disregarded authority? It would be difficult to instance a thinker more disposed to weigh the thoughts of other thinkers, more ready to modify his views by consideration of their's or the grounds on which they rest. Can those who bring the charge against him substantiate of it more than this, that he had not their convictions respecting the authority attributable to a certain set of writers of a certain age? And does it not appear that this theory of the consentient teaching of the Fathers and its " practical infallibility" involves the depreciation of authority, at least in one very important sense? He who binds himself by it, strictly, must needs hold human intelligence to be of little avail in the determination of religious questions, since it is the leading principle of this theory of faith, that our belief has been fixed by an outward revelation, the commentary of tradition upon Scripture,-and that we are not to look upon the reason and conscience of man, interpreted by the understanding, as the everlasting organ of the Spirit of Truth? The weakest intellect can receive doctrine implicitly as well as the strongest, and to hand over that which has been already settled and defined requires no great depth or subtlety of intellect. If the weightiest matters on which the thoughts of man can be employed are already so determined by an outward oracle, that all judgment upon them is precluded, and the highest faculties of the human mind have no concern in establishing or confirming their truth, authority, as the weight which the opinion of the good and wise carries along with it, in regard to the most important questions, is superseded and set aside. And the fact is, I believe, that professors of this sort of Catholicity, whether for good or for bad, whether from narrowness or from exaltedness, are by no means remarkable for a spirit of respect toward highly endowed men, or for entering into the merits of a large proportion of those who have conciliated the esteem and gratitude of earnest and thoughtful persons. None are burning and shining lights for them except such as exclusively irradiate their own sphere (which is none of the widest); and their radiance appears the stronger to their eyes because they see nothing but darkness elsewhere. Let it be clearly understood that I here refer to that antiquarian theory, according to which every doc. trine bearing upon religion, held by the Fathers, even though the matter of the doctrine be rather scientific and metaphysical than directly spiritual and practical,-as for instance the doctrine of

free will,-constitutes Catholic consent, is the voice of the Holy Catholic Church, and therefore the voice of its heavenly Head; that the early Christian writers, where they agree, are to be considered practically infallible, on account of their external position in reference to the Apostles; that succeeding writers are of no authority, except so far as they deliver what is agreeable to "Catholic doctrine," so understood, and in so far as they differ from it are at once to be considered unsound and unworthy of attention. If such a theory is not, as I imagine, maintained by a certain class of High Churchmen, I shall be very glad to find that it is only a shadow: though in this case I should be more than ever perplexed to understand what it is that the Catholic and orthodox so much disapprove in the opinion of my Father on the subject in question; or why he should be accused of disregarding authority, because, though he thought the consentient teaching of the early Christian writers worthy of deep consideration, he did not hold it to be absolutely conclusive upon theological questions, or certainly the voice of God. Something very different was, to his mind, implied in the promise of Christ to his Church; for without His presence in any special sense, as the life-giving Light, a fully developed system of doctrine, capable of being received implicitly, might have been transmitted from age to age. He saw the fulfilment of it, partly at least, in the power given to individual minds to be what the prophets were of old, by whom the Holy Ghost spake, religious instructors of their generation.*

Literature, liberally pursued, has no other bearing on a man's religious opinions than as it leaves him more at liberty to form them for himself than any other. Looking at the matter in another point of view I readily admit, that, so far as it is the want of any regular profession at all, it may be in some degree injurious to the man, and consequently to the thinker. But if

* I find the same argument in Dr. Arnold's Fragment on the Church. He words it thus: "The promise of the Spirit of Truth to abide forever with his Church, implies surely that clearer views of truth should be continually vouchsafed to us; and if the work were indeed fully complete when the Apostles entered into their rest, what need was there for the Spirit of Wisdom, as well as of Love, to be ever present even unto the end of the world?"

After speaking in warm eulogy, according to his wont, of S. T. C. Dr. Arnold says, "But yet there are marks enough that his mind was a little

a regular calling tends to steady the mind, restraining it from too tentative a direction of thought, and what may prove to be a vain activity, it tends perhaps in an equal degree to fix and petrify the spirit, of which I beleive abundant evidence may be found in the writings of professional men. Perhaps there is no fixed occupation which does not in some measure tend to disturb the balance of the soul; the want of one permits a man to commune with human nature more variously and freely than is possible for those to whom a stated routine presents persons and things with a certain uniformity of aspect; it is not mere experience that gives knowledge, but a diversified experience, and the power of beholding the diversity it contains through the absence of a particular bias and leisure for contemplation. So far, therefore, as it presents facilities for the acquirement of the philosophic mind, even the want of a regular calling may in some degree facilitate the acquirement of truthful views in religion. "It is scarcely possible," said my Father himself, addressing Mr. Frere, "to conceive an individual less under the influence of the ordinary disturbing forces of the judgment than your poor friend; or from situation, pursuits, and habits of thinking, from age, state of health, and temperament, less likely to be drawn out of his course by the under-currents of hope or fear, of expectation or wish. But least of all by predilection for any particular sect or party; for wherever I look, in religion or in politics, I seem to see a world of power and talent wasted on the support of half truths, too often the most mischievous because least suspected of errors.

It was the natural consequence of his having no predilection for any sect or party that parties and party organs have either neglected or striven against him; they were indeed his natural opponents, as they must ever be of any man, whose vocation it is to examine the truth of modes of thought in general, while an assumption of the truth of certain modes of thought is the ground of their existence as parties, and the band that keeps them together. It has been observed by Mr. Newman, in condemnation of "the avowed disdain of party religion;” that

diseased by the want of a profession, and the consequent unsteadiness of his mind and purposes: it always seems to me, that the very power of contem plation becomes impaired or diverted, when it is made the main employ ment of life." See Arnold's Life and Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 57.

*Church and State. Advertisement, VI. pp. 24, 25.

“Christ undeniably made a party the vehicle of his doctrine, and did not cast it at random on the world, as men would now have it;"* and undeniable it surely is, that there is nothing radicaly wrong in the union of members for the support or propagation of truth. But then, from the weakness of human hearts and fallibility of human understandings it comes to pass, that while party union is right in the abstract, parties are generally more or less wrong, both in principle and conduct, and do more or less depart from truth in their resolution to maintain some particular portion or representation of it. The party that has our Lord at its head and fights for Him and Him only is one with the Church of Christ, considered as still militant; but this host, like the fiery one that surrounded Elisha, is invisible. The party which Christ instituted was not invisible, but it differs essentially from all parties within the precincts of Christendom for this very reason, that it was undeniably instituted by Him, and that they who composed it had to defend the moral law in its depth and purity, theism .tself in its depth and purity-(the acknowledgment of God as a Spirit, one and personal, with the relations to each other of the Creator and the creature-a faint distorted shadow of which was alone preserved by Polytheists)—against a popular religion, which, though pious and spiritual in comparison with utter want of faith in the things that are above, was the very world and the flesh, as opposed to Christianity. Thus they were striving for the life and soul which animates the religion of Christ, whereas I would fain believe, that the contentions

* Sermons preached before the University of Oxford. Serm. viii. p. 165. Heathenism in Scripture is represented as one with sensuality, profaneness and disregard of the life to come; to work the will of the Gentiles was to run to every kind of evil excess; and almost the same, I suppose, may be said of the monstrous heresies, against which the Apostles and their successors spoke in terms of unqualified reprobation. In his Fragment on the Church, Dr. Arnold remarks, that “the heresies condemned by the Apostles were not mere erroneous opinions on some theoretical truth, but absolute perversions of Christian holiness; that they were not so much false as wicked. And further, where there was a false opinion in the heresy, it was of so monstrous a character, and so directly connected with profligacy of life. that it admits of no comparison with the so-called heresies of later ages," pp. 89, 90. Does it appear that our Lord ever rebuked either unbelief or misbelief, except as one and the same with worldliness and wickedness, or at least, as in the case of Thomas, subjection of the mind to the flesh!

among parties of Christians are less for this life and soul than for the forms in which they severally hold that it is most fitly clothed, and with which they identify it.* And this is no unworthy subject of contention, because the life and spirit are best preserved and most fully expressed in the truest forms,-a correct and distinct intellectual system is the best preservative of the essential portion of faith; but yet, because they are forms, the strife concerning them will be more apt to degenerate into an unholy warfare than a struggle pro aris et focis,—for the very ideas of a spiritual religion and for a pure and pregnant morality, the testimony to which every soul may find at home, if it looks deep into its own retirements.

In reference to the present subject, however, I need only observe that party compact operates chiefly for the preserving and extending of truth, considered as already established, while the discovery or development of it is only to be achieved by individual efforts; it even tends to retard such progress in the beginning, because, as essentially conservative, it ventures upon no experiments, but is bound to consider every departure from that form of teaching, which has hitherto served to convey and preserve spiritual truth, as endangering its purity and stability; and

* To take the extreme case, Socinianism, I have long thought that a man may, that many a man does, athwart the negative lines of this creed, which in some cases appear to be quite negative in operation, behold in heart and spirit every deep truth on which Christians around them are dwelling, every truth meet to bring forth the fruit of good living, and to fit the soul for a higher life than the present. I hope and believe that such persons do practically embrace the divinity of Christ, because they worship, serve and obey Him,—they address their religious thoughts to Him habitually—they attribute to Him that which is properly divine, the work of Creation and Redemption, although they have wrong conceptions of the method of this work. On the other hand I should suppose that many Romanists must practically impute divinity to the blessed Mother of Jesus, from the addresses which they make to her, and the extent to which they seem to devote their religious minds to her. At best they appear to make her one with our Saviour, and not merely with the man Christ Jesus but with the Eternal Son of the Father, extending His attributes to her, and making of the twain two persons and one God. How awfully dangerous would it be to address Christ as the Mediator betwixt God and man if he were not himself both God and Man! It will not, I trust, be supposed that I am bere instituting any general comparison between Socinianism and Romanism with a preference of the former. I am merely considering what either may possibly be to the heart and mind of the professor.