actually taken and swallowed, at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, he was hurried off to the stake, without pity or remorse. Yet, for the life of us, we cannot attach any other than a real and corporeal interpretation to the following interrogatories in the Catechism :

Question. What is the inward part or thing signified?

Answer. The body and blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper.

Question.-What are the benefits whereof we are partakers thereby?

Answer. The strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the body and blood of Christ, as our bodies are by the bread and wine.

If this is no ttransubstantiation we do not know how it can be otherwise expressed. But it may be urged, that our apprehensions are wholly groundless, and no harm is done: that the catechism is intended only for the instruction of children; that it is mere words learnt by rote, like the Lord's Prayer, the Apostle's Creed, and the Ten Commandments, at an age when the understanding is so little unfolded that no ideas are attached to them. Granted: but if the formula is to be so depreciated, we think it had better be consigned to the exclusive use of the dame schools, and the public saved the expense of maintaining so many well-fed clergymen, chiefly employed in impressing and confirming it on the minds of our juvenile population.

Another morceau from the mass-book is retained in the Visitation of the Sick; in which the Protestant priest actually grants absolution of sin with as much sang froid and authority as Leo X. The sick person is directed to make a confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled in any weighty matter; the priest then tenders a carte blanch in manner and form following:

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences; and by his authority, committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.-Amen.

In the Morning Service is a form of absolution; but the terms in which it is given are less explicit; and the priest only declares a remission of sins to those who truly repent. Considering the era when the Common Prayer was framed, it is not surprising it retains some remnants of the superstition out of which it was fabricated. For aught we know, the power of granting absolution may have scriptural authority; at all events it must often prove salutary, affording consolation at a moment when human nature most needs support, and compensating for any fears and anxieties which may have been felt during past life, by the certain hope held out of future forgiveness and beatitude.

The mode of filling a Church of England priest with the Holy Ghost, and endowing him with the invaluable elixir to forgive sins, and keep out of hell, or let drop into it whom he pleases, is not less extraordinary than the gift itself. It must be premised that no person can be admitted to any benefice unless he has been first ordained a priest; and

then, in the language of the law, he is termed a clerk in orders. The mode of such ordination is thus described in the Liturgy.

"The bishop, with the priest present, shall lay their hands severally upon every one that receiveth the order of priesthood; the receivers humbly kneeling upon their knees and the bishop saying,

"Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.- Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained."

Truly this is marvellous in our eyes! The bare idea of any one who can swallow three bottles of wine, and leap a five-barred gate, being filled with the Holy Ghost, makes the gorge rise. But then the necromancy of this wonderful infusion. The bishop, only imposing his right reverend hands, saying, "Receive the Holy Ghost," and instantly, with the suddenness of the electric fluid, the Holy Ghost passes from the fingers of the bishop into the inside of-perhaps, a Clogher, a Hay, a Blacow, or a Daniels.

Talk of miracles having ceased, they are performing daily. Talk of popery, of indulgences, and absolutions. Talk of the poor, naked, godless, unenlightened Indian, who wanders on the banks of the Niger or the Orinoque. Talk of the Chinese, who cuts his deity with scissars, or moulds him in paste. Talk of the wretched Hindoo, who immolates his victim to Juggernaut; or of the wild Tartar, who worships the invisible Lama. Talk of all or any of these, or go to what age or country we may, for examples of supernatural pretension, can we find any to match this part of the rites of the Church of England?

We shall now leave to the Reader's further consideration the subject of the church ritual. It is only a work of men's hands, and cannot, of course, claim the same infallibility as the Holy Scriptures. An order in council is any time sufficient authority for introducing alterations in the Liturgy; and, even within our own time, it has been subjected both to curtailment and additions. George IV., it will long be remembered, ordered the name of Queen Caroline to be struck out, as a person unworthy of the prayers of the people. Lord Sidmouth, who now forms a fragment of the dead weight, during his secretaryship, directed four prayers to be interpolated, and they form a regular portion of the church service. In the few observations we have ventured to put forward, our purpose has been only to advert to such parts as seemed most startling to vulgar apprehension; and in doing this, we trust, nothing irreverent has escaped us, or in derogation of the general utility of the Book of Common Prayer. With all its imperfections we greatly prefer the established ceremonial to the random out-pourings of the conventicle; and think the measured solemnities deliberately framed for the various occasions of life, preferable to those wild exhortations which have no standard but the intellect of the preacher, his thirst of gain or popularity, or the passions and fatuity of his hearers.

VII.-WHO WOULD BE BENEFITED BY A REFORM OF THE

CHURCH?

A reform of the Church, like most other reforms, would permanently benefit the many and only temporarily injure the few. The lawnsleeves, the shovel-hats, silk-aprons, and monopolizing incumbents would be the chief sufferers; while the condition of the most numerous and useful order of the clergy would be improved. Such odious abuses as non-residence and pluralities would be abolished, and the shameful injustice of one man doing the duty and another receiving the reward would be no longer tolerated. Every district, or parish, requiring the services of an officiating clergyman would be provided with one to whom the degrading epithet of "poor curate" or "poor parson" could never be justly applied. By mitigating the penury of the working clergy their respectability and influence would be augmented, and every neighbourhood would enjoy the advantages which are known to result from the permanent abode of at least one educated, intelligent, and exemplary individual.

The equalizing of the value of sees would remove the abuse of translations, and thereby effect a great improvement in the bench of bishops. It is only a few lucky individuals who obtain the rich prizes of Canterbury, Winchester, London, Ely, and Durham, that are benefited by the unequal revenues of the bishoprics. Many prelates have barely income enough to support the dignity of their stations; yet they share, in common with the rest, the public odium attached to their class from the inordinate wealth of their more fortunate brethren. It is this inequality, and the desire consequently excited to move to the wealthier endowments that gives to the bishops their political animus, and renders them the most self-seeking-men in the country. Without translations they would be as independent in their conduct as the judges are said to be; but with the help of them Ministers are always able to keep a phalanx of votes at their absolute disposal. The influence of this temptation has been strikingly evinced in the history of Catholic Emancipation. So long as this salutary measure was opposed by the ministers, it was opposed by the whole of the bishops, with the exception of the Bishop of Norwich; but when the Duke of Wellington became premier, and the Catholic Relief Bill made a government measure, then the right reverend prelates opened their eyes to its justice and policy, and ten of them actually voted in its favour.

Another great improvement in the prelacy would consist in the abolition of patronage. As it is, a rigid discharge of their duties is often incompatible with their interests, or at least their feelings. Their proper functions are the superintendence of the subaltern clergy of their dioceses; but many of these clergy have been promoted by themselves to their benefices; they are their very good friends, and not a few their own flesh and blood. How, in such cases, can it be expected they will be strict in the enforcement of pastoral duties; that they will not be

indulgent in the granting of licenses for non-residence, and dispensations for pluralities; or that they will insist on the payment of suitable stipends to the curates. A bishop, like a pope, ought to have no relations, and thus escape, as Benedict II. remarked of the successors of St. Peter, the opprobrium of perverting the patronage of the church to the aggrandizement of his family. Under the existing system the chopping, exchanging, bargaining, and moving about, that ensue in a diocese on a translation or consecration, are a disgrace to the church, and render the discharge of episcopal duties more like a game on the chess-board, in which the rooks, knights, and other prime pieces, represent the kit and kin" of the new diocesan.

The advantages that would result to the nation from church reform are immense. In the first place the abolition of non-residence, of pluralities, of sinecure offices in cathedrals, and the reduction of extravagant incomes, and the substitution, in lieu of these abuses, an uniform and graduated rate of payment to the different order of ecclesiastics, proportioned to rank and duty, would not only effect a vast improvement in church discipline, but a saving of at least seven millions per annum of public income. Away then would go the TITHE,-the most unjust and impolitic impost the ingenuity of rulers ever devised for tormenting God's creatures, and crippling national resources. Of course we do not mean the tithe would be simply repealed; that would be merely throwing so much additional rent into the pockets of the land-owners without benefiting the farmer or general consumer of his produce. The tithe is a tax, and forms part of the public income levied for public purposes. Its simple removal, without purchase or commutation, would only yield so much increase of revenue to be lavished on opera dancers and actresses; or dissipated in gaming-houses, in concerts, coteries, and grand dinners; or wasted at Paris, Florence, and Naples, and which had better continue to be spent, as much of it now is, by sinecure silk-aprons and non-resident pluralists, at Bath, Cheltenham, and Tonbridge.

No! no! the people are quite awake on this subject. They do not intend to throw the tithe-impost as a sop to the boroughmongers; that indeed would be returning good for evil with a vengeance; but they intend it as a means of relief to themselves. The measure they contemplate is the sale of the tithe outright to the landowner, or its commutation by a land-tax. This would be a real reform; the other is only delusion. With such a resource as church property would yield, all the rabble of taxes might be repealed which now weigh down to annihilation the springs and sources of industry, and oppress a man's "house, even his heritage." The farmers and working agriculturists would share in the general benefit, not only by an increase of profits and wages and the mitigation of public burthens, but also by the extinction of an inquisitorial impost, whose pressure augments with every increase in industry, skill, and capital.

Nothing can more pointedly illustrate the stagnating influence of our aristocratic institutions on the mind and energies of the community than

the continuance of the tithe-tax so long after its impolicy and injustice have been demonstrated. Even Mr. Pitt, who, throughout his political life was the slave of a paltry ambition for place, and the tool of a despicable faction, meditated its removal. It has been denounced by Bishop Watson, by Dr. Paley, by Burke, by Malthus, and every writer and statesman with the least pretension to intelligence and patriotism. It is supported by the example of no country in Europe. Though England swarms with separatists, and can hardly be said to have a national religion, yet, for the maintenance of one handful of spirituals, the whole nation is insulted and the operations of rural industry fettered and impeded.

Our neighbours, the Scotch, have long since wiped out this abominable stain. Among them tithe is a valued and commuted rate of payment, forming a trifling and invariable impost, to the extent of which, alone, the landlord can ever be made liable to the church. This reform they commenced about the time they got rid of prelacy and cathedrals, in the days of JOHN KNOX. With this superiority Scotland would be the land to live in, were it not for her rag-money, her myriads of legalists and placemen, her host of servile writers, the barrenness of her moors and mountains, and the griping keenness of her population. "Strange as it may seem," says Mr. BROUGHAM, in one of his eloquent harangues, "and to many who hear me incredible, from one end of the kingdom to the other, a traveller will see no such thing as a bishop— not such a thing is to be found from the Tweed to John o'Groats: not a mitre, no nor so much as a minor canon, or even a rural dean-and in all the land not a single curate-so entirely rude and barbarous are they in Scotland-in such utter darkness do they sit that they support no cathedrals, maintain no pluralists, suffer no non-residence; nay, the poor benighted creatures are ignorant even of tithes ! Not a sheaf, or a lamb, or a pig, or the value of a plough-penny, do the hopeless mortals render from year's end to year's end! Piteous as their lot is, what makes it infinitely more touching is to witness the return of good for evil, in the demeanour of this wretched race. Under all this cruel neglect of their spiritual concerns, they are actually the most loyal, contented, moral, and religious people any where, perhaps, to be found in the world."*

Bishop Watson, said " a reformer, of Luther's temper and talents, would, in five years, persuade the people to compel parliament to abolish tithes, to extinguish pluralities, to enforce residence, to confine episcopacy to the overseeing of dioceses, to expunge the Athanasian creed from our Liturgy, to free dissenters from Test-Acts, and the

* Trial of John Ambrose Williams, for a libel on the Clergy of Durham, Aug. 16th, 1822, p. 43. The defendant had given umbrage to the haughty clergy of the Palatinate by commenting, in a newspaper, on their servile conduct in prohibiting the bells to be tolled on the occasion of the death of the unfortunate Queen of George IV.