these writers claim, the entire constitutional Theory of the Church, there can be no Creed, there can be no Sacraments, there can be no spiritual Gift sufficiently ascertainable to be any ground of comfort to a believer, there can be no Unity, there can be no Church.

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Government itself, as far as relates to religious matters, would seem, in spite of Dr. Arnold's elaborate argument on the subject, to be simple tyranny; and so, we conclude, must Mr. Bunsen think when he says that 'a free constitution in the widest sense 'of the words, is the condition of the realization and effectual 'exercise of the true priesthood in the Church, and of the 'preservation of the Church herself.' Indeed, we hardly see why separate Christians are not kings, as well as priests, so as to render it as great an usurpation in the King of Prussia or the Queen of England to assume royal authority over their subjects, as for the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London, to claim the Priesthood (on principle and catholically) over their Dioceses.

The following are the 'summa fastigia' of Dr. Arnold's argument in favour of government in the Church of the Future.

'It is seen and generally acknowledged that men's physical welfare has been greatly promoted by the co-operation of a number of persons endowed with unlike powers and resources.'

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This co-operative principle was by Christianity to be applied to moral purposes, as it had long been to physical.'

The object of Christian society relating to the improvement of the whole of our life, the natural and fit state of the Church is that it should be a sovereign society or commonwealth.'

So long as the sovereign society is not Christian, and the Church is not sovereign, we have two powers alike designed to act upon the whole of our being, but acting often in opposition to one another. Of these powers, the one has wisdom, the other external force and influence.'

The natural and true state of things then is, that this power and this wisdom should be united.' This is the perfect notion of a Christian Church.' - Arnold, pp. 6-10.

All this sounds very plausible and easy; not less plausible and easy than Cicero's famous notion of the origin of states, when the 'noble savage' was won by the eloquence of orators to relinquish barbarian life, to build cities, and submit to civiliza-tion; but how, we should like to ask, is the mass of Christians, all of equal right and privilege, all of equal claim to possess and interpret Scripture, all of equal right to hold, to think, to believe, to worship according to their separate royalty and priesthood, ever to be brought to this voluntary co-operation, in the force and strength of which they will be willing to obey, or able to

enforce their joint decrees? And how will such joint decrees escape the charge of tyrannical interference with their said separate royalties and priesthoods, if they claim to overrule the free choice in point of belief, or worship, or anything that is religious (which are the sole objects of the co-operation), of those who have as good right and title as their governors?

Also how comes this mass of separate kings and priests to be able to be spoken of as the Church? We must, of course, suppose all the present bonds of union loosened - parishes, dioceses, the whole of the higher spiritual doctrines of the Sacraments abandoned, Christians assembled in separate Independent congregations, or broken up into still minuter subdivisions, how, we ask, can it be imagined that we can call such a loose, scattered, disjointed, infusible mass, as this would be, the Church, and proceed to argue about it as if it were capable of sovereign power?

Again, if it were capable of power (which we deny), or being capable of it were able to exercise it without tyranny (which we deny again), or, being capable of exercising it justly, could exercise it without falling to pieces again, and at once, at the very first exercise of it (which we deny again), how, we ask, could a democratic spiritual constitution like this combine in one with any secular constitution which the world knows, excepting a democracy? And how could it conceivably hold its own, even with a democracy, while the secular and spiritual objects would needs be so diverse, the leaders of the respective powers so different, the struggles so tumultuous, and the powers of coercion so small? We know, indeed, that Dr. Arnold protests againt all distinction of things into secular and spiritual, and tells us that such a distinction is 'utterly without foundation, 'for in one sense all things are secular, for they are done in 'time and on earth; in another, all things are spiritual, for they 'affect us morally either for the better or the worse, and so ' tend to make our spirits fitter for the society of God, or of his 'enemies.' But we really must, with all respect for the lamented writer, claim to regard this sort of writing as extravagant, and indicative only of the zeal and heat of the author, and his intense conviction of the soundness of his conclusions; for can it be denied that some things are more secular than others, and some more spiritual? that though, no doubt, there is no absolute barrier between the two subjects, as though the secular were not at

1 It is interesting and curious to observe, how while the high Roman monarchical theory of Church government is apparently incompatible with all polities except such as are monarchical; and the Independent with all except such as are democratic; the Federal-Episcopal, or Cyprianic seems capable of an application as wide as that of Christianity itself.

all spiritual, or the spiritual not at all secular, yet that going to church and saying one's prayers verges more nearly to the spiritual side than eating one's breakfast, and vice versa?

From Government let us pass to Doctrine. We hold it to be equally impossible that this constitution of the Church of the Future should admit of a Creed.

This impossibility seems to us to arise directly, and follow necessarily, from the perfect independence of interpretation of Holy Scripture belonging to every believer.

Nor let it be supposed that unity of theological opinion would be as likely to be maintained as unity of political, or of scientific, or other sorts of opinion, without the intervention of any sort of authority, by the mere gravitation of the sentiments of the majority towards some common principles, of which none but paradoxical and exceptional minds could doubt. Such may well be the case in subjects where opinions are either derived by process of acknowledged reasoning from some acknowledged principles, or are capable of being tested continually by their application to the actual state of things. But the interpretation of Holy Scripture is unlike either of these. No principles of interpretation of these books can be laid down, or ever have been laid down, on which all will agree. No dogmas ever have been, or can be derived from those books, which multitudes have not denied. No single truth, moral or divine, with the exception of the mere being of God, can boast to have been drawn from Holy Scripture with the unanimous consent of all who have called themselves Christians-of all who would have a right to claim, not a vote only, but an equality of rightness, truth, and privilege, according to the Bunsenian Constitution of the Future Church.

Accordingly we find in these writers a very consistent laxity on the subject of creeds. Dr. Arnold's work, being a fragment, does not reach any formal discussion of the subject of doctrine. Yet we find him saying, in a tone which well indicates the manner in which he would have treated that subject, if he had dealt with it directly,

A great point is gained when we understand that the heresies condemned by the Apostles were not mere erroneous opinions on some theoretical truth, but absolute perversions of Christian holiness: that they were not so much false as wicked. And further, where there was a false opinion in the heresy, it was of so monstrous a character, and so directly connected with profligacy of life, that it admits of no comparison with the so-called heresies of later ages..... In the Arian controversy, and in all others which have since arisen among Christians, the question has turned upon the true interpretation of the Apostles' words; but both parties have alike acknowledged that what the Apostles taught was to be received as the undoubted rule of faith and of action. Not so, however, the real heretics of the first century.'-Arnold, p. 89.

Is it possible to draw any other conclusion from this passage than that, in the author's mind, there can be no heresy' in those who acknowledge that what the Apostles taught is to be received as the undoubted rule of faith and action?-i.e. that Scriptural interpretation is an absolutely open field, in which as there can be no heresy, so there can be no authoritative truth?

Mr. Bunsen has two methods of dealing with Christian doctrine. The one philosophical; the norm of which may be gathered from the following sentence :

' It can never be repeated too often, or expressed too emphatically, that the Protestant Church, by regarding piety and morality as identical terms, by assuming the religious and moral feelings of man to be inseparably united in their deepest roots, has bound herself to discover and demonstrate the ethical exponent of every objective expression respecting the relation of man to God.'-Bunsen, p. 33.

Does any reader desire a few specimens of the art of ethical exposition of objective doctrines? Here are a few with which this volume casually furnishes us. The Church of Christ; Emancipated Humanity,' (p. 224). Catholicity; 'Believing Humanity as one in its Divine Redeemer,' (p. 216). Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ; 'Humanity set free by the Word and the Spirit,' (p. 192). Universal Priesthood of Christians; 'The general moral responsibility to God of every individual,' (p. 32), or, aliter, the postulate that faith in the Holy Spirit is capable of being realized,' (p. 21). Episcopacy; The personal Conscience,' (p. 69). The kingdom of God; The moral order of the world,' (p. 35). The body of Christ; 'Humanity adopted into the Divine fellowship,' (217).

We should have thought that there would have been little need of any further doctoring of doctrine than this philosophical method would have furnished. Reduced to such a gaseous form, sublimed and bubble-blown into next to nothing, expounded thus ethically into nothing more nor less than our own separate selves, with our own personal notions and moralities, doctrine is rendered so completely harmless, that we cannot understand why it is worth while, even if it be not inconsistent and unintelligible, to make a separate historical crusade against doctrine as such.

But Mr. Bunsen is not satisfied. He complains that the Protestant Churches, for the last three hundred years, have taken up the same one-sided view as the Clergy of the earlier Church for a thousand (fifteen hundred?) years before;-the ' notion, that is, that Christianity is in the very first place a 'doctrine, and that unity of doctrine, that is, of a theological 'system, is the condition of the development of the Church in every other respect.' - Bunsen, p. 19.

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Thus, then, we might suppose, that what with philosophy, what with anti-dogmatism, and what with the independent right of kings and priests to interpret, Mr. Bunsen had swept away all creeds whatsoever, and left the field as clear of doctrine as we have seen it made of government. But no: we must not do injustice. The very same paragraph from which we have extracted the last sentence contains the very thing which we had imagined to be annihilated-to be impossible to have become an absurdity; -the Symbolum Bunsenianum itself.

'The eternal, indestructible foundation and object of Christian faith is formed by three acts of God himself :---the act of creation, by which the world was called into existence, and man made in the image of God; the act of redemption, through Christ the God-man; and the act of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost to be the Guide of the mind of the Church, and the supreme Witness for that which is testified to us by history'(1 John v.)-Bunsen, p. 18.

We trust that our readers will give us credit for the selfcommand with which we waive all more particular notice of the audacity and presumption with which this 'Apostle of the Church of the Future' takes upon him to shear away from the glorious and venerable creed of the true Apostles, every word (such as 'Father,' 'only-begotten Son,' 'our Lord,' &c.) which contains truth in contradistinction to act, so as to enable him, with the least semblance of consistency to retain some shadow of an objective religion at the very time when his arguments have seemed to sweep away all doctrines whatever from the Church. But we really must ask, what right has Mr. Bunsen, after all his arguments, to use in his creed the words God-man? What possible warrant can he have, in defiance of all Church history, to disallow the existence of Arian, Unitarian, and Socinian opinions, by introducing the doctrine of the Divinity of our Lord into his miserable creed of Divine Acts? Why has not the Arian,