subject introduced is Infallibility. Under this title the Author has enumerated the various and insuperable difficulties which beset the Romish assailant in his assertion of that lofty claim: opportunity at the same time is taken of bringing forward and exposing other not less dangerous pretensions; and of pointing out, from the canons of the Church of England, a safe and Scriptural guide for the attainment of religious truth.

The last dissertation here published is on the doctrine of Mediation. The greater number of heretical opinions at the present day, and, indeed, at all times throughout Christendom, have arisen from regarding in a partial and confined view the great principle of atonement; and from limiting attention to one only among the offices of Christ. As the office of Mediator includes them all, a discussion of his Mediatorial character is calculated to repel on either side, the aggressions of our Socinian and Antinomian adversaries. Throughout the whole essay general expressions are systematically employed, and all allusion to those articles of belief respecting which the members of the Church have adopted different explanations, is carefully avoided.

Thus four subjects have been chosen for vindication in this volume. First, the form of Church polity in the English Establishment; secondly, our received mode of Divine worship; thirdly, the rules for the attainment of sound doctrine; and fourthly, the leading doctrines themselves, which the observance of those rules has led the Church to adopt and promulgate.

Edinburgh, 1832.

"The foul practices which have been used for the overthrow of Bishops, may, perhaps, wax bold in process of time, to give the like assault even there, from whence at this present they are most seconded. Nor let it over-dismay them who suffer such things at the hands of this most unkind world, to see that heavenly estate and dignity thus conculcated, in regard whereof so many their predecessors were no less esteemed than if they had not been men, but angels amongst men. With former Bishops it was as with Job, in the days of that prosperity which at large he describeth, saying, Unto me men gave ear; they waited and held their tongue at my counsel; after my words they replied not; I appointed out their way, and did sit as chief: I dwelt as it had been a king in an army.-At this day the case is otherwise with them; and yet no otherwise than with the selfsame Job at what time the alteration of his estate wrested these contrary speeches from him; But now they that are younger than I mock at me; the children of fools, and offspring of slaves, creatures more base than the earth they tread on; such as if they did shew their heads, young and old would shout at them and chase them through the street with a cry, their song I am, I am a theme for them to talk on.' An injury less grievous, if it were not offered by them whom Satan had through his fraud and subtilty so far beguiled, as to make them imagine herein they do unto God a part of most faithful service. Whereas the Lord in truth, whom they serve herein, is, as St. Cyprian telleth them, like not Christ (for he it is that doth appoint and protect Bishops) but rather Christ's adversary and enemy of his Church. A thousand five hundred years and upwards the church of Christ hath now continued under the sacred regiment of Bishops. Neither for so long hath Christianity been ever planted in any kingdom throughout the world but with this kind of government alone; which to have been ordained of God, I am for mine own part even as resolutely persuaded, as that any other kind of government in the world whatsoever is of God."-Hooker, Eccles. Polity.

THREE distinct ecclesiastical orders existed at the period of the Reformation, throughout every part of the Christian world, under the name of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.

B

;

To each of these three orders were allotted separate duties, and different degrees of rank and power. Not only among all the churches subject, in the west, to the Roman Pontiff and in the east and south, to the Patriarchs of Antioch, Byzantium, and Alexandria; but also among the numerous Christian societies who rejected their doctrine and disowned their authority, were the three orders in question established and maintained. The polity of the Nestorians, Monothelites, and Armenians, on one side of Christendom, as well as of the Albigenses, Waldenses, and Bohemians, on the other, was uniformly episcopal: however widely most of these numerous sectaries were opposed to the rest, and to the great communities from which they separated. The most industrious explorer of Church antiquity, searching from the shores of the Atlantic, to those of the Indian Ocean, from Abyssinia to Scandinavia, has never yet distinctly traced a single Church, in which a hierarchy possessed of diocesan rights and privileges did not, at the period here referred to, prevail'.

As the Christian hierarchy were in actual and universal possession of these peculiar rights and privileges, so they claimed them also for their ancient and undisputed inheritance; an inheritance transmitted and held, by the venerable title of prescription, during fifteen centuries; and by the still more venerable and sacred tenure of apostolical institution.

Nor is this all. For when the general adherence of the episcopal order to the errors and corruptions of the Romish creed, presented, in some countries, formidable obstacles against the progress of Reformation; those pious Presbyters who had engaged in that great work, and who were thus reduced to the necessity of abandoning their design, or of contriving a new system of Church government and discipline, adopted this latter alternative with reluctance. They deplored as a calamity the necessity for this innovation They regarded it as defensible mainly on the ground of political expediency. They appear to have been overborne equally by the governors and the governed; by the jealousy and cupidity of rulers, as well as by the prejudices and clamours

1 See note (A), at the end of the volume. See also in confirmation of this assertion, Hooker and Charles Leslie.