiction" was written when he was twenty-three; the "Sermons" from 1829 to 1833, when he was between twenty-five and thirty. His "Letters" begin in 1823, when he was twenty, and are carried down to within a month of his death.-Preface, pp. iii.—v.

The following is part of the apology for a posthumous publication.

But the present is a peculiar case, a case in which, if the survivors do not greatly deceive themselves, they are best consulting the wishes of the departed by publication, hazardous as that step commonly is. Let the reader, before he condemns, imagine to himself a case like the following. Let him suppose a person in the prime of manhood, (with what talents and acquirements, is not now the question,) devoting himself, ardently yet soberly, to the promotion of one great cause; writing, speaking, thinking on it for years, as exclusively as the needs and infirmities of human life would allow; but dying before he could bring to perfection any of the plans which had suggested themselves to him for its advancement. Let it be certainly known to his friends, that he was firmly resolved never to shrink from any thing not morally wrong, which he had good grounds to believe would really forward that cause: and that it was real pain and disquiet to him if he saw his friends in any way postponing it to his supposed feelings or interests. Suppose further, that having been for weeks and months in the full consciousness of what was soon likely to befal him, he departs, leaving such papers as make up the present collection in the hands of those next to him in blood, without any express direction as to the disposal of them; and that they, taking counsel with the friends on whom he was known

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