does not manifest itself in acts of obedience to all the commands of him in whom we profess to believe.

But the Bishop of Exeter not only rejects the doctrine of St. Paul concerning justification by faith alone-he maintains "the soundness" of the opposite doctrine that forgiveness and works of mercy avail in obtaining remission of sins from God. We do not stop to enquire how this is consistent with his other tenet, that it is through baptism alone that remission of sins is to be obtained; for we cannot find consistency for three pages together throughout the whole of this "Pastoral Letter." But we are told that the Archbishop of Canterbury had said that, "to speak of forgiveness, or works of mercy, as availing to obtain remission of sins from God, is to depart from the sense of the Articles " (26). To this statement the Bishop of Exeter replies in the following remarkable words :

"I shall not enter into any argument to prove the soundness of the position which his Grace condemns. In truth, I cannot deal with it as a matter of discussion-as the tenet of men-no! not of the most learned or greatest of men; for is it not also the tenet of HIM who is God as well as Man? Read his parable of the cruel creditor, and then where is the man who will dare to say that, 'to speak of forgiveness or works of mercy as availing to obtain remission of sins before God,' is to depart from the sense of the Articles of religion to which we all subscribe? If it were, never more would I permit a clergyman to subscribe those Articles before me-never more would I permit myself, by the grace of God, to act as bishop in a Church which so contradicts the plain teaching of our Lord. Did the writer, who thus ventured to brand this sentiment with his anathema, ever seriously ponder-did he ever cursorily notice the force of that petition, which is often on his lips, and always, I doubt not, in his heartthat petition, which is at once the source of all our consolation and the simplest and plainest warning of our duty-Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us for if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you ; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses?'-this is the comment of our Lord himself on His own heavenly lesson of mercy; yet this we have seen condemned by the highest officer in our Church as heterodox, as Popish -aye, and by implication-I tremble while I write the word-as devilish!" (27).

This is one of the most painful and disgraceful paragraphs that we have ever had the misfortune to deal with-painful in the spirit it evinces-disgraceful in the ignorance it manifests in one who holds the office both of a father and a teacher in the Church, who should be an example of meekness and gentleness, and not only sound in the faith, but sound in

speech, that he may be able to instruct others also; and it is difficult to avoid committing the same faults which we condemn in the bishop while commenting on a production so much calculated to arouse feelings of contempt and hostility as is the "Letter" before us. But these feelings are considerably moderated by the doubt which we expressed at the commencement-whether the writer has been accustomed to weigh That he has and ponder well the sense of the words he uses. no accuracy of thought is evinced throughout this "Letter." First, what say the Articles? The eleventh says "We are says-" accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own. works or deservings ;" and the twelfth says-" Albeit that good works, which are the fruits of faith and follow after justification, cannot put away our sins; yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ, and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by the fruit." These are the two points which we have been endeavouring to explain as completely reconciling the statements of St. Paul and St. James. St. Paul asserts that we are justified by faith alone; but he, of course, means it to be understood as an abiding and not an evanescent principle; and he shows in many places, especially in the epistle to the Hebrews (vi. 4, x. 26), the fatal consequences of departure from that faith which they had once received. St. James, on the other hand, speaks of the same faith as manifested in its fruits, maintaining that, unless these fruits appear, the faith was never genuine; or the party has fallen away from the faith which he once held. Both doctrines are alike true--both would be equally asserted by St. Paul and St. James, and both are declared by the eleventh and twelfth Articles of the Church of England.

The Bishop of Exeter receives these Articles, and yet mainspeak tains "the soundness of the position" of those who " of forgiveness, or works of mercy, as availing to obtain remission of sins from God;" and that this is no departure from the sense of the Articles, although one of them declares By what pro"that good works cannot put away our sins." cess of reasoning he is able to reconcile the two statements, which are not involved in an intricate labyrinth of long scholastic subtleties, but consist of a few of the plainest words that could be used, we are utterly at a loss to comprehend. Had a meaner man, or a less practised writer, made such an avowal, we should regard him as an imbecile, and

our most becoming way of dealing with it in a bishop is to pass it by in silence.

But the appeal to the parable of the cruel creditor and to our Lord's Prayer, in justification of the position that forgiveness and works of mercy are availing to obtain remission of sins from God, having the semblance of an argument and being false inferences from Scripture, and not a mistake in matters of fact, we must point out the fallacy of the reasoning in these two instances. The cruel creditor had been already forgiven, before his willingness to forgive a fellowservant was put to the test: therefore, it is not at all to the point, and does not in the least prove that forgiveness and works of mercy avail in obtaining remission of sins from God; but what it does prove is this-that, although we have obtained forgiveness from God, it will be of no avail, but will be forfeited by us and revoked by God, if we are not as ready to forgive our brethren as God hath already shown himself to be in forgiving us. And this is also the meaning of the Lord's Prayer; for it begins with addressing God as our Father, and no one can call a being with whom he is at enmity by that endearing name. We are by nature children of wrath, and become children of God by adoption and grace; and, of course, have received forgiveness before we can truly call God our Father. And, as St. John teaches, we love God because He first loved us; but, if we love not our brother whom we have seen, it is a vain mockery to pretend to love God whom we have not seen: so forgiveness and every other grace begins in God and is first exercised by him towards us, and we are then rendered capable of exercising the same kind of graces towards our brethren and towards all mankind. We do not pray to be forgiven, because we forgive them that trespass against us, but as we forgive them; and this makes all the difference. Love ye your enemies, saith our Lord, that so ye may be the children of the Highest. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

And we must also notice the pretended appeal to Scripture in support of the doctrine that forgiveness and works of mercy are available in obtaining remission of our sins from God. Our readers would be surprised if it should be found possible to discover any passage in Scripture which favours such a doctrine; but the Bishop of Exeter has found a passage in Bull's "Harmonia Apostolica " which he adopts and cites as conclusive authority on the question. The doctrine, it is said, "is sufficiently clear from that well-known passage of Dan,

iv. 27, where the holy prophet suggests this wholesome counsel to King Nebuchadnezzar, as yet sticking fast in his sins: 'Redeem thy sins by alms-giving, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor"" (26). We need not dwell on the confusion of thought, both in Bull and in the Bishop of Exeter, in their citing an address to a Heathen king as at all parallel to, or having any analogy with, remission of sins in the Christian sense: the two ideas are toto cœlo different; and we need not dwell on it for another reason-the words quoted are not Scripture. Bull must have known that they are not it is possible that the Bishop of Exeter did not know it. The words are the Vulgate perversion of Scripture, of which our authorised version gives the true sense as follows "Wherefore, O King! let my counsel be acceptable to thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity " (Dan. iv. 27). There is no support of the false doctrine here; but the Vulgate rendering is, "Peccata tua eleemosynis redime, et iniquitates tuas misericordiis pauperum; forsitan ignoscet delictis tuis "a favourite doctrine of the Roman Church, and dear to the natural man, as giving him something to glory in; but finding no support in Scripture, as this perversion shows, as well as the reference in the margin of the Vulgate-not to any genuine Scripture, but to the Apochrypha alone. Ecclus. iii. 33— Ignem ardentem extinguit aqua, et eleemosyna resistit peccatis." We think that the new version of Tate and Brady might be as well referred to as an authority, who thus have translated the hundred and twelfth Psalm

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"His liberal favours he extends, to some he gives, to others lends; Yet what his charity impairs, he saves by prudence in affairs.

His hands while they his alms bestow'd, his glory's future harvest sow'd:

Whence he shall reap, wealth, fame, renown-a temp'ral and eternal crown."

This leads us to point out where we conceive the error lies in what is called the "Sacramental System "-an error which pervades even that modified form of it which is maintained by the Bishop of Exeter, and is carried out to the full in the writings of Dr. Pusey and his followers. The error consists in ascribing to lifeless things the attributes of living things, and so losing sight of the distinction between persons and things-between sacraments and the graces which the sacraments are ordained in order to impart.

The error commences even earlier than the sacraments,

for the same parties confound together three things which are quite distinct, though they are all three called the " Body of Christ;" or, more properly, the body of Jesus, the body of Christ, and the body of the Lord. It were well if these distinctions were always kept in view, so as to designate our Lord's personal body by his personal name, which is Jesus; and his mystical body by his official title of Christ or the Anointed; and his sacramental body as that of the Lord or Head over all things to the Church. These distinctions are generally, and so far as we can find without exception, observed in Scripture: thus where St. Peter gives, as the conclusion to be deduced from his appeal to Scripture on the day of Pentecost, "Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified. both Lord and Christ." As Jesus, he was crucified; but being Christ, or Holy One of God, his flesh saw no corruption, and he was exalted to the right hand of the Father as Lord over all; and from that throne of glory he manifests himself as the Christ by bestowing on the Church that anointing of the Holy Ghost which is implied in this name, and also in giving them the bread from heaven which is therefore called the "Body of the Lord;" and being broken for distribution amongst the members of his mystical body is therefore called the "Communion of the Body of Christ."

The Bishop of Exeter seems entirely to disregard these distinctions; and to hold that in all cases where the Church is spoken of as a "mystical body," or our Lord calls the sacrament "his body," we are to understand these expressions in a personal sense, as we do the body which hung upon the cross and now sitteth at the right hand of God. But we

acknowledge our utter inability to comprehend what it is that the bishop really does hold: we wish to understand his meaning, but can extract only such a sense from his words as seems self-contradictory and absurd. The bishop first refers to the ordination service, which says, "The Church and congregation which you must serve is his spouse and his body.' On which he remarks, "This is a particular which must not be dismissed cursorily. Scripture, as we see, speaks of the Church as having that which is equivalent to personality" (31). Does the bishop mean to call the ordination service Scripture," as we have already found him calling the creeds. "the pure word of God?" It would seem so, and in that case a simple denial is all that is requisite: it is beyond the reach of argument. But passing this, has it never occurred to the bishop to remark that the Church is often spoken of

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