show those whom she opposes that she considers them rather silly persons, Academical decorum would repress this; and the seriousness of the subject should banish even the appearance of levity. We will quote a few shrewd and instructive passages, subject to the above general remarks :

"Those who remember the ultracalvinistic secession of twenty years ago, will find no few of its best known champions now in the ranks of Irvingism; and if some such names be not yet registered for the Popish lists at Oxford, there are signs of the times; and we shall see hands that once could not offer the bread of life to any but the preelect of God, and now locate the Holy Spirit's work within the pale of Newman Street, presently become prodigal of both, in the waters of baptism and episcopal ordination. Already the fowls of the air,' that hovered for a season round the outermost branches of the once fast withering root, are seen gathering about the fresher promise of the new one. Surely it is strange-that men do not remember that they cannot learn; that shepherds who so lately, by their own venturous approaches to the precipice, led their flocks headlong over it, and lost them, are doing the same again. Would that we could say to some we know, albeit such as we have little right to teach, and little hope that they will read our pages, 'Do you not remember, in such a place and at such a time, how you countenanced and helped forward, and for a season followed, not knowing to what extremes they meant to go, those mischief-doers, whom with all your souls you now condemn? How by metaphysical distinctions, and verbal perversions, and useless disputations, by misusing common words, and puzzling plain texts, and dissecting hidden mysteries, you confused the simple, and unsettled the weak, and excited the curious? We might meet you not unjustly with the words of David's brethren Where have you left those few poor sheep in the wilderness?' You are on the field again-you have not separated yourselves from the worship of your fathers-you have not made schisms in your own household, and cast off the friends of your bosom, and set a mark upon your name, and excluded yourselves from all rational society. You played with weapons of which you knew the use too well to slay yourselves. You have changed CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 18.

your minds, and retracted your opinions, disavowal. But where are those little or withdrawn them silently without a ones, whom you seduced from their more sober teachers, and fed on stimulants, till neither they nor you could any more satisfy them with the bread of truth? I have seen a mother put a drop of spirits on her infant's lips-and I have seen the first dose administered of other intoxications; the issue was not contemplated in either case, but it might have been.

We might ask you-we do ask youWhere are our children, our bosom friends, our sisters, with whom we sometime took sweet counsel together, brake bread at the same table, and worshipped in the same place--but who now live in suspicious and repulsive silence? We miss them if you do not; and we remember who it was that led them first aside from the paths of simplicity and godly quietness. Love keeps a surer register than conscience. We could tell you, perhaps, from which of your sermons, which your rash and ill-considered statements, the first false impression came. But you have forgotten all. I know it will be pleaded that as honest and zealous men, such persons teach only what they believe to be the truth; and by reason of human fallibility, finding themselves to have been mistaken, they cannot do more than to confess their errors, and follow the increased light that has been granted them. Yes, they can do more, and more is required of them to do by God and man. They might learn humility by their previous miscarriages, and go softly in remembrance of the mischief they have done. They might lay their finger on their lips, and keep silence from all novelties and notions of their own henceforward. They might mistrust themselves, and expect to be mistrusted, and put a careful guard upon their statements. I think they should forbear to lead, and be the last to follow, in any deviation from the beaten track. I am sure they should not be, as they are, the heroes of the next onslaught.

The same

"The fact is otherwise. men, who by their expectation of miraculous gifts, their exact calculations of the Lord's immediate coming, and above all, their bold investigation of his sinless humanity, laid the foundation for Irvingism in many a guileless bosom, and shaped and fitted many a fair stone for the building of a temple, to which they never joined themselves, unhumbled and unashamed, are repeating the experiment; and with their matins and their vespers, their turnings 3 A

and bowings, their Romish phraseology and pontifical pretensions, their wilful obscuration, to say the least, of the first principles of the Protestant faith, are promoting the views of the new school at Oxford, which, nevertheless, they do not intend to join; betraying into its hands the flocks committed to their care, and the younger ministry emboldened by their example."

"Observe the devoted minister of Christ, toiling year after year among a careless and ungodly people; slowly and painfully he sows his seed, and long and wearily waits to see it grow; till some few solitary saints among a stonehearted multitude become the crown of his rejoicing. But comes there into the field of his patient, prayerful labours, a preacher of new things, an Irvingite, a Puseyite, no matter what, so it be new enough, and strange enough, and wrong enough; he will have more adherents in a month than the tried and sober preacher gained in years; it will be well if he pick not the precious jewels from his hard-won crown, to lose them once more in the dust of earth. It is then the doubtful falter, the weak are discouraged, and the children of light are grieved and saddened in their heavenward course, searce knowing what to think."

"The Church, they say, has grown too young of late, and must revert to the beginning for experience; to the day dawning for a clearer vision. They will commend you to antiquity, or something that they call so: to the apostolic age, but not to the Apostles: to where the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in his wings, but not to that blessed and eternal Sun. Then they will change their minds - and they are right, for the apostolic ages will not serve their purpose; the reflex image of that Sun was too distinct in those who so nearly beheld its rising beauty. They find antiquity now wants experience, and you must travel two or three centuries forward to look for its maturity. This is no jest; it is their own plain statement. Neither they who, under the teaching of the Incarnate Word, drank of the waters at the fountain-head; nor they who, under the dispensation of the Spirit, have come near to the outbreaking of the perfect day, will serve the purpose of the Prince of darkness. He who sowed tares in the Redeemer's field, best knows how long they were coming to maturity, and when they overgrew and smothered the good seed: the very point of time at which the gospel once preached to the poor, and adapted to the unlearned, and welcomed by the simple, was most completely hid

den from those for whom it was intended, beneath the mass of error, prejudice, and superstition with which even in the apostles' days it began to be encumbered. It is to that very point of time they will send you, but not to learn the lesson that you might learn in the study of those pious Fathers; deepest gratitude to God, that, by extended possession and understanding of the Scriptures, knowledge has been added to our faith, and the truth been again disencumbered of the fables and commandments of men, with which some of the most righteous and devoted of other days possessed it."

"Our new theologians write a great deal about the Universal Church,' but when we enquire where this comprehensive unity is to be found, they say it is in Rome, in England, and in Spain, and whether there be any part of it anywhere besides, they cannot tell; there may be, but they do not think so." [This is not strictly true.]

·

"We are spoken to of the opinions of "The Church,' the authority of The Church,' the decisions of The Church,' and to believe, if we will, that it is still

The Church' of the Bible and the Creed. In one particular, it is no matter whether it be or not for the powers claimed have never been possessed. The Church' of the Bible never had opinions. She obeyed the Word spoken, and finally the Word written, but neither spake, nor wrote, nor determined in things spiritual, otherwise than by inspiration of the Holy Spirit: and we do most positively and firmly deny that she ever has, or can have, acquired the right, or power, or capability of doing so. She is to hold fast that which she has received, and communicate that which she is taught of the Word, but she has no opinions, revelations, or interpretations irrespective of it.'

"You will hear it asserted, that if the opinion of the whole church at every period could be obtained in any parti cular, that opinion would be infallible. This is so purely chimerical, it is scarcely worth consideration. I leave it to the colleges to demonstrate how any multiplication of the fallible can produce infallibility: enough for common minds, that the members in particular of the body of Christ' cannot be consulted at any given moment; much less throughout all time; and if they could, they would not be of one mind in anything respecting which the Bible admits of a difference."

"Be it remembered, that neither Oriel College, nor the Parish incumbency, nor the Theological Professor's

Chair, is the Church of England. There is more true faith, more spiritual light within the Church of England now than there ever was before, or than there is anywhere else. It is no small part of the value of an Establishment, a ritual, and a liturgy, that like our civil constitution, it as much constrains the rulers as the ruled. If the monarch on the British Throne forsakes her faith, she abdicates, and we are still the lieges of the Protestant crown. And if our whole bench of Bishops should turn Puseyites a thought more allied to a smile at present than a fear-it is they, not we, who cease to be members of the Protestant Church of England."

"The general paucity of Scripture language has struck me very forcibly in the writings of the Oxford school. But there is one mode of speech in general use amongst them so boldly at variance with the divine word, I could wonder it does not act as a caution to their rash and inconsiderate followers. To 'preach the Church,' to 'preach the Sacraments'

Where did they get this new commission of their ministerial office? Apostles had it not: Christ gave it not; He gave an express commission to administer baptism, and an inferential one to administer as well as to receive the Lord's Supper. But go thou, and preach the kingdom of God.' 'Preach the word.' Preach the Gospel.' 'Preach Jesus Christ-Christ crucified."

"I wonder, and but that I see so many Christians falling into it, I should dishelieve, that one who has ever enjoyed the

real spiritual presence of Jesus in the Sacrament, should tolerate the idea of a carnal one, or endure the notion of a material medium between themselves and Him. I could as well have expected that the disciples at Emmaus should sit down to feed upon the bread, in the breaking of which their risen Lord was known, instead of arising in the fulness of their joy, and departing to communicate their blessed vision."

"But the first annals of Church history will show, how soon the grosser nature began to operate, in trying to bring back from heaven the human body of the Lord, and submit it once more to the witness of the senses: the wish was parent to the thought, and the thought, a metaphysical abstraction perhaps at first, became the parent of popish idolatry in its grossest form: the worship of the host, and the sacrament of the mass. The communion once again purified at the Reformation, guarded, as in our liturgy I think it is, by expressions the most carefully exact, and accepted and enjoyed in its inward and spiritual grace, by so large a body of evangelical worshippers, what is it now our grief and shame to hear? The cry once more of the sensual nature for a sensible deity, a bodily-present Saviour in the holy sacrament. O shame! If there were in my bosom but a conceived wish that so it should be, I would hide my head in the dust before his altar; unworthy indeed to look upon those sacred pledges of his love, incapable to taste the high companionship of that mysterious feast."

IT were earnestly to be wished that a large measure of attention

were devoted to the state of the Protestant Churches in France,

Switzerland, and Germany, with a view, by the divine blessing, of promoting the much-needed revival so happily commenced among them. Those Churches, in common with ourselves, seceded from the corrupt communion of Rome; and were, in a considerable measure, guarded against defection in doctrine, by the adoption, in subordination to the word of God, of Scriptural formularies, in the main coincident with our own Thirty-nine Articles, though pressing a few points further than our judicious reformers considered meet, or perhaps tenable. Unhappily they lost that additional bond of security, that safeguard against restless change, which we enjoy, in Scriptural diocesan episcopal government. We deeply lament this; we lament it for their own sake, and for the sake of our common Christianity; believing as we do that episcopacy is most agreeable to the word of God, and that it was the basis of Church polity established by the Apostles. But not considering the rent as extending to the foundation, so that these churches are not true churches of Christ, and may not be pure and flourishing churches, we anxiously desire to see them restored to the brightness of the era of the Reformation, and lengthening their cords and strengthening their stakes, throughout the length and breadth of their nominal boundaries. We do not say, that if, in throwing off popery, they had been endued with the discrimination to retain episcopacy, they would not be much more able to cope with the arguments, and to resist the aggressions, of the Church of Rome, by whose hostile legions they are surrounded; nor do we doubt that a judicious attention to the testimony-not the authority-of Christian antiquity, would have been highly beneficial to them, as it was to our own

Church, in repressing a vagrant and reckless spirit, and keeping them in the footsteps of the flock" of Christ, which never diverged towards Socinian or Pelagian perversions of Holy Writ; but believing that they were conscientiously built, under God, by their revered fathers upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner stone, we earnestly pray for the Divine blessing upon them; that whatever of "wood, hay, stubble," has been heaped up among them, may be swept away, and that they may be abundantly enriched with the " gold, silver, and precious stones" of pure doctrine and holy membership.

It would be monitory and instructive, yet deeply interesting, to trace the history of the Protestant Churches of France, Switzerland, and Germany, during their early stages (or, in inspired language, their "first love,") and thence through their bitter persecutions and ultimate decadence, to their present hopeful and reviving condition. But this would require a volume instead of the cursory pages of a magazine; we will, however, allude to a few desultory particulars, leaving our readers to draw up a more regular sketch from their own studies.

We need scarcely touch upon the state of the Protestant Continental Churches at the period of the Reformation, because that is well known from the numerous histories of that memorable era. In the faith, the simplicity, the love, the endurance, the practical godliness, and the substantial union and unity, amidst many minor and not unimportant differences, of the faithful, when first emerging from the darkness of popery, which had for so many ages enveloped Christendom, we seem almost to be reading a new

chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Whether we turn to the memorable and devout deeds of some of the princes and governors whom God raised up to aid the work of reformation; or to the lives and writings of the many eminent divines who conducted it; or to the affecting annals of piety and constancy in private life which adorned it; we discern abundant traces of that extraordinary effusion of divine grace which it pleased the Great Head of the Church to bestow at that eventful period.

We have been gladdened, yet pained, in having our recollections revived by one of the publications noticed at the head of this paper, in reference to one corner of our Lord's vineyard, which for a time yielded many precious clusters, and afforded promise of an abundant vintage, till the wild boar out of the forest of ecclesiastical and political popery rooted it up, and left a waste which still continues, for the most part, in desolate barrenness. We allude to the south-west provinces of France, where the ancient kingdom of Navarre shone with the matin beams of the Reformation; till its own renegade, Henry the Third of his native dominions, and the Fourth of France, seduced by worldly ambition and false because unhallowed policy, cast off the faith of his pious relatives, and became the betrayer and opposer of that holy communion in which he had been nurtured.

Mr. Jameson, during a recent visit to Pau, the capital of the little States which once formed the kingdom of Navarre, obtained liberal access to an extensive library preserved in the ancient monastery of the Cordeliers, and which contains many curious works rescued from the ravages of time and revolution, and is

particularly rich in works of local history and biography, from the pens both of Romanist and Protestant writers. These copious stores Mr. Jameson was permitted, by the kindness of the venerable librarian, to examine and make use of; for which purpose he was allowed to occupy an ancient cloister, and was supplied with every accommodation. The result is contained in the present volume; our notice of which we must confine chiefly to the account given of the never-to-beforgotten Jane of Navarre, the mother of the unhappy Henry IV. misnamed The Great; though, had he adhered to the blessed faith in which he was educated, and acted worthy of it, he had qualities which might have rendered him deserving of that title.

The reader may be pleased to be introduced to the present localities of the scene.

"As I purposed making some little stay at Pau, I was led to look around me with more steady enquiry than mere passers-by either do or can do. The Parc,' from its English look and name, its delicious shade and range of prospect, first engaged my attention. A lovely tract of country lay before me, with a brilliant sun beaming on it. It was market-day, and crowds of peasants, (the men dressed like Scotch highlanders, the females like Welsh women, except the hat,) came pouring along the roads, some on rough angularlimbed nags, (the women astride,) some in ox-carts, and some in wooden shoes,

the exact model of a New Zealand canoe. All were gabbling their not unmusical patois with a cheerful air. Every one, old and young, looked comely and good humoured."

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I turned to the left, and the ancient pile on the verge of the cliff was before me. It was the Chateau, where Marguerite de Valois had discussed points of faith with Calvin and Beza, and acquired the then rare knowledge of the truth: it was the palace where (her daughter) Jeanne d'Albret (the good Queen Bess' of these regions) had reigned, after the model of King Josiah, who did that which was right in the sight of the Lord;' it was the castle where Henri Quatre was born,

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