iniquity;" and thirdly, that our Church, which limits the grace of baptism to those "who receive it rightly," seems equally ignorant of this self-evident truth! We are pained to see how soon, in that land of fog and mist in which our Author delights, all clearness of spiritual vision and discernment, are blotted from the mind. The mention of the treatise, "De Habitu Virginum," leads the Author to some strictures on "Ancient Christianity," in which the same bias appears, with an offensive and discourteous tone towards Mr. Taylor, which we cannot but reprobate. We do not ourselves accord fully with that writer's line of thought, though we believe that his work contains important truth and salutary warnings. But it is pitiable weakness to treat him as he is here treated. Besides worse insinuations, we are told, "that it is too late for him to acquire the tact, without which the Fathers cannot be understood;" that "the irreverent and impure will revel in his pages;" and that "the Church of God will weep at the impiety of her son." We leave such passages to speak for themselves; only we must observe, in passing, how happily consistent it is to refer Christians in general to the Fathers as their guides, when a writer who has few superiors in piety and intelligence cannot, it seems, expect to understand them, unless he have read them from his very childhood! But to those who would exalt the Fathers into idols, such works are, doubtless, branded with deep impiety. "Ye have taken away my gods,-and do ye ask, what aileth me?"

The fact recorded of Novatian in page 149 is given by our Author to show the awful guilt of an heretic. It seems to us to convey a still deeper lesson. We are told that Novatian sent for three Italian Bishops, on pretence of needing their intercession with Cornelius; that he engaged them in a feast, got them intoxicated by the close of the day, and then, "by the imposition of the hands of the three Bishops, he obtained episcopal orders." Our Author seems, from his following remarks, to admit that this impious mockery conferred the orders of a bishop, but not the influence, or the diocese, which the three bishops had not to bestow. Of course, had one of the three been a simple Presbyter, the whole would have been void; but since all the three were bishops, and only intoxicated, their orders were valid. Now we think it useless to reason gravely with an English clergyman who can adopt a view so monstrous as this. But we ask our readers, how must the canker of superstitious delusion have caten away the very power of natural conscience, when even a heretic could hope to strengthen his cause in the Church by so impious a mockery? Such facts may open our eyes, more than grave reasoning, to the folly and danger of magnifying a bare succession of orders, if un

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accompanied by soundness of doctrine, conscientiousness of deportment, spirituality of mind, and the other scriptural fences of the sacred ministry of God's word.

What, again, must we think of our Author's statement in the next page, where he speaks of the oath administered by Novatian "while he held their hands, together with the body of Christ, between his own?" Here we see an English, unhappily we cannot say a Protestant, clergyman, asserting the local presence of the body of Christ in the hands of the communicant. Where such a style of language begins to appear within our holy and beloved Church, the words of Moses force themselves to our lips-" There is wrath gone out from the Lord: the plague is begun." We must remind the Author of his own plain subscription, "The body of Christ is given, taken, and received in the sacrament only after a heavenly and spiritual manner; and the mean whereby it is received and eaten is Faith."

Another instance of the strange tone of reasoning which our Author adopts, in his deference to the Fathers, is as follows:

"That exhilaration,' says he, produced by the cup of the Lord and his blood, not being like that which is produced by common wine, the Psalmist declares the exhilarating cup to be very good for the cup of the Lord so exhilarates those who drink it, as to make them sober.' These few words are sufficient to indicate the drift of his reasoning here; and to show, also, that it would be absurd, if no especial grace was conveyed to the recipients by means of the cup; or if the whole efficacy of the Eucharist resided in either kind." (p. 286.)

This is an instructive specimen of the fatal effects which result from making the Fathers authorities instead of Scripture itself. A fanciful application by Cyprian of a mistranslated text is adopted as a conclusive argument against the Romanists. How entirely the reason must have been clouded by a theology of mists and shadows, before the mind could gravely rest on such arguments as these!

In the next page we have the following question quoted with approbation. "How shall we drink new wine of the fruit of the vine with Christ in the kingdom of the Father, if in the sacrifice we offer not the wine of God the Father and of Christ, nor mix the cup of the Lord according to the divine tradition?" Mr. Poole then proceeds to disprove transubstantiation, on the strength of the following extract:

"That waters signify people, Holy Scripture tells us in the Apocalypse, when saying, The waters which thou sawest, upon which that harlot sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations of the heathen, and tongues. And the like figure we see is contained in the sacrament of the cup: for since Christ bare us all, who also bare our sins, we perceive that the people is to be understood in the water, while the blood of Christ is shown in the wine. When, therefore, water is mingled with wine in the cup, the people is made one by Christ, and the host of the believing is associated and joined with Him, in whom they have believed. Which association and conjunction of water and of wine is

so made in the cup of the Lord, that there can be no separation of either from the commixture. Whence it cometh, that nothing can separate the Church, that is, the multitude constituting the Church, and maintaining faithfully and with unmoved constancy, that faith which it hath received, from Christ, so as to shake their inseparable love, or to put an end to it. Therefore on no account can water be offered alone, in the consecration of the cup, nor wine alone: for if any one offers only wine, the blood of Christ begins to exist without us; but if the water be alone, the people begins to be without Christ: but when both are mixed together, and combined by a perfect union, then is the spiritual and heavenly sacrament perfected. And so neither water alone, nor wine alone, is the cup of the Lord, unless each be mingled with the other; just as neither flour alone, nor water alone, can be the body of the Lord; but both must be joined together, and united in the substance of one loaf. In which sacrament also the people is displayed united; for as many grains collected together, and mingled and joined one with another, make one loaf; so in Christ, who is the heavenly bread, we know that there is but one body, with which the whole number of the faithful is conjoined and made one.'"'-(pp. 296-298.)

This passage alone might serve to convince every serious Christian how unsafe it is to follow blindly the expositions of the Fathers, and how utterly absurd to make them the basis of controversial argument. Could it be credited that a Presbyter of sound mind would argue against transubstantiation on the warrant of a passage, which would prove every sacrament he has celebrated to be sacrilegious and vain? Yet such is the case here. And what a weak reason docs Cyprian allege for this human tradition! For ourselves, if the practice must be accounted figurative, the prophet, we think, supplies a far juster exposition in his indignant rebuke, " Thy wine is mixed with water:" and its continuance may be viewed as a silent warning of that early intermixture of human inventions with the new wine of the Gospel, which so early and fatally prevailed in the Church. The history of the cup would thus be a parable of the history of the Gospel itself. The visible Church first corrupted it with unhallowed mixtures, and at last the Church of Rome withheld it altogether.

But we must suspend these brief observations. We regret that the dangerous theories of human tradition make it needful, in contending for the truth, to have even the appearance of disparaging the saints of God, whom from our hearts we reverence and esteem. We doubt not that Cyprian, in the day of the Lord Christ, will be found among his most honoured followers. But he will then have outgrown his earthly errors and infirmities, which his superstitious admirers would enshrine; he will then have gained that true Catholicity which gladly owns the work of God's Spirit, wherever the real fruits of His presence are to be found; and which, while it prizes and values the visible ordinances of the Church, has learned to view them in their true light, as means to a most blessed end, the redemption of immortal souls to living holiness and eternal glory.

A LETTER TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR JOHN CAM HOBHOUSE, Bart., M.P., on the Question of the Connexion of the East India Company with the Idolatry of that country. London: Hatchards. 1841.

EVERY now and then, in watching the course of public events, we encounter evils of such appalling magnitude, and yet obviously so easy of removal, that we are ready to exclaim, "Surely these things need but to be exposed to the reprobation of the good and wise in order to be instantaneously redressed." But experience soon convinces us of our mistake, and teaches us how wide is commonly the interval between the acknowledgment of national guilt, and the practical exhibition of national repentance and amendment. "Great bodies move slowly." The apophthegm is a trite one. We may however be allowed to remark, that its most signal illustration, in the moral world at least, is furnished by the class of instances to which we have referred. The agitation of the Slave Trade question was begun in Parliament in the year 1789;-not until 1806 was the British Slave Trade abolished. The first national confession of the guilt of slavery was the adoption, by the House of Commons, of Mr. Canning's celebrated Resolutions of 1823;—not until 1834 did West India Slavery receive its deathblow at the hands of the Legislature; and not until 1838 was the last remnant of it finally swept away.

The title of the pamphlet which we have quoted at the head of this article, calls our attention to a not less melancholy exemplification of the same truth; with this difference too, that whilst negro slavery and the slave trade have at length disappeared from amongst us, we are at this very hour guilty before God and man of upholding and abetting, nay of actually participating in, the most monstrous system of idolatry and pollution ever witnessed upon earth. To the establishment of this proposition we purpose to devote the remainder of the present article; and in so doing, shall largely avail ourselves of the labours of the excellent author (Mr. J. M. Strachan) of the pamphlet mentioned above.

What we have in the first place to speak of the character, namely, of Hindoo idolatry-shall occupy as small a space as the subject will admit. Its full development, even had we room for it, would be far too hideous and revolting. There are two annual festivals of especial popularity in Eastern India-the Durga Poojah and the Charak Poojah, both celebrated in honour of Parvati the wife of Shiva, but under different forms. In the character of the

destroyer of the Giant Durga, whose name she assumed in honour of her victory, she receives the homage of deluded thousands. Every family is then provided with an image of the goddess, fabricated expressly for the great yearly exhibition of madness and crime. "Passing," says Dr. Duff, in his work on Indian Missions, "along the streets of Calcutta, before, behind, on the right and on the left, here and there and everywhere you seem encompassed with a forest of images of different sizes, and piles of limbs and bodies and fragments of images of divers materials, finished and unfinished in all the intermediate stages of progressive fabrication."

The hour of greatest sanctity during the celebration of the Durga Poojah is eight o'clock in the evening. The devotee then enters the hall, and approaches the shrine. After innumerable contortions of the body and grotesque gesticulations, intermingled with senseless prayers to the idol," he stretches himself at full length, disposing his body in such a manner as at once to touch the ground with the eight principal parts of his body, namely, the feet, the thighs, the hands, the breast, the mouth, the nose, the eyes, and forehead. Numbers having thus performed their worship, there succeeds a round of carousals and festivity. The spectators are entertained with fruits and sweetmeats. Musicians, with various hand and wind instruments, are introduced into the hall. Numbers of abandoned females, gaily attired and glittering with jewels, are hired for the occasion, to exhibit their wanton dances, and rehearse their indecent songs in praise of the idol, amid the plaudits of surrounding worshippers "-(Duff, p. 230.)

Elsewhere in his book the same well-informed writer describes the scenes of self-inflicted torture and mutilation, of indecent merriment, and more than brutal ferociousness daily to be witnessed during the period appropriated to the worship of Kali (another name of Parvati,) "the goddess of blood." But we will spare our readers the horrible recital, and content ourselves with describing this universal object of Hindoo worship. Kali is pictured with four arms. In one of her right hands is a naked scimitar, in the other the head of the giant Durga, torn and bleeding. Her lower left hand points to the earth, to intimate the fatal authority with which she is armed, her remaining hand upward towards heaven. Around her neck she wears a circlet of skulls; her ear-rings are mangled carcases-a girdle of human hands encompasses her waist. Having drunk the blood of vanquished enemies, and of innumerable victims offered to her in sacrifice, her lips and brows are stained of a bloody hue, and a stream of blood pours down her breast. Invested with these