her power; yet, where the ground is already occupied by any branch of the Catholic Church, there the gate is closed against her labours. Whatever the temptation therefore, to spread the borders of her tents, whatever the prospect of success, whatever her hope of saving souls, any Church intruding on the dioceses of another is guilty of schism. But wherever the cross has not been raised, and no champion has yet risen to fight the battles of the Gospel, there the ground is open, and to be a missionary is a holy work. Now, upon the Roman hypothesis, that the Church of S. Peter is the one Catholic Church, and that all others are counterfeits, it is impossible for her to trespass on preoccupied ground, because to occupy wrongly is all one with not occupying at all. Accordingly we find her without dread of schism planting her priests, instituting her hierarchies where a duly constituted Church already exists; and with these mementos of her activity constantly before our eyes, the great idea the Protestant mind receives of Rome is that her normal condition is to propagate. On the other hand, the great Eastern Communion takes the same ground with ourselves; while admitting the claims of Rome to Catholicity, she yet asserts her own, and nowhere declares herself to be the only Catholic Church; on the contrary she calls herself the Holy Eastern Church, a superfluous and unmeaning epithet if the Western be no Church. When the Russian Uniats were in 1839 reconciled to the Church, and renounced the Jurisdiction of Rome, to the number of two millions with their bishops, the only act of profession required was, "that our LORD JESUS CHRIST was the one

true Head of the one true Church." Then, if ever, was the time for the Eastern Communion to speak of her sole claim to Catholicity, if she professed any: but she contents herself with securing her own claim to communion with the true Body of CHRIST. Mr. Neale draws an argument to the same purpose from the "usual practice of the Eastern Church to denominate herself the Orthodox rather than the Catholic Church of the East." But in Ecclesiastical phraseology these two terms are convertible, and Bishop Beveridge shows in the note to the 19th Article, that Catholicus and Hereticus are opposed to each other, while ή καθολικὴ πίστις and ἡ ὀρθόδοξος πίστις are identical. So that we cannot lay much stress on the word orthodox. But it is sufficient for our purpose if no formal document has been issued by the Eastern Church in assertion of her alone catholicity. Upon this principle it would be inconsistent in her to commission her preachers in Europe and America; and accordingly we find her ministrations confined to the use of those of her children who may be resident in those quarters. While therefore, Rome is planting her convents, building her churches, making converts, preaching in the open air, writing controversially and offering masses for the conversion of England, Greece abstains with a righteous forbearance, from

interfering with the work of an independent metropolitan. The missionary character, therefore, we popularly attach to the one and deny to the other; and hence the charge so lightly preferred, so easily repelled.

But in lands where it was free to the East to penetrate, there she has girded on the sword and is still fighting manfully. But here we prefer to give Mr. Neale's own eloquent language :—

"Eastward, from the great (though unsound and finally heretical) school of Edessa, the envoys of Christianity went forth, They pitched their tents in the camps of the wandering Tartar; the Lama of Thibet trembled at their words; they stood in the rice fields of the Penjab, and taught the fisherman by the sea of Aral; they struggled through the vast deserts of Mongolia; the memorable inscription of Siganfu attests their victories in China; in India the Zamorin himself respected their spiritual, and courted their temporal, authority. From the Black Sea to the Caspian the Monks of Etchmiadzine girded themselves for this holy warfare; they braved alike the Pagan and the Fire-worshipper, the burning suns of Tiflis and the feverish swamps of Imeretia ; they subjugated the border lands of Europe and Asia, and planted a colony halfway up the Great Ararat.

"Southward, Alexandria sent forth another army of missionaries. Steering through the trackless deserts by sun and stars, they preached the Gospel as far as the fountains of the Nile, and planted flourishing Churches in Nubia and Abyssinia. Solitary Monks ventured further into the kingdom of Satan; through the savage Gallas they passed to Melinda or Zanguebar; others, committing themselves to the merchant vessels, preached the way of salvation to Cape Guardafui, Zocotra, and distant Ceylon. Here the two great armies of Christian warriors met, having embraced a quarter of the then known world in their holy circle.

"Northward, latest but most victoriously, Constantinople sent out her envoys; Constantine convinced Vladimir by the Icon of the last judgment of the 'good to those at the right hand, the woe to those at the left; the idol Peroun was carried by the Dnieper to the sea; further and further the pioneers of the truth pushed their way; Moscow, and Kieff, and Vladimir owned their Metropolitans: tribes unknown to the ancients received spiritual illumination. Undeterred by Sarmatian forest or Estiaan swamp, the soldiers of the Cross went on conquering and to conquer till they stood on the barbarous shores of the Sluggish Sea.' Thence their holy chivalry bore them eastward; overleaping the Ural Mountains they forced their way into Siberia; slowly and painfully they advanced towards the rising sun, preaching the glad tidings of the Sun of Righteousness; at Irkoutsk, and Sitka, and Tomsk, after centuries of warfare, they have placed a vicar of CHRIST for the feeding of His flock; and thus, on the borders of Chinese Tartary, they hailed the disciples of the early teachers that went forth from Edessa. And even as I write, missionary zeal has not abated. On the unknown shores of the Aleoutine Islands a band of faithful priests

have sealed with their labours the Faith that they taught, and thus have raised the standard of the Eastern Church in the Western World.

"And this Church, fighting hand to hand, now for eighteen centuries, with every kind of idolatry, and not relaxing in its labours, in this old age of the world,-this Church, privileged to work a conversion on the largest scale that has been seen since the days of the Apostles, namely, that of Russia,-that saith to the East, Give up, and to the South, Keep not back,-this Church, forsooth, is not a missionary Church!"

The comparison with Mahometanism then falls to the ground. But Dr. Newman proceeds. "Granting," he says, "that as is alleged, the Greek Church during the thousand years of its present position has expanded itself in a vast heathen country, which it has converted to her faith, yet we shall find all the facts in the remarkable history of the Nestorians." Their tenet is traceable to Antioch, the very birthplace of the Christian name. It laid the foundation of a schismatical Communion the most wonderful that the world has seen. It propagated itself both among Christians and Pagans from Cyprus to China. Its ecclesiastical dominion lasted for eight centuries, it was administered by twenty-five Archbishoprics; its people together with the Monophysites outnumbered the whole Catholic Church, Greek and Latin. If you rely on the existence of the Eastern Communion, you are driven from your position by the parallel success of the Nestorians.

Is it possible that Dr. Newman cannot see that this second argument supplies the reply to his first? He started with drawing a series of couplets of error and truth, and concludes: if the Greek Church be not the error how is the parallelism sustained? And then a few pages afterwards he makes out Nestorianism to be a more remarkable phenomenon than the Communion under disWhy then cannot Nestorianism, which attacks the nature of our LORD's person, be rather supposed to answer to Jeroboam, Samaria, Moab and Egypt, than the ancient Apostolic Catholic Church in the East? If the existence of Nestorianism be of equal weight with the existence of the Eastern Church, nay more wonderful still, how can it be said that there is no other alternative but to apply to the latter, a parallel which will equally apply to the former ? It may be subtle, but it is scarcely honest to forget the Nestorians, when a parallel is wanted to Samaria and Jeroboam, and extol their influence, extension, and grandeur, when it suits to contrast them with the holy Eastern Church.

But we deny the alleged likeness of the Greek Church to Nestorianism. And there is this remarkable difference-that whereas the latter has withered away and is but the wreck of its former self, the former is as vigorous and healthy as ever, still extending its missions, still working its miracles, still canonizing its saints, still saving souls. The Catholic Communion has seen

Nestorianism rise, flourish, and decay, while no signs of old age appear in her august form. The author of " Eastern Churches" thus speaks of the present state of the Nestorians. "A small remnant of what they once were, as the gleaning of the grapes when the vintage is done, the Nestorians are now chiefly found in Koordistan and Oroomiah. . . the Nestorians inhabit, I should perhaps say inhabited, for by the last accounts they have been almost exterminated by their Mahometan oppressors-inhabit the wildest and most inaccessible part of the Koordistan mountains." Contrast this feeble expiring remnant of this once powerful sect, with the vigorous, expansive Catholic Church in the East, that has never waned or sickened, but exhibits now in the 19th century, the same energy as characterized the days of Athanasius and Cyril. In 1835-6, says the same writer, "Taken altogether the Nestorians were computed at 140,000 souls." Dr. Newman sums up the Russian and Byzantine churches together at 43,000,000. Even this excessive disproportion were enough one would think to have quashed his argument; but Mr. Neale has shown from the statistical accounts of the government, that their vast numbers amount to 65,770,000. When the sun is compared to a taper flickering in the socket, and its fall predicted from the candle's gradual wane, then may the Holy Eastern Church be ranked with the Nestorian heresy, and her compact millions equalled to the scattered thousands of Koordistan.

Dr. Newman in the same lecture furnishes us with another defence drawn from the armoury of the East. Not only does he admit that our Baptism is valid when validly administered, which from the doctrine of lay Baptism he could not deny, but that as having the succession, our Eucharist also is a true Eucharist-our Communion the true Communion of the Body and Blood of CHRIST. The whole passage is worth transcribing.

"It is consolatory to reflect how the schism or heresy which the self-will of a monarch or generation has caused, does not suffice altogether to destroy the work for which in some distant age Evangelists have sacrificed their homes and martyrs their blood. Thus the blessing is inestimable to England, so far as among us the Sacrament of Baptism is validly administered to any portion of the population. In Greece, where a far greater attention is paid to ritual exactness, the whole population may be considered regenerate: half the children born into the world pass from a schismatical church to heaven; and in many of the rest it may be the foundation of a supernatural life which is gifted with perseverance in the hour of death. There may be many who being in invincible ignorance on those points of religion in which their church is wrong, may have the divine and unclouded illumination of faith on more numerous points on which it is right. And further, since there is a true priesthood there is a true Sacrifice; the benefits of mass to those who never had the means of knowing better, may be

almost the same as they are in the Catholic Church. Humble souls who come in faith and love to the heavenly rite, under whatever disadvantages from the faulty discipline of their Communion, may obtain as well as we, remission of such sins as the Sacrifice directly effects; and that supernatural charity which wipes out the most grievous. Moreover, when the Blessed Sacrament is lifted up, they adore as well as we the true Immaculate Lamb of God; and, when they communicate it is the true bread of life, and nothing short of it, which they receive for the eternal health of their souls."

"Jurisdiction," then, does not enter the question. It is enough that we have the "true Priesthood:" which in that case must depend on an unbroken succession: and it cannot be denied that our succession is as free from suspicion as the Apostolic lines of Alexandria and Jerusalem. So then, the slovenly celebration of the most Holy Sacrament, on the deal table of the neglected parish church, is none other than the same Sacrifice offered up by the chasubled Priest, with incense and candles on the gorgeous Altars of Rome. We can forgive Dr. Newman all his hard sayings -all his misrepresentations-all his coloured descriptions—all his keeping back of the truth-all his ridicule-yea, we can well nigh pardon his defection, for this one admission. The Communion of the English Church is indeed none other than the one, universal, adorable Sacrifice.

But we have somewhat wandered from Mr. Neale's book, though not from our subject. We hail its publication as strengthening our independence of the Roman See. But we value it on other grounds also.

It is not the least hopeful sign in our great revival that the student of Divinity is led to explore a wider circle than had heretofore fallen within his range. Amid the many blessings attendant on an established Church, it cannot be denied that there are also many evils and of these perhaps none have been so productive of injury to the English Church, as the temptation to take for granted the truth of her doctrines, and in consequence to omit the duty of strengthening and confirming the faith. Hence her Priests have confined their teaching to such points as seemed more immediately to concern the salvation of their hearers, omitting others as intimately connected with their souls' health, because all appearance of danger had ceased. To this unhappy policy must be traced the lamentable ignorance of our people on all the points of the present controversy. Let a Roman Catholic child be asked why he is a Roman Catholic-why he is bound to confess,-why he is baptized and confirmed-why he hears mass-why when he dies he hopes to receive extreme unction? and he will give plain straightforward answers for the faith which is in him. How is it that even educated persons cannot do the same on the Protes