(if occasion be) shall notice be given of the Communion." Now these apparently contradict each other, and the question is, which are we to follow? What is meant by "if occasion be?" Is it not, if the minister has occasion to give notice of the Communion, he must do it then?

With regard to the place, we have no rubric to guide us in this, except the one which your correspondent has rejected; viz., the first after the Nicene Creed, since the one prefixed to the exhortation does not specify the place. I have never heard the exhortation read but at the altar (which I should imagine the proper place), except in the following instance,-where there is only one service, and that alternately, morning and evening, when warning for the Communion has been given in the afternoon for the following Sunday morning, it has been read from the reading desk after prayers and before the sermon; but in this case the minister has no rubric to guide him, and must, I suppose, follow his own discretion. Does your correspondent mean to say, that the warning should be given from the pulpit after the sermon? or that it should be read from the altar after the prayer for the Church Militant? I am an advocate for a strict adherence to the rubric, in all cases, if that could be effected; and, with your correspondent, reprobate the custom of reading only a part of the warning for the Communion, and had rather the sermon should be curtailed than the exhortation.

Your correspondent "R." seems to think that the prayer of consecration ought to be said by the minister standing before the altar, I think the rubric will hardly bear this interpretation, but that he is only to stand before the altar until he has ordered, or placed in order, the sacred elements, so as the more easily to reach them.

Sept. 12, 1834.

M. N.

NEW VERSION.

SIR,-My parish church being under repair, I have been compelled to go to any of those in my neighbourhood. Last Sunday I went to one of our city churches, the name of which it is not material to mention. Between the first and second service, the clerk gave out the first three verses of the 95th Psalm. I was much surprised when, in the third verse, the clerk was singing, "A king, superior far to all, whom gods the heathen falsely call," to hear the charity children in the gallery screaming out (for in psalmody, I lament to say, our city churches do not excel), "A king, superior far to all, whom by his title God we call." On my return home, I found this difference did really exist in different editions of the new version, by Tate and Brady. The former reading is to be found in an edition printed at Cambridge, pearl, 24mo., 1832, and the latter in an edition printed by the Stationers' Company, 8vo., 1805; and another by Reeves, without date, but perhaps 1801. Uniformity in our liturgical services is certainly desirable. Whether of the two is correct? It is probable that one may be an improvement upon the other, in a corrected edition of Tate and Brady's Version. But as I have not the original edition of

1696, and am ignorant what emendations the authors may have made in subsequent editions, I shall be thankful to any of your correspondents who will decide on the proper reading. By comparing the prose translation, "For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods," it seems that the former is the preferable reading, though Tate and Brady have rather paraphrased the original, by taking in a part of Psalm xcvi. 5. I am, Sir, yours &c., HYMNOPHILUS.

London, Oct. 1, 1834.

WESLEY'S FEELINGS TO THE CHURCH.

SIR,-The letter by "A constant Reader," in the present month's number of your magazine, on "John Wesley's attachment to the Church," I have read with surprise and regret. Your correspondent appears to labour under some great mistakes respecting both Mr. Wesley and his followers. He gives a letter, written by that great man only some little more than three years before his death, declaring his determination not to separate from the church; and he then praises the "consistency" of Mr. Wesley, in maintaining to the last his dutiful attachment" to the church. To those who are well acquainted with Mr. Wesley's history, this letter will not appear surprising. They can produce many letters and declarations of the founder of methodism to the same effect, of a still later date. But what does "A constant Reader" mean by offering this letter as a proof of Mr. Wesley's "consistent" churchmanship? Does he intend that Mr. Wesley remained a churchman in the strictest sense,-that "even to the end of his days," he maintained an undeviating conformity to canonical rule? If so, then let him say how it was that Mr. Wesley received the treatment he did from the great body of the clergy, and suffered such relentless persecution, as though he were an enemy of the church. Your correspondent asserts, that the followers of Mr. Wesley have "widely departed, in practice, from his precepts and example in regard of the church;" but this, he ought to be aware, they constantly deny. The constitution of methodism still allows the members of society to attend the worship of the established church, and receive at her altars the sacrament of the Lord's supper; and, in point of fact, many methodists of the present day frequently do both. The liturgy of the church is read in a greater number of methodist chapels than in Mr. Wesley's own life-time; and her forms for the administration of the sacraments, and the burial of the dead, are, as to their substance, regularly used. It is only in regard of service in church hours, and the administration of the Lord's supper, that any alteration has taken place since Mr Wesley's death; but "A constant Reader" cannot justly blame the methodists for what has taken place in respect of these, unless he could make it appear that the changes which they have made have resulted from their abandoning the principles of their great founder. This, however, he cannot do. The methodists have their services, it is true, pretty generally, in church hours; but Mr. Wesley himself introduced the practice, and published rules for its regulation; and if it prevails now to a much greater extent

than formerly, that has followed from the unavoidable pressure of such circumstances as induced Mr. Wesley to commence the practice. And such is the fact respecting the Lord's supper. The societies generally have the Lord's supper administered to them in their own chapels, under the limitations laid down in the "plan of pacification;" but this is not the effect of a new and Anti-Wesleyan principle. Mr. Wesley himself gave the Lord's supper in some of his chapels, and preachers who had not been episcopally ordained sometimes assisted him in administering it; and they are the same causes which led Mr. Wesley to go thus far, that, increasing in strength, compelled his followers to adopt his practice on a larger scale. It is greatly to be lamented that your correspondent should have chosen the present time to reiterate an oft-disproved charge against the methodists. It is not a very grateful return for the service which the methodists have rendered to the established church, by their dignified forbearance,-their more than forbearance-their practical maintenance, in time of great temptation, of their professions of friendly regard for the church. And it is not a step dictated by sound policy. Does "A constant Reader" imagine that the church is no longer exposed to danger-that the crisis of her fate is safely past? If such be his conclusion, he is not, I fear, a very skilful discerner of the signs of the times, and he may, ere long, learn, that the church is not in a condition to risk the consequences which may possibly result from those successive experiments on the patience of a numerous body of her friends.*

B.

THE TERM "CATHOLIC."

MR. EDITOR,-One of your correspondents, signing himself an Irishcatholic Priest, has lately made some just remarks on the assumption of the term "catholic" by the papists, and our thoughtless surrender of it to them. While, however, I will contend as strongly as he does for our right to the title, and the importance of our urging it, yet I cannot deny that, in various ways, the word catholic may be used by way of contrast to the word protestant.

First, politically, the "Catholic Question" had its definite meaning, and has become naturalized in our parliamentary vocabulary. We need not quarrel with it any more than with the word protestant, as applied, in the same political dialect, to ourselves, though the church of England calls itself "reformed," and shrinks from the pollution of the vulgar "protestantism" exemplified in the religious varieties of the day.

It is particularly requested that, if any one answers B.'s letter, no notice may be taken of this language, or of the temper which dictates it. It would be idle to endeavour to correct it; nor can there be any use in a controversy with one who thinks that the church owes her safety to the Wesleyans, and threatens it with destruction for the heinous offence of printing some of Mr. Wesley's letters. Such a spirit is not prevalent among that very respectable body, the Wesleyans. They would be the first to deprecate the advocacy of one who makes it a merit that, under temptation, they acted as they have always professed they would, and as they feel in conscience bound to do, or who insinuated that there could be any strong temptation to them to injure the church.-ED.

Again, speaking of the ante-reformation period, we need not fear to call that popish time "catholic," as used relatively to protestants; for catholic and papist were surely, in matter of fact, identical terms in the period above named, i. e., all English catholics were papists; on the other hand, no catholic was a protestant until he protested, i. e., till about the time of the Reformation. I am not unmindful of the opinion of some of our divines, that there were to be found, in every age, protesting members of the popish church; these, however, cannot be technically called protestants till they formed themselves into a body; consequently the word catholic does seem the rightful designation of the builders (e. g.) of our churches, the founders of many of our colleges, &c., inasmuch as they were one undivided body, and a whole body cannot be protestants, which is a relative term. Thirdly, I would even grant that, in a certain sense, the word catholic may be fairly applied to the papists of the present day, in opposition to the English church; though, since it may, and most probably will, be unfairly applied, it had better not be applied to them at all. I mean that, in matter of fact, they are the great united body of the western church catholic, or Latins, and our church is unhappily cut off from it, not through our fault, but theirs: yet as truly cut off as a son who is sent from home by his father in disgrace, though his father may be in the wrong. And it may be useful for us, of the English church, instead of vaunting about our famous Reformation, and railing at popish superstitions, and talking of our purity, &c., to bear in mind that, even though we are in the right, we are in a deplorable condition, in banishment, under a stigma, and bound, by all feelings of piety and Christian love, to walk in sackcloth, and to afflict our souls with fasting, as the two witnesses mentioned in prophecy, or David beyond Jordan. Here, then, is a third sense in which the word catholic belongs to the papists more than it does to us. Nothing would tend more to alleviate such a state of things (though, of course, it would not touch the seat of the evil itself), than if it had been possible for us to enter into communion with other branches of the church catholic, which, like ourselves, the papal section of Christendom has cast off. Could we give episcopal orders to Germany and Denmark, open Christian intercourse with Sweden and Scotland, cultivate a correspondence with the episcopacy of the United States, and, much more, could we adjust our differences with the Greeks, an advance would be made towards restoring us to an actual catholicism; till then, we must be content to be called what we are content to remain, an isolated fragment of a spiritual empire of the apostles. And we should take our misfortunes and our miscarryings in past times as witnesses against our present lukewarmness, for they imply a struggle which we have given over. William, the revolutionist, cut off Scotland from our communion; Tenison, his archbishop, has the reputation of thwarting the effort of the Prussians

*

But not justly, as will be clear from reading the correspondence at the end of the Life of Archbishop Sharp. On the other hand, it has been suspected, that the Prussians at that time engaged in the negotiation wished for English money as much as English orders.-ED.

to obtain episcopacy from us; Wake attempted in vain to coalesce with catholic France, a noble project; Secker was forbidden, by the minister of the day, to plant the church in America; and the Scotch episcopalians have failed in their negotiations with the Greek church. It is true we have of late years given the succession to both Indies and to Canadas; but it would seem as if the state were not the nursing father, but (to use a fashionable figure) the upas-tree of the apostolic church, or, at best, the jailor of her in a splendid captivity, keeping her, as some hero of romance, from her high destinies in the gardens of luxurious security. The latest accounts from the West Indies state that our settlements there have begun to give that branch of our church "notice to quit."*

66

I have but one remark to add as to Mr. Butler-viz., that, much as the state may desire it, ours is not yet a mere "state religion," a new church," as he calls it (e. g., p. 52, &c.), and, therefore, we may fairly say to him and his party, when they complain of our calling them papists, that we will drop the appellation offensive to them when they cease to call our religion parliamentary. This, surely, is equitable; if they will confess the usurpations of the pontificale over the church, we will bring ourselves to acknowledge the tyrannical acts of the regale. Your obedient servant, &c.

FEELINGS TOWARDS THE CLERGY.

SIR,-During several years past I have visited friends in the rural district from which I now address you. Among those friends is the curate of the parish in which I am, and to whose church I resort on Sunday. I was delighted in finding, last Sunday, the village church well attended by farmers, their wives and families, and by a numerous assemblage of labourers, with their wives and families, all attentive listeners to the holy ministrations of the happy day of OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION. But I have been more pleased by observing, how little grounds the real state of things gives for the common statement as to the feelings of the agricultural districts. Between the clergy and the farmers I find a good understanding; as, also, between the farmers and their labourers. Nor are they slow to contribute to each other's comfort. The clergyman has no difficulty as to his tithes, the farmer does not complain, and the poor labourer, though, doubtless, he would like greater pay, acknowledges that the farmer is unable to give it. I will add, that my friend, the curate, is, as usefully and as conscientiously as he is contentedly, discharging his holy responsibilities on that payment which, I find, is the usual payment from incumbent to curate. The incumbent having important engagements of a spiritual nature, at a distance from the parish, is occasionally absent from it, but has full reason to be satisfied with the attentions kindly paid to him when here resident. Thus satisfaction generally

* What authority is there for this ?-ED.

VOL. VI.-Nov. 1834.

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