reason perish in the very hour when they are most needed, the hope of the gospel is sure and steadfast, disappointing not, but growing stronger and brighter with every increasing year of the Christian's life.

Who, moreover, that has experienced the peace of mind which scenes like this occasion, does not long for their renewal? How sweet the enjoyment of them! in recollection how grateful and soothing! and from the anticipation the soul derives nutriment no less pleasant than beneficial. Yes, to this feast of benign affections, where the mind, the heart, and the soul, are at once exercised, refreshed, and nourished, where every angry passion is lulled to rest, where the stillness and peace of heaven are in some measure anticipated, and over which the spirit of the Saviour-a spirit of love, and piety, and affection, broods; to this feast of joy and peace in a holy mind, who of you wishes not to come, that he may encourage the growth of the various Christian graces, stir up his mind to the full discharge of duty, repress and subdue what is wrong, supply what is defective, confirm and hallow what is good, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work!

But if I may interpret your feelings by my own, none of these considerations, nor all of them together, affect you so strongly as your attachment to the Saviour. Were you asked why you surround the table of the Lord, the answer would be prompt upon the tongue- "because I love him." Sweet to me, would you add, is the remembrance of Jesus. For was he not divinely great and good? Had he not compassion for the wretched and mercy for the sinful, and a kind look and an outstretched hand for the returning prodigal? Where can I find instructions which, like his, inform the mind and win the heart? And in his words I recognize God's grace and wisdom. To whom shall I go but unto him? for he has the words of eternal life. Mercy do I need, and in Jesus I find at once mercy offered and mercy exhibited. I seek the way to God and Heaven, and Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I would not willingly perish and become insensible to the beauties of my Creator's works and the thrill of pure affection; and Jesus assures me, if I believe in him, though I die, yet shall I live, and inhabit the mansions where the sons of God shall for ever dwell together in pious and delightful intercourse. For the divine excellences of his character, for the bright and pure example he has left, for the invaluable disclosures which he made, for his dying that I might live, for his suffering that I might rejoice, for his redeeming me from the thraldom of sin, from the apprehension of coming judgment and the fear of death, for the bright hopes he has kindled, the free pardon he has communicated, the durable joys that he gives in time, and the everlasting bliss he promises in eternityfor these things I love the Saviour. He was the chosen servant of God; he was the well-beloved Son of God; he was the wisdom, power, and image of God; he was intimately allied with God; he was constantly approved of God; he was pre-eminently honoured of God; raised by God from the

dead, received up into glory, seated at God's right hand, made judge of quick and dead, and is destined to come a second time to award to every man according to the things done in the body; and therefore I feel it a high privilege to love him, and am conscious of a devout reverence mingling with my affection, rendering it at once more pure, grateful, and influential. But vainly do I attempt to tell you of the reasons why Jesus is precious to me. To do so fully, I must unfold my heart before you; I must penetrate into its most secret workings; I should have to call up all that I have felt in perusing the narratives of his life and death, in dwelling on his holy and lovely character; I should have to go through the history of my Christian life, and set before you the instances, all but numberless, in which the Gospel of Jesus has given me aid and strength and comfort-has led me from sin to holiness-from the world to God-from earth to heaven; has refined my affections while it deepened them, has enlarged and expanded my mind. And if now the tenour of my days is peaceful and serene; if I have hope towards God; if a sweet consciousness of his favour pervades my soul, proving a constant source of pleasant thoughts and pleasant images; if I look on my family with comfort, perhaps delight; if I can anticipate the time when this mortal shall be clothed upon with immortality, and all those who have aided and blessed me on the journey of life be as full of happiness as the large capacity of the undying spirit will admit; to whom, under God, do I owe all these blessings-blessings truly priceless, blessings which make out of the creation of nature a new creation, blessings which double all the good of life and lessen all its ills—to whom but to Jesus am I indebted? And therefore I love him with reverential fervour, and therefore it is pleasant to me to muse on his character and deeds, to honour him in my affections, that by a humble imitation I may honour him in my life. For this cause I eat and drink in remembrance of him, and pray to his Father and my Father, to his God and my God, that the perishing memorials of his love may, by the divine blessing, prove that food which cometh down from heaven to be the life of the soul. True it is I do not believe that he was God the Son; but I do hold, what the Scriptures teach, that he was the Son of God. I do not believe that he was God-man; but I hold, as the Scriptures teach, that God was with him. I do not believe that he made God merciful; but I hold, what the Scriptures teach, that he came because God was merciful. I do not believe that he reconciled God to man, but man to God. And surely it is enough to believe what the Scriptures expressly set forth; and strange is it if love to Christ really depends on notions which have no direct countenance in the sacred records, and wear the appearance of contravening some of their first and most important principles. And well certainly do I know that my simply scriptural faith is fitted to awaken devout attachment to the Saviour; well do I know that the more it extends its empire over my bosom, the more ardent and respectful, the more grateful and devout, the more stable and

influential, does my attachment to Jesus become; and the more pleasant also is the occasion when, as now, I eat and drink in remembrance of him. And fully assured am I by experience, that my heart will glow and throb with pure emotion at the thought of him, of whatever redounds to his honour, advances the great objects of his life and death, approximates me more closely to his divine image, and assures me more strongly of a union with him through eternity; when my faith shall have become, and in proportion as it does become, the sole guide of my life, the sole prompter of my feelings.

ON THE CORRUPT STATE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

MR. BEVERLEY, of Beverley, Yorkshire, is a young man of family and fortune, who enjoyed a university education at Cambridge, but who, unlike the majority of those who unite the two former advantages with the latter, now devotes his time and talents to the assiduous pursuit of knowledge and the zealous enlightenment of his fellow-men. When the Catholic question was uppermost in public discussion, he was powerfully active, by word of mouth and of pen, in promoting the happy issue. On the subject of the present pamphlets he expressed his opinions with fearless honesty a few years ago, in a clever appendix to a singular Latin document professing to have been discovered in the archives of the ancient town of Beverley. That book was aptly entitled "Horrida Hystrix." The porcupine shafts have now again bristled up, and not a few have been darted with unerring, if not deadly aim. Mr. B. thus opens his business with his Grace of York:

"MOST REVEREND SIR,

"If the many persons in your diocese who have the ability and the wish, had also the courage, to express their opinions openly on the present state of the Church of England, I never should have undertaken to lead the forlorn hope against the ecclesiastical batteries. The timidity of my friends compels me to become your Grace's correspondent, and to invade the slumbers of Bishopthorpe with sounds not usually addressed to Archiepiscopal

A Letter to his Grace the Archbishop of York, on the present Corrupt State of the Church of England. By R. M. Beverley, Esq. 12th Edition.

A Reply to a Letter addressed by R. M. Beverley, Esq., &c. By the Rev. William Taylor Wild, Curate of Newark-upon-Trent. 2d Edition.

The Apostolical Institution of the Church Examined, in Six Letters to R. M.. Beverley, Esq. By the Rev. G. Oliver, Domestic Chaplain to the Right Hon. Lord Kensington.

The Tombs of the Prophets: a Lay Sermon on the Corruptions of the Church of Christ. By R. M. Beverley, Esq.

ears." "It is no slight matter to attack the Established Church; but my duty and my inclination lead me to the attempt; and without the slightest care for the consequences, I begin the war which shall never end but with victory, or that final event which silences all writers."

The object at which Mr. B. aims is the dissolution of all connexion between Church and State. He abhors that unholy union; he traces some of its mighty mischiefs in the successive periods of Christianity; and avows the conclusion to which every consistent Dissenter comes, that the sooner religion is absolved from the polluting patronage of the world, the better. "Let the Church of England be put on a footing with all the other sects in the land." "The State must repudiate the Church, and the Church the State." (Letter, p. 37.) He would have tithes abolished, and all Church property confiscated-taking care, however, "that all present incumbents should be allowed to retain their benefices for life, by which means, no person in possession would be at all injured; and, as for those future parsons who are not yet in being, it cannot be said that they who do not exist would be injured by such an arrangement; for no one hereafter would take holy orders who did not know what he had to expect. If, however, some should persist in thinking that we hereby injure some embryo parsons, as well might it be said that we are cruel to a crocodile, when we break a crocodile's egg. The cruelty is in imagination and not in reality; for the crocodile is not yet in being." (Id.)

In pursuance of the object thus avowed, Mr. B. examines the claims of the English Church to be regarded as the one true and apostolic church. There is solid argument in the following clever piece of irony:

"On some weak minds, perhaps, the unceasing assurances from the pulpit, that the Church of England is synonymous with the Christian religion, may have made a little impression; and I know some few persons who agree with the majority of the clergy in their definition of religion. Our reverend pastors present us a strange picture of Christianity in their sermons, their charges, and their tracts. According to their notions, the apostles, or at least the immediate successors of the apostles, were reverend gentlemen, residing in wealthy livings, preaching fifty-two written, printed, or lithographed sermons in the course of the year, and securing livings for their clerical, or commissions in the Roman army for their military sons. In that golden age, according to their system, all the world was not only taxed by Cæsar, but tithed by Cæsar, for the benefit of the primitive clergy; and the priests of the first three centuries amused themselves with card-playing, fox-hunting, horse-racing, shooting, fishing, and dancing, as they do at present. Pluralities were multiplied, and translations were frequent. St. Paul had a golden prebend of Philippi, a large living at Rome, another at Thessalonica, and was, besides, the very reverend' the Dean of Corinth. St. Peter was translated from the bishoprick of Babylon to that of Rome; and St. James was enthroned at Jerusalem, with great pomp and large lawn sleeves, after having subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles according to Act

of Parliament. St. Bartholomew was pressed to take the see of Jericho, but he preferred holding the deanery of Napthali, with the great living of Succoth, which last was of the clear yearly value of 8000/., and besides was encumbered with very little duty, as there were only 700 persons in the parish, 500 of whom did not believe in the Christian religion. St. Clement died worth twelve hundred thousand pounds in the three per cent, consols, the careful savings of forty years' episcopacy; and Irenæus, having been a tutor to a Consul's son, had the primacy of Rome offered him, which however he refused, being content with the bishoprick of Lyons."-Letter, p. 4.

Figures of speech aside, Mr. B. proceeds to point out, in plain terms, two principal items in which the primitive Christian Church and the present English Church are essentially different. "1. There were no diocesan bishops; 2, there was no tithe or church property" in the primitive church. He proves, by very obvious scriptural criticism, what to us never seemed difficult of proof, though Mr. Wild labours hard to make out the contrary, that bishop means the same as presbyter or elder in the language of the New Testament, and that the distinctions of orders in the priesthood are of subsequent origin. He maintains unopposed his second position, at least as relates to tithes, Mr. Wild allowing at once that in the early church the tithe system was out of the question, from the difference of circumstances; while, as to church property, the only answer attempted is, that the Christians contributed voluntarily to the common fund to a large

amount.

The worldly spirit of the Establishment, the worldliness of its priests, (with honourable exceptions, principally among the curates,) and the political manoeuvring by which vacant bishoprics are filled up, (with very few

Mr. Beverley had appealed to Acts xx. 28, where Paul calls the elders of the Church of Ephesus bishops (rendered overseers in the Common Version); and to Titus i. 5-7," that thou shouldst ordain elders in every city, if any be blameless," &c., "for a bishop must be blameless." In reference to the former passage, Mr. Wild says, that every bishop was an elder, though not every elder a bishop, just as every English bishop is a clergyman, though not every clergyman a bishop; and wishes us to believe his dictum that these elders of the Church of Ephesus were all diocesan bishops. The latter passage he understands to mean that Titus should ordain elders into bishops in every city; promote them from priests into diocesans; and appeals to the good sense of his reader to decide whether this interpretation is not the most natural, “and ordain elders (bishops) in every city.” By this rule, when English priests are ordained, they become bishops. Mr. Wild then refers to three passages from the Epistles of Iguatius, one from Cyprian, and another from Jerome, as proving three orders of clergy to have subsisted, viz. bishops, priests, and deacons. But the Epistles of Ignatius are too questionable to be trusted, even as proving what was the case in his day; and the other two references (strange to say) speak only of the order of bishops, without deciding whether they differed (as perhaps they might in the third and fourth centuries) from the elders of the New Testament.-(See pp. 15-24.)