forget the wonderful elevation to which this country has been raised, in the sight of the whole world; or can we disconnect it from the fact, of England's being, however unworthy, the depositary and the assertor of THE TRUTH. But if it be true,-and true we fear it is, that an observer, casting his eye around our senate, would discern only here and there, only in ones and twos, the men who dare even profess their allegiance to Christ;-if he might traverse our Exchange, or our Guildhall, and scarcely meet with one man out of twenty who did not curl his lip with scorn at the name of "saint;" if he might survey our whole metropolis on a Sabbath evening, and find more than twenty persons openly breaking the Lord's day, for one who is even outwardly keeping it ;-surely our exclamation of wonder will be appreciated and understood, when we remark, With how little of real Christianity has our national character been earned! But there is one natural inference from this view which is most delightful and encouraging. It is this: If things be as they are, -if the fame of Britain for Bible truth spreads far and wide, and if God appears to bless us as though we were sincerely honouring him; if all this be so, amidst our manifold short-comings and unworthiness,-what would be the state of society if even a respectable minority,-if even one third or one fourth of the whole community, were real Christians? It seems difficult to realize the momentous change. That every third man who passed us in the street, should be upon the Master's business! Why, the world would be altogether changed; it would be wholly another kind of place from that which we at present see. Yet it is quite certain, that a day is coming, and is even very near, when much more than this shall actually be realized. When "the people shall be all righteous: " when, over all the earth, "there shall be one Lord, and His name one: " when "they shall not teach every man his neighbour, saying, "Know the Lord," for all shall know him from the least unto the greatest. What a transition, from the subject with which we commenced! What a change must pass over the land, when it is really brought to Christ! We know, indeed, that this work is far too mighty for the hand of man. Yet man may, and ought, to scatter the seed, which, in God's good time, shall assuredly spring up into a glorious harvest. A CHARGE, delivered to the Clergy of the Three Dioceses of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, at the Primary Metropolitical Visitation, 1842, 1843. By DANIEL, Bishop of Calcutta, and Metropolitan of India. London: Seeleys. 1843. WE rose from the perusal of this Charge with a livelier apprehension than we had ever before realized of the wise man's familiar, but most forcible similitude, "As cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country." This is, so far as we know, the only METROPOLITICAL charge that has been delivered throughout the Protestant Episcopate within the memory of living man. And it is eminently worthy of that high distinction. While "contending earnestly" (which in these unhappy times is but too much needed) "for the faith once delivered to the saints," and "holding fast the form of sound words," the right reverend Author bears in mind the apostolical injunction, that all is to be " done in faith and LOVE, which is in Christ Jesus;" nor can we more fitly delineate the wisdom and the spirit with which he speaks, than by appropriating the fervid language of the poet : "Paul's love of Christ, and steadiness unbribed, It is not our custom, however, to deal in unqualified and undiscriminating eulogy even towards Episcopal writers; and we profess to hold in our hands a telescope of such power, that by its aid we could discern spots, if spots there were, in the disc even of the far-off Metropolitical sun of India. We will, therefore, proceed to assign the grounds on which we determine that Bishop Wilsonin this straight-forward, single-hearted, spirited, and most seasonable Charge-has rendered most essential service, not only to the Church of India, over which he so worthily presides, but to the cause of Evangelical truth, in his unforgotten father-land. The Charge is appropriately inscribed to the Right Rev. the Lord Bishops of Madras and Bombay. It was composed, the Author states, with much fear and anxiety; under a deep sense of the novelty, as well as the importance, of the Metropolitical character, and "with little guidance, except from the outline of precedents in early ecclesiastical records." It was designed to embody the tone of frank and fraternal communication with bro 1 Cowper, Table Talk. ther bishops, as well as that of fatherly counsel and admonition to those who are designated, by a term unhappy because unscriptural-the inferior clergy; and most deeply has the Metropolitan of India imbibed, and most clearly has he exhibited, the spirit in which Peter exhorted, as an "elder among fellow-elders," not a "lord over God's heritage, but an example to the flock." "I have aimed at supplying in some small degree, that kind of friendly and most important intercourse which subsists between neighbouring Bishops at home; but which in such a climate as India, and at the immense distance of the Presidencies from one another, could scarcely ever take place except by some such method as the present, when one of the Bishops is appointed to go round as Metropolitan to his brethren once in a given period of years. "Beyond this object of brotherly intercourse I determined gradually to acquaint myself with the peculiarities of my office-satisfied if I could at all events assist in the grand duty of a Bishop in every Diocese, and especially in new ones like those of India, to preach, and encourage his Reverend Pres byters to preach, the glorious gospel of the blessed God.' I trust my paramount desire has been, and will ever be, to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified,' and to labour, so far as my strength will allow, 'to testify publicly and from house to house, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.' "—(pp. ix. x.) We pass over a most interesting statement of the advancement and progress of the Anglican Church in India, replete as it is with motives of earnest thankfulness to the Giver of all good, that we may come at once to the main subject of the Charge, which touches the efficiency, the vitality, nay the very existence of the Church itself, even in this seat and sanctuary of Protestant Christendom :— "On one important question I have found the Reverend clergy, both chaplains and missionaries, as well in your Dioceses, my Right Reverend brethren, as in my own, shaken, anxious, disquieted, distressed. You will anticipate that I refer to what constitutes the subject of a principal part of my Charge -the great struggle now going on in every part of our Church on the Rule of Faith, and the matter and ground of our Justification before God. I trust that I have succeeded in some measure, through the Divine goodness, in strengthening and tranquillizing their minds. Indeed I shall consider the Metropolitical Visitation to have been peculiarly blessed, if it is the means of checking this mighty evil. "I speak with deference to your better judgment, my honoured brother Prelates, and with sincere respect also for the opinions of all the clergy, and especially the senior clergy in the three Dioceses; but I must avow that my impression of the danger of this system has been increasing from the time I first delivered an official opinion on it in my Charge of 1838, and indeed I may say since the brief period, of only seven or eight months, when I commenced the present Visitation. "What the event may be, I cannot tell. My hopes upon the whole strongly predominate, from my humble but firm reliance upon the Lord Christ, my thorough persuasion of the pure scriptural character of our Reformed Church, and of the ultimate and glorious triumph of the truth of the gospel, and its diffusion over the whole earth by the power of the Holy Spirit. But, I confess, I am not without the greatest alarm, and especially for the infant branches of our Church, both European and native, in India. This alarm springs, not from the want of able defenders of the faith once delivered to the saints-for the triumph in point of argument seems to me to be comJUNE, 1843. 3 K plete nor does it arise from want of the repeated condemnations of all the extreme opinions by the Right Reverend the prelates and leading divines of England and Ireland-for there probably has never been an occasion since the Reformation when a greater unanimity of censure has appeared; but my fears spring from the fatal tendencies of the system as it has gone on developing itself-from the course which the leaders of it are apparently resolved to take-and from the rapidity with which the tide is carrying away for a time our younger clergy and laity. For what is the tendency of the system up to the very hour I am writing, but an increased approximation to all the corruptions and superstitions of Papal Rome-so that even her idolatrous offices are being republished for the use of our Protestant people? And what are the leaders doing? Do they retract? Do they admit frankly the admonitions of the Bishops? Nothing of the kind. They stop, indeed, one series of publications at the re quest of a Diocesan, but immediately replace it by others equally obnoxious: they turn aside all the condemnations in the Charges of different prelates, by affecting to consider them as founded on mistake: they pervert the terms of commendation in which their learning, their motives, and the incidental good which they may have done in awakening attention to matters of discipline have been spoken of, into an acquiescence in their doctrine. "Lastly, they are now crying out for peace, and a season of tranquillity, in order that the several parties may understand one another:-that is, after having thrown the whole Church into confusion, and having told us, that a decisive struggle is being now waged between two sets of principles, and that they are prepared to go all lengths in their efforts to 'unprotestantize' our Church, they quietly ask for peace, and beg us to leave them to the prosecution of their avowed enterprize undisturbed. "In the meantime, they boast in no measured language of the wide diffusion of their system by all kinds of instruments and in every sort of way, and amongst all classes of our population. "Still my hopes prevail. God will surely vindicate His truth, if we do but stand firm in this hour of our Church's temptation. "Never was any cause more truly that of Christ and the gospel. Never was any cause more truly that of the glorious Reformation of the sixteenth century. If anything can be clear, it is that the grand corruption protested against by all the Reformed Churches and our own, was the Popish, and now renewed error of Justification by inherent or infused grace; and that the foundations of our Reformation were laid in sweeping away the Traditions of thirteen centuries on this and the kindred topics, and coming back to the scriptural doctrine of our being justified-i.e. accounted righteous before the bar of God, only for the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not for our own works or deservings-and that the way was thus opened for the re-assertion of the true doctrine of our sanctification by the grace of the Holy Spirit renewing the heart, and proving its genuineness by every good word and work; and also for a return to that primitive Church polity and order which the Church and Court of Rome had usurped to itself, or buried under a load of superstitious and idolatrous ceremonies. "If this be so, then also nothing can be more clear on the other hand, than that the whole tendency of the writings before us, as it is more and more developed, is in direct contradiction to these fundamental principles of the Reformation. They build up Justification by inherent grace. They lay Tradi tion, written and unwritten, as its base and support. They weaken both Justification and Sanctification by confounding them together, and thus they are insensibly making way once more for a state of ignorance and superstition resembling that of the fourth and fifth centuries, which they do not scruple to hold out as the period when the Christian Church attained her mature and perfect form and due stature.' "If I am right in this view of the case-and of this you, my Right Reve rend brethren, will judge-then I feel assured that our Protestant Church and nation will never suffer themselves to be talked out of their common sense, for any length of time, by the mere talents, and learning, and pertinacity of controversialists.”—(pp. xii.—xvi.) We trust that the Bishop's assurance is as well-grounded as his apprehensions. But it cannot have escaped him, that the system whose developement and progress in the Church he views with so much alarm, wisely repudiates, as profane and presumptuous, all appeal to common sense. It demands that dogmatic teaching shall be received with implicit faith; and that, the teaching not of Apostolical authority or of Apostolical antiquity, but of that period which theologians of this school are pleased to consider as the maturity of the Church-the fourth and fifth centuries. though, as the Bishop justly observes, "Protestant England will never renounce her first principles of pure religion," yet the writers of whom he speaks are quite as fully convinced of this as himself; and hence their watchword is, the "UNPROTESTANTIZING of the national Church." Their object is, "to recede farther and farther from the principles, if any such there be, of the English Reformation." "England, while she is Protestant," says Bishop Wilson, "will never renounce her first principles; " but, reply the leaders of the movement, she must therefore cease to be Protestant, in order that she may renounce them. The remedy, therefore, as the Bishop truly observes, is "the faithful preaching of the gospel of Christ, connected with just views of Church order, and of the sacraments and other means of grace, based on the capital doctrines of the gospel as set forth by the inspired Apostles." In other words, it is to do what we pointed out in our last number— to take up a strong position on the vantage-ground of the VIth Article, against which we know all the powers of an enemy can never prevail! We will, however, indulge ourselves with one more extract from this admirable Preface, as to the effectual application of the remedy, and then proceed to analyze the Charge itself. "The Tractarian doctrines are new to the present age: they have come upon the Church by surprise: they have a show of the Gospel: they are framed into an insidious system of error: they are propagated with steady aim by able and learned persons, skilful in debate, concealed in their methods of attack, commanding a part of the worldly public press, employing all the tactics of controversialists, compact in their several operations, and acting with an ultimate and organized design to "unprotestantize" our Church. "Such a case demands, therefore, a steady and determined resistancenot to the neglect of other classes of error, but for the purpose of opposing the new and prevalent one. "But I check myself. It is to God that we must look. He it is that alone can help us. His grace, and nothing else, can effectually silence error. His grace can touch the hearts of men-can make them feel their guilt as sinners before the bar of God-can teach them the value of those vital blessings of redemption, as a matter of experience, with which they now be |