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"These cattle must have pastures," said the Bishop, "which pasture if they lack, the rest must needs fail them. And pasture they cannot have, if the land is taken in and enclosed from them. So, as I said, there was on both parts rebellion; therefore, for God's love, restore their sufficient unto them, and search no more what is the cause of the rebellion."

Another evil with which Dr. Döllinger charges the Reformation, is the prevalence of drunkenness. The Catholic holidays were abolished, and the Christian Sunday transformed into a Jewish Sabbath. England, renowned of old as "merrie England," became, for lack of social sport, the most sullen and discontented nation in the world; and the only pastime left them was, the indulgence of a propensity to drink, which had never been known before the Reformation. There is some truth in the allegation, and we should greatly desire the prevalence of rational and innocent amusements provided for the people, as a substitute for the ale house and the tavern; but we must remember that the sup. pression of national sports cannot be attributed to the English Church, but is only chargeable on the Puritans. A Puritan section had existed in the Church of England from the days of Elizabeth, and no doubt had used their influence against the sports. The first authoritative suppression, however, was made by the judges of assize at Exeter and Taunton, in 1633. An appeal was made to Charles I., who commanded the Bishop of London to write to the Bishop of Bath and Wells, for an account of the manner in which wakes and other festivals were conducted. On the receipt of this letter, the Bishop of Bath and Wells took counsel with seventy of the country clergy, and the result of their deliberation was a representation—

that on the festivals (which commonly fell on the Sunday) Divine Service was most solemnly performed, and the congregation fuller, both in the forenoon and afternoon, than upon any other Sunday; that the people desired that they might be continued, and that the Clergy in most places were of the same sentiment. They believed these annual solemnities serviceable for preserving the memory of the dedication of the churches, for making up differences by the meeting of friends, for cultivating a good correspondence among neighbours, and for refreshing the poor with the entertainments made upon those anniversaries."

The King's authorization of these holiday sports was almost immediately issued; and we all know the tumult which the Puritans raised against the Book of Sports. The rebellion quickly followed, and at the Restoration the state of parties in England was such, as to make it inexpedient again to open the question. The representation of the Somersetshire Clergy may, however, be taken as a picture of the practice of the Church of England during the century which succeeded the Reformation. That the Church of Eng.

land does not hold the Christian Sunday to be a Jewish Sabbath is proved by the favourable reception which Dr. Hessey's Bampton Lectures received. Whether Puritanism has been productive of drunkenness is not the question with which we are engaged, as our present concern is with the Church of England. Certainly, we will admit that this vice nowhere prevails to the extent which it has reached in Puritan Scotland.

Again, Dr. Döllinger is manifestly unfair in his comparison between Protestant sects and the English Church.

"The Anglican Church," he says, "is distinguished from all other Protestant Churches in this, that they possess in their symbolic books at least the possibility of unity of doctrine, and a corresponding ecclesiastical life as, for example, the Lutherans, by keeping seriously and closely to their Concordian-Book, might effect a unity of life and doctrine, provided they got rid of theology. But the English Church has the germ of discord and ecclesiastical dissolution in its normal condition and in its confessions of faith. It is a collection of heterogeneous theological propositions, tied together by the Act of Uniformity; but which, in a logical mind, cannot exist by the side of one another, and whose effect upon the English Churchman is that he finds himself involved in continual contradictions and disingenuousness, and can only escape the painful consciousness by sophistical reasoning.”—P. 160.

If it were true that a Catholic Liturgy and Calvinistic Articles were imposed by the Act of Uniformity on the members of the Church of England, we would admit the justice of the charge; but Dr. Döllinger does not seem to be aware that our Articles are not borrowed from any Calvinistic model, but from the Lutheran Confession of Augsburg. The Council of Trent found nothing to condemn in the writings of Luther or of the Lutheran divines on the subject of predestination or of final perseverance; and therefore, since the Articles claimed as Calvinistic are of Lutheran origin, we and Dr. Döllinger are agreed. At the time when the Articles were framed, Calvin's Institutes possessed as yet but little influence, and it is well known that of all the German Reformers, the Lutheran Melancthon had the greatest influence with Cranmer and Ridley, who, in common with the rest of the English Reformers of that period, held the doctrine of the universality of Redemption. If the Calvinists had been satisfied that our Articles favoured their view, they would not have clamoured for the promulgation of the Lambeth Articles, which were finally rejected at the Hampton Court Conference.

It is not true that the judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in the Gorham case, altered the doctrine of the Church of England. Whatever fears may have been entertained by churchmen at the time, the blow fell powerless on the Church. It was only by an oversight that a court so constituted obtained power to decide questions of doctrine, and their judgment in the Gorham case is never appealed to as an argument of the slightest

weight. It is difficult to say what this judgment decided, but certain it is that it did not deny that the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration was the doctrine of the Church of England.

The facts which we have brought forward in answer to Dr. Döllinger are not new to students of English Church history, but the repetition of charges, which have been already refuted, proves the necessity of stating them anew. Evils and imperfections no doubt exist amongst us, and there are breaches in our walls which need repair, but are we in a worse position than other churches? However hardly state influence may be sometimes made to press upon the free action of the Church, we are happily not yet reduced to that state of thraldom under which the Russian Church has bowed. No minister of state can suppress the charges of our Bishops, as is known to have been done in France; and if political influence sometimes regulates an ecclesiastical appointment, is that influence unfelt in the election of a Pope, when Cardinals hold the vetos of secular powers against the nomination of individual members of their order. Nor have we yet arrived at the state of the Eastern Church, of which Dr. Döllinger tells us, that when the Armenian clergy had a dispute with the Greek priests concerning mixing water in the eucharistic cup, reference of the question was made to the Turkish Reis-Effendi, who decided that water must be used alone, because wine was forbidden by the Koran.

Nevertheless we cannot be ignorant of our need of reformation, and our sense of this we cannot better express than in Dr. Döllinger's own words, spoken in reference to his own church,-" The right reforming spirit must never depart from the Church, but on the contrary, must periodically break out with renovating strength, and penetrate the conscience and the will of the clergy.'

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Our main difference with Dr. Döllinger is this, that while he regards the decay of other churches as the means by which the Church of Rome will regain her world-wide sway, we look upon the increasing life and energy of the several national churches, as the surest precursor of Christian union. Believing this, we can never be so satisfied with our position as to slumber. Unshaken in our allegiance to that branch of the Catholic Church to which, by GOD's providence, we belong, we look forward to a restoration of the Church's unity; and if it should be that the Papacy, having passed into a new phase of its existence, should become the centre of that unity, it is better that when the time comes, the union should be one of love and good works, than that whilst we spend our energies in reviewing our breaches without attempting to repair them, a foreign power should enter in and chain our unresisting limbs. Meanwhile let our position towards the Church of Rome be one of emulation in well doing, and let us

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But the fact is, the Articles were not intended as definitions of doctrine, but simply as an apology. If we desire to know what is the doctrine of the Church on the subject of the Trinity, or the Sacraments, or Ordination, we look not to the Articles, but to the Prayer Book.

REPORT OF THE OXFORD CHURCH CONGRESS.

Report of the Proceedings of the Church Congress of 1862, held in the Sheldonian Theatre and Town Hall, Oxford, July 8, 9, 10. Oxford: Parker.

THE most useful notice of this " Report," which we trust that all our readers will peruse for themselves and widely circulate, we apprehend will be just to distinguish between the points on which some progress was made, by the labours of the Congress, and those where things were left very much as they were found.

Under the latter head, we should without hesitation class Missions, the Education of the Clergy, and Church Finance; although, of course, good must come from the mere ventilation of these difficult subjects.

While on the subject of the legal bearings of appropriated seats, on the employment of women in the Church's work, and on the way of extending the ministry, we are bold to think that the Congress will have gone some way towards clearing men's minds. A few words on each of these subjects.

I. We have reached now undoubtedly the point of divergence between free and allotted seats in Churches. The difficulty does not commence, as Mr. Herford in his very logical paper shows, till there are more families in a parish than there are pews. What is then to be done? The churchwarden, says the Bishop of Oxford, must allot seats according to age, station, &c. Mr. Herford says, no; because in seating some of the parishioners, you thus exclude others: the allotting should cease as soon as there is one more family in a parish than there are pews. These are the two views; and we are disposed to think, that the layman is a better lawyer than the Bishop.

II. On the question of sisterhoods, again we look to its historical rather than to its practical aspect. The recognition of sisterhoods, as an institution in the Church, had in fact been already won; the paper of Mr. Cator and Dr. Pusey, however, may be considered as consummating the triumph. The subject of Vows, which the President and Archdeacon Denison so oddly tried to pooh-pooh by

a side wind, has since received and is receiving illustration in our own pages. The most valuable contribution in our eyes was the short speech of Mr. Scudamore, deprecating the revival of the term Deaconess in the wrong sense in which it is now used, as calculated to promote confusion of ideas. A Deaconess, he rightly told the Congress, was a woman solemnly ordained by the Bishop, and bound consequently by a life-vow. He might have added, that it was because the order of Deaconesses was not found to work well, that they were superseded by Sisterhoods. This seems altogether to settle the question as between Sisters and Deaconesses.

III. In reference to the extension of the Ministry, the paper of most moment was that of Mr. Massingberd, which he boldly entitled the "Revival of the Minor Orders in the Church," from which we quote the practical conclusion.

"Could we not, therefore, adopt that plan of a confraternity which seems to have been the most ancient and primitive system of lay cooperation? The time forbids to give details-one can but suggest. But suppose it were called 'The Brotherhood of Lay Readers ;' suppose that brothers were of two classes, those willing to employ readers at their own expense, or subscribe to employ them, and those willing to be so employed-the latter class being subdivided into those who would work gratuitously, and those requiring pay: none, however, to be actually appointed who should not be nominated to the Bishop by the priest of his own parish, nor retained after the Bishop had withdrawn his licence, which accords with the Representation' of the Lower House of Convocation, adopted in a late session, and now before the Upper House. Of course the licence would always be withdrawn if the clergyman of the parish desired it.

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"But this belongs rather to the third head proposed-the mode of appointment. Being nominated to the Bishop and approved by him, the Lower House of Convocation has ruled, so far as they are concerned, and submitted to the Bishops, that the appointment should be 'with the solemnity of a public service in the Church, and by an instrument under the episcopal hand and seal.' This solemnity might be sometimes in the parish church, where the reader was to officiate, but more commonly at the time of ordination of priests and deacons; and for the form, nothing can be better than that supplied by the Council of Carthage, which directs that the Bishop deliver into the hand of the reader the Bible which he is to read from, and say thus:- Take this, and be a reader of the Word of God; and have a place, if you duly fulfil your office, with those who have ministered the Word of GOD.'

"If any should think that to form such a brotherhood as this beforehand would be to show disrespect to the episcopal office, it may be remembered that the Bishops may possibly wait to be informed whether such persons are forthcoming before they proceed to sanction a plan which otherwise might prove abortive. And it is not unworthy of notice that the two great fraternities in the Medieval Church, the Dominicans and Franciscans, were both of them formed, and in some degree in operation, before they went to the Pope for confirmation. In ·

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