Trentism, who, putting away their wives or husbands for the cause of fornication, marry again. After all the changes of the canon law of divorce, introduced by the various emperors of Rome, it is wonderful to find the crime of adultery, which none of those changes dared to treat but as the destruction of marriage, thus absolved by the modern Church of Rome.* The early Church might be charged with too enthusiastic an obedience to the Divine Law; they were eager to apply our Saviour's cause of fornication, to all adultery, spiritual as well as physical;† modern Rome seems to feel a curious sensitiveness for adultery, and would not be reminded that the adultery of a Church dissolves her union with Christ; she shrinks instinctively from bearing any witness to "the judgment of the great whore, that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication."S

But whatever value Romanists attach to the grace of their sacrament, there are no greater impugners, no more earnest rejecters of it, than themselves. Celibacy is en

* Can. 7. "Si quis dixerit. Ecclesiam errare, cùm docuit et docet, juxta Evangelicam et Apostolicam doctrinam, propter adulterium alterius conjugum matrimonii vinculum non posse dissolvi; et utrumque, vel etiam innocentem, qui causam adulterio non dedit, non posse, altero conjuge vivente, aliud matrimonium contrahere; mœcharique eum, qui dimissâ adulterâ aliam duxerit, et eam quæ dimisso adultero alii nupserit; anathema sit."

† Bingham's Antiquities; Divorce.

See Bishop Davenant on Colossians, iii. 5, by Allport. § Rev. xvii. 1.

joined in their ninth canon, and in the tenth it is eulogized as preferable and more conducive to happiness than matrimony.* Now if, as the Catechism of Trent allows, "This sacrament is a sacred sign of the holy union that subsists between Christ and His Church," and a sacrament is not a bare representation, but seals and conveys the inner blessing, which it represents, celibacy becomes the loss of the holy union betwixt Christ and His Church, and the eulogy of celibacy becomes in like manner a presumptuous contempt of that union.

Melancholy indeed is it to find such things so treated; but what can be said of these Canonists, who decree that marriage is a sacrament, when we know them to be practically ignorant of all its spiritual instruction to the faithful, and of its honour and purity in the Church of Christ. For what word is it that they set in antagonism to marriage? Even chastity, castitas; a vow of celibacy is called a vow of chastity. How refreshing to turn from this evil tissue of false theology and indelicate and contradictory dogmatism to the treatment of marriage, that

9. "Si quis dixerit, clericos in sacris ordinibus constitutos vel regulares, castitatem solemniter professos, posse matrimonium contrahere, contractumque validum esse, non obstante lege ecclesiasticâ vel voto ; et oppositum nil aliud esse quàm damnare matrimonium, posseque omnes contrahere matrimonium qui non sentiunt se castitatis, etiam si eam voverint, habere donum; anathema sit: cùm Deus id rectè petentibus non deneget, nec patiatur nos supra id quod possumus tentari."

10. "Si quis dixerit, statum conjugalem anteponendum esse statui virginitatis vel cælibatus, et non esse melius ac beatius manere in virginitate aut cælibatu, quàm jungi matrimonio; anathema sit."

real vow of chastity, in the Holy Scriptures and in the service of our Island Churches; where marriage in the Lord witnesses to the great mystery of the union betwixt Christ and his Church, and assures the Christian wife of freedom from that idolatry, which her sentence of subservience to her husband, with her desire unto him, in the days of ignorance would have tempted her to indulge! She is now blessed in finding that desire unto him, her husband, is made the symbol and the help of her soul's desire unto the eternal Bridegroom.

"If blessed wedlock may not bless
Without some tinge of bitterness

To dash her cup of joy, since Eden lost,
Chaining to earth with strong desire
Hearts that would highest else aspire,
And o'er the tenderer sex usurping ever most;
Yet by the light of Christian lore

'Tis blind idolatry no more,

But a sweet help and pattern of true love,
Shewing how best the soul may cling
To her immortal Spouse and King,

How He should rule and she with full desire approve."

APPENDIX.

(A.)

THE words "traditive agreement" are used in preference to traditive interpretation" of Scripture and Creed, used by Dr. Hammond in his dissertation on Heresy. It appears to me to be most important to make always plain and clear that what are called the essentials of salvation, as set forth and witnessed in the ancient Creed and in Holy Writ, require no interpretation whatever: simple reception is all that they require. They are as plain already as words can make them: they are proclamations of living facts and effective truths, not of speculative doctrines. The two natures of Christ, His life, death, resurrection, ascension, session; mission of the Holy Ghost, Church, return to judgment;-these great matters of the Kingdom of Heaven cannot be supposed to require elaborate interpretations without first covering them or rather the eyes of those, who behold them, and without an entire loss of the simplicity of the Gospel. These interpretations themselves soon require interpretation; and thus instead of enjoying the simplicity of the Gospel, Christians are perplexed with interminable developments of subjective dogmatism. The Church of Rome forgets her own origin; she cannot give as freely as she received. She identifies the faith with her own reception of it and her own treatment of it, and in the spirit of Gehazi stipulates for something deferential to herself in return for that faith, of which her Prophet was the finisher as well as the author, and which was perfect in the beginning, the unspeakable gift of God, without money and without price. Not that "the seed of Gehazi" is to be