Christianity of eighteen hundred years, and it frankly avows that it is a mere religion of man, and the accident of a period. It considers it a syncretism of various opinions, springing up in time and place, and forming such combinations, one with another, as their respective characters admitted. It considers it as the religion of the childhood of the human mind, and curious to the philosopher as a phenomenon. And the utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity is true, whether the latter be regarded in its earlier or in its later centuries. Protestants can as little bear its ante-Nicene, as its post-Tridentine period. I have elsewhere observed on this circumstance: "So much must the Protestant grant, that if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial; by a deluge coming in a night, and utterly soaking, rotting, heaving up, and hurrying off every vestige of what it found in the Church, before cockcrowing so that 'when they rose in the morning' her true seed 'were all dead corpses'-nay, dead and buried -and without grave-stone. 'The waters went over them; there was not one of them left; they sunk like lead in the mighty waters.' Strange antitype, indeed, to the early fortunes of Israel!-then the enemy was drowned, and 'Israel saw them dead upon the seashore.' But now, it would seem, water proceeded as a flood 'out of the serpent's mouth,' and covered all the witnesses, so that not even their dead bodies 'lay in the streets of the great city.' Let him take which of his doctrines he will, his peculiar view of self-righteousness, of formality, of superstition; his notion of faith, or of spirituality in religious worship; his denial of the virtues of the Sacraments, or of the ministerial commission, or of the visible Church;

or his doctrine of the divine efficacy of the Scriptures as the one appointed instrument of religious teaching; and let him consider how far antiquity, as it has come down to us, will countenance him in it. No; he must allow that the alleged deluge has done its work; yes, and has in turn disappeared itself; it has been swallowed in the earth mercilessly as itself was merciless." 1

That Protestantism, then, is not the Christianity of history, it is easy to determine. ("Essay on Development," p. 5.)

BIBLE RELIGION.

THERE is in the literary world just now an affectation of calling religion a "sentiment;" and it must be confessed that usually it is nothing more with our own people, educated or rude. Objects are barely necessary to it. I do not say so of old Calvinism, or Evangelical religion; I do not call the religion of Leighton, Beveridge, Wesley, Thomas Scott, or Cecil, a mere sentiment, nor do I so term the high Anglicanism of the present generation. But these are only denominations, parties, schools, compared with the national religion of England in its length and breadth. "Bible Religion" is both the recognized title and the best description of English religion.

It consists, not in rites or creeds, but mainly in having the Bible read in church, in the family, and in private. Now I am far indeed from undervaluing that mere knowledge of Scripture which is imparted to the population

1 ["Hist. Sketches," vol. I. p. 418.]

Q

thus promiscuously. At least in England, it has to a certain point made up for great and grievous losses in its Christianity. The reiteration again and again in fixed course in the public service of the words of inspired teachers under both Covenants, and that in grave majestic English, has in matter of fact been to our people a vast benefit. It has attuned their minds to religious thoughts; it has given them a high moral standard; it has served them in associating religion with compositions which, even humanly considered, are among the most sublime and beautiful ever written; especially, it has impressed upon them the series of Divine Providences in behalf of man from his creation to his end, and, above all, the words, deeds, and sacred sufferings of Him in whom all the Providences of God centre.

So far the indiscriminate reading of Scripture has been of service; still, much more is necessary than the benefits which I have enumerated, to answer to the idea of a Religion; whereas our national form professes to be little more than thus reading the Bible and living a correct life. It is not a religion of persons and things, of acts of faith and of direct devotion; but of sacred scenes and pious sentiments. It has been comparatively careless of creed and catechism; and has in consequence shown little sense of the need of consistency in the matter of its teaching. Its doctrines are not so much facts, as stereotyped aspects of facts; and it is afraid, so to say, of walking round them. It induces its followers to be content with this meagre view of revealed truth; or, rather, it is suspicious, and protests, or is frightened, as if it saw a figure in a picture move out of its frame, when our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, or the Holy Apostles, are spoken of as real beings, and really such as Scripture implies them to be. I am not denying that the assent which it inculcates and elicits

is genuine as regards its contracted range of doctrine, but it is at best notional. What Scripture especially illustrates from its first page to its last, is God's Providence; and that is nearly the only doctrine held with a real assent1 by the mass of religious Englishmen. Hence the Bible is so great a solace and refuge to them in trouble. I repeat, I am not speaking of particular schools and parties in England, whether of the High Church or the Low, but of the mass of piously-minded and wellliving people in all ranks of the community. (“Grammar of Assent," p. 53.)

2

PURITANISM.

PURITANISM is a very peculiar creed, as being based on no one principle, but propping itself up upon several, and those not very concordant. . And thus it contains within it the seeds of ruin, which time only is required to develop. At present, not any one principle does it carry out logically; nor does it try to adjust and limit one by the other; but as the English language is partly Saxon, partly Latin, with some German, some French,

1 ["Real" and "Notional" are here used in a technical sense, which Dr. Newman explains thus:-"In Notional Assent. . the mind contemplates its own creations, instead of things; in Real, it is directed towards things, represented by the impressions which they have left upon the imagination." ("Grammar of Assent," p. 72.)]

2[Dr. Newman uses this term to denote the system of opinion received by the party in the Anglican Church known as "Evangelical."]

some Dutch, and some Italian, so this religious creed is made up of the fragments of religion, which the course of events has brought together and has embedded in it, something of Lutheranism, and something of Calvinism, something of Erastianism, and something of Zwinglianism, a little Judaism, and a little dogmatism, and not a little secularity, as if by hazard. It has no straightforward

view on any one point on which it professes to teach; and, to hide its poverty, it has dressed itself out in a maze of words, which all enquirers feel and are perplexed with, yet few are able to penetrate. It cannot pronounce plainly what it holds about the Sacraments, what it means by unity, what it thinks of Antiquity, what fundamentals are, what the Church; what again it means by faith. It has no intelligible rule for interpreting Scripture, beyond that of submission to the arbitrary comments which have come down to it, though it knows it not, from Zwingle or Melancthon. “Unstable as water it cannot excel." It is but the inchoate state or stage of a doctrine, and its final resolution is in Rationalism. This it has ever shown when suffered to work itself out without interruption. ("Essays, Crit. and Hist.," vol 1. p. 293.)

MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY.

THERE are few religions which have no points in common; and these, whether true or false, when embraced with an absolute conviction, are the pivots on which changes take place in that collection of credences, opinions, prejudices, and other assents, which make up what is called a man's