Mass as the most substantial and essential act of their religion: all Protestants condemn and abhor it;" when 'tis visible that the Protestants of the Church of England believe and reverence, as much as any, the Sacrifice of the Eucharist, as the most substantial and essential act of our religion, and doubt not but the word Missa, "Mass," has fitly been used by the Western Church to signify it, and herein abhor and condemn nothing but the corruptions and mutilations which the Church of Rome, without care of conforming themselves to the Universal, have admitted in the celebration '—(Preface to Despatcher Despatched.)

And we will close this part of our rejoinder with another extract, taken from the writings of Connop Thirlwall, Bishop of S. David's, a man whose powerful intellect and vast learning were universally confessed, and whom his wildest opponent has never suspected of being other than hostile to the advanced High Church School in the Anglican body:

'The Church of England. . . has dealt with this subject in a spirit of true reverence, as well as of prudence and charity. She asserts the mystery inherent in the institution of the Sacrament, but abstains from all attempts to investigate and defend it, and leaves the widest range open to the devotional feelings and the private meditations of her children with regard to it. And this liberty is so large, and has been so freely used, that apart from the express admission of Transubstantiation, or of the grossly carnal notions to which it gave rise, and which, in the minds of the common people, are probably inseparable from it, I think there can hardly be any description of the Real Presence which in some sense or other is universally allowed, that would not be found to be authorised by the language of most divines of our Church, and I am not aware, and do not believe, that our most advanced Ritualists have in fact outstepped those very ample bounds.'(Charge in 1866, pp. 97, 98.)

Nor has this been the mere esoteric doctrine of a few recluse divines, buried in volumes known only to erudite scholars. On the contrary, every manual of Eucharistic devotion for lay use which achieved real popularity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries testifies to these same facts; as, for example, Dr. Edward Lake's Officium Eucharisticum, which went through thirty-one editions between its first issue in 1677 and its comparatively recent reprint in 1846; the old Companion to the Altar, which had reached its seventeenth edition in 1738, and was often subsequently issued with special licence from the Crown; and Bishop Thomas Wilson's Lord's Supper, which had reached its thirtysecond edition from 1736 in 1807, and which is still in steady demand. These are only the more salient examples of a copious devotional literature, differing singularly little in tone

and spirit from the more old-fashioned books formerly in use amongst English Roman Catholics, except so far as the dissimilarity of structural arrangement in the Latin and English rites compelled some variation, and are sufficient proof that if a Puritan can boast that the Mass has indeed disappeared from the Church of England, his vaunt holds good only in the same sense as that of a republican under Hadrian or Severus, who should have dilated on the fact that the Eternal City had bowed to no king since she drove out the Tarquins.

So far, then, as the Quarterly Reviewer has staked his case on the rejection of Apostolical Succession and of the Mass' -understanding by that word--as did the compilers of the Prayer-Book of 1549, the acknowledgment of the Presence, Adoration, and Sacrifice in the Eucharist, confessed as legally tenable in the Church of England even by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council itself-he has not taken much by his motion. And it is not a little curious that if he had availed himself of the one really plausible argument for fastening the epithet 'Protestant' on the Church of England, namely, that it is part of the official title of that daughter Church in the United States with which she is in full communion, there is the awkward fact that both Apostolical Succession and the Eucharistic Sacrifice are formally expressed in the American Prayer-Book with an explicitness which leaves nothing to be desired. Nay more, as regards this very title of 'Protestant Episcopal,' there is at this moment a powerful agitation on foot in the United States for its abolition, and that not by reason of any great influence of Ritualism, which is but a small factor as yet in America, but desired by moderate Churchmen simply because of the practical mischief which an even seeming classification under such a very dubious and discredited category as Protestantism is found to do to a Church which has to make its way, with no prestige of social establishment, against a multitude of warring sects. And, if we be not misinformed, the chief objection mooted against the proposed change is not theological at all, but legal, on the ground of the difficulties which might arise before the civil courts in respect of a multitude of trusts that have been created under the present designation. How the Protestant idea has failed in the United States as truly, though perhaps not so visibly and indisputably, as in Continental Europe, is shown by Dr. Ewer in his powerful Conferences,1

1 Catholicity in its Relationship to Protestantism and Romanism. Six Conferences. By the Rev. F. C. Ewer. New York, 1878. A work which we heartily commend to all our readers, and not less to the readers of the Quarterly Review.

in which, like the great Anglican Churchmen of the seventeenth century, like the early leaders of the Oxford movement, and, we may add, like ourselves, he defends the Catholic theory of the Church alike against the Papal and the Protestant view. We will cite in illustration one paragraph from a sermon at the close of his volume :

'The movement of 1833 is but a resurrection of the movement of A.D. 33. In the sixteenth century, the thinking world rejected that adulterated presentment of Christianity known as Romanism, because it was tyranny. In the nineteenth century the thinking world has rejected that other adulterated presentment of Christianity known as Protestantism, because it is utter anarchy. Is it not possible that ancient Catholicity, which is neither Roman nor Protestant, and which once conquered the world in less than four centuries, should, now that it has roused from its long obscurity, regain that world again which Romanism and Protestantism have between them lost?'

Nothing is clearer than that such Protestantism in England, as is not a mere popular alias for Anglicanism, is becoming daily less of a religion and more of a mere negation of all positive faith. Two broad facts exhibit this so clearly, that no further evidence is needful. First, as regards the Nonconconformist bodies, their unanimity in being willing to have the Bible banished from Board Schools, and thus by degrees from all primary education, provided that the Church might be impeded in her efforts for Christianising the young; and next, as regards the Evangelical party within the Church itself, the manner in which it has now for twenty years given itself almost exclusively to rancorous litigation and to the use of such vile weapons as hired rioters and suborned prosecutions against a competing school, while it has been ready to cast away one of the Creeds in order to secure allies,—show only too plainly that Christianity counts for little with either of them, and cannot be trusted to stand any vigorous pressure from the unbelieving element with which both these bodies are interpenetrated to the marrow. And we see no wisdom, even on the most earthly and prudential grounds, in giving more prominence to such a disintegrating factor of religious decay.

And with this judgment agrees precisely the language of Dr. Thorold, the junior Evangelical Bishop on the bench, in his recent Pastoral, which we have placed at the head of this article :

'First amongst the features of our present distress I put unbelief, because it is the first and greatest. Who does not prefer a grave superstition to a dismal atheism? Thomas Aquinas at least adores

Jesus Christ. Comte, in what he calls Humanity, worships himself. Indisputably, unbelief is a wide expression, since it begins where a subtle Arianism almost imperceptibly parts company from the orthodox formula, and ends by a blank abyss, where modern thinkers blandly inform us that modern research gives no glimpse of a Personal God, and where the human spirit, with all its ineffable hopes, undeveloped powers, and exquisite forces of joy and sorrow, faith and hope, is constantly told that its short life, so full of tragic interest, will be but as the brief sob of a wave as it rises and falls on the shore. The outcome is, that conscience becomes a lie, creation a misfortune, existence a bubble, reason an enigma, and death-the supreme end.'

Such is modern Protestantism, logically reasoned out from the premisses of Luther and Calvin, as David Strauss and others like-minded have not failed to tell us, who confess that though they are Protestants, they are not Christians.

And it is because we know the loyalty of the great majority of the English clergy can be depended on in the main, so that whether they vote by orders or in a separate House, in the event of any crisis of disestablishment, they are sure to resist dangerous neologising more effectually than their Irish brethren did, and not to permit a half-instructed laity to sweep away the ancient landmarks, that we can look forward without dismay. We are no friends to clerical domination over the laity, but it is well to be assured that we run no risk here of the flocks being allowed to drive the shepherds, with small advantage to either.

ART. II. THE CHRISTIAN POSITION, AND THAT OF ITS OPPONENTS.

1. Supernatural Religion. Vols. I., II., III. (London.) 2. Three Articles in the Fortnightly, entitled 'The Christian Conditions,' by the Author of Supernatural Religion, in reply to Professor Westcott's Resurrection of Christ, a new Revelation.

3. The Bampton Lectures for 1877. Christian Evidences reviewed in relation to Modern Thought. By Rev. C. A. Row, M.A., Prebendary of S. Paul's. (London, 1878.) SINCE our former notice of the work at the head of this article, its author, who still preserves his incognito, has pub

lished his third and concluding volume. In point of tone, as far as the imputation of unworthy motives to those whose views he controverts is concerned, it is an improvement on its predecessors; but here our praise must end. It is characterised throughout by the same one-sidedness as the two former volumes. While its author professes to occupy the judgmentseat of grave impartiality, his reasoning is that of the most thorough-going advocate. In his eyes every variation in the Sacred narrative is a contradiction; a probability, provided it be in his own favour, which is erected on another probability, and that again on a third, is an unquestionable fact, while the strongest probabilities on the other side are simply ignored; and where facts are wanting, or obscure, his power to determine what they must have been out of his own subjective consciousness is inexhaustible. Of the capacity to weigh and balance evidence he seems to be utterly destitute; of his one-sidedness in this respect his elaborate 'criticism of the Acts of the Apostles and of the history of our Lord's Passion, contained in his third volume, constitute the most singular example we have ever seen. His object is to prove that the Acts is a work written by an unknown writer, not earlier than the last thirty years of the second century; and that, with the exception of the account of S. Paul's voyage, and one or two other brief passages, it is utterly unhistorical-in fact, a romance written for the purpose of effecting a compromise between opposing parties in the Christian Church. It is impossible here to discuss an argument which is spread over several hundred pages; but to such an astounding position common sense puts in an objection in limine, to the important bearing of which on the case it is impossible that an impartial judge could avoid drawing the attention of the jury. It is this-if the book is, as you allege, a romance, and if its author has committed the number of stupid blunders which you charge him with, how has it come to pass that such a writer, at the end of the second century, has succeeded in composing an historical romance out of his own subjective consciousness, which enters into minute details of facts, the latest of which took place more than a century prior to the composition of his work; and yet that his numerous allusions to historical and geographical facts, manners and customs, and a number of other minute incidents, are not only in strict conformity with what we know to have been the case from other historical sources, but are constantly receiving additional confirmation, even in points otherwise doubtful, from the numerous discoveries made in