lean upon, and this may account for the manifestation of a stronger feeling towards Romanism.

A retrospect of the history of the Anglican Church demonstrates the utter inutility of Creeds, Articles, and a settled form of Prayer, to preserve agreement in belief, or even harmony of feeling, among its members. Three parties exist, and long have existed, within it-devoid of all sympathy with each other, but each sustaining a most intimate relation to certain bodies that are external to it. It is encircled by Catholics, by Evangelical, and by what are called Rational, Dissenters. Within it, we recognise the same three elements, the Catholic, the Evangelical, and the Liberal. We have traced the filiation of the Catholic element from Andrews and Laud through the Non-jurors to the Oxford Tractarians. The Evangelicals find their counterpart in the doctrinal Puritans of the seventeenth century. Hales, Whichcot, Wilkins and Tillotson are the predecessors and spiritual progenitors of a most respectable, but now, it is to be feared, the smallest and feeblest, party in the Church-the moderate and rational party,-attached to truth and science and social progress, friendly to Dissenters, not confounding an Establishment with the vital principles of Christianity, but regarding it as a human instrument for their support. With differences resulting from the complexion of their minds or the state of the times-we may assign to this class,

Thirty-nine Articles. For this object an association was formed in the year 1772; but its application for relief proved unsuccessful. The Evangelical party, with Mr. Venn and Lady Huntingdon at their head, opposed the measure with all their influence; and Mr. Burke, though in general friendly to the extension of religious freedom, resisted the concession, and with great force pointed out its incompatibility with the principles of the Establishment.a The principles entertained by the promoters of this scheme and made the ground of their petition to Parliament, were exhibited in a work called the Confessional, published anonymously, but known to be the production of Archdeacon Blackburne. This work assumed the preservation of the Establishment, but proposed to substitute for subscription to the Articles, as the condition of admission to its offices-a simple declaration of belief in the Scriptures, and a promise to make them the rule and standard of public teaching. This was coming as near to the attainment of religious freedom as the retention of the Establishment would admit. But the plan, though specious in theory, is burdened with great practical difficulties; for the terms proposed are themselves so vague, that they must have led in usage to an arbitrary limitation, that would have

a

• Venn's Life and Lady Huntingdon's Memoirs, II. 286-7. Burke's Speeches, Vol. I. p. 94. Feb. 6, 1772.

excluded some parties, and moreover, viewed abstractedly, do not satisfy the full demands of the rights of conscience. Any one indeed who had studied the history and genius of the English Church, and watched the feelings that were deeply cherished by its most devoted adherents, might have foreseen the reception that the proposal of so sweeping a change would be certain to encounter; and however groundless these feelings may to some appear, it is still a question, whether it would have been prudent and right, harshly to violate them. In consequence of the frustration of this measure, a few clergymen who were dissatisfied with subscription-and among them, that meek confessor, the Rev. Theophilus Lindsey-seceded from the national Church:-and the tendencies of which the petition to Parliament was an expression, no longer finding a safe vent in the Establishment, have taken refuge, where they are expressed at all, in the Presbyterian and Anti-Trinitarian section of the Dissenters.

Since the peace, called forth by alarm at the rapidly succeeding measures of civil and ecclesiastical reform, which have been introduced by a liberal government-an intense revival has taken place of the old High Church principles. In 1833, a few individuals of kindred sentiments met at Oxford, to agree upon a course of joint action to resist these democratic tendencies. Hence the

in the last and preceding generation, Jortin, Law, Newcome, Shipley, Paley, and Parr-and in the present, Maltby, Whately, and Arnold. (32) Such men would liberalise the Church, if it were possible. They have no superstitious reverence for episcopacy as such; they regard it simply as a discipline and an instrumentality for the accomplishment of a great social object. They would gladly make the Establishment express and cherish the religion of the nation, and cease to be an instrument of insult and annoyance in the hands of selfish and ambitious men. But what can we think of the unity of a Church, in which men, so opposite in their views, as Dr. Arnold, Mr. Newman, and Mr. Baptist Noel, are equally recognised as ministers, and required to use the same formularies and to sign the same articles? After the debates of centuries, it is still a matter of dispute, which of the three is the truest son of the Church of England. It is strange, that the controversies of the first Reformers should still be left unsolved; and that one half of the Church should deem the other heretical for preferring the Catholic or the Calvinistic elements, which may be found in its Prayer-book, its Articles, and its Homilies.

CHAPTER III.

PURITANISM.

SECT. I.

PREDOMINANT IDEA OF PURITANISM.

HAVING attempted in the preceding chapter to describe the constitution and historical development of the Anglican hierarchy, I proceed now to contrast with it the nature and operation of the antagonist principle of Puritanism. It is from the conflict of these opposing tendencies, that the peculiar character of our religious life results. The spirit of Puritanism must not, however, be confounded with the principle of free inquiry and mental independence, which ultimately grew out of it, and by those who were capable of reasoning to consequences, might have been seen to be implied in it. The fundamental idea of Puritanism, in all its forms and ramifications, is the supreme authority of Scripture, acting directly on the individual conscience-as opposed to a reliance on the priesthood and the outward ordinances of the Church. To realise the standard of faith, worship and conduct, recorded in Scripture, has ever been the object of Puritanism; and to attain that object, in defiance of a hierarchy, requires no small degree