II.

PRIESTS' RELIGION.

HUMAN AUTHORITY AND INVENTION versus CONSCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.

The Scriptures are the only standard of Christian faith and practice: every one is at liberty to examine them; but no one is at liberty to decline this examination: and though we may receive the help of others, we may not rest on their authority, (which is Man-worship ;) nor receive as religion, what is not in the Scriptures, (which is Willworship.)

THE OXFORD DIALOGUE.

[THE following dialogue, was commenced a short time ago, and a few introductory specimens appeared in detached parts; the favourable notice these obtained from a leading organ of public opinion, together with the important nature of the sentiments themselves, and the direct method of exposing error afforded by the style of dialogue, in which the very words of the opponent are quoted; induce the writer to resume and complete his task; hoping that it will be as useful to the readers of THE BIble and THE PEOPLE, as it is agreeable to himself.]

THE most vigorous instance of refutation in the form of dialogue, is afforded in Milton's "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smertymnus;" and we may fortify ourselves against all censure of the spirit and method adopted, by a few sentences from the preface of that inimitable writer:-" although it be a certain truth, that they who undertake a religious cause, need not care to be men-pleasers; yet because the satisfaction of mild and tender consciences, is far different from that which is called men-pleasing; to satisfy such I shall address myself a few words to give notice beforehand of something in this book, which to some men may seem offensive; that when I have rendered a lawful reason of what is done, I may trust to have saved the labour of defending or excusing hereafter. We all know that in private or personal injuries, yea in public sufferings for the cause of Christ, his rule and example teach us to be so far from a readiness to speak evil, as not to answer the reviler in his language, though never so much provoked: yet in detecting and convicting any notorious enemy to truth and his country's peace, especially that is conceited to have a valuable and smart fluence of tongue, and in the vain confidence of that, and out of a more tenacious cling to worldly respects, stands up for all the rest, to justify a long usurpation and convicted pseudepiscopacy of prelates, with all their ceremonies, liturgies and tyrannies, which God and man are now ready to explode and hiss out of the land; I suppose and more than suppose, it will be nothing disagreeing from Christian meekness, to handle such an one in a rougher accent, and to

send home his haughtiness, well bespurted with his own holy-water." "And, therefore, they that love the souls of men, which is the dearest love, and stirs up the noblest jealousy, when they meet with such collusion, cannot be blamed, though they be transported with the zeal of truth to a well heated fervency; especially seeing they which thus offend against the souls of their brethren, do it with delight to their great gain, ease and advancement, in the world; but they that seek to discover and expose their false trade of deceiving, do it not without a sad and unwilling anger, not without many hazards; but without all private and personal spleen, and without any thought of earthly reward, whereas this very course they take, stops their hopes of ascending above a lowly and unenviable pitch in this life. And although in the serious uncasing of a grand imposture, (for to deal plainly with you, readers, Puseyism* is no better) there be mixed here and there such grim laughter, as may appear at the same time in an austere visage, it cannot be taxed of levity or insolence; for even this vein of laughing (as I could produce out of grave authors) hath oftimes a strong and sinewy force in teaching and confuting; nor can there be a more proper object of indignation and scorn together, than a false prophet taken in the greatest, dearest, and most dangerous cheat, the cheat of souls: in disclosing whereof, if it be harmful to be angry, and withal to cast a lowering smile, when the properest object calls for both, it will be long enough ere any be able to say, why the two most rational faculties of human intellect, anger, and laughter, were first seated in the breast of man.

"Thus much, reader, in favour of the softer-spirited Christian, for other exceptioners there was no thought taken. Only if it be asked why this close and succinct manner of coping with the adversary was rather chosen -this was the reason, chiefly, that the ingenuous reader, without further amusing himself in the language of controversial antiquity, may come to the speediest way to see the truth vindicated, and sophistry taken short, at the first false bound. Next the Puseyitet himself, as oft as he pleases to be frolic, and brave it with others, may find no gain of money, and may learn not to insult in so bad a cause.'

"The Rev. William Sewell, M.A., &c., Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, in his work, called Christian Morals,' proposes to talk with his reader, in the person of a little book: the reader being comfortably seated, listens to a soliloquy, rather than engages in a conversation; though the book,-by the aid (we suppose) of physiognomy,-perceiving the occasional surprise and bewilderment of his companion, frankly acknowledges that he is uttering a paradox, which however, his reader is not to wonder at, for if he will but have patience he shall hear even stranger things, and, if he cherish faith enough, shall assuredly believe them. The author of 'Christian Morals,' acknowledges the incompleteness of his proxy, inasmuch as a little book cannot answer unanticipated questions: perhaps upon the whole it might not be unedifying, if this tenth volume of 'The Englishman's Library' could find a suitable companion, for then these two libelli might be bound up together, and left to talk it out.'

VOL. II.

• Prelaty; in Milton.

D

+ Remonstrant, in Milton.

"It is at least but fair to suppose that the reader of these Morals, after being talked to so long, might have something to say in his turn."

CHAP I.

Sewell." If you had lived fifteen hundred years ago, what I am about to say would probably not have come to you in the shape of a little book. There was a time, when Christian men did not trust to books to inculcate Christian truths.

Companion." Perhaps this was because printing was not established; and I have heard that the reason of this was, because paper was not yet invented; so that there were no better means of preserving knowledge, than by a few parchments supplemented by oral teaching But is not the Bible a book-the book of God? And must not Christian teachers themselves be first taught by this book?

S.-"The imperfection of books will be seen, if you consider how you will deal with me; you have taken me up, have you not, in order to amuse yourself.

C."I confess you promise some amusement; but proceed, I pray with your reasons.

S."You can read me just as long as is convenient; skip this passage and that; pronounce me wrong, if I say what you do not agree with; criticise and judge me in all things, instead of docilely submitting to be guided by me and over-ruled.

C.-"Just so; and I should deal in this manner with you, even if you addressed me by the voice, instead of the pen,

S." In the mean time I am powerless, I cannot rebuke you for levity; nor rouse you to attention; nor chastise your indolence; nor reduce you to humility, by showing your own ignorance; nor compel you to study

me.

C.-"Why, this is the dialect of a schoolmaster, with a stout cane in his hand.

S." And yet, by neglecting me, you will have made your conscience more insensible to warnings, and learnt to practise contempt for your teachers, and to look on questions of right and wrong, as things to be talked of and argued about, not for practice and self-denial.

C." But if right and wrong are not to be argued about,' why do you reason with me on the subject? Besides, is it a part of your philo sophy, that what is reasoned upon, is therefore not to be acted upon? I always thought that the best way to lead men into right action, is first to show the grounds of it, and the obligations to it. And that this, instead of being opposed to action, (as your multiplex question assumes,) would most likely lead to it.

S.-"These are some of the reasons why wise men of old,-wiser than you, or any of us in the nineteenth century,-would have opened their eyes with as much contempt as holy men can feel towards ignorant fellow creatures, if any one had proposed to make you a good Christian, or a good citizen, by means of a book.

C.-"Indeed! I very much fear, from what you say, that these contemptuous saints would have been no worse for having their eyes opened a little, and but for interfering with their sleep-good, easy souls!-it

would have been no matter if they had opened their eyes so wide, as not to be able to shut them, again. I do not wish to frighten these ancients; but, by way of a secret, let all moderns learn, that one who is wiser than any even of the third century, has left no other means, that I can hear of, except a book called The Book, by which to enlighten the world, And if these gentlemen, who have slumbered so quietly for fifteen hundred years, were ignorant of this fact while they lived, let not the thunder of the announcement disturb their repose,-rest, rest, perturbed spirit," -we can manage without you. There is really a book of more consequence than your 'patristic folios;' which folios you can carry to the shades to serve as a pillow; for the Bible having made some wise unto salvation,' will show them how to teach others.

S.-"Now you will declare that I have been gravely telling you that books are of no use in making men good. I have said no such thing: I said that wise men, in former days, would not have thought to make good by means of a book; but did not say that books were not useful to make men good.

C." Is not this a specimen of jugglery?

you

S.-" By no means; when you have to take medicine, it must be brought in a glass: and the glass is very useful in curing you; yet I think it is not the glass which cures you; and so books may be of great service in making you good, and all the time not be the thing which makes you good at all! This is a problem-is it not?

C." Why, truly, and rather a curious one. But first we could take medicine without a glass,-we might prefer pills:-or we might read you on morals. And secondly, the glass is not useful in curing us, but in conveying that which does cure us: it has no more to do with the affair, than the apothecary's lad, who brings the nauseous dose home to us, And thirdly, books are not merely the glass in which the restorative is conveyed; for if so, we could empty the book of its contents, and still it would be a book; but whether you would call a lot of blank paper a Bible, I cannot tell. If the Bible is simply a vessel, you may empty its contents into another, and then throw the Bible away. But if you look again, it will, perhaps, appear that this book is both the glass and the medicine; and you will also find, on enquiry, that this medicine is prescribed by one who is a better physician than either the Fathers or their infants; certainly some persons not only argue, but act as if the Bible were a glass, or a phial; for they would try to extract the Balm of Gilead, and put in a nostrum of their own. But if, as your illustration implies, it is what the glass contains which cures the patient, so it is what the Bible contains which will cure the world. It is for the healing of the nations. Some would suspect that you regard the Bible as a patent medicine, of which you are the patentee; or that your associates in the 'Succession' form the College of Health' for the world; but if this is your meaning, it is another problem, is it not? Whether you can 'minister to a mind diseased,' a wise patient may fairly question; since you pay so little deference to that remedy which is prepared and labelled by the only physician of souls.

"Your first chapter seems like a very clever attempt to come as near

as you can to saying what you do not mean, and then astonishing the reader by the trick of words: but let us adjourn to the second.”

CHAP. II.

S. "The first thing, then, which great and good men, many ages back, would have done to make you like themselves, would have been this coming to your cradle, they would have bade your mother and father bring you (as a foul, polluted, accursed thing, against which God was wroth, and over which the spirits of evil were permitted to have dominion,) to a place where they would appoint.

C." Well, go on, for I am very anxious to know what sort of a process I should have been put through, under the bookless training of these great men.

S.-"But, now, is not this a mystery which you cannot understand? You lay there feeble, half blind, half deaf, never having heard of God, never having disobeyed him, and unstained by any offence to man,-the object of love to your parents, yet under the wrath and curse of God.

C.-"Surely you commit an anachronism. I am but twenty years old; how then could I lie under the inspection of these venerable men, ages ago? And certainly you seem to make as great a mistake in theology as in chronology, when you suppose me as an infant personally hated of God.

S.-"Now, are there not other cases in which men, boys, and children, may be objects of aversion to others, without being aware of it themselves, or without having done anything to deserve it?

C.-"No doubt, a person looking forward to an inheritance, might hate a child for being born, so as to come between the expectant and the fulfilment of his hopes; but this happens only in reference to men: the Creator can have no such reasons for abhorring children.

S.-"When you become older, you will find, that to look first to your own experience, to your own understanding, is not the wisest or the safest way of solving mysteries: rather consider who these persons are, who would come to your cradle-are they persons whom you ought to trust.

C.-"Very good: I am not to trust to my own understanding; yet I am to decide whether these persons are trustworthy: does not this constitute me the judge, after all? Suppose, now, I should regard their wisdom as drivelling folly; ought I not then to despise them, instead of trusting to them?

C." In the first place, who are you that you should despise any one? You are not wise, or would not require instruction; nor experienced, for the world is immeasurable, and time infinite,-and of these, you see but a part; you are as if in a dungeon, with one little eyelet-hole in the roof, and can only see one object at a time; of the future you know nothing: how far have you travelled? what have you read? what do you know of the heavenly regions?

C.-" Why, certainly I am very ignorant of history, geography, astronomy, and many other things; but am I therefore to believe what every one tells me? Must I swallow the medicines of every quack, because I have not read Galen, and am ignorant of the whole science? Besides, who told you that the world is immeasurable? I thought it had