sities, and were acknowledged by High and Low Church alike. At Oxford they were especially upheld by such men as Copleston, afterwards Bishop of Llandaff; Shuttleworth, afterwards Bishop of Chichester; Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin; Lloyd, Regius Professor of Divinity, and a little while Bishop of Oxford; Vowler Short, now Bishop of St. Asaph; Longley, now Archbishop of Canterbury; besides others who never emerged from the University. They were able men, some remarkably able; they had the field to themselves, yet they could not keep it. They sincerely believed that by invoking "historical testimony" they could recommend to the assent of every unprejudiced and intelligent mind such doctrines as we have denoted; yet, against their learning, experience, and high authority, two young men in Oxford commenced an unexpected reaction-Pusey, Professor of Hebrew, and J. H. Newman, whose sole distinction then consisted in being a Fellow of a most distinguished College; both of whom had evidently become aware that Protestantism could not possibly stand on its old basis. To prove by historical and learned evidence the postulate of the Evangelicals, that the Bible from end to end is infallible, they saw to be at once a hopeless and an absurd undertaking. To lay logic as the foundation, and make the doctrine of the Trinity the superstructure, they more than hinted, was very dangerous; indeed, some of the "Tracts for the Times" almost avow that no Protestant can prove the doctrine even from the Scripture. Dr. Newman (led on, we suppose, by polemical instincts) struck upon the method of assailing with logic all who appeal to reason (that is, common Protestants and liberals), while assuming that the true faith (his own), being founded on something higher than reason, is not bound to justify itself to reason. This gave to his school a delightful licence of attacking other people's want of logic, while reserving to itself the privilege of being illogical at pleasure. Oxford still boasted of able men, though some of those whom we have named were withdrawn. The new 66 Puseyism" soon reached the ears of the outer world, and interested all England. Baden Powelland shall we say Hampden ?-opposed it from within; Whateley, and Arnold, and Julius Hare, and a host of Evangelicals, from without. At Cambridge, at least one man of vast and various powers, keen ambition, deep and original thought-Whewell, Master of Trinity College—would have started a rival philosophy of the Christian religion, if he had been able. In morals, Sedgwick and Whewell have repudiated Paley; but we have never understood that in regard to "Christian Evidences" they undertake to supersede him. Like the deep-souled Julius Hare, and the sprightly, eager Arnold, they proved unable to check the movement of Newman and Pusey, whose attacks on the vulgar Protestantism were very unshrinking. The Tractarians were, no doubt, in a false position. They overthrew their allies from within, and were debarred from attacking their great enemy without; for Romanism, precisely on their ground, claims exemption from the task of reconciling its dogmas with reason: moreover, their doctrine of "Apostolic succession" presumes that a Roman bishop, however wicked, has a power of bestowing the Holy Spirit. In the result, Dr. Newman discovered and repented of the sin of assailing Rome. He has, nevertheless, done an effectual work in England, practically showing to what those tend who assume "High Church" axioms, and reason from them with consistent logic. Simultaneously, our knowledge of German theology has continually been on the advance. Dr. Pusey indeed himself, in his ardent youth, was the first person to expound at Oxford the deep Biblical learning and warm piety of German Protestants, who had in some points unhappily been carried too far, but who ought nevertheless to be esteemed and honoured, and wisely used. But he appears in a very few years to have discerned that the free study of the Bible in the nineteenth century would never end in the theology of the sixteenth, and by the discovery to have been forced into a totally new career. Meanwhile, it has become notorious that the arguments of Lardner and Paley break down on the literary and historical side, in the presence of the more accurate scholarship of the Germans, to say nothing of a higher philosophy; so that our academicians, if they endeavour to discuss "evidences" in Protestant fashion, dread to be precipitated into German "Neology;" while, if they deprecate private judgment and appeal to the Church, they are fighting the battle of Rome. In such an entanglement men of backward and stagnant minds may write and speak as if nothing new had been added to our knowledge of antiquity in the last fifty years; but leading talents will no longer give their energies to develop and maintain either theory of Anglicanism-of the Low, or of the High Church. The school of Paley has now, for perhaps the last twenty years, its most prominent representative in Mr. Henry Rogers, whose grave Edinburgh articles have been succeeded by elaborate effusions, called coarseness and ribaldry by some critics, sacred mirth by others. Most of our readers have probably read his conception of an Irish Adam talking brogue to the Creator against the Ten Commandments; and will add epithets at their own discretion to Mr. Rogers's name. We believe that he writes from the outside of the Established Church. Within, Oxford and Cambridge are waiting for a religious philosophy. That of Professor Jowett may be very noble and very true; but it is so different from the hereditary Protestant doctrines, that the Oxonians cannot be blamed for looking askance and timidly at it. They are in general paralyzed, from an uneasy foreboding of the dangers contingent on a close reconsideration of first principles. Precisely because theologians will not reconsider first principles, but, with infinite disputes about their superstructure, are careless about their foundation, therefore it is that science tends to become Atheistic, alike in Protestant as in Catholic countries. The blame of this may be justly laid upon the doctrine which elaborately seeks for marks of God in everything unusual and exceptional, and denies His presence in all that is ordinary and established. We are aware that there are enlightened Protestant divines, who disapprove this position; eminently the Rev. Baden Powell, who, in the first of his "Three Essays on the Unity of Worlds," speaks as follows: : "According to this mode of representation [by religious writers] Nature was the rule, 'Deity' the exception. The belief in nature was the doctrine of reason and knowledge; the acknowledgment of a God was only the confession of ignorance. So long as we could trace physical laws, nature was our only and legitimate guide; when we could attain nothing better, we were to rest satisfied with a God. Even learned writers on natural theology have thought it pious to argue in this way."-p. 162, Second Edition. [Italics as in Mr. Powell.] Mr. Powell's protest is right and wise; but, with deference to him, we add, it cannot be effectual unless he pull down the whole Protestant theory, of which the avowed foundation is the miraculous— the exceptional. It commands us, not to look within our hearts, or into human history, for the Divine, but into one miraculous book and one miraculous history. It virtually shuts God out from inspiring us now, by the stress which it lays on the special inspiration once granted by Him to a few. It lays down that the Jewish history is sacred, and other histories profane; and treats even the history of the Christian Church as too secular for the pulpit, from the day that the canon of Scripture was closed. It represents that God is certainly present wherever there is miracle, but that where miracle is not, no one can be sure of the presence of God. Nothing else is meant or can be meant by the infallible and authoritative Bible, than to desecrate, in comparison to it, all the ordinary modes of learning truth, and duty, and right. In proportion to the power and activity of this theory concerning miracles and the Bible, will be the intensity with which a man embraces the exceptional and obscure phenomena of the world as the great manifestation of Deity. Undoubtedly Mr. Powell rightly regards this to tend to Atheism, for every step onward of knowledge is then a lessening and weakening of the Theist's resources. But we submit to him that we are right in insisting, that a theory which places the strength of religion in the miraculous is naturally of Atheistic tendency. It entraps into Atheism those students of science, who, having no religious philosophy of their own, borrow its fundamental principles from the Church. In fact, those writers on "Evidences," who now seem to have the field to themselves, make no secret of their conviction that Atheism is the necessary logical result of an appeal to Science, the Universe, and Man. On the one side, we see a great ecclesiast, the Rev. Dr. Irons, frankly declare that, without the authoritative and supernatural revelation by miracle, Nature preaches to us nothing concerning God. On the other, a wouldbe philosopher and liberal Christian, Mr. Rogers, in his "Eclipse of Faith," announces that the Atheist has the argument entirely in his own hands, as against the Deist, and that without the Bible the only God preached by Nature is an immoral or malignant Being. The learned and highly popular author of a work called "The Restoration of Belief" goes so far as to insist, that one who does not acknowledge the supernatural authority of "THE BOOK," not only ought to be an Atheist, but has no right to talk of "Conscience, Truth, Righteousness, and Sin;" and that sacrifices for Truth are in such a one "not constancy, but opinionativeness." How can Christians avoid shuddering at such avowals from their own advocates? which, if true, utterly destroy Christianity with Theism, and prepare to plunge mankind into a state of barbarous Paganism. That the Protestant theory has no future, is indicated by many marks. We have seen Arnold and Julius Hare (good, noble, able men, of peculiar acquirements) live and die without being able to make themselves understood; a pretty clear proof that the age has no susceptibility for their doctrine. The same is true of the Rev. Fredk. Maurice, and of the Chevalier Bunsen. Mr. Maurice is a man of acknowledged goodness and largeness of heart; as Professor or Preacher, untiring in industry; devoted to raise the working classes; so copious a writer on theology that he will probably outdo Archbishop Whately in amount; and he has evidently undertaken as the work of his life to sublimate Church orthodoxy into a transcendental philosophy. Yet, in spite of the high commendation bestowed upon his talents and discrimination by a few, to the public at large he seems to be only subtle, flimsy, and evasive. He may be wise, but the age cannot understand him. "What does he mean?" is the cry which escapes from the perplexed novices who would fain admire him. Not dissimilar is the case with the accomplished Bunsen, who invests in gorgeous colours and vast pomp of intricate words a system of religious historicism, in which the common intellect can discover no solidity, no fixed shape, no firm and certain meaning. And as the new quasi-Coleridgian school proves feeble to us and dim, so neither does the old nursery rear any thriving plants. No young Whatelys show themselves. Nobody of high reputation now writes treatises on the Trinity. Whately did but bring on himself a strong and dangerous imputation of "Sabellianism" by the remarks in his Logic on the word "Person:" Hampden half ruined himself by being too learned on the same subject. Men of the Evangelical school, who have no philosophic reputation to lose, may publish sermons on the Atonement; but a systematic treatise on this involves much risk to a man of note. Schleiermacher's "Discourse on St. Luke" was translated about twenty years ago (as was believed) by Dr. now Bishop Thirlwall: we have never heard that it has been answered by any one. Many have claimed, that the Bishop will answer it himself, since he now disavows it. Nor does any leading divine undertake to refute the works of Charles Hennell or W. R. Greg. When the wise men hold their peace under such attacks, it must be thought that they are but too conscious of the weakness of their own cause. In consequence of the freedom which in Protestant countries many sects attain, we see from time to time the doctrine of personal inspiration (perhaps with some fanaticism) assert itself strongly against the ecclesiastical, which makes inspiration an exceptional thing of the past. Thus Whitfield, and thus Huntington the coalheaver, thus also Edward Irving were distinguished. Speculators have marked out as revivals such periodical recur |