1842, 1843. By DANIEL, Bishop of Calcutta, and Metropolitan of India. 2. The past Dangers, and present Position, of the United Church of England and Ireland; a Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Ely; in 1842. By the Rev. J. H. BROWNE, M.A., Archdeacon. 3. Two Treatises on the Church; the first by THOMAS JACKSON D.D., the second by BISHOP SANDERSON; to which is added, a Letter of Bishop Cosin, on the Validity of the Foreign Reformed Churches. Edited, with introductory remarks, by the Rev. W. Goode, M.A., Rector of St. Antholin, London. 4. A Defence of the Principles of the English Reformation, from the Attacks of the Tractarians. By the Rev. C. S. BIRD, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 5. Our Dangers and our Duties, in the present Crisis of the Church; an address from a Minister to his Congregation. 6. A Word to the English Laity, in what appears to be their Duty in reference to the Modification of Popery, commonly called Puseyism. By JOHN POYNDER, Esq. 7. Identity of Popery and Tractarianism; or Pope Pius the Fourth's Creed, illustrated by Tractarian Comments. Published by the Reformation Society. 8. The Approaching Downfall of Popery and Civil Despotism in Europe, with especial reference to the recent progress of Popery and Puseyism throughout the World. By a Layman. 9. Letters from Oxford in 1843. By IGNOTUS. 10. A few Thoughts on Church Subjects; namely, Uniformity, Daily 11. A Protest against Tractarianism; being an Explanation and WE shall pursue our wonted plan of taking up a pile of publications upon Tractarianism, from the multitudes which collect around us; heading them with an episcopal Charge. If the subject has lost much of its novelty, it has assuredly not lost any of its importance; and therefore we do not shrink, even at the risk of some repetition, from laying before our readers another series of passages relative to it. There is one point which we have urged from the first, and which the signs of the times impress with increasing vividness of application; namely, to beware of reaction; not to allow one error to goad us into the opposite; the perversion of one truth to induce us to pervert another; exaggeration to betray us into indifference; the errors of Rome to drive us to Geneva, or those of Geneva to send us back to Rome. We said from the very first that the false claims set up on behalf of the Fathers and Tradition, would lead many to undervalue, and not a few to ridicule, what is really venerable and Scriptural in primitive antiquity; and thus would the church of Christ, and particularly our own branch of it, lose treasures of wisdom and holiness, memorable facts and valuable precedents, which ought not to be rashly set aside because mixed up with much that is superstitious, puerile, or unsound. So again with regard to our own Apostolic Church, the preposterous pretensions urged on her behalf, and to which she is no party; and the worse than absurd affectation of Romanising her rites, Orders, and Liturgy; are causing many who called themselves churchmen, and meant to be so consistently, but who knew little of canons, rubrics, or ecclesiastical discipline, to confound a just and temperate regard to her observances, with the innovations of those who, under the mushroom title of "Catholics," are striving to "unprotestantize" her. The "Evangelical Clergy" (as they are. popularly called) may probably be forced into a painful position with some zealous friends, who cannot discern between things that differ; and who, in their just and honest alarm at Tractarianism, may be too ready to suspect this heresy where it was never dreamed of. We were astonished last month to learn that for a sick person to desire "the prayers of the church" was a Tractarian innovation, and that we had therefore been Tractarians for more than thirty years without knowing it. In our Volume for 1819, p. 86, was inserted a paper written by, or under the eye of, the late Rev. Basil Woodd, complaining of the "inadvertent irregularity" of some clergymen in allowing singing in their churches after the second Lesson, instead of where the rubric prescribes it, after the third Collect; and yet some persons have ignorantly imagined that this obedience to the rubric, which to most clergymen has been familiar from their childhood, is a new Oxford discovery, and an indication of Tractarianism. We might mention other similar facts. These things are very absurd; but they shew the wisdom with which the clergy ought to conduct their pro- . ceedings, so as to be faithful to their Ordination vows as conscientious and consistent churchmen; and yet to avoid all just cause of jealousy and suspicion. For the most part, things were well enough in these matters, if well were let alone.-But we will not delay our readers with our own remarks, when we have in hand the very interesting and highly important Metropolitan Charge of our Right Reverend friend who presides over the Anglo-Indian Church; a Charge replete with facts and business; but chiefly devoted to a consideration of the momentous questions connected with the Tractarian controversy. It is warm, energetic, faithful; yet judicious and well-reasoned; full of scriptural truth and devout exhortation. We feel deeply thankful to God for his mercy, by his "Divine permission," there should be placed over the Church of India at this crisis of its history such a man as Bishop Wilson; a man singularly qualified for the office; uniting evangelical doctrine with apostolical order; and who can afford to say even strong things as an Episcopalian and an Anglican churchman, because he keeps them in their right place, distinguishing between means and ends; and not building up formalism, or opposing irregularity and schism with popish weapons or for popish objects; but seek that, ing to promote the glory of God In his dedication to the Bishops "Allow me to offer for your acceptance the first Metropolitan Charge delivered by me in British India-which will, also, in all human probability, be the last. I need not, I am sure, intreat your indulgence in perusing it. It was composed with much fear and anxiety. The duties of a Metropolitan were new in our Protestant Reformed Churches; and at my distance from home I had little to guide me, as to its details, beyond the general terms of Her Majesty's Letters Patent, and the outline of precedents in early ecclesiastical records. I have made the Visitation, therefore, rather in a way of trial and inquiry, and in order to begin the series for my Right Reverend Successors, than with any idea of accomplishing the high and important ends of such an office. 66 My first endeavour in this Visitation has been, I can truly say, to strengthen your hands in the discharge of your ordinary episcopal functions, with which my own in no way interfere-to open a personal and brotherly intercourse with you, to comfort and cheer you under the depression of your many trials-and to point the affections and confidence of the Clergy and of their flocks, whether Chaplains or Missionaries, towards your persons and office. "In this manner I have aimed at supplying, in some small degree, that kind of friendly and most important intercourse which subsists between neighbouring Bishops at home; but which in such a climate as India, and at the immense distance of the Presidencies from one another, could scarcely ever take place except by some such method as the present, when one of the Bishops is appointed to go round as Metropolitan to his brethren once in a given period of years. (The period is five years or oftener. No one of the three Bishops of India could visit the dioceses of his brethren, and return to his own, without taking a voyage of above fourteen hundred miles.) in new ones like those of India, to preach, and encourage his Reverend Presbyters to preach, the glorious gospel of the blessed God.' I trust my paramount desire has been, and will ever be, to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified,' and to labour, so far as my and from house to house, Repentance strength will allow, 'to testify publicly toward God, and Faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.' "Still, opportunities of giving advice as Metropolitan have been far more frequent than I anticipated, and have in some measure initiated me into my new duties. I have found various occasions of promoting in some small degree the purity and simplicity of the gospel of Christ-of upholding and enforcing the mild discipline of our Church, of drawing closer the bonds of charity-of mediating where danger of misunderstanding existed-of silencing the cruel reports and calumnies which are always floating about-of repressing any appearances of what might be considered party-spirit-of preserving harmony of feeling and uniformity of proceedings between the Anglican Church in India, and the Church at home and in the other parts of the British Empire-of conferring on regulations for the details of duty in the three dioceses, of preparing a draft of subsidiary Oriental Rules and Canons, to be submitted to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, under whom our three dioceses and ourselves are placed-of arranging plans for obtaining more correct versions of the Holy Scriptures and of our Common Prayer Book in the chief Indian languages, to be used uniformly, when duly authorized, in our Missions of examining the relations of the Reverend Clergy with the Civil and Military Authorities, and with the Committees of our great Religious Societies of promoting the sound Christian education of our native youth on the principles of our Church-of watching against the beginnings of any conformity to idolatry in our Christian population, both in our stations and in our missionsand, generally, of advancing that peace, and good-will, and unity in ecclesiastical affairs, in the whole extent of the vast territories subject to the joint Government of the Crown and the Imperial Company of British India, which was one principal end, as I conceive, of the creation of the awful and responsible office imposed on me. "My reflections, Honoured Brother Bishops, at the close of the Visitation are, generally speaking, pleasing. The state of the dioceses, thank God, appears to me decidedly improving, and in many parts full of promise. Our sees, indeed, are still too large. The unmanageably wide portions of the globe which are nominally placed under our charge-especially of two of us-it is physically impossible for any one effectually to superintend. Still, compared with what India was in 1814, when the Bishopric of Calcutta was first erected, the progress has been great. We had then not more than thirty Chaplains, and ten or twelve Missionaries in the three dioceses, with perhaps eight or ten churches. We have now one hundred and seven Chaplains altogether, fifty-three on the Establishment of Calcutta, twenty-nine on that of Madras, and twenty-five on that of Bombay-and our whole number of Clergy in the three dioceses is two hundred and nineteen; whilst our churches are upwards of one hundred and twenty. The Missions in the south of India and Ceylon, which I have just visited, as well as those in Bombay, to which I may add those in my own diocese as I found them in my ordinary Visitation of 1838-41, are in steady progress. Especially the Missions around Palamcotta and Tinnevelly are big with hope. About 35,000 natives are there collected, and are in different stages of Christian instruction under the two Societies for Propagating the Gospel and for Church Missions. "On one important question I have found the Reverend Clergy, both Chaplains and Missionaries, as well in your dioceses, my Right Reverend Brethren, as in my own, shaken, anxious, disquieted, distressed. You will anticipate that I refer to what constitutes the subject of a principal part of my Chargethe great struggle now going on in every part of our Church on the Rule of Faith, and the matter and ground of our Justification before God. I trust that I have succeeded in some measure, through the Divine Goodness, in strengthening and tranquillizing their minds. Indeed I shall consider the Metropolitical Visitation to have been peculiarly blessed, if it is the means of checking this mighty evil. "I speak with deference to your better judgment, my honoured Brother Prelates, and with sincere respect also for the opinions of all the Clergy, and especially the senior Clergy, in the three dioceses; but I must avow that my impression of the danger of this system has been increasing from the time I first delivered an official opinion on it in my Charge of 1838, and indeed I may say since the brief period, of only seven or eight months, when I commenced the present Visitation. "What the event may be, I cannot tell. My hopes upon the whole strongly predominate, from my humble but firm reliance upon the Lord Christ, my thorough persuasion of the pure scriptural character of our Reformed Church, and of the ultimate and glorious triumph of the truth of the Gospel, and its diffusion over the whole earth by the power of the Holy Spirit. But I confess I am not without the greatest alarm, and espe cially for the infant branches of our Church, both European and Native, in India. This alarm springs, not from the want of able defenders of the faith once delivered to the saints-for the triumph in point of argument seems to me to be complete: nor does it arise from want of the repeated condemnations of all the extreme opinions by the Right Reverend the Prelates and leading divines of England and Ireland-for there probably has never been an occasion since the Refor mation when a greater unanimity of censure has appeared; but my fears spring from the fatal tendencies of the system as it has gone on developing itself-from the course which the leaders of it are apparently resolved to take-and from the rapidity with which the tide is carrying away for a time our younger clergy and laity. "For what is the tendency of the system up to the very hour I am writing, corruptions and superstitions of Papal but an increased approximation to all the Rome-so that even her idolatrous offices are being republished for the use of our Protestant people? And what are the leaders doing? Do they retract? Do they admit frankly the admonitions of the Bishops? Nothing of the kind. They stop, indeed, one series of publications at the request of a Diocesan, but immediately replace it by others equally obnoxious: they turn aside all the condemnations in the Charges of different Prelates, by affecting to consider them as founded on mistake: they pervert the terms of commendation in which their learning, their motives, and the incidental good which they may have done in awakening attention to matters of acquiescence in their doctrine. discipline have been spoken of, into an 66 Lastly, they are now crying out for peace, and a season of tranquillity, in order that the several parties may understand one another—that is, after having thrown the whole Church into confusion, and having told us, that a decisive struggle is being now waged between prepared to go all lengths in their efforts two sets of principles, and that they are to unprotestantize' our Church, they quietly ask for peace, and beg us to leave enterprize undisturbed. them to the prosecution of their avowed "In the meantime, they boast in no measured language of the wide diffusion "Still my hopes prevail. God will "Never was any cause more truly that the Reformed Churches and our own, being justified-i. e. accounted righteous by the grace of the Holy Spirit renewing "If this be so, then also nothing can Church attained her mature and perfect form and due stature.'" The above rapid but masterly sketch of the character and tendencies of Tractarianism, will prepare the reader for the remarks in the Charge. He adds, that if the system should go on in India, we are lost as a Protestant church; go on; and his brother Bishops, he testifies, concur with him in this opinion. The way to keep out this and other errors, he says, is "To magnify the grace of Christ— to study, ourselves, and embrace with more and more of personal interest for our own eternal welfare, the great Scripthrough faith. Let us fully understand tural doctrines of salvation by grace and glory in the redemption of our sanctifying influences, not as a matter Lord Jesus Christ in its pardoning and of controversy, but of experience, and we shall preach and teach Christ clearly and consistently to our flocks, and exclude by so doing every main error." In reply to the argument that Tractarianism was useful in checking negligence, disorder, and the absence of sound church principles, he says:— "It is no remedy. It opens a new disease. Truth, not opposite error, the faithful preaching of the Gospel of must be our defence. The remedy is Christ, connected with just views of Church order, and of the sacraments and other means of instruction, based on the capital doctrines of the Gospel, as they are set forth by the inspired Apostles." Charge with a statistical synopsis of The Bishop, after opening his church matters in India, and some incidental heads of advice to the clergy, proceeds to urge them" to take hold of the capital features of the Gospel," particularly in regard to the sinfulness and lost estate of man, and the redemption that is in Christ, both in regard to pardon and holiness, justification and sanctification; and also "to honour and love our church, and willingly to follow her godly order and discipline;" for man, he says, "being such as he is, must have a church; Christianity, without order and authority, is a dream, an enthusiasm, a desolation." He reminds them of the importance of the Pastoral care; and also of keeping up their studies. Under the head of ecclesiastical history, he not more strongly than justly recommends them to avail themselves of M, 3 K |