should meet to receive intelligence and ordain decrees; and throughout the various fortunes of the English Church, this right has never been questioned, this practice never suspended (if we except the brief interval of the Commonwealth), till within the last hundred years. And when we recollect that the English Convocation was tyrannically suspended by the influence of George the Second's queen (who belonged neither to our Church or nation), for its laudable zeal in defence of the doctrine of the everblessed and undivided Trinity, we may well, judging from the past, expect good from the future, and feel that, like a prophet restored after death to bear witness to the truth, it will not fail to serve that God in whose cause it has already suffered.

We here gladly avail ourselves of Mr. Ross's words, with a recommendation of his work to attentive perusal :

"That any objections should be formed against the meeting of Convocation, on the ground that its freedom of discussion on ecclesiastical subjects must necessarily be attended with danger, would hardly have been expected in a country whose civil institutions are animated by a spirit of freedom, while the principles of the Church herself are based on her original independence and liberty of acting, uncontrolled by any civil power, or foreign ecclesiastical domination. There is reason to conclude that such a suppression of the unfettered powers of Convocation would never have been resorted to by the State (because wholly indefensible on the principles of liberty, for which it had all along struggled since the Norman Conquest, as its ancient right, by the ancient Saxon laws, and on which our present constitution has been settled), were it not the lamentable fact that a long period of spiritual apathy and stagnation succeeded the Revolution, the effects of which have been for more than a century experienced in this country, as the cause of dissent, indifference in religion generally, and almost total relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline." p. 272.

There are many points which require synodal legislation, and synodal sanction: there are many difficulties which a national synod alone can remove; many great and glorious works which a national synod alone could undertake. Whether we look to our internal or our external relations, to our domestic or foreign affairs-to the obstacles that impede many desirable measures within our own pale-or to the aggressions against us from without of rationalism, Romanism, and infidelity, our only remedy is a Church Legislature.

2. We decline entering into further particulars, lest we should offend the prejudices or irritate the feelings, and thus divide the counsels, of those whom we desire to see united in this great cause, and we pass on therefore to the limits which should be allowed to the legislative authority of the national synod.

VOL. X.-NO. XIX.-SEPT. 1848.

Its power should be absolute in spiritual matters: but it should only enforce its decrees by spiritual censures and spiritual disqualifications. Under this head is of course included the right to regulate or withhold the administration of any of the rites of the Church. And besides this, all ecclesiastical preferments, and all other appointments held by clergy or laity, as ministers or members of the Church, should be held conditionally on the obedience of such clerics and laics to the decision of the synod. 3. And we now proceed to the last part of our present subject -the constitution of the synod.

We propose that in each diocese there should be a synod, consisting of two houses-a lower, elected by the communicant laity—a higher, by the clergy; the bishop presiding.

We propose that the national synod should be composed, as at present, of two houses: that the lower house should consist of an equal number of deputies of the clergy and laity, elected by the councils of the several dioceses in proportion to their church population, together with representatives of the Universities, and two or more heads of the ecclesiastico-legal faculty.

The upper house should consist of all the bishops.

And no enactment should be considered as the law of the Church which had not the Royal assent, so long as the Sovereign continues to be a member of our communion.

The admission of the communicant laity to a share in the deliberations of the synod may perhaps, at first sight, strike some of our readers as an innovation; but such a view of the case is far from being correct.

In the earliest general council, that of Jerusalem, mentioned in Acts xv., we have the testimony of inspiration to the fact, and therefore the propriety, of such a proceeding.

Let us examine the passage.

Certain officious persons invade the jurisdiction, dispute the authority, and question the orthodoxy of the Apostles Paul and Barnabas: not being able to convince or silence them, it is decided that the matter should be referred to the Apostles and elders (the bishops and priests) at Jerusalem; and when they came to Jerusalem, "they were received of the Church and of the apostles and elders." A council is called to determine the matter, and, after a lengthened discussion, we read: "Then pleased it the apostles and elders, with the whole Church, to send chosen and they wrote letters by them after this manner; The apostles, and elders, and brethren," &c. There is no mistaking the meaning, or destroying the force of this passage.

men ...

And if we refer to those passages in the Gospels where our Lord delegates judicial and legislative power to his Church, we

shall find, that though some of them convey an absolute and independent power to the Apostles and their successors, there are none which authorize the legislation of the inferior clergy, except as subordinate to that of the bishops, and co-ordinate with that of the laity. There are charters, so to speak, granted to the first order of the Christian ministry, and to the Church as a whole; but there are none which admit the elders whilst excluding the brethren: expounding these passages, as we have a right to do, by the fifteenth chapter of Acts already mentioned, and by other passages scattered through the Epistles, we arrive at the conclusion, that though the priest is to his own flock the divinely-appointed guide, the clergy, as a body, can give no sanction to the enactments of the episcopate which they did not already possess, without the assistance of the communicant laity : whilst we are also taught that the clergy are entitled, on such occasions, to a separate representation and a decided pre-eminence; and that the laity are, in like manner, totally without authority as a body, unless that authority be exercised co-ordinately with that of the clergy, and subordinately to that of the bishops.

In the later councils of the early Church there is no evidence that the laity were generally represented, and frequently direct testimony to the contrary; but there is no doubt that they were on all occasions previously consulted that the clergy were to a great extent elected by them-and that no bishop was, in the first ages, ever imposed upon a diocese without the consent of the laity; so that, indirectly, their feelings and opinions were most powerfully represented.

In the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries it was universal throughout Christendom for councils to be called, consisting of bishops, clergy, and laymen, who enacted regulations on questions both spiritual and temporal.

And ever since the English Reformation the principle has been admitted and acted on, that to make a law of the Church binding, it required the assent of the bishops and clergy in Convocation, and the communicant laity in Parliament assembled.

As the Parliament no longer consists exclusively of the communicant laity or their representatives, it has evidently no right to legislate for the spiritual affairs or internal concerns of the Church but we are, notwithstanding this, of opinion that it has both the right and the duty, whilst surrendering a power no longer lawfully its own, to stipulate for the privileges of that body which it has superseded, viz. the communicant laity; and to secure the rightful supremacy of the Crown.

And, in conclusion, let us once more urge upon all our brother Churchmen the necessity of union and the duty of unity. Mere

common sense, to say nothing of deeper policy, will tell us, that if united, we must prove invincible—if divided, utterly powerless; that in the one case, our triumph is certain-in the other, our doom is sealed.

And to treat the matter on the ground of duty, we may remark that the question was once asked-is still asked-by a high authority, "If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" It is a question the solution of which would, we fear, tell rather painfully on many of those who are most highly thought of amongst us; but it would not be the first instance where that which is highly esteemed amongst men is abominable in the sight of God.

For our own part, whilst endeavouring to maintain and extend the faith once for all delivered to the saints in all its fulness and all its purity, we rejoice in cultivating the society of wise and holy men who do not exactly coincide with us; we love to recognize the image of Christ wherever the SPIRIT has formed it; and deem it a more graceful, as well as a more grateful employment, to acknowledge the merits and imitate the excellences, than to discover and expose the faults and foibles of our fellow Churchmen. If we hear any of the great doctrines of the Gospel brought forward more prominently than we have perhaps been in the habit of placing them, our inclination is not to accuse the preacher or speaker of a disregard for the remainder of Christianity, but rather to question our own heart as to its due acceptance of the great truth thus enunciated, even should the phraseology or manner of the teacher not accord with our own fastidiousness; and we are more disposed to employ such opportunities as the means of our own edification, than to use them as the channels of pride or malice, under the specious pretext of zeal for the Church's honour, or for our heavenly FATHER's glory.

ETC.

1. Chambers' Ancient Sea Margins. 2. Strauss' Political and Theological Liberalism-Strauss' Der Politische und der Theologische Liberalismus. 3. Sharpe's London Magazine. 4. The Ministry of Reconciliation, by W. B. Killpack. 5. Mirabeau. 6. Memorials of Keats, &c., by M. Milnes-Memorials of Lamb, &c., by N. T. Talfourd. 7. Second Series of Dr. Moberly's Sermons. 8. Gresley's Practical Sermons. 9. Some Account of the Foundation of Eton College, by E. S. Creasy. 10. Flower's Reading Lessons. 11. Popery DelineatedArchbishop Murray's Douay and Rhemish Bible. 12. Hours of Recreation, by C. S. Middleton. 13. Holy Times and Scenes, by J. S. Tate. 14. Poole and Hugall's Churches of Scarborough. 15. Ford's Gospel of St. Matthew Illustrated. 16. Hastings' Whole Armour of God. 17. Female Examples. 18. Hymns for Public Worship and Private Devotion. 19. Contributions towards an Harmony of the Holy Gospels. 20. Maurice's Sermons on the Lord's Prayer. 21. Spencer's Abridgment of Wall on Infant Baptism. 22. Bp. Mant's Youthful Christian Soldier. 23. Cardall's Journeys of Israel in the Wilderness. 24. Huxtable's Ministry of St. John the Baptist. 25. Devotional Aids. 26. Fox's History of Rome. 27. Reflections on European Revolution of 1848. 28. Chepmell's History. 29. Nugée's Instructions on Confirmation. 30. Boyes' English Repetitions. 31. Grinfield's Scholia Hellenistica in Novum Testamentum. 32. Norden's Progress of Piety. 33. Hibbs' Discourses on Baptism. 34. Burnett on Insanity. 35. Excerpta Protestantia. 36. Reports on Education in Wales. 37. Maskell on Outward Means of Grace. 38. Birch on Shakspeare. 39. Philips' Triumphs of Faith. 40. Hook's Our Holy and our Beautiful House. 41. Hamilton and Co.'s Works on Arithmetic. 42. Autobiography of Rose Allen. 43. Allen and Cornwall's School Grammar-Miscellaneous.

1.-Ancient Sea Margins, as memorials of changes in the relative level of Sea and Land. By ROBERT CHAMBERS, ESQ., F.R.S.E. Edinburgh: W. and R. Chambers. London: W. S. Orr and

THE submarine forests which, on several parts of the coast of England, may be traced far into the sea, and to the depth of ten, twenty, or thirty feet below high-water mark,—and again, the repeated strata of recent shells, which in so many districts of this country may be seen in the section of our hills,-tell, in unmistakeable language, of the changes that have taken place in the relative levels of the land and sea. Similar vicissitudes in the surface or outer crust of the earth tell the same story in every other region; and are, indeed, so obvious, that in all ages they have arrested the attention of every observant eye, and formed the subjects of innumerable and most whimsical theories in the hands of cosmogonists.

These frivolous fancies gave way at length to a more careful investigation of facts, as well as to the control of a more sober species of induction; and for the last three-quarters of a century geology has taken its legitimate place amongst the accurate sciences. Geology has, moreover, become a fashionable pursuit ; it offers such a field to the studious philosopher,—such a range to