late it is never too late while we remain on earth: "Be not afraid, only believe."

We shall notice but one more manner of sleepers described in Holy Writ: we put it last, because it is the parable of the end: but it does not wait the end to be exemplified. It will be perceived that I mean the ten who, while the Bridegroom tarried, all slumbered and slept. I am inclined to differ from other commentators, who think the whole ten were doing wrong. The Scripture statement does not seem to imply this. It was midnight, the time of necessary rest: they had gone forth, and were not therefore abiding where they should not be: they took their lamps, and were not therefore walking or lying down in darkness: the five had oil, and were ready at the first moment of the cry,-"Behold the bridegroom cometh." Who has so good a right to rest when the weak and wearied flesh requires it, or who can rest so sweetly and so safely while the master tarries, as they who at any hour of any night are ready to welcome him, and meet to enter with him to the marriage? "Even so he giveth his beloved sleep." Happy, most happy, within whatever secret chamber hidden,—behind whatever curtains veiled from mortal eyes, the virgins that never go to rest at night without a thought that it may be before the morning: and never omit the needful preparation. The other five: a great many fancies have been put forth about them: but the Scripture is quite sufficient to its own explanation. It is plain they expected the bridegroom would come some time, or they would not have gone forth: it is plain they understood what was required, or they would not have taken their lamps: nay more, they knew when awakened, what it was they had not, and could not meet their coming Lord without. It is apparent therefore, that they had received the same instructions, and made the same profession: the oil, the emblem ever of the Holy Spirit, was all the difference: "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his," the whole Bible may be consulted to know what the unction of that Spirit is: this only I will add, that every individual of us who lies down to rest this night, goes to sleep in the condition of one five or the other. Is it anywhere written on which night the Bridegroom shall not come?

DEATH-BEDS OF PARENTS.

'MANY have dated their first serious impressions from the death-beds of their parents. O the look of tenderness of a dying mother! the feeble grasp the agonizing sigh-the inarticulate expressions! These are the richest legacy, and likely to produce the best effects. Here is no acting a part: no formal prayer of an hour long; all is nature, speaking feelingly-all is grace, speaking graciously; all is religion, speaking religiously. This takes full gripe and hold of the heart, and the result is great and lasting.'-Waugh's Life.

Review of Books.

A CHARGE delivered to the Clergy of the united dioceses of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin, at his primary visitation in September, 1842. By JAMES THOMAS O'BRIEN, D.D., Bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin. Third edition. 8vo. pp. vi. and 304. London. Seeleys. 1843.

[CONTINUED FROM PAGE 76.]

THE remaining half of the Charge, is, for the most part, historical, though interwoven, according to the writer's manner, with most lucid and powerful reasoning on the various subjects which pass under his review. The succinct and masterly sketch which he gives of the history of Tractarianism in its origin, its progress, and its effects upon the minds which have embraced it, is of thrilling interest, and of portentous aspect.

He shows with what caution the earlier steps of this movement were made, what advantage was taken of the peculiar circumstances in which the Church and country were placed; with what skill the points were selected for discussion, which were most likely to find a response in the rising feelings of respect for the Church, in that portion of the community, which desired to see the just authority of the Clergy more generally recognized than it had been of late years, or to rouse indignation against the hostile bodies of dissenters, who seemed regardless of every object, but that of levelling the Church with the ground. Romanism, it was declared, was not so foreign to the spirit of our Church as Dissent, and therefore we ought by all means to lean towards the one rather than the other. Many were influenced by such suggestions to patronize this movement, who were quite unaware of its real tendency, and perhaps some, with more of this world's policy, than of Christian sincerity, who did forsee the natural course of the system, yet resolved to lend it their assistance for a time, in the hope of more effectually opposing dissent; intending all the while, to withdraw their support whenever it might seem to be advancing too far or too rapidly.

The Bishop is not one of those who takes care to neutralize his censures with lavish and injudicious praise. He does not speak of the movers of this controversy, as of men deserving thanks and admiration for their achievements. He rather delivers, in a calm and dignified tone, a condemnatory judgment on their first, and least obnoxious proceedings;

'I cannot but think,' (are his words,)' that, comparatively cautious as were the first steps of the party, even in their very earliest efforts, there was not a little which ought to have suggested that this grave enterprize was not in very safe hands.'

The cause, however, proceeded with accelerated velocity, new and startling propositions were hazarded, then perhaps qualified, or partially explained away. The highest Church principles of the Laudean school were applauded and outrun. Protestantism was repudiated, and its very name cast out as evil. The continental Reformers were first mildly pitied or blamed, and then held up to scorn and derision. Our

own martyred champions of the Reformation were regarded as pitiful temporizers, whose Erastian principles led them to lay the Church at the feet of the civil power. So that,

'A reader of the Tracts might find it hard to determine, what, in the judgment of the writers, we had gained by the Reformation, and what was its value; but he could not doubt that in their judgment we had lost much, and much which they regarded as of no mean importance. It is very plain in the first place, that the great doctrines then restored to the church, found but very little favour in their eyes. In the tracts and the other publications of the school, the great doctrine of justification by faith only, was either passed over in silence, or brought forward to be mis-represented, or disparaged, or explained away, or opposed. The great principle concerning the Rule of Faith, which is our only security for the permanent enjoyment of that doctrine, or of any other, was denied, or received with a qualification which robbed it of its truth and its power. The labours of our Reformers to restore the purity of public worship fared hardly, if at all, better.'-(page 122.)

In process of time, the canon of the Mass is strongly recommended and the Roman Breviary is shown to be full of excellences, of which our own Church has been miserably deprived. Then, lest the alarm should be prematurely taken, a tract is put forth to give reasons why we remain separate from Rome.' Some of these reasons are sound, others futile, others fearfully expressed, and perhaps the most important of all either pretermitted entirely, or declared to be absolutely untenable. That while such documents issued from the press, there should be but little check put upon the progress of the movement, would seem remarkable, did we not know that when once any large portion of the public mind has become favourable to any given scheme, it requires not only argument but time, and not only time, but perhaps also some great excess and extravagance in the course of the innovating party, to cause any very forcible or perceptible re-action in the feelings and judgment of the community.

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It was not therefore till the appearance of Froude's Remains, that any considerable secession took place from the Tractarian ranks. The bold and revolting assertions of this froward youth, backed as they were by the authority of the real heads of the Oxford movement, awakened suspicions in many, and confirmed them in still more of the early adherents to this spurious divinity. He avows himself as 'every day becoming a less and less loyal son of the Reformation,' as thinking worse and worse of the Reformers ;' hating the Reformation and the Reformers more and more;' thinking better than he was prepared to do, of Bonner and Gardiner.' He believes the Church can never right itself without a blowing up.' A strange way certainly, of righting the Ecclesiastical vessel! On the whole, he regards the Reformation as a limb badly set: it must be broken again in order to be righted.' We cannot however, follow our Author through the perfect exposure and confutation to which he subjects the noxious productions of this daring and wrong headed traitor to his own Church. The opinions of such a man, would have been of small consequence to any but to himself, had not the Leaders of the party pledged their own cause and credit on his exposition, of what they call catholic views. They proclaim themselves ready to stand or fall by them; and thus render it the more important to trace them to their natural consequence. In taking this course, (to insist on no other point,) they give in their adhesion to

a principle which cannot fail to yield most bitter fruits. The principle is this, that a true Churchman's allegiance is pre-engaged to the Catholic Church. And when it is added, that Mr. Froude is the judge as to what are the doctrines of the Catholic Church, the principle resolves itself at last into one of private judgment.' But still further; he maintains that the Church of England is in bondage to the State, and that the State is its oppressor; and consequently, that his duty to the Church Catholic is paramount to any obligation by which he may be bound either to his own national Church, or to the State; and may indeed render him anything, rather than an obedient subject of that State which is so severe a Task-master to the Church. What Articles can bind men of such loose principle? Let Tract Ninety answer the question.

But, notwithstanding the outrageous attack upon the Church of England, which these Remains of Froude contain; and notwithstanding the earnestness with which the Heads of the movement contend for the substantial correctness of the views they exhibit,—a very large number of the early forerunners of this system, resolutely shut their eyes to the true state of the question, and determined to maintain, that the work itself was but an excrescence of Tractarianism, and by no means part and parcel of the scheme. Hence they were still unwilling to recede, or to offer the slightest resistence to the prevailing error. They blinked questions they could not meet, and were sustained by the hope, or rather the presumption, that more good than evil would result from the measures taken, however little they might be capable of justification. In this way, we may account for the comparative slightness of the reaction produced, by the bold publication of Froude's absurdities, on the public mind.

In the mean time, no opportunity was lost of following up the advantage gained by this forced march. The tract 86, 'on the indications of a superintending providence in the preservation of the prayerbook, and in the changes which it has undergone,' which followed in due order, is a remarkable specimen of the cautious boldness which characterizes the innovating party. Under the pretence of speaking of the preservation of the Liturgy,' it really tries to show how much it has been mutilated and injured, how nearly it has got rid of everything Catholic, how impossible it would have been, considering the uncatholic temper of the Reformers, to have had any portion of catholic doctrine left, if it had not been providentially and almost miraculously kept in! Other tracts with a similar object were put forth; all which clearly show how steadily the design was followed up of disparaging the Church, and lowering it in the eyes of its members.' p. 163.

'While many thinking and honest minds were vainly perplexed with the question, how men who entertained such principles and feelings, and who so laboured to propagate them, could remain ministers of the Church of England, a startling solution of the difficulty appeared in a Tract for the Times, which in some respects went beyond all that had gone before it. It was professedly a proof that though the Articles were the offspring of an uncatholic age, and conceived in a Protestant tone, they yet admitted a Catholic interpretation, and might consequently be signed by those who held Catholic views or in other words, that there is in fact no irreconcileable opposition between the Thirty-nine Articles and the leading principles of the Church of Rome, as promulgated in the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent! '—(page 164.)

1844.

P

To a shrewd observer of the belligerent parties, who kept aloof from both, and was only concerned to discover what was gained or lost on either side, the publication of this tract might have appeared the first great error of the campaign on the part of the Tractarian aggressors. It was palpable that their valour had outrun their prudence, though the prudence with which so imprudent an onslaught was conducted might be applauded too. It was clear enough that if positions so untenable as those propounded in tract 90 could have been maintained, the hand that undertook to do it, was equal to the task. No skill in the arrangement of his forces, or in the manner of assault, or in covering his own weak points and detecting those of the opposite party, was wanting in the author of this piece of profound jesuitism. Not that the idea now struck out was original. It had been long ago put forth, by the English Jesuit Davenport, under the name of Santa Cara; but it was new to the readers, and it was applied with abundant dexterity to the questions now agitating the public mind. But whatever praise the author might receive for his ingenuity, he got none for his ingenuousness. The whole procedure was too unenglish to meet with any favour at the hands of unsophisticated Englishmen. The country had not yet become sufficiently steeped in folly and delusion to endure this daring outrage on every sacred principle of truth and honesty; and there can be but little room for doubt, that, by the premature publication of this tract, a retrograde movement was taken by the Tractarian delusion. Yet this movement was neither so far nor so fast, as the true friends of ecclesiastical order and sound doctrine might reasonably have hoped. So difficult is the task to root up errors, even when they no longer veil their grossest absurdities! Surely it is something worse than absurd, to assume that the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Council of Trent were not at variance. Published about the same time,—the former as the exponent of Protestant doctrine, the latter as that of Romish doctrine,-both touching expressly on the same controverted points, and using on those points language diametrically opposed, one intending to subvert the Romish faith and to uphold the Protestant, the other intending to subvert the Protestant faith and to maintain the Roman-how was it possible that the two sets of documents should, by any Procrustean skill or violence, be made to fit the same couch,be reduced to the same standard, or be made to speak any other than the most discordant language.

Oh, but one Article condemns only the Romish doctrine, on certain points, and the Council of Trent did not hold what is vulgarly called the Romish doctrine, or what the Church of England looked upon as such, but the doctrine of a Catholic age, free from the absurdities of more modern times; and therefore an Anglican divine may first subscribe (with due qualification) his own Article, and then the decree of Trent. Such is Newman's famous argument; and it seems to say, you may believe which of the two you like best, or neither one nor the other as you please. For instance, Romish invocation of saints may be forbidden by the Article; but that does not forbid all invocation of them, only such as is Romish. Just as a jesuit referred to by the Bishop argued, that since St. Peter condemns abominable idolatries,' it is plain there is some idolatry which is not abominable, and which therefore does not need censure! Whatever be the value of this