some points, not perhaps excluding his notion of development, (though in this matter we suspect that his views and our own are not far asunder,) he has pressed to an undue extent: and his strictures on anonymous publications, although, like every suggestion of his, they cannot be otherwise than valuable, and are not to be dismissed without due consideration-(we find that they are also expressed by the Foreign and Colonial Reviewer) -we cannot at present coincide in-for we think, and had we time, would show, that the advantages overbalance the disadvantages, however great. However, we desire to suspend our judgment on so important a subject: it is not to be passed over in a paragraph. We do most respectfully thank Mr. Palmer for the advice which he has tendered to all controversial and periodical writers; and we cannot conclude better than by reading ourselves a very useful and needful lesson; although we believe and trust that our own pages have been kept tolerably free from the faults herein condemned.

"I would also venture to suggest (and the suggestion is offered alike to all parties) the necessity of abstaining from the perusal of controversial writings, and especially from the study of journals and periodicals, the circulation of which depends upon the amount of excitement which they supply. I am persuaded, that no one who permits himself the habitual study of such publications, can fail of imbibing their tone, and of thus being gradually filled with irritated and angry feeling. I am sure that many excellent men would have recoiled with horror from the perusal of such writings, had they been aware of the frame of mind to which they were about to be unconsciously led. It almost seems to argue distrust in the soundness of a cause, when we are for ever seeking for arguments to sustain it. If 'Tractarianism,' as it is sometimes called, be dangerous and pernicious, if it had been marked by censures, why is it necessary to dwell longer on the subject? Is it wise or right to continue the controversy, to the exclusion of almost every other thought or interest; to mark all its turns and windings, to listen to every alleged error, and dwell on every alleged instance of folly or of guilt? Do not such studies tend to disturb the heart, and disqualify it from the higher pursuits of religion? Do they not engender a spirit of criticism? Are they wholly exempt from danger, in familiarizing the mind with the notions of error and evil? I am convinced that there is no more clear duty of Christians in these days, than that of abstaining from the habitual study of controversial journals and periodicals, in which the power of writing anonymously what no man would venture openly to avow; and the pecuniary interests of publishers or proprietors, which are promoted by violence of tone and party spirit, combine to keep up an unwholesome and unnatural excitement. And I would most earnestly and humbly appeal to the consciences of writers in periodicals, whether it is right to put forward sentiments under the veil of anonymous communications which they would feel in any degree reluctant to publish with their names. Individuals have it in their power largely to diminish these evils, and in that power is involved responsibility-a responsibility to God for the welfare of His Church."-Palmer, pp 82, 83.

[We may as well state, that the late period of the month in which Mr. Palmer's pamphlet appeared, has prevented us from examining into the fairness of his quotations. We cannot for one moment suppose them to be otherwise than faithful; indeed, most we recognised with sorrow; but much depends upon the context.]

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

The Scottish Communion Office. Edinburgh: Grant. 1843. 24mo.

THIS is a beautiful and portable edition of a Liturgy which English churchmen often inquire for in vain, and which, indeed, was only to be had before in the rather scarce, but very valuable, work of Skinner.

Our readers have not now to be told how high a value we attach to the Scottish Communion Office; and we are only led to mention it at present from having observed, with great pain, that a movement against it is taking place in the Church whose possession of it has been so often envied here. The clergy of Ross and Argyle, and those not of the whole diocese, but the whole city of Glasgow, have formally expressed their wish to be rid of it. We now implore them to reconsider their measures. They assign two reasons for destroying the rich legacy of their fathers;-first, the advantages that would ensue from entire uniformity with the Church of England; and, second, the absence of pretext that would then be enjoyed by their turbulent members, who now first disturb, and then leave them, on the plea of the Scottish Office wounding their consciences. As regards the former reason, we deny the fact, we deny that uniformity, as such, is desirable, however sensible we trust we are of the blessedness of unity. The truth is, that uniformity, when carried beyond its natural and fitting bounds, those of a given territory, is apt to obscure unity to produce deadness. Varying rituals, varying usages, varying schools, so long as there is substantial identity, promote the vitality of the Church, act healthily on each other, and tend to manifest her essential unity. But if uniformity with England were desirable, why is it to be produced by Scotland; why are better gifts to be sacrificed to more defective ones; why are the lean cattle to swallow up the fat?

As regards the second reason, in all seriousness, we would ask the petitioning clergy, is their Church a loser by the schism of such persons as Mr. Drummond and Sir William Dunbar? That those two wretched men have put themselves in a fearful position cannot be doubted; but, however tremendous the present situation of one, and guilty, to say the least, that of the other, they must in both cases be but the manifestation of the evil that was in them before; their previous communion could not have been real, or living; and their influence on the Church, whose priests they were, must have been pernicious. She therefore has nothing to regret on her own account in losing them, or those who have been misguided enough to adhere to them. That pain and scandal are caused by such doings, we deny not; but such are the portion of the Church in every age; she must not shrink from them, they are her Saviour's cup and His baptism, the saving marks of His cross upon her,-signs rather of spiritual life and welfare than the reverse. The opposition of bad men is only exerted against the Church's energy. They have ever

been tolerant of her slumbers.

For the Church of England, we say that she will be a loser, if a

Liturgy nearer the primitive model than her own be removed from under her eye, and lose the sanction which it has from being that of a Church with which she is in full communion. Let us hope and pray that the evil may be averted.

Apostolical Succession not the Doctrine of the Church of England. By the Rev. JOHN HUNTER, M.A., &c. &c. Second edition, enlarged. London: Nisbet. Bath: Godwin.

IT is painful to see an amiable and respectable clergyman, as we understand Mr. Hunter to be, taking such perverse pains to strip the Church, of which he is a minister, of that which chiefly distinguishes her, in a corporate capacity, from the followers of Muggleton, Joanna Southcott, and the Mormonite impostor. His pamphlet is evidently prompted by the benevolent intention of comprehending within the Church, strictly and properly so called, not only the foreign Protestant communities, but also most of the religious bodies in this country who dissent from our communion. But in his zeal to compass this cherished object, he is manifestly endeavouring to serve charity at the expense of truth.

His principal arguments seem to be, that the Church nowhere positively asserts the Apostolical Succession. That some of her assertions in her Articles and Homilies are expressed with such a latitude as to take in, not only the foreign Protestant bodies, but also the various (so-called) orthodox dissenters at home. And, that the Apostolic Succession was rejected by some of the English Reformers.

Now, granting that our Church has nowhere totidem verbis asserted the doctrine, yet by her constant appeals, in justification both of her doctrine and practice, to the primitive Church, by which this doctrine was notoriously held; and by her positive assertions in her ordinal, that "from the Apostles' time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ's Church, bishops, priests, and deacons ;" and that "to the intent that these orders may be continued, and reverently used and esteemed, in the united Church of England and Ireland, no man shall be accounted a lawful bishop, priest, or deacon in the united Church of England and Ireland, or suffered to execute any of the said functions, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted thereunto, according to the form hereafter following, or hath had formerly EPISCOPAL consecration or ordination ;"-by these positive assertions, the Church of England fully warrants the inference that she considers the Apostolic Succession as, at least, generally necessary to the effectual exercise of the ministerial office.

With respect to the foreign Protestant bodies, it seems understood that the English reformers felt a tenderness about excluding from their definition of the Church, in some sense, congregations whom e considered as unwillingly deprived of the succession. And many those divines among us who have most firmly held the doctrine of apostolical succession have allowed them to be Churches, though a maimed and imperfect state. But to leap from this point to the conclusion that our Church, therefore, places the dissenting bodies in

this country on the same footing, is to contradict not only the language of her ordinal, as above quoted, but also the still stronger expressions of her eleventh canon, in which she declares excommunicated "those that assert that there are within this realm other meetings, assemblies, or congregations of the king's born subjects, than such as by the laws of this land are held and allowed, which may rightly challenge to themselves the name of true and lawful churches."

With regard to the opinions of certain of the English reformers on the doctrine of the succession, it may be enough, in order to neutralize Mr. Hunter's quotations, to confront them with the following:-1. In 1536, the following statement was signed by Cranmer, Latimer, and Shaxton :-"Christ and his apostles did institute and ordain in the New Testament certain ministers or officers which should bear spiritual power, authority, and commission under Christ. ... to order and to consecrate others in the same room, order, and office, whereunto they be called and admitted themselves." 2. In 1548, we find the subjoined assertion put forth by the authority of Cranmer (who is expressly quoted by Mr. H. in refutation of the succession):-"The ministration of God's word, which our Lord Jesus Christ himself at first dit institute, was derived from the apostles unto others after them by imposition of hands, and giving the Holy Ghost, from the apostles' time to our days." In 1558-9, the following assertion was maintained by Scory, Grindal, Cox, Aylmer, Guest, Jewel, and Horn:-"The apostles' authority is derived upon after ages, and conveyed to the BISHOPS their SUCCESSORS."

It may be well to add, that respecting the sentiments of so many of the great lights of our Church from the period that the excitement of the Reformation had had time to cool,-i. e. from Bilson, Hooker, and Bancroft, downwards, comprehending Andrewes, Hall, Sanderson, Hammond, Beveridge, &c. &c. there is no dispute. They were all decided maintainers of the apostolical succession; and though their evidence may be slighted by those whose strong attachment to a particular system has closed their eyes to the force of legitimate argument, yet it will always have due weight in quarters where zeal is tempered with judgment, and balanced by discretion.

Letters from Madras during the Years 1836-1839. By a LADY. London: Murray. 1843.

THIS is a delightful book. We suppose many people must have felt how little information is to be got from Anglo-Indians, on the most obvious points one would think connected with Indian life, how impossible it is to form any distinct image out of their conversation or reports of things, not coming precisely under the heads of religion, politics, natural history, or the thermometer, but concerning which one's curiosity is as active as it is about most of these. The truth is, India is not visited like any other country. People go there e'en because they must; by doing certain things there they earn their

Meaning, of course, laws ecclesiastical.

bread; their facilities of seeing to the right or to the left of their daily occupations are very few and small; the tremendous climate directs an unhappy degree of attention to little comforts for the day or for the hour, and exercises, moreover, an enervating influence on the faculties; when here on furlough they are often glad, as far as may be, to forget the existence of the place; and such reminiscences of it as they may occasionally wish to indulge, are from the aforesaid circumstances intelligible only to one who has been there with them. Hence has arisen the strange circumstance that an eminently inquisitive nation possesses vast and important regions, in which comparatively few of its families of the better class have not at least one member, and yet remains more ignorant of what those regions are, as regards the ordinary aspect of life there, than it is of nearly any other civilized part of the world.

The present authoress goes far to supply this deficiency, as regards the parts of India which she has seen. Her letters are most genuine and graphic, obviously never designed for publication; lively feminine views of all around her frankly revealed to her own near relations, overflowing with humour, and good humour, delightfully free from any obtrusive theory, either political or religious, yet full of shrewd sense, and impregnated with right principle and feeling. She dreads and seems to predict that Indian indolence must in time steal over herself, but if tolerable health be vouchsafed to her, we cannot fancy the sultriest of seasons and warmest of winds ever reducing her to inactivity.

The following is her account of Madras society :

"We have been to one or two large dinner-parties, rather grand, dull, and silent. The company are generally tired out with the heat and the office-work all day before they assemble at seven o'clock, and the houses are greatly infested by musquitoes, which are in themselves enough to lower one's spirits and stop conversation. People talk a little in a very low voice to those next to them, but one scarcely ever hears any topic of general interest started except steam navigation. To be sure, 'few changes can be rung on few bells;' but these good folks do ring on the 'changes in the service,' till I cannot help sometimes wishing all their appointments were permanent. At an Indian dinner all the guests bring their own servants to wait upon them, so there is a turbaned sultan-like creature behind every chair. A great fan is going over our heads the whole time, and every window and door open; so that, notwithstanding the number of people in the room, it is in reality cooler that an English dining-room. What would grandmamma say to the wastefulness of an Indian dinner? Every body dines at luncheon, or, as it is here called, tiffin-time, so that there is next to nothing eaten, but about four times as much food put upon the table as would serve for an English party. Geese and turkeys and joints of mutton for side-dishes, and everything else in proportion. All the fruit in India is not worth one visit to your strawberry-beds. The ingenious French at Pondicherry have contrived to cultivate vines; but the English say nothing will grow, and they remain content to waste their substance and their stomach-aches on spongy shaddocks and sour oranges, unless they send to Pondicherry for grapes, which the French are so obliging as to sell at a rupee a bunch. After dinner the company all sit round in the middle of the great gallerylike rooms, talk in whispers, and scratch their musquito-bites. Sometimes there is a little music, as languid as every thing else. Concerning the company themselves, the ladies are all old and wizen, and the gentlemen are all old and wizen. Somebody says France is the paradise of married women, and England of girls: I am sure India is the paradise of middle-aged gentlemen. While they are young, they are thought thing of just supposed to be making or marring their fortunes, as the case may but at about forty, when they are high in the service,' rather yellow, and somegrey, they begin to be taken notice of, and called 'young men.' These respectpersons do all the flirtation too in a solemn sort of way, while the young ones sit