They may lay by the breast-plate, too, And Faith is changed to glad prostration; And the long-used, long-trusted sword, 'Tis holy ground, that golden street! Each after each, O vision glad! In robes of glory brightly clad, While Heaven's high courts anew are ringing Another soul is gathered in, Another struggler landed! O that some echo of that song Might reach earth's battle-field ere long! Have found their own for ever! Why should we stand in mournful gloom In hope of coming triumph. E. P. S. DR. PUSEY'S EIRENIKON. An The Church of England a portion of Christ's one only Catho lic Church, and a means of restoring visible unity. EIRENIKON, in a Letter to the Author of the Christian Year. By E. B. Pusey, D.D. John Henry and James Parker, Oxford. 1865. From a variety of causes, we took up this elaborate letter, which is really a volume of 409 pages, with the intensest interest. Since the commencement of the present fearful conflict "with unbelief and half belief," our hearts have been gradually warming and drawing towards the Regius Professor of Hebrew. Many of his recent works we have perused, we hope with real profit to ourselves, and we are sure with unfeigned thankfulness for such a valuable and most seasonable testimony. We had good hope that the precious truths of that holy Book, whose Divine Inspiration he so nobly vindicated, were sinking deeper and deeper into the heart of our author; and that the errors and delusions, for which he contended in by-gone time, were virtually renounced, and silently abjured. Neither could we see with an indifferent eye that this Eirenikon was addressed to the tuneful author of "The Christian Year." Some of the exquisite thoughts that sparkle through the mist of that well known book, and shine like stars among the clouds of night, have often proved to us a word in season, and have lent us wings on which to ascend from this work-day world of ours to high and heavenly things. Dr. Pusey informs us, in his opening pages, what was the occasion that called forth the present volume. We know well how heartily he united with all who tremble at the Word of God, in resisting the daring attacks of neologians and rationalists. For this he has been called to task by the perverted Dr. Manning, now both an Archbishop and a Cardinal of the Apostate Church "By merit raised to that bad eminence." For associating with the Evangelical clergy, even for such a purpose as that, the fallen Archdeacon accuses the Regius Professor of "drifting back from his old moorings." How glad we should have been if Dr. Pusey had frankly admitted the charge, and told his accuser that he gloried in it. If his old moorings were not safe,-if he felt he was drifting from them, as Dr. Manning and others had already drifted, to the apostate Church of Rome, and if, by his diligent search of Holy Scripture, he had found that there is nothing else but Scripture only on which to rest,-where would have been the shame of changing his moorings from the shifting sand to the safe anchorage? Surely it might have been said to Dr. Pusey, in such a case, what Jerome said to Rufinus :-" Never blush to change your mind. You are not of such authority that you should be ashamed to confess that you have been in error." We are deeply grieved, and greatly disappointed, to find that such is not the acknowledgment made by our author in the Eirenikon. Indeed, he has written this book to prove, both to friends and to foes, that he has not departed from his old moorings; and that his views are substantially the same now, that they were thirty years ago. We are extremely reluctant to receive his proofs; but with this book before us, we are constrained to do so; and with a tearful eye and sorrowful heart write,-Dr. Pusey, in the volume before us, instead of repudiating the false doctrine of the Oxford Tracts, comes forth as their advocate; and if we rightly apprehend his meaning, the most monstrous and notorious of them all, Tract No. 90 itself, finds favour in his sight. Indeed, he tells us distinctly, towards the end of his letter, that such is the case. He records a correspondence which was carried on between Du Pin and Archbishop Wake, respecting the practicability of union between the English and the Romish Church. This design (could it be otherwise?) entirely failed. But in these words he expresses to his correspondent the favourable light in which he regarded the compromise offered by Du Pin. "His whole plan seems to be an anticipation of our dear friend's Tract 90." (p. 235.) Then again he informs us, in another place,—“I have the further object of showing that the breach between us and Rome is not so wide as it is commonly thought, or as, in the period of my youth, the Articles were unconsciously strained to make out." (p. 207.) In addition to this, we find him speaking thus of the very period when our Prayer Book was purged from all the remains of popery that appeared in the first Prayer Book of our English Josiah: "The unhappy time towards the close of the reign of Edward VI." (p. 228.) Now all this is to us most grievously disappointing. When Dr. Pusey does battle with German rationalists, who have no real belief in the truth and inspiration of the Bible; or with English sceptics, who would eliminate from the Scriptures everything that is distinctive and definite; like the strong man in the zenith of his strength, he brings down and lays low the armies of the aliens, heaps upon heaps; and demolishes, in the most triumphant manner, all their strongholds, and all their hiding places. But as soon as he touches the ground where the mighty conflict is being carried on between the Protestant and the Papist,-that is, between the true Church and the apostate Church, between Christ and Antichrist,-like Samson shorn of his locks, he is not only weak and powerless as another man, but we are perfectly satisfied, in his attempt to reconcile what cannot be reconciled, he would betray the cause for which our Marian martyrs gave their bodies to be burned, and that he would deliver the Protestant Church of England, tied and bound, into the lap of the great spiritual harlot. In speaking most kindly, as he does, of the "Evangelicals," Dr. Pusey makes this apparently candid, but really astonishing, avowal:-"I never met with any who held the Lutheran doctrine of justification, that 'justifying faith is that whereby a person believes himself to be justified." The words we put in italics, we suppose to be those of Dr. Manning. But whoever it may be that makes this unworthy reflection upon "the Lutheran doctrine of justification," we do not hesitate to say, that the Lutherian doctrine of justification is none other than the doctrine of Prophets and Apostles, the doctrine of the Church of England, and of the Holy Church throughout all the world. In these words Dr. Pusey rehearses the articles of his belief:"I believe explicitly all which I know God to have revealed to His Church, and anything, if He has revealed it, which I know not. In simple words, I believe all which the Church believes. This is the habit of my mind now. This I confess when I say to God, I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church." (p. 7.) This confession of faith is extremely unsatisfactory. To believe all that the Church believes, affords a margin sufficiently ample to have inscribed upon it all the delusions, and superstitions, and errors of the Apostasy. How much safer and better it would have been for Dr. Pusey to have taken the ground so wisely selected, and so nobly defended, by Chillingworth in his great work on "The Religion of Protestants." What things do we know with certainty that God has revealed to His Church, except those things which we find in the Scriptures of Truth? "The Bible, I say,"-these are the memorable words of Chillingworth,-"the Bible only is the religion of Protestants. I cannot find any rest for the sole of my foot, but upon this rock only. I see plainly and with my own eyes, that there are Popes against Popes, Councils against Councils, some Fathers against others, the same Fathers against themselves, a consent of Fathers of one age against a consent of Fathers of another age, the Church of one age against the Church of another age. In a word, there is no sufficient certainty but of Scripture only, for any considering man to build upon. This therefore, and this only, I have reason to believe. Propose me anything out of this Book, and enquire whether I believe or no, and seem it never so incomprehensible to human reason, I will subscribe it with hand and heart, as knowing no demonstration can be stronger than this: God hath said so, therefore it is true. I am fully assured that God does not, and therefore that men ought not to require any more of any man than this,-to believe the Scripture to be God's word, to endeavour to find the true sense of it, and to live according to it." After reading Dr. Pusey's "Daniel the Prophet," we were prepared to expect that he would cheerfully endorse such a good confession as this. But the "Eirenikon" has completely dispelled the pleasing expectation. It is true that in this book he speaks with his wonted reverence of the Holy Scriptures; and gives, in a learned and elaborate note, a consensus Patrum to prove that "the faith according to the Fathers is contained in Holy Scripture." But all this is of little avail while "Patristic interpretation" is preferred to the glorious light which the Bible never fails to reflect upon its own pages, when the inward teaching of the only infallible Teacher is earnestly and sincerely sought. Dr. Pusey himself says:-"The question between the school of Dean Goode and ourselves was not, whether Holy Scripture is the ultimate source of faith (in which we were always agreed), but whether it is its own interpreter." (Note A, p. 337.) When we say the Bible is its own interpreter, we do not reject any help for discovering the meaning of God's Word that can be had from those whom He has taught in times past. Only we mean, as the profound Usher remarks, in his answer to a Jesuit, that while we rise up before the hoar head, and honour the face of the elder, we give the supreme reverence to Him who is the Ancient of Days, the hair of whose head is like the pure wool, and whose voice we recognise speaking to us from heaven in His holy Word. It is truly said, "All the different parts of Scripture are so quickened by the same life, and so animated by the same spirit, that no sentiment of any one of the sacred writers can receive a more convincing and trustworthy interpretation, than that which is supplied by the sentiments and expressions of another." (Bishop Ellicott, in Aids to Faith.) A most remarkable testimony to the power of Scripture to interpret itself, we cannot withhold, from Bishop Horsley. These are his words:-"It is incredible to any one who has not tried the experiment, what a proficiency may be made in the knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation, by studying the Scripture with reference to the parallel passages, without any other commentary or exposition than that which the different parts of the sacred volume mutually furnish for each other. Let the most illiterate Christian study them in this manner, and let him never cease to |