would be likewise outraged. Can it really be wished that our fonts should be exposed to such unavoidable accidents as that which gained for the Emperor Constantine V. the epithet of "Copronymus "? Would such things really tend to the decency, the solemnity, of our consideration, sacrament of initiation? No man surely, can, upon desire it. If it be said, that all these inconveniences did not deter the ancients from pursuing it, I answer, that this may be accounted for partly from the inveteracy of the custom, the scandal of changing which might have been more prejudicial to the faith than these objectionable features were to the morals, but chiefly because the manners of men in those times were rude and coarse; and therefore that which would be injurious now, was not so (at least comparatively) then. We want no further proof of the coarseness of the age than is furnished by the epithet above mentioned, as applied to Constantine, and by which he was known and designated. Let any man translate it into plain English, and then think what the delicacy of the age must have been, when an emperor could be designated through life, and in history, by such an epithet! The only loss which it seems to me we have sustained by the adoption of affusion, or sprinkling, instead of immersion, is, that our people do not so readily see the force of St. Paul's comparison between baptism and burial. Whether their more ready apprehension of that illustration would compensate for the certain inconveniences, and, under our present habits of mind, probable injury to purity and modesty, which would result from a return to the old custom, is the question which (I venture to think) must be satisfactorily answered in the affirmative, before the suggestion of "Catholicus" can be reasonably entertained, with a view to its adoption. He will not, I trust, be offended with the plainness with which I have stated the chief of the objections which have occurred to my own mind. If he can set them aside, he, no doubt, will do so; but, with kindness and courtesy, I would suggest to him, that it is not by stigmatizing delicacy of mind as "fastidiousness," nor by imputing "the practice of sprinkling (as distinguished from affusion)" to " carelessness, or something worse," that he will succeed in his attempt. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, CONCURRENCE OF FESTIVALS. SIR, One of the most obvious of the few defects which have been noticed in the rubrical portion of our service book, is, the absence of any directions to the minister, as to the course he is to pursue in the frequently-occurring case of a fixed festival or saint's day coinciding with a Sunday or other moveable festival. Many clergymen, I know, are of opinion that the saint's day ought, in all cases, to give place to the Sunday, as the greater festival. That this opinion is founded on a mistaken view of the matter has, I think, been satisfactorily shewn by The practice of invariably Wheatly, Mant, and other ritualists. passing over the service for the saint's day has also this additional inconvenience, in these days of mere hebdomadal devotion-viz., that a great portion of our services is never at any time brought before the notice of the congregation. On the other hand, it cannot be doubted that cases may happen where the Sunday ought to take the precedence. Suppose, for instance, Easter day should fall on the 25th day of March (the festival of the Annunciation); in this case, I fancy, no variation of practice would arise. Other cases may occur in which, as Wheatly observes, there may be a reasonable doubt which is to preferred, and it is to be regretted that a distinct rule has not been laid down for our direction. In the absence of such directions from the compilers of our own liturgy, it appears to me that the most reasonable method is to inquire what was the practice before the reformation; inasmuch as, since our own church professes in the preface of the service-book-to be the same church as was existing before the alteration of some parts of the divine office, we may, I think, conclude, that where no express alteration is made, it was intended that the ancient rule should be followed. I beg leave, therefore, to offer to the notice of your readers the following rule, extracted from the Roman missal, which appears to me worthy the adoption of our own church :-- In the Roman calendar, festivals are classed as doubles of the first or second class-greater doubles, doubles, and semi-doubles. The following list contains those retained by our church. Sundays of first class, the services for which take place of that for any festival occurring on the same day :-1 Advent, 1 Lent,* Palm, Easter, Whitsunday, Trinity. Festivals, doubles of first class, which supersede any Sunday not in the foregoing list :-Epiphany, St. Philip and St. James (May 1st), St. John the Baptist, (June 24th), St. Peter (June 29th), the Nativity (Dec. 25th). of Sundays of the second class, the service of which supersedes that any festival not in the above list:-2, 3, 4 of Advent, Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima, 2, 3, 4, 5 of Lent. The remaining festivals in our calendar are ranked as doubles of the second class, and take place of any Sunday not included above. From this classification, I would derive the following rule :From Advent to Christmas, and from Septuagesima to Easter (inclusive), and on Whitsunday, and Trinity Sunday, the Sunday service takes precedence of the festival; at all other times, the festival takes precedence of the Sunday. I will very briefly notice two or three consequences of this rule. St. Matthias (Feb. 24th or 25th), the Annunciation (March 25th), St. Andrew (Nov. 30th), St. Thomas (Dec. 21st), always yield to the Sunday, the two former always falling between Septuagesima and Easter, and the two latter in Advent. Some festivals will in some years give precedence, in others yield, to the Sunday. Thus the Conversion of St. Paul, and the Purification, The Roman calendar adds Passion Sunday (the 5th in Lent); but as that day has no peculiar service in our church, I have classed it with the other Sundays in Lent. may happen on Septuagesima or Sexagesima Sunday, in which case the Sunday precedes; or they may fall on a Sunday after Epiphany, in which case the Sunday gives way. There are one or two cases not expressly named in my small edition of the missal, but which, I think, may easily be decided. 1. It appears to me that Ascension-day and Good Friday ought certainly to be classed with those moveable festivals (Easter, &c.) which take precedence of every other coincident festival. 2. The Annunciation may happen in Passion week; or that of St. Mark may fall on Easter Monday, or Tuesday; or St. Barnabas on Monday or Tuesday in Whitsun week. In all these cases, it appears to me that it is the evident intention of the church, in the first instance, to call our attention to the history of the Passion, and in the others to the Resurrection and Descent of the Spirit, and therefore the saint's day ought to give way. Should the Annunciation happen on Monday or Tuesday in Passion-week, the first lessons for the festival must be read, as no others are appointed; and, for my own part, I should in every case commemorate the festival by using the collect, together with that of the Sunday, notwithstanding the express opinion of Wheatly to the contrary. I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, P.S. I think your correspondent "A. O. V." will find a satisfactory vindication of the propriety of turning from the congregation during prayers, in Vol. IV. of your Magazine, page 434. CONDITIONS OF SALVATION.-ROBERT HALL. MR. EDITOR,-It appears to have been the fate of Robert Hall, as well as that of the most eminent divines in our own church, " to be accused of employing anti-evangelical language, and to have suspicions of his orthodoxy pretty freely insinuated, for presuming to speak of conditions of salvation. His defence of that term may perhaps be acceptable to some of your readers. "That repentance and faith, and their fruits in a holy life, supposing life to be continued, are essential prerequisites to eternal happiness, is a doctrine inscribed as with a sunbeam in every page of revelation; and must we, in deference to the propagators of an epidemic pestilence, (antinomianism) be doomed to express, by obscure and feeble circumlocutions, a truth which one word will convey, especially when that word, or others of a precisely similar meaning, has been current in the productions of unquestionable orthodoxy and piety in every age?. If it be replied, why adhere to an offensive term, when its meaning may be expressed in other words, or, at least, by a more circuitous mode of expression? the obvious answer is, that words and ideas are closely associated; and that, though ideas give birth to terms, appropriate terms become, in their turn, the surest safeguard of ideas, insomuch that a truth which is never announced but in a circuitous and circumlocutory form, will either have no hold, or a very feeble one, on the public mind. The anxiety with which the precise, the appropriate, term is ́avoided, bespeaks a shrinking, a timidity, a distrust, with relation to the idea conveyed by it, which will be interpreted as equivalent to its disavowal. While antinomianism is making such rapid strides through the land . . . . . . it is to be opposed, and opposed successfully, by a return to the wholesome dialect of purer times.”—R. Hall's Works, by Gregory, vol. ii. p. 230. Some weighty authorities for calling Christian works a condition of salvation, (Christian works, I say, that all objection to the word, drawn from the application of it to works done before man is made a member of Christ, may be at once shut out,) may be found in a tract of two or three pages, published by Rivington, and signed "T. K. A.” Some of these are noticed by your correspondent on this subject in the last Number. But Robert Hall's defence of the term may have weight with some, who would lend an unwilling ear to the authorities he has cited. Allow me to make one or two further observations on this subject. Repentance, faith, and their fruits, in a holy life, are conditions of salvation, argues the writer from whom I have quoted, because they are necessary, in the established order of means, to salvation-a sine quâ non-that without which salvation cannot take place; and upon this sufficient ground he asserts not only the correctness of the term, but the great importance of using it. But there is another view, it seems to me, to be taken of the word condition, upon which the use of it may be maintained to be not only highly important, but something very like necessary. Has the Christian, in the state of salvation to which he has been called, anything himself to do necessary to his salvation? If he has, then will no other term so plainly characterize the part he has to perform, "in the established order of means," to his salvation, as the calling it a condition of his salvation; because no other term will so clearly imply that he has himself to perform it. Other terms may be used, speaking with equal force to the necessity of what is required of him to his salvation; but they will none of them, as it appears to me, convey with equal certainty the important truth, that we are active agents-(in the common-sense meaning of the word active)-active, though not independent, agents in the work of our salvation. For Christian works might be "qualifications," "evidences of faith," &c., and, as such, necessary to salvation, and yet the Christian himself be merely a passive and irresponsible recipient of these qualifications, &c., without the will or power to give or refuse reception to them; just as inanimate things have qualities of attraction wrought in them, which they put forth to the eye, and the appearance of which is necessary to the part assigned to them in creation, but which they have no will or power of their own to produce or withhold. But where this degree of moral impotence, or rather absence of all active moral power in the Christian, is not held; whether the preacher speak of the Christian co-operating with the Spirit given him, or following the Spirit; walking in the Spirit, or not quenching the Spirit ; doing righteousness, doing things pleasing in the sight of God, or working out his salvation, God working in him to will and to do; if he admit the ability in the Christian, in any degree, to perform these duties through grace, and acknowledge that he is under a necessity to perform, then does he admit them to be conditions of salvation; and not only cannot consistently object to call them so, but cannot, by any other term, so fully represent his own opinion regarding them. But perhaps the strongest argument in favour of the term "conditions of salvation" is to be drawn from the very nature of the language in which good works are enjoined the Christian in scripture, (unless all analogical reasoning, from the use of language, is to be rejected, when proposed to be applied to the language of scripture.) I must, however, content myself with referring to Matthew, vii. 21, and asking, whether that which a man has to do, as the condition of his obtaining a certain end, could be more rigidly proposed, as a condition, than it is in that passage? Now, with these arguments and these authorities before us, in favour of this term, and the doctrine involved in it, what is to be said of the intention officially announced, on the part of a member of our brethren in the ministry, "to war with this unscriptural doctrine till they have exterminated it from the tracts of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge"? I would at least beg every one who is a party to this hostile determination to consider, before it be too late, whether he has such evidence of the error of the doctrine in question as not only binds him not to hold it himself, but obliges him to a war of extermination against it, if he finds it held by others. Surely, Sir, there is a great distinction to be made here. I may be so far satisfied of the erroneousness of a particular doctrine, as to feel bound to reject it, for myself; but I may feel, at the same time, that I have no such evidence of it, nor even such a degree of conviction of it, in my own mind, as to make its general extermination a public duty on my part. Before any such obligation can lie upon me, I must possess a very high degree of evidence indeed, not only that there is error of doctrine, but very grievous error; in fact, such evidence alone as will leave the church without excuse if it continue in its error,—will justify me in sacrificing the peace of the church in order to eradicate it. Now, can there be this degree of evidence against the doctrine, that works are a condition of salvation, when such has been the language held regarding works, in all ages of the church, and by such men, among others, as Dr. Hammond, Bishop Sanderson, Bishop Taylor, Bishop Bull, Bishop Wilson, Bishop Horne, to say nothing of Baxter, of Robert Hall, and others, in dissenting comC. F. H. munities? Sir, yours, &c. STRAUSS' THEORY. MR. EDITOR,—I will study to observe your rule of brevity in some remarks suggested by your own observations on the German theory, of scripture being a rhapsody of Mythi. The true character of the sacred writings is, that they are "the |