advice is worth any thing, I would affectionately intreat you not to indulge a practice of reading books of controversy; there is no surer way to form a dry hard habit of mind, without obtaining really any religious knowledge. I can safely say I never gained any real grasp of any doctrine whatever, by studying controversy. The experience of most persons would be the same. At all times, but especially the present, act up to the light you have; study the Scriptures, pray for the SPIRIT, listen to the teaching of the Church, seek CHRIST in Holy Communion and works of mercy, and you will attain a far deeper insight into the mysteries of Revelation, than if you had mastered all the works of all the angry polemics whom the world has seen.

"2. And next, bear in mind that your faith must not be merely one of negations. At the judgment day we shall have to answer, not for what we have not, but for what we have, believed :—and it is a great delusion, under which many people labour, who fancy if their faith is not that of Rome, it is sure to be right; a delusion, because while we reject the dogmas which that Church has added as articles of faith, we must ever remember that the creeds which we daily and weekly repeat, contain certain, sure, and infallible truths which God has revealed, and which we must believe. Beware, then, of one of the errors of the day, that it is sufficient to disbelieve certain doctrines, in order to secure heaven. See that your faith is surely founded, and that you do not fall short of the full measure of truth as it is in JESUS.' We shall never attain eternal life if we content ourselves with thanking GoD we are not as other men are.' To their own Master they stand or fall.'

"3. Let us humble ourselves for our past neglect of duty, for which doubtless, among other reasons, GOD has allowed these evils to encompass us. We have been too apt to pride ourselves upon our superiority to every other religious body in the world. And what has happened? While we have been standing still, and our mouth speaking high swelling things, the work which God has set us to do has been left undone. Look at the ignorance and vice which every where surround you; look at the awful state of our large towns, which are heathen in every thing but the name: look at our churches in many places, closed to all practical purposes against CHRIST's poor: look at our few clergy, and our feeble efforts to evangelize the land, compared with the enormous wealth of this great country, and ask yourselves whether Ezekiel's words are not true of us. They were scattered, because there is no shepherd: My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, My flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did seek or search after them?' And it may be, God knows-but it may be that He has allowed the Roman Communion among us to put forth fresh life,-to show us that if we will not do His work, He has others who will. If it shame us from our dreams, and make us labour more earnestly in our Master's vineyard, it will really have helped us."

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

A Paraphrase and Annotations on the Book of Psalms. By. H. HAMMOND, D.D. 2 vols. 8vo. Oxford: At the University Press. 1850.

THERE has been but one separate edition of Hammond on the Psalms since its first publication, neither has it been reprinted since 1684, the date of the last edition of his collected works which was superintended by Fulman, a protegé of the author's. The present reprint has been extremely well edited, by one who has unostentatiously done the hard and dull work that falls to an editor, and modestly spoken of what he has done, None but those who have been engaged in such work, at all know how laborious it is, and how much of accurate scholarship is required in an editor. Complaint is made in the advertisement of numerous errors which had to be corrected. Besides the correction of these, the principal alterations in the present edition consist of critical explanations of words, with references to more modern authorities, and the addition of the Arabic or Syriac characters to words which Hammond had written in Hebrew. We wish the editor had informed us whether he printed from the original edition of 1659, or from the fourth volume of the author's collected works, and how far he has collated the two. We should have been glad also to know his opinion of the fitness of the last editor for his task. The editor of the miscellaneous works of Hammond in the Anglo-Catholic Library speaks of Fulman as being inaccurate, and we confess to some misgivings as to his knowledge of Greek, whilst we think there is some evidence to show that he was entirely ignorant of the Eastern languages. But perhaps he deputed some other more competent person to the task of correcting the press of the Annotations and Paraphrase on the Psalms

and Proverbs.

With regard to the work itself, we have no hesitation in saying that it is the most valuable of Hammond's writings. It is moreover beyond all question the best commentary on the Psalms that exists in our language, so that we are glad it should appear with the advantage of the Imprimatur of the delegates of the University press. We do not know how long the Paraphrase on the Psalms was in hand, but as it was nearly the last published work of the author, he had probably been employed in it for some time, perhaps ever since 1653, the date of the publication of his Paraphrase and Annotations on the New Testament. And we know from his biographer that independently of collections which he had been making for some years previously, that volume occupied him for four or five years. But however long may have been the time occupied in the actual preparation of the volume for the press, the Annotations on the Psalms have this advantage over those on the New Testament, which by the way we by no means wish to disparage, that from the subject itself, as well as from the time of their appearance, they have less connexion with the polemics of the period. Their composition we have no doubt, occupied many of the author's

leisure hours, and soothed his mind when overwrought by the excitement of controversial writing. It was Hammond's singular fate to be engaged in controversy to which he was naturally averse, all his life. The perusal of these volumes, in times the disputes of which run very parallel with those of Hammond's time, may perhaps afford to some of their readers the same kind of solace which their composition did to their author.

We have only to regret what in these days of octavos is perhaps almost unavoidable, the separation of the Annotations from the Paraphrase, each of them occupying a volume by itself.

The Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws as attempted in the Reigns of King Henry VIII., King Edward VI., and Queen Elizabeth. A New Edition, by EDWARD Cardwell, D.D., Principal of S. Alban's Hall. Pp. 344, 8vo. Oxford, at the University Press, 1850.

THE University Press has, we presume, sent out an edition of this work, from its being naturally connected with the Primers and Formularies of Faith, and with Dr. Cardwell's selection of documents bearing on the History of the English Church, already published there. The Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum itself, is a monument of the attempt to set forth a code of Ecclesiastical Laws for the Church of England, as a substitute for that gigantic body of Canons, Decrees, Glosses, and interpretations, which obtained throughout Western Christendom up to the sixteenth century. As an historical curiosity, it is interesting enough; as an authority, it is naught: that is, it only shows what Cranmer and Peter Martyr, and Parker and John Fox, believed and wished to enact, but which they did not enact. "Including within it (Dr. Cardwell says) matters of doctrine as well as discipline, it may be considered as exhibiting the mature sentiments of Archbishop Cranmer, and the avowed constitution of the Church of England at the close of King Edward's reign." It never, however, became in fact the law of the Church of England. And the theology of the English Church, we know, underwent considerable modification in Elizabeth's reign, and again under Laud and his school of Bishops. The peculiar value of the present edition arises from its containing a collation of the text edited by Fox (with a Preface of his own) in 1571, from Archbishop Parker's MS., as prepared for Parliament, with the MS. copy left by Cranmer ; "wherein was much of his own hand, as likewise of Peter Martyr, and other the assistants." This curious document is now in the British Museum. Dr. Cardwell has appended the variations in it at the end of the volume, and has prefixed a clear and exact account of the MSS. and editions of the work. We are not disposed to attach much value to the document itself: it illustrates the Thirty-nine Articles; in some points, as on the Apocrypha, rising above them; in others, as on the Sacraments, sinking below them. It punishes heresy with death. There are abundant, and some very useful, provisions for discipline, and many places, from which we might gain illustrations of the history and manners of the times.

Regeneration: or, Divine and Human Nature. A Poem in Six Books, by GEORGE MARSLAND. Pickering, 1850.

THERE could not be a better proof of the practical effects of the "right of private judgment," than the chaotic confusion of ideas which it has produced in this book, and the irreverence and unwarrantable speculations amounting (we believe involuntarily) to blasphemy, which it has here engendered. This result must infallibly occur where a man professes to acknowledge no law but that of liberty "-in truth the bitterest bondage to individual prejudice and error-and proceeds, without a shadow of diffidence or godly fear, to descant upon the hidden things of God. The poetic talent and vigorous intellect, which the author really possesses, have not saved him from the inevitable evils of his boundless latitudinarianism. In proof that we do not speak too strongly, we may state, nearly in his own words, that we find him describing such scenes as a "Council of the Trinity," convened by the Eternal FATHER, in order to solve His doubts, in which the SoN and HOLY SPIRIT propose "a scheme," ratified by the solemn oath of the TRINITY! The information which he elsewhere gives us that "CHRIST was a Dissenter," is one of the boldest attempts we have ever heard to support the sect to which we presume he belongs. We should be glad to see the genius which the author really possesses, rescued from a lawlessness which makes him incapable of discerning right from wrong.

A Commentary on the Te Deum, chiefly from ancient sources, by A. P. FORBES, D.C.L., and Bishop of Brechin. London: J. Masters. THIS is a most striking little work, admirable in every sense of the word. It is well calculated to produce a real sense of the value of our great triumphal hymn, as being indeed a very treasury of Catholic Truth, no less than the most perfect compendium of uninspired praise and prayer which we possess. The author has so deeply studied this noble work, that he seems to have caught the very spirit of the unknown composer; and we may say of his meditations upon it, what we can rarely admit of any modern commentary, that so far from obscuring the sense and lowering the meaning, it does but open out before us in very beautiful language, some of those depths of spiritual knowledge and devotion which we are too little accustomed to discern in it.

Reginald Grome, or Visible and Invisible, by the REV. CLAUDE MagNAY, (Cleaver,) though a small work, is by no means devoid of pretension, nor yet, we will add, of ability. But that there is enough in it to reconcile the reading public to the anomaly of its construction, is more than we dare assert. It is scarcely to be called a tale; but rather loose chapters on the history of a family and a village, which are made the excuse for "thinking aloud" on various points of conduct and action.

The kind of metaphysical analysis that is implied in the very title of a Child's Book of the Soul. (Seeley,) is in our judgment eminently unnatural. Moreover, in trying to be familiar, the author becomes sadly irreverent. It is an American reprint.

Mamma's Words to a very little Child, (Guillaume,) is surely not the work of one who has had much to do with children; neither can we commend the theology of the writer.

A Pocket Manual of Prayer, (Masters,) contains the offices for the "Hours" and a few other well selected special devotions.

The Sum of the Catholic Faith, is upon the same ancient model; and is taken immediately from Bishop Cosins' " Devotions."

A Selection from the Sermons and Poetical Remains of the Rev. G. J. CORNISH has been published at the request of friends as a tribute to his memory. (Mozleys.) But their circulation, we feel sure, will not be confined to any such limited circle; they will be read with pleasure by numbers who were strangers to the author in the flesh. The poetry upon the whole seems to us preferable to the prose.

The BISHOP OF LLANDAFF, we are glad to perceive, is acting vigorously on his Archdeacon's letter, and has already held two meetings in the diocese, with the view of raising funds for the supply of the alarming spiritual destitution which exists there. The Substance of the Speeches delivered on these occasions is now embodied in a pamphlet, and published by Mr. J. W. Parker. We trust that the plan will be largely and generally supported.

Mr. HEATHCOTE has published a sermon on a very important subject-the Laws of our knowledge of Doctrinal Truth. (J. H. Parker.) It is a comment on our LORD's Words-so often quoted, and so difficult safely to apply-" If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of GOD." They are treated in a sound and philosophical manner; and several thoughts of comfort are suggested in reference to our present unhappy divisions.

Dr. Mc Neile has had a very just reprimand addressed to him on the subject of his correspondence with Archdeacon Wilberforce, in a letter by the Rev. R. F. LAWRENCE. (Oxford: Vincent.) Were persons like Dr. Mc Neile at all open to reason, or could we believe that there was any common ground of appeal with them, such a reply might have some effect with him. As it is, the only use can be (but that of course is a most important one) in opening the eyes of Churchmen generally to the very inconsistent position occupied by the evangelical party.

Dr. PUSEY has published a Postscript to his Letter to Mr. Richards on Confession, in which he entirely disposes of Mr. Maskell's arguments and of the little apparent advantage which Mr. Maskell had seemed to gain over him. He has also in the press, it appears, a reply to Mr. Dodsworth's most unkind and inconsiderate letter, but which he thought it right to postpone, as involving charges that were mainly personal, to the vindication of the public Christian Ordinance of absolution.