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assenting to all the details of his interpretations; but how it is possible to avoid assenting to his general outline, I cannot conceive.

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"Pardon me for saying, that if you become a Papist, as reported, you will be, in the worst sense of the word, an apostate; an apostate from a true Church to an apostate Church, from CHRIST to Antichrist. "I am sure you will not suppose that I speak thus out of any indifference to your feelings. I should, however, be exceedingly anxious to be instrumental in giving your thoughts a direction which they may not have previously taken, and which might tend to prevent a result that would be painful to your brethren and pernicious to yourself.

"I should say that the volume which I enclose is not my own. I have not a copy of the work in my possession. It is borrowed. The marks in the margin are those of the owner, merely designed for his own satisfaction. Under these circumstances I am constrained to beg, that, at your convenience, you may return the book.

"Rev. sir, yours very faithfully,

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"TRESHAM D. GREGG.'" (pp. 37, 38.)

3. Mr. Gregg, practical.

"Let us have a Board of Commissioners, called 'Her Majesty's Board of Commissioners for the promotion of Christian Knowledge, and the discouragement of Wickedness and Vice.'

"Of this Board of Commissioners all the Bishops should be ex officio members.

"Only conceive—

"Rev. and Dear Sir.-It is my wish that you should preach on Sunday se'nnight, in the open air, in Trafalgar Square. If it be consistent with your arrangements so to do, give notice to the Board of Commissioners for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge,' to whom I have notified my wish, and they will take care that the necessary announcement and preparation shall be made.

"I remain, Rev. and Dear Sir, your faithful Servant,
C. J. LONDON.'

"To the Rev.

"The reply of the gifted man addressed-and recollect, the employment of any but a gifted man, a man of mind, a man of power, such men as GOD fits, peculiarly fits for great purposes, and whom, if the Church were not to a great extent wrapped in a deep slumber, she would, even as things are at present constituted, seek out and honour; would be utterly vain in such a service. If the spirit of nepotism, or partiality, or a disposition to flatter rank, led to the attempt, in the case which I suppose, to inflict some humdrum personage upon the public, the public scorn which would meet the attempt would be a proper punishment. But the gifted of the Church-those whom the fiat of public opinion has stamped with the mark of public approbation -being discovered and employed, to suppose that the effect would not be immense would be perfectly absurd; Dr. Croly, Hugh M'Neill, Hugh Stowell, Baptist Noel, an excellent man, and of great power; warped, however, in some respects, by the bent of the times; Henry

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Melvill, if he have kept clear of the nonsense of Tractarianism— Tractarianism is just emasculated Popery, the stare and the glare of Popery without its power, the miry clay without the strengthening admixture of the iron: we must have no Popery in any shape-Robert Montgomery, Thomas Mortimer, and some others, would be admirable persons for the work: but it must not be forgotten that the views which I have laid down in this work being carried out, the spirit of division would depart from amongst us, and it would be soon found that the Richard Winter Hamiltons, the Joseph Parsons, the Robert Newtons, the Jabez Buntings, would be in fact identified with the Church, and the powers with which they are gifted be available in the most efficient possible manner for the glory of GoD and the service of society however, an answer in the affirmative having been received from the clergyman addressed, a servant in purple livery is forthwith seen conveying a letter to the Lord Mayor of London, conceived in something of the following terms:

"My Lord Mayor,-I beg leave to inform your Lordship that the Rev. will preach in Trafalgar Square on Sunday se'nnight, and I should feel obliged by the attendance of your Lordship with your cortege.

“I remain, my Lord Mayor, your faithful Servant, "To the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor.

C. J. LONDON.'

"Similar letters would, no doubt, be sent to the Sheriffs and other suitable persons. Everything that could be conceived capable of giving weight to the powerful appeal that would be made would be provided. For the benefit of those who could not hear, that appeal in a printed form, would be circulated on the occasion. No doubt, it would be reprinted in every daily paper on Monday, and tell with powerful effect upon high and low, upon rich and poor. Truth and virtue would be wafted with lightning speed to the most remote borders of the kingdom, and operate their healing influences upon every heart. Where would Tractarianism then be? Licentiousness would flee like the shades of night before the beams of the rising sun. An enlarged charity would bless the community. Every enemy of England would tremble, and Popery would sink like a millstone in the sea. O blessed times! O happy reform! Where is the man that will not lend his best influence to bring it about? I trust, however, that my readers will remember that I am only giving hints. I attempt not the thing in detail. The attempt would be absurd. I borrow my hints, however, from the Word of GOD, and from unquestionable precedents in English history." pp. 404-406.

4. Mr. Gregg, as the Divine and Critic.

"I abhor the heresy lately promulgated in a published sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hook. The sermon is entitled the Hem of the Garment,' and a more utter, total, or complete misapprehension of the nature of the Christian religion I never read. The doctrine of the sermon is thoroughly and distinctly Popish. I read it attentively; and though I have not it by me, nevertheless, I am able to define and convey the idea

which it sets forth. The sermon is on the miracle wrought on the woman who had an issue of blood, (Matt. ix. 20, &c.; Mark v. 25, &c. ; Luke viii. 43;) whose faith led her to say, 'If I but touch the hem of His garment, I shall be whole;' accordingly, she did so; virtue went out of Him and healed her; on which JESUS said, 'Be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.' Now the principle which Dr. Hook inculcates in his sermon is this, that faith led the woman to desire the touch, that the hem of the garment conveyed the healing virtue which set her constitution to rights, and that thus it is with respect to spiritual grace exerted in the removal of sin. Faith leads the individual to look for pardon through CHRIST. The Church in the Sacraments presents the hem of the garment,' which conveys to him who lays hold on it pardon and peace, holiness and heaven-in one word, spiritual life. Pray, what is this but Popery; rank, gross, offensive; no, I beg pardon, subtle, refined, stealthy Popery? The Doctor is, indeed, wise as the serpent, but not harmless as the dove; he is baleful as the serpent, too. Very clever is the way in which he would appear to exalt faith. What but faith brought the woman to the SAVIOUR? What else created the trustfulness of her spirit? Without this faith she could not have been healed; and such is the exercise of faith, which the Doctor regards as analogous to the faith which saves the soul. And well, as a latent Papist, he may and so might any Papist; for, after all, what else is faith here but gentleman-usher, or gentlewomanusher, to the hem of the garment?' And what other office would it, according to the Puseyites, occupy with respect to the Sacraments? It would bring men to the Communion-table to be 'doctored' by the Priest; it would be the verger, or acolyth, [sic] to introduce the sinner to Doctor Hook, who should there manipulate him into a sanctification. In fact, according to Dr. Hook, a sort of electric shock, or influence, or virtue, would be conducted from CHRIST through the Sacraments (the hem of the garment') to the believer, who would thus be renewed in the spirit of his mind. Now, in opposition to all such Popery, for Popery it certainly is, the Gospel principle is of a totally different

character.

"Doctor Hook confounds two things essentially different in their character; the miracle which heals the body, and the grace which heals the soul. Nothing is more delusive than those reasonings which argue from things corporal to things spiritual. They constitute a favourite process of inference amongst the Papists. I have given some examples of it in Chapter i., Part II. Water purges away that which is foul and unclean from the body, therefore, it will drive away unclean spirits from the soul.' Fire purges out the impurities of metals, therefore, purgatory shall burn away those spiritual defilements which cleave to the inner man.' This is very plausible, and may go down with boys; nay, indeed, such reasonings lie sometimes at the root of successful trading speculations amongst men, too. No doubt it is an analogous process which flatters the baldheaded into the virtue of bears' grease. A fat bear has a shaggy hide, therefore, rub yourself with this grease, and you will get a thick head of hair.' Very plausible argumentation, and highly satisfactory to the perfumer. Arguments, however, from body to spirit, from things temporal to things eternal, will be as certain

to delude the infatuated dupe of priestly superstition, and to benefit the priests alone, as the logic of Rowland and Son is to delude the baldheaded, and to prove profitable to none but the firm themselves, and the retailers of their ware.' (pp. 347, 348.)

And yet poor dear Mr. Gregg complains with Hibernian frankness that "the simplest moral lesson will not go down except it be conveyed amid a discharge of puns, bons mots, [sic], doubles-entendres, [sic] with all sorts of comical illustrations." (Free Thoughts, p. 346.) We quite agree with him that "we may soon expect to see a Commentary on the Scriptures by 'Punch,' with appropriate illustrations by Phiz'." (Ibid. p. 347.) Mr. Gregg has the clearest right to prophesy-though Kenny Meadows has contrived already to forestall in the "Illustrated Bible", published at the Illustrated London News Office, one-half of this vaticination.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

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Ecclesiastical Restoration and Reform. No. 1. Considerations and practical suggestions on Church Rates, Parish Officers, Education of the Poor, Cemeteries, by WALTER BLUNT, M.A., a Priest of the English Church. London: Masters.

THIS is a clever and practical Pamphlet, but liable, in our judgment, to the same objections as were so universally, and justly urged against Dr. Hook's scheme of education; it sweeps away at a stroke the whole theory of Church and State, and would introduce an entirely new system of parochial administration. Now it may be perhaps that we shall have to come to this in the end: but the proposal we think at least a little premature; and, till churchmen are somewhat better educated, we deprecate the very discussion of changes involving such weighty interests.

A Commentary on the Seven Penitential Psalms, chiefly from ancient sources. London: Joseph Masters; J. Burns. Oxford: Parker. Derby Mozley. (18mo. pp. 72,) 1847.

UNDER this modest title we have a most useful and truly religious realisation of the evangelical meaning of the Penitential Psalms. The writer has chosen for illustration, the internal acts of penitence, and in a very able and eloquent introduction has placed the use of the Psalms in the Christian Church, and of these especially, as exponent of evangelical repentance, in a very clear and satisfactory light. He states the great authority with which they come to us-the use of so many of the saints-of the universal Church and the example of our LORD Himself. We forget whose the remark is-that the singing of the Psalms of David is a note of the Catholic Church-but of whatever authority we

cannot but assent to it; and so intimately do we feel convinced that the use of them is an evidence of sound and lively Church membership, that we are not only thankful for the present little commentary as a boon to all earnest Christians, but as we trust an indication of the working of vital, practical religion, in its most Catholic shape. We commend it most heartily and with the greatest confidence to our readers, and we hope that the author may pursue the line of study which he has so successfully entered on.

"Hymns for Public and Private Use." London: BURNS, pp. 240. A Collection of Hymns for Congregational use, possessing at once freedom in composition and soundness in doctrine, had really become an object beyond our hopes. The English Church seemed destined to continue a bye-word of reproach in this department of her public service. Every attempt that had been made to supply what was wanted seemed to prove only a greater failure than its predecessor. Now, at length, however, it may be said, that the reproach is taken from us we have here a volume that seems to give all that we could desire; and one which could not have been produced, except both by the liberal surrender of copyright by all our best hymn-writers, and by their zealous co-operation in supplying original hymns, so as to make the series complete.

The Hymns for the Sacred Seasons and Holidays of the Church are such as should satisfy the most fastidious taste; and those for private use are really a most inestimable gift-(the ones classed under the head "of sickness," we consider specially beautiful). In the miscellaneous Hymns for public use, are some which we can not very highly commend: neither do we approve of attempting to provide a hymn appropriate for every Sunday in the year. On ordinary Sundays, where a short anthem cannot be sung, we would suggest the keeping to the metrical Psalms, and to a few of the best Hymns of a general character.

Appended to the volume, we may add, is an admirable selection of metrical Psalms. The number given is few; but they are so arranged as to present very considerable variety; and care is always taken in selecting the verses, to give those which contain the evangelical sense of the Psalm, or that part which gives the character to the whole.

A few old favourites, both among the Psalms and Hymns are missed. This was unavoidable; but altogether we cannot too highly commend the judgment and spirit displayed in the undertaking. The volume is published in the "Practical Christian's Library"; and is to be followed by a selection of tunes.

A History of the French Revolution. Burns.

THIS narrative of the great drama of which our fathers were spectators, would be an admirable book to put into the hands of young persons, to give them right notions in politics, so far at least as the exhibition of monstrous evil can lead minds to love good principles. The first part gives a full, but not too diffuse account of the first two acts of the

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