IN

N the Contemporary Review for January, Mr. Skeats has replied to an article of mine, entitled "A Nonconformist View of the Church of England," which appeared in the previous number. In that article I criticized his "History of the Free Churches," on the double ground of mis-statement of fact and violence of language. Mr. Skeats pleads guilty to various charges of the former kind, but will not allow that he has anything to apologise for in his language. "What has been quoted I adhere to: in writing these very sentences I exercised, as I considered, much self-restraint." At the same time he protests, "as a literary man," against being judged by such extracts: "Mr. Mayor should have quoted the other side.' We must suppose, therefore, that Mr. Skeats deliberately justifies, and adheres to, such a sentence as the following, to which I had called attention:-"A large proportion of the clergy lived in open violation of the whole of the moral law." The italics are of course mine.) But in the second place, though he justifies his own use of such words, he thinks it unjustifiable that they should be quoted against him, unless they are balanced by quotations of an opposite nature. I must confess this seems to me much as if, after calling a man a fool and a knave in one page, you were to deny that he had any right to take offence, for you had paid him a compliment-perhaps allowed that he dressed well-in the next. What kind of sentence would Mr. Skeats have had me pick out to balance the one I have given above? I quoted the passages referred to, because they seemed to me to transgress the limits which are expected to be observed by educated writers; if they do so, it is no answer to show that there are other passages in which those limits have not been transgressed.

Charges of inaccuracy Mr. Skeats meets generally by saying (and in this I fully agree with him) that it is impossible to escape errors in a large historical work, and that it is unfair to condemn such a work, as a whole, on account of a few minor blots. But Mr. Skeats will not himself deny that errors may be so numerous, or of such a nature, as to destroy all confidence in the writer: and the question between us is, to which class do the errors which I have noticed belong?

With regard to particular charges of inaccuracy, where they are met by a bare denial, or where the question at issue is one which, to be fully argued out, would require more time and space than I have at command, I must leave my readers to form their own judgment for themselves. Such are the charges referring to the following questions:-Were the ejected clergy tenderly treated? Is Mr. Skeats's book properly named; or is it an appeal to Nonconformists to unite against the Church? Were the Puritans melancholy and sour-visaged,

or were they "a little too fond" of dancing and billiards? One observation, however, I must make upon Mr. Skeats's remarks in reference to this last question. In his history he had asserted that Milton wrote only for Puritans, and implied that his writings might therefore be taken as an evidence of the tastes of the Puritans. In answer to this I said that people might, "if they liked," believe that Milton's "dim religious light" expressed a Puritan feeling, but that it was "simply false" to state that "Comus" (one of the works particularized) "was written for Puritans." Such a blunder, one would have thought, would have made the author of it shy of the page in which it was exposed, but Mr. Skeats boldly lays hold of my word "liking," and says, "the business of the critic is to expose the writer when he is wrong, and not to receive or reject evidence according to his liking." It is hard to see how "the critic" could have "exposed the writer" more completely than by showing that, on his own mere liking, in flat opposition to the plainest evidence, he had claimed "Comus as the property of the Puritans.

I go on to the remaining points, reserving to the last the two passages in which Mr. Skeats retorts upon me the charge of inaccuracy. In reference to his placing Cartwright and Whitgift at Oxford, he thinks he makes sufficient atonement for his mistake by an airy apology to the two universities: and if these were men who had simply received their education at Cambridge, no more could have been expected from one who had no special interest in either university. But Cambridge was not only the university of Cartwright and Whitgift; it was also the scene of their great controversy. To forget that they belonged to Cambridge is much as if one writing the history of the Church of England in the present century were to transfer Newman to Cambridge or Simeon to Oxford.

The next point is the numerical progress of dissent. I had mentioned that the accounts given under this head were inconsistent, and had even pointed out contradictions occurring in the course of a single page. Mr. Skeats answers this by saying, (1) that some of his statements are taken from official documents; (2) that he is not responsible for erroneous statements if they are given as quotations; (3) that, since the book was brought out, he has appended a note to one of these erroneous statements, mentioning that he believes it to be erroneous. All this seems to me to show a very extraordinary view of a historian's duty. Supposing every separate statement were taken from the best authorities, yet if they are inconsistent with one another, what can be more condemnatory of a historian than that he should throw them all down before his readers without any hint to show that he was himself conscious of the inconsistency, and therefore, of course, without any attempt to clear up the difficulty and arrive at the real truth? But Mr. Skeats does not think it necessary to seek out the best authorities; all that he requires is the protection of inverted commas in order to screen himself from attack. His view of "the business of a writer is that he should "simply report what he finds." I need not say that I take a very different view of "the business of a writer" who professes to be a historian. He has not only to "report what he finds," but to sift, weigh, and arrange what he finds. If he quotes an author, he is giving his sanction to what he quotes, unless he expressly guards himself by putting the responsibility upon the author.

The Church of England is a new Church." I had said that the Reformers claimed to represent the old Church of England; that their claim was at the time allowed by all Protestants; and that, in these words, Mr. Skeats was adopting the language of the Romanists. He replies that it is Bishop Short's language which he adopts. But this does not meet my objection. Bishop Short is an individual living now; I referred to the contemporary opinion of different religious bodies. And Bishop Short does not call the Church of England a new Church. His words are, "the existence of the Church of England as a distinct body, and of her final separation from Rome, may be dated from the divorce." Granted that it may be so-the Church of England, having been previously connected with Rome, became a distinct body then-the very words quoted imply that it was not the commencement of her existence, but of her separate existence. Should we call the Gallican Church new, if the proclamation of the Pope's infallibility should provoke it to break off its connection with the See of Rome? Mr. Skeats further asks, whether I hold that the

Romanists who refused to join the Reformed Church belonged to a new or an old Church. I will give my answer in the words of Coleridge:—

"The course of the Christian Church may be likened to a mighty river, which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its waters mud and gravel and weeds, till it met a great rock in the middle of its stream. By some means or other the water flows purely in a deeper and narrower course on one side of the rock, and the refuse of the dirt and troubled water goes off on the other in a broader current, and then cries out, We are the river.'"

So much for the general relation between the reformed and the unreformed Churches; but as to the particular question, whether the Romanists in England at the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth represented the old national Church or not, I reply most undoubtedly they did not. They had far less claim to do so than the Non-jurors had in their time. They were a small sect of foreign origin, and were only frightened into separation by the Bull of Excommunication, in the year 1570. "Before that time," says Fuller, "Papists usually without regret repaired to the public places of Divine service, and were present at our prayers, sermons, and sacraments."

Mr. Skeats is very summary with Hallam, whom I had quoted in reference to Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying." "This is one of the instances," he says, "in which Hallam was mistaken.' He then quotes a somewhat ambiguous passage to prove that the treatise in question is not properly described as a "plea for toleration." The reader, unless he is more than usually familiar with Taylor's works, will be surprised to learn that this passage, on which Mr. Skeats grounds his contradiction, is not to be found in the "Liberty of Prophesying "at all. It is taken from a sermon preached on the text, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine;" the main purport of which is to prove that the way to peace in religion is not by persecution, not alone by toleration, but by holy living. Of course a casual mention of this sort has no weight against a treatise expressly written on the subject; even if it had, if Taylor had in so many words recanted what he has said in the "Liberty of Prophesying," that would not have touched the question whether this was, or was not, "the first plea for toleration." To show that the book itself does fully deserve Hallam's praise, and justify its own descriptive title, "On the iniquity of persecuting differing opinions," I will quote one or two passages from the preface, in which Taylor sums up his reasons for writing:

"Let all errors be as much and as zealously suppressed as may be, but let it be done by such as are proper instruments of this suppression, by preaching and disputation, by charity and sweetness," &c.

"I have also as much reason to reprove those oblique arts which are not direct persecutions of men's persons . and these are suppressing all the monuments of

their adversaries, forcing them to recant, and burning their books."

"The experience which Christendom hath had in this last age is argument enough, that toleration of different opinions is so far from disturbing the public peace or destroying the interest of princes and commonwealths, that it does advantage to the public, it secures peace, because there is not so much as the pretence of religion left to such persons to contend for it, being already indulged to them."

Mr. Skeats complains that I have unjustly charged him with saying that in the year 1688 the universities were closed to a section of the English people, for the first time in English history." The date was taken from the heading of the page in which the sentence occurs; but it appears that I might have inferred, from the preceding sentence, that the date intended here was 1662. As 1662 is no more the date of the first closing of the universities, than 1688, I cannot think I have done Mr. Skeats any great injustice in overlooking the sentence to which he refers. The gist of my accusation was that he was ignorant of the existence of subscription under James I.; and to prove that this was not a mere slip I quoted another passage, in which it was said that, "up to the reign of Charles I. degrees were conferred without distinction of opinion." For this latter passage, however, he pleads the privilege of inverted commas, and declines to be responsible.

The next passage we have to consider is one in which I am charged with having committed "the blunder of confounding the anti-slave-trade with the

anti-slavery agitation." The occasion of this charge is an expression of surprise on my part at Mr. Skeats's mention of Joseph Sturge, John Burnet, and Daniel O'Connell as the leaders of the anti-slavery party, rather than Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Fowell Buxton. Mr. Skeats, therefore, must mean to imply that the second trio were engaged in the former agitation exclusively, and not in the latter; that after the abolition of the slave-trade in 1807, when Fowell Buxton was still a youth, they took no further interest in the welfare of slaves, and were in fact indifferent as to the abolition of slavery itself. Mr. Skeats could not of course assert this of Buxton, the actual leader in the second great movement against slavery. Him, therefore, he leaves in the convenient disguise of an 66 &c.," and devotes his attention to the other two. 66 Wilberforce took little part in the later struggle." The lives of Wilberforce and of Buxton tell a different tale. In the former we read:-"The last three years of his parliamentary career were spent in giving to the struggle against slavery that first impulse which before he left the scene had secured emancipation throughout all the British colonies." Again in 1830:-"The darkened prospects of the negro cause called him from his retirement; he consented, with weakened voice and enfeebled frame, to take the chair at a great meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society." His words on hearing that the Bill for abolition had passed the second reading are well known:-"Thank God that I should have lived to witness a day in which England is willing to give twenty millions sterling for the abolition of slavery." So also from Buxton's Life it is evident that Wilberforce was really the soul of the agitation, and that Buxton himself felt that he was merely the lieutenant of Wilberforce. There is now only Clarkson remaining to prove me guilty of confounding the two anti-slavery agitations. Of him, however, Mr. Skeats has no doubt:-"Clarkson was dead long before this." "If Mr. Mayor had referred to my history under the year 1788, he would have found Clarkson's name in the proper place." In considering this passage I must ask my readers to remember that Mr. Skeats is here on his defence on a charge of inaccuracy; he goes out of his way to retort the charge on his critic; and yet he has not taken the trouble to avoid a mistake in the simple matter of a date, which he might have learnt from any common history of the time. If he goes wrong here, where he had every motive to make sure of his ground, what chance is there of his proving a safe guide elsewhere? Even if we could excuse him for not knowing that Clarkson died in 1846 at the age of eighty-six, "having lived for the cause to the very last, and drawn in others to live for it," says Miss Martineau, yet one writing on the subject of the anti-slavery agitation might have been expected to remember Buxton's letter of congratulation to him after the Bill had passed. Since it proves that Clarkson's influence was felt in the later struggle as well as in the earlier, I shall quote a few words from this letter, and also from Clarkson's reply. After saying how greatly Clarkson had contributed to their success, Buxton continues-"I always think your pamphlet, which first gave us the true tone, was of most essential importance to our cause;" and Clarkson's answer begins-"I am immeasurably, more than I can express, thankful."

Even yet I have not done with this most fertile paragraph. Mr. Skeats speaks of the anti-slavery agitation circ. 1837;" but that agitation died with slavery itself in 1833. The agitation in 1837 was against apprenticeship; and one who is so keenly alive to the danger of confounding slave-trade and slavery might, one would think, have been on his guard against confounding slavery and apprenticeship.

I think I have now noticed every point in the "Vindication" which could be thought to call for a reply. I have only to add in conclusion that, though I have felt it my duty to speak out plainly my opinion of Mr. Skeats's book, yet my quarrel is not really with him, but with the reviewers whose notices form such an imposing array in his advertisement. As long as parties exist, there will be party historians; and I do not know that Mr. Skeats has exceeded the latitude which we naturally allow to those whom we recognise as party writers. But his reviewers have claimed for him the rank of a philosophical, i.e., of a non-sectarian historian. It is as such I have tested him; and as such I venture to think my readers will agree that I have shown him to be wanting.

J. B. MAYOR.

The First Epistle of John, expounded in a Series of Lectures. By R. S. CANDLISH, D.D. Two Volumes. Second Edition. Edinburgh: A. and C. Black.

WE are not than three years after its first publication. This edition

WE are not surprised that a second edition of this valuable series of lectures has

is an improvement on its predecessor by the addition of some valuable footnotes, a partial re-arrangement of the discourses under the several divisions of the work, and a considerable enlargement of the table of contents. A cursory perusal of this work shows it to be the production of a powerful masculine intellect. Every discourse evinces intellectual opulence; it is marked by a subtlety of thought, exegetical tact, combined with a clear and forcible exposition. The metaphysical bias of the author's mind, his predilection for formal doctrinal statement, which occasionally tends to the consistency of logical hardness, is less prominent here than in some of his former works, and is softened and subdued by a freer outcome of the heart, by the manifestation of a varied and profound Christian experience and fervid eloquence.

We have no intention of attempting, within our limited space, a laboured criticism of these lectures-an undertaking which would require long and careful study; we can only indicate briefly the general plan and structure of the work, and point out some of its deficiencies, which we should be glad if the author would endeavour to supply in a future edition. Dr. Candlish disclaims the intention of presenting to the learned a commentary founded on an elaborate critical and grammatical analysis of the text of the Epistle. He has given, however, enough of the ripe fruits of extensive learning, profound study, and scholarly criticism, to raise his work above the category of popular expositions. But we regret the almost entire absence of historical criticism and exegesis-an element which, though not always adapted to pulpit discourses, might have found a fitting place in an appendix, or in an introductory chapter, and which would have greatly enhanced the value of the work to many readers. The basis of this exposition is theological. A familiar acquaintance with the evangelical system of theology, Dr. Candlish thinks, is the prime necessary qualification for the successful exegetical interpretation of this Epistle of John. Unless too