1823.] Obituary-Bishop and Archdeacon of Calcutta. (Dr. Pretyman), he entered upon his In 1810, he began to act as a Magis 199 has been lamented both in Great Bri- Mr. Archdeacon Pott, in proposing "I have heard him say, in the warm effusion of his heart, that he had revolved the subject which had been placed before him by the wishes of those who, with so much judgment, selected him for this charge; and that having, without eagerness of mind, or overweening confidence, surveyed the matter on all sides, and having lent an ear to the call, he thought that it remained for him to cast every care behind him, and to address him, self with an humble trust in the good providence of Almighty God to the work to which he was appointed. "I had occasion to see something of the course of study in which he was then occupied, which was various in its objects, but directed to one end. I had often felt the power and energy of his comprehensive mind, the com pass and sagacity of which have since been so signally displayed; and I may, I hope, be allowed to say, that the Church of England, by the care of those who preside in it, with whose advice and approbation we must all feel convinced that the new-formed diocese received its first appointed pastor, discharged a weighty trust with a singular discretion." Mr. Parsons, in his funeral sermon (an extract from which he allowed to be taken by the Corresponding Committee of the Church Missionary Society), remarked: "To advance under God the good work of Brown, Martyn, and Buchanan, the Bishop has appositely given to the cause of missions the identical sort of sanction which it wanted. It wanted political countenance, and the reputation of sound learning. Judged dangerous in its apparent disregard of political cares, it was judged of disputable orthodoxy in point of doctrine. In the Church, it had been supposed to characterize a party. Stability and ballast appeared to be wanting to this ark upon the waters. Old institutions for the purpose did comparatively nothing toward it; the Government of England had not expressed itself favourably on the subject, beyond an ancient indication or two, grown obsolete: the universities, as such, sent forth no men in the cause it was prosecuted but collaterally, and by individual efforts: no provision existed, humanly speaking, for the continuance of missionary exertions in the Church. Our departed Bishop has conferred upon the missionary cause, according to his predilections as to the mode of it, every attestation, aid, and honour, which it could expect to receive from him. Instead of a dangerous project, he has, with reason, said, that it, or nothing, must prove our safety in these possessions-that it were preposterous to suppose ourselves established here for any purpose except to make known the Son of God to a people ignorant of him. He gave the missionary cause his heart. During life, he employed on the Mission College all his elaborateness and accuracy of attention: in death, he has bequeathed to it the choice of his books: he has also bequeathed a part of what expresses the heart of man, his money: lastly, he had bequeathed to it, if it should please God, his very bones: he had looked to it, as Jacob to the holy land, saying, There they shall bury me!" Archdeacon Loring had observed, in reference to the college, in the sermon which he had preached in the morning "It was to the new mission college that the Bishop eagerly looked, as a sure means of extending knowledge to the people of this country. This institution was the nursling of his latter years. It occupied his attention many hours of every day; and his anxious mind was daily gratified with the expectation of seeing it in full opera tion." The writer of this statement is himself now no more. We copy the following notice respecting him from a Calcutta journal. "We perform a painful task in announcing the death of the venerable the Archdeacon of Calcutta on the 4th September. This melancholy event was produced by a violent attack of cholera morbus, which baffled all medical skill. Archdeacon Loring was in every respect, and in the truest sense of the word, ‘amiable:' it was impossible to know, and not to love him. Honest, plain, and manly integrity, doing to others as he would be done by;' unaffected humility, esteeming others better than himself;' gentlemanly principles and manners, and sincere piety, all united greatly to endear this respectable clergyman to the now sorrowing circle of his friends. upon "As a religious character, the Archdeacon will be judged of according to the views and feelings of those who may dwell regarded religion as an awful thing, his character. He and cultivated it in humility of heart, and in faith, conscious of his imperfections, and demerits, and therefore void of familiarity and presumption. His reading was in great measure of a religious kind; and as a proof of the occupation of his mind, when sickness desk to his death-bed, a little book, most probably called him from his dridge's Rise and Progress of Religion which always lay before him, 'Dodin the Soul,' was found turned down open to the chapter on 'The Soul the sincerity of its repentance and submitting to the Divine Examination faith.' truly Christian temper is charity, in its But the surest evidence of a true and scriptural sense, and with this grace Providence had greatlyblessed him;-that charity which suffereth long and is kind; which envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. C. W.; A CONSTANT READER; C. B. F; JONATHAN; H.; IGNOTUS; EUSEBIUS; D. C.; and W. H.; have been received, and are under consideration. The British and Foreign Bible Society have received the remaining halfofthe Bank Note, No. 9742, for £.100. CHRISTIAN OBSERVER. No. 256.] APRIL, 1823. [No. 4. Vol. XXIII. RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATIONS. MEMOIR OF BOSSUET, BISHOP OF MEAUX. (Continued from p. 139.) THE unwearied zeal and activity of Bossuet were continually prompting him to fresh encounters with the Protestants. A more determined combatant certainly never appeared in the lists of theological controversy. He met, however, with opponents who were no less confident than himself and with better reason of the goodness of theircause and the strength of their weapons. Claude, Jurieu, Basnage, and other eminent, ministers of the Reformed churches on the continent, stood foremost in this warfare, and never suffered his treatises to remain long unanswered. In the mean time, Tillotson and Burnet were fighting the same battle from the opposite shores of Albion, and upholding the cause of Protestantism with a vigour and dexterity of argumentation which have been seldom equalled. Among the various excellencies of Tillotson in particular, his powers of reasoning shine most conspicuously and admirably, in his opposition to the doctrines and pretensions of Popery. Doddridge speaks of his lucky arguments; and surely never were the weapons of controversy wielded with greater ease, happiness, and effect, than in some of his discourses on the errors of the Church of Rome. In 1682, Bossuet published his "Traité de la Communion sous les deux Espèces." I am not acquainted with the work; but we may fairly conjecture that he could find no better argument for withholding CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 256. the cup from the laity than that miserable one which is founded on the doctrine of transubstantiation, and which must fall with the subversion of the foundation that supports it. Of all the unauthorised innovations of the Church of Rome, the denial of the cup is one of those most recently introduced, and most obviously inconsistent with the tenor of Scripture. In 1689 came out his "Explication de l'Apocalypse;" in which treatise his panegyrist assures us, that he has completely overturned the Protestant interpretation of the prophecies of this book. That every true Roman Catholic must anxiously desire to see this interpretation disproved, there can be no doubt. But facts are stubborn things, and they make against him. The Apocalypse is doubtless a difficult and mysterious book, even to the present day. Scaliger said of Calvin, that he acted wisely in not meddling with it. But, independently of the detail of proofs by which many learned men have shewn its application to the errors, superstitions, and innovations of Popery, a general survey of its contents is almost sufficient to determine its genuine import. If it be not directed against papal Rome, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to discover any other subject of history to which many parts of it will be found at all applicable. In the course of the preceding year (1688), this indefatigable polemic had made one of his most formidable attacks upon the Protestants by the publication of his "Hig E toire des Variations;" or an account of the numerous divisions and diversities of opinion which had prevailed among the separatists from the Church of Rome. We are told, by his friends and admirers, that this treatise was attended with as much celebrity as the wonder-working "Exposition;" that the Reformed churches themselves were powerfully struck with it; that they now became acquainted, for the first time, with their own' history; and that, as the Exposition had surprised them, by a display of purity and excellence in the Romish doctrine which they had never before suspected, so the Variations made them blush at the contrasted picture of their own deformities. This is very lively, but not very convincing, declamation. I cannot, however, resist the temptation of offering a few remarks on the general argument here made use of for conformity to the Church of Rome, derived from a view of the numerous divisions which have taken place amongst those who have separated from her communion; especially as it is one which, however fallacious, is undoubtedly capable of being enforced with much plausibility, and which perhaps, in point of fact, has made a greater impression upon the minds of many Protestants than any other by which Popery has attempted to maintain her errors. This argument, as used by the Papists, evidently proceeds, in toto, upon the assumption of an infallibility residing somewhere in their own church, and giving a final authority to all its decisions. Once establish the point of infallibility, and Protestants must submit. But till this be established, the argument drawn from our divisions, were they ten times as numerous as they are, is nothing to the purpose. Our schisms and separations may be, and doubtJess are, wrong; but they can never prove the alleged unity of the Church of Rome to be right; because that unity may be only an agreement in errors and abuses. "There may be," says Lord Bacon, "an universal consent, which is derived from ignorance, as all colours are confounded in the dark." But, in fact, has the Church of Rome then continued entirely free from schisms and divisions? Every one knows she has not. She has had, formerly, her Thomists and her Scotists ranged in order of battle against each other; and, in modern times, her Jesuits and her Jansenists. A fierce controversy was kept up, for nearly two hundred years, respecting the doctrine of the immaculate conception; a doctrine which now forms one of the most important articles of faith. The most violent disputes have sometimes prevailed between the monastic orders; among which we may notice, in particular, the quarrels which arose, in the thirteenth century, between the Franciscans and Dominicans, concerning the rank and pre-eminence of their respective societies. It may be urged, however, that notwithstanding these manifold differences of opinion, all the members of the church agreed in a main point, which was,-unreserved submission to the infallible authority of the holy see. what shall we say to that portentous schism in the papacy itself, when, for seventy or eighty years, one pope at Avignon thundered out his decrees against another; at Rome, and vice versa; till, according to the strongly graphic language of old Fuller, St. Peter's chair was like to be broken betwixt so many sitting down together? And what shall we say, moreover, to the difference of opinion, which has always prevailed in the Romish Church, respecting that particular body in which the pretended infallibility of her decișions is vested; whether it be the pope in his sole person, or the pope with the assistance of a general council, or sometimes one and sometimes the other? It is difficult to conceive any thing more absurd— But 1823.] transubstantiation itself is not more so than the pretence of an infallible authority, respecting which it is doubtful in whom or where it resides. Even admitting that such an authority were probable, how can any one be required to bow to it unless he knows with certainty where it is to be found? errors and The Roman Catholic writers have been accustomed to speak of Protestants, from the Waldenses downwards, as though they had been the first, or the only, disturbers of the unity of the church. They appear to forget that there is another Christian church, in a state of separation from their own; a church not included under any denomination of Protestantism, but partaking largely of their own superstitions. I allude to the Greek communion, extending perhaps over as large a space as that of Rome, and with quite equal pretensions to antiquity. This most extensive schism took place long before the era of the Reformation, and is wholly un-, connected with that event; though we may indulge the delightful hope that the day is not very far distant when this oppressed and interesting daughter of Zion will shake herself from the dust, and, putting on the beautiful garments of a pure faith and holy conversation, will shine forth among the brightest ornaments of a renovated world. As human nature is at present constituted; or rather, I should say, in that state of ignorance, infirmity, and corruption, to which it is now reduced by the Fall, it would seem that there are but two ways, in which even the appearance of universal agreement in matters of religion could be upheld and perpetuated for any length of time. It might be brought about, in the first place, by the establishment of a pretended infallibility in the church, calculated to impose on the imagination, and to fetter the conscience; thus precluding men from the due exercise of their reason and natural liberty. The Church of Rome, we know, has tried this experiment, and Such an appointment |