these every such constitution must be tested, and that every true restoration will necessarily exhibit an advance and development of these principles in the history of mankind. (Chap. II.)

'We shall then, in the second place, show that every Protestant ecclesiastical constitution, which has been hitherto established, is for the future untenable, either as founded upon the remnants of the exploded idea of the Byzantine middle ages, the Clergy-Church, or as resting upon the bare negation of the episcopate of that church. Those remnants owe their preservation to the merely negative position which the opposing principle has hitherto maintained; while these negations owe their continuance to the continuance of that one-sided view which called them forth. The Church of the Future rejects episcopacy in the view taken of it by the Clergy-Church; and in so doing, gives the death-blow to that merely negative system, which rose up as the opponent of the ancient church. (Chap. VIII., IV.)

'Having thus unfolded the general idea of the constitution of the Church of the Future as contrasted with that of the Clergy-Church, we shall proceed, in the third place, to seek in the present and actual condition of Germany for the elements out of which such a church may be restored, and to estimate them according to that idea. (Chap. V., VI.)

'Thus provided with materials, we shall finally be prepared to apply to Prussia our idea of the Church of the Future, and to take a comprehensive view of all the questions which regard its inward constitution, as well as its relation to the people, to science, and to the state. (Chap. VII-XI.)

'The constitution thus sketched out is that of the Correspondence, we believe that in the main it is that of the future. The relation of the problem to the present state of the church will form the conclusion of the treatise.' (Chap. XII.)-pp. 29, 30.

Substituting 'independence of the people' for 'national independence,' in the first paragraph of this extract, there is nothing in the paragraph to which we do not entirely and cordially assent. As soon, however, as our author begins to apply these primary principles to existing institutions, and with a view to their future practical development, we see at a glance how inconsiderable the agreement between us really is. The two parties look at these principles from different points of view: he from the standing point of nationality, as an attribute of the churchwe from the ground of Scripture, and the will of Christ as revealed in it. It therefore happens that when we agree in the disapprobation which he expresses in reference to the existing Protestant churches, our disapprobation rests on different reasons from his; and when he proceeds to his practical suggestions, we lose sight of him altogether. In fact, his notion of the nationality of the church, deprives his better principle of the universal priesthood of believers of nearly all its practical value; for while

it secures the brotherhood of Christ from the intervention of a mediating human priesthood, and even from clerical authority, as exercised in the imposition of doctrines, it allows both his proposed diocesan and the state a control, in reference to Christian worship and discipline, which are perfectly incompatible with the New Testament. It is also, necessarily, the grave of Voluntaryism. A few lines illustrative of his ideas on the compatibility of Nationality with Catholicity, will show that it must needs be so :

And here we find the assertion of Nationality in apparent contradiction to the claim of Catholicity. The Reformation did in no way deny this second principle, but maintained it in the following sense. The church, as a spiritual personality, is the human race, redeemed by Christ; as an institution, she is the divinely appointed means for restor ing disunited and shattered humanity to peace with God, and unity with itself. This it has been from the beginning. It was as much so, when its influence was confined to the sphere of a few believing fami lies, as three hundred years afterwards, when it was incorporated with the life of the state by the Roman empire. The word of salvation has gone out into all the world, and by it a divine kingdom of truth and love has been founded, as members of which all mankind are brethren, because all are children of one Father, and called to one common salvation. As these families and communities became gradually by means of the church partakers of the universal life of humanity, so likewise the body politic, by becoming Christian, has gradually received into itself the principle of universality,-under Constantine, under Charlemagne, and by means of the Reformation. It is only by becom ing a member of the church that a nation becomes a portion of divinely liberated humanity, and that the body politic becomes actually the highest visible manifestation of moral life. This is Hegel's definition of the state in general; but in the first place, it is only true of the Christian body politic, and in the second place, only of this, in the highest sense, in so far as that body is pervaded by the influence of the church.'-pp. 39, 40.

'Such nationalities, then, and such states are Christian, as acknowledge themselves to be divinely constituted members of the body (the incorporation) of redeemed humanity,-links in the chain of the historical development of the human race. Nations are the real units, so to speak, the higher personages in the history of the world. But no one nation is the human race, and none which is really Christian can consider itself as forming the centre, around which the political existence of all men is, so to speak, to crystallize. States are the highest forms and institutions, in which, by divine ordinance, the uni versal life of mankind and its conscience (that is, its consciousness of truth) are to be independently realized.'-p. 42.

In page 77, Dr. Bunsen speaks of the local congregation

6

the fundamental unit' of church life; here nations are the real units,' and in page 90, the Christian nation,' or 'evangelical national church,' as the supreme body,' is the highest unit.' 'The moral responsibility of the nation,' again he says, p. 43, lies in the state, that is in the uncontrolled conscience of the 'national community or communities.' All churches,' Dr. Bunsen adds, must be witnesses for the truth; but no testimony has any real value before God in history, except as far as it is the testimony of a free and morally responsible being. Catholicity, 'therefore, must henceforth exist in harmony with nationality, in 'the same way that the divine right of the ministry can only be ' admitted in future, if controlled by the first great principle of the 'Reformation, the universal priesthood.'-p. 44.

We must leave our readers to reconcile all these statements as well as they can; for ourselves, we see not how a state, as distinguished from the individuals who compose the nation, can be morally responsible. Again, how can churches be witnesses for the truth, but either through the testimony of the free and morally responsible beings who compose them, or their symbolical confessions? Are churches themselves, as such, free and morally responsible beings? But Bunsen, though he says, in p. 57, that he takes his stand on the Augsburg Confession, speaks slightingly of the confessions, articles, and systems' of the Protestant churches, and asserts that the notion that unity of doctrine is the condition of the development of the church in every other respect, is a notion which must necessarily arise in every clergy-church. Has it not always been the view of every national church, and can we reasonably expect the contrary? Our own conviction is, that both in this way and by fostering in Christians an undue partiality for their own country and its interests, which are represented in their liturgical offices as separate from those of other nations, nationality is subversive both of true religious freedom and true nationality.

But after taking exception thus freely to the details of Dr. Bunsen's work, it gratifies us that we can speak with admiration of his own catholic spirit. His views are Utopian, but his heart is large. This is conspicuous, not only in the liberality which he would fain infuse into his diocesan episcopacy, but in the comments which he makes at different times upon existing systems. In page 25 we have a candid and able notice of Calvin's ecclesiastical polity, and one we should have quoted, but that part of it would inevitably, unless we had mutilated it, have provoked a long discussion. His notices of the Swedish Church, pp. 73, 74, the English Independents, pp. 77-79, and the Episcopal Church of North America, are written in a liberal spirit. Our readers

would hardly excuse us if we withheld from them the second of these notices.

'The other protest was that of the Independents, who advanced the doctrine of the so-called separation of Church and State, and founded the Voluntary System. As the dictatorship we have just described [the state dictatorship which arose in the German Protestant Church*] has the merit of having protected the church from the unfounded claims of the clergy, before such protection could be afforded by a free national church polity; so it must be allowed that the Independents have the merit of having asserted and established the inalienable rights of the congregation, (that is, in the highest sense, of the Christian laity, which is necessarily composed of local congregations,) against State Churches as well as Clergy Churches, against systems of police as well as systems of dogmatism. But, from leaving out of sight the other side of the idea of the church, it necessarily followed that Independentism, having started with asserting the rights of the fundamental unit of church life, the local congregation should continue to regard this as its highest manifestation, as the church herself, and should degrade the ecclesiastical liberty it achieved into a liberty exterior to the national life. By its first one-sided view (that is, by leaving Catholicity out of sight) it incapacitated itself from exhibiting to the world, at any rate in practice, a great church-communion; by the second (that is, the neglect of Nationality) it nearly relapsed into the errors of the Middle Ages, and even into Papacy. The Papacy, from its inherent enmity to nationality, disturbed as far as it could that divine law, according to which Christianity is developed around the divinely appointed centres of independent nations and states. Independentism, with its American gospel and canon law,-the doctrine of what is styled the separation of Church and State,-loses the idea of Nationality as well as of Catholicity. While it protests against the state, the nation escapes from it. Its adherents desire freedom, and fall into a mischievous servitude, the clergy under the fanaticism of a local congregation or its majority, the congregation under the onesided dogmatism of their preacher, tempered by no historical develop ment. There is in this respect especially a very remarkable similarity between the theory of Independentism and the Monasticism of the Middle Ages. Like the latter, it does not find the pure expression of the Christian character in the civil relations assigned it by God, but shrinks from an encounter with the world, instead of joyfully and hopefully opposing it with faith, and penetrating it with love. Despair

Of this Dr. Bunsen had said, it 'rested decidedly on the feeling of the laity that they were the brethren of the clergy, and endowed with equal privileges. This is the reason that, notwithstanding its illiberal character, it was willingly adopted and tolerated as a protest against the Lutheranic priestly assumptions. The Canonists did their duty; they made the fact into law. The real or presumptive authority of the clerical corporations of the Lutheranic Clergy Church was transferred to the Lutheranic Government, as the supposed representative of the Chris tian laity; while, however, no regard was paid to the right of the Christian people in their local congregation... We therefore called it a dictatorship.'~p. 76.

ing of the renovation of the national churches, held in bondage by the state, or in the far worse slavery of worldliness, Independentism forgets time and hour, and looks even upon the present, that hard-won inheritance of centuries, as having absolutely no real existence. In this despair it is for beginning everything afresh, as if the past had yielded no experience, and formed no institutions, as if no Christian state existed,-led away in this by American orators, who, like many others before them, make a virtue of necessity. And thus people have been brought to perceive in an embryo condition the height of perfection, and in the point of commencement, at which America naturally herself stands, the end and haven of all development. We may deplore this one-sidedness and delusion, and yet recognise the great worth of Independentism, as presenting us with one of the necessary elements in the constitution of the church, and bestow our admiration on the Christian earnestness and zeal of its confessors and teachers. John Owen preached the doctrine of liberty of conscience with even more power and fearlessness than his contemporary Bishop Taylor,not, as a later age, in unbelief, but in faith,—not in a sense hostile to the church, but for the church's sake.'-pp. 77-79.

There are some parts of this statement which we may safely leave to the reader's knowledge and intelligence. That the clergy are enslaved under the fanaticism of local congregations, or their majorities, while the congregations are enslaved under the onesided dogmatism of their preachers, tempered by no historical development, is a portrait whose identity we fail to recognise. In his fling at the American gospel and canon law of Independentism, and his assertion that the Independents are led away by American orators, the chevalier only shows his small acquaintance with the historical development' of the body to which he refers. These charges, however, were they true, are of far less consequence than their leaving Catholicity out of sight would be. Is this charge true?

What Dr. Bunsen means by Catholicity we may learn from p. 41. He there says, truly and beautifully—

'In the church the inward disposition is weighed, not the outward act; and this not only in the immediate communion of the Christian with his God, but also in that intercourse which he enjoys with his Maker by means of the world through his connexion with his fellowmen, and the rest of the creation. It is on this relation of the church to mankind (as the sphere of that moral life in which all have a common interest, and which is the condition of their highest unity) that the universality of the church is founded; it is plain that this relation must be older than the rise of states (as the whole must be prior to its parts); it is probable, from Christian doctrine, that it is intended to outlive their life. This is the evangelical import of the words Catholic and Catholicity. In this sense is Catholic, that is, universal, employed in the old creeds. In this sense only, according to the common English usage, have I used the words in my correspondence.'