CONTEMPORARY LITERARY CHRONICLES.

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I. CHURCH HISTORY, &c.

(Under the Direction of Professor CHEETHAM.)

HE present ecclesiastical condition of the northern half of Great Britain is altogether unique, and the layman to whom we are indebted for the "Appeal against Disestablishment (The National Church: an Appeal against Disestablishment: W. P. Nimmo) has, as it seems to us, deserved well at the hands of all Scotchmen,-nay, of all who are interested in the future welfare of Scotland,-by the singularly lucid and impressive exhibition which his volume contains of its actual condition. Since the days of John Knox it might be said with truth that Scotland has been nothing if not Presbyterian. Twice over, no doubt, she had Prelacy thrust upon her, but she stubbornly resisted the imposition, until, at last, under the Revolution Settlement, she achieved the desire of her heart, and secured the establishment of the Genevan platform. In that platform there was no Popery, no Prelacy, and no Patronage, and around the midmost fibre of it there was woven the Westminster Confession of Faith. After the Revolution Settlement came the union of the two countries, with special precautions on the part of the North against the introduction by the larger Southern community of her Episcopal leaven into the Caledonian meal. This precaution took the form of what was called the Act of Security, and by the Scottish nation this Act was regarded as the very keystone of the arch which bridged over the debateable border-ground between the two kingdoms. Nevertheless, within the brief period of four years after the legislative unification of Scotland and England, the Jacobite ministry of Bolingbroke reimposed patronage in the Kirk, and in such haste that, in those days, when railroads and telegraphs were still undreamt of, the Commissioners from the General Assembly only arrived in London with their protest against the measure, of which some vague rumour had travelled northwards, to find it in the last stage of its consummation. It is alleged that the Jacobite motive in the restoration of patronage was simply the hope that the Scottish people, finding their ecclesiastical interests had been abandoned by the existing Government, would throw themselves into the arms of the Pretender. On the other hand, it is distinctly stated in the preamble to the Act of 1711, that the Patrons had never received the statutory compensation for the withdrawal of their rights, which was promised in the Act of 1690, and that the substituted system of nomination by the heritors (being Protestants) and elders had “occasioned great heats and divisions." But whatever may have been the reasons which weighed with the promoters of the measure, the Scottish Church and people preferred to remain in union with England, contenting themselves with a protest against the infraction of the treaty, rather than incur the hatreds and general national confusion which alliance with the Stuart cause would inevitably entail. And accordingly the Church consented, if reluctantly, to retain the various

privileges which directly flow from union with the State, though the law under which she continued to discharge the functions of a National Establishment, -contained the distinct and altogether unambiguous provision that "the Presbytery of the respective bounds shall and is hereby obliged to receive and admit such qualified person, or persons, minister or ministers, as shall be presented by the respective patrons in the same manner as the persons or ministers presented before the making of this Act ought to have been admitted." In other words, though Patronage was restored, the people had still the right to approve or disapprove of the presentee, but, in the event of their disapproving, they had to give in their reasons to the Presbytery of the bounds, "at whose judgment, and by whose determination, the calling and entry of a particular minister was to be ordered and concluded." Moreover, according to the Act of 1592, which has been called the Charter of the Church of Scotland, this " same manner" provided the Presbyteries were bound and astricted to receive and admit whatsoever qualified persons presented by his Majesty or laic patrons;" but this obligation on the part of Presbyteries did not in the slightest degree derogate from the authority which had been assigned to the ecclesiastical courts in the examination and admission of ministers by the Act of 1567-the Act by which the Scottish Establishment was created, and in which, moreover, the General Assembly was declared to be the final court of appeal.

Thus far, the masterly Appeal of the layman and the very able, and it must be added temperate, lecture of Lord Moncreiff (Church and State, chiefly in Relation to Scotland: Three Lectures by Robert Rainy, D.D., Lord Moncreiff, and A. Taylor Innes: T. Nelson & Sons) are at one in the résumé which each supplies of Scottish ecclesiastical history. And the two authors alike lament the abuse of power on the part of the dominant section of the Church which by the high-handed intrusion of unacceptable presentees on remonstrant congregations, occasioned, first the "Secession" of 1736, and then the "Relief" movement in 1752-the representatives of the Seceders and Relievers now constituting the United Presbyterian community. But as was perhaps to be expected when the Free Church Judge and the Established Church lay apologist have occasion to speak of the world-famous Veto Act, which was passed by the General Assembly in 1834, we discover a very decided difference of opinion between the two writers as to the legitimacy of this bit of ecclesiastical legislation. By the Veto Act it was decreed that "if a major part of the heads of families, being communicants, objected to a presentee, he should not be settled, and the patron should present another." These words are quoted from Lord Moncreiff, and his lordship informs us that "he should be well prepared to say and to prove that the principle on which that Act was founded was one in thorough accordance with the whole practice and mind of the Church from the date of the Reformation." On the other hand, and as it seems to us with a much clearer recognition of the situation, the layman asserts that the Assembly had simply committed a great innovation, that by its Veto Act it had only vetoed the mind of the Presbytery, which, by statute, was bound to examine into the reasons of a disapproving congregation, and that "entirely on its own authority, it had transferred to the people the power which the State, with consent of the patrons, had placed in the hands of the Church" (of course, the author, not being a High Churchman, meaning by the word "Church," on the present occasion, the Presbytery); and the great question in dispute between the Evangelical party on the one side, and the Moderate party, the Court of Session, and the House of Lords on the other, from 1838 to 1843 was, "whether the Assembly had this independent authority or not." The layman has some reason to adopt the conclusion that the Assembly, however much the liberalizing influences of recent political events may be set down to the credit of the majority of its members, had acted not only ultra vires in passing the measure, but had altered its own constitution. That constitution allowed it to reject a presentee if it considered it proper, but its own Veto Act excluded its judgment, and compelled Presbyteries to reject a presentee, if objected to by the major part of the male heads of families in communion with the Church, even though they "give no reason for their rejection of him." It would occupy far too much space were we to give even an outline of the events which marked the "Ten Years' Conflict," from the passing of the Act by which the majority of the Assembly tied the hands, and closed the ears, and stopped the mouths of Presbyteries, down to 1843, when the Disruption took place. But our readers will find a singularly simple and luminous statement of the various episodes in the controversy in the volume of the layman, and they will

learn from these pages the historical grounds on which he bases his appeal when he claims for the existing Established Church of Scotland, that it is de jure and de facto the lineal heir and representative of the Church of Knox, of Melville, of Henderson, of Carstairs, and in which Thomas Chalmers was once a burning and a shining light. They will further discover, or be reminded, that from west to east, the judges both Scotch and English, and the statesmen, such as the nonintrusionist Lord Aberdeen, who resisted the claims of the Evangelical majority, never called in question the true spiritual independence of the Church; that on the contrary they gave pre-eminence to the fact that the Courts of the Church by law established were the only ecclesiastical courts in Scotland to which jurisdiction, in the strictly legal sense of the words, is attached: and it may occur to not a few who give this volume the honest and serious attention to which it is entitled, that the late Sir William Hamilton was not altogether ignorant or foolish when he addressed to his Evangelical fellow-countrymen, on the eve of their exodus from the National Church, the emphatic counsel contained in his pamphlet: 'Be not Schismatics, be not Martyrs by Mistake."

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But whether the outgoing party, or that which remained within the pale of the Establishment, had gained the truer interpretation of the voice of history, one thing seems to us to be abundantly proved by this anonymous layman, and that is, that at no previous period of her history did the venerable Kirk of Scotland ever enjoy more liberty than she possesses now. The Imperial Legislature, if tardy in its acknowledgment of her claims, has at last rendered to those claims the amplest justice. Patronage is abolished, and its abolition has brought about, in the judgment of all reasonable outsiders, the possibility of union amongst the three chief Presbyterian communities. No doubt there are theoretical voluntaries who, stand aloof from all proposals of union emanating from the Establishment, as if the Establishment existed now by the will of an individual Cæsar. There are others, like Mr. Taylor Innes, the author of the very elaborate and eloquent lecture on Church and State in the Present Day," who, while assenting in the abstract to the principle of an Establishment, are of opinion that the concrete specimen of it now called the National Church of Scotland is a grievous heresy inflicted on the Scottish population, and that any alliance with it. on the part of Free Churchmen would be a flagrant dereliction of the great principles which the Seceders of 1843 proclaimed to the world. But all the same, the natural historian, if we may be allowed the expression, who turns his gaze on Scotland, is confronted by this phenomenon, that there are three communities, one in creed, one in discipline, and one in ritual, who might be one in a concerted presentation of the claims of Christ's Christianity in presence of the scepticism of to-day, who might be one in their efforts to avert the drunkenness and disregard of the Seventh Commandment which are only too notoriously prevalent in the North, who have a great opportunity of merging secondary and perishing opinions in the ampler light of charity, and of showing that "Christ" is not "divided," but who are kept apart by merely sentimental "views," or by interpretations of abstruse legal terms which certainly are not to be found in the New Testament. And as an illustration, at once lamentable and ludicrous, of the "variations," without any substantial disagreement, which are to be found among the Presbyterians of the North, our layman singles out a parish which contains only four hundred and fifty souls, but in which there are three churches in close proximity to each other, the ministers of which all preach the same doctrine, having all subscribed the same Confession of Faith, but the respective congregations of which, though they all hold professedly the same Calvinistic opinions, and sing the same psalms to the same tunes, and on week-days are "Hail fellow, well met!" with each other, have on Sundays no more religious "dealings" in common than they would have if the several objects of their worship were Buddha, Mahomet, and Jesus Christ!

And what is to be the sequel of this nineteenth century reproduction of the divisions in the Corinthian church in the days of St. Paul? That is a question which the British Parliament must one day decide. And before the decision arrives, we can only express the hope that our legislators will take counsel from the author of the "Appeal against Disestablishment." It is simply a matter of fact that within the brief compass of one hundred and eighty pages this lay writer has made an abler defence of the existing Establishment in Scotland than we have ever met with before, and we say this after being thoroughly acquainted with the voluminous literature of the Voluntary and Free Church controversies. There is not an aspect of the question of Establishment or Disestablishment which he does not face and thoroughly discuss. If we were to take an exception to his views, it 2 T

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would be on the subject of education, on which we are of opinion that he falls below his usual level. But in all other respects his volume meets with our cordial approval, and he will be a singularly gifted man who will be able to overthrow our author's conclusions in behalf of the existence and the continuance of the Established Church of Scotland, on the grounds either of history, or statistics, or Christian principle. Principal Rainy, in his scholarly and philosophic lecture, is not yet prepared for Disestablishment; Lord Moncreiff remembers that you cannot uproot an aged tree without dislodging a great deal of the surrounding soil," and he would not be precipitate in seeking the destruction of a venerable institution; while Mr. Innes advocates immediate Disestablishment, and would substitute in place of the Kirk, with all its home missionary privileges and responsibilities, with all its manses and churches and churchyards, round which the deepest poetry of the national mind is entwined, a vague recognition " of a vague Presbyterianism, in which Dissent would gradually degenerate into the dissidence which was so naïvely expressed by the lady who found herself in a community consisting only of herself and her husband: "I'm nae sae sure of John." Whatever Mr. Innes may say to the contrary, Scotland is not ripe for Disestablishment just yet, and it will be a long time before it is if his lay brethren will lay to heart the counsels of their countryman, the author of the "Appeal." The ability of his volume is greatly set off by the almost literary boldness of the style and the modesty of the entire performance.

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Canon Dixon's standpoint in his history (History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction: Vol. I.-Henry VIII. A.D. 1529— 1537: Smith, Elder, & Co.) is to a certain extent indicated by his title-page, for an ardent admirer of the Reformation would scarcely talk of the "abolition of the Roman jurisdiction." We are, therefore, not much surprised when we come to the curious paragraph (p. 40) in which he discusses the question, what he is to call "those who set themselves against the doctrinal system of the Church." After successively rejecting the terms Lollard, Lutheran, Protestant, and "New Learning," he comes to the conclusion that "their proper historical name is that which they have received the least,"-heretic. Whether they might be called "Reformers" he does not even inquire. His book is in fact a clerical history of the Church of England; it everywhere takes the side of the clergy, the party in possession, not the innovators; and the writer always regards himself as belonging to the succession of Wolsey and Warham, rather than to that of Latimer and Ridley. He wishes to make the break of continuity between the Church of Henry VII. and the Church of Elizabeth as small as possible. What most people call "the Reformation" is with him an unhappy episode in a noble story.

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Holding this leading thought, it is no wonder that he extenuates to the utmost the anti-ecclesiastical forces which were at work in the kingdom. There was no occasion for the changes which were actually made; they were due simply to the violence of the King and certain unprincipled advisers; all that was needed was to reform some of the leading abuses in the Church, a task which would have been admirably performed by Convocation, then consisting unlike the Houses of Parliament of the best and wisest of men. In fact, Mr. Dixon is decidedly for making a revolution with rose-water. Sometimes his way of ignoring symptoms of the general discontent with the Church felt by lay people is rather amusing. In 1529 a conference was held between representatives of the Lords and the Commons on a Bill sent up by the latter about pluralities and non-residence; Mr. Dixon naïvely observes that the temporal lords of the number deserted the bishops, who were then unable to prolong their resistance;" it does not seem to occur to him that the meaning of this really is, that the lay lords generally were against the bishops; if thay had been on their side, they would have taken care to choose managers who would not desert" them. That the Commons were against the ecclesiastical authority of that day is a matter so notorious that there is nothing to be said but that this Parliament was "packed;" yet it was not so packed, but that it peremptorily rejected the Bill of Wards, against all the authority and influence of the King. Even in the sixteenth century, it would have been extremely difficult to pack a Parliament unfavourable to institutions which were really popular in the country. Mr. Dixon recognizes the fact, that the press exerted an immense influence against the existing state of things in the Church.

"Books filled with general charges against the standing system, written with incredible

scurrility and ribaldry, poured from the press, and found an eager welcome among that easy class which has always been the general feeding-ground of dissidence, the class which gets money, and with money the leisure to speculate on the doings of others, and which turns its attention to those who bear office, and particularly to those whose burden it is to maintain the religious system of the country.'

If it be true, as no doubt it is, that anti-ecclesiastical literature found acceptance with the only class which had "leisure to speculate," it is pretty clear that public opinion was against the existing Church. If all the reviews and magazines which circulate among the cultivated classes were clamouring with one voice for disestablishment, we should think it a very serious symptom; and the pamphlets, for which Mr. Dixon has so great a contempt, were in fact the light literature of their day. Now, when we put all these things together; when we see the discontent of the lay Lords, of the Commons, and of the general public, with the existing state of things; a discontent not slight and superficial, but going down to the very foundations of the great structure; we cannot help being a little amused with Mr. Dixon's perfect content with the idea of "clerical reformation," to which, as he truly says, the clergy were not averse," especially when clerical reformation had disastrously failed on the continent of Europe in the three great councils of the preceding century. A clerical reformation would have contented the clergy, and the clergy only. It is past all doubt that many things were done unfortunately, and some disgracefully, in the course of the English Reformation; but it is difficult to understand how any one who has taken pains to acquaint himself with the state of England in the reign of Henry VIII.—as Mr. Dixon evidently has-can have supposed that such a "clerical reformation" as he has depicted, though "not intended to be slight or partial" (p. 91), could possibly have satisfied a people discontented alike with the doctrine and discipline of the Church which tyrannized over them. The forces were already at work which were to produce in due time freedom of religion, for the present undreamed of on either side. The clerical reformation would have produced at best a milder tyranny; and the portion which most needed reform, the superstitious dogmas, was exactly that which the clergy refused to touch. Much was, no doubt, destroyed which ought to have been preserved, but even that destruction was better than preserving falsehood and wrong for the sake of dignity and beauty. We do not take Mr. Dixon's view of the Reformation history; but it should at the same time be said that his work is by no means to be classed with some recent publications in which the Reformers have been assailed. It is likely to be the most considerable contribution to the history of the Church of England made in our time; it is written in an interesting style, and it is founded on careful and extensive research. It is no doubt pervaded by a strong prejudice; but as Mr. Froude has written a very popular history of the same period with a strong prejudice in favour of the King, it is perhaps not altogether unfair that Mr. Dixon should write one with a strong prejudice in favour of the clergy. If he is permitted- -as we hope he will be-to write the history of our Church from " the abolition of the Roman jurisdiction to our own day, he will have filled a great gap in our literature. So far as we can judge from the volume before us, his great defect appears to be that he takes too little account of the movements of thought; everything is external with him : he deals with parliaments and convocations, canons and statutes, not with religion or philosophy. For this reason we do not expect from him an adequate account of the process which transformed the Church of More and Fisher into the Church of Parker and Whitgift, of Andrewes and Donne, of Taylor and Barrow, of Butler and Paley; still less of the springtide of thought and feeling which gave us Shakespeare and Bacon instead of Chaucer and Duns.

Lord Selborne's work (Notes on Some Passages in the Liturgical History of the Reformed English Church: John Murray) has been called forth by the publication of Mr. James Parker's "Introduction to the History of the Successive Revisions of the Book of Common Prayer." It is an excellent specimen of careful historical criticism. Lord Selborne first points out the reasonableness of the rule of law which, in the interpretation of an Act of Parliament, excludes all reference to the private opinions or intentions of its framers, and then proceeds to discuss the history of certain portions of the Prayer-book and documents connected with it. He shows clearly that the "Ornaments Rubric" of the Book of 1559 was not in the book when it left the hands of the revisers, but that the Rubric of 1552 was altered by