But union with her as she is, impossible.

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God would be pleased to restore the whole Catholic Church to that unity which has been so long interrupted; and, that our prayers may be heard, are bound to correct our own errors; but beyond this, individuals cannot go. While Rome continues as she is, closer union is impossible.

Yet we need not wonder, however much we may regret, that some, in their anxiety for such an object, should underrate the obstacles which oppose it, and speak as if no points of real difference remained between us. They find that their own Church refers them to the early ages of the Faith, as the model on which she is built. They see in these times, some forms of speech, and cere monial practices, which we have lost, but which Rome retains, and think they may lawfully make them their own. Such fancies are beautiful, but they are full of danger as of beauty. Believing as we do, that both the Roman and the British Churches are true Churches, whatever defects there may be in either, and whatever differences prevail between them; hoping that the inward unseen unity of the Church has never been interrupted, we dare not move towards Rome one step beyond what our Church allows. We must act as Scottish not as Roman Catholics, and happy is it for our true freedom, as well as for our faith, that we are so. While we deeply lament their errors, we denounce not them, though they have excommunicated us; we recognise the foreign Churches which submit to the See of Rome as part of the great Catholic Body, though they believe us to be cut off; we do not seek to impose on them the local rites and usages which are binding on ourselves; but for the very cause that our Church allows such liberty, we must be careful to obey the commands, and reverence even the cautions which she gives to her own children.

The duty of loyalty which we thus owe to our own Church, may best be illustrated by alluding to some of the particular points in which it has occasionally been disregarded. In what is here said, no reference is made to any individual cases. We know of none such. But they are known to have occurred in the sister Church of England, and the same causes which are at work there, may at any time produce the same results with us. These principles are deeply seated in human nature, and are worth a careful consideration, though the actual danger from them were much more uncertain than it is.

There can be no doubt that our ritual services are in many respects inferior, both in number and fulness, to the ancient models

B

from which we derive them, and that in some of these respects the Roman Offices are superior to our own. It might be enough for an humble Christian, to prevent his undervaluing the plainer Services of his Mother Church, that they are hers-that they do contain all that is absolutely necessary, and that, in any event, they are better than we deserve, or can rightly value, as the sad experience of every day testifies. All this should not prevent the Church from endeavouring to supply her wants, as Divine Providence opens the way; but it should prevent her children from murmuring or repining in the meantime. The very simplicity of our existing Services has a beauty of its own, which is more fitting our present imperfect and fallen condition than greater splendour:—

"I love thee, nor would stir

Thy simple note, severe in character,

By use made lovelier-for the lofty tone
Of hymn, response, and touching antiphone,
Lest we lose homelier truth."

Mingled with much beauty and magnificence, which we do not possess, there is in the Services of the Church of Rome much of peril, which we are also happily free from. The circumstances wherein they are dangerous, are too well known, and have too often been dwelt upon, in other than the spirit of charity, to require particular mention here. These considerations will, it is to be hoped, shew how cautiously we must act in any attempt to improve what we have, and how imperatively we are called upon not to disparage our existing Services, which would surely be yet more unbecoming than the opposite fault-the praising them at the expense of others.

There is another point in which individuals may be tempted to act undutifully to their Church. There are few things more worthy of a Christian's study than the Lives of the Saints; and, certainly, there is none more attractive. Our Church has sanctioned the reverence with which natural feeling would teach us to regard the Saints, by commemorating them in her Prayer Book, either with or without special services in their honour. No age or portion of the Church, let us hope, has wanted its own saints. Their existence may not be necessary to the Church's being, though it is to her highest well-being; and, therefore, recognising as we do the Catholicity of Rome, and considering the extent of the countries in communion with her, we need not be surprised at the number of holy men and women which she has produced; rather should we

And seeking for models of holiness in Rome.

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wonder if she had not done so. But in dwelling on the lives of those who have existed in her, since she became separate from the British Churches, we must be careful to avoid the notion that every opinion or practice of these holy persons is lawful to us. Our character must be formed upon a higher model than the faith or practice of any individual. The same caution, though in a less degree, is necessary, even in regard to those who lived before the separation of the sixteenth century. The actions of the very persons whom our Prayer Book commemorates in its Calendar, and whom it holds up to our devout reverence, may be treated in such a manner as to become a snare to the little ones among us.

When we said that we need not be surprised at the number of holy persons known to have existed in the communion of Rome, we must keep in mind that the Roman system tends to bring out, in too prominent a manner, those who are supposed to excel their fellow-christians in saintly graces, while the peculiar character of the English Church, and the domestic habits of the English nation, unite to cast a veil over these graces, even when existing in their highest perfection. And why should we regret that it is so :

"Even human Love will shrink from sight

Here in the coarse rude earth:
How then should rash intruding glance
Break in upon her sacred trance
Who boasts a heavenly birth?

So still and secret is her growth,
Ever the truest heart,

Where deepest strikes her kindly root

For hope or joy, for flower or fruit,
Least knows its happy part."

These considerations are sufficient to shew how uncertain and unsafe it would be to set up, as some now-a-days seem inclined to do, the apparent sanctity of a few individuals as the one great note of the Church. The promotion of holiness among her members is, indeed, the chief object of the Church's mission, but the degree in which it may exist can never be fully known upon earth.

It is not only, however, in practices or opinions which are actually Romish, that the danger lies. Even those which our Church permits or teaches may be put forward in a way, and with a leaning, which may do harm. There is an ostentation and an unreality in the manner in which some persons allow themselves to discuss very sacred subjects, which is most painful and perplexing. It is necessary to give instances, though at the risk of appearing irre

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Tendency to irreverent language in sacred things. verent, and alluding to matters on which, as a general rule, a religious reserve is expedient. Our Church never speaks of the Mother of Our Lord but with the language of the deepest reverence. She certainly guards carefully against one of the most dangerous errors of Rome, yet her words, and those of the Church Catholic in her general councils, to which she implicitly defers, may be used by injudicious persons in such a way as to be unbecoming. We have, indeed, no more right to give up one single word of the Church's teaching, than we have to add one iota to it; otherwise the very Faith itself might be sacrificed. We are bound to rebuke the ignorant and presumptuous, when they quarrel with her sacred language ;-but, surely, we are not called upon to proclaim her most solemn truths indiscriminately, and in a way which is sure to be mistaken. This were to fall into one of the worst errors of a boastful and bad school, which the persons alluded to would be the first to condemn. Akin to this, is the way in which the state of the faithful departed, and the doctrine of the Church on that point, as well as on others yet more awful, may be spoken of. Surely these subjects are not for open everyday discussion, like the affairs of this world. If we do not take care, the most sacred mysteries will be spoken of, and argued, and blasphemed, as lightly and carelessly as they were on the rise of the Arian heresy, or during the Great Rebellion in England.

There only remains one other illustration to be mentioned of the danger of disloyalty to the Church, from Roman tendencies. Those who entertain them, seem to view the whole course of the Church's History, through a foreign and unreal medium. They do not wilfully falsify facts, but they colour them in such a manner as makes them most agreeable to their own fancy. In this way, the long period of the middle ages has of late been presented to us by several writers, in a one-sided, and, therefore, in a false aspect. Neither is it an excuse for this that the opposite and worse error has so long prevailed ;-it rather affords an inducement or a pretext to many to cling to the mistakes which they were beginning to abandon. Something of this, however, was perhaps unavoidable in the recoil from the popular view. The Dark Ages, thus generally called, because we have not chosen to look upon the light which they enjoyed,' were discovered to be something

"Many causes have contributed to render these ages very dark to us, but for the present, I feel it sufficient to remind the reader, that darkness is quite a

False views of Ecclesiastical History.

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different from what the infidel and semi-infidel historians of last century represented them. While it was the duty of all fair enquirers into the truth of History to unfold their real character, whether for good or evil, some writers, as has been said, have laboured to give a partial representation of them. It is not merely that their account of them is not a true one, though in history as well as morals, that of itself is a very serious matter:-but the particular colour which has been thrown over them seems to be used for serving a purpose. They are represented in a far more uniform and favourable light than sober inquiry will warrant. The virtues of these times are magnified, their defects extenuated, and the general influence of Religion on the affairs of the world made greater than it really was. The whole system of the Mediæval Church is then, as far as possible, assimilated to that of modern Rome, and contrasted with that of modern England. No notice is taken of the difference between the cases where the Roman See spoke as the voice and organ of the Church Catholic, and where for her own private ends. Finally, the natural conclusions are drawn, first, that Mediæval Christianity is the model which we ought to propose to ourselves; and, secondly, that its true lineaments are now only to be found in the existing Church of Rome.

From this false and mischievous theory sprung many ill-digested schemes of Ecclesiastical Reformation, which have recently been brought forward. Some of these were, in themselves, both just and practically useful, but they were frequently promulgated in such a way as to prevent any real good from following. It seemed to be supposed that it was reserved for the nineteenth century to do away at once the sacrilege of the sixteenth. How visionary such a fancy was, it is needless to say-the "entail of curses" is not so easily "cut off." Besides, we will but perpetuate the mistake if we believe that the robbery of the sacred property of the Church, begun with the reign of Henry VIII., was any way necessarily, or exclusively, connected with the changes in doctrine and polity, which then took place. There is hardly a century in the history of the Church, since the days of Constantine, when the same spirit was not at work, though not, perhaps, on a scale so extensive.

different thing from shutting the eyes, and that we have no right to complain that we can see but little, until we have used due diligence to see what we can." Maitland's Dark Ages, p. 2.-Such works as this, and the Merchant and Friar of Sir Francis Palgrave, have done more for general readers to dispel the mists which obscured the real virtues and knowledge of these times, than a hundred indiscriminating panegyrics could have effected.