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EVANGELICALISM

second position to a third, depends on the first position we ourselves occupy. To a Dissenter the Church of England evidently appears what she is often called, a "half-way-house to Popery," a mere compromise between Popery and Protestantism. It is not uncommon to hear the Church of England denounced as a limb of Antichrist, while the Socinian looks upon all Trinitarian institutions, as offshoots of that great system of corruption engrafted by the Early Church on the simplicity of the Gospel, and finally consolidated by the Church of Rome. To become a Romanist, a Socinian would first become a Trinitarian, a Dissenter, a "Churchman;" as it may be natural to suppose an Evangelical would first become an "Anglo-Catholic." If we want the broadest distinctions from Rome, we may sooner, no doubt, have our wants satisfied in "Evangelicalism," than in "Anglicanism;" but then also in Socinianism more readily than in Evangelicalism, and in Atheism than in Socinianism. Each appears to the other an easy descent to "Popery," and doubtless each may be more easy. In one the mind may need certain safeguards from error, and attractions to truth, certain counterbalancing motives and impressions, which in the other may be dispensed with. From either extreme indeed the medium, or that which more nearly approaches the medium, will appear more nearly approaching the error opposite to itself, while the position of equal reproach will be precisely that of positive truth. The point therefore for such system to attain is that where in fact the region. of error commences, and its special danger lies in making a subjective process of particular minds, the measure of the objective limits of truth. In no mode of inquiry more than this is the fallacy of the logicians' non causa pro causâ habitually perpetrated. "I told my brother," says Mr. F. W. Newman," when he espoused the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, that he had entered upon the system of Popery, and that all its corruptions would in time follow." Yet how many conscientious Protestants maintain this dogma, how many divines whose Protestantism no one has ever suspected, no one now suspects, have left on record the testimony of their adherence to the truth! The question is, Where does Tractarianism actually commence? What marks it off as a system dangerous to the stability of Churchmen and influencing defection to Rome? The point which Mr. Smith defines as this characteristic and which as contradistinguishing it from "Evangelicalism," it really is, is that upon which we have commented, the theory of the Catholic Church as a specially constituted body-" distinguished and characterised by the features of her constitution as such-that is by particulars relating to the disposition and government of her meinbers as a body, or their attributes and movements in their collective capacity,-and under such a description appealing to her history, measuring her extent and progress, and demonstrating her presence and agency in the world." (pp. 30 and 31.) It cannot but be therefore of high relief to those who are tempted

to ascribe to some mysterious process in Tractarianism, or power of darkness whose agency it is, the supposed tendency to secession, to find so easy a solution of the matter. And, indeed, Mr. Smith has broached an idea which may be well taken to elucidate the point in hand.

"In the view," says Mr. Smith, "which we have thus generally offered of the influence of such a belief and conception of the Catholic Church in promoting secessions from our own communion to the Church of Rome, we have supposed the individuals taking that step to be moved to it in the first instance as principally by the incentive of feara fear that in our own communion, they may not be worshipping God and seeking the happiness of a future state in the one only Church, which both Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic are agreed, it is the first and chief object of Christian inquiry and solicitude to ascertain and be assured of." (p. 31.)

This suggests one of the most obvious explanations that may occur to us, of those melancholy phenomena of secession which have recently agitated our atmosphere. The true notion of the Catholic Church being just restored into more fitting and more general prominence, has concentrated the minds and the appreciations of many of its adherents on that side of truth with too little counteraction, and the contrast, which does at present exist in our Communion in many particulars with that ideal, continually forced upon the experience, has made them too often morbid, and too exclusively theoretical. In the meantime, Rome steps in with far louder, and in some requirements, more warranted pretensions to act out that lofty idea; the morbid mind, overlooking the remaining elucidation of truth and the deficiencies of the pretender, and panting to escape the harassing imperfections to be found in our own system-proving, it appears, every day, after unwearied, but discouraged efforts at reform, more hopeless and irremediable-flies into the arms of Rome; it may be in many instances more for a refuge from doubt and conflict, than to the realization of its theories and its hopes. But then are we to renounce this idea— are we to prove traitors to the Catholic Church, because it makes men's perceptions so much more sensitive of present imperfections, that some, without the necessary amount of self-possession and judgment, are betrayed in sheer disgust, by louder pretensions, acting on that want of comprehension sufficient to the grasp of entire truth, which the revival of one portion of truth renders largely inevitable, to abandon the system altogether? What wonder, if, after the paroxysm occasioned by newly discovered abuses and defects, and the constant discouragement awaiting continually renewed exertions to get rid of them, some men should become bewildered, deluded, paralysed, entrapped? That this theory of the Catholic Church has no necessary tendency to promote secession from the Church of England, is evident from its

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EVANGELICALISM

constant inculcation, as a principle of thought and action, by every divine of character and note since the Reformation, whose opinions are in our possession. Its tendency, we say, in many minds to promote secession is not inherent, but accidental: that accidentality is in its newly occurred revival, and in the effort of Evangelicalism to prevent its being worked out with its machinery of dependent truths, as the Church of England has clearly marked out in her formularies and standard documents. What wonder, when the present practical state of the English Church is in many things so imperfect an illustration of her existence as a living branch of the Church Catholic, some should be driven by various concurrent causes to the impression that she is not Catholic? But in this, consists the admission of Mr. Smith. He protests what danger there is in investigating the claim of the Church of England to be a member of a great Catholic body; hinting (which of course we stedfastly deny,) that the Church of Rome alone answers the true demands of such a supposition. Is then such an investigation warranted? Does not the Church of England advance her claim to be a part of this Catholic body? On the question of a divine special appointment of the threefold ministry, we have said, the turning point of the larger question hangs. For, if divers orders have been once for all established by Divine authority, they must certainly be a distinctive badge in that society which possesses them, stamping it with a character peculiar to itself, and so marking it off from all combinations or constructions pretending to a similar description; and as this badge is a Divine one, the difference marked must be of the weightiest and most indispensable nature. The Church of England therefore, by assuming the possession of such a ministry, marks herself off from all communities not possessing it by a speciality of constitution insurmountable and not to be explained away. For, to pretend a Divine authority, and then deny the essentiality of that which is so authorised, would be mockery and presumption. We are to suppose therefore, that the theory opposed to Tractarianism, denies this delegation of authority. Indeed Mr. Smith complains, that by claiming for our Bishops a Divine appointment, we put them on a level with those of the Church of Rome, and actually intimates, that by discarding a consideration, which surely must be the highest sanction of reverence for any office or function, (as it was put forward by our LORD Himself,) we place them "above all comparison with the dignitaries of the Church of Rome!" And so he condemns any reference to the "ceremonial of their appointment for the establishment of their credentials." That is, although the ceremonial of their appointment as actually contained in the Prayer Book, professes to be concerned with the special delegation of their powers from God Himself, through the gift of the HOLY GHOST; though the Homilies speak of

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Ordination even as a "Sacrament" conferring the special power of Absolution, (another "Sacrament" which "hath the promise of forgiveness of sin,") though the utmost particularity is evinced in its prescription and observance, as indeed must naturally be about every ceremonial concerned in the bestowal of a special gift and power of GOD,—we are to make no account of this ceremonial, we are to overlook and therefore to contemn these gifts, we are to avert our gaze from that Divine author of all potentiality and all grace, upon whose assumption of His office, the appointment of this very ministry was announced by His own lips, the consequent-" All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth-Go ye therefore," and to seek for the chiefest motives of "reverent estimation" amid relations of earth, amid considerations of personal fitness and moral or literary respectability! We are quite prepared to find Evangelicalism denying the Divine origin of the ministry, because we are convinced that itself is its practical denial, but we could scarcely conceive a writer, reprobating any such assumption as weakening its general claim to reverence and respect. "O wretched blindness," saith Hooker, whom all men agree to call judicious, "O wretched blindness, if we admire not so great power; more wretched if we consider it aright, and think that any but GoD can bestow it!" If such be " Evangelicalism," what shall we say of "Tractarianism," which, as this writer confesses, consists, speaking on the whole, of the affirmation of this truth, viz., the Divine original of the Christian ministry, and we may say, as involved therein, the Divine economy of the visible Church? And what of tendency to secession, which, according to this writer, is owing to the prominent inculcation of this theory, which is notoriously the theory of the Church of England and of her reformers? The question is, can we, dare we, consent to abandon these principles of the Church of England, because the peculiarities of present circumstances impel some minds to pervert them to false conclusions? If her own "ideal" is practically much set at nought, and but imperfectly worked out, are we therefore to degrade that ideal to the miserable mediocrity of her position, that we may evade the unpleasant reality of a contrast, and the stringent criterions of truth? This would be to propagate a hollow imposture, and faithlessly to hand it down to our children, till with the concentration of its own virus, it burst like a purulence in their hands: to daub a wall with untempered mortar, and leave the generation after us heedlessly playing beneath the tottering fraud. Our truest philosophy, as well as our truest safety, our faithfulness to convictions, our zeal for religion, our confidence in GoD, lie in being content to probe to the bottom, the cankering sores eating into our Church's life, and to stop not short till we have burst out once more into viviscence and maturity, filled meanwhile with but one hope, and moved with but one fear-the victory or the defeat of truth.

THE PHILOSOPHUMENA ASCRIBED TO ORIGEN.

(Continued from Vol. XI., p. 391.)

Origenis Philosophumena, sive omnium Hæresium Refutatio, e codice Parisino nunc primum edidit EMMANUEL MILLer. Oxonii: e Typographeo Academico, 1851.

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In the paper on the subject of the Philosophumena in our last number, we studiously endeavoured to withhold the expression of a conviction which pressed upon our own mind that this Treatise was not the work of Origen. We had endeavoured to keep our judgment in suspense, and to give as fair and candid a statement as we could, of the points which appeared to bear as evidence on the question. We did this for two reasons: 1st, we felt that an indefinite amount of deference was due to the judgment, which we presumed had been exercised, of the Delegates of the Oxford Press; we presumed that they had decided in favour of the genuineness of the Treatise, and that on such a subject we ought to be cautious in forming, and still more in expressing, an opinion in opposition to their's. 2ndly, The Editor of the Treatise spoke with confidence, with the most undoubting confidence, of the work being Origen's-the preface in which that confidence was pressed having, so far as appeared, the sanction of the delegates of the press, and he promised further evidence in a work which he was preparing to publish. It appeared fair to wait for that evidence, before expressing a decided opinion against the genuineness of the Treatise. Besides, we felt that this publication was an invaluable accession to theological literature, and that a great debt of gratitude was due to those through whom it had been bestowed on us. Nor do we now wish in any degree whatever to detract from the value of the work itself, as containing monuments of opinions and events which were hitherto almost, and in most cases altogether, unknown. At present, we are concerned only with the question of authorship, and we now feel bound to say, that a further examination of the subject has so far shaken our confidence in the judgment of the editor, and brought before us what seem such indubitable proofs that the work was not written by Origen, that we no longer hesitate to entertain and express that conviction.

Before proceeding to state these proofs, we wish to refer to some points in our last article. And, in the first place, we would again state our impression, that the style, even of those parts which are most probably the composition of the person who produced the work, is not the style of Origen; and particularly that

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