system of ours. I will not stop to quarrel with you for calling it ours, as if it were not rather the Church's; but explain to me what you consider it to consist in.

L. The following are some of its doctrines: that the Church has an existence independent of the State; that the State may not religiously interfere with its internal concerns; that none may engage in ministerial works except such as are episcopally ordained; that the consecration of the Eucharist is especially entrusted to Bishops and Priests. Where do you find these doctrines in the formularies of the Church; that is, so prominently set forth, as to sanction you in urging them at all, or at least so strongly as you are used to urge them?

C. As to urging them at all, we might be free to urge them even though not mentioned in the Articles; unless indeed the Articles are our rule of faith. Were the Church first set up at the Reformation, then indeed it might be right so to exalt its Articles as to forbid to teach "whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby." I cannot consent, I am sure the Reformers did not wish me, to deprive myself of the Church's dowry, the doctrines which the Apostles spoke in Scripture and impressed upon the early Church. I receive the Church as a messenger from CHRIST, rich in treasures old and new, rich with the accumulated wealth of ages.

L. Accumulated?

C. As you will yourself allow. Our Articles are one portion of that accumulation. Age after age, fresh battles have been fought with heresy, fresh monuments of truth set up. As I will not consent to be deprived of the records of the Reformation, so neither will I part with those of former times. I look upon our Articles as in one sense an addition to the Creeds; and at the same time the Romanists added their Tridentine articles. Theirs I consider unsound; ours as true.

L. The Articles have surely an especial claim upon you; you have subscribed them, and are therefore more bound to them, than to other truths, whatever or wherever they be.

C. There is a popular confusion on this subject. Our Articles are not a body of divinity, but in great measure only protest against certain errors of a certain period of the Church. Now I will preach the whole counsel of GoD, whether set down in the

Articles or not. I am bound to the Articles by subscription; but I am bound, more solemnly even than by subscription, by my baptism and by my ordination, to believe and maintain the whole Gospel of CHRIST. The grace given at those seasons comes through the Apostles, not through Luther or Calvin, Bucer or Cartwright. You will presently agree with me in this statement. Let me ask, do you not hold the inspiration of Holy Scripture ? L. Undoubtedly.

C. Is it not a clergyman's duty to maintain and confess it?
L. Certainly.

C. But the doctrine is no where found in the Articles; and for this plain reason, that both Romanists and Reformers admitted it; and the difference between the two parties was, not whether the Old and New Testament were inspired, but whether the Apocrypha was of canonical authority.

L. I must grant it.

C. And in the same way, I would say, there are many other doctrines unmentioned in the Articles, only because they were not then disputed by either party; and others, for other reasons, short of disbelief in them. I cannot indeed make my neighbour preach them, for he will tell me he will believe only just so much as he has been obliged to subscribe; but it is hard if I am therefore to be defrauded of the full inheritance of faith myself. Look at the subject from another point of view, and see if we do not arrive at the same conclusion. A statesman of the last century is said to have remarked that we have Calvinistic Articles, and a Popish Liturgy. This of course is an idle calumny. But is there not certainly a distinction of doctrine and manner between the Liturgy and the Articles? And does not what I have just stated account for it, viz., that the Liturgy, as coming down from the Apostles, is the depository of their complete teaching; while the Articles are polemical, and except as they embody the creeds, are only protests against certain definite errors? Such are my views about the Articles; and if in my teaching, I lay especially stress upon doctrines only indirectly contained in them, and say less about those which are therein put forth most prominently, it is because times are changed. We are in danger of unbelief more than of superstition. The Christian minister should be a witness against the errors of his day.

L. I cannot tell whether on consideration I shall agree with you or not. However, after all, you have said not a word to explain what your real differences from Popery are; what those false doctrines were which you conceive our Reformers withstood. You began by confessing that your opinions and the Popish opinions had a resemblance, and only disputed whether yours should be called like the Popish, or the Popish like yours. But in what are yours different from Rome?

C. Be assured of this-no party will be more opposed to our doctrine, if it ever prospers and makes noise, than the Roman party. This has been proved before now. In the seventeenth century the theology of the divines of the English Church was substantially the same as ours is; and it experienced the full hostility of the Papacy. It was the true Via Media; Rome sought to block up that way as fiercely as the Puritans. History tells us this. Did I not fear to incur the guilt of railing against other branches of CHRIST'S Church, I would, before we separated, attempt a few words in explanation of my irreconcilable differences with the system of Rome, as it is; but, on the whole,I feel it better to stop at the point to which we have come.

L. Thank you for this conversation; from which I hope to draw matter for reflection, though the subject seems to involve such deep historical research, I hardly know how to find my way through it.

OXFORD,

The Feast of St. James.

[FOURTH EDITION.]

These Tracts are continued in Numbers, and sold at the price of 2d. for each sheet, or 7s. for 50 copies.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. G. F. & J. RIVINGTON,

ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE.

GILBERT & RIVINGTON, Printers, St. John's Square, London.

The following Works, all in single volumes, or pamphlets, and recently published, will be found more or less to uphold or elucidate the general doctrines inculcated in these Tracts:

Bp. Taylor on Repentance, by Hale.-Rivingtons.

Bp. Taylor's Golden Grove.-Parker, Oxford.

Vincentii Lirinensis Commonitorium, with translation.—Parker, Oxford.

Pusey on Cathedrals and Clerical Education.-Roake and Varty. Hook's University Sermons.-Talboys, Oxford.

Pusey on Baptism (published separately).-Rivingtons.

Newman's Sermons, 4 vols.-Rivingtons.

Newman on Romanism, &c -Rivingtons.

The Christian Year.-Parker, Oxford.
Lyra Apostolica.-Rivingtons.

Perceval on the Roman Schism.-Leslie.
Bishop Jebb's Pastoral Instructions.-Duncan.
Dodsworth's Lectures on the Church.-Burns.
Newman on Suffragan Bishops.-Rivingtons.
Keble's Sermon on Tradition.-Rivingtons.
Memoir of Ambrose Bonwick.-Parker, Oxford.
Hymns for Children on the Lord's Prayer.-Rivingtons.
Law's first and second Letters to Hoadly.-Rivingtons.
Bp. Andrews' Devotions. Latin and Greek.—Pickering.
Hook's Family Prayers.-Rivingtons.
Herbert's Poems and Country Pastor.

Evans's Scripture Biography.-Rivingtons.

Le Bas' Life of Archbishop Laud.-Rivingtons.

Jones (of Nayland) on the Church.

Bp. Bethell on Baptismal Regeneration.-Rivingtons.

Bp. Beveridge's Sermons on the Ministry and Ordinances.-Purker, Oxford.

Bp. Jolly on the Eucharist.

Fulford's Sermons on the Ministry, &c.-Rivingtons.
Rose's Sermons on the Ministry.-Rivingtons.

A Catechism on the Church.-Parker, Oxford.

Russell's Judgment of the Anglican Church.-Baily.
Poole's Sermons on the Creed.—Grant, Edinburgh.
Sutton on the Eucharist.-Parker, Oxford.
Leslie on the Regale and Pontificate.-Leslie.
Pusey's Sermon on November 5.-Rivingtons.
Bishop Wilson's Sacra Privata.-Parker, Oxford.
The Cathedral, a Poem.-Parker, Oxford.
Palmer's Ecclesiastical History.-Burns.

Larger Works which may be profitably studied.

Bishop Bull's Sermons.-Parker, Oxford.
Bishop Bull's Works.—University Press.
Waterland's Works.-Do.

Wall on Infant Baptism.-Do.

Pearson on the Creed.-Do.

Leslie's Works.-Do.

Bingham's Works.-Straker, London.

Palmer on the Liturgy.-University Press.

Palmer on the Church.-Rivingtons.
Hooker, ed. Keble.-Do.

TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.

BISHOP WILSON'S FORM OF RECEIVING

PENITENTS.

After Morning Prayers, the person who is censured to penance standing in the accustomed place and habit, the Minister shall exhort him as follows:

BROTHER,

THE Church being a society of persons professing to live in the fear of GOD, and expecting the judgments of GOD to fall upon them, if His laws are broken without calling the offenders to account; it is reasonable that every member of this society, who has been guilty of any scandalous offence, should either openly confess his sins, and promise reformation for the time to come; or else should be cut off from the body of CHRIST, which is the Church.

Now, to awaken you to a true sense of your condition, I will set before you the Word of God; that you may certainly know what will be the end of a wicked life; and that knowing the terror of the LORD, you may speedily turn unto Him and make your peace.

Hear then what the Apostle St. Paul saith of great offenders: Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God 1.

Hear also what the same Apostle saith:

Now the works of the flesh are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, laciviousness, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of GoD2.

1 1 Cor. vi. 9.

VOL. I.

:

2 Gal. v. 19.

A