are offered for the divine blessing and the grace of God may 'not unreasonably suppose that the grace is not necessarily 'tied to the rite.' The line of separation, it may well be believed, does not appear in the printed form. We have added it to draw attention to the argument. We do not think Aristophanes himself ever produced so splendid a specimen of a παρ' ὑπόνοιαν. The Bishop of Exeter gives his account of the state of things which was then only incipient. Very serious doubts,' he says, 'have been raised in the minds of many, whether the Church, if she continued passive under this judgment, would not forfeit 'her claim to be a portion of the Church of Christ.'

This is the state of things with which the letter to an Anglican friend commences. The author was well qualified to describe the case, for it was the turning-point of his life. He was himself concerned in that declaration which was so carefully prepared and afterwards signed by about a dozen members of the Church of England, half of whose number subsequently seceded to Rome, and four of whom are still in the same position that they occupied then, five being no longer living. We need not enumerate all the resolutions that were then drawn up. The sting of the Archbishop's recounting of them exists in the first, which runs as follows: 1. That whatsoever at the present time 'be the force of the sentence delivered on appeal in the case of 'Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter, the Church of England will 'eventually be bound by the said sentence, unless it shall openly 'and expressly reject the erroneous doctrine sanctioned thereby." Whilst probably all who still remain in communion with the Church of England would agree in all other parts of these resolutions, they must,-while admitting that the allowing the contradictory of an article of the Creed to be held is a virtual abandonment of the article, and that any portion of the Church which abandons such article thereby ceases to be a part of the Catholic Church,-they must, we say, retract the opinion there expressed of the binding force of this decision on the Church of England. Not only has everything failed which was suggested in that protest, but Churchmen will probably rejoice in the failure of each suggestion that was made. An authoritative declaration by Convocation, if it had been made, would certainly have been made not unanimously but only by a majority, whether small or great; whilst a re-affirmation by the united episcopate would certainly at the present moment be considered of no value whatever. Churchmen of that day did not perceive-and how was it possible that they should guess-how things were moving. The silent growth of belief in the doctrine of baptismal grace would, if they could have foreseen it, have more than answered all their expectations. It is certain that any new declaration or re

affirmation of a doctrine so plainly expressed in the formularies of the Church could have had no effect at all upon those who believed it, or on those who considered that disbelief in it was reconcilable with the claims of conscience. And though the theoretical difficulty still remains, we must for the present be hopeful in the solvitur ambulando process, which has so far outstripped all calculation. The party whose position was thought secured by the Gorham judgment, are almost extinct as far as influence is concerned. And an approach to something like orthodoxy of belief, as far as regards this sacrament, has been steadily going on for seventeen years. The Archbishop

does not tell us who was the individual who addressed the rest of the signers of the document in the words: If then the 'Church of England shall not clear itself of the Gorham 'judgment, we are all, I suppose, prepared to leave it.' He says he also remembers the answer of one who spoke, he fears, also for others, viz. that, come what might, he had no intention of leaving the Church of England.

Now, Dr. Manning, if he was not the first of these two speakers at least highly approves of what he said, and mentions the answer not only with the view of reprobating it, but apparently as indicating the folly of a man who by his words must of course be supposed to have meant that he had an entire confidence in the Church of England. We do not presume to say anything in the way of justifying the expression taken in its exact letter, nor probably did the person who spoke the words mean more than that he felt a full confidence that under whatever difficulties and dangers she might have to pass the Church of England would eventually steer clear of them all; but we confess that we entirely disapprove of the hard and critical tone of the other speaker, who could deliberately stake the convictions of a life on the issue of a single case. It seems to us there could have been little of the tenderness of a son towards a mother, an allegiance very superficial and lightly sitting, which forcibly reminds us of the flippant and flaunting way in which some earlier conversions were effected, in the case of persons who laid down the law for themselves how they would interpret the formularies, apparently for the express purpose of using the refusal of their claim as the handle for quitting the Church of their fathers. It is not for us to judge others, but it has been gradually more and more deeply impressed on our minds as events go forward, how much more wisely they act who wait to see the end. It is of course possible that any one event may be like the last ounce which breaks the camel's back. And there are undoubtedly perplexities enough in recent affairs to make any one anxious about the future. But the condition of things.

in 1850 was very different. The secession of Dr. Newman had taken place some time before; and the startling effect of the loss of that master mind had been in some degree recovered. There had been no alarming appearances. And though probably the feeling of most of those who sympathize with this Review was quite the same as that experienced by those who seceded soon after or consequently upon the Gorham trial, it seems to us certain that many of those who then left us would have been with us still if they could have known the wonderful growth of the Church of England, which was to be developed in so short a space of time as fifteen or sixteen years.

A remarkable instance of Dr. Manning's one-sidedness occurs in his description of the attempt made by Blomfield, Bishop of London, to amend the Court that had been considered to make such a frightful blunder. He quotes the expression of a right reverend prelate that many gems in the Church of England would fall from it,' and the reply made by Lord Carlisle that the gems must be loosely set if they could be so lightly shaken off. The reply was an obvious one, and savoured of the good sense characteristic of the speaker; but Dr. Manning can see no other point in it than to accuse those who have remained in their position of having been too firmly riveted in the Establishment. He cannot bestow a thought upon the nature of the tie which seems so strong. He would not accuse them of acting from motives of worldly interest. And what, then, is the account to be given of the divergence of their course from that which the writer has himself adopted? And here the Archbishop is mute. To him it is simply inexplicable.

In these days of rapidly passing events, when all but the most recent things slip the memory so quickly, it is well sometimes to recur to the history of the early times of the great movement that for forty years has convulsed the Church of this country. We can now see in the past how short-sighted would have been the policy some of us would have adopted. Who would dream now of supporting such a bill as that brought in by the Bishop of London, that the doctrinal and the legal view should be taken apart, the latter being consigned to the judges of the Privy Council, whilst theology was relegated to the bench of bishops. A more suicidal measure for the Church party could scarcely have been devised; yet the measure found favour with many Churchmen of the day. Lord Brougham made use of precisely the same arguments as would be used by Churchmen of the present day, with the exception that he was too polite in the House of Lords to put the question which we now feel we should answer in the negative,Suppose that all the bishops of the Church of England should decide unanimously on any doc

trine, would any one receive the decision as infallible?' He contented himself with the more practical argument-more practical, that is, because founded on a more probable conjecture-that the decision of the bishops would not be thought much of, on the ground of its representing only the opinion of a fluctuating majority.

The failure of this bill, which Dr. Manning, with the singular infelicity of diction which characterizes this volume, speaks of as 'an overwhelming rejection,' is made the most of as shewing the acceptation on the part of the Church of England of the appellate jurisdiction of the Crown. He goes the length of saying that no further attempt has been made to mend it, (but then he is writing in the spring of 1864, and perhaps hardly would have penned the sentence exactly in the same words if he had been producing it for the first time in 1867); and then continues, with an exactness of logic which exactly matches the grammatical precision of the previous statement, that appeals must be settled within the four seas, or they must be carried beyond them. This, no doubt, is an unexceptionable dichotomy, but now for the conclusion, that is, the Church of England has no choice for its final appeal but the Crown or the Holy See.'

Dr. Manning is extremely hard to please. He first finds fault with the Church of England for not speaking out, and when she does speak out the matter is only made worse. He seems to make the most of the Church of England having spoken in Convocation on other subjects, but taunts her with not having given an utterance on the Gorham controversy. Does Dr. Manning affect to doubt what would be her utterance as to the grace of baptism? If he does, he can know little of the mind of Convocation. If he does not, we wonder that he does not graciously condescend to admit a truth which he evidently thinks his argument is so strong as to be able easily to dispense with. As it is, he dilates upon the plain fact that the Church of England has not specially spoken on this subject for thirteen years. Does it occur to him to imagine that the reason of this may perhaps be, that the subject has not turned up at all for thirteen years? and can he carry his mind one step further, and recognize that the reason why it has not turned up is this, that the Evangelical clergy even have begun to see the truth on this point, and that the small and uninfluential section of them who still disbelieve the plain statements of the Book of Common Prayer, would be somewhat afraid to express themselves openly in the heretical language of Mr. Gorham, albeit that language is sheltered beneath the broad shield of the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

After having dispatched the subject of Baptism, the Arch

bishop of Westminster proceeds to the doctrine of the Eucharist. And there he states very fairly that Archdeacon Denison has had to acquiesce in the position that his own view of the subject is regarded as tenable, whilst others more or less contradictory of it are likewise held in the Church of England. Dr. Manning does not take advantage of the circumstance which some people may regard as a doubtful advantage, that no trial on the merits of the case took place. But he might have spared all allusion to the recent trial on the case, if he had contented himself with remarking, what nobody would have been able to gainsay, that two very different views have all along been held on this subject within the pale of the Church of England with entire impunity.

Dr. Manning concludes his catalogue of telling facts against the Church of England with the Jerusalem bishopric, the prevalence of rationalism at Oxford, the sitting of Jews in Parliament, the alteration of the marriage law, Dr. Colenso's permission of polygamy, and the acquittal of Mr. Wilson and Dr. Williams; neither does he omit to notice the attempt at united action where such action was possible between the two parties of the Church, when the doctrine of future punishment was impugned. He adds, also, his fears that Dr. Colenso is but a type of the 'educated English layman.' On this latter point we can assure him that his fears are quite groundless. Nevertheless, it seems hardly possible not to add, what we heartily wish fact would not permit us to add, that the number of English who disbelieve the supernatural is by no means equal to that of other nations where the Roman Church has its full sway. If all this condition of unbelief has arisen in England from the principle that the Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is the religion of Protestants, from what principle, we ask, has the same state of things, if not a much worse one, arisen in France and Italy and Germany? We are as much opposed to the so-called principles of the Reformation as Dr. Manning himself can possibly be. It is no new thing for this Review to protest that we do not believe either in the doctrines or the characters of the Reformers. We take our stand on the Prayer-book of 1662; or if we must go back to an earlier period for our theology, we shall take the liberty of referring to an earlier century than the sixteenth.

Dr. Manning seems to think it preposterous that any minds should be able still to entertain the idea that there is something divine in the Anglican system, after meeting with such rebuffs in courts of law as have befallen its cherished doctrines. But in truth the real state of things amongst us has not been altered. The legalization of certain errors has not created those errors, it has but sanctioned what already existed; and indeed the re