is rapidly sinking, deeper and deeper, in servility, pollution, and depravity.

In the article of ours, which drew forth the present attempt at a reply, we have quoted Scripture upon Scripture. Our opponents answer, by quoting bishop upon bishop. One bishop, they seem to think, will make us halt: a second bishop will make us turn round and run away: a third bishop will send us back to whence we came, never to open our lips, or to shew our faces more, against the Gentleman's Magazine. Here our opponents are mistaken. We must plainly tell them, that we do not regard opinions ex cathedrâ, on matters of theology, as in this day worth a rush. They may weigh with those who know little or nothing respecting the points in debate; or whose object is merely to ascertain what is the doctrine now passed upon the public, to be by them received as the doctrine of the Church of England. But with us, whose standard is the Bible, and whose system is the Thirty-nine Articles in their literal sense, the modern glosses of those calling themselves the Church go for nothing. The true and orthodox Church established in this realm, and the system now claiming to itself the character of orthodoxy, are two different things. Nay, not only different, but opposite. The one has substituted itself for the other. The one has usurped the place of the other. The one has put down and keeps down the other. The one has suppressed and hides the other. We then, in this matter, are for the weak against the strong; for justice against foul play; for sound doctrine against error; for truth against falsehood. -We hope we have made ourselves understood.

Those who call themselves orthodox, and high-churchmen, with all their apparent advantages, have no real right to the titles. Those whom they represent as unsound in doctrine, and disorderly in discipline, with all their alleged irregularities, are the true Church of England.-Is this intelligible?

The true doctrine of the Church is denied among those who call themselves the Church; and is to be found among those whom they style enthusiasts and fanatics. The former have departed from the true standard; the latter have adhered to it. The former, not the latter, are the schismatics. The former, not the latter, are the dissenters.-Is this intelligible?

Strange truths seldom obtain a place in the minds of men, by once repeating. But we intend to say these things over and over again, till the public are familiar with them. This is the way falsehood has been propagated. Truth must be restored in

the same manner.

So much for Episcopal, as opposed to Scriptural, authority.

No, no, Mr. Sylvanus Urban: you must not be suffered to use the mitre, as an extinguisher of the Bible.

Our reviewer objects, he tells us, to " Calvinistic principles," yet (will it be believed?) strongly inculcates "religious and moral education, the benefits of which have been proved in Scotland." Why, what a contradiction is here! The Scotch Church, if any thing, is by principle even more Calvinistic than our own. Calvinistic principles, strictly inculcated, have led to all that is really good in the character of the Scotch people.

Calvinism on the one hand, and on the other public morality, domestic happiness, personal integrity, moral innocence, and national simplicity, are now, in that country, declining together. By bringing the national religion into ridicule, the novels of Sir Walter Scott have helped forward this evil as much in Scotland, as Lord Byron, by the foul effusions of his tainted muse, has promoted similar ills in England. Sylvanus and Urban are not more opposite, than objections to Calvinism, and an approval of the principles of education which once made Scotland a happy nation. There are a set of persons that commit a monthly delinquency, by the publication of a periodical at Edinburgh, on whom, whenever we take them in hand, we shall inflict the KNOUT. They fancy that they can safely go on with their drunken revels, from month to month, ridiculing their national clergy and the principles of piety, and yet possessing an innocent peasantry to form the subject of their midnight songs. But no. You must have both or neither. Sap the foundations of true religion in any country, and every national virtue will rapidly disappear. Accelerate the downfal of the established faith in Scotland, and you will accelerate the change from happiness, patriotism, personal integrity, good fellowship in neighbourhoods, loyalty, temperance, contentment, intelligence, and piety, to infidelity, radicalism, Owenism, mock science and philosophy, faction, vice, turbulence, starvation, and misery. "When the wicked cometh, then cometh also contempt."

But, to pass on from one contradiction to another, Mr. Urban complains of certain fanatical doctrines, as "separating, or tending to separate, faith from works;" yet at the same time assures us, with reference to the Office for Visiting the Sick, that "the Liturgy requires only a confession of faith in Jesus Christ." If this be not separating faith and works, what can be? But what a monstrous misrepresentation is here! Then," says the rubric (after enjoining the confession of faith, and that not only of faith in Jesus Christ, but of faith in all the articles of the Apostles' Creed), "Then shall the minister examine whether

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he" (the person visited) "repent him truly of his sins." It is not confession of faith alone, then, that is required; but confession of faith, and REPENTANCE. And again :" Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins”—(confession of his sins, as well as confession of faith)" if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession, the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort."-Now, who is it that is most chargeable with separating faith from works? The worthy clergyman, assailed by Mr. Urban for speaking seriously to a dying man? or Mr. Urban himself, who, while the rubric especially enjoins that the sick person be moved to confess his sins, has the face to tell the clergy that they are to require ONLY a confession of faith ?-By the bye, Mr. U. rather misrepresents Bishop Tomline, when (quoting certain words, in which the Bishop merely urges, that a person will not be condemned for not believing doctrines that have never been proposed to him) he has the boldness to represent the words quoted, as "censures of the Bishop "applied to the Athanasian Creed." The Bishop is far too safe a writer thus to commit himself, in plain terms, against any received formulary of our Church. His real faults we conceive to be, that upon many most important points of controversy he has taken the wrong side of the question, and that he has frequently betrayed a profound ignorance of the subject on which he has written. Persons versed in these matters may discover this continually. The Rev. Thomas Scott, though with great forbearance, has shewn it over and over again. But the Bishop's writings contain fewer than most men's, of those superficial flaws which are detected by ordinary readers. We consider him, indeed, a very dangerous, but a very guarded writer. The crust is smooth and sound, though what lies beneath is bad indeed.

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If a visiting clergyman affrights the sick, he destroys," says Mr. U.," the operation of the medicines proposed for his belief." We hold that the business of a clergyman, called in to visit a dying man, is, if indeed he finds that man to be a Christian, to comfort, to strengthen, to encourage him, in his final hour; to talk very humbling, but at the same time very high, doctrine to him, so high as he could never have dreamt of talking to him while well and about; to display a large cross (not crucifix);to display a large cross, so large that Satan shall be frightened away from the sick man's bed-side, and not dare to come nigh to inflict a parting thrust. But, if he finds him to be not a Christian, if he finds him to be dying without hope, if he finds his mind made up so to die, then, "operation" or no " operation,"

we hold it to be the clergyman's duty, with all affection, but with all decision and promptitude, to make a last and desperate effort, such as he would make to save a drowning man that is about to sink. He must declare and lay open, in a breath, the terrors of perdition, the wrath of God against all who die in sin, the anguish of eternal destruction, the misery of a death that knows no death, the flames of hell: and, while he tells of a compassionate Saviour's sufferings and power, he must warn the dying man of all those awful realities, as of things which, unless his course be changed at once, he will speedily behold and feel for himself. To prevent the minister's doing this, he will probably, on entering the sick man's apartment, find, leagued together against him, the sick man himself-all his weeping friends and relatives-the nurse-the doctor-the devil-Deathand, if it has found its way into the room, the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1827. But, in defiance of this phalanx, he must do his duty; despising offence, contempt, obloquy, and shame; telling the sick man of hell, telling him of heaven, telling him of that Saviour by whom he may yet escape the one and reach the other, while all around him scowl:which, no doubt, is the way the Bishop proceeded, when he visited the Duke of York in his last illness.

But one paradox more. "In point of fact," says Mr. Urban, "if we analyze such fanaticism chemically, we shall find it merely to consist in doing those things violently, which the regular clergy do temperately." Now, how the regular, or rather, as we call them, the irregular clergy, may like this assertion, we are at a loss to divine. For fanaticism is charged with doing many things, in the earlier part of the article, of a very pernicious tendency. If, therefore, the only difference be, that the one party do them violently, and the other temperately, we must say, that the evil lies far more on the side of the latter, than the former: for those who set to work to do mischief temperately, generally do it with most perseverance, as well as most effect. Let us see, then, what, according to Mr. Urban, are the things done. For example: Fanatics, when opposed, employ" modes of aspersion not to be named." Religious enthusiasm "foments all the low passions consequent upon strong party-feeling, and is shockingly uncharitable;" and "makes faith a covering for sins." Now it is false to say that the body whom our opponent assails-namely, the evangelical or regular clergy of the Church of England-do these things violently, or do them at all. But the point to be determined is, whether, as Mr. Urban intimates, the other class of the clergy do them temperately. If they do, all we can say is, that they are a most

dangerous set of men.-With regard to the last article, that of making faith a covering for sins," Mr. Urban himself tells us how this may be done-namely, as we have seen already, by requiring from a sick person visited, "ONLY a confession of faith in Jesus Christ ;" and that, as he adds afterwards, "though the sick man's life may not have been praiseworthy;" or, in other words, though he may have been a swearer, a drunkard, an adulterer, a gamester, and a Sabbath-breaker: and, if this be not making faith a covering for sins, what meaning has the term? This, then, according to Mr. Urban, is what his clients have been doing; and doing temperately, coolly, deliberately! They have been suffering men to live and die at ease in sin, by requiring ONLY a confession of faith in Christ. Surely Sylvanus has here furnished us with a key, which will lay open the true reason, why, in the hands of that very class of persons whom he is so anxious to vindicate, the Church of England is now so rapidly sinking into contempt, inefficiency, and general obloquy and ill-will.

But our opponent urges, "It is irregular, in an Episcopal Church, for the clergy of any diocese to belong to religious societies which the bishop does not patronize." We fear the irregularity, in this matter, is on the part of the bishops themselves. The societies in question are excellent institutions, deserving encouragement: and we regard the conduct of our prelates, in not supporting them, as highly reprehensible. If, from their refusing their support, evils have in some instances arisen, the blame must rest with themselves. And if they regard those of their clergy, who do support them, with an evil eye, and in consequence ill-treat, depress, or persecute them, they have a heavy burden of responsibility. In most dioceses, there are some clergymen, whose literary acquirements, or whose pastoral zeal, mark them out as men whom the bishop OUGHT to encourage. This may be a painful claim: and if upon some one of these individuals it be possible to fix a charge of irregularity-whether by his preaching certain doctrines now unfashionable though always true, by his advocating certain institutions, or even by his belonging to this or that committee-the offence may serve as a very convenient diminution of the list of claimants: but whether it be right and fair to profit by such pleas, is quite another matter. If these last remarks meet the eye of those to whom they very particularly apply, we hope they will reach their conscience.

Our opponent having said, "If the system of Calvin be true, God is the author of evil," we have called this blasphemy. In reply, he refers us, both for the sentiments and words, to