This system is fully carried out in the Congregational Churches alone. Their very maxim is separation - their professed rule individual judgment.

"According to their principle the Church is nothing more than a voluntary association. The motive for entering it is the opinion of the individual that it will be conducive to his edification to do so. From the voluntary principle of their associations they argue, that like all other clubs, societies, etc., they must possess the absolute power of regulating their own affairs, appointing their servants or ministers, directing, controlling, paying, dismissing them. An infringement on any of their privileges they regard as an invasion of their indefeasible rights. In short, they are human societies." Vol. i., p. 375.

How such latitudinarian notions strike a philosopher, we may take the word of Coleridge. "My fixed principle is, that a Christianity without a church exercising spiritual authority, is vanity and dissolution ;" so, too," the Church," he elsewhere terms, "the exponent of Christianity." How such arrogant dogma appears to the scriptural theologian, we may refer to Mr. Palmer's volumes to show. How to the historian, let the facts of history exhibit-a very chaos without form and void, into which nothing can, or ever did bring order, beauty, or unity, save the Christian Churchone, holy, Catholic, and apostolic. How our author brings out this idea we go on to show, but we will not here conceal from our readers our impression that he has not treated this more philosophical part of his subject with that depth of thought that we think befits this deepest of all Church questions -the true line of demarcation, we mean,between the authority of the teaching Church and the independent judgment of the conscientious and self-choosing mind. He has treated it, we mean, rather as a theologian than a philosopher - dogmatically rather than spiritually. It is not surely because we deem ourselves competent to the task of supplying what Palmer has left deficient that we venture on the following observations, which, if any one shall say bear trace of the philosophy of Coleridge, we shall but take that as a commendation which they intend as a sneer, and hold ourselves bound to acknowledge therein the teaching of that deepsearching mind.

The right of the Church to teach authoritatively the rational and choosing mind, is a problem, then, we deem, not in intellec

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THE LAW OF

tual, but in spiritual philosophy, one to be apprehended, therefore, not comprehended, by the thinking mind—to be viewed in its spiritual forms as a guide to the inquiring conscience, rather than in its concrete, as a definite law, speaking dogmatically to the limited understanding. In other words, this combined result of teachable obedience, with inquiring independent choice, is the expression of an IDEA, a truth out of time and space, and beyond the power of language, therefore, either definitely to measure, or adequately to express, a thought to be but approximated to, in language, and that only through the union of inconsistent and opposing terms, such as in truth the revealed word actually uses in order to convey this very idea to the mind of the Christian LIBERTY man free yet bound, and bound yet free. Such, then, we hold to be the true position of the individual Christian in relation to this double bond, by which, under God, his spiritual nature is tied to duty; and they only, we think, maintain the path of safety who thus keep at once both in their eye, and both in their hearts, the Church - to whose divine teaching they reverently bow-their conscience and reason, at whose tribunal all questions must definitively be tried. Error, fatal error, on this turning question, lies equally on the right hand and on the left. Whosoever magnifies the teaching of the Church of Christ to the slightest disparagement (were it even to a hair's breadth) of the supremacy of the conscientious will; or the teaching of the conscientious will, to the smallest diminution of the divine right of the Church of Christ to teach the truth revealed whosoever thinks to measure, by his understanding, the metes and bounds of this, or any other spiritual question, so as to apprehend it as a definite law, and lay it down in words as a measurable rule for the conduct of himself or others he, we deem, understands not the nature of that on which he presumes to dogmatize. He has not looked, as a teacher should, into the depths of his own heart; that would have taught him that the attempt to measure spiritual things by the understanding, is like that of measuring the heavens by a two-foot rule. Now these, we deem, are not words without meaning or use; on the contrary we hold, that all practical error on this point, all bigoted conclusions, have resulted from inattention to this primary distinction, and we hold further, that due attention to it is the only practical method either to understand or to retrieve our errors. The rash attempt

to measure in words this spiritual rule, that error from which all division comes on the subject of the Church, results from being one-sided in our view. If we look to both poles, and that we can do only with the eye of the spirit, we cannot even attempt it-looking to but one, to the thesis or the antithesis of the idea, it ceases to be a spiritual law at all, it becomes a law but of time and space, dogmatic and imperative; clear, it may be, to the understanding, as "obey the Church," or "follow your own judgment," but then not clear to the spiritual mind, or rather false, since that cannot but recognise the practical falseness of either formula. Under the guidance of such unspiritual philosophy the theologian who looks to the Church becomes the Papist, and teaches Romish slavery, while he who looks to reason and conscience runs into the opposite error of unlimited dissent, rejecting all notion of a church save of his own creation, all rule that is to fetter the supremacy of unbridled will. Now, such teaching is equally false and equally fatal to the true Christian spirit on the one side and on the other, and yet they both have been, and will continue to be taught, and that, too, by sincere Christians, until such teachers shall be content to learn from the study of scripture, or from those to whom scripture has taught it, a deeper and a more spiritual philosophy, recognising that in such matters "the letter killeth," "the spirit alone giveth life," and that the understanding, (pornua oaoxos,) the earthly faculty, comprehendeth not these things, "neither indeed can it, because they are SPIRITUALLY discerned."

Such we deem to be the true analytic view of this question, and one that cannot be got rid of, at least with any thinking mind, by the adoption of any imperative rule whatsoever. What the Church Catholic teaches we may admit to be the rule, but still what it is that the Church Catholic teaches is a fact to be ascertained by the conscientious individual mind, so that the court of final appeal, even here, must still be "in foro conscientia;" or should it again be held that the Spirit's teaching is the Christian's rule, we may admit this too, and yet must we ever try what we deem to be the Spirit's teaching, and see "whether it be of God;" and the only test to which we can bring it is the teaching of the Church Catholic. Under this mystery, therefore, as Christians do we walk in all inquiries that touch the rule of faith. But to return to our author.

1842.]

Bishop Whittingham's Eulogium.

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Whatever may be thought otherwise of these volumes, no reader of ours will doubt the completeness of the survey they take of the question, who looks at the following syllabus of their contents.

Part I. The "notes" of the Church applied to the existing communities of professing Christians, embracing the Oriental Churches, British, Romish, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Zuinglians, with the case of the Separatists, or dissenters from the Church of England, and the Nestorians and Monosophytes in the East, etc.

Part II. Of the British Reformation, including that of the Churches of England and Ireland.

Part III. Of Scripture and Tradition.

Part IV. Of the Authority of the Church in matters of Faith and Discipline.

V. Of the Relations of Church and State.

VI. Of the Sacred Ministry.

VII. Of the Roman Pontiff; and, lastly,

A supplement, containing answers to objections.

Our readers may thus judge of the extent of the plan; with what ability carried out we must refer them to the volumes themselves. Nor will they fail to be struck, we think, with the tone of fearless candor that pervades all Mr. Palmer's statements; so forcibly indeed does he bring forth the objections of adversaries, that we have ourselves been more than once puzzled to know, until coming to his own conclusive answers, on which side he was in truth arguing. Now this we hold to be a rare merit in a theological controversialist. Such, then, is the general character of a work, the republication of which, with its right reverend editor, we hail as "timely, and called for by the turn of religious inquiry in our own country." For American churchmen Bishop Whittingham's eulogium on these volumes will be their sufficient warrant:

"Every where," says he, "the editor has found cause for admiration of the extent and depth of research, the accuracy of learning, and the clearness of methodical arrangement which makes this, as the first complete treatise on the subject in our language, so among the best in any." - Preface.

Now, from this eulogium we dissent not, though we must again repeat that, superior as it may be, to most or all other treatises on the Church in fulness and exactness, yet

still we regret to miss in it that tone of deep spiritual philosophy which gives to the divinity of Field and others of the seventeenth century their commanding influence over the mind. We would that our author recognised more fully in his conclusions the gulf that separates the dead speculations of the understanding from the living truths of the spiritual mind. Until this is done, we hold all treatises upon the Church to be naught to work almost as much evil as good, by making that to be a word of contention among Christians which should be and is a word of peace, and which, under God, we doubt not, will be the banner-word of re-union in his good time among the scattered hosts of Christ. But we would not here be misunderstood as pressing these thoughts to the disparagement of our author, still less as against his spiritually minded editor, in whose pure-hearted catholicity and self-denying devotion to advance it we have never ceased to recognise from the hour he first put on his armor-the spirit of a purer and a better age. But we must not wander from our task.*

The work before us opens with a definition of the Church and the "notes" by which it is to be distinguished. On these, as the determining features of Mr. Palmer's whole reasoning, we must consequently dwell somewhat at large. We commence, however, as a matter of guidance, with what he does not touch upon the derivation of the term CHURCH. "The ancient Saxon word," says Burns in his Ecclesiastical Law, "is Cyrce; the Danish, Kirke; the Belgic, Kercke; the Cimbric, Kirkia or Kurk;” — all, evidently, the same word, and as evidently a corruption of the Greek kupiɑzov, belonging to the Lord, or rather, perhaps, xugov oixos, the Lord's house, the latter derivation being analogous to the Ethiopic version of it. The earlier and purer pronunciation of the word, therefore, which we have lost, the Scotch retain, their Kirk coming nearer, in sound, at least, whatever it may do in substance, to the primitive Cyrce. But we are safer in going for the meaning of Church to its original and scriptural

The external appearance of these volumes is more creditable to the publishers than their typographical accuracy. They have the air of being hurried through the press. Among such indications, passing by many inaccuracies in dates and classical quotations, we would point out a note of the editor's of half a page in length, given on the three hundred and fiftieth page of the second volume, and repeated "totidem verbis" with some additional matter on the three hundred and seventy-first page of the same volume. In a scholar-like work like the present, such inaccuracies are inexcusable, and indeed, touching all the reprints of that liberal publishing house, we counsel them to give more heed to minuter accuracy.