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hope, different from that of the gospel. The notion on which he places his, and advises others to place all their, hope of salvation, cannot but prove, if St. Paul be correct, destructive to the souls of men. It is another gospel, and yet not another, for it is far from being good news; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ'-men who have read about the church till they have forgotten Christ, and are so full of reverence for saints and fathers, councils and canons, that apostles and apostolic doctrines are neglected, or seen only in a distant perspective; the fore-ground is occupied by the church. They may deem their one warrant for the hope of salvation' only a 'development' of the original gospel, but it is unquestionably a metamorphosis of a palace into a prison, a transformation of bread into a stone, of a fish into a serpent. Odd developments, indeed, those must be which extinguish all type of the original principle, and substitute that which the inspired writers have exhibited as its opposite. If of works then is it no 'more of grace.' Such strange, and perilous, and incoherent work do men make of it, when they attempt to develop divine ideas and systems. The first lines of the Ars Poetica were never more appropriate than to the monstrous union of human and divine in the theory of salvation which the church' has substituted for 'the hope set before us in the gospel.'

Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas
Undique collatis membris: aut turpiter atrum
Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne!

Cloudy, desultory, and utterly illogical as is the whole of the book, yet there are some passages or sentences, which, apart from the recollection of the author's position, would not have failed to awaken within us a pleasant feeling of sympathy in Christian hopes and aspirations; they would have done so, if they had been written by a conscientious Romanist; but, in the present instance, they not only lose their natural effect, as expressions of zeal for the renovation of our apostate nature, but they inevitably provoke questionings concerning the author, which a generous mind feels reluctant to indulge, and yet the author himself occasions them by the contradiction which his work presents to his position and official character. The church of his judgment and of his heart is that of Rome. It has been so for years. positively yearns for it. It is the only church, he tells us, the members of which are not in a state of schism—that is, in a safe state. Yet he expresses his determination to remain in the church of England, not only as a private member, but as a bound and pledged upholder of its religious creed. Either his writings

He

must be inconsistent with his conduct, or his conduct must destroy all faith in the conscientiousness of his writings. Writings, actions, and conscience, seem to be in open hostility to each other. The church that has hold of his conscience tells him, that he endangers his soul's salvation by remaining another hour in the communion of the church of England; yet he disbelieves his infallible mother, and still adheres to the rich establishment! Is it that worldly prudence suggests weightier reasons than conscience? That must be a strange sort of crucible in which these heterogenous, these antagonist materials, can all be fused into combination.

By profession he is, or was when he wrote this book, (for what he may be before our publication sees the light, we dare not predict,) a protestant clergyman, and whether protestantism be truth or error, he stands bound to support it as by law established, and for this service he has accepted the pay of the nation, while by his pen he has been confessedly labouring for years, to uproot every one of the principles by which that church is distinguished from the Roman catholic. He has not concealed, he does not now conceal, his designs; but in effect impudently tells the nation, whose servant he is, 'I will use my utmost efforts to undo you, as a reformed church, and to deliver you over to your most 'inveterate foe.' What would the nation say to any other public officer, engaged for a particular kind of service, who should just follow the honourable, and very moral, and very conscientious example of Mr. Ward and his fellows?—a captain in the army or navy, an ambassador at a foreign court? How long would the superiors of such a person tolerate his conduct before they impeached him as a delinquent, and visited him with appropriate punishment? How long would the nation, knowing of such a case, look on and be mute?

Yet here are the interests of the church of England-that is, of its members, interests transcending infinitely all secular interests-literally trifled with, sacrificed before their face, in a style of effrontery and daring that is absolutely unequalled. But the darkest feature of the whole affair is emblazoned with all the arts of eloquence and persuasion in these pages-it is the pretence, that the system of the church of Rome tends far more powerfully than protestantism, to the production of a sound morality, a tender conscience, and a saintly character. The morality, we must say, surpasses our comprehension; with such tenderness of conscience we feel no sympathy, and as to the saintly character, the fewer there are of such saints in any church, the better for its purity and stability. The inmates of Newgate may next read us lectures upon honesty, and courtezans treat us with

panegyrics on the beauty of virtue. Had Mr. Ward first renounced his profession as a protestant clergyman, and then published his book, no man would have had a right to impeach his consistency; but, as it is, he has branded his own name with reproach, and never can he efface it. No man who execrates the doctrines and the very name of protestantism, and, at the same time, declares himself in full unison with the whole cycle of Romish dogmas and practices, can honestly remain another hour-honestly, we mean, to the nation, to his conscience, and to the Almighty-the endowed minister of a protestant church. He has avowedly adopted the doctrine of repudiation. The American repudiationists are the only parallels to the Puseyites which modern times have furnished. And we could almost ask, where is the whip of scorpions which so justly scourged the Pensylvanians? Here are repudiators who still more justly merit the satirist's scourge. Even if Mr. Ward and others should have openly renounced the church-of-England doctrines, professorships, tutorships, endowments, and all, before these lines meet the public eye, yet they never can wipe off the foul stain of a long series of treasons against the religion of their country. Canonization itself could scarcely do it, peerless as its powers are known to be in making saints.

Art. III. Essays on Christian Union. 8vo, pp. 524. London, 1845.

To lament the activity of party among the politicians and religionists of our country, in the present day, is a sign of imbecility or bigotry, and it is at best a miserable waste of time. In every department of life the strongest thinkers look at the same objects with different predispositions, from different points, and in different lights; and these act on other minds in such a way, that what was at first the conviction of an individual is perpetuated as the symbol of a party. So long as active intellect is combined with personal influence and social attachments, parties will be formed.

The kind of party depends on the object to which the ascendant minds of any time or place have been strongly directed, and on the degree of general interest which that object is likely to create, to which we must add the passions to which the candidates for acceptance respectively appeal. The power of party owes perhaps as much to the passions of both leaders and followers as it does to their convictions. The springing up of parties round

the grand truths developed in the course of civilization, and exhibiting the plastic power by which that civilization has been moulded, is to the thoughtful observer a sign of life, the pledge of a severe, if not a fair, testing of the true, the good, the permanent; and the progress of such discussions allures him with a charm not less strong than that which would have enchanted him in looking at the Olympic games, or listening to the odes of Pindar.

Party in a commonwealth is either the effect or the cause of liberty; for where perfect despotism_rules, there must be the silence, or the monotony, or the melancholy unison, of slaves, who utter only what their tyrant likes, and as he chooses that it shall be uttered; but where mind is free, so that rights shall be asserted, opinions expressed, and theories canvassed, the iron touches not the soul: either it has already been flung from the limbs, or there is that in the unshackled spirit which, with the certainty of a law of nature, will finally consume it. The hacknied accusation of the enemies of freedom, by which the weak are frightened, and the selfish fortified, has ever been, that, however beautiful in theory, freedom is fraught with danger; and a thousand tales are told of extravagance and folly, of heresy and insurrection, of plunder and bloodshed, to illustrate the fatal consequences of granting this dangerous power to men, especially in matters so exciting as politics, or so sacred as religion. These tales are not all weak inventions. To the readers of both sides in the civil and ecclesiastical history of Europe, during the last three centuries, it is sometimes entertaining, and always instructive, to see how the great battle of right against wrong, and of conscience against domination, has been made doubtful by the real evils done by the combatants on either side, and still more by the feeble, perverted, and often wicked uses made of these facts by the enemies of right and truth.

Freedom is the absence of restraint and fear; but no man of sense has ever wished or imagined a state of things-society it could not be-in which there shall be no control over the vagaries of thought and the impulses of passion. The real question has related to the best securities for the greatest amount of independence to each, compatible with the freedom of all. The public man who does not enter heartily on the career which, to the best of his judgment, leads to that goal, is the enemy of the human species. He and all who unite with him constitute a faction which it is the interest of the whole species to put down. So fully is this truth now established, that few are to be found who are not ambitious to be regarded as the friends of freedom. The question, however, remains-Upon what principles, and by what

methods, shall this professed end be most solidly and permanently secured?

Here is an opening for diversity of opinion, and consequently for the formation of parties professing in common their adherence to the cause of freedom. One man may think he sees securities for general liberty in certain restraints on individual action, which to another man appears to be subversive of all liberty; and on these opposite views of the question two parties may join issue. The enlightened lover of freedom wishes both parties to have fair play, because it is only by the full discussion of the entire question that the truth can be brought out; because it is only among men who enjoy a certain measure of freedom, with whatever present security for its continuance, that such parties could exist, or such discussions have place; and because it has been found that, in proportion as a people are wise and patient enough to forego a transient freedom for that which shall pass down as an ancient inheritance to their children, it is as difficult for sophists to mislead, as it is for demagogues to inflame, or tyrants to enslave them.

Hæc mea sunt, teneo: quum vere dixeris, esto

LIBERQUE AC SAPIENS

Not only is the existence of party a sign of liberty—it is an organ of power. As the drops accumulate in the stream, and as mechanical forces acquire more than numerical increase by their combination, so it is with associations of men uniting on a common principle to gain the same object. Mind is strengthened by the sympathy of co-operative minds. There is more light, more firmness, more individual deliberation, more promptitude, more balancing of diverse judgments, more certainty of action, and more probability of success, where men form themselves into a party than when they think and act independently of each other. It is well for us that our social instincts, apart from speculation, urge us to associate; while the coolest reason shows that to follow these instincts is as wise as it is natural. quench, in detail, the sparks of liberty might seem an easy task; but to extinguish the flame kindled by bringing all those sparks together in a blazing focus, is a very different affair. Where union is, there is organization; where organization is, there is life; where there is life, there is resistance-the background of national strength and freedom. As it is by decrying party, and seducing timid and pliable men from their natural confederates, that the enemies of freedom often accomplish their mischievous designs, we would join in the loudest exhortations to every thinking man, and say to him'Make sure, by all the light within your reach, that your party

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