form variety compose the Roman host. The non-juring clergymen at the revolution raised this same clamor against the Church of England,' as having separated from the catholic apostolic church, and as having, therefore, no authentic ministry; while, on the other hand, this more liberal branch of the English church maintained towards their non-juring brethren, a front of most determined hauteur and cold neglect.

"Sancroft and others were still considered by their advocates as bishops of their respective sees, and Tillotson and his associates reprobated by them as schismatics."

The non-jurors and high-churchmen usurped to themselves exclusively, the honorable title of Church of England men."

The two "Defences of the Deprived Bishops, (the nonjurors) which contain the reasons of their separating, and which they are not a little proud of, upon all occasions referring to them, make the present Church of England guilty of the greatest heresy, as striking at what is fundamental in the highest degree, as being fundamental to other fundamentals, the succession of bishops, without which the church cannot subsist. And on this head tragical declamations are made of the great danger the church is in; for which there could not be the least ground, were the present possessors of the sees supposed to be true bishops, and consequently capable of continuing the succession. So that should the deprived bishops die without consecrating others, the non-jurors would, by these principles, be as far from owning the present church as state."

So speaks that very able and learned work, "The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted," which was written "to justify the established church, and to confute those notions by which such as call themselves the true Church of England, attempt to prove the present church guilty of schism."

"These great apostles of unity," says Dr. Mitchell," "who for a hundred and sixteen years have been deafening us with the 'unceasing cry,' schism, schism, join us, ‘or be ruined for ever,' have themselves gone over to one part of the schismatics; and so here is one rent sewed up."

Nor is there any abatement of that loving concord with which different portions of this church have thus regarded each other. On the contrary, it is found at present to actuate the bosoms of the Oxford sect, or the high-church prelatists, and those who differ from them, with all the strength of a burning passion.

1) Bishop White, in the Case of the Episcopal Churches, 1782, p. 10.

2) See "The True Character of a Churchman, showing the false pretences to that name," in Scott's Collection of Tracts, vol. ix. p. 477.

3) Rights of the Christian Ch. p. 329.

4) See ed. 3d, Lond. 1717, p. 416.
5) See preface, p. 58.
6) Presb. Letters, p. 349.

The upholders of this prelatic system are denominated by the London Christian Observer "the sect of the tractitians"—"the Laudean school"-"so baleful to the church of Christ and to the souls of men." They are denied to be, in truth, members of the Anglican church. Of Mr. Newman and Dr. Pusey it is said: "We ask Professor Pusey how, as a conscientious man, he retains any office in a church which requires him to subscribe to all the Thirty-Nine Articles, and to acknowledge as scriptural the doctrines set forth in the Homilies? Will any one of the writers, or approvers of the Oxford tracts, venture to say that he does not really believe all the doctrines of the Articles and Homilies of our church?"2

"The chief schism," says a correspondent of the London Christian Observer," "which is now rending our own church, arises from the efforts of some who are going 'beyond the exact prescriptions (or even the intimations) of divine truth,' very much after the fashion of Luther himself respecting consubstantiation; but the remark applies generally; for there is a strong tendency both in individuals and churches to set up unprescribed 'terms of communion;' just as some among us are ejecting the foreign protestant churches, even the Lutheran itself, from covenanted mercy, by reason of their alleged loss of apostolical succssion."

1) See for Jan. 1841, p. 10, et passim.

2) See ibid, for 1836, p. 791. 3) Feb. 1841, p. 93.

"The Tractarian Sect," Lond. Chr. Obs. March, 1841, p. 160. The Lond. Chr. Obs. (for 1837, p. 840,) speaks of these divines as "the Oxford schismatists," and for the very reason of their exclusiveness, &c. See pp. 172, and 550.

A writer in the Episcopal Recorder thus speaks of Dr. Pusey, (quoted in Lond. Chr. Obs. Nov. 1840, p. 679,) "With consummate puerility he considers figurative language as if it were literal, and mere images and shadows as if they were realities and substantial entities or beings. With this explanation, hear him speak for himself, pervert scripture, and advocate pernicious heresies."

Of Mr. Newman's doctrine on Justification, the London Christian Observer affirms, (March, 1841, p. 176,) "it is a fearful, a despair-engendering and a soul-destroying doctrine.'

Professor Powell styles them "the

traditionists," (Tradition Unveiled, p. 19,) and "the high-church party.' Ibid, p. 5.

On the tendency of this system to socinianism, see Bishop McIlvaine's Oxford Divinity, pp. 85, 208, 239.

That they contradict the standard of the English church, is also clearly shown. See pp. 222, 230.

He calls on these divines to "go and learn the alphabet of the gospel! Spell the name of Jesus!" (p. 247.) "Oh, calumniated churches! that one of thine own children and pastors should teach such doctrine for thine!" p. 250.

He represents the doctrines of the Oxford divinity as fundamentally different from those which he defends, and involving the very foundation of a sinner's hope towards God. (p. 505.) "A vital difference upon grand primary questions, involving all that was so nobly contended for by the martyrs of the reformation, and all that is precious to the sinner in the gospel of Christ." pp. 507, 508, 522, 537. See also Note A.

The London Christian Observer, for January, 1839,1 in speaking of the Oxford monument to be erected to the memory of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, urges as a reason for some monumental building, in preference to a church, that the pulpit of a church might be made to proclaim opinions in direct contrariety to those of these reformers; "especially in a diocese, the ecclesiastical ruler of which-melancholy to relate-has for several years been countenancing the doctrines and actions of the most insidious and dangerous body of men that ever obtruded itself within the precincts of the English church."

Nor are these divines, on the other hand, at all reluctant in returning these complimentary manifestations of the unity of the Anglican church. Take an example from an editorial address, in the last number of the The Church of England Quarterly Review, which contains the following passage:2

"The doctrine that regeneration uniformly takes place in baptism is so clearly taught by the Church of England, and involved in its general procedure, that we hesitate not to say, that the only honorable course, which can be pursued by those who hold the contrary opinion, is to abstain from agitating her communion by their preaching, which they must do, if only commonly honest and consistent, and to cease, also, to eat her bread, and to fill those pulpits which can only be conscientiously occupied by her sincere and cordial members.

"The doctrine of the total depravity of human nature is another instance of the perversion of scripture, and of contrariety to the sentiments of the Church of England, chargeable upon some of the clergy called evangelical; but it is, unhappily, too consistent with the Calvinistic notions of election and regeneration."

Thus quietly are the whole evangelical party discarded as unsound members!3

Dr. Hook thus speaks of the evangelical or low-church party in the episcopal church: "I am opposed to the opinions maintained by those who call themselves low-churchmen, on this ground: I believe it to be only on account of their being bad logicians, that they are not socinians."

1) P. 64.

2) The Belfast Christian Patriot, vol. ii. No. 95.

3) It is explicitly declared by these Oxford tractitians, that there can be no real alteration in what they avouch to be the doctrines of the church without a schism. (London Quart. Rev. Ap. 1839, p. 313.) 4) Lond. Chr. Obs. 1839, p. 234.

5) "We heed little," say the editors of the Observer, "what Dr. Hook,-who, when he had a purpose to serve, assailed his meek and holy diocesan, Bishop Rider, in print, in an undutiful and overbearing, not to say contemptuous, manner,may think either of good churchmanship or sound divinity; but with regard to his assertions, we reply,

"Those professed members of the establishment," says Crabbe, "who affect the title of evangelical, and wish to palm upon the church the peculiarities of the calvinistic doctrine, and to ingraft their own modes and forms into its discipline, are schismatics."

The London Christian Observer complained of the Oxford tractators for applying unseemly names to dissenters. In volume fourth of the Tracts, these writers justify themselves by showing that they applied these epithets to parties within the church and not to those without. "Another remarkable exhibition of the same science is your asserting that one of the tracts called the dissenters 'a mob of tiptops, gapes and yawns,' (pp. 172, 174, 177, 185, 186.) Five times you say or imply it. Now it so happens that the tract in question has nothing to do with dissenters; but with persons who wish alterations in the liturgy on insufficient grounds, a circumstance which in itself excludes dissenters."

"Yawn is a farmer whose sons go to the church school; and he himself, 'scarcely ever,' as he boasts, 'misses a Sunday,' coming into the service 'about the end of the first lesson.' Ned Gape, too, is a church-goer, though a late one. In what sense then, Mr. Editor, do you assert that when Richard Nelson, in the end of the story, says that he 'cannot stand by and see the noble old prayer book pulled to pieces, just to humor a mob of Tiptops, Gapes and Yawns,' that the writer calls dissenters by these titles ?"

In a book entitled "The Oxford Tracts, the Public Press and the Evangelical Party," by G. Percival, it is said: "The evangelical party in the church are only restrained, from the accident of their position, from the destructive power of rationalistic and socinian principles; the spirit is already there, only its full development is restrained."

While these parties in the English church thus denounce each other; the prelatical or high-church party, as certainly cut themselves off from the communion of all other churches on earth. For, from the Roman catholic church they are most peremptorily in common with all other sects-excommunicated. So also are they regarded by the Greek and other Oriental churches, as a schismatical, and withered branch of the

first, that we know not of any body of persons who call themselves by the nickname of 'low-churchmen,' though we do of some who mounted on Romanist stilts, are pleased so to denominate all true reformation

principle members of the Anglican communion; and, secondly, that his accusation falls upon the Church of England."

1) English Synonymes, p. 480. 2) Eng. ed. Pref. p. 31.

true church. Nor are they satisfied with this exclusion from the greatest portion of the church catholic. They voluntarily pronounce a sentence of excision upon themselves, from nine tenths of the protestant world; and thus with infatuated folly, while making pretensions to be THE ONLY AND TRUE CATHOLIC CHURCH, reduce that universal church to the limits and dimensions of their own comparatively feeble denomination.1

To crown this climax, it will be our object to show, before closing this discussion, that prelatists, both of the Roman and the Anglican school, have been, and are still, justly charged with schism, by all non-prelatical churches;-not for the same reason indeed, but upon the ground of their unchristian pretensions, and that intolerant and anathematizing conduct, by which they attempt to establish a supremacy over the church of God.

Most certain it is, from this review, that the definition ordinarily given of schism, needs to be itself defined, since its authors apply it most appropriately, as they think, to things which, by all ordinary rules of judgment, would appear to be opposites. In order therefore to see our way clear through this mist, and to escape from this sinking bog, into which we have been plunged, by attempting to trace out the course of our prelatical legislators, we must endeavor to ascertain what, after all, is to be understood by schism. And, as it is on all hands asknowledged to be a violation of that unity which is characteristic of the christian church,-and its opposite; by understanding in what this unity consists, we shall at once arrive at a true knowledge of the nature of schism.

Though on this subject we shall again speak, it will be neces

1) "These remarks are meant to apply, not to the Church of England, but to a party-we are sorry to say, the dominant party-in that church. A party, whose doings implicate her character, if they do not involve her destiny.

"There are three Church of England Reviews at the present time; one of them is Puseyite, another semi-Puseyite, but all anti-evangelical. The fountains of theological literature, the episcopal bench, and a vast majority of the dignified and beneficed clergy, are tainted with a spirit which differs from popery less than the blossom does from the seed."

"They have withdrawn their countenance from all dissenters, great and small, and given prominence to two great principles, by which they have cut themselves off from the church of Christ through

out the world. The first is, that there cannot be a church, nor any scriptural sacraments, unless holy orders have descended through an uninterrupted line of bishops from the days of the apostles. This principle excludes the continental churches, the church of Scotland, the British and Irish dissenters, as well as all the American churches, except the episcopalians and Moravians. But even these are exIcluded by the second principle, which makes the validity of the clerical functions depend on a civil establishment and the consequent sanction of the magistrate. This schismatical tendency has been exhibited in the most offensive forms, at a time when all other churches are longing and laboring for union among themselves." Belfast Chr. Patriot.