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deriving a profit out of church revenues,* it should be appropriated to the increase of small livings, and supplying the spiritual wants of the millions of our benighted population.

The resolution of Mr. S. Rice seems to us not very dissimilar in principle to other resolutions passed by the House of Commons nearly two hundred years ago. We need not remind our readers what was the natural issue (on January 30, 1649,) of such an impious wholesale scheme of confiscation. But we forget, according to a learned lord, high in office, that the lessons of history are little better than a minus quantity, to be deducted from the value of a statesman's reasoning. Nevertheless, we subjoin a few of those memorable resolutions:

:

"Whereas the government of the Church of England by archbishops, and bishops, and the chancellor, &c., commissaries, deans, and chapters, archdeacons, &c. have been found by long experience a great impediment to the perfect reformation and growth of religion, and very prejudicial to the state and government of the kingdom; Resolved, that the same be taken away."

"Resolved, that the lands, fines, rents, and profits, of all archbishops, bishops, deans, and chapters, &c. be forfeited to the state.

"Resolved, that a certain sum be issued to commissioners, to be appointed for the purpose of supporting a sufficient number of preaching ministers, and for the due support of the Church."

"Resolved, that the Archbishop of York be a state annuitant, and have 100l. per annum for his life."

When all her sources of revenue are confessedly and lamentably insufficient to meet the christian exigencies of the Church, this bill would rob her of nearly 600,000l. per annum. God is dishonoured, our pauper population robbed. We repeat what we observed in our review of Archdeacon Wilkins's letter:---Let us have a rent-charge, redeemable at a fair and average valuation in lieu of church-rates, and let the proceeds be applied towards providing CHRISTIAN accommodation for the millions of our fellow-countrymen, totally destitute of the means of religious worship and instruction.

A country like Great Britain, whose redundant pauper inhabitants are perishing for lack of spiritual ministration, and whose superfluous accumulations absolutely require some such outlet, in order that capital may be kept down within the limit of

*How the lessees will be "far better off," by having to pay for their holdings 300,000l. a-year more than they do at present; or how the lessors will be benefited by the exhausting of their resources for the relief of the dissenters, according to two assertions of Mr. Rice, we are unable to understand.

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profitable investment, were perfectly mad to famish her virtues, or put her charitable duties, whether of this world or the next, on short allowance. If she do, she may depend upon it she will be brought to severe account for her sacrilegious malversation. May that national judgment be dispensed in mercy! But if our utilitarian statesmen scorn this prospective danger, because our children's children and not they will be punished, we tell them plainly that there remains behind another tribunal, at which not only ministers, and kings, and parliaments, but even NATIONS themselves must one day answer.

ADDRESS TO THE BISHOPS.

We subjoin a well-timed address, which is circulating through the town of Birmingham, with a view of earnestly impressing upon influential churchmen in every parish throughout the kingdom the necessity of following so admirable an example. There should be no time lost. We hope, indeed, ere these words meet the eye of the reader, that our recommendation will have been anticipated by an almost simultaneous burst of gratitude. Our reverend prelates merit this testimony for having approved themselves careful shepherds; and, as public men, it is only just that their spirits be fortified to persevere in their course of holy patriotism.

"6 ADDRESS TO THE BISHOPS.

"The undersigned respectfully invite the members and friends of the Established Church resident in Birmingham and the immediate neighbourhood thereof, who are opposed to the ministerial plan of abolishing church-rates, without substituting any national provision, to meet in the large room at the Royal Hotel, Temple-row, on Wednesday next, at twelve o'clock, to consider the propriety of addressing the archbishops and bishops of the church of England on the subject of the measures now before parliament, tending to violate the rights and interests of the Church, and therein those of the community at large; and also to declare to the prelates the affectionate attachment and respect with which they are regarded by the people under their episcopal care, and the unshaken confidence with which the laity look to them for the maintenance of the integrity and welfare of that portion of the catholic church of Christ, which now, by God's blessing, exists in this country."

THE MELBOURNE ADMINISTRATION.

All the world knows that the first lord of the treasury possesses only the empty name of premier, the master-mind of Daniel O'Connell having contrived to centre in himself the virtual authority of that high office. It is owing to this false position of the cabinet that we infer danger to our beloved establishment. We all along mistrusted Lord John Russell's

positive pledge to support church-rates,* as from bitter experience we distrust every engagement in that quarter. It is not exactly that his lordship does not know his own mind, but he is not his own master. He and his co-satellites having sold themselves for office, they must, albeit against the grain, exhibit some signs of doing the behest of their arbiter. They dare not disobey, for their places. However they may try to disguise it, they feel, like all persons similarly circumstanced, that they are bound hand and foot. We are inclined to think that they would gladly retrieve their characters by retracing their steps; but, with ministers, as with other people, it is not easy to play an after game of reputation. The devil may be called from "the vasty deep," but will not be exorcised. The indulgence of passion cannot be made to cohere with public duty and with probity. Ministers might have learned from Lord Brougham, who must have read Lord Shaftesbury, that "the rules of harmony will not permit it: the dissonances are too strong."t Here then is

the danger." We have," in the words of the poet-" tracked the felon home." The weakness of "that helmless, saltless thing," the Melbourne administration, is what ought to be dreaded, not its strength. How inclined soever upon occasion to act uprightly, these men must

"Live cowards in their own esteem,

Letting I dare not, wait upon I would." The longer they remain under the dictation of the papist and of the radical party, the more imminent the peril of the empire and OF THE CHURCH. Were they not dependent, they need not make sacrifice of their own views to retain power. But they are too green and sore, from their late insolent triumph over the king, to be considered, or to feel themselves, stable or assured; so they turn and wheel about with strenuous agitation. The top can only be kept up with continual lashing. The moment

My opinion on this subject is exactly the same as it has hitherto been. I think that it is the duty of the state, either by means of church-rates, or of some other public fund, to maintain the buildings set apart by the state for divine worship in good and efficient repair." "And whatever may be the anxiety of dissenters, they cannot be in doubt as to the opinions of the government. Two years ago Lord Althorpe brought in a bill on the subject, in which the principle was declared, that church-rates should not be abolished, unless the state provided a substitute. I have never said any thing inconsistent with that principle, or at least any thing to lead dissenters to suppose that ministers meant to abolish church rates without an equivalent, or that that equivalent was to be found in the revenues of the Church. To that principle I have adhered, and to it I mean to adhere."-Speech of Lord J. Russell, June, 1836.

See part iv. s. 2, of Freedom of Wit.

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it ceases to spin, the administration is a dead bit of box. It would, therefore, evince no small simplicity ever to expect that the ill compacted frame of our present government can dam out the torrent of revolution, which, pouring along unexpected channels, threatens to sweep away all that is holy, just, and virtuous. The Melbourne administration tosses at the mercy of the waves of papistry, and its power of resistance, unless when backed by the Conservatives, is that of a rush to stem the ocean. Indeed, the country has no augury but her own spirit. She can have no hope save in that resolution, which heretofore characterised her in all her struggles; which, if she can be prevailed upon to manifest, it lists not that government dream of abolishing church rates, without providing any substitute except out of resources devised to the Church even unto the last penny; the monstrous deed will inevitably fall—

"Like a shaft loosed by the bowman's arrow,

On their own hearts."

Let our countrymen, one and all, soul and body, be prepared for the event. There is yet, by the blessing of Providence, left to the land a triumvirate, on whom the wise and the good amongst us can safely confide. Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel, are names, which at this hour are "felt along the blood." It matters not then, we say, what further schemes of impious spoliation in Great Britain or in Ireland may float in dim perspective about the terfyn-gylch* of our premier's contemplation. On that horizon the sun of ministerial prosperity must shortly set, and the dawn of a brighter day be in store for Old England.

Reviews.

A Scriptural Inquiry into the Nature and Import of the Image and Likeness of God in Man. By E. W. GRINFIELD, M.Ä. London: B. Fellowes. 1837.

THE real matter which is in this work we could comprise in one sheet. It appears to us to be too speculative; and we suspect Mr. Grinfield not to be perfectly free from Hutchinsonian reveries. That Christ restored the image of God, defaced by Adam's transgression; that this image is of a moral and

*For the force of this Cambro-British term, which signifies horizon, see the Rev. J. Walter's Dissertation on the Welsh Language.

intellectual nature, the Scriptures so amply demonstrate, that no further reasoning is required on the point. But, when Mr. Grinfield, quoting several texts, maintains that Christ was the Creator of man, as well as his Redeemer,-"that the image and likeness, in which man was originally created, was the incarnate nature of Jesus Christ," and asks, if man 66 was not created for the express purpose of being redeemed and restored," we fear, that he is approximating the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity to something very like to Tritheism, and very unlike to the belief of three hypostases in one Godhead. To determine the hypostatical operations of the Father and of the Son in the cosmogony and creation of man, we consider a presumptuous undertaking, and one too subtle for human powers; and we conceive that the various texts which refer the act to the Father, and those which refer it to the Son, fully verify our doctrine of the co-eternity, co-equality, and co-essentiality of the Trinity; but, whilst Mr. Grinfield proceeds to show, that the Son is not subordinate to the Father, it has escaped him, that he is either making the Father subordinate to the Son, or taking from him every hypostatical energy; and when he inquires, if man was not created for the express purpose of being redeemed and restored, he forgets, that if he could substantiate this fact, he would also substantiate the fact, that man was created for the express purpose of his fall, which approximation to blasphemy we are assured he did not intend.

In his notes, he has introduced an useful comparison of texts, from the two Testaments, which he applies to his inquiry, and which most forcibly uphold the definitions in the Athanasian Creed. We have known Mr. Grinfield to have been, and to be an orthodox champion of the Church, and have read some of his former works with delight: we therefore, in christian good will, offer him these suggestions, being well convinced that the inferences deducible from his premises, have by inadvertence escaped him.

Memento of the Protestant Reformation. A Sermon preached in the parish Church of Obing, near Chichester, on Sunday, October 4th, 1835. By T. H. HOLLAND, M. A. London: Groombridge, 1837.

THIS sermon is excellent and practical, showing the encroachments, corruptions, and insidious advances of Romanism; in which salutary cautions, mingled with remarks and proofs from the scriptural pages, are given, of the prediction of this apostasy in the first christian age. The sacred text is felicitously added in support of his positions, and is so adduced, as to form a continuous chain of authority; and at the same

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