and in nothing seek thyself, and you shall feel most sweetly, that thy GOD is above all.

2. O Lord, it is true what thou sayest; all that thou speakest pleaseth me; wherefore, I will leave myself quickly, for thy sake, lest I find thee late. Thou in me, and I in thee, by the love which thou kindlest within me. I beseech thee, O Lord, tarry with me bountifully, lest, forsaken by thee, I fail, like an exile in prison, like a pilgrim in the way. Help me, and I shall be safe; and day and night I will meditate on all thy ways, and words, and works. I love thee, O Lord, my strength, purely and wholly for thyself, and by thee and for thee are all things done. Neither will I love myself but for thee, and thee ever more than myself; for all things are beneath thee, and thou art above all good, both in heaven and on earth. Thou alone art fully and perfectly enough for me, wherefore I wish and desire nothing but Thee, who art before all, and above all, ALL IN ALL, GOD blessed for Amen.

evermore.

CHAP. XII.-ON LONGING AFTER HEAVENLY JOYS.

1. "Beati qui habitant in domo tuâ, Domine, in sæcula sæculorum laudabunt te." (Ps. lxxxiii. 5.)

"Blessed are they who dwell in thy house, O Lord: they shall praise thee for ever and ever."

O sweet, and heavenly words, "They shall praise THEE for ever and ever;" not themselves, but THEE! ascribing all good to THEE,— attributing nothing to themselves! But, how shall they praise Thee? Most highly, most devoutly, most purely, most sweetly, most fervently, most clearly, most securely, most happily. What more? Seek you to ask any more, or better, where GOD is ALL,- wholly present, vouchsafing, enlightening all, and blessing all and each in glory!

2. O truly blessed life, worthy to be praised, to be loved most highly, to be desired extremely! where all good, at once and perfectly united with GOD and in GOD, endures most pleasantly, without loss or any lessening for ever, and most steadfast. Blessed, therefore, are all who dwell in thy house, O Lord, who praise thee for ever and ever. Among these I often sigh—I, an exile in this world, far apart from the kingdom of GOD, and with the holy Psalmist, pray with all my heart. (Ps. cxviii.) O when wilt thou comfort me, when wilt thou make me glad with the light of thy countenance, in thy kingdom? Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy holy name, and praise THEE, O my God, with all thy saints, for ever and ever. Amen.

END OF THE DOCTRINAL OF THE YOUNG.

THE "BRITISH CRITIC" AND THE "QUARTERLY REVIEW."

In the 138th number of the Quarterly Review (March 1842) there appeared an article titled "Church of England Divines of the Seventeenth Century," the main object of which is to show, that in their controversies with Rome, the "old (Anglican) divines" used harsher language towards "Rome" than "modern theologians"-an object apparently of great importance in the eyes of the reviewer, inasmuch as he has exhausted about eighty pages of print to prove his position. But we must give the reviewer's own words.

"There is a disposition in the present day, to shrink from all strong and harsh expressions, when speaking of Popery. It may be, that the general tone of our mind is relaxed in regard to strict lines of religious truth; or the infection of a spurious liberality has crept in, even where it is most repudiated; or, we think little of the sins of Popery, as compared with those of dissent; or, so much of our own sins, that we dare not condemn the sins of others; or we overvalue the preservation of many outward apostolical ordinances, in the Church of Rome, till we undervalue its departure from an apostolical spirit; as if succession without doctrine was not rather a curse than a blessing. Or, what is most probable, we know little of its real nature; or we are shocked by the unthinking abuse and calumny which has been too often heaped on it, by men who would equally revile our own Church; or are perplexed in drawing the line between the good and evil of the Romish system, and so, fear to censure at all, or are unwilling that one sister Church (much less an individual), should sit in judgment upon another. Whichever of these reasons prevails (and many of them are symptoms of an humble and amiable spirit), it is certain that the tendency of our modern theologians on all sides is. to use a language in respect to Rome far milder than that of our old divines."

66

Accordingly, the reviewer has raked together and presented as a dainty dish" for high and low churchmen a number of extracts from the writings of Jeremy Taylor, Field, Jackson, Thorndike, Hicks, Barrow, Montagu, Bull, Brill, Stillingfleet, Bramhall, et multis aliis, and certainly to persons unacquainted with the writings from which he quotes, he will appear to have made good his statement.

Of course

with those who consider hard words and railing as good arguments (and there are many such persons), this mode of defending and exalting his Church will be considered as irresistible, but fortunately there are others, even in the communion of the Established Church, who cannot

concur in this species of logic, though delivered by a professor of moral philosophy. Yet after all this waste of paper, what if it shall turn out that the reviewer has not dealt fairly by the "divines" whom he quotes that he has culled out only the passages which supported his view, and suppressed those which had a contrary tendency. And this he has done, and in a way too which looks very like literary as well as moral dishonesty. This conduct has not escaped the vigilant eyes of the conductors of the British Critic, who, in the last number of that almost Catholic work, have made out a case against the reviewer which places him in a situation not very enviable.

The article in the British Critic, which is titled " Development of the Church in the Seventeenth Century," thus opens.

"It is not uninteresting, or altogether unprofitable, in times of change and movement, occasionally to enjoy the liberty of a spectator, and observe how far opinions, whatever they may be, which are the subjects of contention, have advanced or retrograded. That opportunity has been afforded lately, by the appearance of an article in the first and most influential periodical of the day, on the subject of these opinions, and having especial reference to the judgment of our divines of the seventeenth century. It is now about ten years since certain members of the University of Oxford began to put forward, by means of tracts, and other publications, various High-Church doctrines, which they asserted, and which all agree had been for a long time laid aside, or but indifferently maintained in our Church. These doctrines, which are mainly those of baptismal regeneration, the real presence, the Eucharistic sacrifice, tradition, Church authority, apostolical succession, or points connected with them, they supported by catena, or quotations from our standard divines, which proved clearly and irresistibly that such had been not only held, but authoritatively taught in our Church, and that, therefore, though popular opinion was at present against them, as tending to Popery, they not only might be held, and taught again, but had positive prescription on their side. If our memory fails us not, the appeal to those divines was received at the time in a way anything but complimentary or respectful to their authority. The language was we will not say totidem verbis—but in effect-why evoke from their quiet and obscurity a set of musty and moth-eaten folios, to sit in judgment upon us? why sound a retreat from the nineteenth to the seventeenth century? why restrain our present race of clergy to the dicta of such remote predecessors? We have the Bible, and are content with it; the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants. Such, if we remember right, was the kind of language which the appeal to our divines at that time elicited; but such is not the language which any moderate, any decent Churchman can now hold, after the strong and decisive acknowledgment of them, made in the influential quarter (the moral philosophy chair at Oxford) just mentioned. It

has been pronounced from that quarter, and in a tone of authority befitting the high reputation both of the writer and of the review, that the theology of those divines is the standard theology of the English Church. Few will be found, we imagine, so hardy as to dispute the fact, after such an affirmation of it."

Having thus fixed the reviewer to his standard divines, who, as the Critic observes, wishes not to prove that they did not hold the doctrines enumerated in the preceding extract, but that they did not hold certain other views and certain other language which he asserts the Oxford writers indulge in, viz. a mode of speaking of the Church of Rome, of the alliance of Church and State, which in his view shows a considerable departure from the tone of their predecessors, the writer in the Critic proceeds to the charge made against the " Oxford School," of a departure from the tone of the standard Anglican divines. He observes that the difference, if such there be, is not between very strong language against Rome and not at all, and remarks with great truth that the chief writers of the present movement have expressed themselves very freely and very decisively against what appeared to them corruptions in the Church of Rome; that "there are differences, however, in their mode of speaking, among others a great difference in the fact that the modern Churchman draws attention to the good points of the Roman as well as (what they consider) the bad; whereas the old controversialist against Rome confined himself to (what appeared to him) the bad." But, continues the Critic:

“We have a duty, however, to fulfil to our divines, and we confess that though we have all along admitted that they were Protestants (as they called themselves), nay, urged it, when we had occasion so to do, we have, nevertheless, no wish to see them made out to be Protestants of the present day, persons who gave opposition to Rome the first place in their creed, and sound doctrines in the second, or none at all. And yet, such is the impression which the ordinary Protestant reader (of course skipping or putting aside as so much sentiment, all the reviewer's own sprinklings of high-Churchmanship), goes off with, from a catena, some fifty pages close print, of some passages from Anglican divines, against the Church of Rome. By the time he has swallowed a hundred extracts his imagination is strongly affected; he thinks, of course, that our old divines did nothing but talk against Rome; he images our standard divinity as a kind of perpetually going pump or torrent of anti-Romish epithets, amongst which figure conspicuously the words' Babylon,' Jezabel,' 'Antichrist,' and the like; for the passages have been selected with a proper view to effect. Whatever other opponents may appear on the stage, Brownists, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, Nonconformists, are naturally lost sight of in

the all-absorbing opposition to the Church of Rome, which pervades the scene. And were it not for certain historical associations which attach to the English episcopate of those days, he would come to the conclusion that they were the legitimate precursors of the orators of Exeter Hall.”

Out of courtesy, we presume, to the reviewer, the Critic does not accuse him of intending this, but the Critic finds fault "with the careless, superficial, indiscriminating, and confused representation he gives of our (the Anglican) Church divines.”

"He would persuade us that they all talked, and thought, and wrote exactly alike; he allows no difference, no modification, no shading off of opinion amongst them, nothing to break the force of one long wearisome, monotonous note against the Church of Rome. He converts them not so much into a mere crowd (for that would admit of some freedom and variety) as into a herd or flock of divines; and as every species of animal has a noise peculiar to itself, as oxen low and horses neigh, so he very respectfully allows our divines what he supposes to be the peculiar noise of the species, the antiPopery one. His charmed ears are penetrated with this, and can hear nothing else; they answer his purpose better as a herd, uttering one uniform, irrational cry, than as a succession of rational writers, as they were, who often used the liberty of reason for differing from each other on the very subject here spoken of, nay, often spoke differently themselves at different times of their lives; who, in short, though members of the same Church, were far from being members of the same school, and who developed, as a body, into different views, in a latter age, to those which they had held in a former. It was probable, however, that some distasteful facts might get out, if his own note was ever allowed to pass into proper articulation and rational variety."

We have here the key to the reviewer's system of perversity,—a system which his antagonist in the Critic lays open with an unsparing hand. After accounting for the hostility displayed by some of the early Anglican writers against the Church of Rome—an hostility engendered in "the atmosphere of concentrated Calvinism which succeeded the Reformation" in England—and giving a sketch of the Anglican Church during her "Calvinistic days"-the writer in the Critic comes to the Laudian era, when she attempted to shake off the "Calvinistic creed." Laud," as he says, “found Oxford a seminary of Calvinism, and he left it a school of orthodoxy; he found the foreign Reformers installed as its doctors and divines, and he left an English Reformer in their place, who has maintained himself in it up to this day." It was in Laud's time, according to our author, that the "standard divinity" of the Anglican Church received its final formation: "the present orthodox divinity of our Church (he observes) is a development since the Refor