of repentance and a new life? It is the mass, the ceremony, the sacrament; something to address the senses, not the understanding and the heart, which we there find. The altar is above the pulpit, the sacrament is put before the preaching of the word.

The theories of Moehler find no realization in the general belief and practice of Romanists.

We would lay stress upon this point by repetition. Let us not be blinded by the plausible representations of men of shrewd and cultivated minds concerning the inoffensiveness of the doctrine of merit in the Romish church. What are the facts in the case? Is the doc trine of Bossuet, Moehler or Wiseman, that the term merit is but expressive of the worth and dignity of that which we perform through grace, inculcated from the pulpit in

the hearing of the people? Do the great body of Roman Catholics know any thing about the nature and necessity of that "radical internal change," on which we are told the church insists so much? We hazard nothing in the assertion, that they are as ignorant on this point as the heathen. The only regeneration they know of is baptism. The church stands before and in the way of the Gospel, instead of modestly following it to receive its converts into her bosom. The work of regeneration should precede all connection with the church; but the church assumes to accomplish it through her sacraments, and to dispense salvation to those who keep her commandments.

[We are necessarily obliged, by the pressure of other matter, to postpone to our next Number the conclusion of this Article.-ED.]

Ar the beginning of a new year, it may be useful to recur to a few points connected with the discussion of "church principles," in which we have mingled somewhat freely during the past twelve months. We do not allude to the subject now for the sake of reiterating arguments which we have already presented under every possible aspect, but that we may put on record certain facts which seem worthy of preservation, and which may be of service hereafter. Nothing has appeared in the present controversy with "church principles," which has produced so much commotion among Episcopalians of every grade, as did the number of the New Englander for January, 1844. In that number we attempted to define the position of the evangelical party in the Episcopal church, (p. 113,) while we gave the dominant party

(we know not what else to desig nate it) an opportunity of defining its own position in our review of Bishop Brownell's Charge, (p. 143.) The manner in which the number was received by the organs of these parties, the Episcopal Recorder, and the Churchman-was both amusing and instructive. The Recorder, passing over our inquiry into the position of the evangelical party, forgot its usual candor and courtesy in its sympathy for prelacy, and made a most alarming assault upon our picture of Connecticut Episcopacy in canonicals.

Its editorial of February 17, is worth preserving entire. It is as follows:

"A SPECIMEN.-We have remarked in

another article upon the assaults which simply give a few sentences from a late our church is obliged to bear. We will professed review of the Charge of Bishop Brownell in the New Englander, a quar

terly religious publication at New Haven, of course from a vehicle which is considered dignified and gentlemanly according to their standard.

"Ought we for Christ's sake, to be sober, when prelacy is acting Bottom in the play, because it is prelacy, and not the real Bottom?" "

"Here it [Connecticut Episcopacy] is revealed with the most fatal ingenuousness, and our churches and ministers may see it without mistake. The dry bones are uncovered, the dead flat of Pharisaism is spread out before them, the ghastly grin of spiritual death stares them in the face.""

"Bishop Doane goes over to get the annointing of Dr. Pusey, and returns pompous Lord George, to set up a cross! Onderdonk is so fierce to become a Lord, that he makes himself a bear. And the good Bishop of Connecticut, whose misfortune it is to be hedged about by the stiff old pikes of Puritanism, amongst which it will not do so well either to be a Lord or a bear, must still charge.''

""The Book of Common Prayer is a shell of sects and schisms in its own cornposition, a patchwork of discord and moral confusion.'

"The church has been and now is but a band of discord and confusion-a synod of foxes and firebrands-Calvinistic ministers, priestly drones and nothingarians -Arminian bishops who have not so much as learned from Arminius the notion of a spiritual religion-sentimental formalists, formalists without sentiment

save the love of money and good living Oxfordizing and Romanizing doctors-all kennelled together under the standard of faith and worship in the Book of Common Prayer.'"

"These are some extracts from the January number of this great modern vehicle and defender of Congregationalism. Are they the spirit of Christ? What must be the known taste and character of the persons for whom such provisions are made? We can appeal to the whole range of the sharpest assaults in our sharpest publications against the errors of Presbyterianism and Congregationalism, and ask if any single instance can be found approaching these in character. We can not wonder at the indignation of Connecticut Episcopalians at such ill-bred abuse. And while the same publication invites the low churchmen of our church to come out and unite with them, we think the answer at present to be sufficient, whatever may be their religious offers, that we have not been enough accustomed to persons of this language and demeanor to become hardened to their rudeness, or to desire any further connexion with them. We give our readers these specimens of the kind of assaults we have to meet

having three several pamphlets of the very same description received this week, to show the nature of this warfare, and one reason why we have no taste for mingling in it."`

We shall have occasion to refer would only ask here, whether it is to this "specimen" again. We in accordance with the "spirit of Christ" to select an article of unusual though justifiable severity, as a "specimen" of the ordinary tone of the New Englander; to make garbled extracts from that article, presenting its seemingly harsh strictures out of their connection and so perverting their meaning; to keep out of view the arrogant and contemptuous assault upon the great doctrines of the Bible as held by all evangelical Christians, which called it forth; and then to denounce the New Englander as a low and vul. gar assailant of the church of Christ. This may be "considered dignified and gentlemanly according to the standard" of the Recorder; but to us it savors of slander and "illbred abuse."

The Churchman on the other hand, thinking it prudent to refrain from commenting upon our review of the "errors of the times," fully endorsed all that we said of the inconsistency of the evangelical party. A communication appeared in the Churchman of March 2d, in which, after quoting a few sentences from our "position of the evangelical party," the writer remarks as follows:

"The above extracts, Mr. Editor, are from an article in the New Englander, the whole of which from its pointed and nervous style, as well as from its peculiar fitness, may be profitably read by all quasievangelicals. The writer has evidently studied the Prayer-book and its doctrines to some purpose, and has made a home thrust which must cause no little uneasiness."

"We tell the New Englander, and we tell him honestly, that he is right in the view he has taken of the Prayer-book and its doctrines. The church does not and never has recognized any other than an Episcopally ordained ministry. Every

clergyman who serves at her altars, knows and acknowledges this. The very

men who make "common cause" with dissenters in the distribution of the Bible, and tracts, and Sunday school books, who are ever ready to parade themselves on the platform and to cry down forms, to exalt their independency, strongly maintain the invalidity of others' ministerial commission, and if questioned, will place Episcopacy where it manifestly belongs, on the principle of jure divino. It may be very much doubted, whether in the whole body of the Episcopal clergy, crooked as some of them may be in other respects, there is one who does not hold Episcopacy to be essential to the perfection of a church, while nineteen twentieths of them maintain the sounder doctrine, that it is essential to the being of a church. So far as the ministry is concerned, the (evangelical) party is

church to the back-bone."

is high

"We would gladly see the article from the New Englander published in every paper of the land, for it takes the bull by the right horn. Such sentiments will

soon lead our low church brethren to define their position,' and after defining it, to keep it.'

It will be seen from these extracts, that each party in the Episcopal church took more notice of what was applicable to the other in our January number, than of what had reference to itself. Perhaps this was judicious in them both. It was not long, however, before both parties forgot their discretion. Our review of the Bishop's doctrines of tradition, church salvation and bap tismal regeneration, was not suffered to wither under the animadversions of the Evangelical Recorder. It was summoned before the bar of High Churchism itself, where the Bishop appeared by his attorney, (a lawyer known only as the attachè or umbra of a miter,) and undertook to show without a single reference to Scripture, that "New Englandism" i. e. the pure faith of the Gospel as it has been held by the churches of New England for two hundred years, is 66 not the religion of the Bible." The plea of this attorney was dissected, as far as it would bear dissection, at p. 309.

At length it was deemed expedient to reprint both the articles refer

red to in our January number in pamphlet form for general circulation. The review of the Errors of the Times was republished in Hartford, with a few notes of importance in reply to the pamphlet of Juris Consultus. The article on the " position of the evangelical party," appeared in Philadelphia under the name of its author, Rev. Albert Barnes; who having thus publicly acknowledged it, leaves us at liberty than we could otherwise have done. to speak more freely of its merits This pamphlet met with a ready sale, and passed rapidly through several editions. It called forth another commendation from the Churchman in the following words. "Mr. Barnes' position of the Evangelical party, which appeared first in the New Englander, has been reprinted in several different forms. It is on many accounts a valuable production, and deserves to be extensively circulated."-Churchman, April 6.

It met with a different fate, how. ever, at the hands of the Recorder. It was immediately attacked with great virulence in the columns of that usually moderate journal, and the substance of three editorials was then published in a pamphlet, which is the very counterpart of Mr. Barnes' in shape, size and color,

in every thing-except its logic and its spirit. The predominant feature of this pamphlet is ill-nature. When we first read it we were strongly inclined to hand it over to our friend Juris Consultus, that he might read the authors a lecture on his three favorite points of criticism, viz. "taste and style," "courtesy," and "orthodoxy." But relenting at the thought of instigating one sour-tempered churchman to worry another, we concluded to leave it to Mr. Barnes to administer the reproof which such an outrage on all the common decencies of life demanded.

* N. E. Vol. II, pp. 309–313.

have been ungenerous even towards them. Our sole object in this discussion is truth. We may have cutting argument, or cutting satire; but above all things let us have fair and manly dealing.

We shall not follow the argument of the Recorder, as our object is to make a historical record. Our opinion is that it utterly failed to meet the great points at issue. In fact it hardly professed to meet them. It attempt ed to evade the force of Mr. Barnes' argument by an impeachment of his motives-to divert attention from the reasoning to the man. And yet it seems quite as much at a loss what to do with the man as with his argument. At one time he stands up like a moral and intellectual giant, whose personal character and reputation give an importance to all that he says and does, and the sanction of whose name entitles that to sober consideration, which when it appeared anonymously in the columns of the New Englander might safely be despised. Again he appears only as a man of moderate dimensions, not at all to be feared in argument, but of such an unfortunate disposition as to keep every thing around him in commotion; and who, after having divided the Presbyterian church, is resolved to split the Episcopal church also, if not to demolish it root and branch, simply to prevent some of his congregation from being enticed away by the superior eloquence of his Episcopal neigh bors (we can not say brethren) in the ministry. To accomplish this, this man so eminent as "a scholar, a gentleman, and a consistent and faithful Christian minister," stoops to the most willful misrepresentation, and betrays the most childish igno. rance. Such is Mr. Barnes in the

* "Mr. Barnes may be worried because members of his church and congregation leave him for our communion, for this we

are informed was the origin of this assault from the pulpit and the press."- Recorder's pamphlet, p. 7.

Episcopal Recorder. Is not this a "jumble of contradictions?"

But why is so much said about Mr. Barnes, if not to divert attention from his argument? Those pertinent inquiries (p. 140) which contain the gist of the whole matter, and admit only of a categorical answer, remain unanswered by the Recorder to this day.

The editors of the Recorder express their deep regret that Mr. Barnes should have interrupted the friendly intercourse which has hitherto existed between evangelical Episcopalians and the members of other denominations of Christians. Upon this point they say—

"Whether, as a personal question, this is an honorable reception of our fifteen years' labor in this city, in the various walks of our ministry, for the great purpose of enlarging and maintaining the privileges of mutual Christian kindness,

we leave Mr. Barnes and his own friends to judge. We fear that our own church and ministers might say, perhaps with justice, 'it has served you right.' [The Churchman has said this in good earnest.] How any other Episcopal clergyman can be expected to subject himself to the possibility of such rudeness, it is difficult to say. Certainly if we regard the delicacy of our own feelings, or the dignity of our own character, we can hardly submit ourselves to such uncourteous treatment, or afford any farther reasons arising from any intercourse with such opposers, for another similar attack upon us, under the avowed purpose of an inquiry into our posi

tion."

We hope that this humble apology for having exhibited so much of the evangelical spirit in former years, and the promise to pay more regard to the dignity of the church in future, will not be forgotten by true churchmen in the diocese of Pennsylvania when they meet to fulfill the decree against their late Right Reverend Father in God, "his bishopric let another take."

But after all, what is this delightful harmony which Mr. Barnes has so rudely interrupted? We have long felt that our union with Epis copalians in enterprises of benevolence has been purchased at too dear