and consolation. We are convinced that well-informed laymen would heartily join in the efforts made to establish in such positions associated bodies of clergymen, who should work with unity of will, counsel, and power, and carry into the kingdom of CHRIST that system of energetic combination in labour which has produced such large results within their own recollection in the kingdom of this world. We should then no more have outcries against parochial colleges of the clergy than we have against the hospital or dispensary, in which men's corporal infirmities are attended to by associated bodies of medical men. People would then understand how the work that seems, and is, impossible under the present system of solitary working, might be accomplished with comparative ease by associated clergy. They would see that parochial colleges of clergy, of men endowed with the special grace of GOD for their special work, are the proper instruments to do the home missionary duty of the Church; and not here and there an inferior layman, appointed to this labour almost because he is unfit for any other.

Many of our Difficulties would indeed be done away by a real co-operation of the laity in Church work. And not least of all results would it be, that reasonable men would then see how unreasonable it is to demand of the clergy a certain amount and kind of work, and yet to deny them the means by which to do it. How absurd then, would seem fettered Convocations! How wicked the tyrannical exercise of a legitimate power in the appointment of Bishops, only for the sake of party or personal interests! How foolish the many pettinesses which sensible men are now guilty of under the plea of No-Popery!

If this great difficulty of lay ignorance, and lay indifference, and lay idleness could be done away, then (like all other classes and corporate bodies of men) cathedral dignitaries, and university officials, and parochial clergy would be constrained to do their duty, and be what they profess to be. But they would not be required to give in their tale of bricks and yet be denied the straw wherewith to knead them. A reasonable demand would be made of the clergy, but it would be associated with a reasonable supply of all that machinery by means of which what is expected and asked for might be accomplished.

SWAINSON ON ARTICLE XXIX.

An Essay on the History of Article XXIX, and of the 13th Elizabeth, Cap. 12. By G. A. SWAINSON, M.A., &c. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. London: Bell and Daldy. 1856.

MR. SWAINSON's history is more conclusive than his logic, and more to the point than his illustrations.

The body of his pamphlet is an historical detail, both accurate and conscientious; the opening is a piece of reasoning which does not touch the question proposed, and the ending is an illustration which does not apply to the answer given.

As we propose to point out the merits of the better part, we must, in a few words, justify what we have said of the less felicitous portion.

Mr. Swainson commences by expressing his approbation of Dr. Lushington's declaration of the 12th of August, (a day very near to S. Bartholomew's), urging that "to expect Dr. Lushington to listen to an argument whether the Articles XXVIII. and XXIX. agree with the Bible, or to interpret those Articles by reference to the Bible," is "as unreasonable as to expect Lord Campbell to hear arguments brought against the justice coram Deo of any of our criminal enactments.'

Certainly Dr. Lushington cannot be expected to listen to an argument concerning the agreement of the Articles with Holy Scripture. Such an argument belongs to the question, whether the Articles shall or shall not be accepted. But, the Articles being accepted because they agree with Scripture, the "known scope and design of the compilers and imposers" being to express the doctrine of Scripture, where else than to Scripture shall we turn for the ultimate resolution of a doubt concerning their meaning? Theologians are consulted regarding the "natural force of the words," i.e., in the present case their technical force in theology; and if these doctors differ regarding the extent of a term, or if we doubt which school of the said doctors compiled the Article in question, then its interpretation can only be settled by an appeal to Scripture, in agreement with which both parties assume it to be.1

Holy Scripture is in this case adduced, not to prove the truth of the doctrine, but to explain the precise meaning of a statement of the doctrine. If indeed the Bishop of Exeter's opinion be correct, that not a constructive contradiction of an Article, but only an avowed contradiction, renders a clergyman amenable to the statute, 1 See Cautions for the Times, No. XXVI. p. 454. Where the error is in not distinguishing the rule for interpretation before acceptance from the rule after acceptance, or rather, after imposition.

then the appeal to Scripture cannot be allowed. But the Court at Bath proceeded on no such principle; nor, we imagine, would any Court, for in that case so long as a clergyman was willing to subscribe, (i.e., so long as he held his preferment), and so long as he did not name the Article, he might preach what tenets he chose. But if a constructive opposition makes a man obnoxious to the statute, it is a flat denial of justice to refuse the appeal to Scripture.

For example; suppose that Article XI. were the Article in question, and suppose that Archdeacon Denison had preached, "Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only," with what justice could the arguments have been refused, on the one hand, that Article XI. must be interpreted so as to admit S. James' doctrine; on the other hand, that the Archdeacon used those words in S. James' sense of them, and therefore did not contradict the Article? Had such a case been tried in Scolymorrhodia, would not the refusal of such a plea have been satirized as a piece of Hyperephanous injustice and astuteness ?1

Nor is Mr. Swainson's ending less infelicitous. We say this without assuming the correctness of Archdeacon Denison's doctrine. Opponents as well as advocates will see the inapplicability of the illustration used. It is drawn from the virtue of magnetism and the capacity or incapacity of certain substances to partake of that virtue.

We may remark, in the first place, that Mr. Swainson has much underrated the acquaintance of the schoolmen with the magnet. They did not know much of the variation of the compass, or the best construction of the needle, but we imagine that they were as well acquainted with the properties of magnetism concerned in this illustration, as a modern Cambridge philosopher, and were quite as able to discourse subtilly regarding them.

But this matters little. Mr. Swainson's illustration, drawn from "the physical fact that there must be in the body presented to the magnet, an aptitude without which the latter cannot communicate its power," assumes that which is at the very basis of the question. It assumes that the baptized man has not what he was undoubtedly intended to have, spiritual organs for the reception of spiritual food.

Mr. Swainson has not ventured to argue this point. Now an illustration should not be offered without some antecedent proof that the subject of the discourse comes within the sphere of the illustration. But we gladly turn to the history.—

We have a careful, and (we believe) an accurate history of the Act and of the Article,—with a notice of the printed books. On these last the question hangs, for the Act refers to a printed book. And the main question stands thus. The Bill was read the fourth time in the House of Commons on May 3; the third time in the 1 See Barclay.

House of Lords May 21; finally passed both houses May 28; received the Royal Assent May 29.1 The Articles were ordered to be revised and printed May 4; were revised, but not printed, May 11; were subsequently revised again; probably received the sanction of both Houses of Convocation after this revision; were certainly considered and ratified by the Queen after this revision, and were printed.2

Mr. Swainson asks, "Is it probable that all this would be accomplished before Monday, May 21, when the bill in its final shape was sent down to the Commons, or before May 29, when the bill received the royal assent ?" It is true that in our history some church matters, as those concerning the liturgy, have now and then been transacted very rapidly; not so however when subscription to Articles was involved.

But there is another question. Can any one believe, we ask, that the House of Commons would pass the bill in all its readings without seeing the book it referred to; that they would pass a law requiring subscription to Articles, and inflicting deprivation for denial of Articles, which Articles were not settled, and which were yet to be not only completed by Convocation, but revised by the Crown? To any one who knows the temper of the times, the supposition is incredible.

There was much jealousy of the Queen, and much jealousy of the Bishops. Mr. Swainson's pamphlet contains evidence of both; with proof that the House of Commons was not so subservient to the crown as is generally supposed. The very Act in question is an instance, we believe, of the jealousy with which the Bishops' proceedings were watched. For we do not agree with Mr. Swainson that the Bill was "directed against the Papists and those who were papistically inclined," (p. 44,) unless indeed the High Church Bishops are included under this latter term. We are inclined to agree with Calamy3 that the intention of the Bill was to forestall the Bishops, and set the rule of subscription lower than the Bishops would have done if left to themselves. However this may be, it

1 May 26 is printed; but our copy, received in the ordinary way of business through a bookseller, is corrected with a pen, May 29.

2 Pp. 36, 37.

3 Short historical view of Subscription in the Church of England. In Defence of Moderate Non-conformity, Part II., p. 106, Calamy's words are,-" In 1571, the Parliament to stop further rigours, made an Act requiring the Clergy to subscribe to those Articles only which concerned the true Christian faith and doctrine of the Sacraments. And this Subscription passed smoothly. This Act was designed by the Parliament to put an end to the severity of the Bishops. But it was far from answering the end intended. For, that very Convocation which sate at the same time, made a Canon to oblige to a Subscription to all the Articles as well those relating to rites and ceremonies, order and polity, as those which concerned the Christian faith and the doctrine of the Sacraments. And this was refused by many because of what was added in Article XX., and because of the XXXIVth, XXXVth, and XXXVIth Articles." Cardwell (Synodalia I. p. 61, note) allows that "this view of the matter certainly receives support from the parliamentary history of the time, and is also confirmed by the proceedings of Convocation in 1575.”

cannot be supposed that the Bill passed through all its stages in the Commons while the printed book to which it refers was yet unprinted, and not even finally composed. The book referred to must therefore be the earlier book which does not contain Article XXIX.

We take this to be the main argument. There are several auxiliary arguments and considerations, for which we must refer the reader to Mr. Swainson's pages. That Mr. Swainson has

arrayed his materials in the most lucid order, we do not say.

It requires probably the education and habits of a lawyer to arrange and present such a number of minute details in an order that is quite satisfactory. But it is doing good service to put the materials into Dr. Phillimore's hands. And every reader with little trouble and no small profit, may arrange them for himself, according to his own habits of thought.

Of the auxiliary arguments we will mention one, because Mr. Swainson has hardly done it justice. It is drawn from the tradition among the Nonconformists that the Act refers to the unaltered Articles. Calamy's words we have quoted, and they explain the only difficulty in the argument, which is that Article XXIX. is not specified as an alteration.1

A writer against Leslie says that the clause in Article XX. is not in the printed book to which the Act of Parliament refers. Now that clause is in the English Articles (though not in the Latin) of 1571: but it is not in Jugge and Cawood's Edition, 1563, of the Articles of 1562.

Cornelius Burges, who was the compiler of the tract "Reasons showing the necessity of Reformation," in his letter to Pearson, writes,3 "Our work is to show that there is no necessity for subscription by virtue of the Act of 13 Eliz. 12, because that thereby the Articles now urged do not appear to be by that law established. That as they now stand and are now worded, they ought not to be established until they be reformed."

Hamilton in the pamphlet mentioned by Mr. Swainson, p. 37, writes, "Since the Act 13 Eliz., or of 1571 refers only to a printed book of Articles 1562, the same year wherein they were agreed upon, but specifies not what printed copy of that year, &c." He doubts whether the English copy or the Latin is intended; but he has no doubt that the book intended belongs to that year.

And although Pearson, on the other side, appears to have supposed the Articles of 1562 and 1571 to be identical; yet his words carefully connect the Act of 1571 with the Articles of 1562. "The Act takes notice of the Articles as they were at that time printed. For thus the Act speaks." He recites the Act and pro

1 The Nonconformists laid stress on those Articles alone to which they objected. 2 A detection of the true meaning and wicked design of a book entitled "A Plain Method with Deists." London, 1710.

3 Postscript to 3rd Edition of "No sacrilege nor sin to alienate or purchase Cathedral lands." London, 1660.