rence it stands unassailable. But the pseudo-Catholics among ourselves can make no pretensions of this kind, and their objections in detail to this or that unreformed tenet are merely so many instances of palpable inconsistency. In the Catholic scheme every doctrine is intimately incorporated and bound up with the whole system, and involves the stability of the common authority on which they all repose: they mutually support each other, and must all stand or fall together. Now the self-styled Anglo-Catholics take away some stones of the arch, and yet expect the rest to stand! They acknowledge the prerogative of the church in principle, but deny it in practice; they profess to uphold its rights in general, but rebel against them in detail; they deny the soundness of the doctrine, while they cannot impugn the authority of the teacher: they denounce the Romanized church, through whom they admit the truth was transmitted to them; they profess to receive the faith as it is handed down to them, yet would themselves purify it from what they presume to call its corruptions; they think the waters of life more pure when filtered from a polluted stream than when drawn from the fountainhead.

Let them ponder well the straightforward manner in which a genuine Catholic exposes such inconsistency. We quote from the able pamphlet of Mr. Ambrose Phillipps :

"He who stands up for church authority without admitting the infallibility of that authority, is either a bad logician or a bad moralist.

.This infallibility is promised by Jesus Christ only to the church teaching all nations—i. e. the universal church. The moment therefore that any portion of the church isolates herself from the rest of the church catholic, that instant she forfeits the glorious promise which was made only to the totality, and cannot be inherited by the several parts of which that totality is composed, unless they remain in the original position in which God's providence had placed them, in reference to that universal body, that is, living members of Christ's holy vine."-Reply to Mr. Newman's Letter to Dr. Jelf, pp. 11, 12.

And it is indeed manifest that the most essential principle and vital essence, as it were, of all Catholicism is found in the unbroken unity of the church and the indivisible identity of her permanent existence, by virtue of which alone she can claim a living continuance of her high attributes and powers; and the unimpaired succession in these functions, from the

Apostles downwards, is in fact but the result and emanation of this great principle.

But when this unity was broken, and the very thread of spiritual vitality was, as it were, snapped asunder by the convulsions of the Reformation, the channel of the apostolic commission was necessarily interrupted, its authority vitiated, and any pretence to the succession rendered null and void, by the heresy which placed all self-reforming communions without the pale of the Catholic church. If in any case a succession was still pretended, if a descent and catalogue of persons was made out, it was still not a transmission of the same function: if the name was retained, the reality was lost. The Anglicists can only raise their claims on that same plea of authority and tradition, by virtue of which the remnant of the ancient church utterly repudiates them; and the decrees of the church cannot admit of two interpretations; they can only support their appeal to ecclesiastical antiquity by interpreting it in their own sense, while the unreformed church makes the same appeal in a totally opposite sense. If this difference of judgement be allowable, where is the authority of the church? And again, where is the boasted security of tradition?

The traditional handing-down of the forms and doctrines of Christianity, in all their original purity, necessarily implies no less than infallible powers in the church.

The obvious operation of innumerable causes of adulteration which confessedly taint all similar modes of recording events or opinions in relation to ordinary subjects, in the bands of ordinary men, justly makes the very name of tradition nearly synonymous, in popular language, with fable and legend. In passing from one to another it inevitably receives additions, so slight individually that they may remain undetected, but on the whole sufficient to overthrow its entire credit in a lengthened series of transmission. Tradition, in proportion to any suspicion of its recent origin, is worthless,-in proportion to its antiquity, only the more likely to have become corrupted. Thus, not trustworthy in the smallest matters, it is of course wholly unfit to be the vehicle of such momentous announcements as those of Christianity. The slightest reflection, then, on the very nature of human tradition, as the vehicle and channel of divine doctrine, points out the num

berless causes of its corruption, and its unavoidable adulteration by the admixture of what is human, even if it be not erroneous. And this shows the absolute necessity for a plenary divine power to keep the truth pure and uncontaminated, and proves that nothing short of a perpetual supernatural interposition could uphold such a preservative function in the church; a function which involves no less than the preservation of the precious deposit of divine doctrine absolutely unadulterated from all accessions of human invention. Thus, and thus only, could the church become the unfailing channel for the conveyance of divine truth, and the judge at all times of its true interpretation.

The Anglo-Catholics, still professing to uphold tradition, and insisting on it as the basis of true Catholic and primitive doctrine, must ever find themselves in a palpably false position unless they consent to go back to the one consistent idea of unqualified infallibility, and consequently return to the church as she existed before her infallibility was impugned and set at naught by the Reformation. They anxiously shrink from this disagreeable but unavoidable alternative; and in the palpable inconsistencies of reformed Catholicism in which they involve themselves, we can discern nothing but the most nugatory pretensions and unsubstantial chimeras; an empty affectation of powers which they are afraid effectually to assume; a religion of mere fancy, which pleases itself with idle imaginations. And this spirit of religious romance is at once evinced and fostered by the anxiety to cherish and revive the pageantry of ecclesiastical ceremonial,-the dramatic representation, as it were, of the "great parable," the allegorical interpretation of the forms, and the discovery of a mystic sense in the very architecture of the church;-all tending powerfully to divert the mind from the consideration of reason and facts.

In the genuine unreformed Catholic church, indeed, there is a reason, a consistency and a substance in these things; all its forms have a unity of purpose, a direct tendency to one grand object. They are, in fact, more than symbolical; they embody the reality of its functions; they are all conspiring parts centring in the consummation of its most awful mysteries; and the rigid maintenance of them involves a

worthy object, as the defence of the important outworks of the sacred citadel. Whereas in the pretended Anglo-Catholic institutions the affectation of similar forms is utterly empty and unmeaning—the substance is wanting; the contentions for the revival of them frivolous, the importance attached to them puerile. It is a sort of child's play at high mass-a make-believe religion of surplices and candlesticks.

We do not deny, that among its more honest but less enlightened votaries such a religion may be received without any sense of contradiction; they may find its doctrines and observances congenial to a spirit of deep and mystical devotion, and it may exercise some influence by the impressions it makes on the emotions and imagination. But we think the system, in all its manifestations, gives indications of a very different spirit in some of its adepts, which is fully understood and echoed forth by their worldly admirers and disciples.

We have thus endeavoured to trace to their origin those pretensions which form the common basis of the ancient ecclesiastical scheme, matured in the institutions of the Roman church, partially and inconsistently adhered to by that section of the English Protestants who disclaim that title, and style themselves Anglo-Catholics. We have exposed the very simple causes to which the growth of the institutions in which these claims were developed may be traced; and from this simple consideration of facts, the testimony of history, and the obvious movements and impulses of human nature, all the lofty pretensions of church authority are at once seen to be baseless assumptions, and its claims reduced to their real emptiness. The secret of their influence,—whether as operating in the systematic completeness of Romanism, or in the futile and childish inconsistencies, the self-contradictory assertions, the arrogant yet powerless bravadoes of the pretenders to similar claims among ourselves,-requires further examination, which we must reserve for another opportunity.

ARTICLE II.

1. Der Isolirte Staat in Beziehung auf Landwirthschaft und National-Economie. Von J. H. VON THÜNEN auf Tel

2. Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and the Sources of Taxation. By the Rev. RICHARD JONES, A.M. London, 1831. 3. Six Letters to Sir Robert Peel on the dangerous tendency of the Ricardo Theory of Rent. By a POLITICAL ECONOMIST. London, 1842.

It will doubtless to many appear a startling assertion, that the theory of money-rents derived from land has been more carefully and more successfully studied in every other country than in England. Independently of the great importance attaching to the subject in a country where money-rents may be said to be universally adopted, while on the greater portion of the continent they are but sparingly introduced or altogether unknown, Englishmen are proud of what they conceive to be a peculiarly practical turn of mind, and are not disposed to acknowledge any inferiority in calculating skill. Yet few lessons of history are more instructive, and occasionally more amusing, than the manner in which this supposed practical superiority has often been mystified and led astray by the grossest sophistry, or than the grounds on which many rest the claims of England to the distinction of being the most practical of nations.

The very term practical deserves a place in the catalogue of ambiguous words; for it can obviously be applied in different senses. A practical farmer must rest his mode of treating the land he tills, and of calculating the proceeds he has to expect from it, upon his own experience and that of his immediate predecessors. The owner of an entailed estate, to which the farm in question may belong, would not however be justified in taking the experience of the past as the sole standard of the value of property for a future period, but is bound to inquire into the probable distant results of systems which may, for the moment, be satisfactory in their operation. A chancellor of the exchequer is too often obliged to found his calculations for the current period upon as