is, that you were required to sign a new Creed, and that without this you could conscientiously have remained in your Church. The missionaries take the same ground. I have given your words and theirs at large in this Letter. But as no new Creed is now enjoined (as all admit), your justification loses its sole support. You are in unnecessary schism. Your schism was formed, as I shall presently show, before the Patriarch called you to account at all, and of course before he could have attempted to impose a new Creed upon you. It is idle, therefore, to say that any new Creed was the cause of your schism.

“II. On the subject of persecution my own opinion is as follows:"I have thoroughly examined the alleged cases of persecution. Some, a good part, I have found to be gross fabrications. Some contain a portion of truth mixed with such essential errors in the reports of them as materially to change their character. Some, a very few, are manifest cases of wrong, which called for the interference of the British Ambassador so justly and judiciously accorded to you. None of them are acts of persecution by the Armenian Church, or emanated in any degree from the Patriarch.

"The Patriarch openly took stand against all violence in matters of religion immediately on his entering upon office in 1844. The missionaries themselves at the time testified to this. In 1845 he suspended and sent to a monastery a Bishop who advocated compulsory measures for the disaffected in his Diocese, the disaffected being of your party. He has often told me that he was opposed to force in religious matters, and that he did not believe that such a system at the present day could be carried out. At an early period in the late troubles, he engaged to take up any cases that I would point out to him. He himself declared explicitly against all acts of persecution. He took up several that I brought to his notice, and acted promptly and efficiently in correcting them. He issued the most stringent injunctions against acts of violence, three of which I have published. He denounced in one of them such acts as deserving of excommunication. If I had the slightest suspicion that the Patriarch had persecuted, I would not hesitate to declare it. I utter the sincere conviction of my mind when I say, Ì believe him to be wholly innocent.

"III. I come now to the real cause of your schism—and that which is the real cause of your schism is the real cause of the disturbances which rose from it, so that all inquiry terminates in this, 'What caused the schism?' For this we go back a little :

"1. The missionaries, during a period of fifteen years, invariably de.. clared to the Armenians their intention of not creating a schism. They gave the most positive, clear, and oft-repeated pledges on this point. In 1842 they gave those pledges to me. I had shown to an Armenian, formerly their follower, a piece written by one of them, which seemed to show a different tendency, and which, having gone abroad among their followers, raised an excitement against them which would, I believe, have overturned their work if they had not taken the course which they did. They desired a conference with me. In that conference they

protested most warmly against all such tendency, and desired me, as I had been the means of indicating it to their alienated friends, to go to them and declare to them that the missionaries had no such views, that the piece had been misunderstood, that they desired and aimed at no schism, that their work was conservative, &c. I did this as a simple act of justice, and their mission was saved. This was but one of numberless pledges to the same effect. It was their habitual profession for fifteen years. They could not at that time have maintained their mission a month without it.

"2. As soon as the concession was made to England and France, in 1844, that secessions from one religion to another should be free, the missionaries began to change their system, gradually at first, then more openly, as their followers were prepared for it. When I returned to Turkey in August, 1845, after an absence of fifteen months, the aspect of things was entirely changed. It was then commonly reported that a secession was at hand. Some of the indications of it and the series of subsequent events were as follows:-The followers of the missionaries were some of them .openly demanding a separation. They were, as the missionaries have since testified (I have quoted the testimony in this letter), already separated from all communion with the Armenian Church, excepting such intercourse as their civil relations required, and were freely speaking against and opposing it. This previous separation overthrows entirely the pretence of a new Creed as the cause.

"3. In October, 1845, I was informed from many sources, that one of the missionaries had recently preached against remaining in the Armenian Church, and in consequence ten of their followers, who were not prepared for that doctrine, left them. This was the first open preaching of schism of which I know. Immediately after this the Patriarch requested one of the returned individuals to communicate to the missionaries from him, that their present proceedings were in violation of all their former professions. The missionaries became more abusive and radical, sending their publications in parcels to the houses of respectable Armenians, leaving pamphlets at the doors, and taking other measures to force the Patriarch to an excommunication. The priest Vertanes, the leader of the party, openly renounced the priesthood about this time, and went about where he could find hearers in the city, reviling the Church and his own ministerial office. On Dec. 7, 1845, one of your party, in passing an Armenian Church, crying aloud, called it an idol-temple.' He was struck down by a rough Armenian who happened to meet him at the moment. Occasional acts of this kind showed the tendency of things on both sides. Some of you seemed determined to provoke deeds of violence for the purpose of bringing matters to an issue. The Patriarch was forced to attend to these things. He called the disaffected one by one. He reasoned with them, expostulated with them, and offered them terms such as the missionaries had always professed to be satisfied with. One of the missionaries admitted to a presbyter connected with my mission the fact of these concessions. Many, the great

majority, returned to their allegiance. Others were refractory, obstinate, and some of them personally abusive. The Patriarch still delayed, until the evil became monstrous, and the Church generally cried out against the factious proceedings of the seceders. The clergy complained of the violence and confusion in their parishes. He then, in the latter part of January, 1846, having, as he believed, exhausted all pacific measures, excommunicated, first, priest Vertanes; afterwards, the others who remained obdurate. Immediately the missionaries seeing the disturbances that must arise, professed that the schism was against their desire, they were content that their followers should remain in the Armenian Church, that they were driven out by the Patriarch. You made the same professions. I have quoted both yours and theirs. At last the "new Creed" was laid hold of as justifying your resistance, and your defence made to rest upon that. This is a simple history of the events as they occurred. I disapproved your course in this matter, because it was a violation of pledges, some of them given to myself; because it was inconsistent with a desire to do good to the Armenian nation generally, which the missionaries professed; because it was a mere attempt to establish a congregational sect, too visible from the first.

"4. The peculiar doctrines of the Congregationalists were openly declared by you before the schism. This was the main cause of offence to the Armenians.

"5. As soon as you were formally excluded from the Armenian Church, you proceeded to do publicly what you had long been doing privately; viz., to form yourselves into a Congregational sect, in exact imitation of the Puritan seceders from the Church of England and of their descendants in America, whose missionaries have taught you; thus showing what was the precise nature of the views and proceedings which had caused the interposition of the Armenian Patriarch.

"6. In this new sect you discarded everything belonging to your ancient Church. The Creed of Nice you ceased to use. The ministry of your Church was so completely subdued that the single priest among you was put into the congregation, while a young man, lately a schoolmaster, was elected by you and placed over you as Pastor.' The feasts of the Church were reduced to the 'Sabbath.' The fasts of the Church were utterly abolished. The Liturgy of the Church was utterly discarded, and extemporaneous prayers substituted in its stead. The organization, rules, 'confession of faith,' and 'covenant' of the Congregationalists were adopted, thus making to yourselves a new Creed.' You made it a standing rule that if a Bishop should join you he should be treated as a layman. Your new Pastor' was examined by the missionaries, who testified that 'his views on Church Government, the Sacraments, and the duties of the Pastoral Office,' were satisfactory to them. He was ordained by them after the fashion of the Congregationalists.

"7. To all this I make no objections; you were bound to appear as you were. But there are two or three things that follow from it. First,

calling yourselves merely Protestant' and 'Evangelical' is a concealment of your real character. You are bound to proclaim yourselves under your specific denominational character of Congregationalists.' But this you have carefully avoided in every thing intended to produce an interest in your behalf in England, and among Churchmen in America. Secondly, being Congregationalists immediately after your excommunication, and forming at once a Congregational Sect, you were evidently such before your excommunication, and all the troubles which have arisen have flowed from this single cause. You were Congregationalists in the Armenian Church, separated from it by your own act, before the act of the Church. Your excommunication merely brought you out in the character which you have long maintained,

"8. This is the whole schism, and the whole cause of it from beginning to end. Not one man who has not embraced Congregational views has been excommunicated, or put himself into a position to be so. Those who have remained are as 'Evangelical' as yourselves can claim to be, but they are Churchmen; and not one who was a Churchman, whatever was his opinion of the present state of the Church, whatever was his religious theory, could be brought to secede. It is purely, simply Congregationalism, and nothing else, which has separated you from the Armenian Church. It is purely, simply, Congregationalism which has produced all the disturbances of which we have heard, so far as reports of them have any foundation in truth. Without this, the missionaries would have had no occasion to desire a separation, no temptation to effect it. It is a slander upon the Gospel to call it 'Evangelical;' it is mere delusion to call it 'Protestant.' It is simply sectarian."

In conclusion, the Bishop says :-" I wish I could convince you that the path which you have chosen does not lead to religious security in doctrine, nor to primitive purity in practice. But failing in this, Į leave you in the hands of Him who will judge aright, and who can make the most untoward events to minister to His glory and the salvation of souls. I do not intend to make war upon you as Congregationalists. My relation to you will be the same here as is that of our Bishops at home to Congregationalists there. The Church's mission will pursue its own way in Turkey, as does the Church in America the path of her allotted duty. There may be conflicts here, as there; but my general policy will be to promote, by direct action on the Eastern Churches, the work to which I am sent, instead of turning aside to contend with others, whose labours I do not approve so far as they aim at schism,"

THE

ENGLISH REVIEW.

JUNE, 1849.

ART. I.-Sermons, Doctrinal and Practical. By the Rev. W. ARCHER BUTLER, M.A., late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Dublin. Edited, with a Memoir of the Author's Life, by the Rev. THOMAS WOODWARD, M.A., Curate Assistant of Fethard, in the Diocese of Cashel, &c. Dublin: Hodges and Smith.

THE name of Professor Archer Butler is well known to the theological world in connexion with a very able series of Letters on the Doctrine of Development, in reply to Mr. Newman's work, which made their appearance in the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal some three or four years since, and which have been commended by excellent judges as amongst the best of the various replies to Mr. Newman's essay. That series of Letters gave evidence of the possession of powers and attainments from which the most brilliant results might have been anticipated; but scarcely had we learnt to contemplate in Archer Butler one of the rising stars of the Church, when the intelligence of his early and much lamented death extinguished the hopes which we had formed of his future services to the cause of Christian truth.

The University of Dublin, and the Church of Ireland, may feel that they have lost one of their most distinguished ornaments in the untimely death of this eminent person; and in the present day, when false philosophy is labouring to subvert the groundwork of the faith, we can ill afford to lose the aid of one who has proved himself so thoroughly versed in its subtleties, and so qualified in all ways to combat and refute them.

It were useless, however, to repine at the dispensations of Providence; and indeed when we contemplate the state of Ireland and its Church, it is almost with a sense of bewilderment at all that is passing before us. Our fears had been excited as regards the intentions and principles of statesmen. We had feared that they were willing to sacrifice the cause of religious truth to the demands of an imagined expediency. We had been grieved at the continual disposition to concede to intimidation at the ascendancy gradually being attained by parties hostile to the integrity of the empire and the dominion of law. But all these old causes of alarm and dissatisfaction have now been replaced by a state of things arising partly from the visionary theories of VOL. XI.—NO. XXII.-JUNE, 1849.

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