should it become general, would overturn the papacy to its foundations. He boldly maintained the rights of individual reason and conscience. He asserted his right and duty to bring the commands of his superiors to the test of Scripture, for that was his ultimate standard. His principal work is distinguished by an entire absence of appeal to human authority. He put conscience above the commands of the Pope, subjecting it to God's Word alone. The ground which he assumed in his opposition to the Pope, would equally have served him against the claims of a council, and would doubtless have been so employed had it decreed contrary to his convictions of truth and right. Surely in all this, done and spoken openly, enforced with all his impassioned earnestness and power, there is sufficient to account for his condemnation. He was dangerous to the peace of Rome. His bold and fervid utterances were heard, not only throughout Italy, but Europe, and tended to increase the discontent, and intensify the disgust which already widely prevailed on account of the scandalous conduct of the clergy. Savonarola was a warning prophet in the ears of Rome. His sin was not that he pretended to have received revelations from God,—for Rome was not averse to having a few prophets or prophetesses, if only they will speak according to her mind, -but that his prophetic utterances were so uniformly condemnatory of her. His labours and writings were a prophecy of hope to the world and the church. His failure served to shew that not from within could the foulness of Rome be cleansed, that if religion is to spread and triumph, as he believed it would, it must be by those who love it coming out of the mystical Babylon. It was another step preparatory to a reformation, greater and better by far than the great Dominican ever contemplated, a reformation in which Italy, the leader in the great revival of letters, the pioneer of modern civilisation, whose poetic sons had most loudly denounced the crimson sins of Rome,-should not occupy the first place. From the northern land a voice would, in due time, be heard, equally solemn, and vastly more powerful and distinct,—a voice that would shake the throne of the Vatican, and arouse the slumbering nations, and which would give permanent shape to the nascent discontent by an open revolt from Rome. The renovation sought by Savonarola was an abortion,—that in which Luther was honoured to occupy so distinguished a place, based on clearer, firmer, broader ground, became a glorious fact. The former thought to have civil liberty and pure religion under the wing of Rome, the latter, by God's blessing, emancipated religion, and laid the foundation of lasting freedom, by renouncing allegiance to the papacy. Yet, imperfect as were Savonarola's conceptions and aims, to these he was a

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martyr. In his life and in his death he was a witness against the wickedness and usurpations of the Roman antichrist; a witness for truth, righteousness, and spiritual religion, for political liberty, for the rights of conscience, and the supreme authority of the Word of God.

M. H.

ART. VI.-The Church and the Age.

The Church and the Age: Essays on the Principles and Present Position of the Anglican Church. Edited by ARCHIBALD WEIR, D.C.L., Vicar of Forty Hill, Enfield, and WILLIAM DALRYMPLE MACLAGAN, M.A., Rector of Newington, Surrey. John Murray, London. 1870.

NE of the questions that seems to be practically coming up from many different quarters in the present day, requiring a clear understanding and sound decision, is that of the true nature of the church of Christ, and the principles by which it ought to be governed. Almost every section of Christendom is at present led or forced to reconsider the position that it occupies, and the grounds on which that position may be justified. The Church of Rome on the one hand has to deal with such questions in her so-called (Ecumenical Council; the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, on the other hand, must fairly face them in order worthily to dispose of the proposal for Union either one way or the other; while the Church of England, which occupies a dubious, if not a middle position, is distracted by wider and more radical differences than either of them. There have been times in the history of the Church, when its various parts have been able to go on quietly, holding their once fixed relations one to another as definitely settled, and following each its own traditional course of action, without direct or fresh inquiry into the principles of their position or policy. In such circumstances, there is ever a danger of ecclesiastical bodies drifting gradually and imperceptibly away from their original anchorage, and coming to hold positions which must be justified, if justifiable at all, by very different principles from those maintained at first. It is well, therefore, that circumstances occasionally arise which compel all thinking men to look beneath the mere outside form and appearance of things, which are often so deceptive, and to penetrate to the real truth that lies beneath. This seems to be specially needful in the present times; and any thinkers who give a clear

view of the ultimate questions that underlie those on the surface, may do us a signal service, even by the statement of views diametrically opposed to our own. This merit the volume of essays before us possesses; and it is chiefly because it brings out, in a clear and decided way, the radical principles of a certain powerful section of the Church, that we think it may be interesting and useful to direct attention to it. We do not mean to attempt any literary criticism, such as the work would deserve, nor to point out to our readers the various characteristics and excellences of its several parts. Suffice it to assure them, that they will find the various important and interesting topics taken up in the several essays, discussed in a manner worthy of the subject and of the authors' names, with various kinds and degrees of excellence, but on the whole with much learning and ability. We propose simply to consider some of the principles of the section of the Church to which the writers belong, that are brought out with some distinctness in this volume. Nor is it necessary in order to do so, to discuss the question, so much vexed of late, as to the responsibility of the several contributors to such a volume for each other's views. We shall not ascribe the opinions advanced in any of these essays to any other than its own author, or suppose that all the writers ought to be held as concurring in everything contained in the book. Indeed, there are some points on which they decidedly express different opinions. But we cannot read their joint production attentively, without perceiving that there is a certain consistency in it, and that certain fundamental principles, which they all hold in common, are maintained throughout with more or less clearness and strength. From the nature of the case, there is a much greater amount of harmony spontaneously appearing among those who hold definite and positive views, than among the followers of a system, if system it can be called, of vague latitudinarianism or mere negation.

The writers of these essays belong to the school of opinion that is generally known as the High Church party, and their essays indicate, with considerable distinctness, the principles that are held by the ablest and most distinguished men of that section of the English Church. The Introduction of the volume, by Dean Hook, treats of Anglican Principles, and in it he explains "that the bond of union among the writers is a determination to abide by those principles which have distinguished the English from all other Reformers, from the reign of Henry VIII. to the time of the Revolution, since which time the Church of England has remained stationary " (p. 10). He then proceeds to remind us that the English Reformation was not one revolutionary act, but a series of events, covering

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the space of a century and a half; and he assumes that, during all that period, the Church of England was providentially guided in accordance with the same principles. Now, it seems to us, that at different times between the breach with Rome and the Revolution, the English Church has acted in very varying ways, and that the changes in its doctrine and ritual towards the latter part of that time have been very much for the worse. But into that question we do not mean at present to enter. Let us see what are, in Dean Hook's estimation, Anglican principles. The first relates to the continuity of the Church: "a belief that the post-Reformation is only a development of the pre-Reformation church, was the distinguishing point between the English and the foreign Reformers" (p. 12). Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin are not, according to him, in strictness of speech, entitled to the name of Reformers; they were the founders of sects, and what they effected was not reformation but revolution. Now, undoubtedly, these great men did something more decisive in the way of separating from the Romish Church than Dean Hook supposes the English Reformers to have done. They protested against, and attempted to reform the corruptions of the pre-Reformation Church; but, finding that the rulers of that church not only refused the reforms they craved, but met their protests by anathemas and persecution, they considered it necessary to make a secession from a body that was incurably corrupt, on account of its heresy in doctrine, idolatry in worship, and tyranny in government, and to form purer independent communions. But these reformed communions were not on that account mere sects, i.e., associations arbitrarily formed by men's will; for certainly, in the mind and purpose of their formers, they were founded on the authority of Christ speaking through his Word, and, therefore, are as much entitled to be called churches, and branches of the true Church catholic, as any others; at least if we take the definition of the church given in the Thirty-nine Articles, as "a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same." If some of the foreign Reformers went further than the Church of England in the way of removing from religion the accretions that had grown up around it in the course of ages, and reducing its forms and organisation to a more bare simplicity, it was not merely because they personally preferred such austerity that they did so, but because, taking the New Testament Church for their model, they considered that such was its form and constitution. In so doing, Anglicans may think they went too far, and made too radical and sweeping changes;

but it is unwarrantable to speak of this as anything more than an error, if error it be, in the application of a principle, on which all the Reformers alike acted. If Dean Hook means to assert that the Anglican Church rests upon any principle essentially different from this, he removes it from the foundation of the Protestant churches altogether, for he thus virtually repudiates the principle that the Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants.

Indeed, this is done more than virtually when there is laid down as another great Anglican principle, "deference to old catholic doctors" (p. 21 foll.). To shew that this is a principle of the Church of England, Dean Hook quotes a number of statutes and official declarations, in which the Reformed Church is spoken of as catholic, and the early fathers and councils are appealed to as well as the Bible. As far as these official statements are concerned, they may quite fairly be understood simply as asserting, as a matter of fact, that the Protestant doctrine was in accordance with the old catholic doctors as well as with Scripture; and this, as Dean Goode has shewn in his valuable work on the Rule of Faith, is all that is proved by a great number of the passages confidently alleged by tractarians as evidence of their theory of tradition. But undoubtedly the extracts given with approbation from Bishop Cheney (p. 23) do go much further than that, and set up catholic and universal consent as the rule for the understanding of Scripture. Dr Hook goes on elaborately to explain that the reason why deference is to be shewn to the early fathers, is that they are to be regarded as witnesses of the oral teaching of the apostles; and that this is needful, not indeed to supplement, but to interpret the teaching of Scripture; that the bishops at the first four general councils met, not to argue or discuss, but simply to bear witness to the faith of their respective churches; and that an ecclesiastical tradition existed in the ancient church, deference to which made the distinction between catholics and heretics. We cannot here enter into a discussion of the passages in the fathers to which he refers, but whatever may be their true meaning and bearing on the question, it is manifest that Dean Hook regards the voice of the Church, not merely as an important subsidiary aid in ascertaining the historical import of Scripture, but as an authoritative rule for its interpretation. This is evident, not only from the way he speaks here, but from a very offensive note on a previous page (p. 12), in which he says, "A Catholic in the primitive Church was one who accepted in the interpretation of Scripture the tradition of the Church Universal. He was opposed to the Heretic, who, as the word aigeons imparts, instead of deferring to the Church, exercised in regard to any