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"audible voice," is regarded as "the protest of our Church against the muttered prayer and unintelligible language in which the Romish Church wraps up her services from the community," (p. 44.) There was good reason and sound symbolism in the mediæval practice of ordering the officiating priest to say the first part of the Prayer by himself, while the last petitions were uttered responsively; there was equal wisdom in the return to the more primitive practice in our own offices. But to see in this arrangement nothing but an ostentatious display of religious differences exhibits a morbid tone of mind which we unfeignedly deplore. Thus, the innovation of beginning the Communion Service with no intention of proceeding to its close was intended to discountenance "that mischievous notion of communicating by proxy which obtains in the Romish Church," (pp. 101, 102.) If this be true, (which it is not,) which is better, the intercession of the priest in the presence of the people, or the absence of both? The alms at the offertory are to be dispensed by the "minister and churchwardens," in order to "secure the laity a preponderance in the committee which allocates the funds raised for charitable uses," and thus "prevent the clergy from domineering," (p. 143,) the truth being this, that the clergy, and churchwardens are desired to consult together as to the pious and charitable uses to which the offerings of the faithful are to be assigned. And so far from any preponderance being intended to be conferred on the laity, the clergy and churchwardens have only one voice each, with the bishop as referee in case of any dispute; and this expression in the case of the parish officers is further controlled by the fact that one of them is the parson's nominee. Commenting on the rubric which directs that baptism be performed in public, and in the vulgar tongue, Mr. Reichel is led by his love of private interpretation into the gravest error.

"Does not this very care to secure not merely publicity, but knowledge and understanding, protest in itself against the idea, that there is in Baptism or in any other rite something magical, acting of necessity, merely by the doing of certain acts, or the saying of certain words, whether or no those words and acts be understood by the congregation?"-Pp. 148, 149.

And he goes on to assert, that the prayers of the congregation are essential to the procuring of regeneration, surmounting the difficulty of Private Baptism by the remark that even there the priest is directed to say as many collects as time and present exigencies will admit, an evasion which exhibits, we are sorry to say, remarkable obtuseness or intentional misinterpretation. While we are on the subject of Baptism, we may mention that Mr. Reichel holds what has been called the charitable theory.

"The declaration that the child is regenerate, is not one whit stronger than the twice repeated declaration . . . . in the address to the sponsors that they have actually prayed that the child may be regenerate. Now these declarations must, in common fairness, be taken in connection with each other. Assuming that the prayer of faith has been really offered up, inasmuch as it has been apparently, and we are bound by the law of charity to believe men's professions, whether made by acts or words, to be true, until they are proved to be false,-assuming therefore that the prayer of faith has been offered, the Church pronounces that GOD has answered it, because it knows that God never allows the prayer of faith for spiritual blessings to be of none effect." -P. 166.

"And to separate the declaration, that the child is regenerate, from the rest of the service of which it forms a part, and without which it is unintelligible; and then to consider it, thus separated, as a dogmatic statement that regeneration invariably takes place without any regard to those conditions which the former part of the service never tires of reiterating, is the very extreme of unfairness. It is as clear as daylight that the child is declared regenerate on the supposition that the congregation, and especially the sponsors, have prayed that he may be so."-Pp. 167, 168.

Our author sees also in the institution of sponsors, "" a protest against the idea of there being some magical spell, so to speak, in this sacrament."

"For were there aught such,-were a certain effect, i.e. invariably produced whenever a child was dipped or sprinkled in the name of the TRINITY, then there would be no occasion whatever for sponsors, or indeed for prayer at all;1 and upon that system it would be commendable in a missionary to the heathen, e.g. to baptize all the children he could lay his hands upon, without their being brought to him for the purpose by either the parents or anybody else. The institution of sponsors is, therefore, not only reasonable in itself, but a protest against superstitious ideas on the subject of this sacrament.”—P. 152.

No words of ours are needed to expose the unworthy attempt herein made to revive heresies which have been again and again refuted, and to foist upon an ignorant congregation as God's truth this miserable phantom of evangelicalism. Unbelief is the true hydra: cut it down as you will, it still springs up young and fresh. Like a vigorous weed it strikes its root far and near, rising into strong life, where least expected to appear. But to proceed: by the prayer in the Baptismal Service that the child may be baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, and in the Communion Office that the communicants receiving the Bread and Wine, "may be partakers of CHRIST's Body and Blood," the Church according to the Irish ritualist, (p. 155,) enters her "protest against the doctrine of the opus operatum, the doctrine, i.e. that wherever the outward

1 The exact case in private Baptism.

and visible sign is given with outward regularity, there the inward and spiritual grace must be conveyed." Now if this were a true view of the great Protestant bugbear, of which so much is made in the controversy with Rome, will Mr. Reichel allow us to ask how he accounts for the existence of such prayers for grace in the corresponding offices of the Roman Church? And again, is it to "oppose the spirit of formalism," (p. 170,) that we pray that children after baptism may remain in the number of the elect, and lead the rest of their lives according to this beginning? No one, as far as we know, now-a-days, believes that because a man has been regenerated in infancy he will be necessarily saved, should he grow up to man's estate; and we do not think that Mr. Reichel has met with any such notion among his countrymen. It is a pity, therefore, that his serenity should be disturbed by so needless a protest. Once more, it is not an irresistible inference that because the Church has withdrawn from her Ordination Services certain portions at one time used, she by this retrenchment intended to show that she did not consider the Holy Eucharist a sacrifice, or her ministers sacrificing priests in any sense. "Had our Reformers," says Mr. Reichel, (p. 207,) "believed the LORD's Supper to be a sacrifice, they would assuredly not have struck out of the Ordination Service the whole of the words and acts by which that power was supposed to be conferred." We imagine our learned commentator alludes to such acts as the delivery of the eucharistic vessels into the hands of the priest, &c., acts which have been long ago proved to be not essential to the valid ordination of a PRIEST in the fullest sense, and which, symbolical and beautiful as without all doubt they were, any national Church might change or abolish as she thought expedient. A fuller acquaintance with earlier ordinals, and with the doctrine concerning the Holy Eucharist, which obtained in the Churches which employed them, might have taught the lecturer that such simple forms as our own were entirely consistent with belief in the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, and that when the bishop bestows the HOLY GHOST for the office and work of a priest, and gives authority to minister the holy Sacraments, he also gives the power requisite for the whole performance of the priest's duty, whatever the other formularies may further exhibit that duty to be.

There is some (not much) ingenuity in Mr. Reichel's explanations of various points in the services and arrangements of the Prayer-Book. For instance, the reason why the suffrages after the Creed are directed to be said by the Priest, standing, is "in order that, by the attitude of standing, the minister might be enabled to pronounce them the more powerfully, so as to excite the response of his congregation, and to equal it, which, when great numbers respond, requires a louder tone than common." (P. 69.) The object of the rubric in the Communion Service which enjoins the

Priest to communicate himself first, is "to discountenance the Lutheran idea, that the consecrating minister represents CHRIST, and therefore must not receive the Communion himself." (P. 125.) In total ignorance that the statement has been often shown to have no grounds of credibility, Mr. Reichel reproduces the opinion that the retention of the Minor Festivals in the Calendar was entirely occasioned by their use as dates, to denote certain days or seasons of the year, and had no reference whatever to any honour intended to be paid to their memory. And so fond is he of this theory, that he denies that any respect was meant to be shown to the Blessed Virgin by the appointment of the great days of the Purification and Annunciation.

"So much did the Reformers abhor the idea of paying any honour to the Virgin beyond what Scripture pays her in the title given to her by inspiration, Blessed,' that, to exclude the least idea of any such honour, they actually did not once name her in the prayers to be used on these two days!"-P. 22.

As if those Collects were the invention of the revisers of our Offices, and had never been used by Christians who paid even undue reverence to the Mother of our LORD; or as if, on the one hand, the mention in both of the Incarnation of the SON of GOD was not sufficient honour to the holy Mary, and, on the other, as though the allusions and narratives in the Epistles and Gospels for those days did not sufficiently express the intention of the Church in retaining the above forms. We may ask further whether any intentional dishonour is intended in the case of SS. Simon and Jude by the omission of their names in the Collect for their Festival, and by the absence of all mention of S. Simon even in the special services of the day?1 Undoubtedly there is full justification for the lengthened readings of Holy Scripture in our Matins and Evensong (which, indeed, is a practice derived from primitive times, and by no means a device of modern origin 2); but to find that justification in the idea that such uninterrupted lections are "a declaration of the right of every man to exercise his own judgment on God's Word," (p. 18,) is to wilfully ignore the true design of the Church,-viz., to support and comfort those who, by authorised instruction, have already learned Christian doctrine, and to promote their spiritual growth, and is to prostitute a devout and Catholic practice to the advancement of the worst feature of modern misbelief. Our commentator has employed his own private judgment in denying to

1 We may add here that Mr. Reichel considers the Church merely to recommend, but not to prescribe, fasting, leaving it to her members to please themselves in the matter.

2 We do not, in saying this, touch upon the question whether our Daily Lessons might not have been better arranged. See Freeman's " Principles of Divine Service," ch. iv. § 4.

2"

the Apocrypha the title of Scripture (p. 97), which the Sixth Article assigns to it, and of which, quoted as it is by our Blessed LORD and His Apostles, common reverence would not have suffered it to be deprived. And he considers that it ought to be eliminated from the services of the Church, and most particularly that the introduction of the "idle legends of Susanna, and Bell (sic) and the Dragon, evinced a deplorable want of Christian feeling and right judgment." (P. xxiii.) Our readers will agree with us that the Presbyterian divines at the Savoy Conference would have found an able supporter in the Irish Professor. Of course, with regard to matters of present controversy, we expect to find such a writer on the wrong side; but we thank him for telling us that the alb ought to be worn, and is " more convenient" at the Holy Eucharist than the surplice.

Perhaps, however, the greatest piece of misrepresentation in the whole book is the treatment which the Ordination Service has met with. It "strikingly discountenances the idea that the Christian ministry is a continuation of the Jewish Priesthood," and confers "no sacrificial power on the Christian minister." "Priest " all through the Prayer-Book is by natural inference said to be no more than "Presbyter, in its strict etymological sense." And then we come to the two following statements, which are something more than mistakes:-"What is said to be committed by the imposition of the hands of the Bishop and his Presbyters is, not the HOLY GHOST, but the office and work of a Priest. Put fully, the sentence would run thus: 'Receive the HOLY GHOST,' &c., . . . 'which office is now committed to thee by the imposition of our hands.' Secondly, the word receive' is not a command, but a prayer. It is equivalent to mayest thou receive.'" (P. 209.) Perhaps Mr. Reichel will inform us what was the gift which S. Paul speaks of as conferred by the laying on of hands; whether it was merely the outward admission to an office, analogous to the ceremony used, for instance, in conferring knighthood, or the gift of the HOLY GHOST for sanctification in, and the exercise of, a certain definite office? Mr. Reichel is Professor of Latin in the Queen's University, and seems to have paid some attention to the force of the imperative mood does he consider that the words, "Take, eat," are a prayer? or that our LORD's language in S. John xx. 22, 23, which the Church exactly adopts, is a mere wish? Again, in the solemn commission, "Whosesoever sins," &c., Mr. Reichel sees nothing more than an external power of excluding from participation in Christian rites, residing not specially in the Apostles or their successors, but in the whole Church. We need not take the trouble to refute such a notion, but will merely desire our commentator to consider the expressions in S. Matt. xviii. 18, "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven," &c., and to remember that the Prayer-Book states that one of the effects of priestly abso

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