We take our stand here. If the evangelical Episcopalian regards other churches as true churches, and other ministers as true ministers, we have a right to know it. If he does not, then the community has a right to know what Episcopacy is. If it is essentially narrow, and exclusive; if it recognizes no other communion as a true church, and regards all others as left to the uncovenanted mercies of God, then it is a right which the community has, to understand this. Episcopalians are every where endeavoring to win the young from the churches of their fathers. Let us understand fully what the system is, and let not the youth of the land, won by great professions of catholicity and zeal for the common cause, be drawn blindfold into a communion that is essentially exclusive of all others, and where the first act of faith must be the expression of a belief, that a father and mother worship in a conventicle, and are baptized and buried under the authority of laymen. We have spoken freely, but not in anger. It is not because we believe that those brethren who are endeavoring to infuse the evangelical principle into the Episcopal church, are not good men, that we have made these remarks.

We regard it as an honor, that we are permitted to number some among them as our personal friends, and there are many among them at whose feet we regard it as a privilege to sit down. Among the living of this class, we doubt not there are some as holy men as the church embosoms, and among the dead, there are those whose memory will be cherished as long as piety, eloquence, and moral worth, are honored on earth. The name of Be dell will not be, and should not be, forgotten. The land has known few men who have done more honor to the ministry than he did. His sil very tones, his placid manner, his

clear enunciation, his unshrinking fidelity, his indefatigable toils, his meek, pure, unobtrusive Christian spirit, his large-hearted liberality toward all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, can not be forgotten by the multitudes who hung on his lips, as a preacher, and who loved him as a man.

But we regard these brethren as laboring in an impracticable work, and in a work which it would not be desirable to accomplish if it could be done-an attempt to blend the spirit of the gospel with the religion of forms. The experiment has now been fairly made. It can not be hoped that it will be made under better auspices, and we regard it as destined to inevitable failure. As we love pure evangelical religion therefore, we think it right to state what we think must be the result of the experiment, and to set before the churches the principles which are involved in the controversy.

We think, also, that there has been an error in other denominations of Christians in this matter. There has been a feeling, the correctness of which no one seemed to regard it as proper to doubt, that the Episcopal sect was to be numbered in the family of evangelical churches, and that other churches should lend their influence to infuse the evangelical spirit more and more into that communion. Under the influence of that desire, pious and devoted young men have been advised to throw themselves into that communion, with the hope, that they might do more to promote the great cause, by attempting to diffuse the spirit of Christ through the religion of forms, than by ministering in connection with the church of their fathers. This, we now think, was unwise counsel. It was both unkind to Episcopacy, and it was morally certain that it would be a failure. It was as unkind as if the Methodist church, pressed with great concern for the

Presbyterian denomination, should scatter its ardent sons through all the presbyteries of the land, avowedly for the purpose of changing its policy, and diffusing the tactics of Wesley through the Presbyterian ranks; and it was an experiment which, from the nature of the case, must fail. There is a way of ef fectually neutralizing all such influence that comes in from other denominations. Episcopacy has the means of infusing its own principles, with singular vigor, into the heart of a neophyte from another church. Let the miter once touch the head of a low churchman, and a new light shines on his mind in regard to the apostolic succession, and on all the pomp and paraphernalia of prelacy; and as a New England man becomes the most cruel of all slave-drivers, if he can be made so far to forget himself as to become a slave-driver at all, so a man from an evangelical denomination becomes the most furious for prelacy, if he can be made so far to forget himself as to become a prelate at all. We think it time for the evangelical young men of our country to understand, that if they wish to advance the cause of the gospel, it is not to be in connection with the religion of forms. The gospel of Christ has elements of moral power in itself, which are only hindered by gorgeous external rites-as the keenness of a Damascus blade is rendered useless if buried within a gorgeous scabbard. We regard the prevailing spirit of Episcopacy, in all aspects, high and low, as at variance with the spirit of this age and of this land. This is an age of freedom, and men will be free. The religion of forms is the stereotyped wisdom or folly of the past, and does not adapt itself to the free movements, the enlarged views, the varying plans of this age. The spirit of this age demands that there shall be freedom in religion; that it shall not be fet

tered or suppressed; that it shall go forth to the conquest of the world. It is opposed to all bigotry and uncharitableness; to all attempts to unchurch' others; to teaching that they worship in conventicles, that they are dissenters, or that they are left to the uncovenanted mercies of God. All such language did better in the days of Laud and Bonner, than now. It might be appro priate in lands where religion is united to the state

-"like beauty to old age For interest's sake, the living to the dead,"

but it does not suit our times, or country. It makes a jar on American feelings. It will not be tolerated by this community. The spirit of this land is, that the church of Christ is not under the Episcopal form, or the Baptist, the Methodist, the Presbyterian, or the Congregational form exclusively; all are, to all intents and purposes, to be recognized as parts of the one holy catholic church, with no distinction of prerogative, with no right to the assumption of exclusive names, with no self-complacent expression of feeling, that their form brings them nearer to heaven than others. There is a spirit in this land, which requires that the gospel shall depend for its success not on solemn processions and imposing rites, not on the idea of superior sanctity in the priesthood in virtue of their office, not on genuflections and ablu. tions, not on any virtue conveyed by the imposition of holy hands, and not on union with any particu lar church, but on solemn appeals to the reason, the conscience, the immortal hopes and fears of men, attended by the holy influences of the Spirit of God, and which de mands that the devotion which from age to age is to be breathed forth on our hills and along our valleys, should be that pure worship which proceeds from the heart, worshiping God in spirit and in truth.

Ir is sometimes a serious question whether we have a right to laugh; and especially when some priestly foible, or consecrated absurdity provokes our mirth-as in the late charge of the Rt. Rev. Father in God, the Bishop of Connecticut. Ought we, for Christ's sake, to be sober, when prelacy is acting Bottom in the play, because it is prelacy and not the real Bottom? This great tragedian, our readers will remember, was specially ambitious to "play the lion too;" he would "roar that it should do any man's heart good to hear him," and with the further advantage, that he would not "frighten the ladies;" for he would "aggravate his voice" and 66 roar you an' 'twere any nightingale." This famous nightingale of a lion, was roaring upon us all the way through in our first reading of the charge, and now that we are set down to our solemn office of review, we can no way get the sound from our ears. We have a certain respect for the worthy diocesan, which disposes us to treat his effusion with all due forbearance and gravity. We have even tried to bring ourselves to a serious and regular discussion of his argument; which he has manifestly labored with prodigious effort and expectation. But we can not utterly suppress the comic feeling that haunts us, neither can we possibly muster so much of respect for the matter of his production, as to feel it altogether suitable to our ambition, to measure our strength against it in a deliberate and solemn

* Errors of the Times. A charge delivered to the clergy of the Diocese of Connecticut, at the annual convention, holden in Christ Church, in the city of Hartford, June 13, 1843. By the Rt. Rev. Thomas C. Brownell, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of the Diocese.

answer. We fear too, lest in such an attempt we should part company with our readers, for the proscriptive grin they have suffered of six months standing since the charge was published, has so far relaxed the austerity of their Puritanic faces, that they will scarcely be willing now to follow a regular deliberative argument. Still, we will endeavor to come as near sobriety as we can.

And first of all, we will thank the Bishop for his charge, as the most serious and deliberate thing we can say. There is a point of view in which it has a real and sober importance. It is a flat, and, as far as a generally good spirited man is capable of malice, malignant attack upon the distinctive religion of New England. As such, it absolves our ministers from any chance of incurring unpleasant imputations, by going into a public defense of the Congregational polity. Many, we know, as Episcopacy has been growing rife among us, have been detained from taking ground, by their perhaps undue sensitiveness to such impressions. Now they have the Bishop's official permission to put on strength and go to the work, clear of all restraint. A few perhaps, who were more occupied with the impudent assumptions of the charge than with its weakness, have suffered a salutary vexation. Others, we know, and they are the many, hailed its appearance as a deliverance, and with real exultation. It eased a perplexity which had long tried their patience. In this view, the Bishop's charge is a thing of consequence, and he may certainly look for some important results to follow it. Heretofore too, it has been somewhat difficult to ascertain what Connecticut Episcopacy is. Here we have it on authority. Here

it is revealed with a most fatal ingenuousness, and our churches and ministers may see it without mistake. The dry bones are uncovered, the dead flat of Pharisaism is spread out before them, the ghastly grin of spiritual death stares them in the face.

Having offered this most serious tribute to the Bishop and his charge, we can not resist the temptation to set forth some inductive matters, which compelled us to receive it with lighter impressions. This is the fanatical age of Episcopacy, and there was never a church on earth more thoroughly leavened with fanaticism, than the Anglican church is at this moment. But the Bishop suffers a most amusing ignorance even of the possibility, that any such malignant phrensy can ever visit Episcopal bosoms. He speaks of "fanaticism," (p. 26-7, and elsewhere,) as the exclusive right of the sectaries—a thing quite impossible, either in or under a successor of the Apostles. Could he have endured with a little more patience the abhorrent discipline of "metaphysics," he might have been led to suspect, that it does not alter the essential nature of man, either to be under or to be a bishop. Possibly he might have discovered, that fanaticism is oftentimes only a sign of the activity of religious influences that religion when it verily enters the soul, has to bear the company of evil there, and that when the holy fire is kindled, it may reasonably be expected (such is human infirmity) that some devilish heat will occasionally kindle with it. If too, in tracing the history of New England fanaticism, he had not forgotten the history of the Apostles, he would have seen that these luckless preachers were doomed much oftener than they wished, to stir up a blaze of fanaticism. Nay, if he had stayed to form some deliberate estimate of St. Ignatius himself, who is to Episco

pacy father of the Fathers, he would have found him an arrant fanatic, as carnally inflated, as mad with senseless zeal, as Davenport himself. Fanaticism does not, as he supposes, depend on given forms of outward demonstration, such as indicate an erratic or ecstatic phrensy; but on the activity of absurd and malign emotions in the prov ince of religion, and among religious bodies. Where the religious principle is most active therefore, the exposure to fanaticism is great. est. But alas! even the inertness of formalism is no certain security against this truly human infirmity. The fury of the fane (which is fanaticism) may set even spiritual death on fire. Though the church care not a straw for the great doctrines of Christian truth, and deprecate, it may be, every manifestation of a true Christian experience, the question of a tallow candle, or of the real presence of Christ to the teeth of his disciples, may yet suffice to set on fire the course of nature, no thanks to grace. And exactly this is what we now see in the Anglican church. Laud is alive again at Oxford, and the dead body of high church formalism is seething once more, in the blaze of the rubrics. Mecca itself was never the seat of a more senseless fanaticism, than the great high church university is at this moment. The shirt of Mahomet never wrought a madness more absurd or malign, than the Oxford doctors now suffer in their shirt of penance, or their zeal for the dead letter of the ru brics. And if we regard the word, there is no other so true and proper fanaticism as this same fane-fury, this church-mad inspiration, which is now reigning in the Tract writers and their adherents; nor only in their adherents, for the leaven of their movement extends to the whole Anglican church, both in England and also here. And yet our Episcopal bishop is as ignorant

of the fact, as William Miller of the like in his determination to burn up the world.

See how it goes in England. A literary honor is announced at Oxford in favor of a distinguished American scholar and statesman. Witness the hisses and yells of discontent by which the unfortunate stranger is insulted. This at Oxford a great and renowned university in the nineteenth century! And what is the cause? Why, that Mr. Everett has never been baptized in the church! Or, what is not a whit better, that he is a Unitarian! If the latter was the cause most ostensibly used, the former certainly was the most real and efficient; for it is plain enough, according to the well known practice of the church, that if the holy sprinkling of priestly hands had fallen on the stranger's head, the member thus regenerated, might have received the doctorate with applause, even though it held the faith of the infidel. Nor is this a mere casual ebullition of the church phrensy that rages at Oxford. Not only are the sacraments of the church proclaimed as the only ve hicle of salvation, and they that refuse them unqualifiedly damned, but what is more really new and electrifying to the English nation, it is proved by penances and fasts and vigils, that the new teachers are certainly pious men! The rumor of their sanctity goes abroad with their doctrines, and when they propose to regenerate the church, the ancient apostolic, but alas, sadly degenerate and dishonored church, the word is a fire in thousands of bosoms. When they advocate the right of persecution against the enemies of the church, the ear of the nation is not shocked, for they are men of sanctity, and sanctity is a thing so new and strange, that no one can tell what great things are to come of it! When they main tain by the most learned process Vol. II.

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the authenticity of the popish miracles, no one stares at their credulity-they are sent to restore an age of faith! If they advocate the principle of reserve in religious knowledge, it is but a more imposing proof that great mysteries of wisdom are hid in their minds. If they undertake the philosophy of ethics and gravely propound the doctrine, that "morality is gravitation towards the church," the discovery is received with silent awe. If they maintain by solemn argument, that no one is qualified to investigate the natural and mathematical sciences who is out of the church, and that the power of the keys extends to all the departments of human knowledge, who shall smile at the sanctimonious nonsense of a doctrine so honorable to the church! The new zeal thus kindled in behalf of the church, spreads rapidly through the establishment, and so astonished are multitudes to see any thing in the shape of an earnest attention to religion, that they really hail the movement as that promises to regenerate the land. The political aristocracy are not sure, that some new hope of strengthening their decayed and tottering eminence, is not here dawning upon them. The bishops denounce the new school faintly, taking care to atone for what they do, by a more close and rigid adherence to the rubrics. Here the old cathedral bell, that had almost forgotten to ring on Sundays, announces a daily service. Here the humble chapel is filled with the smoke of incense, and hung about with pictures and crucifixes, which the gaping multitudes rush in to see. The younger clergy, for the young are specially susceptible to fanaticism, vie with each other in their spite against the dissenters, and their zeal for saints' days, penances, and postures-for the straitbreasted coats, the "changeable suits of apparel, the mantles, the

one