That my Father, though an ardent maintainer of the Church as a spiritual power, organized in an outward body, co-ordinate with the Spirit and the Scriptures, did not admit the ordinary mysticism on the subject of Apostolical succession, seems clear from this passage from some of his manuscript writings, dated 1827. "When I reflect on the great stress which the Catholic or more numerous Party of Christians laid on the uninterrupted succession of the Bishops of every Church from the Apostles, the momentous importance attached by the Bishops themselves at the first general council to this unbroken chain of the spiritual lightning, ever present to illumine in the decisions and to scathe in the anathemas of the Church-when I read, that on this articulated continuum which evacuated the time which it measured, and reduced it to a powerless accident, a mere shadow from the carnal nature intercepting the light, a shadow that existed only for the eye of flesh, between which and the luminary the carnal nature intervened, so that every Bishop of the true Church, speaking in and from the Spirit, might say, 'Before Peter was, or Paul, I am!' 30-Well!-Let all this pass for the poetry of the claims of the Bishops

stance of the material body could do nothing for our souls: the substance of the divine humanity can be present to our souls alone. So it seems to many of the faithful.

1

30 After describing Episcopal succession as a "fixed outward mean by which the identity of the visible Church, as co-ordinate with the written Word, is preserved, as the identity of an individual man is symbolized by the continuous reproduction of the same bodily organs," as, " more than this, not merely one leading symbol of permanent visibility, but a co-efficient in every other," my brother says, " Yet it must be examined according to this idea. I dare not affect to think of it, in order to render it intelligible

to the same Spirit, and, consequently, to the same authority as the Apostles, unfortunately for the claim, enough of the writings of Bishops, ay, and of canonized Bishops too, are extant to enable us to appreciate it and to know and feel the woful difference between the Spirit that guided the pen of Tertullian, Irenæus, Epiphanius, &c. and the Spirit by which John and Paul spake and wrote! Descending into the cooler element of prose, I confine myself to the fact of an uninterrupted succession of Bishops in each Church, and the apparent human advantages consequent on such a means of preserving and handing down the memory of important events and the stedfast form of sound words, and when I find it recorded that on this fact the Fathers of the Nicene Council grounded their main argument against the Arians, &c. I cannot help finding a great and perplexing difficulty in the entire absence of all definite Tradition concerning the composition and delivery of the Gospels." He then goes on to suggest a solution of this perplexity.

Noscitur a sociis is a maxim very generally applied; we trust and love those who honour whom we honour, condemn whom we disapprove. My Father's affectionate respect for Luther is enough to alienate from him the High Anglican party, and his admiration of Kant enough to bring him into suspicion with the anti-philosophic part of the religious world,-which is

and persuasive to faithless and mechanical minds, as of a mere physical continuity, by which the spiritual powers of the pastorate are conveyed, like a stream of electricity along a metal wire." My brother had never seen the passage from my Father's MS. Remains which I have given in the text when he wrote this, and I believe it to be a perfect co-incidence.

the whole of it except a very small portion indeed. My Father was a hero-worshipper in the harmless sense of Mr. Carlyle; and his worship of these two heroes, though the honours he paid to the one were quite different from those he offered to the other, was so deliberate and deep seated, that it must ever be a prominent feature on the face of his opinions. He thought the mind of Luther more akin to St. Paul's than that of any other Christian teacher, and I believe that our early divines, including Hooker and Field, would not have suspected his catholicity on this score. Indeed it is clear to my mind that in Luther's doctrines of grace, (no one has ever doubted his orthodoxy on the subject of the divine nature, but his doctrine of the dealings of God with man in the work of salvation,) there is nothing which ever would mortally have offended High Churchmen, Romish or Anglican; that they tried to find heresy in these because of the practical consequences he drew from them to the discrediting and discomfiture of their spiritual polity. On the doctrine of Justification he has been represented as a mighty corrupter; let us see how and how far he differs on that subject from his uncompromising adversaries.31 There are but three forms in which that doctrine can possibly be presented to the mind, I mean there are but three ways in which St. Paul's

31 My authorities for the following statements are the Decrees and Canons of Trent, Luther's Commentary on Galatians, and Table Talk, Bishop Bull's Harmonia with his thick volume of replies to the censures of it, and Mr. Newman's Lectures on Justification, all of which I have dwelt on a good deal. I have not yet read St. Augustine on the subject, but suspect from extracts, that his view was the same as Luther's so far as he developed it.

Three Forms of the Doctrine of Justification. xcv justified by faith without the deeds of the law can be scientifically explained or translated into the language of metaphysical divinity;-namely the Tridentine, or that set forth by the Council of Trent,-the Anglican or High Church Protestant, set forth by Bishop Bull;— and that of Luther. Nay, I think that, really and substantially, there are but two, namely the Tridentine and High Anglican or doctrine of justification by faith and works as the condition of obtaining it, and Luther's solifidianism or doctrine of justification by means of faith alone,—a faith the necessary parent of works. All parties agree that God is the efficient, Christ, in His sacrifice, the meritorious cause of salvation: all profess this in words, all the pious of all the different parties believe it in their hearts. The dispute is not about the proper cause of salvation, but only concerning the internal condition on our part, or what that is in us whereon justification ensues, which connects the individual man with the redemption wrought by Christ for all mankind. Bull teaches that this link within us to the redemption

Mr. Newman says in his Appendix—“ I have throughout these remarks implied that the modern controversy on the subject of justification is not a vital one, inasmuch as all parties are agreed that Christ is the sole justifier, and that He makes holy those whom He justifies." Yet one who professed to hold Mr. Newman's religious opinions in general, could talk of Luther's doctrine as a doctrine too bad for devils to hold consistently, contrary to natural religion, corruptive of the heart and at war with reason. It should be remembered that the state of mind in the justified is precisely the same in all the different schemes. The dispute is only about the name to he given to certain constituents of it; whether they are to be called justifying or only inseparable from, or the necessary product of, the justifying principle.

without us is faith informed with love and works-faith quickened by love and put forth in the shape of obedience. The Tridentine teaches, in like manner, that we are justified directly upon our holiness and works wrought in us by the Spirit,that faith and all other graces of which it is the root, are the condition of aeceptance with God. Between this statement and Bull's I see no real difference at all; it is but the same thought expressed in different words. The Anglican chooses to add that our holiness and works, in order to be thus justifying, must be sprinkled with the blood of the covenant; the Tridentine declines that well sounding phrase: perhaps he thinks it a tautology offensive to Him who forbade vain repetitions; and, for my own part, I cannot think that his Saviour requires it of him, whatever divines may do. His anathemas against those who say either more or less than he says on these points are, in my opinion, the only anti-christian part of his doctrine of justification. Drive the thing as far back as we may, still there must be something in us-in our very selves which connects us with salvation; it seems rather nonsensical to say that this is the blood of Christ. We should never have obtained this something without Him; He created it in us and to Him it tends; what more can we say without nullifying the human soul as a distinct being altogether, and thus slipping into the gulf of Pantheism in backing away from imaginary Impiety and Presumption? Even if with Luther we call Christ the form of our faith, and hence the formal cause of our salvation, still there must be that in our very selves which at least negatively secures our union with him; to that we must come at last as the personal sine qua non of justification, whether we call it the proximate cause, or