ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

A. F.; Viator; R.; A Constant Reader; M. Y.; An Inquirer; J. C.; J. M. T.; The Bible Secretary of a Local Association; X. Y. Z.; and B.; are under consideration.

We have received the following from the Editor of the Eclectic Review:

"Sir, 20th December, 1840. "In the Christian Observer for this month, page 728, an extract from The Eclectic,' entitled by you 'An oft quoted passage,' is made, which I have been unable to trace out. Will you therefore oblige me by informing me where the passage may be found. I have no recollection of it whatever, and am persuaded that if quoted correctly, its meaning must be greatly modified by the context. Apologising for the trouble thus given you, "I remain, Sir, your obedient Servant,

"34, Paternoster Row. "THE EDITOR OF THE ECLECTIC." We of course comply with this just and reasonable request. The passage referred to will be found in the Volume for 1832, p. 144. We did not give it as new, but as an "oft-quoted passage." It occurs in a long and elaborate paper, written in so much more kind and candid a spirit than that which too many Dissenters (and some of the writers in the Eclectic among them) have evinced in later years towards the Church of England, that we gladly recur to it. The immediate context contains a statement to the effect that some Dissenters, by their intercourse with pious Churchmen in the Bible Society, had found (as we should express it) their prejudices diminish; so that in this way the Anglican Church had been benefited by the alliance. But the writer intimates that this abatement of virulence was not pleasing to all Dissenters; for that some considered that " pure attachment to dissenting principles requires to be kept up in the minds of a certain class by a keen hatred, and now and then a little round abuse, of the Church." The writer clearly intimates his own opinion that such barbarous warfare was not lawful; he would doubtless have wished that all men should become Dissenters by sound Scriptural reason, without invective; but his admission that he differed from some of his brethren in this matter was for this very reason the more oracular. It is perfectly certain, as many Dissenters have avowed, "that dissent upon principle," as it is called, is too etherial to satisfy the multitude; the abstract argument must be rendered pungent by "round abuse;" the "pure attachment," by "keen hatred." Hence the gluttony of the Patriot newspaper for tales against parsons-hence the Eclectic's own comparison of the Church of England to Juggernaut, in order to confirm the "keen hatred" of Dissenters to Church-rates. The writer of 1832 must blush and be grieved as he peruses much that has fallen from the pen of some of his colleagues and successors. Indeed, even then he showed what was his opinion of that fervid eloquence against the Church of England, which has since distinguished the Eclectic Review. For in mentioning the "Ecclesiastical Knowledge Society," the writers for which do not speak more "keenly" than some of those in the Eclectic, he says: "That British Christians-nay, ministers of the Gospel-nay, individuals enjoying the benefits of endowments, should be so far misled by party zeal, as to join in the unprincipled clamour against church property, raised by the advocates of uncompensated spoliation,-forgetful alike of consistency, the decencies of their sacred office, and the plain dictates of common honesty; this, we must avow it, has filled us with amazement and shame. The cause of Dissenters is under small obligation to those who have brought down upon it this deep disgrace."

So say we too. It is a "deep disgrace;" and deeply has the Eclectic Review itself incurred it. We received last month from some of our correspondents most just censures upon a recent article in that publication in reference to the Liturgy of the Church of England; which we omitted inserting, only because it is hateful to us to be always opening new controversies; and we fear we thereby failed in our duty, for remarks more reprehensible, and in a worse spirit, we have not often fallen in with upon such a subject. Take the following specimen :

"Oh! for the pen of Milton or Isaiah, to expose and denounce in words of fire that awful book by which myriads of deluded victims are blinded to their

character and danger. By all the love which they feel to their neighbours, their country, their kind, by their appreciation of the soul's worth, and their jealousy for God's honour, we implore our readers to do what in them lies towards counteracting the influence and destroying the reputation of the most dangerous and injurious book which the English language contains."

Our Prayer-book, the editor of the Eclectic affirms, is "the most dangerous," and "injurious," and "awful" book in the English language ;-worse therefore than the works of Tom Paine and the tracts of the Socialists. Assuredly this is keen hatred and round abuse, to increase pure attachment to dissent. So again those thrilling supplications: "We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord." "Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us." "O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world," &c. &c. are called "flippant sentences." And again: "The Laplander thinks his train oil the greatest delicacy which the universe supplies. The Episcopalian, from the same cause, viz. custom, thinks the Prayer-book the ne plus ultra of devotional forms."

We hope we have written enough to satisfy the editor of the Eclectic; but he shall have much more if he covets it.

We are exceedingly indignant at having been made the vehicle of conveying to our readers fiction and falsehood under the guise of truth. The manuscript inserted in January and February last year, entitled "A fortnight in England, by a French Protestant," was guaranteed to us as having been sent to England for publication by Mr. Jameson, an English resident at Pau, whose "Notices of the Reformation in the South West of France," we had reviewed in October 1839. It purported on the face of it to be the genuine production of a French Protestant; there was the affectation of translating gallicisms; and the fabricator, to keep up the deception, pretended to give notes of his own explanatory of what he called "the original;" and he affirmed that his friend said to him, "Translate away in your holiday style; clothe my French ideas in the best English fashion;" and no private intimation was sent with them that they were not genuine documents; so that fully crediting the solemn assertions in the papers themselves, and believing that Mr. Jameson would not transmit them for publication if they did not speak truth, we inserted them; and in our Number for April, in reply to a correspondent who censured some things in them, we expressly stated, relying upon the above evidence, that they were the statements of a foreigner, which caused us to pass over in revision some passages which we would not have allowed a fellow countryman to have uttered in our pages. We yielded some indulgence to a supposed "French Protestant;" thinking that his remarks upon men and manners in England possessed an adventitious interest, and might perhaps be entertaining or useful, even where in the lips of a native they would have been superficial or incorrect. We feel keenly the wrong which has been done us by the imposition of Mr. Jameson's private lucubrations as the genuine letters of a foreigner. Nothing could have induced us to insert a single line of them, had we been aware of the deception. As it was, we omitted, as we stated at the time, some flippant remarks upon the bishop of London; and we inserted an apology for some uncivil things respecting the Church of England, which Mr. Jameson was pleased to pen under the disguise of a translation from the French. We have now made the best reparation in our power, by giving up the name of the author, which of course we should not have done, had he candid'y stated, when he sent the manuscript to England, that the letters were not genuine. We should merely have declined using them; and have urged him not to commit a fraud upon the British public. Should he wish to republish the letters, we shall insist, as our pages have been made responsible for them, that he shall add that they are not the productions of a French Protestant, and were never translated at all; for as the copy-right is legally ours, we will use our right of forbidding the publication, should it retain a deceptive form. We cheerfully insert the following statement from a Dissenting minister, who sends us his name. It forms a pleasing contrast to the ultraism of some modern zealots, though we fear his testimonial for his brethren is far too general. We regret that there should be Dissenters from the Anglican Church; for the reasons assigned by Howe, Baxter, and the (not) "two thousand;" but such men did not say they would not pray for it, simply because it is connected with a national establishment, even if all its services were immaculate, and "all its ministers believed its doctrines, and practised what they preached.' Our reverend correspondent says: "Oberving, in your valuable Miscellany for October, an inquiry as to whether Evangelical Dissenting Ministers' do still pray for our Established and protected Churches,' I beg to say, that having

been the Pastor of a Dissenting church considerably more than twenty years, I do not remember to have once omitted supplication for the blessing of God upon the faithful labours of the Ministers of the Established or Episcopal Church of these realms, during all my public services for the above period. Nor do I belive that any of my brethren of the independent denomination to which I belong, fail of interceding, at least once in the course of the Sabbath, for the same object. Circumstances may have arisen, most unhappily, to have compelled many of these gentlemen to take decided ground in the maintenance of those principles for which Howe and Baxter,' and two thousand more, suffered the loss or all things,' but I believe that the spirit which they cherish towards the clergy, and the Establishment in general, is quite worthy the descendants of their illustrious ancestors. The acts of a few individuals among Dissenters, should not be taken as interpretative of the spirit of the body. Such a rule would tell fearfully against your own church, if it were acted upon. Hoping you will do the Dissenters the justice to insert this note, and deeply regretting the failure of that charity which hopeth all things between the two great bodies of Protestants, I am, Sir, yours truly, &c."

We reply to VESPUCIUS, that we have not seen the recent reports or other papers of the American Colonization Society; and if any have been sent to us, they probably slumber among the unfranked heaps of appeals, circulars, reports, pamphlets, packets of newspapers, letters, lottery circulars, &c. sent from foreign lands to English Periodical Publications; and which being chiefly concerning the business of the senders, and laden with onerous postage or carriage, often amounting from a few shillings to as many pounds, publishers are obliged to decline taking in, unless they know the correspondent. But we have no need of the recent publications of the American Colonization Society to enable us to speak decidedly respecting it; for we have all along denounced it as a pro-slavery institution-an institution which stamps a brand of ignominy upon all persons whose ancestors were of African origin; and the object of which is to expatriate free-coloured men, however well-conditioned, moral, or religious, as a nuisance and pest to their lordly white brethren. The friends of slavery in the United States view with alarm the vast amount of the free-coloured population, whom they tyrannously retain in the abject political and social condition of slaves; and hence they wish to send them to what they insultingly call "their own country," though they and their forefathers—perhaps for many generations-were born in America; and have a priority in its soil before nine tenths of their oppressors. It is "a rank offence," and "smells to heaven."

We are much obliged to the Dean of Ardagh for his kind note and prayerful salutation, and we rejoice that he is in health. We alluded to his reported death, as the last page of our Appendix was passing through the press, within a few hours of publication; and it was too late to correct the mistake. The newspapers have this month incorrectly reported the death of the Rev. H. Melvill; as once, if we recollect, they did that of the Rev. H. Blunt; who is now at Rome, and we are happy to say is able to use his pen, and we hope for future public edification-though he is laid aside from pastoral labours. As the Secretary of the Hibernian Society gave his name to his communication, we cannot permit A SINCERE PROTESTANT to reply to it anonymously; nor indeed is there any need for further controversy, as the facts are now clearly before the public, and every person may form his own conclusions upon them. The only personal matter between our correspondents is, that in the advertisement signed by the Secretary in reply to our correspondent's letter, his charge is called "indefinite and vague," because he said that the Society ploys" Romanist teachers, whereas "it appoints no teachers whatever," but only grants pecuniary aid, and exercises visitorial control; the local patrons choosing the teacher, subject to the permission of the London Committee. The Secretary thinks that this fact, and the other particulars and considerations mentioned in his letter, are of great importance in the argument; the "Sincere Protestant" thinks that they are of no account whatever; that the question is one of principle; that the number of the schools and the circumstances of the locality have nothing to do with it; and that the distinction between appointing a master, and consenting to his appointment and paying him his salary, knowing his sentiments, is of no avail.

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Erratum.-There is a misprint (as the reader will have perceived by calculating the rupees) of £60,000, for £6,000, as the annuity to Juggernaut, at p. 816 of the Appendix.

THE DANGERS, DUTIES, AND ENCOURAGEMENTS OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST AT THE PRESENT EVENTFUL ERA. (Continued from page 9.)

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For the Christian Observer.

N our opening Number for the year, we proposed to consider the dangers, duties, and encouragements of the church of Christ, at the present eventful era; viewing them in regard first to those without, and secondly to those within its visible pale. The former contemplation included the case of Jews, Mohammedans, and Heathens; and the latter, which is our present subject, relates to the Greek and Eastern churches; the Latin church; the Protestant churches; and that vast body of persons who are Christians only in profession; and some of them not even that, being, though baptized, secret or avowed unbelievers.

1. The Greek and Eastern churches demand the most thoughtful consideration of those who are blessed with the knowledge of the Christian faith in its scriptural purity. Scarcely had our Lord ascended on high, and the gift of the Holy Ghost been poured out upon the day of Pentecost, when strifes, errors, and heresies, began to distract the infant communion. We discern mournful traces of this in the Acts of the Apostles, in the Epistles, and in the book of the Revelation. These evils continued to increase from generation to generation; so that long before the age of Constantine,-to whose secular patronage of Christianity the opponents of national churches are prone to attribute the great corruptions of the faith which afterwards prevailed, -the mystery of iniquity had made such fearful advances in its subtle workings, that there needed only shape and consistency to be given to them, to exhibit the full-grown enormities of the Latin church, which at length subdued the Western world.

Had the visible communion of our Lord's kingdom continued in a good measure pure to the era of the separation of the Eastern and Western churches, we might have hoped that the former, by their exemption from the delusions of the Roman apostacy, would have presented, in after ages, a favourable aspect of sound doctrine and CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 38.

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holy life. But many of the chief mischiefs were rife before the disruption, and the seeds of others were sown; so that though the Eastern churches did not follow the Latin rule, they diverged into grievous errors, heresies, and superstitions of their own. Protestants often make incorrect estimates of the oriental communions, as if their exemption from certain specific occidental corruptions, were a presumption that they maintain in a good measure pure doctrine; but nothing can be farther from the truth. If we examine the tenets, and survey the actual condition, of the Constantinopolitan Greek church; the Russian and Georgian Greek church; the Antiochian, or Jacobite churches; the Armenian church; the Abyssinian church; the Coptic church; or the Syrian church; we find awful heresies pervading some; and serious errors, gross superstitions, debasing ignorance, and practical ungodliness overrunning all. We do not attempt classification in this cursory sketch; but there is not one of the oriental churches which does not exhibit some deviation from scriptural truth with regard to matters connected with the fundamental doctrine of the Trinity itself: for even the opinion held by the Greek church, both Russian and Constantinopolitan, that the Holy Ghost does not proceed from the Son as well as the Father, may be made to bear, by inference, upon the doctrine of the Trinity; though, of course, the Greek church maintains that doctrine, and " acknowledges the Holy Spirit to be of the same substance with the Father and the Son; to be God from eternity, proceeding from the essence and nature of the Father, and to be equally adored."* But as we proceed further Eastward and also Southward, the aberrations from Scripture respecting the Godhead become wider: the delusive opinions of various ancient heresiarchs being perpetuated, and often strangely blended. The churches subject to the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, (each successive patriarch assumes the name of his venerable predecessor St. Ignatius), are Monophysite; as are also the Armenian, Coptic, and Abyssinian churches; though as each differs from the others in many points of faith and worship, there is not much cordial intercourse among them; and in some instances they stand aloof even to mutual anathematization. The Syrian church (these descriptions are vague, and variously used) is Nestorian; as its epithet Syrian, from Nestorius, who was a Syrian, imports; and it extends its sway very widely throughout the East."+

But it is not singly, or we might say chiefly, from distinctive appellations derived from the early controversies within the Christian pale, that the actual condition of the Oriental churches is to be inferred. We doubt whether one in a hundred of the clergy, or one in a thousand of the laity of those churches, has any clear notion of the peculiar opinions of the heresiarchs whose names designate their

• Advocates of the Greek church have asserted that there still exists at Rome a copy of the Nicene creed, engraven upon two tables of silver, and hung up in the church of St. Peter by order of Leo III. in the ninth century, which does not contain the "filioque; "an interpolation, they maintain, of the bishops of Rome without consulting the Eastern church.

As

there are many Englishmen at Rome who take an interest in such inquiries, it would be worth while to test the truth of this story.

The Syrian, or St. Thomas, Christians on the Malabar coast of India, disclaim the heresies of Sabellius, Nestorius, and Manes; and deny that they are Eutichians, or Jacobite Monophysites.