SIR, It has, of late, continually occurred to my mind, that while the enemies of Christian truth are doing their utmost, by every available means, to inundate our beloved country with the most dangerous error in the form of Popish or Tractarian (semi-popish,) principles, we who profess to be the friends of vital and evangelical Christianity, are perhaps not sufficiently alive to the danger, nor enough concerned, to use our utmost influence in opposing their errors with every moral and spiritual weapon Scripture gives, or warrants us to employ.

Are we not too ready to underrate the danger referred to, by counting too securely upon the wide diffusion, at the present day, of religious light and knowledge?

Is it not to be feared that, at this present time, those fundamental principles of vital truth upon which the glorious Reformation was based, are too little known and less appreciated ; and, on the other hand, that the true genius and spirit of Popish error is also very imperfectly apprehended?

A painful conviction on these points has repeatedly forced itself on my mind, and it is from the constraint a sense of duty involves, which leads me to appeal to you, as the organ of a large body of the evangelical Christian public.

May I, therefore, be allowed to suggest, through your columns, to the friends of evangelical truth, whether a vigorous, systematic, and united effort should not, and might not be made, to counteract the pernicious influence above referred to, and whether such an effort might not be well carried on by, or promoted under, the influence of some such evangelical union as was not long ago, proposed by the Rev. J. A. James, in this Magazine.

Might not such effort be attempted by making use, as far as possible, of the existing agencies and societies friendly to the cause; the main object being, to bring down to the great bulk of the people clear, concise, and correct information on the vital points of Protestant Christianity? and would not attention be well directed to these following, among other points, in order to the end desired ?

1. Inducing the more decided influence of ministers in giving such fundamental truths a due prominence in their public and private teaching.

2. The circulating, or inducing the circulation, through families, of wellapproved works bearing directly upon the points at issue.

3. The promotion of a systematic circulation of approved tracts, or concise treatises, (which give a plain and just delineation of the principles of Protestant truth in contrast with those of Popish and Tractarian error,) through the population of our land.

And here, may it not be considered, whether the Homilies of the Church of England do not supply a means peculiarly adapted to this very purpose?

4. The directing of the attention of teachers, whether in daily or Sabbath schools, to these same points, that by their means, both the children and their parents may be rightly informed thereon.

Of course the foregoing means are only intended in subordination to the circulation of the Sacred Volume, and to which book they are but meant to direct.

Submitting these hints to the serious consideration of the watchmen in Israel, I am,

Very respectfully, yours,
AN OBSERVER.

ANGLO-CATHOLICISM NOT APOSTOLICAL: being an Inquiry into the Scriptural Authority of the Leading Doctrines advocated in the " Tracts for the Times," and other Publications of the Anglo-Catholic School. By WILLIAM LINDSAY ALEXANDER, M.A. 8vo. pp. 462.

A. and C. Black, Edinburgh; and Longman and Co., London.

THE design of this seasonable and elaborate treatise, as announced by the Author in his preface, is to strip the Tractarian or Catholic theory of its proud boast, that it is that "quod ubique, quod semper, quod ad omnibus, creditum est ;" to "shew that it has not always been received by all true Christians; but, that especially in the earliest days of the church, when under the infallible guidance of the apostles, it was as a system either wholly unknown, or, so far as known, repudiated and condemned."

It is, indeed, matter of equal humiliation and regret, that the necessity of entering afresh on this controversy, which is, properly speaking, the battle-field between Romanism and the Reformation, should have been occasioned by the professors of a Protestant University, and by the well-paid clergy of a Protestant church. Awfully defective must be the discipline of a community professedly reformed, that can have endured within its pale, for the space of ten years, a class of teachers, subverting by their avowed and unblushing Romanism, the doctrines of the Reformation. The time, we

trust, will speedily arrive, when the sound and enlightened portion of the British nation will agitate, with a voice of thunder, the great constitutional question, "Is Popery, in all its essential heresy, to be maintained by funds appropriated to the support of the Reformed faith?" If the heads of colleges and the prelates of the English church will not grapple with this question, and dispose of it upon honest and English principles, we venture to predict, from what we see passing around us, that it will speedily be taken up by the British public, and that appeals will be made to the legislature, which no administration will be able to resist. We happen to know that thousands of the lay members of the Establishment are pondering in their minds what it may be proper for them to do at the present alarming crisis; and we must remind churchmen, that Nonconformists, of all denominations, have a deep interest in resisting the stealthy re-establishment of Popery, from which they could look for nothing but another period of anarchy, proscription, and bloodshed. If the Tractarians are to prolong their reign in this country, we tell them that it must not be at the national expense; if their own sense of integrity is not sufficient to restrain them from receiving public money under false pretences, the period is fast approaching, when the tardy authorities of the church will be compelled to deprive them of resources which were never intended to be employed in " unprotestantizing" the English nation.

Meanwhile, we are thankful to find that their Popish plot has been thoroughly detected, and that champions, north and south of the Tweed, have been raised up, quite a match for them in sound scholarship, and far more than a match in theological acuteness and research. Indeed our settled opinion is, that their attainments generally have been absurdly overrated, as if a few translations from the Greek and Latin Fathers, and a mass of Jesuitical scribbling in tracts, essays, and semi-popish reviews, could entitle them to be regarded as the great literary aristocrats of the day. We believe that this injurious impression has been mainly created by the injudicious praise bestowed upon them by the bishops; even those bishops who have followed their commendations by a rejection of the leading doctrines they have taught.

We agree with Mr. Alexander, that "the great question at issue is simply this: Does Christianity depend upon the church as a visible body, or does the church depend upon Christianity?" In other words, is it the church, existing by the preserving care of God, endowed with mysterious and supernatural power over the destinies of men, and whose ever-vital nucleus is found in the clerical order, by the members of which her order is preserved, her unity manifested, and her power dispensed: is it the church, thus constituted, which conveys salvation to men? Or do men, by obtaining salvation, each one for himself, by the reception of God's offer of mercy through Christ, constitute, by their spiritual union with Christ, the church of God, which is holy, catholic, and invisible, and by their outward fellowship with each other, such churches as Christ has appointed to exist visibly on the earth? This is the great question at issue, which must be justly apprehended, and fairly dealt with, before this controversy can even approximate to a close."

This is undoubtedly the grand question, well put, at issue between the Tractarians and the sincere advocates of Biblical Christianity; and we rejoice to say that our author has met it, and disposed of it in a manner equally creditable to the scholar, the gentleman, and the divine. With a degree of patience and candour rarely displayed in polemical writings, he has threaded his way through the whole labyrinth of Tractarian theology, and has shown it to be a maze of traditional fables and human devices, supplanting alike the doctrines and the institutions of the New Testament.

Our author's first chapter is introductory, in which he demonstrates the matchless simplicity of Christianity, as set forth in the inspired records, and the tendency which evinced itself, even in the apostolic age, to depart "from the original form of Christian

VOL. XXI.

truth, practice, and institute." A passion for novelty, a lingering attachment to the doctrines of pagan philosophy, a desire to make Christianity respectable in the eyes of the world, a misguided attachment to Jewish institutes, a distrust of the innate vitality of the gospel, and the rapid growth of a secular and worldly spirit, evincing itself in lukewarmness among the professors of Christianity, and in avarice and ambition on the part of the clergy, are shown to be the principal sources of that corruption which had overspread the Christian church, long before the days of Constantine. The combined influence of causes like these is shown to have "eaten out the vitals of Christianity, and changed it from a simple, unassuming, unostentatious scheme of religious benefit to man, into a great hierarchical corporation, the prevailing tendency of which was, to make religion a matter of rites and ceremonies, to elevate the Christian pastor, whose duty it is to feed the flock of God with the pure food of truth, into the awful priest, whose place it is to stand between God and man, and, by power derived from the former, to influence not by his doctrine, but by certain rites of mysterious meaning, the eternal destiny of the latter, and to make the church, which, according to the doctrine of the apostles, is the invisible body of Christ, a great, compact, visible engine of spiritual dominion. In the system thus described, we have the substance of the system of Catholicism, to which Romanism has added many corruptions of her own, and to which Anglicanism, whilst protesting against these additions of later ages, would fain bring back the whole of Christendom, as to the pattern of primitive order, loveliness, and strength," p. 4.

care.

This view of Catholicism is well sustained in a very able historical sketch, which indicates a profound acquaintance with the original sources of ecclesiastical history. Those who wish to become well acquainted with the doctrines and usages of the Nicene age, which have been so much lauded in our times, will do well to read this chapter with Rome, indeed, added not a little to the errors then existing; but it developed principles already recognised, rather than originated anything absolutely new. "To the church thus developed and established," observes our author, "all true Catholics look back with reverence, as to their model directress. When we come a little further down, however, in the history of Christianity, we encounter certain additions made to the creed and to the rules of the Nicene council, which are regarded by many Catholics as corruptions and unauthorized departures from the primitive faith and practice. Of these it will not be necessary to take any particular notice in the inquiry to which the 2 F