vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the word of God." In such language appears no trace of that bold, overpowering indignation excited by image-worship in the luminaries of ancient England. The descendants of these faithful stewards, who so manfully and in such full integrity "kept that which was committed to their trust," held not indeed their holy profession undefiled. But who will argue that their degenerate apostasy affects the voice of Anglo-Saxon tradition? By this had already been borne clear and decisive testimony to that very estimation of iconolatry now maintained in the national Church. This fact is amply sufficient to prove that English Protestants, in refusing religious honours to the seductive works of human hands, merely follow the tradition of their fathers, merely profess a religious principle anciently established in their country.

Nor will a different conclusion flow from careful reflection upon that kindred usage, the invocation of angelic and departed spirits. If Bede had approved of such a practice, how injudiciously did he act, in teaching, from St. Austin, that no being is fitted for mediation between God and man, but one i Art. XXII. k 1 Tim. vi. 20.

both divine and human! If the compilers of our ancient religious offices esteemed it reasonable or allowable to call upon angels or the dead, how came their service-books to display no trace of that opinion? Evidently they held in profoundest veneration God's ministering spirits, and the brighter ornaments of their blessed Saviour's unseen kingdom. For aid from the prayers of these happy beings prevailed, accordingly, a general, an excessive, perhaps also an injudicious anxiety. Yet addresses ascended to the footstool of Omniscience only. Whence this remarkable restriction, unless there was indeed an identity of views respecting invocation between ancient and modern England? How completely does an examination of our ancient liturgies vindicate from the charge of novelty those who discarded from English service-books all invocation of created beings!

Nor is there any disagreement between our national Church in Ante-Norman and in modern times, respecting the indispensable necessity of true repentance. Who can shew the belief of our Saxon fathers in the power of attrition, if attended by acts termed sacramental, to secure the soul from eternal ruin? Are not, on the contrary, the religious monuments of our distant ancestry replete with

plain declarations and grounds for inevitable inferences, that salvation is promised to those alone whose hearts are touched by genuine contrition? Probably there are those who fain would say, " If the case, indeed, be so, the modern Church of England has innovated upon her venerable mother; as is testified abundantly by an absolution provided for the sick in the Book of Common Prayer.” This formulary will be found, however, if carefully observed, to warrant no such conclusion. It has indeed been modelled upon those indicative forms of absolving penitents which were unknown to any branch of the Catholic Church, until a period comparatively recent. Inveterate prejudices, it is likely, our Reformers reasoned, would hardly allow the people to surrender absolutely an assurance of pardon which had calmed the apprehensions of several preceding generations. Where men, therefore, desired earnestly to hear the customary form of absolution, that satisfaction, if warranted apparently by their states of mind respectively, was not to be denied. But those who kindly thus provided for alleviating the griefs of a sick bed and a wounded conscience, were careful to prevent their indulgence from inflicting an injury upon the soul. They prefaced, accordingly, the voice

of seemingly authoritative consolation, by declaring that the Church's absolving power extends to those alone" who truly repent and believe" in Jesus Christ. No sinner, therefore, merely attrite, has the smallest expectation of escaping eternal death offered to him in the indicative absolution of our servicebook. Every hope of such a person is indeed expressly cut off, and the penitent is plainly warned, that unless he brings true repentance to the footstool of Omnipotence, he must expect justice, and not mercy.

In another instance, connected with penitential doctrines, the modern Church of England has undoubtedly receded something from principles entertained within the bosom of her Anglo-Saxon mother. The doctrine of compensating for iniquities by proportionate austerities has not survived the Reformation. But can this doctrine securely claim support from holy scripture? Was it not, probably, largely indebted for establishment among Christians to the Platonism which early found an asylum within the Church? Can its rejection, therefore, by those who remodelled our ecclesiastical institutions, be pronounced a fit occasion either for surprise or regret? In this abandonment of ancient usages, it was not, however, by any means in

tended that the religious discipline of former times should have been included. Those illustrious men who guided England in her separation from the papal see, were not less anxious than had been their Saxon fathers to guard from scandal the holy church of God. Had Cranmer, accordingly, and his admirable colleagues been spared to complete their plans of reformation, they would have striven earnestly for the restraint of moral obliquities by ecclesiastical censures. They went, indeed, even so far as to propose that no Christian should enjoy the public consolations of his holy profession, unless he cleared himself from every serious imputation'. But such severity, however theoretically good, is impracticable in communities of great extent. Hence there is no reason to lament that an attempt was never made to force it upon the country. Nor would the subject have been mentioned here, had it not been desired to trace as far as possible the similarity of views entertained by the divines of Ante-Norman England, and those who, at the price of many arduous labours, many struggles, many painful sacrifices, accomplished the Reformation.

These two classes of intellectual Englishmen, so remote from each other in age, ordi1 See Reform. Ll. Eccl. de Purgatione.