speak very confidently about the future, and admits that his prophecy may sound strangely in the ears of those who entertain hopes and daily offer prayers for the conversion of England. He states the other side of the case with candour and fairness, with fewer solecisms of expression, and upon the whole, as it appears to us, more truly. He tells us that unbelief and immorality reached their climax about the middle of the last century; that from about the year 1750 men have been returning to the belief, first, that Christianity was reasonable, then that it was true, then that certain elementary doctrines such as that of the Trinity and Incarnation, and subsequently those of atonement, sacrifice, and grace, began to reappear; and with this remark he lands us at the year 1830-the commencement of that wonderful era in the Church of England, which in less than forty years has produced the extraordinary state of things out of which Dr. Manning's volume has arisen.

Let us take Dr. Manning's assertion for what it is worththat the tone of the Church of England has been gradually rising since 1750. We are afraid we should hardly have ventured on a date so remote. But at least it is on his principles an absolutely inexplicable phenomenon that out of three centuries which ought to have been centuries of gradual decadence, a period considerably exceeding a hundred years should have been a period of growth and recovery. The Archbishop does not affect to conceal this view of the case. He dilates upon it, and, if anything, overstates the case. He traces the development of Anglican doctrine from 1830 in the Oxford movement, which gradually permeated the country; and if we cannot quite go so far as to think that a majority of the clergy were predisposed to receive its principles and spirit, yet the favour which this movement met with up to the publication of No. XC. of the 'Tracts for the Times' was certainly very wonderful. It was not perhaps to be expected that Dr. Manning should be much at home with the state of things which has existed amongst us since he quitted our communion. He does not appear to us to have formed any tolerable estimate of the immense growth of those principles and the greatly deepened hold which they have upon the affections of people since the disasters of 1844 set in. The movement at its commencement was too popular. There were many attracted to it because of its mere novelty, and by its offering a form of religion free from the ridiculousness of Puritanism; many took it up because it was manifestly the most intellectual thing going, and was headed by the first intellect of the day. But all was not right when the conversation at a ball in the intervals of the dances turned upon the revival of the daily service of the Church; nor was it to be expected that the

fever would be of long duration which prompted young ladies to rise at seven to go to church and on their return home to go to bed again to sleep till near mid-day. There was so much of outside about the movement in those days that there was wanted something in the shape of persecution or suffering of some kind or other to winnow the chaff from the wheat. And without doubt it came with unusual severity. First, the loss of the leader of the party detached all the merely intellectual hangerson; the evident prospect of being left behind in the race of life, by the coming unpopularity of the system, shook off all who were lukewarm adherents; whilst a large number, finding that there was nothing to be made of it, without actively forsaking their friends, gradually subsided into neutrality, and have lived on ever since shutting their eyes to the controversies in the midst of which we have been living for these twenty years, or at least, excluding from their minds any consideration of the true issues of the case.

The result of the whole has been such an extraordinary development in the direction that Dr. Manning would most wish, that we should have expected nothing from him but a song of triumph instead of what is now like the wail of despair. But the Archbishop of Westminster, as we have already implied, seems incapable of holding two ideas together. We do not pretend to define his meaning when he protests that no consecutive mind' could follow such and such a course. But the chief reason of his arguments being so little consecutive seems to us to consist in this, that he is unable to entertain at once in his mind the whole of any given case. He wraps himself up in a part of it, which to himself is most striking, and he has not grasp of mind to comprehend the mutual relations between the parts. He sees the results of the trials on appeal before the Privy Council, which have been, with a single notable exception, such as to shew that anything is tenable in the Anglican Church, so far as the ability of the law goes to dispossess the holder of his preferment. It used to be said by that very comfortable class of clergy who held preferment which a little exceeded the limits of what the law allowed, that you could hold anything if only you could hold your tongue.' The aphorism has to be enlarged to meet the present case. To hold opinions in the Church of England, it is no longer necessary to be able to hold the tongue. Those who have spoken out the loudest against Church doctrine have been under one plea or another let off, and though they probably will live the rest of their lives under the suspicion of nine-tenths of the clergy and laity of the Church of England, they will remain in undisturbed possession of their preferment.

This is the point against the Church of England which the

Archbishop is perpetually urging. It is not for us to underrate its significance or importance. In the transition state through which we are passing, as friends and foes must alike admit, this is undoubtedly a most alarming feature. If taken by itself, the indications are as if indifference to doctrine had got hold of the clergy, and as if this must necessarily perpetuate itself by the aid which it is sure to receive from the ignorant and the worldly. There are still a sufficient number of good appointments in the Church to attract intellectual men, if they can once be made to understand that they are not bound to believe its formularies or doctrine. And the opening of the door at once admits this very undesirable class, and excludes all those who believe that the very opening of the door is itself equivalent to the denial of the faith once delivered to the saints. If the state of things which begun with the iniquitous decision in the Gorham case is to go on, and be perpetual, actum est de Ecclesiá Anglicand. It is because we feel that this cannot be so, that we have hopes which are not dispelled by whatever number of adverse judgments are given in the Court of Appeal. For in truth, whatever be the weight of the argument against the Church of England from the decision in that case, it is not in the slightest degree increased by any judgment that has since been given, nor, we may add, by any that is likely to be given. That the Church of England is, in a legal point of view, tolerant of heresy, could no longer be denied after that trial. The 'one baptism for the remission of sins' was impugned and denied. The issue of that case proves that for the present a clergyman who is heretical on this point cannot be deposed unless the precedent thus established should be reversed on another action on the same count. The two doctrines on which so much stress has been laid, the inspiration of Scripture and the eternity of future punishment, are under the present view, and for the present argument, of much less importance, however far-reaching may be the consequences of any decision as regards them. They do not nearly so directly touch the foundations of the faith, and though they may confirm the Archbishop in the opinion which he seems to have formed instantly upon the Gorham case being decided, that the Church of England has no claims to his allegiance as a Church, they add absolutely nothing to the amount of argument adducible against her. That she is tolerant of heresy in any degree is as good an argument as that she allows it in any, however great a degree, and in how many soever instances. Let us fairly face the fact that the judgment protected a clergyman in actual heresy; and if the argument is on whatever ground resistible, that resistance, if successful, carries with it the solution of all difficulties of a similar kind that have since arisen. We have

no manner of doubt that it was the Gorham case alone that decided Archdeacon Manning, as indeed it did many others who did not act so precipitately as he did, against the Church of England.

It

The letter to an Anglican friend is the first of the four brochures which have been stitched together to make up the volume which is now entitled 'England and Christendom.' is dated March, 1864, and it tells the story of the author's conversion as distinctly as if it were directly intended to be a personal narrative. He has a vivid recollection of all the proceedings, and though there is not a word, and we honestly believe not a thought of egotism through the whole, we read there the whole history.

"Quæque ipse miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.'

Seventeen eventful years and more have passed since the stirring period of the Gorham controversy. In his letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Exeter had wound up his telling philippic with the urgent appeal to his Grace, 'Call together your comprovincial bishops; invite them to declare what is the faith of the Church on the Articles impugned in the judg'ment.' The Bishop must have known well the fruitlessness of such appeal, but he had no resource left but to proclaim his unwavering faith in the 'decision to which the English episcopate would be directed. To us, looking at it at this distance of time, we must admit that we have little faith in what would have been the judgment of the bishops in the spring of 1850. We scarcely think it likely that after what had taken place, there would have been found even a bare majority of the bishops of the province of Canterbury, or of the united provinces of York and Canterbury, to give a flat contradiction to the judgment of the Court of Appeal on the Sacrament of Baptism. But even if there had been a bare majority who would have consented to decide in favour of a judgment which should contradict the court, it is certain that such decision would now have come to be looked upon as almost worthless, because representing nothing more than the opinions of a majority of individuals, who happened to have been raised to the highest stations in the Church. Neither would such a decision have at all satisfied those who had staked their belief on the issue of that case. The prevailing impression amongst Churchmen at that time was as far as we recollect something of this kind, viz. that unless there was a very general protest of bishops, as well as of the inferior clergy and laity, it would be difficult to divest the decision of the Court of Appeal of the apparent character which

it claimed of being the voice of the Church of England. The leading Churchmen of 1850 were, as they well might be, extremely perplexed at the unexpected position in which they found themselves placed. No one, till a few days before the issue, had any suspicion that so flagrant an injustice could have been committed by the eminent lawyers and ecclesiastics who composed the tribunal. The fact that such opinions as Mr. Gorham's, or at least opinions equally heretical, had ever been held with impunity in the Church of England had been urged, and was indeed the only ground on which the judgment could rest; but it was not expected that any such outrageous perversion of the plain meaning of words and super-jesuitical interpretation of statements, could commend itself to the eminent lawyers who sat upon the appeal, however it might fall in with the prejudices of the two weak prelates who occupied the chairs of the metropolitan sees. To use an expression more pointed than elegant, people were taken aback; nor was the judgment itself rendered more palatable by the fact that the presiding judge had, in the course of conversation, previously been heard to say with reference to the coming decision, and as it were in defence of it,' But what is to be done with the Evangelicals? We can't afford to drive them all out of the Church.' Recent events would probably have shown that eminent lawyer that his fears were quite groundless; but the fears existed, and we have no doubt were the sole cause why the luminous judgment of Sir Herbert Jenner Fust in the case of the Bishop of Exeter versus Gorham was reversed, without so much as the faintest reference being made to the elaborate statement of the grounds on which that judgment was formed and pronounced. The decision was received with the utmost astonishment. And no doubt many who never acted as they thought they should have done, were under the impression that the Church of England was somehow or other committed to the doctrine of the Court of Appeal-followed as that decision soon was by the forcing of Mr. Gorham upon the diocese of Exeter. The view of such persons was that there must be a simultaneous rising of Churchmen to vindicate their Church, and to reassert the true Catholic doctrine of baptismal grace. And here, though it is a little off the point, we cannot forbear reminding our readers of the amazing argument of the court on the efficacy of prayer. We must in common charity suppose that Archbishops Sumner and Musgrave did not give their adhesion to the mode in which the judgment was fortified, though unhappily we are precluded by their own admissions from defending them from being participators in the judgment itself. The judgment speaks as follows: Those who are strongly impressed with the earnest prayers which