of years, the attributes of the Deity, the affections of the human heart, and the faculties of the human mind, were the favourite subjects of philosophical inquiry. They engrossed the attention of the acutest and the most diligent thinkers. Reason was enlightened by Revelation; and, for more than 1800 years, the Revelation itself has been commented on by the whole civilized world. To be original in such matters-to discover inferences and analogies of any value, which shall have escaped undetected by so long and so careful an examination-is an attempt from which the most sanguine may well recoil. The bulk of our writers prefer gleaning from fields which have been less carefully reaped. They turn to political economy, to legislation, to criticism, to history, to biography, to physical science, in short, to studies which are so recent, that their most accessible treasures are still unexhausted, or which, depending rather on observation than on consciousness, rather on testimony than on inference, are practically inexhaustible. Working on such materials, they may expect to inform or to amuse. As expounders of Archbishop Whately's reasonings, all that they can hope is to instruct-to lead the reader to admit propositions which, though unperceived, had been implied in his previous knowledge.

This, without doubt, can be done. Trite as are his subjects, the Archbishop's works are eminently original. They are full of new analogies, of subtle discriminations, and of inferences, of which the reader recognises both the truth and the novelty, feels that they had never struck him before, but that they follow necessarily from premises with which he is familiar.

But a critic is not satisfied by acting the part of a mere expounder. He wishes not to follow, or even to accompany, but to precede, his author; to clear up his confusion; to expose his fallacies; and to show that even when he is right, he is right imperfectly that he has seen the truth, but not the whole truth, and has left it to his reviewer to draw from his premises their full conclusions.

We have all studied Bacon's advice-" In seconding another, yet to add somewhat of one's own; as, if you will grant his opinion, let it be with some distinction; if you will follow his motion, let it be with condition; if you allow his counsel, let it be with alleging further reason."

The victim whom we delight to immolate is a puzzle-headed, ingenious rhetorician, whose absurdities and inconsistencies may serve as pegs for our own theories, and as foils to them. But against this treatment Archbishop Whately's works are proof. They have been carefully elaborated in a capacious and patient. intellect, animated by a love of truth, and a hatred of disguise, Essay on Ceremonies and Respects.

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amounting almost to passion. They contain few premises thrown out rashly, none assumed insincerely, and no inferences which the author does not believe to be legitimate; and small indeed are the chances of finding a flaw in the logic.

The work, of which we have prefixed the title, is not peculiarly fit for criticism. Its fragmentary nature makes it impossible to give any general view of it. But, though it has already reached a third edition, it is the newest of the Archbishop's works; and though, without doubt, already widely known, it is probably less so than anything that he has published since 1844. We shall incur less danger of encumbering our pages with quotations with which the reader is already familiar, and of pronouncing judgments which he has himself anticipated.

The essays of Bacon do not require an annotator for the purpose of explaining obscurities; for, as is the case with almost all clear thinkers, he is an eminently perspicuous writer. Nor is there much that is obsolete in his language. Like Shakspeare, he seems to have anticipated many modern refinements. Whole pages occur in which nothing betrays antiquity except a naïveté and simplicity of diction, seldom found in the writings of those who have the fear of critics before their eyes, and an exuberance of classical quotation, which was natural when the bulk of our literature was Roman or Greek. But, though Bacon's essays require little explanation, they are susceptible, as this volume shows, of great development. They were intended, as the Archbishop remarks, and as the word essay in its original acceptation expresses, to be tentamina, not finished treatises, but sketches, to be filled up by the reader-hints, to be pursued-thoughts, thrown out irregularly, to suggest further inquiries and reflections. It is true that his sketches and hints are worth far more than the most elaborate performances of other men, but they never have been turned to better account than when they have been expanded and illustrated by Archbishop Whately.

In reviewing a work without unity, or even continuity, it is difficult to find a principle to follow in the selection of topics. We will begin by the essay on Unity in Religion, partly on account of the peculiar importance of its subject, and partly because, in his annotations to that essay, the Archbishop has noticed some speculations for which the author of this article is responsible, and has subjected them to strictures so serious, that he feels bound either to admit that they are well-founded, and, in that case, to retract, or to show that they are undeserved.

Bacon had the misfortune to live in a bigoted and a persecuting age-in an age which believed that, in religious matters, error, though merely speculative, though totally incapable of influencing

human conduct, though relating to things far beyond the reach of the human faculties, is not only sin, but sin for which men "without doubt shall perish everlastingly ;" and, still further, believed it to be the duty of the civil governor, in the words of the English Liturgy, "to execute justice, and to maintain truth;" that is to say, to maintain truth by the execution of justice. From bigotry, however, he appears to have been free. In his advertisement on Church Controversies,' he reprobates the "curious questions and the strange anatomies of the natures and person of Christ," which divided the Christian churches in the first centuries, when ingeniosa res fuit esse Christianum; and still more those "about ceremonies, and things indifferent, and the external policy and government of the Church." He suggests a doubta doubt which, in those days, must have shocked the majority of his readers—whether, "in the general demolition of the Church of Rome, there were not, as men's actions are imperfect, some good purged with the bad;" and he ends his "considerations on the pacification of the Church" by a passage which we quote below, and which well deserves to be pondered by our modern ecclesiastical factions. But he cannot be as fully exonerated from the charge of having been, to some degree, intolerant. He disapproved, indeed, of "the propagation of religion by wars, or by sanguinary persecutions, to force consciences;" but he adds, that "there be two swords among Christians, the spiritual and the temporal, and both have their due office in the maintenance of religion;" and that "the temporal sword is to be drawn with great circumspection in cases of religion." He objected, therefore, not to the use, but merely to the abuse of persecution. He did not perceive that any employment whatever of the temporal sword in cases of religion, whether rashly or with circumspection, is opposed not merely to the spirit, but to the express precepts, of Christianity-to the formal renunciation by our Lord of all temporal dominion, and of all coercive influence.

His desire for unity, indeed, in "points fundamental, and of substance in religion," was very earnest. "For the point," he says, 3 that there should be but one form of discipline in all churches, and that imposed by necessity of a commandment and prescript out of the word of God, is a matter volumes have been compiled of, and therefore cannot receive a brief redargution. I, for my part, do confess that, in revolving the Scriptures, I could never find any such thing; but that God had left the like liberty to the Church government as He had done to the civil government-to be varied according to time, and place, and accidents; which, nevertheless, His high and Divine providence doth order and dispose. For all civil governments are restrained 1 Works, vol. ii. p. 501. 2 Ibid, p. 529. 3 Essay on Unity in Religion, p. 19.

Heresies and Schisms.

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from God unto the general grounds of justice and manners; but the policies and forms of them are left free; so that monarchies and kingdoms, senates and seignories, popular states and communalties, are lawful, and, where they are planted, ought to be maintained inviolate.

"So likewise in Church matters, the substance of doctrine is immutable, and so are the general rules of government; but for rites and ceremonies, and for the particular hierarchies, policies, and disciplines of churches, they be left at large. And therefore it is good we return unto the ancient bounds of unity in the Church of God, which was, 'One faith, one baptism,' and not, 'One hierarchy, one discipline;' and that we observe the league of Christians, as it is penned by our Saviour, which is, in substance of doctrine, this- He that is not with us, is against us;' but, in things indifferent, and but of circumstance, this- He that is not against us, is with us;" as it is excellently alluded to by that father that noted, that Christ's garment was without seam, and yet was of divers colours; and thereupon setteth down for a rule, 'In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit.'

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"Heresies and schisms are of all others the greatest scandals, yea, more than corruption of manners; for as, in the natural body, a wound or solution of continuity is worse than a corrupt humour, so in the spiritual; so that nothing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and drive men out of the Church, as breach of unity; and, therefore, whensoever it cometh to that pass, that one saith, Ecce in deserto,' another saith, Ecce in penetralibus ;'-that is, when some men seek Christ in the conventicles of heretics, and others in an outward face of a church, that voice had need continually to sound in men's ears, Nolite exire. The Doctor of the Gentiles (the propriety of whose vocation drew him to have a special care of those without) saith, 'If a heathen come in, and hear you speak with several tongues, will he not say that you are mad?' and, certainly, it is little better. When atheists and profane persons do hear of so many discordant and contrary opinions in religion, it doth avert them from the Church, and maketh them to sit down in the chair of the scorners.' It is but a light thing to be vouched in so serious a matter; but yet it expresseth well the deformity. There is a master of scoffing that, in his catalogue of books of a feigned library, sets down this title of a book, The Morris Dance of Heretics;' for, indeed, every sect of them hath a diverse posture, or cringe, by themselves, which cannot but move derision in worldlings and depraved politics, who are apt to contemn holy things." To this passage the Archbishop has appended the following note:1

1 P. 31.

"There occurs, in a late number of a leading periodical, a remark, which one may find also in the mouths of many, and in the minds of very many more, that the great diversity of religious opinions prevailing in the world, and the absence of all superhuman provision against them, is a proof that it is the will of the Almighty that such should be the case-that men were designed to hold all diversities of religious belief. Now, the inference which will naturally be drawn, on further reflection, from this is, that it is no matter whether we hold truth or falsehood; and next, that there is no truth at all in any religion.

"But this is not all. The same reasoning would go to prove that, since there is no infallible and universally accessible guide in morals, and men greatly differ in their judgments of what is morally right and wrong, hence we are to infer that God did not design men to agree on this point neither, and that it matters not whether we act on right or wrong principles; and, in short, that there is no such thing as right and wrong, but only what each man thinks. The two opposite errors (as we think them), from the same source, are—'If God wills all men to believe, and to act rightly, He must have given us an infallible and accessible guide for belief and practice. (1.) But He does so will; therefore, there is such a guide; and (2.) He has not given us any such guide; therefore He does not will all men to believe and act rightly.'

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"Now, this is to confound the two senses of WILL,' as distinguished in the concluding paragraph of the 17th article of the Church of England. In a certain sense, the most absurd errors, and the most heinous crimes, may be said to be according to the Divine will, since God does not interpose His omnipotence to prevent them. But, in our doings,' says that article, that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared in Holy Writ.'"

The passage thus referred to is to be found in an article in the Edinburgh Review, on Sir George Lewis's Essay "on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion," contained in the number for April 1850:

"If," says the author of that article, "religious faith be favourable, and religious error unfavourable, to the welfare of a people; if it be in the power of the State, by means of persecution, to diffuse the former, and to extirpate, or at least to discourage, the latter; and if it be the duty of the State to do all that it can do to promote the welfare of its subjects, on what ground ought it to abstain from persecution?"

The able author of the "Letters on the Church," admits "that he can find no arguments against persecution which ought to convince a Mohammedan or a Pagan ruler." We believe