Had the apostle any meaning when he besought the Corinthians not to receive the grace of God in vain?" Was there ever (to quote the language of the Princeton Review) a more "remarkable instance of persons self-deceived and full of self-complacency in their delusion?"

But "the mind tires and grows sick" in dwelling upon the wonderful theology and baseless metaphysics of the writer, who, by some strange accident, has been permitted to display his want of knowledge and of charity in the pages of the Princeton Review. With our friends of the Calvinistic Churches we wish to have no quarrel. We gladly and joyfully recognize them as fellow Christians. In the language of Mr. Watson, "the fact of conversions from sin to holiness being wrought, by God's blessing upon the labours of divines and preachers of each class, (Calvinistic and Arminian,) shows that he employs that truth in which they agree, rather than the points in which they differ, as the instrument of conveying salvation to man."* At the same time, we believe that Calvinism, in its distinguishing features, is a very mischievous corruption of Christianity, and that it is quite easy to prove it such. We believe that it originated, not in the Apostolic age, not in the Church of the first three centuries, but in "the sophistries of that corrupt pagan philosophy which imbued the early thoughts of Augustine, and which he brought into the Christian Church." It teaches that "God imposed upon Adam a necessity of falling; and made it the very end of the creation of the human race, that God might show his mercy, or rather his mere will, in electing some of them, without respect to their faith and obedience, unto eternal life; and his justice, in rejecting all the rest, and punishing them" for transgressions, not only unavoidable, but committed under the pressure of a moral and invincible necessity. And in teaching this, it destroys at once the moral attributes of God and the free agency of man. The writer in the Princeton Review says that he has hardly in his whole life heard from Presbyterians "more than half a dozen formal discourses on any distinguishing doctrine of Calvinism," and we can well believe him. It is not by such preaching that men are converted, and our contemporary knows it.

king, and to run into a house of ill fame lest we should be proud of our chastity."-Fletcher, Works, i, 501.

"Watson's Works, (London,) vii, 478.

ART. VI.-ENGLISH UNIVERSITY LIFE AND UNIVERSITY REFORM.

In less than an hour and a half the express train whirled us over a distance of sixty-three miles from London to Oxford. As we walked through the streets, and looked at the withered college walls and silent cloisters, the black gowns and square caps of the passing students, the strange mixture of scholastic, clerical, and monastic life, it appeared to us that we had made a still greater backward journey over the road of time from the nineteenth century to the middle ages. The change is almost as great as that between Naples and Pompeii. And yet, though some hundred years older, we felt renewed and refreshed by the green meadows and the literary atmosphere. On our first visit to the celebrated university, some ten years before, we had to make a part of the journey by coach. The completion of the railroad, although it passes some distance from the town, seems to be almost a desecration of the Muses. But it makes the contrast between the noise of the monster city of commerce and the quiet of the peaceful retreat of learning, between the prose of business and the poetry of study, between the stir of the present and the charm of the past, only more striking. In the teeming life of the metropolis you feel lost like a drop in the ocean; in the University town you regain your self-possession, the consciousness of your individuality and freedom.

Oxford is emphatically one of the old things of England; a venerable relic of the past, and a strong conservative power of the present age; the green-house of High Churchism in religion and High Toryism in politics; the nursery of the episcopacy and aristocracy of Great Britain. The very lions at its gates bristle at the approach of a liberal and a dissenter. And yet we doubt whether even a Puritan from New-England can visit its ancient halls and chapels, the treasures of the Bodleian and Radcliff libraries, the noble monuments of the martyr reformers, the verdant fields and stately trees on the banks of the youthful Thames, and mingle with the literary society, which rules there supreme, without the deepest interest and the most agreeable impressions. We have enjoyed the full benefit of English hospitality from heads of houses, professors, fellows, and students, and are free to confess, that memory shall ever number the few weeks spent in this ancient seat of learning, among the most pleasant as well as the most profitable recollections of good old England.

Oxford is the birthplace of Puseyism, which since 1833 has exerted such a powerful influence upon the whole Church of England. So

closely is the place identified with this movement, that Puseyism and Oxfordism, or the Oxford school, have almost become synonymous terms. Dr. Pusey, Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church College, although destitute of popular talents, a retired student, of austere, almost monkish habits, is generally respected and even popular there, as the principal originator of a theological and ecclesiastical movement which gave new importance and celebrity to the University, and seems to have grown out naturally of its mediæval and Anglican traditions, and to be well adapted to support the ancient institutions and established order of the country. But it is far more the Anglican than the Romanizing feature of that system which has taken root in Oxford. The majority sympathize with, or acquiesce in, High Church views on episcopacy, apostolical succession, liturgical worship, the sacraments, etc., but, with all this, they hate Romanism as heartily as dissent, and have not the most distant idea of ever leaving the Church of England. There is little doubt that Pusey himself will die a son of the Establishment. He is satisfied with the system of Anglicanism, and has very little interest in anything that goes beyond it. We made some inquiry as to the effect which the apostasy of so many distinguished Oxford men had upon their former associates and co-labourers. Some, no doubt, must feel very uneasy at results which they neither foresaw nor desired. Others regard them as a transitory crisis, which is nearly over, and attribute the conversions, or "perversions," as they call them, more to the restless spirit and peculiar temperament of the individuals in question, than to the consequences of their principles. They are willing to admit the defects of Anglicanism and the force of some of the arguments urged against them by their former friends; but they console themselves by the fact, that there is no perfection in the Church militant, and that Romanism is burdened with still greater difficulties and grievances. They regard especially the veneration of the Virgin Mary and the sad moral condition of Roman Catholic countries, as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, as insuperable objections to Popery.

Besides the Puseyites, and the numerous old-fashioned High Churchmen, (the high and dry,) there are in Oxford a few disciples and admirers of Dr. Thomas Arnold, who share more or less the liberal opinions of the Broad Church school. They make up for their numerical weakness by talent and learning. At first they stood in strong opposition to Puseyism, but the heat of the controversy has long passed its climax. Had Dr. Arnold laboured longer in Oxford, as Professor of History, he would perhaps have exerted an influence not so strictly theological, but as strong and far-reaching

upon the rising clergy, nobility, and gentry, as Dr. Pusey. His spirit still lives there, and is not likely to die so soon. The reforms already accomplished in the administration of the University, and others still in contemplation, will, in all probability, affect in the end also the theology which gives the leading tone to that great institution.

The University of Cambridge represents generally the other wing of the State and Church of England, and is thus a necessary complement to its older and more powerful sister. There Low Church tendencies have had the ascendency from Cranmer and Bucer down to Goode, although the classics and mathematics are far more studied than theology. There the poet Milton, and many of the leading statesmen and orators of the Whig party, as Babington Macaulay, have received their training.

But we must hasten to give our readers an idea of an English university as distinct from a continental university and from our American colleges, and of the reforms which have for years been agitated, and which were partly carried by the Parliament of 1854. We shall speak with special reference to Oxford, with which we are more familiar than with Cambridge.

The English Universities present a singular combination of the monastic life of the Catholic middle ages, in which they originated, and the Protestant habits and studies of modern times; and in point of literary organization, they exhibit a curious mixture of the tutorial or college system, with the professorial or university plan. They occupy thus a medium position between a continental university in the proper sense of the term, on the one hand, and a German gymnasium or American college, on the other. They attempt to be both college and university, but without doing justice to the lecture system and the professorial studies.

As Rome was not built in a day, so the English Universities are the growth of ages. They go back to the thirteenth century; a few colleges date their first existence even from the times of Alfred the Great. The number of colleges, professorships, fellowships, scholarships, libraries, prizes, and various endowments, gradually increased, and is still increasing by the liberality of kings, bishops, noblemen, scholars, and other friends of literature and the Church. Most of the older endowments were more prompted by religious than by literary zeal, and were intended to secure the benefit of prayers for the departed founders. The State, at the Reformation, took them away, abolished masses for the dead, and gave them to Protestants, on the principle that man is only the life-tenant of his property, and has no right to legislate for future generations, except for their benefit.

Oxford numbers now not less than twenty-four complete literary institutions, nineteen colleges and five halls, each possessing its separate buildings, library, corps of teachers, and students. The only difference between them is, that the halls are not incorporated; consequently, whatever estates or other property they possess, are held in trust by the University. In early times, when there were but few colleges, the number of the halls was very large, amounting even to over two hundred in the reign of Edward I. We will here enumerate these institutions of Oxford according to their age, as given by the "University Calendar." From this it will be seen that the colleges of the middle ages were mostly founded and endowed by bishops, those after the Reformation by laymen, a fact which is not very creditable to the liberality of Protestant bishops as compared with their Catholic predecessors.

1. University College, founded by William, Archdeacon of Durham, A. D. 1249. 2. Balliol College, founded by John Balliol, of Bernard Castle, A. D. 1263.

3. Merton College, founded by Walter Merton, Bishop of Rochester, A. D. 1274. 4. Exeter College, founded by Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter, A. D. 1314. 5. Oriel College, founded by Edward II., A. D. 1326.

6. Queen's College, founded by Robert Egglesfield, confessor to the queen of Edward III., A. D. 1340.

7. New College, founded by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, A. D. 1386.

8. Lincoln College, founded by Richard Flemming, Bishop of Lincoln, A. D. 1427. 9. All Souls' College, founded by Henry Chiohele, Archbishop of Canterbury, A. D. 1437.

10. Magdalen College, founded by William of Waynfleet, Bishop of Winchester, A. D. 1456.

11. Brasenose College, founded by William Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, and Sir Richard Sutton, A. D. 1509.

12. Corpus Christi College, founded by Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, A. D. 1516.

13. Christ Church, founded by Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII., A. D. 1526.

14. Trinity College, founded by Sir Thomas Pope, A. D. 1554.

15. St. John's College, founded by Sir Thomas White, A. D. 1555.

16. Jesus College, founded by Queen Elizabeth, A. D. 1571.

17. Wadham College, founded by Nicholas Wadham, of Merifield, and his wife, A. D. 1613.

18. Pembroke College, founded by Thomas Tesdale, of Glympton, and Richard Wightwick, Rector of Ilsley, A. D. 1624.

19. Worcester College, founded by Sir Thomas Cookes, of Bentley, A. D. 1714. 20. St. Mary's Hall. 21. Magdalen Hall. 22. New Inn Hall. 23. St. Alban Hall. 24. St. Edmund Hall, (the oldest of the halls, dating its existence from the year 1269.)

* It is said to have been founded by Alfred the Great, in the year 872. But the Danish invasion destroyed nearly all such institutions.