least concern as to the means of filling the immense void which it proposes to create, without any thing to substitute for the action of the Church, except the empty declamation of Anti-State-Church councillors, and Anti-State-Church lecturers, whose motto is: "Pereat ecclesia, ruat cœlum !"

This is a heavy charge to bring against a body of men who come before the world with words of holy zeal for the Gospel of Christ, and of love for the souls of men, upon their lips; a charge which we should assuredly neither wish nor venture to bring against them, were we not driven to the conclusion, and borne out in the assertion, by their own acts and recorded declarations. We look in vain in their principles for any thing beyond that of destruction; in vain for any elements out of which another, even though it were an erroneous, system of religion, might be built up, when they shall have succeeded in levelling the structure of ages with the ground. While the Gospel serves as the pretext for their aggression upon the Church, they are not themselves agreed what the Gospel is; nay, it is evident, that any positive form of belief, even if they were prepared to give their assent to it today, would not be admitted by them as a permanent standard or symbol of truth. The privilege of denying every thing, if it shall so please them, of being bound by nothing, is the only tangible idea which runs through all their statements and arguments; this they hold to be the very essence of religion, even that "liberty wherewith Christ has made us free." This wicked principle of individual and universal licence, to which they blasphemously give the name of Christian liberty, pervades alike their religious and their political sentiments; whatever savours of authority, whether it be a settled belief and a regular ministry, or a civil magistrate bearing rule as the ordinance of God, is equally repudiated by them; the will of the multitude, and that alone, is to decide what shall be law on earth, and truth in heaven.

"A knowledge of our nature," we are told (Tracts for the Million, No. 8)," and of history, teaches, that the best way to secure religious progress and improvement, is to leave religious principles to the unfettered understandings, wills, and consciences of men; whereas stateenjoined creeds and customs present strong obstacles to the correction of what is evil, and the perfection of what is good."

"It is plain," says the author of the tract, The Church of Christ : What is it?'" that the supreme tribunal to decide this cause is a man's own private judgment, and that the Bible is to be the statute-book by which this decision is to be regulated. Every one's own conscience is to test all Church pretensions by the standard of God's word."

As it happens, however, that this "supreme tribunal" does not

pronounce the same judgment in all minds, nor, indeed, in the same mind at all times, Mr. Brewin Grant, the writer of the tract in question, is driven to give of the Church the following definition:

"The Church is a visible Embodiment of Christianity in its unity of spirit and its variety of development.”

This "variety of development," as it is understood by this writer, is not confined to those externals of Church discipline and worship which, it is admitted, " may be changed according to the diversities of countries, times, and men's manners;" it affects the whole system of the Church, the very fundamentals of its constitution and doctrine.

"The Bible is the statute-book of the Church, but it does not give a full description of rites (as it did in the case of Judaism), nor a full confession of faith, nor a clear arrangement of ecclesiastical polity. If, therefore, the Church is founded on an external uniformity, it is not authorized by the Bible, for it lays down no outward rule. Taking externals as the guide, the Church is an assemblage of men who have nothing established as the common rule of faith and practice. The statute-book contains no minute description of rites-no elaborate arrangement of creeds and discipline; its doctrines are thrown out with a nobleness which baffles the one-sidedness of sects and schools. There is not a single formally expressed article in the whole Bible. The question of Church polity, as a definite order of government, is equally difficult; is it to be episcopal, presbyterian, or congregational? Surely, if the Church of Christ consists in an outward unity, the Bible is the wrong book for this Church to be founded on, since it purposely leaves these matters in obscurity. The most important part of revelation has to be supplied by tradition; the Church has to be its own founder-to arrange for the fundamentals of its faith and practice."

Such is the painful vagueness to which men are reduced, when, walking by the light of their own understandings, they separate the word of God from the living witness to whose keeping He has committed that word, and from those life-giving ordinances by which He has made provision for the nurturing in oneness of faith and spirit, because in oneness of life with Himself, those who are willing to seek the grace and truth of God humbly, reverently, obediently, and by faith, in the way prescribed by God. To escape from the evil conclusion into which he has led himself, Mr. Brewin Grant has recourse to what he calls "the general spirit which the Gospel enforces," in contradistinction to "particular tenets and rites ;" and then subjoins a brief summary of faith of his own composing, which he conceives to be the genuine and indisputable expression of that "general spirit," but to which, he will give us leave to say, we have quite as much right to take

exceptions as he has to repudiate the three Catholic Creeds. At the same time he acknowledges, that "for the true and complete union of the great spiritual body, the Church, there should be a sympathy amongst the members, a mutual recognition of each other, there must be one circulation throughout the whole system; but how, upon his own principles, that union is to be brought about, how the "sympathy" and the "one circulation" are to be produced, is a point on which, with the exception of a pious wish not likely to be fulfilled, Mr. Brewin Grant has the wisdom to be silent.

Another of the tract writers, "the Rev." A, J. Morris, carries the argument against settled forms or articles of belief a step further, by demonstrating the practical impossibility, as it appears to him, of any man ever cherishing a single verity as absolute and unfailing truth. In his opinion,

"It is the right of every man to receive and to aver that which commends itself by evidence to his own mind. God has given to him this right. But the right involves an obligation. It is not only a privilege but a duty. He is bound, by the constitution of his nature, and by the express law of his Creator, to be willing to adopt fresh views, if they possess the necessary proof of being right views, to keep his heart. open to every intimation of the Divine will. Possessed, as all men are, of the elements of fallibility, and surrounded, as all men are, with influences favourable to error, it is a mark of humility, as well as of honesty, while we are faithful to our present convictions, to be ready to receive others, It is impossible not to believe that we are in the right; but it is improper to believe that we cannot but be. Decidedness of belief is perfectly compatible with the stern denial of infallibility; and we are bound to cherish a constant and candid spirit of inquiry by the very grounds on which we have received and do hold our actual faith. Whatever tends to check this spirit, is a serious evil."

And in another place, in his "Anti-State-Church Catechism,' the same idea is expressed with still greater clearness.

"Man is in a condition, in the present world, in which he is bound, by duty and interest, to be ever learning.' As none is infallible, none is able to justify the abandonment of inquiry. But State Churches are, and always have been, formidable barriers to this. They stereotype' doctrines, and the consequence is, that they retain errors after others have got rid of them. All protected' interests are backward in seeking and adopting improvements. It is so in agriculture, in manufactures, and in religion. Entire freedom is the only thing by which the progress of men in religious truth can be secured.'

It is impossible to conceive any thing more wretched than this application of the "free trade" principle to religious truth: the miserable state, described by the Apostle, of those who are

66 ever

learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth," is portrayed with distressing fidelity in this ideal of what the Christian ought to be. Viewing truth, as all the professors of such doctrines do, as a production of the human mind, the material of which is taken from the Bible, but the fashion supplied by man himself, nothing, of course, can be more consistent than this perpetual scepticism underlying every conviction, even at the moment when it is most firmly entertained; nor can any thing more clearly demonstrate the total absence of that which alone gives to religious truth substance and reality in the mind of man, the effectual operation, the conscious and abiding presence, of the Holy Spirit. To speak of Him, of the word engrafted by Him, of that living faith which He begets, and by which we are enjoined and exhorted to hold fast as by the sheet-anchor of our souls, in terms of such looseness and uncertainty, were indeed blasphemy: but of this sin the propounders of Anti-State-Churchism are clearly guiltless; they know not that deep and holy fountain of unfailing truth; and when they speak of faith, it is evident that they "understand neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm."

So much for the theology of the Anti-State-Church Association. Its political principles are not less unsound and untenable. They may be gathered with unmistakeable distinctness from a tract, entitled, Religious Establishments incompatible with the Rights of Citizenship, by Edward Miall, one of the original committee appointed to carry out the views of the Leicester meeting.

"A citizen (he says) is a member of that select community which, under the present system of things in our own land, bears absolute rule over Great Britain and her dependencies. He is one of the trustees of political sovereignty. Of the powers that be' he is an item. He holds office, and he holds it from God. He cannot evade his responsibility; however, like the prophet Jonah, he may flee from his post. Until he has examined to the utmost every privilege which the constitution has put within his reach, he shares in the guilt of every contravention of the will of God perpetrated by our political authorities. Disguise it from himself as he may, his voluntary and deliberate disuse of the rights of citizenship is the subscription of his name to every law upon the statute-book, and the extension of his public sanction to every wickedness done in high places. He has a talent, and he buries it to the advantage of every wrong doer. He sides with the oppressor by connivance. He gives his vote for monopoly by silence. The sin of war lies at his door, brought thither by his inaction; and if there be any thing religiously offensive in an Established Church, any thing displeasing to our Lord and Master, any thing subversive of Christian purity, peace, or power, he is by his position, and by his studied neglect of the duties of it, an open party to its continuance. To such parties we may address a word of kind admonition. O brethren! reflect what it is

you do when you commit suicide upon your citizenship. More guilty than the father who suppresses his parental instincts, and avowedly repudiates parental duties, you throw into the treasury of unrighteousness the whole amount of power which you surrender. God has introduced you into one of the highest relationships of temporal life, and you tell Him that you will attend to none of the obligations of your trust. He has made you rulers, and you leave the people to perish through your indifference. Think of this, brethren, and ask yourselves by what plea you will justify your conduct when called to give up your

account.

Verily, Mr. Edward Miall is a very Sacheverell, nay, a very Hildebrand, of democracy. We have heard of the divine right of kings, and we have heard of the "rights of man," alias, the rights of the sovereign people; but the divine right of the sovereign people is, we confess, a novelty to our ears. Abstracting, however, for a moment, from the question in whom the divine right to govern is vested, let us stop to examine the conclusions which Mr. Miall draws from its possession. Mr. Miall admits that there is such a thing as "the powers that be," an authority which is "held from God." And how does he conceive that this authority should be exercised? In the utmost plenitude of its power, is the answer. He who is invested with that authority"held from God," must not "commit suicide upon it." If he fails to wield it to the full, for the repression of all that would oppose its salutary and consecrated action, he is reminded that he "throws into the treasury of unrighteousness the whole amount of power which he surrenders." What, again, is, according to Mr. Miall, included within the legitimate scope of the exercise of that authority? Is it to be a merely temporal authority, confining itself to the supervision of the material interests of the state, the nation; or is it to extend its care to the furtherance of true religion; is it to concern itself about the spiritual welfare of its subjects, about the salvation of their souls? Most assuredly it is to do the latter, and that under the most solemn responsibility to Him from whom the authority is derived, and who will call upon those whom He has entrusted with it, to "give up an account" of their stewardship. "If there be," quoth Mr. Miall, “any thing religiously offensive, any thing displeasing to our Lord and Master, any thing subversive of Christian purity, peace, or power," the "trustee of political sovereignty," holding his office from God," is, "by his position, and by his studied neglect of the duties of it, an open party to its continuance." Mr. Miall has a word of kind, and withal stringent, admonition for "trustees of political sovereignty," if they should chance to be remiss in removing whatever is "religiously offensive, displeasing