the style in which he writes, no one of the converts to Rome has undergone a more complete revulsion of feeling.

The second of the essays reprinted in this volume is entitled 'The Convocation and the Crown in Council.' We have not much to say upon this essay, which is as it were a continuation of the subject begun in the letter to the same friend, written four months earlier. The burden of the first letter, however, was that Convocation had taken no steps in the Gorham case; the key-note of the second is an attack on Convocation after it has spoken out on the Essays and Reviews.' Still we must do this essay the justice to admit that it rakes up the whole case that can be made against the Church of England, and represents every anomaly in its constitution in so very pointed a manner, as somewhat to belie the often-repeated assertion that the writer is far from rejoicing over the issues that are befalling her. Indeed we do not know why Dr. Manning should so earnestly rebut this accusation. In his circumstances, and with his views, it is scarcely possible but he must rejoice in that which must appear to him the immediate forerunner of her entire dissolution. If he thinks as he says, that the Church of England, so far from being a bulwark against the inroads of infidelity, has floated before it, surely he is bound as a good Catholic to hope and to pray for its speedy extinction. But be this as it may, the second essay in this volume represents the whole case as against the Church of England of the present day, in as striking a light as it well can be represented. It is in truth so well represented that it is only wonderful that any educated person can remain in a communion so manifestly proved to be outside the pale of the Church. misfortune of the case is that the Archbishop tells the story exactly as an Anglican might have told it. We mourn over the thraldom of the Church, the apparent inconsistencies in which she is involved, and the many other concurrences which he has enumerated circumstantially. And yet we do not come to his conclusion. And simply for this reason. He has stated one side of the case. The other side has no attractions for a convert to Rome. And in the first place we may observe, that every point against the Church of England that is so mercilessly urged against her by her enemies, might have been urged with as great force before as after the recent judgments in the Court of Appeal. It is true no one would have beforehand expected such judgments to be given. Nevertheless, it was always possible that such should be given. They do not place the Church in a worse position than she was in before; they do but bring out into strong relief the weak points in her position. It is not as if they constituted an era in the existence of the Church, a crisis at which it became people to act and judge

The

decidedly because they have been taken by surprise. That they indicate a weakness in her present condition of alliance to the State is undeniable. But as everybody knows that the union with the State is not of the essence of a Church, and as every one can see that these adverse judgments are owing entirely to the accidental circumstance of that union, it surely is a point of practical wisdom to wait and see the end. The changes through which the Church of England has gone have been so remarkable that it would be impossible to predict what may still be coming upon her. Some crisis is no doubt at hand. Humanly speaking, it is undoubtedly conceivable that the worst fears of her sons or the worst hopes of her enemies may be realized; but the upward direction in which she has been so long steadily moving, naturally makes us hopeful for the future. The improvement in every direction within the Church has been so marked that, to state it at its full, we should seem almost to describe it in the past as having forfeited its character as a living branch of the Catholic Church. What the second Prayer-book of Edward VI. was as compared with the Liturgy of 1662, the state of the Church of England in the eighteenth century is compared with what it is now in the middle of the nineteenth. We have already said that the Gorham judgment has exercised the wonderful effect of spreading the orthodox doctrine of baptismal grace throughout the whole country. There is another point which the judges in that trial insisted upon, which we think is fraught with important consequences as yet undeveloped. It is not likely that the judges in that court would have liked to decide that Eucharistic Adoration was compatible with English formularies. But

'Quam temere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam.'

The very condition which the judges made in the Gorham case, apparently for the express purpose of comprehending the party whom the common-sense interpretation of the formularies of the Church of England refuses to hold, will bind their successors in the trial of Eucharistic Adoration, if ever it should come before them, to admit an interpretation which will be maintained by too large a number of adherents to allow of their being excluded. And now we shall be told that after all, supposing such should be the issue, it amounts to no more than a bare toleration of these views as matters of opinion. And indeed this is the exact point which Dr. Manning works with such great effect, representing the Church of England as being the city of confusion, in which truth and falsehood, are alike. tolerated, and arguing that that cannot possibly be any part of the Church of Christ where heresy of any kind is tolerated.

The argument, no doubt, is plausible, and to a regularly educated Roman Catholic would, without doubt, appear conclusive for the claims of Rome as against England, even were he ever so much disposed to favour Anglican claims. But it deserves to be considered that if this were absolutely conclusive, it was just as conclusive at any given period since the Reformation as at the present moment. Whatever were the advantages derived from the Reformation in Henry the Eighth's reign or in that of Elizabeth, in the point of view from which the Church party regard matters there has always existed this evil. A Protestant party, who to our apprehension have not much standing-ground, have held their own in the Church, and, sheltered behind the Thirty-nine Articles, have been able to make out a case which, we freely admit, on the surface of the Articles, and omitting all consideration of the dogmatic teaching of the Prayer-Book, would be quite tenable in most of its points. That it has stood its ground so long is mainly owing to the ignorance and defective education of the clergy. The absurdities of the Evangelical system, which have been propped up by a traditional hypothesis which has hitherto placed a barrier against the incursions of reason and of common-sense, have already given way, and amid the fray and in the battle-field in which theology and rationalism are fighting a deadly fight for the possession of the vantage-ground of the English Church, their place is nowhere to be found. has been said, and with some semblance of historical proof, that Anglicanism has stood its ground by opposing Rome. It is certain it will do so no longer. The party whose whole tactics consisted in holding up Roman doctrines which they entirely misunderstood and misrepresented, to the abhorrence of Englishmen, is nearly extinct. It will never again play any part in the history of the Church of England, except, indeed, in petty wranglings amongst its own members over portions of exploded controversy. But its actual existence will continue as long as the Thirty-nine Articles remain part of the English system, for the reason we have already given, viz. that a prima facie view of the Articles is in their favour.

It

Now, in replying to the Roman attack upon our position, it would be absurd for us to put in the plea that we had reached a final state of perfection, or something as nearly like perfection as can be obtained by a National Church. Whether or not this was the view of cathedral dignitaries of a bygone age, whose sermons seemed to us always to begin either with the words or the sentiment, 'It is the wisdom of the Church of England,' &c. we need not stop to inquire. Certain it is that this is not the standing-point on which the Church of Eugland can take up her position for all time to come. We have before said, and we

confess we think it is the only plea on which our position can be justified, that we are in a transition state. No one, we suppose, would contend now that the Church of England sprung suddenly in the days of the Tudors into a perfect state of development, as Pallas was fabled to have sprung from the head of Zeus. No doubt the view under which the publication of the volumes of the Parker Society was undertaken, was something of the kind, but the people who believed in the Reformers do not seem to have cared to spend much time over their works. We never yet saw a copy of this celebrated series, which is now bought at waste-paper price, but what might fairly have been described in an advertisement as in an uncut state. There is indeed at the present moment an attempt to raise the battle-cry for the principles of the Reformation, and the truths for which our forefathers in the Protestant faith were martyred. But it does not meet with much sympathy. Those who know anything of history know that neither the men nor the principles will bear very close inspection. For good or for evil, the retrograde motion from those principles must be admitted to be a fact by those who have read the accounts of the Hampton Court and the Savoy Conferences, under James I. and Charles II. We shall hear for the future, fierce denunciations from two opposite quarters, of the bigotry and intolerance of the Reformers of the sixteenth century; whilst on the side of the third party, who will attempt their defence, there will be the faint admission that after all they were but fallible men, who cannot be trusted for every point of doctrine, nor justified in every practice of morality which they advocated. We may safely affirm that their day is gone by. And when this has come to be admitted on all hands, as soon it will be, people will begin to see the absurdity of tying down the intellects of people who have succeeded them after an interval of ten generations, to their opinions or their statements. For many years past it has been proclaimed far and wide that people do not choose to be bound by their opinions, and in the inevitable march of events the time cannot be far distant when it will be seen that no defence of subscription to their statements can be maintained. The first critic who shall take upon himself the office of dissecting the Thirty-nine Articles, with the view of exposing their misstatement of facts, their irrelevancy to the present state of opinion in England, or their inefficiency in restraining Roman practice on the one side, or Calvinistic heresy on the other, will probably be found to have much of the argument to himself. Public opinion will follow slowly in his train. And the Church of England will gradually be influenced by the tide of opinion. She cannot remain stationary. People will judge of the movement differently, according to the position from

which they view it. It will seem to Dr. Manning that she is consistently moving onward in the direction of latitudinarianism and general scepticism. To us it seems that she never had so Catholic a tone or such Catholic tendencies as at the present

moment.

The present generation may perhaps see the actual or at least the virtual abandonment of the Thirty-nine Articles, by the common consent and united efforts of Churchmen and Latitudinarians, and the next will probably witness the last struggle between the two parties for the possession of the Established Church.