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Two or three indeed, delegated by the Roman hierarch, were present in the first, fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth general councils. Vitus, Vicentius, and Nosius appeared in the council of Nicea; while Petrus and Vicedonius sat, with legantine authority, in the second of that city. Three represented the pontiff, and three the westerns, in the fourth and sixth at Chalcedon and Constantinople. The eighth constituted a blessed representation of the universal church. The first session consisted of sixteen or seventeen bishops, who, of course, were in their synodal capacity, clothed with infallibility. The second received an augmentation of ten, who begged pardon for having supported Photius, and were admitted. The third session consisted of twenty-three, and the fourth of twenty-one bishops. The fifth was fewer in number. The sixth, seventh, and eighth amounted to the wonderful number of thirty-seven. The ninth rose to sixty, and the tenth numbered one hundred, who subscribed the synodal decision.* Such were the eight Grecian synods, which are, therefore, fairly dismissed by the application of Bellarmine's condition of universality.

'Bellarmine's terms would dismiss the ten western as well as the eight eastern councils. The former, as Moreri and Du Pin have shown, were limited to the Latins, to the exclusion of the Greeks. The first of Lyons consisted of about one hundred and forty bishops from France and England, without any from Spain, Portugal, Germany, or Italy, The French, in the council of Trent, mocked at the Florentian convention, which, they said, was celebrated only by a few Italians and four Grecians. The fifth of the Lateran consisted of about eighty, and nearly all from Italy. The far famed assembly of Trent, when it conferred canonicity on the Apocrypha and authenticity on the Vulgate, consisted only of five cardinals and forty-eight bishops, without one from Germany. These, few in number, were below mediocrity in theological and literary attainments. Some were lawyers, and perhaps learned in their profession; but mere sciolists in divinity. The majority were courtiers, and gentlemen of titular dignity, and from small cities. These could not be said to represent one in a thousand in Christendom. During the lapse of eight months, the council, reckoning even the presidents and princes, did not exceed sixty-four.

The councils of the French school, like those of the Italian, cannot bear the test of Bellarmine's requisitions. These, like the others, were composed of Europeans. The Pisans, though they amounted to more than two hundred, were collected chiefly from Italy, France, Germany, and England. The Constantians and Basilians, though more numerous, were westerns and Latins. The second of Pisa was principally collected from the French dominions, and could therefore

fuit episcopus occidentalis. Fabul. c. V. Thomassin, 1. 6. Crabb, 2. 91. Mainburgh, 68. Godeau, 4. 498.

* Bin. 1. 321. Du Pin, cen. V. et cen. IX. c. IX. + Par les seuls évêques d'occident. Moreri, 3. 539. Du Pin, 2. 388, 430. Paolo, II. VII. Giann. XVII. 3. Launoy, 1. 376.

have no just claim to universality or a convocation from all Christendom.*

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Theologians and critics, disagreeing in this manner about the universality of general councils, differ also respecting their legality. A synod, to be general or valid, must be lawful; and the conditions of the latter as well as the former, have occasioned a striking variety of opinion. The partisans of Popery differ concerning a general council's convocation, presidency, confirmation, members, freedom, and unanimity.'-pp. 110-113.

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Mr. Edgar's book affords ample proof that the bewildering diversity of opinion which exists in the church of Rome on the questions adverted to, obtains to the same extent in relation to almost every point of the Popish system; and thus furnishes a striking exhibition of the efficacy of Romanism, as the means of putting an end to all controversy! We ought not, perhaps, to conclude this article, without recommending to such of our readers as may not have seen them, the recent edition of Dr. Fletcher's excellent volume of Lectures on this subject. There is also a volume of Discourses published not long since on this controversy, by the Rev. John Young, of Albion Chapel, which we have not seen, but which, from the character of the author, we doubt not will be found to be a work of candour and ability.

One word, in conclusion, to our friends of the Established Church -if we still have those in that communion of whom we may thus speak without mockery. You never weary in your efforts to make us aware how much you hate, and how much you fear Popery. The house-top rings with your cries on this subject. The abominable thing is, you think, unchanged and unchangeable as treacherous, as tyrannical, and as cruel as it ever was. Now admitting that there is reason in this aversion, and in this apprehension, to the full extent of your own showing-what would you be doing to meet the case? Will mere clamour avail? Remember that has been tried on a tolerably large scale already, and in the midst of it all, in spite of it all, Popery, from your own admission, has been making rapid advances. Would you resort to force? That too has been tried, and, as the effect, the power of the oppressor has gone over not a little to the side of the oppressed, those who appealed to the sword being almost in danger of perishing by the sword. To keep the enemy down when prostrate, has been found impossible, and can you think that the cords which he snapped asunder in his weakness will suffice to bind him in his strength? Oh! no-clamour, misrepresentation, persecuting statutes, all have only served to help on the power they were designed to suppress. There is one short

* Du Pin, 403. Moreri. 7. 244. Crabb. 3. 549.

and simple remedy for all this. Romanism, like every other false system of religion, is formidable mainly as it is liable to become strong in the emoluments and power of the state. It is not as a spiritual system that it is terrible; but as a system which under that name is disposed to take upon it the form, and to manifest the spirit, of a worldly tyranny, lifting its head in the pride of a mitred lordship, and subduing all who dissent from it by means of the weapons belonging to the civil power. To render even Popery comparatively harmless, the easy method would be, that all sound Protestants should join heart and hand in declaring that this dangerous connexion between religion and the state shall come to an absolute end. Persecution, and the fear of it, would thus be done away, as the power from which alone it can gather strength would not be suffered to exist. So long as the pomp and opulence of the present hierarchy shall continue, Popery must be dangerous, for of all these things it has been despoiled, and it is natural that it should seek to regain them. The heaviest blow that could be inflicted upon it would be in the resolve of Protestant Britain to put an end to such things, to restrict the functions of the state to its proper civil duties, and to make the great object of contention to be, not a religious ascendancy of any kind, but the ascendancy of social justice, of equal civil rights. And to this pass we are confident things will come. Had these views been acted upon from the beginning, Christianity would have been saved from the foulest stain in its history-from the whole of that stain we mean which belongs to the story of Christian persecution; and only in proportion as the principles become prevalent which would have prevented persecution in the past, will the disgrace and misery of it be precluded from the future.

Art. II. The Life and Times of Archbishop Sharp, (of St. Andrews). By THOMAS STEPHEN, Med. Lib. King's College, &c. 8vo. pp. 640. London: Rickerby.

THIS

HIS is one of the most malignant books that we have encountered for a long time. Indeed, such is the folly and inconsistency of the volume, that we should have thrown it aside, had it not been for its thorough spirit of blind bigotry and intolerance. It is by an officer of King's College. It is a book that, no doubt, will be put into the hands of the youthful students of that youthful institution, as one imbued with the true conservative spirit in Church and State, which it is the wish of a certain party to diffuse as universally as possible amongst our growing youth, in opposition to the great spirit of the age; and, taken in

conjunction with indications lately given by the students at Oxford, may open the eyes of a good many who are fondly flattering themselves that knowledge and enlightened sentiment are now grown so strong as to force themselves into even the darkest dens of selfishness and party. But party and selfishness will never care a straw for knowledge and enlightened sentiment while in pursuit of the loaves and fishes. They will never turn one glance even upon them while the burning and shining light' of a wealthy state establishment is before them. The great 'prizes' are the only objects that can command their attention, and gazing eagerly after them, they will run on, treading over knowledge, experience, and even public scorn with indifference, and affording only a growl as they go by to those who are inclined to warn them or to laugh. This volume is a regular growl of this sort. It is written by one of the true old school of high Church and State men—a species of creatures that many of our readers can scarcely realize to themselves in all their ancient completeness of absurdity. They are thorough advocates for arbitrary power and passive obedience, spite of all that those doctrines brought upon this country under the Stuarts, spite of the glori'ous Revolution of 1688,' and all that has been said and sung about it, and spite also of all the blessings that have followed in its train. They would like but one state of things, and that is, that Tories should be in office, and the Church triumphant over all Great Britain. The only way for Queen Victoria to become, in their eyes, a great and wise princess, would be to give the Archbishops of Canterbury and York a commission to exterminate all the troublesome fry of sectarians and papists; and to Wellington another commission to execute it for them. To them Laud and Sharp have died in vain; in vain died Charles I.; in vain was James II. driven out of these indignant realms for his attempts on liberty. What good does this liberty, what good does the growth of social happiness, or the spread of civilization do them while Scotland is in the hands of the Presbyterians, while there are Papists in Ireland, and Dissenters in England? True, they have got a grand estate in the Church of England; they have a noble endowment from the nation here to civilize and Christianize it, while the Dissenters and the Methodists (who are neither dissenters nor consenters according to their own account) are doing the greater part of the work for them. They have all the colleges, and all those pleasant dormitories, the cathedrals; they have the church wealth of Ireland too without the trouble of instructing the people-the Catholic priests do that for them there what then would they be at? They would be at the church of Scotland. They never can get over that being in any hands but theirs. They cannot bring themselves to comprehend, for a moment, what business any but the only true Church

have with state property: how they came to be that only true church we may leave them to settle with Rome. Many are the 'long lingering looks' which they cast towards Scotland, and the time when a gracious and considerate monarch had palmed them upon that country, where they might have now been sweetly pillowed in canonical ease and glory had it not been for those very impudent and unreasonable people the Puritans. Those graceless usurpers would have the government of the church which they had formed themselves. They were so selfish as to insist upon those who did the work having the pay for it. Never was astonishment like that of the English bishops at this unparalleled audacity. Had not the English nonconformists allowed them to have the livings while they did the preaching, and the reforming of the people? Had not the Irish been content to give up to them the churches and church lands, and allowed the priests to do all the work of pastoral exhortation and visitation? They did not want the ecclesiastical labours, they only wanted the ecclesiastical easc. But the Scotchmen were a thick-headed nation just then; they neither could nor would understand this episcopal logic, which had prevailed elsewhere-it was too deep for them; so they even took to their cudgels and their claymores, and drove all the jure divino tribe of kings and bishops out of the country. Hinc ille lacrymæ.

The present Life has two objects, both of which are subservient to this great principle of ecclesiastical lamentation; the ostensible one is to white-wash the renegade persecutor, Archbishop Sharp; the other, and more important one, to proclaim the doctrine that neither is there legitimate religion, nor legitimate government in the world, especially the world of these wealthy kingdoms, except under the shadow of episcopacy and absolute monarchy. All else is treason against heaven and earth, vile rebellion, and viler heresy, which nothing but the power of the prince of darkness, and the folly of men, who do not know what is good for them, could so strangely and daily prosper and diffuse as they do. If any one imagines that we at all exaggerate the views and opinions of this party, or of this book, let them look into the book itself. We will present them with a specimen from the introduction. And, by the way, this introduction takes care to begin with the beginning of things. It wanders away from the prelate of St. Andrew's to inform us, at the outset, that there was an ancient church in Britain, unquestionably planted by St. Paul: that emissaries from this church in South Britain planted the church in Ireland and Scotland; and that this British church has continued to the present day, and is no other than the Established Church of England. If any one should imagine that it signifies little whether Christianity was first planted in Britain by St. Paul, or St. Peter, or Joseph of Arimathea, so that it was

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