such a reform, it must be dispelled by a simple perusal of the Bishop's List of 'principles attempted to be realized.'

1. The furtherance of education in all its branches.

2. The worthy celebration of Divine Worship.

3. The constant residence of the Dean and Canons at their Cathedral. 4. Justice to those vicarages of which the Dean and Chapter are Rectors.

5. Liberal contributions to charities in those parishes where the Dean and Chapter have any property.

6. The proper endowment of parochial cures in Cathedral cities.

7. The payment of proper stipends to all persons connected with the Cathedrals, and so the abolition of the system of fees.

'8. The restoration of the dignitaries and prebendaries to their legitimate functions.

" 9. The connexion of districts with Cathedrals.

10. The greater frequency of more varied and popular services.

11. The revival of discipline in the Cathedral body, by removing the trammels which fetter both the relation of the visitor to the Dean

and Chapter, and all the other relations of authority statutably and necessarily existing in such a society.'-P. 4.

In this list indeed in the whole scheme suggested in the pamphlet - there is one important omission. No reference whatever is made to the functions of the Chapter as council to the Bishop. His Lordship states with great force the importance of preserving the non-residentiary canons to supply the requisite connexion between the residentiary body and the diocese at large. He proposes to summon this large Chapter annually at Pentecost (according to a former custom at Salisbury) to audit the Cathedral accounts, and hear appeals on all matters connected with the Chapter, its officers and schools; but he is unaccountably silent with respect to any duties of a conciliatory character. On this point, therefore, we must decidedly prefer the more extended action suggested in our previous remarks.

It is satisfactory to find that no question is made in this pamphlet, that all the important objects in view may be achieved by an improved management of the property still remaining in the Cathedral corporations. The suggestions of Bishop Denison, concurred in by his successor, is that these estates should be transferred for a time to a central Commission constituted for this express purpose. By such an arrangement all the advantage would be derived which the Chapters of York and Carlisle proposed to secure in their recent commutation with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, while the improved value of the property, when disencumbered of its leases, would be reserved to accomplish the noble reforms we have endeavoured to indicate, instead of being melted down in the voracious crucible of that very unsatisfactory Commission.

369

ART. IV.-1. An Inquiry into the Principles of Church-authority or, Reasons for recalling my Subscription to the Royal Supremacy. By R. I. WILBERFORCE, M.A. London: Longmans. 1854. Pp. 284.

2. Papal Supremacy tested by Antiquity. By the late Rev. JAMES MEYRICK, M.A. London: Longmans. 1855. Pp. 84. THESE two books were being written, it appears, by their respective authors about the same time. They go over the same ground, so far as the main subject in hand is concerned, and arrive at very different conclusions. We have placed them together at the head of our article, because we shall have to contrast the statements made by the two writers on several points. But our present work is with Mr. Wilberforce.

There is nothing new in the Inquiry' before us except its name. We doubt if there is a single fact or a single thought contained in its pages which has not previously appeared in one or the other of Mr. Allies' two works on the same subject, Indeed the whole book may be said to be an expansion of the Preface to Mr. Allies' See of St. Peter.' At the same time, though Mr. Wilberforce has brought forward no new facts, and has discovered no new principle to give an altered complexion to facts previously known, his present book is by no means deficient in merits of its own. It is excellently arranged. A theory is put forward, and facts are marshalled in such a way as to fit in with the theory as well as is possible. Whether this has been done fairly or unfairly, whether counterbalancing facts have been duly noticed or omitted, whether the facts which are selected have been stated with all their qualifying circumstances, or whether they have been so strung together as to lead a reader to draw a conclusion from them different from that which in themselves they would naturally suggest, are points which we propose presently to consider.

Besides the merit of arrangement, Mr. Wilberforce has also the advantage over Mr. Allies in good-temper. Mr. Allies was full of his feelings as a free man,' of the infamy,' degradation,' 'naked infidelity' of Anglicanism; the virus of the Reformation' was 'flagrant;' and the English Church was a 'hideous phantom.' Nothing of this sort is found in Mr. Wilberforce. There is one quiet hit at Dr. Wordsworth (p. 17) and another at the Queen (p. 279): otherwise personalities are avoided. Again, Mr. Allies. began by showing his teeth in the first page, and by setting his reader as a Protestant' at the extremest point of opposition to himself the Catholic.' More wisely Mr. Wilberforce begins with what his reader is likely to hold with himself,-- You 6 believe in the Church-you believe that the Church hath

authority in controversies of faith-you believe the Episcopate 'to be the medium of Church authority-you think a Hierarchy ' useful-you don't object to acknowledging a certain kind of Primacy won't you hold the Supremacy? This is more telling than Mr. Allies' fashion; not that one way or the other way ought in reason to have influence with a man of clear thought; but we know that we are all more disposed to go along with one who takes us for a part of the journey in the direction in which we are desirous of travelling, and we are less likely to mark the slight divergence of his and our path at the outset than when it is prominently brought before us, that the spots to which they lead are thousands of miles apart.

Setting out on this principle, Mr. Wilberforce avoids startling his reader in his first chapters. His weapon here is exaggeration. For example, it is true that the Church is not 'a mere congeries of individuals,' and that it does 'possess a collective character;' but to illustrate this Mr. Wilberforce uses a metaphor which will naturally lead the mind to accept the doctrine of development: By a wall is meant a certain arrangement of bricks, which, when united, are nothing more than bricks still, but a tree is not merely a congeries of ligneous particles, but implies the presence of a certain principle of life which com'bines them into a collective whole' (p. 2). Mr. Wilberforce's first proposition should not be established on a metaphor which does not only suggest the idea which is needed, but adds to it another idea to which Mr. Wilberforce finds it necessary to have recourse in his after pages (p. 99, &c.). Again-as specimens of the same method-in the second, third, and fourth chapters we find propositions laid down and elaborately proved, with which we heartily agree, but before Mr. Wilberforce leaves them he pushes them on into being something quite different from what they were when he started with them. For example, because we hold with Mr. Wilberforce that the Church hath authority in controversies of faith' (p. 7), and that the Church is a witness to truth, and also that in matters of conscience its authorities have a claim to attention' (p. 8), we are not therefore bound to cast aside all those other means of arriving at truth which a greater than Mr. Wilberforce has enumerated, viz. Holy Scripture, the existing Church, Tradition, Catholicity, Learning, Antiquity, the National faith, Common sense, natural Perception of right and wrong, the Affections, the Imagination, Reason, and the like. Yet this is involved in the assertion which we

6

1 Prophetical Office of the Church, p. 158. Most men try to dispense with one or other of these divine informants; and for this reason,-because it is difficult to combine them. The lights they furnish, coming from various quarters, cast separate shadows, and partially intercept each other; and it is pleasanter to walk without doubt and without shade, than to have to choose what is best and safest. The Romanist would simplify matters by removing Reason, Scripture, and Anti

arrive at in p. 37, that the principle on which the belief in Church authority depends is that the Divine Spirit, which has its dwelling in the collective body,' (he means, as the context shows,qua dwelling in the collective body') 'is our sole guide in the things of God.' We can contemplate the union in one person of the two characters of a reasonable and reasoning individual Christian and a deferential Churchman.

Again, we can believe that it is to the early Church that we owe the settlement of the canon of Holy Scripture, and we can feel assured, upon that evidence of probability which is by God's dispensation our only guide except in matters of science and revelation, that the canon there fixed, as distinct from that accepted at Trent or elsewhere, is the true canon, and yet we need not see in this act a proof of the inspiration of the Church, and then upon the inspiration thus proved, build up the theory of infallibility, that gift of spiritual discernment which had 'dwelt originally in the person of our Lord, and had been 'bestowed upon the Apostles' (p. 98). The account left us by Eusebius is entirely inconsistent with the theory that the Church settled the canon by a spiritual discernment and distinctly inspired judgment, rather than because it was 'nearer to the age of the Apostles than ourselves' (p. 28). Mr. Wilberforce builds a great deal on this act of the Church, but there are two objections to his view. The first is the historical evidence, which is to be found throughout the pages of Eusebius, that the early Christians used the ordinary rules of criticism and inquiry in making up their minds as to what were and what were not inspired books. And the second difficulty is that, supposing Mr. Wilberforce's foundation true, still he could not build upon it the doctrine of infallible discrimination in dogma, but in matters of fact, which proves too much, for he rejects the opinion 'that the Holy Ghost has been given to the Church to enable 'her to judge about matters of fact' (p. 33).

Once more, we can believe that it was quite right that eating of blood should be allowed, and that the observance of the Jewish law should be prohibited, in the time of S. Augustine, without being driven to the conclusion, that the Church had power to abrogate Apostolic decrees handed down in Scripture, and that the

quity, and depending mainly upon Church authority; the Calvinist relies on Reason, Scripture, and Criticism, to the disparagement of the Moral sense, the Church, Tradition, and Antiquity; the Latitudinarian relies on Reason, with Scripture in subordination; the Mystic on the feelings and affections, or what is commonly called the heart; the l'olitician takes the national faith as sufficient, and cares for little else; the man of the world acts by common sense, which is the oracle of the careless; the Popular Religionist considers the authorized version of Scripture to be all in all. But the true Catholic Christian is he who takes what God has given him, be it greater or less; despises not the lesser because he has received the greater, yet puts it not before the greater, but uses all duly and to God's glory.'P. 160.

principle on which she possessed this power was, that her authority was equal to that of the Apostles. We can believe that such decrees were intended to be temporary, and that when the necessity for them ceased they thereupon ceased, without equalizing the power of those who determined that the necessity for them was now passed with that of the holy Apostles who instituted them (p. 25).

This method of exaggeration is the peculiar vice of Mr. Wilberforce's mind. He lays down one principle, traces it out to its conclusion, and becomes enslaved to it. He cannot see the force of a counteracting principle: he does not make allowance for the limiting and controlling power of other truths equally certain with that which he is pursuing to its consequences.

This is shown in his doctrine concerning Councils. We believe that the Holy Spirit's guidance is present in the Councils of the Church. We also believe that these Councils are constituted by fallible men. Mr. Wilberforce can see no way of reconciling these two doctrines, except by regarding the Councilas a mere mouth-piece of the Holy Ghost, in the same way that the prophets of old were His penmen-having that peculiar authority which belongs to them through the promises and indwelling of the Holy Ghost' (p. 79); possessed of a living power through the presence of the Holy Ghost, who was 'believed to dwell in them' (p. 76); like the Church itself, 'possessed of a being and action which was irrespective of the will of its individual members, and was impressed upon it by 'some higher authority' (p. 2); guided in interpretation, not by logical argumentation, but by the Spirit of God' (p. 36). This theory, and more than this, is, of course, necessary for a Church which presumes to coin a new doctrine in the nineteenth century of the Christian era. But nothing can be well more opposed to the teaching of Vincentius Lirinensis (an author of whom Mr. Wilberforce carefully avoids mention, though dealing often with the same subject, which he discussed at the beginning of the fifth century), and of S. Augustine 2: nor does it account for facts. A different view may perhaps be less

1 The sacred Council held almost three years since at Ephesus... in which disputation being had of authorizing rules of faith, lest there might, by chance, some profane novelty creep in, as happened at that perfidious meeting of Ariminum, this was thought the most Catholic, faithful, and best course to be taken, by all the Priests there present, which were about 200 in number, that the opinion of these holy Fathers should be brought forth, of whom it was certain that some of them had been martyrs, some confessors, and that all had lived and died Catholic Priests, that by their consent and verdict, the true religion of ancient doctrine might be duly and solemnly confirmed, and the blasphemy of profane novelty condemned which being so done, that impious Nestorius was worthily and justly judged to have taught contrary to the old Catholic Faith, and blessed Cyril to have agreed with holy and sacred antiquity.'-Common. c. 29.

2. Even as respects plenary Councils themselves, earlier ones are often improved upon by later, when experience lays open that which was hidden, and makes