study of the Scriptures in the original Hebrew and Greek, with an attempt (the imperfections of which it is not our business to discuss) to elucidate both the literal and the spiritual sense. This movement had, beyond doubt, a most salutary effect; the assertion of a hidden wisdom in the Scriptures served to check the nascent spirit of philosophical and literary infidelity; the study of its original text gave a wholesome variety to the literary pursuits of the age; the progress of theosophy, recognising the universal relation of humanity to Divinity, gave an elevated and independent tone to the minds of men, which prepared them for the great coming event. The Reformation was essentially in its commencement the revolt of the theosophic element against the theocratic. These two elements, long existing in the church,† now first came into collision. Theosophy in gentler spirits, such as à-Kempis, endeavours to harmonise with theocracy, and to diffuse itself noiselessly through the spiritual atmosphere, like the quiescent discharge of electricity through the natural. But in bolder and sturdier natures, like Luther's, it brooks no opposition; it is then like the electric fluid that, when meeting with more unyielding forces, becomes the levin-bolt, and scatters all before it. That the origin of the Reformation which we have indicated is the true one, evidently appears from the record of Luther's reception, and his first communication of the Divine light. When smarting under a "conscience of sins," he applied to Staupitz, the provincial of his order, for consolatory advice; he received for answer the remarkable "good words and comfortable" which the herald of the New Church might have uttered had he been cotemporary-" Instead of torturing yourself on account of your sins, throw yourself into the Redeemer's arms. God is not angry with you; it is you who are angry with God." And subsequently the old monk spoke to him in the same spirit-" It is commanded to us by God that we believe the sins of every man to be intelligible world, connecting the Sephiroth with the Ain-soph with each other and with man. The names of the Sephiroth are-1. The Crown; 2, Wisdom; 3. Intelligence; 4. Power or Security; 5. Mercy or Magnificence; 6. Beauty; 7. Victory or Eternity; 8. Glory; 9. Foundation Beginning or Principle; 10. The Kingdom or Repose.

The learned Reuchlin, the great cultivator of Cabbalistic learning, was the friend at once of Fecini, Mirandola, and the other sages of Italy, and of Luther in Germany. He regarded the Logos so intimately connected with men as to be in a manner within their very breathing and speech, as the hidden principle of life and thought. He regarded all the forms of nature as so many symbols, from which man can ascend to the last and purest of all forms,—to that which regulates the kingdom of the spirit, i. e., the divine and wonderous Word, ever present.

+ See No. VII.

remitted." These words infused new life into him,-"The gates of paradise," says he, "seemed to open before me, and all the dawn of heaven appeared in view."

And yet from that hour how different became the lives of disciple and master under the influence of the same truth! The current of the one continued to flow like a silent stream; that of the other to rush on like an impetuous torrent, with small intermission of repose. The doctrine of Remission of Sins as the free and universal gift of God in Christ— a common largesse to mankind "-was the plane from whence Luther first opposed the preaching of indulgences by Tetzel; and complementary of this doctrine, he asserted the good old tenet of the primitive church-the union of the Logos with all men, as the necessary consequence of the Incarnation :

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"The ecclesea, the church," says he, in one of his first sermons, "does not exist for the people. The clergy alone are the church. They only partake the symbols of brotherhood. Is not every man a brother? Is not the Lord brother to every man? What means the Incarnation if He is not? It was My flesh, not priest's flesh. My human nature has thereby been in contact with the Word. So are all men. All who recognise this relation recognise also that they are priests. The believer is a priest;—may stand for himself in God's presence ;-does not need a fellowman to go into the Divine presence for him."

Putting both these extracts together, we may say that "the vantage ground of truth," from which the great reformer at first combatted, was the recognition of a universal remission of sins, a universal admission to the Divine presence, and a universal brotherhood of mankind; all three arising from the relation and connection of every man with the Word Incarnate,-the manifestation of Love Divine, unlimited and unchangeable. Happy for him had he continued to hold "the beginning of his confidence steadfast unto the end!" but unfortunately, in the further development of his views concerning the Atonement, he seems to have lost sight, in some measure, of the great, though simple, principles from which he set out, and superseded them by more limited views of the Divine Mercy, intermixed with assertions of the Divine wrath. Vague and incoherent these notions appear in the writings of Luther; but they assume more definite shape in the works of succeeding reformers, and attain their stern culmination as a system in the archives of Dort. His original principles did not, however, altogether recede from his consciousness; but in order to reconcile them with his more stern theories, he had recourse to a strange expedient. Faithful to his original principles, he would have found no difficulty in preaching the * The Synod of Dort, in Holland, was held in 1618.

free and most unconditional grace of God, in connection with the most strenuous exhortations to "avoid evil and do good." For though the gift of God, eternal life is quite unconditional and unlimited as to donation; it is not so as to reception. The influences of heaven descend to us freely; the light enters in at our casements; the breeze murmurs for admission; but we cannot enjoy them unless we keep our windows clean and open, and remove all impediments to the free course of these, God's best natural gifts. But like one who should reverse the condition, and suppose that the descent of heaven's light, and the presence of heaven's air, depended on some action of man, was the conduct of Luther in his treatment of the doctrine of Justification. The two great essentials of the true gospel of all Divine gifts, spiritual and natural, are universality and freedom. Luther having repeated one of these essentials-universality, could only preserve the other essential, freedom, by repudiating all combat against sin, and all progress in good, as self-righteousness, for which he substituted "faith alone," in a righteousness which no one could tell whether it was at hand or far off," taking away a valuable portion of the Bible, and adding a new word to it, in order to uphold his "strange doctrine,"* over whose fatal consequence he lived to mourn, when he said that men seemed to have embraced the doctrine in order to live more at large. The harsher aspects of his doctrine assuming, like accumulating clouds, increasing darkness and gloom after his death, filled such as they could not harden with perplexity and fear, often terminating in Atheism when they did not in suicide. This may account, at least in some measure, for the remarkable observation of Macauley, that the Reformation was never able to proceed beyond a certain point, and for the success of that extraordinary society which seemed the evil genius of Protestantism.

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The dreary aspect which the church presented in the old age of the great reformer, threw a deep shadow over his declining years,—the shadow of a cheerless night, to which he could see no dawning but the end of the world which he believed at hand. And he uttered a great truth, nay, an unconscious prophecy; for the true end of the world, i.e., of the religious world or age, was the only remedy for the mournful state of things which surrounded him. The gleam of sunshine, bright but transient, which shone on his early path; the great truths which were the objective forms of his "first love," and which, in his quaint phraseology, he was ready to maintain "against the Pope, the Greek,

"It is now pretty generally known that he rejected the Epistle of St. James, because he says that man is not justified by faith alone, (chap. ii. 17—24.) and inserted the word alone where Paul says we are justified by faith."

RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, AND LITERATURE.

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the Turk, and the Tartar," may have vanished all too soon from his mental horizon; but they were not lost altogether: their gentle entreaties refused, and the meteors of a baseless theology preferred to their mild and peaceful radiance, they retired unto "the Morning Land" of inner consciousness, to rejoin the innumerable company and generation of kindred truths, the universals of all things, which dwell ever there "embosomed in love," until in a happier state they come forth in the purple light of eternal youth. There, no longer conditioned by space or time, the reformer can behold the advent of the day he so much desired, a day, not of destruction, except to evil and falsity, but of boundless life, the aurora of humanity, the palengenesis of nature, the jubilee of the universe! J. B. W.

JUDGMENT OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL IN THE CASE OF THE ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."-TRIAL AND DEPOSITION OF BISHOP COLENSO.-ROYAL COMMISSION.

THE whole Catholic church is in a ferment; and this in consequence of an increasing desire for greater liberty. In a congress of bishops and other members of the Roman communion, eminent in station and character, held at Malines, only a few months since, the celebrated Montalembert boldly maintained, in the face of the ecclesiastical authorities, the right of private judgment. In a theological conference held at Munich, not very long after, under the presidency of Dr. Döllinger, the most eminent in the present day of Roman Catholic theologians, another attempt to obtain liberty was made, on the ground of a distinction between the authority of the Index and the authority of the Pope; and while the latter was recognised by all the speakers, the former was repudiated by a considerable minority, who, it is understood, will renew the attempt this year with a prospect of greater success. The minority complained that the Index had so unwarrantably interfered in preventing thought upon subjects of literary and theological importance, that the church had no longer any theologians either in Spain, France, Italy, or Germany; and that the consequence was, they had to look to the Protestant church for any advancement in Biblical literature.

Similar aspirations after greater liberty have long prevailed among a considerable minority in the Church of England, arising from the general advancement of the sciences, and its alarming interference with received interpretations of Scripture, -interpretations so exactly in accordance with the literal sense of Scripture, that they had been identified with Scripture itself. When, therefore, it came to be ascertained

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JUDGMENT OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL IN THE

that these interpretations were wrong, it seemed as if science itself was aiming a blow at the Bible; and if the Bible was wrong on matters of science, why not upon matters of history? Accordingly, seven learned scholars of the Church of England undertook, upon this principle, to inaugurate a reformation of Biblical literature, in a work entitled"Essays and Reviews." Of these writers we shall notice only those two whose works were brought before the Court of Arches by the Bishop of Salisbury, and were afterwards the subject of a judgment of the Privy Council, pronounced by the Lord Chancellor ;-we mean Dr. Rowland Williams and Mr. Bristowe Wilson.

It is very obvious that, if the Bible was to be interpreted in the literal sense alone, as popularly received, and that if that sense could not be reconciled with modern discoveries in science and history, the Bible would be regarded as having fallen into error, and the consequence would be that it could be no longer regarded as in all parts divinely inspired and as the Word of God. The question, therefore, was-What had the Articles and formularies of the Church of England said upon this subject? for it is evident that, when the Bible was charged with gross inaccuracies, it was as much upon its trial as the " Essays and Reviews." The issue of the question, therefore, turned upon this: Does the Church of England maintain that all parts of the Canon are divinely inspired or are the Word of God? for if it does not, and if no rule be laid down by which to determine what parts of the Canon are the Word of God and divinely inspired,, and what are not, there will be no limit to the destructive process occasioned by a "remorseless criticism." Accordingly, the Privy Council has shewn that the Articles and formularies of the Church of England offer no impediment in this respect to the "free handling" of the Scriptures, and to the scepticism and infidelity which will be the certain result.

"The proposition or assertion," says the Lord Chancellor, in the name of the Privy Council," that every part of the Scriptures was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is not to be found either in the Articles or in any of the formularies of the church. . . . . The question is, whether in the Articles or formularies, the church has affirmed that every part of every book of Scripture was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and is the Word of God. Certainly, this doctrine is not involved in the statement of the 6th Article-that Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation. But inasmuch as it doth so from the revelations of the Holy Spirit, the Bible may well be denominated 'Holy,' and said to be the Word of God,' 'God's Word written,' or 'Holy Writ;' terms which cannot be affirmed to be clearly predicated of every statement and representation contained in every part of the Old and New Testament. The framers of the Articles have not used the word inspiration as applied to the Holy Scriptures; nor have they laid down anything as to the nature, extent, or limits of that operation of the Holy Spirit."