true Christian name but that which is received in baptism. It has, however, been held, that for the purposes of that act, a Christian, as well as a surname, may be ac quired by repute; and that a person, whose name was Abraham Langley, was well married by and after the publication of banns in the name of George Smith. Vide the King v. the Inhabitants of Billinghurst, (3 Maule and Selwyn, p. 250.)

"I am therefore, clearly of opinion, that the marriage in question not only may but ought to be solemnized; and that the minister refusing to perform the ceremony may be compelled to do so: and I therefore recommend that no further opposition be made by him.

(signed) "H- J——.”

"Doctors' Commons, 5th Dec. 1820.”

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. THE judicious strictures of your correspondent LUTHER, on the clerically patronized ball for the benefit of St. Mark's Sunday-school, Cheetham Hill, near Manchester, have made no impression upon the fashionably charitable of this great town. So determined are they that "the pomps and vanities of this wicked world" shall minister good to the children of the schools in connexion with the Established Church, that the declining funds of the Ladies' Jubilee Charity School for educating, maintaining, and placing out to service orphan and other female children, are to be recruited by an amateur play. The pieces selected as suitable to be represented by the gentlemen amateurs, before those ladies who patronize the institution,—and, I conclude, before the children themselves who are by it to be "trained up in the way they should go,"-are "the Stranger" and "the Turnpike-gate!" Whether the officers of the institution (some

of whom are clergymen), or the Ladies' Committee, who jointly requested the performance, will give their aid on the occasion as actors, prompters, dressers, scene-shifters, or property-men, is comparatively of very little consequence. They certainly cannot exclude bad company from those parts of the theatre into which they cannot introduce good; and they must, necessarily minister to the evil passions of the former, and offend, and probably deprave, the minds of many of the latter class, by the representation of scenes founded in the most gross and flagrant immoralities. But the whole proceeding is so strangely anomalous, that I forbear entering into a specification of individual evils.

PRYNNE.

[We have received repeated complaints from our friends and correspondents, of the mistakes, misrepresentations, and hostile statements of a cotemporary publication, entitled "the Christian Remembrancer," which has chosen to make our miscellany the favourite object of its animadversions; and we have been blamed for not exposing to the public the very intemperate and reprehensible spirit in which, during the two years it has existed, it has at times been conducted. We have hitherto forborne any reply to its various attacks; not, however, as its couductors may have fondly supposed, from any inability to meet and refute their charges, but from a sincere desire to avoid contention. We can assert, with the utmost truth, that we wished to cultivate friendly, rather than hostile, relations with publications which professed to be conducted by disciples of the same Master and members of the same church. We did not indeed expect to agree in our opinions with the work in question; but we nevertheless hoped that it might be the instrument of considerable benefit by admitting useful

ing his communication; but we think it better to furnish the necessary explanations by means of a paper, the date of which is so long anteeedent to the recent attacks which have been made upon our work.]

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. I beg leave to call the attention of your readers to a singular paragraph in the introduction to the first Number of the Christian Remembrancer; a new publication, conducted by members of the Established Church, which commenced its operations on the first day of the present year. In the remarks which I may think fit to make upon it, I trust I am not influenced by any spirit of hostility to this publication, but solely by a sense of what is due as an act of common justice to the Christian Observer.

The paragraph I select is the following. Speaking of the religious periodical works of the present day, the writer tells us,"There are Methodist Magazines, and Congregational Magazines, and Evangelical Magazines, and New Evangelical Magazines, and a host of Observers, Reflectors, and Guardians, which pour forth their springtides once a month, and convey such information as they think fit to select, together with such comments upon the information as it suits their purpose to subjoin, into every corner of the kingdom. And among them all, among all this motley assemblage of religious magazines, there is not one which the Church of England could select as its advocate, or acknowledge as its friend."

This, sir, is the only notice taken of your work in the introduction to the Christian Remembrancer. Not only you are not to be chosen as the advocate of the Church of England, but you are not even to be acknowledged as its friend. Your claim to this latter humble office, which you have steadily professed, and (in the opinion of many persons) conscientiously discharg

ed, for the last seventeen years, is now resolutely denied. You are bundled without mercy, among the fanatics, whether truly or falsely so denominated. In short (for truth will out at last), you are one of that host which is leagued in formidable array against our venerable and excellent Establishment. It is to no purpose that your Blue Cover periodically informs us that you are a member of the Church of England. It seems you hang out false colours to betray your country to the enemy.

It

The Christian Observer has now, for a long period, professed itself a work sincerely attached to the national church. It has called itself a faithful, though temperate, defender of the doctrine and discipline of that church. It has been, if I mistake not, patronized and recommended by some of our most excellent and distinguished prelates;-by such men as a PORTEUS and a BARRINGTON. has also, I believe, been distinguish ed more by the respectability than by the number of its admirers; so that, at all events, it has not been a work calculated for the multitude, either religious or political. It was the first publication that noticed, as much in sorrow as in anger, the occasional enthusiasm of some religious magazines. In some of its early Numbers, it gave a compendious view of those proofs, derived from the writings of the primitive fathers, upon which the authority of episcopal government is founded. And, whatever may be its errors or defects (for it has them, in common with every human undertaking), it has been conducted, at all times, in a strain of edifying piety, and often with a superior share of ability and discernment.

Now, under such circumstances, it appears to me, sir, that your work was entitled to some respectful notice from any subsequent publication professing to be conducted according to the principles

of the Church of England. Even if the authors of such a publication deemed you defective in the discharge of your duty as a friend to the church, they ought to have given you credit for uprightness of intention, and spoken of you with that civility and decorum which is due to a respectable competitor. A candid and liberal adversary is forward to acknowledge the real merit of his opponent, and, in so doing, he augments his own glory, if he be victorious, and, should he be defeated, does himself no injury in the esteem of wise and reflecting persons. But what has "the Christian Remembrancer" done? It has taken no notice of you, except by an indirect and most unkind insinuation, leading those not well acquainted with your work to give it a place among the ranks of schism and enthusiasm. I am sorry that the new publication should have commenced its career in a manner so disgraceful to itself in this respect. How far such conduct is consistent with the liberal spirit which it professes, I shall leave others to determine.

I am the more sorry for this circumstance, as the first Number of the new work appears to contain some pious and much useful matter. I like the zeal of these writers against Antinomianism, though I think that they have cruelly misre presented Mr. Cooper's meaning in his late publication. The Editors of the Christian Remembrancer, cannot be more sworn foes to any thing of an Antinomian tendency than I am, or than you are. I like their specimen of "Church of England piety in humble life," and wish, from my heart, that it were more general. I have nothing to object to in their Review of Mr. Bowdler's sermons. Aud, more than all, I like them for recording the good deeds of our national church, and for recommending an increased publicity to its religious instituuous, in order that they may become more extensively known, and

more generally patronized. It remains for them to explain, however, how far this recommendation is consistent with their incessant charges of ostentation against other societies. They are making themselves known; that is, they are now doing, in this respect, what those two obnoxious institutions, the Bible and Church Missionary Societies, have been doing ever since the period of their commencement. There is this material differenceand it should never be forgottenbetween social and private_charities, that what might be justly esteemed ostentation in the latter is in the former-nothing more than a proper regard for the interests of truth, piety, and benevolence.

But by what right is it that the conductors of the Christian Remembrancer presume to dignify themselves with the august title of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND? They inform us, that, of all the magazines in circulation, there is not one which the Church of England can_acknowledge as its friend; that is to say, mutatis mutandis, there is not one which they will condescend to own in this capacity *. They are the only true churchmen: nay more, by an elegant figure of speech, they are the Church of England itself. Now this really is not over-modest at the commencement of their career; and before the public have had any means of judging whether their pretensions are well-founded. They will contend, no doubt, that their opinions are held by a great majority of the clergy. But suppose that, by some unlucky chance, this majority should one day dwindle into a minority. What then? Would they not, in that case, contend equally that they were still the only true sons of our venerable mother? And yet the argument drawn from numbers would be then turned against them. All this proves the unfairness and absurdity

Query, What had become of the poor Anti-Jacobin ?

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.