cation, and redemption;" they do not the less say that heaven is the inheritance of none but "them that are sanctified;" that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord;" and that Christ "gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works." Again, their interpretations of the Anglican Baptismal service are not more di verse than were those of the venerable men from whose views our author considers them to have swerved; nor more than the opinions of divines of other sections of the Church; for we find, at this very moment, upon the catalogue of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the tract of Bishop Bradford maintaining that baptism conveys to the infant a change of state; and of Bishop Mant, that it conveys a change of nature; while the Tractarian party go the full length of the Tridentine hypothesis. Neither does our author write discreetly upon the subject of prophecy; for in animadverting upon extravagances of interpretation, he apparently casts an air of ridicule upon the study itself. Towards all with whom he differs-and with whom does he not differ?-he indulges a satirical vein; as if he had pleasure in picking—or at least spying-holes in men's coats, and pointing them out to his neighbours. However, thinking that with these strong exceptional remarks, we might yet learn some good lessons from his pages, we have used them freely, believing that he means to wound not as an enemy but as a friend. REVIEW OF IRISH EPISCOPAL CHARGES. 1. Archbishop of Dublin's Charge;-2. Primary Charge of the Bishop of Cashel ;-3. Primary Charge of the Bishop of Ossory. (Continued from page 630.) THE remaining Irish Episcopal Charge upon our list is that of Dr. O'Brien, Bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin; the chief topic of which is the Tractarian controversy. His Lordship does not extenuate the discussion into a petty squabble respecting a few ritual observances; much less does he speak in a hesitating, undecided tone, as if perplexed between a desire to side with the Tractarians, and a consciousness that this would not be prudent; lauding their excellent intentions and genuine church principles; thanking them for the great good they have effected, though lamenting they have gone somewhat too far upon certain points; then bristling fiercely upon some extravagance of some unguarded wight among their followers who has damaged them by incautiousness; regretting also a few things in Mr. Froude, or the British Critic, or the "ill-judged" Tract XC.; but admitting that their chief doctrines are not touched by these unhappy mistakes; and finally, with amiable candour, contrasting their meek spirit, gentle words, and holy deeds, with the party violence, Dissenterism, unchristian tempers, and unblushing mendacity of their opponents. The Bishop of Ossory goes at once to the main points; discusses them calmly and fairly, but resolutely; and clearly evinces that he considers he is dealing with most serious errors and grievous delusions. If our notice of this Charge-or rather treatise-were to be measured by its importance, the ability displayed in it, and its value as a Scriptural and Anglican exposition of the chief points in discussion, we should devote many pages to our remarks and extracts; but as it has been widely circulated and much quoted; and, we may add, as the matters touched upon in it have been largely canvassed in our pages, many of the arguments anticipated, and even the chief illustrative quotations forestalled as the various publications from which they are selected issued successively from the press; our best course, in order to avoid repetition, will be to give merely an outline of its contents, with special reference to a few of the most noticeable topics, referring to the document itself for a series of arguments and proofs which cannot be adequately set forth in abridgment. Notwithstanding ten years of controversial investigation, the subject has attracted, in passing through the powerful and well-furnished mind of Bishop O'Brien, much that is striking and even original; so that the reader will not lose his labour by the entire pe rusal. The Bishop begins with "the externals" of the ministerial office. The house of God is for reading and instruction in the Word of God; for prayer; and for the administration of the sacraments; respecting all which particulars he gives suitable admonitions. He urges the clergy not to be driven by the scoffs of the Tractarians, into "a negligent and irreverent tone in reading the services of the Church." They ought, he says, to be read impressively; which is quite consistent with, nay results from, their being read with real feeling and without affectation. He says there is " a hardness and deadness" now assumed by some, which are calculated to damp the spirit of devotion in a congrega tion. "Those who think that in such services the minister is performing an office for the people, rather than with them, may very consistently disregard appear to look back with some measure of regret at the change made at the Reformation from the Latin services, may hail it as a step taken towards the reprayers are delivered, so as not to be covery of what we have lost, when the heard and understood by the people." such an effect. And indeed those who His Lordship "is happy to believe that in the dioceses over which he presides there is no trace of such mischievous fopperies in dress, gesture, and posture,' have been introduced "by individual ministers, but apparently in concert," in England. If, he says, they appeared in ordinary times, "they might only deserve to be censured as individual frivolities," but " being connected with a conspiracy for un-Protestantizing the national Church," and "to assimilate us in externals with the Church of Rome," they are to be shunned by all who do not wish to promote that nefarious object. He rejoices that in Ireland he per ceives no disposition to "re-appropriate" any Romanist fancies of which the Protestant Reformation deprived us, or "to adopt any of these devices, novel or obsolete, for the decoration or dedecoration of sacred edifices and those who minister in them." His Lordship next proceeds to mention certain difficulties in parochial visiting, upon which he offers some useful practical suggestions; but he has not touched upon what to us English clergymen would be the greatest practical difficulty of all; namely, in what light an Irish parochial minister ought to regard the Romanists who may constitute five sixths, nine tenths, or perhaps forty-nine fiftieths, of the population of his parish, but who do not acknowledge him as their pastor. They indeed look to him for temporal relief in their exigencies; but they do not accept of his pastoral labours, or send their children to his schools. The majority of Irish clergymen give them up entirely, considering that they can do nothing with them, or for them. Others regard themselves as missionaries among them, and act accordingly, waging perpetual war with their priests, employing seriptural readers, and following out a constantly aggressive system. It is said that English clergymen, transplanted to a dense Romanist population in Ireland, after zealously commencing with the latter plan, usually sink in despair into the former. Some, of Tractarian principles, have tried to conciliate the priests, and have abstained upon system from interfering with their followers; considering the Church of Rome to be "the mother through whom we were born to God." Of this mind was Bishop Jebb, who urged this line of conduct upon his clergy in his primary Charge. But unhappily the concessions were all on one side. He invited his Romanist brethren to row with him in the same boat, having first thrown over-board the Homilies to lighten it, and taken in Catholic traditions to steady it; and accordingly, upon quitting his parish of Abingdon (Tipperary) for the episcopal chair at Limerick, he received a flattering congratulatory address from his Roman Catholic parishioners, who greatly rejoiced at his elevation to the mitre. But while his Tractarian proceedings tended to weaken the principles of Protestantism among his own flock, we never heard that they brought over any of his Romanist neighbours to Anglicanism; and happening lately to pass through Abingdon in a summer's ramble in Ireland, we were informed that his own pet parochial priest has been for many years one of the most virulent opposers of Protestantism, and one of the hottest political and religious agitators, in all Mr. O'Connell's dominions. We are sure that Bishop O'Brien would not approve of Bishop Jebb's scheme of conciliation through the medium of Tractarianism; but we could wish that he had stated whom he considers his clergy ought to regard as within the legitimate range of their pastoral visits; and how they ought to deal with those which are without, as well as those within, the pale of their own communion. This is a much-vexed question among the Irish clergy; and many are wavering between quiescence and aggression. The Bishop next touches upon national education, lamenting that the Cabinet and Legislature have not listened to the entreaty of the Irish Bishops and Clergy to lend them aid in carrying on education upon Scriptural principles, as the great majority of them cannot conscientiously avail themselves of the mixed system. The Church is thus left to its own resources, which the Bishop entreats his clergy to ply diligently. In addition to daily schools, he urges them never to dispense with the additional training of Sunday schools, and especially for catechising. It has occurred to us that our Irish brethren have in this matter an advantage over us in England; for it is not so generally considered among them, as among us, degrading for the children of respectable tradesmen or gentlemen to be catechised by their clergyman in a Sunday school with their poorer neighbours. We now come to the Bishop's fourth and chief head-" Preaching; with which he has connected his discussions upon Tractarianism. Far from disparaging preaching, he considers it "in many important respects the highest among the duties of a minister;" seeing that "it is in the pulpit that a minister appears most distinctly and impressively in his office as God's ambassador." the points upon which studious attenĮ ts "This part of your duties is one of have been made to change the views and feelings of ministers in recent times. Preaching has been systematically disparaged, and even expressly described as an instrument which may be necessary in a weak and languishing state [of the Church], but one which Scripture, to say the least, has never much recommended!' (Tract 87, p. 75.) I will not do so much wrong to your acquaintance with Scripture, as to set about any regular exposure of this hardy misrepresentation of it. You will need no proof that you are to teach publicly, as well as from house to house; to preach the word; to do the work of an Evangelist; and that in 'preaching,' you are using an instrument which God has appointed, and employed, and honoured, and blessed, in bringing sinners to Christ, and building them up in the faith. And what I have said, had not for its purpose to prove this to you, but to draw attention to a few out of the many considerations which serve to show the high and peculiar importance of this branch of your duties." says The Bishop goes on to urge reading, meditation, and prayer as handmaids to preaching. He that preachers may vary in their developments of Divine truth according to their tastes, intellects, and habits; but they should keep to the Scriptural balance of truth. "Very many, if not all of these varieties, fall under two great divisions; one being formed of all those in which the Lord's Atonement appears with too little reference to His example; and the other, of those in which His example is inculcated with too little reference to His Atonement. I do not mean to inIclude in the former class that extreme in which the necessity of taking Christ as our example, and aiming at being like Him, is denied ;-which is what is generally understood by Antinomianism; and from the latter class I mean to exclude the extreme which denies the doctrine of Atonement altogether ;-which is Socinianism. I mean, however, to comprehend in the former division, all cases in which the Atonement is preached distinctly and fully, but in which-while it is acknowledged that those who receive the doctrine ought, and are bound, to obey and imitate Him who has wrought this reconciling work,-yet this obligation is not stated with due distinctness, nor are proper pains taken to press the duty upon them in detail. While, on the other hand, I mean to comprehend in the other class, all the CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 71. cases where (while the Atonement is acknowledged) the life of Christ is sought to be produced independently of belief in it, and by other motives than those which it supplies. "Now that both these are unscriptural systems, I need not say: and that both therefore are to be avoided, I need not say. But I do not wish to conceal that I think the latter far the worse and more deadly error. The former sets out upon the principle that all Christian practice is to be derived from Christian faith-which is a certain and fundamental truth-more or less denied by the latter. It infers then that if we can implant true faith, Christian practice will follow: on the principle, that if we can produce the cause, it will produce the effect; and that therefore we need not make this any object of our care and exertion...... It is true that a man cannot really believe in Christ without loving Him, or love Him without a desire to please Him. But to labour to implant the principle of faith in Christ in the heart, and to leave it then, without endeavouring to direct and control, and stimulate, and exercise it, is not merely to neglect what all that we know of the human mind shows to be essential to the full development and efficiency of every such principle, but,what is of still more consequence than any such error in mental philosophy,it is running counter to all the examples of Divine teaching, which we have in the word of God. And in thus abandoning the duty of a teacher, the minister not only, as far as in him lies, stunts and dwarfs the principle of faith when it is really in the heart, but he helps sinners to delude themselves with the persuasion that it is in the heart when it really is not-by putting out of view the safeguard against such self-deception which the wisdom of God has provided in the requirements of His word. "Such a course is doubtless to be condemned and avoided. But still, as I said before, I do not think it so preposterous or so presumptuous as the attempt to build up the Christian character, without first laying the foundation in the belief of this truth. Indeed as to the real presumption of this procedure, when one considers the nature of the truth which it is proposed to set aside. and all that is declared in Scripture of its place in the divine plan for saving sinners, one can hardly find language to characterize the faithless temerity of thus dealing with it. But in what I have said I have meant to speak of the moral influence of this doctrine, leaving out all consideration of its saving efficacy, any further than that is necessarily in4 U volved in any consideration of its moral influences. And limiting our view as exclusively as possible to the latter, I mean to say, that one who preaches the doctrine of the Atonement clearly and fully, while he neglects the moral training which ought to accompany it, is infinitely less likely to preach in vain, than the man who seeks to carry on this training, without doing anything to set forth and secure belief in that doctrine. Just as and I trust that the propriety of the comparison will be felt by all who hear me just as one who sows good seed, while he neglects the other duties of the husbandman, is more likely to have a crop, than he who performs all these offices, with the greatest possible exactness and diligence, while he neglects to sow the seed." We have quoted this passage the rather, because it inculcates a truth which many divines would shrink from boldly asserting. The Bishop applies his position with great effect to refute the Tractarian doctrine of" reserve in preaching the Atonement." Had we not written often and largely upon this subject, we should be fain to cite many pages of the Bishop of Ossory's valuable remarks. One head of his argument, though we have frequently touched upon it, we will notice, because it detects a latent object which the Tractarians have in view in maintaining this doctrine of reserve. We have several times mentioned Mr. Knox's declaration to a friend of ours, that he could not specify what place the Atonement had in his system; -for he did not see how it applies to the case of baptized persons: nor does Dr. Pusey; who intimates the same of the doctrine of justification by faith; concurring with what Popish Bishop Gardiner asserted in reply to the Reformers, that, whether that doctrine be true or false, we have practically nothing to do with it, seeing we were justified in infancy by baptism, and must be saved by good works. "There are in Scripture gracious invitations addressed by Christ to all who are weary and heavy laden, and gracious offers of rest to them; and large and precious promises to all who truly turn unto Him; and invitations and promises, no less full and free, which is apostles afterwards delivered in His name. But when we have to address those who after baptism have turned away from God;' we are gravely recommended to consider whether we have any right at once to appropriate to them the gracious words with which our Saviour invited those who had never known Him, and with which, through His Church, He still invites his true disciples to the participation of His most precious body and blood- Come unto me, ye that labour and are heavy laden.' Whether having no fresh Baptism for the remission of sin' to offer, no means of renewing them to repentance,' we have any right to apply to them the words which the Apostles used in inviting men for the first time into the ark of Christ.' What words of invitation we may use to them we are not told, but we are told what it is, at the most and best, that they can of restoration of that life [the life given obtain by repentance,-that it is 'a sort in Baptism] given to those to whom it is given by virtue of that ordinance; a restoration of a certain portion of their Baptismal health. It is not the new birth simply, that is Baptism, but it is a revival in a measure, of that life; to be received gratefully, as a renewal of a portion of that former gift; to be exulted in, because it is life; but to be received is the renewal of what had been forand guarded with trembling, because it feited; not to be boasted of, because it is but a fragment of an inheritance, wasted in riotous living.' O Certainly if this were the message which you have to deliver, it were of less importance that you should be persuaded to reserve it. But, blessed be God! it is not. And if the writer of the Tract had paused to remember the takes the last words that I have quoted whole of the passage from which he from him, one might hope that he would have been preserved from the very unscriptural limitations of God's mercy to repentant sinners into which he has been led by his own theories, and by the authority of some of the Fathers. For the prodigal in the memorable parable from which these words are taken, was a SON; and he had wasted his subhe came to himself, and returned to stance with riotous living; and yet when his father, we know how he was received; that though all that he sued for, and thought himself worthy of, was the place of a servant, his father did not ratify the sentence of his self-abasement, but opened his arms and his heart and his house to him as his Son, and commanded his whole household to rejoice, because his Son who had been dead, |