of the One supreme judge." And was not the decree of the apostles" supreme and irresponsible?" There was no higher court of appeal on earth, and this is what the terms mean. And yet no mention of Peter is made in it. We do not find in it the words, "It has pleased Peter and the rest." Now, the "One Supreme Judge " is, it is true, our divine Redeemer; and equally true it is that the decree is His. For what did he tell his disciples ?" It is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you. when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come" (John xvi. 7-13). The presence of our Lord, in the flesh, would have rendered it impossible for the apostles to act as they did in the Council of Jerusalem, nor could they have acted as they did without his presence in the Spirit. How beautifully then are the promises of our Lord verified! "It is expedient (he says) that I go away;" and yet elsewhere he tells them-" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. xxviii. 20). The liberty of action requisite to the due service of God could not be practised whilst they had ever before their eyes the miracles and lessons of our Lord in person. It is needless to dwell on the fact that Peter himself furnished evidence how easily a man might be deceived as to the nature of his feelings towards God whilst such things were present to him. It was "expedient" that our Lord should not be so visibly present; and is it less true that he is now present to his Church than that he was present in the Council of Jerusalem? By no means: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. xviii. 20). Now, with these promises before us, and with the undoubted fulfilment of them as recorded in the words, "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us," does it not occur at once to the mind why Mr. Allies passed over in silence one of the most conclusive evidences which could be given to show that such an office as the Ultramontane divines maintain was conferred on Peter was not alone not conferred, but that the very idea of such an office is inconsistent with the promised presence of our Lord, in and by the Holy Spirit, as verified. in the words" It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us ?" For how was the Holy Ghost present? The Acts of the Apostles contain the answer:-" And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost" (Acts ii. 4)-not Peter

alone, but "all." One at least of the offices of the Holy Ghost in relation to the Church-militant is that which is related in the portion of the Acts which we are considering. The narrative leaves no room to doubt it-" It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us ;" and that under persecution they were to be taught what to speak by the same Spirit we know from the promise of Christ. "But whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost" (Mark xiii. 11). Now, will Mr. Allies seriously maintain that there was any room for the exercise of such a power as he claims for Peter? Can he put into intelligible language a proposition setting forth the necessity for such a power, its manner of exercise, and its consistency with the certain presence of our Lord by the Holy Ghost, moving the minds and tongues of all his apostles and their successors (Matt. xxviii. 20) in such cases as may be required for continuing and propagating his Church? But it is needless to pursue the thought. The end we have in view is answered when we show that Mr. Allies has failed to prove his case. There is, however, a plausibility about his remark--" for who gives to the ancients the same authority as to the apostles ?"-which merits a few words. He argues that, as it is admitted the “ancients" are not equal in authority to the "apostles," therefore it cannot be deduced, from the fact of the decree being issued in their joint names, that in the first "council of the Church," Peter had not "occupied a position which befits only the supreme judge of controversies." We have only to remark that, if Mr. Allies will take up any volume he pleases of the "Bullarium Romanum," he will find abundant reason to believe either that Peter's modesty was very much greater than that of men who profess to inherit from him the privileges they exercise; or that the sentiments which pervade the "Bullarium," in similar cases, are strangely at variance with the belief which, on the occasion in question, called into operation the gifts imparted to both "apostles and ancients.' The whole argument of Mr. Allies is based on the notion that a case arose to call into action Peter's privilege as "supreme judge of controversies ;" and that he used the opportunity in such a triumphant manner "that, had we no other evidence but this place whereby to decide upon his rank and office, his pre-eminence would be evident." And yet he is forced to own that all the apostles and ancients had a competent authority to join in that decree!" The fact that the "ancients," whose grade of order was be

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neath that of the apostles, joined in the decree, proves incontestably that the proceeding was one which did not need the services of a "supreme judge of controversy" other than the Holy Ghost who directed alike all the parties to it. Mr. Allies owns that all the "apostles and ancients" had a "power to deliberate and decree." We know that they used. their power. Again, then, we ask, "Can Mr. Allies put into intelligible language a definition of the prerogative claimed for Peter which shall consist with the power of bishops and priests to make such a decree as that passed at Jerusalem by the apostles and elders guided by the Holy Ghost?" We confidently assert that, if he will do so, he will do more to prove his case than he has yet done; for, although the points connected with it are not by any means exhausted, we accept the issue proposed by Mr. Allies, and submit to the candid that, even with the few remarks we have made upon the position stated by the sacred writer to have been occupied by Peter in the council of Jerusalem, "had we no other evidence but this place whereby to decide upon his rank and office, his pre-eminence would be evident "-not, indeed, such a "pre-eminence" as Mr. Allies contends for, but that exalted pre-eminence which the passage shows to have been used in common with Barnabas, Paul, James, and others. More than a "competent authority to join in that decree" the passage does not show. We conclude, then, that "his rank" was that of an apostle, the highest that a man could bear; that "his office" was, in the circumstances, to declare his opinion and the result of his experience; and that his "pre-eminence " rests upon other ground than a pretended supremacy over his fellow apostles, whose nature its maintainers cannot define, and which holy Scripture does not give us any reason to believe he was unwise enough to desire or to claim.

We have thus disposed of some of the leading arguments used by Mr. Allies. Others, did space permit, might be shown to be as destitute of solid reasoning. If his book were intended as a statement of the convictions which forced him to change his ecclesiastical position, we cannot compliment him upon a successful vindication of his movement. He may have other reasons; but the claim to acceptance, by the people of England, of the Ultramontane doctrine upon the Papacy must remain as it is if Mr. Allies, as its chosen champion, cannot urge on its behalf anything better than what he has set forth in "St. Peter, his name and his office, as set forth in Holy Scripture."

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ART. V.-The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. Fourth Edition. By PROFESSOR CREASY. London. 1853.

THERE is no feature of more hopeful augury in the literature of the nineteenth century than the enlightened and philosophical spirit which has been displayed in one of its noblest, and perhaps most important, departments—the history of our race.

The same inductive and dispassionate mode of investigation which has been attended with such wonderful results in studying the operations of nature, and generalizing phenomena, has been with signal advantage brought to bear upon the study of history; and just as the adoption of the Baconian method has paved the way to the most glorious discoveries in the physical sciences, and substituted for antiquated hypotheses and barren categories the simple and beautiful laws which govern the material world, we are entitled to believe that historical enquiry, thus conducted, will show in the rise and fall of empires, and in the concatenation of memorable events which have influenced them, the same subjection to invariable laws, and the same abundant evidence of wisdom and design in their direction and government.

The Germans and French have led the way in the revival, or, to speak more correctly, the founding of a new school of historical investigation. Niebuhr, Schlegel, Ranke, Villemain, the two Thierrys, Sismondi, Guizot, Thiers, and Michelet, have, by their researches or philosophical disquisitions, shed a flood of new light upon the world. Tardily, and few and far between, they have found in England writers to emulate them in diffusing a more correct appreciation of the study of history, and a more enlarged conception of the great lessons which it may be made to supply. But, as yet, the field is hardly occupied: we can only oppose the names of Hallam, Arnold, Macaulay, Allison, Professor Creasy, and a few others, to the great continental writers we have named, and a host of others scarcely less distinguished. But the impetus has been given-the example has been set-and we may confidently hope that the country of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson, will not fail to win new honours in a department of literature so well suited to the national genius, and so important to cultivate in a free country. Indeed, in the

historical labours of Arnold, Macaulay, and other recent English writers, their countrymen may congratulate themselves that there has been added to the subtle research of the Germans and the philosophical spirit of the French an element of far higher import which has stamped them with an enduring value-and that is a deep and abiding Christian faith -aconstant sense of an all-wise and overruling Providence— which they have derived from the education, habits, and religious institutions of their country, and which has enabled them to see through the complex and apparently fortuitous tissue of human affairs-the clear and harmonious designs of God-running, like a golden thread, which, though it escapes the merely learned as well as worldly or vulgar eye, is still sufficiently bright and clear to assure those who seek their wisdom from on High, that "this mighty maze" which they behold, and so often mourn over, is not, indeed, "without a plan !" In proportion as the historian is endowed with the religious spirit, we hold that he will be fitted for the highest duties of his office, especially in the times we live in, and still more so in the times which seem fast approaching: we believe that this religious spirit is more largely diffused in the Anglo-Saxon race than amongst any other people; and it is from this consideration we anticipate that the works of the new school of English historians will possess a peculiar excellence. The vast learning and stately eloquence of Gibbon, or the clear narrative and hard nervous diction of Hume, do not supply, much less excuse, the deficiency caused by their want of religious faith. Immense as has been the value of the legacy left to us in the history of the "Decline and Fall," yet, remembering that it was written for Christian readers, the terms in which it has been conveyed has marred the gift. Our deepest and most sacred sympathies revolt at the cold indifference with which the sufferings "of the noble army of martyrs" are related; and, while our religious fears are justly alarmed at the disguised but still constant and systematic efforts of the historian to disparage the inestimable blessings we have derived from Christianity, and throw a gloss over all the revolting features of Paganism, we detect the partizan under an affectation of excessive impartiality; and the sceptic, recommending his cold joyless creed, while panegyrising the virtues of the philosophic Antoninus, or palliating the relapse of the apostate Julian. He dilates, with suppressed exultation, over the deplorable dissensions of the Christian Church, when, departing from the simplicity of the Gospel in exchange for imperial support,

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