remarks, and rather speak of it as a possible future contingency that a Colonial Bishop, of the views we have described, may be hereafter consecrated and sent forth. And of course, what applies to a Colonial Bishop applies to an English Bishop.

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We ask, then, in the name of all that is consistent, what possible right can Churchmen have to give an unqualified 'God speed!' to such a Consecration? And, in particular, we ask this of those whose office it is to keep knowledge,'—who are solemnly bound to discourage every form of erroneous and strange doctrine,'-the Priests of the Church. They who know that they would refuse, in the most peremptory manner, and as a matter of life and death, to associate a person of such views with themselves in the care of a parish, how can they rejoice in the going forth of such a one to the charge of a diocese? Is the latter less important than the former? Whether such Consecration should be formally protested or not, must depend on the degree of documentary or other evidence which is producible to substantiate the charge of false doctrine. But because we have not the requisite amount of this in any given case, are we, therefore, to waive our objections altogether, and give every outward demonstration of entire satisfaction, unaccompanied by the expression, in any form, of a shadow of disapproval? Surely we ought, inly at least, to mourn over the evil which, it may be, we cannot prevent, and be ready on all occasions to bear our faithful testimony against it.

Let us only review for a moment the Consecration ceremonial, and consider the incongruities inseparable from it, in the view of any sound Churchman, under the circumstances we are supposing; the Bishop to be consecrated, that is, avowing his disbelief of the collation of grace through the Sacraments, and therefore, à fortiori, through any rite whatsoever, and holding, besides, the whole cycle of doctrinal errors almost invariably found to accompany this one. Absolution is pronounced over him, in common with the rest, in the Morning Office, and again at the Holy Communion, by the presiding angel of the Church. To him it brings no comfort; he denies that any such commission to remit and retain' has been left to mortal men. In vain does the Gospel proper to the occasion (S. John xx. 19-24) tell how at the first the risen Head of the Church imbreathed such power with His own Immortal Breath into the Twelve in his chilling and desolate view, the gift was for them alone; the stream ceased at the fountain-head; they received, but they might not give; there have been none since on earth who had power to forgive sins. Or the other Gospel, prescribed as an alternative, is read (S. John xxi. 15-17). He listens to the touching charge conveyed to him through the

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person of the chief of the Apostles. Its first and tenderest injunction is, Feed my lambs.' Alas! he knows of none such in the flock of Christ, or views them with very different eyes from one who believes them to be undoubtedly of the true fold. His creed allows but of one, here and there, of the little children that are brought to Christ in Baptism being really made members of the heavenly family. The service proceeds. He promises to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God's word, and both privately and openly to call upon and encourage others to the same.' He includes among these erroneous doctrines a belief in the Presence of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist; the maintaining that powers of Absolution have been committed to the Church; or that, in Confirmation, Holy Orders, and Matrimony, graces proper to the several estates contemplated in those rites are conferred; the use of Fasting as a spiritual aid; the doctrine of judgment according to men's works; and others-a list including, be it observed, three out of the six points enumerated by S. Paul as principles of the doctrine of Christ,' viz. 'the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of eternal judgment.' (Heb. vi. 1, 2.) But, again, the awful Veni Creator Spiritus'

'Comes floating on its dove-like way;'

He kneels, but not to receive, in his view, the gracious Influence thus invoked. The kneeling crowds around him, with few exceptions, doubt not, but earnestly believe, that the Gracious Visitant waits to join Himself to the invoking word and shadowing hand of His commissioned servants; to him alone for whom the gift is desired, is the dread invocation, Receive the Holy Ghost,' utterly meaningless; the solemn imposition of hands before God and the Church, an empty form. Tremendous words for a mortal man to hear addressed to himself, believing them in their plain meaning! Shocking and blasphemous for him to hear, persuaded the while that they mean nothing! Awful to receive such a gift, acknowledging its reality! Unutterable trifling, thus solemnly to kneel, be imposed and prayed over, believing that you receive-nothing! RECEIVE THE HOLY GHOST, for the office and work of a Bishop in the Church of 'God, NOW COMMITTED UNTO THEE BY THE IMPOSITION OF OUR HANDS: IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND of the Son, and OF THE HOLY GHOST. And remember, that thou stir up THE 6 GRACE OF GOD WHICH IS GIVEN THEE BY THIS IMPOSITION OF OUR HANDS.' We ask, with mingled wonder and shame, what is the plain meaning of these words? is yet one more solemn act in this high ceremonial.

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sorrow and But there The Holy

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Communion is celebrated; the one common strength of the faithful in every land-the viaticum of the spirit's journey through life and through death-is offered to all alike. Bishop, and Priest, and People,-as well he who is to be sent forth, as they who send him in Christ's name, rich with their blessings and prayers, are called to partake of the One Bread, ere they part in this world for ever. There is no leave-taking like that for robbing parting of its blankness and its pain: the fleshly hands are joined, it may be, for the last time; but the hands of faith meet behind the cloud, clasped inseparably in one stedfast hold on that which is within the veil. But no such bright reality,—no such sense of re-ingrafting into one body,-invests the solemn rite in his view who most needs such strength, and would naturally derive most comfort from such communion. With him it is a simple act of obedience and memorial; whatever he may have done, he has received nothing.

It is impossible but that a painful sense of these things should obtrude itself upon the mind of any thoughtful person on such an occasion. But the unsatisfactoriness of it does not end here. Follow this now mighty spiritual Potentate,—mighty, despite his own disbelief and protest,-follow him to his far-off diocese. And first, can it be denied that he goes forth laden with the solemn censures of that branch of the Church to which he belongs? Let us not be thought uncharitable for making the assertion, however startling. What is the use of these things standing on record in the canons to which the Clergy are bound, if the application of them is not to be vindicated and asserted, as occasion shall arise? or what can be more trifling than a nominal recognition of them, which is to go no farther than words? As we said before, in a like case, whether or not the secular power concurs to give effect to them, our duty, and our feelings, as faithful Churchmen, must remain unaltered; we are bound to have a lively resentment of all departure from the Church's enactments and provisions, whether we can prevent them or not. The canons we allude to are the third, fourth, and sixth of 1603:- Whosoever shall hereafter 'affirm that the Church of England is not a true and apostolical 'Church, teaching and maintaining the doctrine of the apostles, 'let him be excommunicated, ipso facto' (can. three); 'whosoever 'shall hereafter affirm that the form of God's worship in the Church of England, contained in the Book of Common Prayer, and administration of the Sacraments, is a corrupt, super'stitious, or unlawful worship of God, or containeth anything in it repugnant to the Scriptures, let him be,' &c. (can. four); 'whosoever shall hereafter affirm that the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, by law established, are wicked,

antichristian, or superstitious, or such, as being commanded by ' lawful authority, men, who are zealously and godly affected, 'may not with good conscience approve them, use them, or as 'occasion requireth subscribe to them, let him be,' &c. Now, no one who has the smallest acquaintance with the terms in which the school in question speak of the doctrines of baptismal regeneration, and the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, can doubt that they bring themselves by the use of them within the ban of these excommunications. Unscriptural,' 'superstitious,' 'popish,' (therefore not apostolical,) fearful delu'sion,' 'soul-destroying heresy,' are among the least of the epithets they apply to these holy truths. And the sending forth of a Bishop thus self-excommunicated, is to be a subject of unmixed rejoicing! Nor, when we contemplate him setting foot in his appointed diocese, is the picture less melancholy. He goes to deny the faith of his own Church, and of the whole Catholic Church from the beginning, in lands where, perhaps, it had hitherto been professed in its purity, and 'to teach men so." He goes to administer awful rites of which he denies the power; to baptize with water, but not (as he believes) with the Holy Ghost; to offer in words to the faithful the body and blood of Christ, believing in his heart that they receive them not; to say to the trembling candidate for the awful gift, Receive the Holy Ghost, which yet I know thou receivest not:' he goes to proclaim his creed of desolateness and orphanhood, that Christ is no longer with His Church, save in some notional and unreal sense; finally, he goes to spread an atmosphere of Antinomianism, by a practical denial of the necessity of good works, and of a judgment according to them.

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We forbear to dwell longer on such a spectacle. We only ask whether, in the prospect of its being in some degree realized as the fruits of the Consecration of S. Peter's day last, we were not justified in turning with some mixture of pain from that otherwise glorious ceremonial; and in expressing our regret that no protest should have arisen from any other quarter. Not, of course, as if it were some new thing' to hear of amongst this unsoundness in fundamental doctrines-but that

'Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se

Crimen habet, quanto major, qui peccat, habetur.'

There is something more appalling than common in the idea of these errors being enthroned in the Episcopal Chairs of Churches, infant now, but born to mighty destinies, and perpetuated through their Fathers in God' to generations of their children. It is therefore that we earnestly deprecate any supineness on the part of our Church at large in conniving at the future

admission of these errors into the colonial Episcopate; because it is so wholesale a vitiation of truth at its very fountains, as far to transcend, in the sadness of its effects, what could follow from the inroads of similar unsoundness among priests and parishes:—the essential evil remaining, of course, in both cases the same.

But is this essential evil, it may be asked, really so great as has been here represented? Truly we have lulled ourselves into such an oblivious toleration of an ever-present mischief, that we scarcely realise the immensity of it. It will not be unprofitable, therefore, to point out some of the more serious bearings of these errors; it may chance to animate some among us to make a firmer stand against them. It is not difficult to show, by an appeal to the testimony of the Catholic Church, that such a Christianity as these views present us with is as totally another gospel' as any which S. Paul denounced in his day. We only compliment such views too much, and convey an impression that they involve no more than an allowable difference of view, when we speak of them as low views,' and the like, thus making orthodoxy to stand to them merely in the, relation of high views;' just as we might speak of the Erastian and Hildebrandist views of the relations of the Church to the State. The difference is, in reality, radical, fundamental, and vital. The question at stake is no less than that ancient one, Is the Lord among us or not?' Is it a truth, or is it a dream, that the tabernacle of God is with men?' that Christ by His Spirit abides in His Church, dwells in the hearts of the faithful, (not notionally, but as really as in the days of His flesh, only in a spiritual manner,)-comes in Sacraments,―works in graces,-speaks in ministers? How would the Church for fifteen hundred years,-until the days of Zuinglius,—have answered the question?

We

It is a significant fact that it is by the absence of Catholic determinations on the subject that we gather a reply. So entirely was the belief in a present Lord worked into every part of the Church's faith, that no single heretic ever seems to have risen up who dared in terms to deny it. Hence no Council deemed it necessary to affirm it; they would as soon have dreamt of affirming by a canon the existence of God. believe it may safely be asserted, that though the reality of Christ's existence on earth in the flesh has been called in question by heretics, the fact of His existence in the Church by His Spirit, never has; just as it has been observed that the existence of matter has been disputed, but not the existence of immaterial spirit. Even those heretics who seemed to be treading on the very verge of error concerning the Sacraments,-whose