1. Tracts for the Times, No. 90. Remarks on certain Passages in the Thirty-nine Articles. 2. A Letter addressed to the Rev. R. W. Jelf, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, in explanation of No. 90, in the Series called the "Tracts for the Times." By the Author. 3. A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, and Canon of Christ Church, on the pub- lication of No. 90, of the "Tracts for the Times." By The Printing of the Bible; Dissenting and Lay Baptism; The Pope and the Government System of Education; The An- glican Church; Schismatical Consecrations; Clerical Irre- gularities; Socialism; The Baptism of the Princess Royal; Episcopacy in the Colonies; Church Extension; Church Rates; Her Majesty's Speech at the Opening of the Session, 481 The Rights of the Poor and Christian Almsgiving Vindicated; or, the State and Character of the Poor, and the Conduct An Attempt to ascertain the True Chronology of the Book of A Supplement to Dr. Sall's True Catholic and Apostolic Faith Sephardim; or, the History of the Jews in Spain and Portugal. 502 The Sermons of the Right Reverend Robert Sanderson, D.D., late A Selection from the Unpublished Papers of the Right Reverend William Warburton, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Gloucester. 503 John Huss. The Workings of Popery in the Fourteenth and Summer Rambles and Winter Amusements Life and Remains of the Rev. Robert Houseman, B.A. Washington: an Essay. By M. Guizot. Anti-Popery; or, Popery Unreasonable, Unscriptual, and Novel. 506 The Latter Days of the Jewish Church and Nation A Brotherly Enquiry for " The Holy One of Israel.” Slavery, and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States of The Restoration of the Jews to their own Land, in its connection with their Conversion and the Final Blessedness of the Earth. THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Quarterly Review, JANUARY MDCCCXLI. ART. I.-The Primitive Doctrine of Regeneration: sought for in Holy Scripture, and investigated through the medium of the Written Documents of Ecclesiastical Antiquity. By GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B.D., Master of Sherburne Hospital, and Prebendary of Salisbury. London: Seeley and Burnside. 1840. THE appearance of a work like this, in the present crisis of the Church's history, affords us matter of deep and fervent congratulation. Perhaps there never was a moment in which it was more needed-undoubtedly there never was one in which the subject treated of was more likely to meet with due attention, or in which the study of it was likely to result in greater practical benefit. The Church, thank God! is awake. A period of dull and leaden formality-of drowsy listlessness and inactivity, has given place to one of expansive zeal and energetic ardour, unparalleled, perhaps, since the days of the Reformation. If the emissaries of darkness be gathering up their powers for a more than ordinary struggle, the Church is no less busy in arming for the contest. The banner of the cross no longer droops half concealed and mouldering in dim and cloistered recesses, but, seized by many a vigorous hand, it unfurls itself majestically to the breeze, and flames meteor-like in the forefront of battle. On every side is heard the din of preparation: the sound of the armourer's hammer rings throughout the camp, and mingles with the stirring trumpet-summons which calls upon the hosts of the Lord to awake and put on strength, as in VOL. IX.-B the days of old. The question then is no longer so much one of action or inaction, as of the most effective means of action. The great majority are aroused-they are ready to use their arms; and the only enquiry is what are the proper weapons to employ, and how are they to be employed to the best advantage? Now it requires no extraordinary powers of observation to perceive that there are at present two lines of conduct held out to the Church by men alike well-intentioned as to their motives, but both having a tendency to run into injurious extremes-the one party disposed to yield, perhaps, a somewhat undue reverence to antiquity-the other inclined to reject the appeal to antiquity altogether, as savouring of a return to the justlyrepudiated errors of Romanism, and as tending to "make the Word of God of none effect by tradition." We can easily see how these two classes have originated, and whence the source of the respective extremes into which they have fallen. At a season of great sickliness and faintness in the Church, when the candle of the Lord burnt awfully dim, a few great spirits arose, and boldly proclaimed the truth as it is in Jesus. But, become by the necessity of the case the express apostles of "evangelical truth," they gradually began to lose sight of "apostolical order." The consequence was, that while endeavouring to obey one part of the apostolic precept, to "hold fast that which is good," they too much neglected the no less imperative injunction to "prove all things." Hence, omitting to seek the interpretation of divine truth at the fountain-head-namely, from the writings of the apostles, as interpreted by their immediate successors, they fell in with the erratic spirit of the time, prone, alike in interpreting the mysteries of the kingdoms of nature and grace, to prefer plausible theorizing to laborious investigation; and were content to adopt the lucubrations of Calvin and others, without enquiry made as to whether they agreed with the doctrines held by the Church in days when apostles and apostolically-taught men were her personal instructors. To such an extent did this error prevail, that for a long period, indeed until very lately, what was called evangelical preaching was almost invariably identified with the dissemination of the doctrines of Calvin-the chief exception being in the writings of those who in a similar erratic spirit fastened their faith upon the conceptions of Arminius. Thus do extremes meet. The very men of all others most opposed to Romanism were those who gave in to the source of its most perilous self-deceivings-the engrafting of novelties upon the pure catholic and primitive faith. The successors of these excellent, but in some respects misguided, men are distinctly enough to be traced in the present day. Their tenets are to be found. embodied in the leading articles of the small-fry of the serious periodical press-religious newspapers and such like; articles frequently deserving of admiration for the support which they would give to the cause of evangelical truth, did they not regularly pull down their own work by their more than half avowed contempt for apostolical order. Hence, instead of a systematic defence of the great essentials of Christianity-systematic, because organized upon Catholic principles-we find them, as might be expected, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, striking evermore in the dark, and consequently never striking with effect or advantage, but as liable to injure a friend as an enemy. We shall gain a yet further insight into the notions of these well-meaning but mistaken individuals, who fancy themselves Churchmen, if we attend for a moment to the Shibboleth of their party. Their cry, in common with that of sectarians of every shape and name, is evermore for what they are pleased to term "the right of private judgment." The everlasting refrain of their song at public meetings and elsewhere is the oft-misquoted saying of Chillingworth-The Bible only is the religion of Protestants." We shall just occupy a few words on these two favorite tenets of the day. Abstractedly, in this free and enlightened land, none but a Romanist denies the right for a moment. The Church of Rome-let us carefully contrast this with her present mawkish professions of liberality, and think of the wolf in the sheep's clothing-the Church of Rome clearly and distinctly denies the right of private judgment, and drags to the rack, the scaffold, and the stake (at least where she dares) all who presume to differ from her, unless she is changed, and then not infallible. Not so our pure and apostolic Anglican branch of the Church Catholic. She, indeed, as a tender mother, would guide her children into the way; but she imposes no temporal penalties upon them for going out of it. The heaviest penalty is imposed by themselves. And her conduct is precisely in harmony with the spirit of our other free and enlightened institutions. Thus, by way of example, no one abstractedly denies the right of a free-born Englishman, if he will, to do any thing, however absurd, so long as his conduct does not directly tend to a violation of decorum or a breach of the peace of society. The man is left to the free exercise of his right of private judgment or rather want of judgment. It is no interference with the liberty of such an one, if we tell him what he is doing, and warn him of the probable injury he is bringing on himself by his folly: but it is an interference with his liberty if we hand him over to the constable. |