which were held by Thorpe, a Lollard, and others, on the subject of the church property. I have already replied to these remarks.

The last letter condemns the martyrologist for his general abuse of the prelates and bishops of the church. Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had put some churches under an interdict; that is, he had prohibited the worship of God on the Lord's-day because the bells were not rung as he passed. Foxe condemns this conduct in his usual unsparing language. Mr. Maitland calls this language "low radical mockery at all ecclesiastical authority." (p. 135.) He asks whether any one of the admirers of Foxe will come forward and say that this was written in the style and with the feelings of a Christian? I answer, that I approve most of the language which Foxe has used. With respect to the affirmation that the circulation of such remarks on bishops and prelates will injure the cause of the church and its higher magistrates in the present day, I can only say it produces more surprise than conviction. No reader of the pages of John Foxe can possibly imagine that the language which the martyrologist applies to Arundel and the martyr-burning bishops, who exerted themselves to reduce England to the yoke of Rome, can be applied to the mild and gentle virtues of Howley and his brethren. It might have been supposed that Mr. Maitland would have paused before he imagined the possibility of such an identity. He may be assured of this, that if he and his brethren, who are beginning to palliate the follies, defend the conduct, explain away the doctrines, and endeavour to reconcile the people and church of England to the yoke of Rome, shall persevere much longer in their wickedness and folly, they will provoke a reaction against them, which shall elicit from the people much severer language than John Foxe has used. I tell him, too, that if our Howleys, Blomfields, and Sumners, imitate the conduct of Arundel, they will deserve the same contempt which Foxe heaped on Arundel. If they behave like Laud, they will deserve, not to lose their heads, but to be deposed from their high office by a national synod, amidst the universal execration of the people. Mr. Maitland may be certain that the people love the clergy of their church; but they love more, far more than they love their clergy, the truth of Christ's gospel, and the constitutional liberty, both of which Rome opposed and hated.

At the conclusion of this letter, Mr. Maitland inquires whether Mr. Townsend will vindicate an expression of a man named Purvey, approved by Foxe, "that every Christian, as well as the priests and clergy, is permitted by the law of God to preach the gospel, privately to their neighbours." (page 141.)

I answer, that none but the bishop, the priest, and the deacon, who is set apart, ordained, and consecrated to the office, may teach or preach in the name of the church, which can alone, according to Christ's own ordinance, give them authority to do so. But I affirm my belief also, that John Nokes, who is a Christian, is ever permitted by the same law of God to say to John Styles, who may be a profligate and blaspheming neighbour, "Thou art a sinful man, my brother; repent, and be converted, that thy sins may be pardoned, and thy spirit be changed, and live." Will Mr. Maitland deny this? Is not

episcopal authority, rightly understood, perfectly consistent with the Christian duty of private exhortation, and with the privilege of Christian conversation?

Here, then, I end my brief notice of Mr. Maitland's "Six more Letters." I am now brought to his letter in the British Magazine of this month.

This letter, I observe, consists of eight pages. They refer, however, to the real and supposed errors of the editor, with which I have nothing to do. The only points which it may be necessary for me to notice are, an omission by Foxe, which is quoted to impugn his impartiality, and a personal observation respecting myself.

The crime alleged against Foxe is, that, in drawing up the articles of impeachment against a man who was burned, Foxe mentions the man's opinions against pilgrimages, transubstantiation, auricular confession, and other points of this nature; but he did not insert in the list the accusation, that the man taught the non-necessity of the sacraments to salvation.

Foxe, I answer, was guilty of the fault which almost every writer of biography, excepting the inspired writers, has committed, of concealing the faults of those whom he eulogizes. He ought to have mentioned the article which he has omitted; and it is certain that many of the martyrs who were burned held opinions which the church of England now condemns. But it is no less true, that the man would have been burned if he had denied transubstantiation, even if he had maintained to the utmost the validity of the sacraments. Mr. Maitland cannot rail the seal off the bond. Foxe wrote to hold up to reprobation the cruelty, treachery, and abominations of Rome. Mr. Maitland and his friends hate the principles of Foxe more than they hate his language. They discover many, very many indefensible faults in his voluminous work; and they are saving the papists much trouble, while they are giving them also much satisfaction, by their incessant abuse of the martyrologist. I trust they will proceed. The wheat will be sifted from the chaff, and Foxe, I believe, will be more honoured by our posterity than he was even venerated by our ancestors, as the result of the controversy.

Mr. Maitland has made one or two personal remarks on myself, which I deem it worth while to notice. He derides my catalogue of the names of those who have eulogized Foxe, as being put forward with "childish parade," and he laughs at the mentioning of the name of the puritan Neal among them. He is pleased to remind me that "praise is of no value, if it come, not from the praised, but from the dunce, the partisan, or the parasite."

My catalogue of names includes some of the best and most honoured, from Whitgift, the archbishop contemporary with Foxe, to Howley, the contemporary of Maitland. I found Neal among the eulogizers of Foxe; and I would not omit him. He was a coarse and partial writer, who read history through the green spectacles of his own opinions; but he was not a wilful liar. I am fully sensible of the value of the maxim laudari a laudatis, which Mr. Maitland has quoted, though I hope we shall both obtain higher praise, when our account is

rendered, than that of the most highly-lauded from among our brethren. I am sorely tempted, when I read the crushing contempt with which the highly and deservedly-praised Mr. Faber has treated Mr. Maitland, and remember the various and numerous eulogies which have been heaped upon Mr. Maitland by others, to analyze the worthiness of those who have praised him, and to assist him in the inquiry whether his laurels have been entwined round his brow by the praised or by the dunce, by the partisan or the parasite. But I forbear doing so, and conclude my letter by informing Mr. Maitland, as to the "childish parade" of my quotations, and as to the present controversy in general, that though we have not wit enough to please the public, nor learning enough to interest them, I trust we shall have so much good sense as to avoid becoming ridiculous, merely to entertain them. Let me add, also, that I have much higher, nobler, worthier objects claiming and receiving my attention than this controversy; and that I earnestly recommend him to employ his undoubted talents, in imitation of my example, on matters which he may reflect upon with greater pleasure at the last, than in winning the approbation of the papist and the tractarian, and obtaining the contempt and disgust of the protestant, yet catholic churchman. I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, GEO. TOWNSEND.

College, Durham, Dec. 7, 1841.

P.S.-Since I wrote the above, Mr. Maitland has published the first number of his Notes on my contributions to the Preface to the new edition of John Foxe. He has, however, done so through Mr. Rivington. I shall therefore request Mr. Rivington to publish my reply. The papers Mr. Maitland sends to the British Magazine, I shall beg the Editor to permit me to answer through the same channel. Those which he publishes in other quarters, I shall also answer through the same medium. I do not speak presumptuously, though I speak boldly and confidently, from the conviction of my love of truth and of the justice of my cause, when I say that I throw down the gauntlet both to Mr. Maitland, to the Editor of the Record,-who has also assailed me,-and to every other antagonist of any name, sect, or party, who assails the general propositions which I have undertaken to defend. The errors which disgrace Mr. Maitland's "Notes on my contributions" are (to use his own expression)" very remarkable." If Mr. Rivington refuses to publish my reply to Mr. Maitland, I must seek some other portion of the yet unpoisoned press; I say this, for though my dear friend, his venerable father, published my Arrangement of the Bible, his son, in his honourable (though in this instance, I think, ill-judged) zeal for what he wrongly deemed the interest of the church, refused to publish my Charge to the Clergy of Northallerton, against Tract No. 80, on Preaching the Atonement with Reserve. He was the London publisher of the Tracts. I then called upon the bishops to do that which their own wisdom (not the knowledge of my humble labour) has since induced them to do. I accept the fact as an earnest that the church, by God's mercy, will stay the plague which is begun. If the bishops

will but do their duty, the catholic church in England, which protests against the errors and the novelties both of Geneva and of Rome, will be preserved as the salt of the earth,-the leaven which shall leaven the whole mass of mankind.

FOX'S MARTYROLOGY.

SIR, Mr. Maitland, in the last Number of the British Magazine, has charged me either with stupidity or dishonesty,* in consequence of my assuming that your correspondent+ " W. B." had used Foxe's edition of 1583, in collating a passage in one account of" John Brown," with a copy of the life of the same man in my edition. In reply, I must refer Mr. Maitland to the notice appended to Vol. II., which distinctly stated, that "the present work‡ is a reprint of the fourth edition of the original work of John Foxe, published in 1583, with the exception of certain passages introduced from the first three English editions, and from the fifth." Now as these several editions vary in many particulars, and my edition is stated to be a reprint of a specified and particular edition, in whom exists the "stupidity or dishonesty"? iu "W. B." for comparing my edition with a very abbreviated and curtailed edition, like that of 1576; or in me, who, naturally enough, supposed that " W. B." would have followed the edition of 1583, of which mine was an arowed reprint? I have said before, § that in the four standard editions of the Acts and Monuments, from 1570 to 1596, the story of John Brown may be found as I have given it. I subjoin the references. Edition 1570, page 927; edition 1596, page 736; edition 1583, page 805. But, Sir, how will Mr. Maitland complacently resume his pen, when he finds that I make no reference to the edition of 1576, or to any more editions? And how singular that this should be the only edition to which Mr. Maitland should have access now, when there were times in which most of the early editions of John Foxe were on his desk! How will his pulse beat when he finds that I have actually made "a mistake,"** in saying that my account of John Brown is in the corresponding place of the edition of 1576, when I find that the editor of that abbreviated edition (who appears to be R. Daye)++ has wisely omitted, as I have done, one of two accounts of the same story. Yes, I have absolutely omitted one of two accounts, and Mr. Maitland is displeased! Had I inserted them both, Mr. Maitland would have charged me, as he does my friend Mr. Townsend, with "childish parade."‡‡ I cannot occupy my time, or your pages, with any more of this foolish controversy. Your obedient servant,

Fulham.

Brit. Mag. No. CXXI. p. 603 (printed 60.)

STEPHEN REED CATTLEY.

† Acts and Monuments. 1836-41. Vol. I. p. 491. Prelim. Dissertation.

Edition of the Acts and Monuments, 1836–41.

Vol. V. p. 694.

|| Vol. IV. p. 181.

See his former letters on the same subject in the British Magazine.

Brit. Mag. No. CXXI. p. 603 (printed 60.)

+ Edition 1576, p. 2009.

Brit. Mag. No. CXXI. p. 607.

MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM.

SIR, I was aware that Gregory Nazianzene* had spoken of man as a miniature world, and am not surprised to hear that Augustine has somewhere borrowed the same image. But when the Fathers, in their general and excessive use of rhetorical ornament, borrowed such phrases from the anthropomorphite philosophy, they certainly borrowed them in their own sense, and not in the sense of the lenders. They meant to signify that a peculiar variety of endowments meet and are combined in human nature,

The diapason closing full in man.

But they did not mean to express Pantheism; and that man, being in God's image, was in the image of the universe, because the universe is God. Neither did they allude in any way to the impure secrets of magic. No men more abhorred such atheistical impieties; and were such imputed to them, which is not the case, their vindication would be almost superfluous.

But the observation that "Taliesint has two poems headed respectively y Byd Mawr and Byd Bychan, the Great World, and the Little World," may lead some readers to imagine that the author so called had, by a mere figure of patristic rhetoric, given such titles to poems, themselves entirely uninfected with the Hermetic philosophy. But the fact is otherwise. The former of those poems, as well as the unentitled poem in p. 184 of the Archaiology, is written in the language of Boehmen, and the very ancient school of which he was a disciple; while the second of them involves its sense in profound obscurity. In illustration of this point, I will give the best version of them I am able to furnish.

SONG OF THE MACROCOSM.

I will adore my Father,

My God, my supporter,

Who placed, throughout my head,

The soul of my reason,

And made for my perception

My seven faculties,

Of fire, and earth, and water, and air,

And mist, and flowers,

* Greg. Naz. Oratio, xxxiv. p. 553, xlii. p. 680: Paris. 1630.

† Above, p. 284.

5

Mr. C. W. Forster, in his Mahometanism Unveiled, ii. pp. 271, 2, has referred the origin of that philosophy to an inventive imagination of the Saracens or Arabs. But it was Egyptian, and anterior in date to the studies of that great nation; who in this, as in most other things, were imitators. Of this he may fully satisfy himself by referring to the following evidences:-Book of Enoch, chap. lxiv. ver. 7. Dionysius Mitylenæus apud Eudociæ Violarium, L. 4 in Villoison Anecd. p. 108. Joann. Antioch. apud Porphyrog. Excerpta a Valesio, p. 834. The History and Works of Zosimus Panopolites. The Papyri published in Reuven's Lettres sur les Papyrus, p. 72. J. Firmici Materni Mathesis, L. 3, chap. xv. Æneæ Gazæi Theophrastus ; in two passages, to which I cannot refer, the pages not being numbered. To all these may be added the curious remains of Britannia, of which a part are more ancient than Saracen philosophy.