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captivity, I do not feel that we can be quite sure that he was to blame. May we not suppose that God intended that the Sodomites should μαθεῖν τοῦ Λὼτ τὴν ἀρετήν—[Chrysost. ] and thus receive a final though ineffectual call to repentance? Not that conduct is always justified by its good consequences; but at all events Mr. Newman's remark, that "Lot is called a just man by St. Peter, and referred to as hospitable by St. Paul," is an under-statement . . . an unintentional one, I am sure of the actual testimony of the inspired writers to his character. "And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: (for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;) the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished."

Surely this is a very different thing from calling a man just and hospitable. Lot's gracious preservation is here given as a proof of God's power to deliver the godly (evσeßeis) out of temptations; he is styled, emphatically, & dikatos,-and we are assured that, far from growing callous to the wickedness of his fellow-citizens, he took it exceedingly to heart, and vexed himself with it day after day! On reading this passage, one feels almost inclined to think with Chrysostom that εἰς ἄκραν τῆς ἀρετῆς τὴν κορυφὴν ἡ τοῦ πατριάρχου συνουσία τὸν δίκαιον τοῦτον ἀνήγαγεν. (The society of the patriarch raised this just man to the highest pitch of virtue.) I am, &c. T. K. A.

MINISTERS AMONG THE QUAKERS.

SIR,-Will you allow me to give a word of information on a point which I see has escaped your notice. I am willing to believe that perhaps some of your readers may not know much more about the subject than I myself did a short time ago.

In your last number (May), at the foot of an extract from the "Morning Herald," you wonder at the error of those who speak of John Wilkinson, the late seceder, as a minister of the Society of Friends, and you affirm "The Friends have no ministers."

I will first make you an apology, and then I am afraid I must be so rude as to contradict you flatly, and affirm on my part that the Friends have ministers-appointed ministers-I must not say ordained to the holy office, for the word would give offence, but approved (that is the Quaker phrase) and set apart for the ministry.

The Society of Friends, as an exclusive church, is not so unorganized and without church government as some people imagine. It has discipline-strict discipline, everybody knows; but it has also difference of degrees among its members-being governed by a regular presbytery-under the name of " elders," who have the right of electing

Mr. N. allows that he was "doubtless a confessor of the truth among the wretched inhabitants of the cities in which he dwelt."

+ Ed. Savile, vol. i., p. 348.

the members of their own body, and whose peculiar office it is to approve ministers, and to reprove and silence them if they see occasion. I need not tell any one that any individual of the Friends' Society, whether minister or not, may address the meeting, if he believes himself inwardly moved; and many private members do preach week after week, who, nevertheless, are not ministers. The ministers are the approved preachers, whom the elders have set apart for the sacred office, as men duly qualified, of tried piety and power. A distinction is then made the ministers sit in the gallery with the elders, and preach from thence; while the ordinary preacher, who has not yet been approved, continues to speak" from the floor."

The Friends' ministers have other duties, of a public and private nature, to perform, which are peculiar to their office. I should add that women are not unfrequently, in spite of St. Paul's protest, regularly approved and appointed ministers, and sometimes it happens that a woman is the only minister of a meeting frequented by fifty or a hundred members.

The late secession of John Wilkinson is so important to the interests of truth, that I had half a mind to offer a few remarks upon it. But I am afraid I have already trespassed too long on your patience, and perhaps I should be telling no new thing to your readers, most of whom, I dare say, have taken as much interest in the matter as I have myself. I am, Sir, yours, very truly,

Alton, May 16, 1836.

G. C.*

MR. DOWLING.

SIR,-Having replied to everything in Mr. Dowling's first letter relative to the quotation I had made from his pamphlet, I supposed I had done all that he could reasonably require.

To his charge respecting personalities, I answer that they are all on his own side. With his argument I have dealt freely; but against his person, his character, his talents, or even his book, I have said nothing. Am I personal because I allow him to be "learned"? If I had, indeed, treated him as, in the opening paragraph of his second letter, he has treated me, he might, with reason, have complained of "personal attacks."

He attempts no "detailed reply" to my letter, on the ground that he has "nothing to answer;" which I believe to be true, though not in the sense he intends. I neither "affected," nor charged him with "affecting, to misunderstand his illustrations," but with really misunderstanding them; and I made good the charge, by shewing that they served my cause rather than his own. Yet, I meant no "incivility" in thus turning his controversial weapons back upon himself.

It contains information to
further say what are the
Probably Mr. Clarkson
It appears that any one

Many thanks to "G. C." for his valuable letter. one person, certainly, and probably to many. But will he public and private duties required of these ministers? may supply these particulars, but his book is not at hand. may preach; and there are no sacraments among the Quakers.-ED.

That the testimony he had given was favourable to Milner I both fully believed when I quoted it, and do still; yet, I also believe as fully he now wishes it had never been given.

His explanation of the phrase "literary capacity," as applied to the divines of the last century, will not avail to extricate him from the horns of the dilemma in which he was placed. He says, "I did not allude to what proficiency they could have attained in ecclesiastical history." To which my answer is, that I never understood him to make such an allusion, nor argued on so absurd a supposition. In truth, he reasons from the term "literary capacity," as equivalent to the term "natural capacity." I may find a peasant who "could,” under suitable instruction, have attained proficiency in literature; yet, if his natural talents have not been cultivated, it would still be true that he has no "literary capacity." So also, many scholars of the last century might have furnished their minds with ecclesiastical literature; but if they failed to do so, they were in a state of literary incapacity for the work which Milner undertook. Now, Mr. Dowling's language was not, "No one did write"—but, "No one could have written such a history better" than Milner; which can mean nothing less than that "no one had made equal proficiency with him in ecclesiastical literature." And this is either to exalt Milner, or to depreciate the age in which he lived, more than I should choose to do.

With regard to that part of Mr. Dowling's letter in which he requires me to notice his tract, I am afraid I can neither speak nor keep silence without giving offence. Does he demand my opinion as a right, or ask it as a favour? If he demands it as a right, the demand is so extraordinary that I can hardly think him serious in making it. If fifty persons chose to write on the same subject as myself, they might each lay as good a claim to my opinion on their several productions. But Mr. Dowling, of all men, ought not to have come forward with such a demand; for if he really thinks that my "usual tactics are to make the matter in dispute the ground of a mere per sonal attack," and if he accounts me a great proficient" in a "strange kind of literary cavilling," what good can he expect from controversy with me? It would be impossible that he should value my approbation, and absurd that he should regard my censure. It is rather singular, in any circumstances, that an author should wish his work to be assailed, for the purpose of giving him the opportunity of defending it; but that he should call, in a peremptory tone, for the approval or the opposition of one whom he can scarcely do less than despise, is a course which all Mr. Dowling's talent will be insufficient to explain or justify. I will, however, state, for his information, that his tract on the "Paulicians" has not produced the conviction on my mind which its author imagines. I did not publicly notice it, because I hesitated to state my views, without supporting them by facts and reasonings, which would have implied the writing of a book. I doubted whether the question itself would be deemed sufficiently interesting by the public to render such a labour advisable. And I further thought my time not so completely at my own disposal as to VOL. IX.-June, 1836.

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justify me, unless the urgency of the case required it, in entering on a controversy with a new antagonist.

I will only add, that if Mr. Dowling asked me, as matter of favour, for my judgment of his work, I candidly tell him that a little more courtesy on his part would have been met with a more frank declaration of sentiment on mine. I remain, Sir, yours respectfully,

Hull, April 9th, 1836.

JOHN KING.

HOOKER QUOTED BY DR. JOHN MILNER.

SIR,-In looking into Dr. Milner's " End of Religious Controversy," I met with the following passage, given as from Hooker, from which the reader, unacquainted with that author, might be led to conclude that one or other of the two doctrines, consubstantiation or transubstantiation, was supposed by that eminent divine to be true. He must indeed be an unlearned reader thus to be deceived: it is for such, I imagine, that this edition of Dr. Milner's work (the ninth, Dublin, 1830,) is designed. Among the testimonies of divines of the establishment to the real presence, "as explicit," he tells us, "as catholics themselves can wish them to be," he cites Hooker in the following manner:-" Lastly, the profound Hooker expresses himself thus: I wish men would give themselves more to meditate, with silence, on what we have in the sacrament, and less to dispute of the manner how. Since we all agree that Christ, by the sacrament, doth really and truly perform in us his promise, why do we so vainly trouble ourselves with so fierce contentions, whether by consubstantiation or else by transubstantiation ?"

The thought which first struck me was, by what process has Hooker been made to speak thus? I discovered that it was by omitting the last ten words of the last sentence! Had they been allowed to remain, the passage would have appeared a rather strange testimony to the real presence in the elements, brought from a writer who was "as explicit on this subject as catholics themselves could wish him to be." Let me, however, supply the omission, and then the latter part of the above sentence will read thus, "whether by consubstantiation or else by transubstantiation THE SACRAMENT ITSELF be first possessed with Christ OR NO ?"

"Hooker is known," as Mr. Newman observes, " to be opposed to any formal doctrinal assertion of the presence of Christ in the sacred elements, and especially on this ground, lest any such should withdraw our minds from His real presence and operation in the soul and body of the recipient."

On the subject of the pope's infallibility, Dr. Milner accuses Barrow and Tillotson of a shameful misrepresentation of Bellarmin. I have not access to Bellarmin's work. From the above specimen I should not be surprised if the shameful misrepresentation is on the side of Dr. Milner.

W. M.

BOSSUET'S EXPOSITION.

SIR,-Although few can doubt but that it is the duty of us all no longer to remain "lukewarm and indifferent to the spread of" popery, yet there may be room for a difference of opinion as to "the course which should be pursued in order to counteract the efforts of those, our vigilant and unscrupulous adversaries," who have declared their "determination to use every means in their power" to procure the "subversion" of the established church For this reason, I would venture to express my dissent from the suggestion thrown out by your correspondent "Clericus," who is of opinion that "an antidote against the subtle poison of popery" would be found in a "popular examination of the tenets advanced in Bossuet's Exposition of the doctrines of the [self-called] catholic church." Not to mention that an able and popular examination of that book already exists, it may be doubted (at least, so I think,) whether it be, except under very peculiar circumstances, expedient to allow Romanists to appeal to any exposition of the doctrines of their church other than is contained in their authorized books. I apprehend that few churchmen would desire to have any exposition of our articles palmed upon them by Romanists, instead of the articles themselves; and for the same reason our adversaries, when it suits their purpose, are ready enough to repudiate all expositions of popery, except those which have been authoritatively recognised by the church of Rome herself. To contend with Romanists on other grounds, is, indeed, to give them an advantage to which they are not entitled, but of which they well know how to make the most. It may be true that Dr. Murray has recommended Bossuet's "Exposition" as 66 ar accredited statement of the real differences, in matters of faith, between the reformed churches and his own," as he, doubtless, would any other book that might be (if possible) better calculated to keep those "real differences" out of sight. Yet Dr. Murray's recommendation may, after all, have had something to do with that sympathy which is said to exist between kindred spirits for the evasions, special pleadings, &c., practised by Bossuet, in the publication of the book in question, find no parallel so suitable as the transactions of Dr. M., connected with the setting forth of "Dens' Theology." Let the following statement of facts be well pondered by your correspondent Mr. Stanley, or by any other believer in the integrity of Dr. Murray. It is well known that Bossuet wrote his "Exposition of the Doctrines of the Catholic Church" for the use of the Maréschal de Turenne, who became a convert to popery. For about four years the exposition was circulated only in MS., but the applause it obtained encouraged the author to publish it. Accordingly, it was put forth in the year 1671, with the recommendation of several bishops, who vouched for its conformity to the doctrines of the Romish church. At the same time a copy of the book was submitted to the doctors of the Sorbonne, who (alas!) were so far from approving of the "Exposition," that they marked several passages in which Bossuet, in his too great anxiety to palliate the tenets of popery, had, in their judgment, absolutely perverted the doctrines of the church of Rome.

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