are born again by baptism, but they be unknown to worldly men, and such as be not led by the Spirit of God. And when they that believe and be baptized, do continue in this their faith to the end of their lives, then God shall raise them up from death to life that they may be immortal and live everlastingly with Christ: and then when sin and the kingdom of death is utterly abolished and destroyed, we shall be perfectly holy and righteous both in body and soul. And for this cause our Saviour Christ doth call in the Gospel the rising again from death a regeneration, or a second begetting. All these things doth baptism work in us when we believe in Christ. And therefore, Christ saith, He that will believe and be baptized shall be saved, but he that will not believe shall be damned. Wherefore, good children, learn diligently, I pray you, the fruit and operation of baptism; for it worketh forgiveness of sin-it delivereth from death and power of the devil, it giveth salvation and everlasting life to all them that believe, as the words of Christ's promise do evidently witness. "But peradventure some will say, how can water work such great things? To whom I answer, that it is not the water that doth these things, but the Almighty Word of God (which is knit and joined to the water), and Faith which receiveth God's word and promise. For without the word of God, water is water, and not baptism. But when the word of the Living God is added and joined to the water, then it is the bath of regeneration, and baptism water, and the lively spring of eternal salvation, and a bath that washeth our souls by the Holy Ghost, as Saint Paul calleth it, saying, 'God hath saved us through his mercy, by the bath of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, whom he hath poured upon us plenteously by Jesus Christ our Saviour, that we being made righteous by His grace may be heirs of everlasting life.' This is a sure and true word. Ye shall also diligently labour, good children, to keep and perform those promises which you made to God in your baptism, and which baptism doth betoken. For baptism, and the dipping into the water doth betoken, that the old Adam, with all his sin and evil lusts, ought to be drowned and killed by daily contrition and repentance; and that by renewing of the Holy Ghost we ought to rise with Christ from the death of sin, and to walk in a new life, that our new man may live everlastingly in righteousness and truth before God, as Saint Paul teacheth, saying, All we that are baptized in Christ Jesu, are baptized in His death. For we are buried with Him by baptism into death, that as Christ hath risen from death by the glory of his Father, so we also should walk in newness of life.' And this is the plain exposition of the words of holy baptism: that is to say, that we should acknowledge ourselves to be sinners, desire pardon and forgiveness of our sins, be obedient and willing to bear Christ's cross, and all kinds of affliction, and at the last to die, that by death we may be perfectly delivered from sin. And therefore we ought to hate sin, and with all our power to fight against sin. For God in baptism hath forgiven us our sins, and given us the Holy Ghost, and made us partakers of the righteousness of His well-beloved Son Jesus Christ. Now consider deeply, I pray you, how great benefits these be, that you may not be unkind to Him that hath done so much for you, but stedfastly believe these things, mortify sin, patiently suffer all diseases and adversities which it shall please God to send you, and then without doubt you shall be saved.

"Wherefore, good children, learn these things diligently, and when you be demanded, what is baptism ?-then you shall answer, baptism is not

water alone, but it is water inclosed and joined to the Word of God, and to the covenant of God's promise. And these be the words whereby our Lord Jesus Christ did ordain baptism, which be written in the last chapter of Saint Matthew, Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

"And when you shall be asked, What availeth baptism? you shall answer, Baptism worketh forgiveness of sin, it delivereth from the kingdom of the devil and from death, and giveth life and everlasting salvation to all them that believe these words of Christ, and the promise of God, which are written in the last chapter of Saint Mark, his Gospel, He that will believe and be baptized shall be saved, but he that will not believe shall be damned.

"Thirdly, if a man ask you, how can water bring to pass so great things? ye shall answer, verily the water worketh not these things, but the Word of God, which is joined to the water, and Faith which doth believe the Word of God. For without the Word of God, Water is water, and not baptism, but when the Word of the living God is joined to the water, then it is baptism and water of wonderful wholesomeness, and the bath of regeneration through the Holy Ghost. As Saint Paul writeth, God saved us by the bath of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he poured upon us plenteously by Jesus Christ our Saviour, that we, being made righteous by His grace, may be heirs of everlasting life. Fourthly, if a man ask you, What doth the baptizing in the water betoken? answer ye, it betokeneth that old Adam, with all sins and evil desires, ought daily to be killed in us by true contrition and repentance, that he may rise again from death, and after he has risen with Christ may be a new man, a new creature, and may live everlastingly in God, and before God, ⚫ in righteousness and holiness. As Saint Paul writeth, saying, 'All we that are baptized, are buried with Christ into death, that as Christ rose again by the glory of his Father, so we also should walk in newness of life. Thus ye have heard, good children, what is meant by the words of baptism, by the which we are born again and made new to everlasting life. Learn these things diligently, and thank God, who in Christ hath called you to be partakers of so large and ample benefits. And express baptism in your life, and baptism shall be the greatest comfort to you, both in your life-time, and also on your death-bed. For by baptism we be grafted into the death of Christ, wherefore sin, death, or hell, cannot hurt us, but we shall overcome all these things by faith, as Christ himself overcame them. And so by this new birth we shall enter into the kingdom of God and life everlasting."

Second Letter to Archdeacon Singleton, being the Third of the Cathedral Letters. By the Rev. SYDNEY SMITH. 8vo. London: Longman and Co. 1838.

REALLY Mr. Smith has outdone himself in the present pamphlet. We must again repeat, as we observed in a previous Number, when speaking of Mr. S.'s last production—that we do not at all approve of levity and joking on sacred subjects, but the gravest man in England could not avoid relaxing his muscles at the brilliant effusions of wit in the "Second Letter to Archdeacon Singleton."

Certainly, Mr. Smith has never been more happy. How his Whig friends may like this satire we do not know; for our own parts, we should not much approve being the mark for such a broadside of sarcasm. Mr. S. has taken up the cudgels most manfully for the Church, and we only wish that in his future efforts in the same cause, he would write in a more serious strain. The tone of the present work is more grave and earnest than that of its predecessor, and for this reason we think it will be much more effective.

But it is time that Mr. Smith should speak for himself. On the subject of the alteration which has been proposed in the Prebendal Stalls, he says

"What harm does a Prebend do, in a politico-economical point of view? The alienation of the property for three lives, or twenty-one years, and the almost certainty that the tenant has of renewing, give him sufficient interest in the soil for all purposes of cultivation, and a long series of elected clergymen is rather more likely to produce valuable members of the community than a long series of begotten squires. Take, for instance, the Cathedral of Bristol, the whole estates of which are about equal to keeping a pack of fox-hounds. If this had been in the hands of a country gentleman, instead of precentor, succentor, dean and canons, and sexton, you would have had huntsman, whipper-in, dog-feeders, and stoppers of earth; the old squire, full of foolish opinions and fermented liquids, and a young gentleman of gloves, waistcoats, and pantaloons : and how many generations might be before the fortuitous concourse of noodles would produce such a man as Professor Lee, one of the Prebendaries of Bristol, and by far the most eminent oriental scholar in Europe? The same argument might be applied to every Cathedral in England. How many hundred coveys of squires would it take to supply as much knowledge as is condensed in the heads of Dr. Copplestone, or Mr.Taite, of St. Paul's?-and what a strange thing it is that so truly great a man as Lord John Russell, the Whig leader, should be so squirrel-minded as to wish for such a movement, without object or end! Saving there can be none, for it is merely taking from one Ecclesiastic to give it to another; public clamour, to which the best men must sometimes yield, does not require it; and so far from doing any good to the Church, it would be a source of infinite mischief to the Establishment.

"If you were to gather a Parliament of Curates on the hottest Sunday in the year, after all the services, sermons, burials, and baptisms of the day were over, and to offer them such increase of salary as would be produced by the confiscation of the Cathedral property, I am convinced they would reject the measure, and prefer splendid hope, and the expectation of good fortune in advanced life, to the trifling improvement of poverty which such a fund could afford."-A Second Letter to Archdeacon Singleton, pp. 7, 8, 9.

We believe they would. But they would do it on far higher grounds than those which Mr. Smith has stated; they would reject the proffered boon, from the affection which they bear to that Church whose ministers they are, and from the sincere and earnest desire with which they are animated for preserving her integrity

and independence. The passage which we have cited is coarsely expressed, but it conveys a great deal of sense and force.

Speaking of the plan proposed for the abolition of church-rates, (a plan, by the bye, which we fancy is numbered with the things that are past,) Mr. Smith says

"But, after all, what a proposition! You don't make the most of your money: I will take your property into my hands, and see if I cannot squeeze a penny out of it. You shall be regularly paid all you now receive, only if anything more can be made of it, that we will put into our own pockets.' 'Just pull off your neckcloth, and lay your head under the guillotine, and I will promise not to do you any harm: just get ready for confiscation; give up the management of all your property; make us the ostensible managers of every thing; let us be informed of the most minute value of all, and, depend upon it, we will never injure you to the extent of a single farthing.'Let me get my arms about you,' says the bear, ‘I have not the smallest intention of squeezing you.' Trust your finger in

my mouth,' says the mastiff, I will not fetch blood.'

"Where is this to end? If Government are to take into their own hands all property which is not managed with the greatest sharpness, they may squeeze one-eighth per cent. out of the Turkey Company: Spring Rice would become director of the Hydro-impervious Association, and clear a few hundreds for the Treasury. The British Roasted Apple Society is notoriously mismanaged, and Lord John and Brother Lister, by a careful selection of fruit, and a judicious management of fuel, would soon get it up to par. I think, however, I have heard at the Political Economy Club, where I have sometimes had the honour of being a guest, that no trades should be carried on by Governments. That they have enough to do of their own, without undertaking other persons' business. If any savings in the mode of managing Ecclesiastical leases could be made, great deductions from these savings must be allowed for the jobbing and gospellage of General Boards, and all the old servants of the Church, displaced by the measure, must receive compensation. The Whig Government, they will be vexed to hear, would find a great deal of patronage forced upon them by this measure. Their favorite human animal, the Barrister of six years' standing, would be called into action. The whole earth is, in fact, in commission, and the human race saved from the Flood are delivered over to Barristers of six years' standing! The onus probandi now lies upon any man who says he is not a Commissioner; the only doubt on seeing a new man among the Whigs is, not whether he is a Commissioner or not, but whether it is Tithes, Poor Laws, Boundaries of Boroughs, Church Leases, Charities, or any of the thousand human concerns which are now worked by Commissioners, to the infinite comfort and satisfaction of mankind, who seem in these days to have found out the real secret of life—the one thing wanting to sublunary happiness-the great principle of Commission, and six years' Barristration.

66

Then, if there is a better method of working Ecclesiastical estatesif any thing can be gained for the Church, why is not the Church to have it? Why is it not applied to Church purposes?-what right have the State to seize it? If I give you an estate, I give it you not only in its present state, but I give to you all the improvements which can be made

upon it all that mechanical, botanical, and chemical knowledge may do hereafter for its improvement-all the ameliorations which care and experience can suggest, in letting, improving, and collecting your rents. Can there be such miserable equivocation as to say-I leave you your property, but I do not leave to you all the improvements which your own wisdom, or the wisdom of your fellow-creatures will enable you to make of your property? How utterly unworthy of a Whig Government is such a distinction as this!

66

Suppose the same sort of plan had been adopted in the reign of Henry VIII., and the Legislature had said-You shall enjoy all you now have, but every farthing of improved revenue, after this period, shall go into the pocket of the State: it would have been impossible by this time that the Church could have existed at all. And why may not such a measure be as fatal hereafter to the existence of a Church, as it would have been to the present generation, if it had been brought forward at the time of the Reformation ?" *

* *

"But the madness and folly of such a measure is in the revolutionary feeling which it excites. A Government taking into its hands such an immense value of property! What a lesson of violence and change to the mass of mankind! Do you want to accustom Englishmen to lose all confidence in the permanence of their institutions, to inure them to great acts of plunder, and to draw forth all the latent villanies of human nature? The Whig leaders are thoroughly honest men, and cannot mean this: but these foolish and inconsistent measures are the horn-hook and infantile lessons of revolution: and remember, it requires no great time. to teach mankind to rob and murder on a great scale. I am astonished that these ministers negleet the common precaution of a foolometer,* with which no public man should be unprovided: I mean the acquaintance and society of three or four regular British fools, as a test of public opinion. Every Cabinet minister should judge of all his measures by his foolometer, as a navigator crowds or shortens sail by the barometer in his cabin. I have a very valuable instrument of that kind myself, which I have used for many years; and I would be bound to predict, with the utmost nicety, by the help of this machine, the precise effect which any measure would produce upon public opinion. Certainly, I never saw any thing so decided as the effect produced upon my machine by the Rate Bill. No man who had been accustomed in the smallest degree to handle philosophical instruments could have doubted of the storm which was coming on, or of the thoroughly un-English scheme in which the Ministry had so rashly engaged themselves.

"I think, also, that it is a very sound argument against this measure of Church Rates, that estates have been bought liable to these payments, and

"Mr. Fox very often used to say, I wonder what Lord B. will think of this. Lord B. happened to be a very stupid person, and the curiosity of Mr. Fox's friends was naturally excited to know why he attached such importance to such an ordinary common-place person? His opinion,' said Mr. Fox, 'is of much more importance than you are aware of. He is an exact representative of all common-place English prejudices, and what Lord B. thinks of any measure, the great majority of English people will think of it.' It would be a good thing if every Cabinet of philosophers had a Lord B. amongst them."