Dublin pronounces equivalent to ordination, and which, accordingly, in his Grace's judgment, at least bears testimony to the "learning and godly conversation" of the individual to whom it is granted and yet it is said that "the Archbishop had no means of judging" whether Mr. Nolan had acquired knowledge." Surely to ascertain that the important "permission" had been obtained, a personal interview with Mr. Nolan was not necessary.

But we must be more exact. When the Archbishop declined giving Mr. Nolan permission to officiate as a clergyman, he "pointed out to him a course of study, and expressed his readiness to admit him to a re-examination when better prepared." When next his Grace's attention was drawn to the rev. gentleman, it found him in circumstances which rendered the proffered re-examination unneces sary. Mr. Nolan was curate of Athboy. The fact of his having obtained the requisite permission to officiate had become notorious, and if the Archbishop desired no further satisfaction than an assurance upon this point, he could have obtained it from a still more unsuspicious source than the lips of a party interested, by directing an inquiry to be made at the office of the Ecclesiastical Commission. When, therefore, his Grace is represented as having no means of judging as to the proficiency of Mr. Nolan, because that gentleman had not sought a second audience, it seems evident that a "reexamination" was the sole "means of judging" by which the Archbishop of Dublin desired to be satisfied.

This "means of judging," the canons of the Church, in our opinion, most wisely disallow. A bishop may ex

amine a minister who seeks at his hands collation to a benefice. It is right that he should be afforded all facilities to judge the fitness of one to whom momentous interests are to be entrusted, for the duties he is about to undertake. It is right that he should have assurance not only of general ability and good conversation, but also of those qualities which promise harmonious and edifying correspondence and intercourse between the minister and his particular congregation. But where there is no permanent relation formed-where the matter to be considered is the qualification required in a stranger who is solicited to perform some occasional act of ministerial duty, it appears that no such authority is given. It is directed, in this case, to ascertain that the stranger is subject to episcopal governance, and that he is duly accredited and authorised by his proper superior. Where the requisite testimonials are found, they are assumed to certify competent knowledge and propriety of life. By this regulation the Church is preserved as a national establishment. If bishops were to disallow the testimonials of their brethren, (and to insist on an examination is to disallow them,) each diocese would become an established church, separate and estranged from every other diocese, and perhaps hostile also. insisting on re-examining Mr. Nolan the Archbishop of Dublin claimed a power which would have proved detrimental to the general well-being of the church, and with which, therefore, the canons did not endow him. The power to inhibit we do not dispute. Upon the exercise of that power we do not sit in judgment; but the reason given for the late exercise has been thrown out before the public, and we

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have no hesitation in declaring that it is unsatisfactory and incorrect. Mr. L. J. Nolan was refused permission to officiate because of his alleged ignorance. That cause, with due respect for the regulations of the Church, could not be assigned against a settled and officiating minister. If Mr. Nolan were, as he professed, curate of Athboy, to accuse him of ignorance would be a violation of decorum, a wide departure from the respect and deference owing to the bishop who had admitted him into his diocese, and indeed a contumelious disregard of the canons. If he was not what he professed to be, there was a still better ground than ignorance for the inhibition. But Mr. Nolan was, we hope, we may say (unless promotion has removed him) is, curate of Athboy. The Archbishop does not express a doubt of the fact. We therefore complain, not that he issued an inhibition, which we believe it may have been competent for him to do, but that he required what was not competent for him, a minister in the diocese of Meath, to submit to his examination; or, what was still more objectionable, that he imputed ignorance to that minister, because he had considered him ignorant before he had qualified himself to undertake the duties of a cure, and because in despite of the testimony borne by his clerical appointment, he was resolved to think him so still.

It is not matter of surprise that an inhibition issued under such circumstances, and justified by such explanations, shall have brought gladness to the enemies of the Protestant Church and religion, or that it should cause to us much anxiety and sorrow. The whole transaction seems to indicate a separation of the diocese of Dublin

from the national establishment, disclosing a very remarkable peculiarity of religious opinion, and assuming a very extraordinary privilege in matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. There may be found some who will say that in commenting on such manifestations of sentiment and belief, we have applied ourselves to topics incidental and collateral, to the exclusion of what was more obviously the matter most to be regarded. Our reply is, that we have addressed our observations to that which we accounted of the highest moment-to principles which must ever be matter of grave alarm, rather than to an incident which, considered apart from the maxims by which it is justified, might have been, for a time a subject of poignant regret, and then a warning against subsequent inadvertencies. We looked upon the documents issued in the Archbishop's justification, as containing expressions by which the holy rite of ordination was profaned, and advancing claims by which episcopal authority is disallowed; and wherever we find such expressions, whether they are set forth as constituting professedly the substance of the document, in which they occur, or seem parenthetically insinuated, like the celebrated “ "proponentibus legatis" of Pius IV. we shall continue to pronounce them the scandals which most imperatively demand correction, holding that the severity under which the purest individual may suffer or sink, is not worthy to be compared with the injury done by a proposition, appearing as part of an official statement, which a knowledge of its author alone would prevent us from pronouncing a defamatory libel on the spiritual offices of our Church, and an avowal of contempt for her constituted authorities.

THE poems of Henry More, the Platonist, are but seldom opened in our day; the neglect into which they have fallen, though easily enough accounted for, is we think undeserved. We know but of two accounts of the volume, one in the Omniana, and a second in the fifth volume of the Retrospective

Review, neither of them exhibiting the peculiar character of the poems; and both critics, it would seem, wholly uninterested by the philosophy of the writer on whom they were commenting.

We therefore think we are doing some service in bringing before the public some extracts from the works of

a man, some of whose writings were more admired and more influential than any appearing at the same period; the correspondent of Descartes-the opponent of Hobbes-the friend of Milton-one whom Burnett describes as "an open-hearted and sincere Christian philosopher," of whom Hobbes said 46 that if his own philosophy was not true he knew none that he should sooner like than More's of Cambridge."

He was born at Grantham in Lincolnshire, in the year 1614. His father, Alexander More, a zealous Calvinist, took anxious care to educate his son in his own sentiments; and the after-life of the young student being passed in combating these opinions, has made him anxious to record that a master was selected for him of rigid Calvinistic opinions. At this period, an uncle of his prevailed upon his father to send him to Eton. He relates his departure for Eton, and his father's parting injunction not to desert those religious principles in which he had been carefully instructed. But the young enquirer had already taught himself to regard the doctrine of predestination as taught by his father and his tutor to be inconsistent with any adequate notions of the justice and goodness of God. At Eton he had the opportunity of expressing his opinions aloud; and the theologian tells of a dispute between him and his uncle, in which at the age of fourteen he stoutly maintained his own opinions though chidden by his uncle and menaced with correction for his "immature forwardness in philosophising." In spite of this controversial divinity -the boy was religious, and contemplative; he tells us, that from his earliest childhood an inward sense of the divine presence was so strong upon him and so habitual, that he did then believe and feel there could be no thought or word hidden from God. At Eton his progress in Greek is described as unusual. In due time he was removed to Cambridge and placed under a tutor, not a Calvinist.

"And now," says he, "a mighty and almost immoderate thirst after knowledge possessed me throughout, especially for that which was Natural, and above all others, that which is said to dive into the deepest causes of things, and Aristotle calls the first and the highest philosophy or wisdom."

In this temper he read, before he took his first degree, Aristotle, Cardan,

and Scaliger. The Platonists, whose works he next studied, coincided more with the peculiar turn of his mind; and he read with delight Ficinus, Plotinus, Trismegistus, and the rest of them. A volume of mystical divinity

the famous "Theologia Germanica" about this time fell into his hands and gave him great delight. The authorship of this work is doubtful; but it has been ascribed with great probability to Lauterus, a Dominican monk, who was styled the illuminated divine and in whose writings Luther was fond of acknowledging that he had found more "solid and sincere theology than in all the scholastic doctors of all the universities put together."

;

"That precept," says More, giving an this author so mightily inculcates, namely, account of this period of his life," which that we should thoroughly put off and extinguish our own proper will; that being thus dead to ourselves we may live alone to God and do all things whatsoever by his instinct or plenary permission, was so connatural as it were, and agreeable to my most intimate reason and conscience that I could not of anything whatsoever be more clearly or certainly convinced."

More speaks of his habitual indolence at this period, by which, how

ever, he seems to mean little more than his unwillingness to commit to writing the result of his studies; for his mind seems to have been engaged with the fullest strife of all its powers, on the highest subjects that can be proposed to human investigation. The sents as in a manner writing his contemplations, he repreresult of his natural constitution, 'which," to use his own words,

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a necessary

"freeing me from all the servitude of those petty designs of ambition, covetousness, and pleasing entanglements of the body, I might either lie first for ever in au inactive idleness, or else be moved by none but very great objects, amongst which the least was the contemplation of this outward world, whose several powers and properties, touching variously on my tender senses, made to me such enravishinto so great admiration, love and desire ing music, and snatched away my soul of a nearer acquaintance with that principle from which all these things did flow, that the pleasure and joy that frequently utterable, though I have attempted to accrued to me from hence, is plainly un

leave some marks and traces thereof iu my philosophical poems. But being well advised by the dictates of my own con

longing to the second Unity of each Triad.

The verbal resemblances, at least, are very remarkable. In the Platonic scheme God is spoken of as making the world by his Word. The visible and outward creation is formed according to the Wisdom of God, or the Intellectual World. In their language, this Intellectual World is the idea of the outward creation. In their language, too, the Logos is the Redeemer of the lapsed world, viz. mankind,-whom he restores again into man; i. e. into wisdom and righteousness.

"Take in the whole Trinity," says More," and you shall find a strange concordance and harmony betwixt the nature of each hypostatis (person) in either in their order. Atove, or Ahad, [ATOVE is the Good-AHAD, One,] is simply the first principle of all beings, the father of all existences, and the universal creation is but his family, and therefore, he has a right of imposing laws on the whole creation. The natural creation keepeth this law, but man breaks it; however, it is still propounded to him, and when it takes hold of him strikes him with dread and horror, hence his external compliance with the law through fear and force as it were. And this," says More, "I conceive is to be under the law that makes nothing perfect. This God vouchsafes, sometimes, to second with the gift of his Son. oogtos brou λoyos TOWTOYOVOS VIOS, as Philo, the Platonist, calls him. He cleanseth us of our sins, he healeth us of our infirmities, shapes us from an inward vital principle (even as the ratio seminalis figures out a tree) into a new life and shape, even into the image of God."

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More now quotes from Aristotle his judgment of those who are eminently good in themselves, living from a vital principle of morality within. Κατα των τοιούτων ουκ εστι νόμος, αυτοι γαρ εισι νόμος" Against such there is no law, for they are themselves a law; the very words of the Apostle. And in the same passage Aristotle says, they are no more under the law than a deity can be under the law, for 'tis as if they should take upon them to rule Jupiter himself, and share his kindgdom.

The last hypostasis in the Platonic Triad is Uranore, or Psyche, whom Plotinus calls the celestial Venus, from whom is born the heavenly Cupid Divine Love. In this More again sees a correspondence with Christian truth; but he entrcats his reader to remember that the happiness of man

is not to know the essence, but to feel the influence of the Divinity, and to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is of more consequence than to understand all curious and acute school-tracts.

Before we transcribe any part of the Psychozoia we find it necessary to say that Psyche is the soul of the worldthat then she is described as the soul of all Alterity. The meaning may be thus explained: as the seed of a plant hath the whole tree, branches, leaves, and fruits at once, in one point, after a manner closed up, but potentially, so all the world indivisible present at eternity is said by the Platonist to have once, and that actually. As the seminal form spreads out itself, and the body it animates into distant branches, from the quiet and silent seed, (wσig εκ σπέρματος ήσυχου) so doth Psyche, the soul of the world, make that actual in time and succession which could not be here below in bodies at once. This the Platonists called alterity. When our readers have reconciled themselves to the names which More gives his allegorical persons and places,-names supplied to him either from the rabbinical Hebrew, and the dialect of the Cabbalists, from the Greek of Plotinus, and from the Latin of his interpreters— we think they will admire the extreme freedom of his style. His vocabulary is neither abundant nor very poetical, but is distinguished for great clearness, reader giving fair attention, can be at so that on a very difficult subject no loss for his meaning.

any

It has been said-untruly we thinkthat Spenser is most interesting to those readers who forget, or who have never attended to the allegory. However this be, the contrary is certainly the case with More. The poet is lost in the philosopher-he in fact deals with subjects which are beyond the range of fancy-which refuse the aid of ordinary illustration and his best praise is, that he succeeds in fastening his reader's watchful attention upon the operations of his own mind. The opening of the poem gives no unfavourable specimen of his manner. Let not the reader be deterred by the half-dozen scholastic words which, with a moment's attention, will cease to interrupt his progress, but give More the benefit of the same attention which he would to any other writer, either of our own or any other country, whose style is not yet quite familiar: