filling the country with sorrow, indignation, and terror. Nevertheless, this was the period chosen by the University for passing the famous decree against "pernicious books," in which the political doctrines not only of Milton, but of Locke, were anathematized and ordered to be burnt. But whatever might be the

zeal of the University in general on behalf of the doctrines on Divine right and passive obedience, it would appear that Mr. Samuel Westley distanced most of his contemporaries in the race of loyalist subservience. And it is only too evident that Samuel Westley retained his extreme Toryism to the end of the reign of James II.

A SHORT time since, I paid a visit to my uncle, Dr. Burke, Rector of St. Guthlac's, in the old city of St. Austin's. His eldest, son, Hugh, had just returned home, after taking his degree at Cambridge with considerable distinction, having come out high among the wranglers. To the disappointment of his father, however, he could not be induced to sign the Thirty-nine Articles; and was thus precluded from taking a fellowship of which he would otherwise have been sure.

My uncle knew too well the high principles which actuated Hugh, to impugn his motives; but it was long before he gave up the hope that he might argue his son into a better set of opinions on Church matters. Some of the conversations which took place in reference to these opinions I have endeavoured here to reproduce.

One day, when Hugh and I were out together, we met an old school-fellow of mine, Arthur Hall, who since we saw him had been cruising round the ends of the earth, as a midshipman on board H. M. S. "Castor and Pollux." After all sorts of inquiries as to our various goings and doings, he said: "Do you know yesterday I met another of the old Queen's School boys. You re

member Gregory, who was a good deal your senior, but whom we used to hear of by the name of Gregory the Great, or St. Simon Stylites. It seems he has a church here, and he told me that it was the festival of their patron saint. He spun a long yarn that I could not altogether make sense of, about high and low celebrations, and vestments, and so on; but it meant I believe that he, and all hands connected with the service of his church, were coming out in full fig in honour of the saint. Well, I went; and thought at first that I had got into a flower-show by mistake. The old church was in full bloom all over, and there were big wax candles burning on the altar, and a lot of gimcracks besides, that looked uncommonly like conjuring apparatus. There was a great brass spread eagle, looking as if he was just going to fly away with the book on his back. Then they came in, rank and file. St. Simon himself in a sort of poncho, embroidered like a drawing-room table-cloth; and other clergymen in other fancy dresses; and little choristers in clean surplices; and two boys in muslin petticoats came with little portable silver stoves, and swung them about to fumigate the place, till it smelt for all the world like a first-rate

perfumer's shop. As the party came in, they made curtsies to the altar, then some of them ranged up on seats right and left; and three of them I think carried on some queer kind of pantomime, up and down the altar steps. Most of the service they sang, and the rest somebody said in a lamentable voice, through his nose; that I was told was intoning. After came a sermon, which as it had no head, no tail, and very little body, was happily short, I waited for St. Simon, and he said, "Well Arthur, how did you like the service?" "Oh, first-rate," said I, "I have not seen anything to come up to it since I was at the festival of the blessed FeeFi-Fo-Fum, (an ancient Chinese celebrity of doubtful morals, but most exalted sanctity,) in a Joss House at Hong Kong. But, my dear fellow, why didn't you give us a little dancing after the singing? That was the only thing wanting to make it complete. You have high antiquity to uphold you. David danced before the ark you know. Only finish up with a little of the 'light fantastic," and you will beat the opera hollow, and may safely defy competition,' as the advertisements say."

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'Sir,' said he, as soon as he could get his breath, I-am-a-Priest. This dreadful irreverence

to me that a man may play any antics he likes, provided he does it with a high hand. Of course, a bishop may exercise some control; he may say to a crowd of clergy, bedizened with superfluous millinery at a consecration, 'Gentlemen, take off those ribbons,' and to the incumbent, 'You must have that sketch removed from the wall,' and they must obey; because they know that if they did not, he could refuse to proceed with the ceremony; but once let a man be fairly settled as rector, or vicar, and he may, if a bold man, defy his bishop almost with impunity. The bishop can't call in the police, to remove unnecessary candlesticks, or idolatrous emblems. He must set all the heavy machinery of the Ecclesiastical courts in motion; and it takes so much golden ointment to lubricate those ancient wheels, that if a bishop sits down first, and counts the costs, he is very likely to get up with the conviction that his money might be much better employed.”

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Simply," said Hugh, "because 'human nature's human nature.' You can't drive out of it what grows in it. You may bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle,' and yet, though you might grind him up into little pieces, you would not beat the folly out of him. A man who has any character must stamp it on all he does. Gregory, for example, could no more content himself with my father's simple and dignified reading, or with chants and hymns sung by the whole congregation, than he could with a perpetual diet of dry bread and water gruel. He must have the food for his own soul, and that for his flock, served up in the most recherché style of ecclesiastical cookery, or he and they would starve."

"But what," said I, "do you think ought to be done, when you see a man

caricaturing Church forms, and going dead against the bona fide teaching of the Church?"

"If I still believed in the State Church theory, I should think his bishop ought first to advise him to behave differently; and if he would not take advice, the bishop might try the effect of Church Law. Then, I regret to say, there is something of a legal stand up fight between the bishop and the clergyman; and even if the former is victorious, the latter may say, 'I don't care, and I will go and tell the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council all about it.' He appeals to Cæsar, and unto Cæsar his accusers must go with him. Well, the uncertainty of the law is not less glorious in the highest than in the other courts; and it is really just a toss up, on a point of ritualism, which side wins. If the authorities then their victim acquires, ipso facto, brevet rank as a martyr. If the accused-then he is a hero whose selfdevotion is akin to that of Quintus Curtius. He has saved the Church, and that without being swallowed up alive, like his pagan predecessor."

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But what would you advise now you don't believe in the State Church?" "No law, Tom; but only plenty of rope. They will put it to its legitimate use all in good time. I should hardly like to say that Gregory and his fraternity are blind leaders of the blind; but if honest, as I thoroughly believe Gregory to be, they are very shortsighted leaders of shorter sighted people. When they get very near to the ditch, they may see whither their " developments are taking them; but if they or any other persons are to be convinced, it must be by seeing truth and error with their own eyes; the law cannot make them see. But to keep to what we were speaking of, mere follies of form; if I were to see a man playing the fool, I would try to point out the mischievous nature of such a performance, especially in anything connected

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The

"Yes," replied Hugh, a mode of service that may do very well for the upper ten thousand would be utterly useless for the lower ten million. same Gospel suits both exactly; but the fashion in which it is preached, and the style of praise and prayer, must be adapted to the hearers. If you go to rough and ignorant people you must fall into their ways a little. You must not despise the aid of a pious collier or blacksmith. Many an audience will follow with their souls, right up to the gate of heaven, a rough and uncouth prayer, from the lips of such who would listen unmoved to forms of prayer which stir the devoutest feelings in other minds. The Church ought to be free to do her own work in her own way. How this is to be unless she is a free Church, I cannot see."

The next evening Mr. Wentworth came to dinner, and Hugh gave an account of Arthur Hall's experience at St. John's. My uncle was very much amused, and Mr. W. very much shocked; he being Anglican to the backbone, and anathematizing anything that savoured of Rome. He thought the bishop frightfully remiss in not coming down upon Gregory at once. Oh if he only had power! I forget what measures he proposed. I think they fell short of capital punishment, though involving another form of suspension. He then appealed to my uncle to know what he would do to these wolves in sheep's clothing.

"Oh," said he, "let 'em alone and they'll go to Rome and leave their sheepskins behind 'em. The Church of

England is subject at times to breakings out,' and I think they are far less dangerous on the surface than if they were repressed and driven in."

"I cannot quite agree with you," said Mr. W—, "but there is another danger that I dread even more than Romanism. I have seen some books lately, by men in high places among us, which, if I had read without seeing the authors' names, I should have set down as the production of avowed unbelievers. Would you advocate leaving these men alone?" "Certainly not, if we can lawfully and effectually stop their teaching error; but we are so frightfully hampered. The way might be easy enough. If we had a real synod of the Church (which we have not, for convocation is only a sham one, which the government allows the clergy to play at because it thinks it amuses them), then we might call an offender before it, and he might be tried by his peers; men who are themselves theologians; and I feel sure he would get at least as fair a trial as in the ecclesiastical courts; and that the verdict would be far more likely to be in accordance with the merits of the case." "True, sir," said Mr. W-; 'but if

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we have to wait till we get a real synod we shall go on waiting till-till when, sir?"

"I think I can tell you, Mr. Wentworth," said Hugh, "if you won't be shocked. You will wait till the first year of the existence of the Free Church of England. You will not get it a day sooner. The governments of the present day, whether Liberal or Conservative, will not hand over one scrap of their power to the clergy. There is, I think, too, a very strong feeling growing among clergy and laity alike, that theology must claim the same freedom which is given to other sciences. What body of scientific men would give a rush for the decision of a court of law, in a question of chemistry for example. Science is higher than all human law; and if a scientific question is settled, it

can be so only because the evidence in reference to it is so clear that no sane mind can remain in doubt about it. Theology God's own science- the grandest, holiest of things that man can study, ought not to be fettered by restrictions which would never be dreamt of in any other; and I agree heartily with those who utterly object to the settlement of theological questions by any other power than that of the evidence about them. If you did bring a doctrine alleged to be heretical under the notice of a synod, its authority could not settle the question any more than the united opinion of all the colleges of physicians and surgeons could settle any subtle question of physiology or medicine. Every educated person, of sound mind, believes that the earth goes round the sun, and that the blood circulates through the body; but this is not in deference to the authority of Galileo or Harvey, but in obedience to the power of irresistible evidence."

"Those views of yours seem to me rather dangerous," said Mr. W—. “I fear the effects that might result were the Church not to pronounce dogmatically on certain points, and were its decisions not authoritatively enforced."

"Well, suppose we try to find out how you will authoritatively fix and then enforce what the Church has said. You have a capital example in the Gorham case. Mr. G-strongly denies the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. The Bishop of Exeter as strongly upholds it, and endeavours to compel Mr. G— to accept it. He, on his part, would rather not. Then the bishop invokes the law, and there are weary ecclesiastical suits, culminating in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. And with what result? 'A conclusion in which nothing was concluded,' except the suit itself. That Mr. G- might hold his doctrine, and that the bishop might hold his, and preach it; but he should not prevent Mr. G-from preaching just the other way. But that was

not a settlement of the question really at issue-whether the Church, as by law established, taught baptismal regeneration or not. The extent to which this vexed question has been set at rest may be judged from the fact that evangelical clergymen abuse Dissenters for saying that the Church does teach Baptismal Regeneration, and they, in their turn, come in for their share of abuse from their High Church colleagues for saying that it does not. Again, as regards your power to uphold purity of doctrine, we have an edifying case before our eyes. The Establishment sends out an eminent mathematician to teach South African heathens Christianity, when, lo! one of them teaches him, and opens his eyes to the error of his ways. The bishop has been telling a Zulu some of the Mosaic history. 'That all true, massa?' asks the noble savage. True? Well, it had not occurred to his lordship to look at it exactly in that light, and on the whole he rather thinks it is not quite true. Then he remembers his benighted countrymen at home, who are sunk in abject belief of that which he now sees to be unhistorical.' He leaves his sheep in the wilderness, and wages fierce paper war with orthodox priests and prelates in England. The bishops would degrade him if they could, but they can't. So they ask him, will he please resign his office? No, most distinctly, he will not. His metropolitan, the Bishop of Cape Town, ' deprives' him of his office. He defies the bishop. I do not hold my office, he says, by your permission, but on the authority of letters patent from the Crown. You ask our mutual friend,' the Judicial Committee, if it is not so. Then the case is argued before that august body, and the Bishop of Natal comes off victorious."

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I regret all this very much," said Mr. W-, "but what does it prove, except that Church lawyers vary in their interpretations of the law, and that Church courts give, like

others, verdicts often very little expected."

Just at this point our friend Arthur Hall was announced. As soon as he had said, "How d'ye do," &c., he began: "Oh, Hugh, I went, as I said I would, to see Gregory, and beg his pardon, and upon my word I went as good as gold; but he carried on so, that first I thought, between his austerities and his festivities, he had gone a little cracked (I am told he keeps a pet cat-o'-nine tails for private use, and starves within an inch of his life on special occasions); so I was beginning to pity him; but then he went on another tack, and talked such stuff that I got wild, and I fear said what I felt more plainly than politely. You know after a few years at sea you want a little polishing up. The midshipmen's mess doesn't train one in the art of fine language. I fear

'Our manners have not that repose That stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.'"

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"Committed myself, sir; what else I am afraid to think; but I feel like Topsy, 'I'se awful wicked.' Well, sir, I said to him, almost as soon as I got in, "Mr. Gregory, I am very sorry I said anything that you felt offensive after the service. I did not mean to do so; it was all my thoughtlessness.' Then he began, as for any personal offence that was less than nothing, very much less; but he feared that I was not conscious of the sin I had committed in my want of respect for the priestly office, and for sacred ceremonies. I ventured to remark, as an extenuating circumstance, that I was rather taken aback by the horticultural display in the church, and the costumes, as I had not seen anything like it in any other Protestant church. 'Protestants,' said he, in a tone that seemed to imply I might as well have asked whether it was a temple