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posed innocence, youth, and guilelessness of the commencing Achilli, in order that he may contrast it with the misery and guilt of the ultimate Achilli; but never was sentiment more displaced, and never did a contrast more recoil upon an arguer's head. S. Paul does not describe innocent, guileless, unsuspecting, inexperienced youth, when he describes what are the tests of being qualified for this state of life. No: he describes the inner working and self-sifting of a man's, a full-grown and mature man's mind. He had not before his mind, when he wrote that chapter, 'innocent youths,' committed when they could not help themselves, and when they could not know themselves, when they were little more than tools in the hands of those who controlled them to this extraordinary state of life and its unceasing ordeal. Talk of the 'wolf,' then, as much as you please; but what if the shepherds pulled in the wolf by the head and shoulders; what if, when the wolf had eaten two or three of the sheep, the shepherds gave him a comfortable kennel in the midst of the fold, in the hope of reclaiming him;' what if his reformation was under such circumstances slow, and he ate several more of the sheep what if the shepherds, still bent upon a kindly reformation of the wolf, in order to melt and captivate him by an act of unqualified trust in his sincerity, send him on a commission to bring in some stray sheep; and what if the wolf concludes an affectionate appeal to these wanderers with a meal made out of some of them? In that case the fact is certainly too evident, that he is a wolf; but neither are you good shepherds. The good shepherd does not stand by while the wolf time after time devours the sheep, and reserve his indignation till the time when the wolf has taken it into his head to leap over the walls of the fold, and is off elsewhere-then, and not till then, when all the mischief has been done, and a controversial end is to be gained, with pious horror to shout, Oh, wolf! dreadful wolf! Follow the rule of the New Testament, then, we say to the Roman Catholics; cease to supply your monastic orders by entrapping innocent youths,' and committing them inexorably to trials, of their power to sustain which you can have no evidence; lay upon men's shoulders only such burdens as the Gospel authorizes you to lay, and lay these burdens upon the shoulders that are able to bear them, according to the best proof you can have of their strength. Do this, and then you may shout Wolf,' when the man fails in the trial. But do not, when you lay the burden upon unascertained strength, condemn the fallen man as a wolf, and free yourselves from all blame. Do not, when you, and not he, are the really responsible party for the undertaking of the trial, throw all the responsibility upon him when he fails in it. Do not, when your own connivance has encouraged the repetition of

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failure, till the fallen man has fallen much lower than he did at first, throw the accumulation of blame entirely at his doors, as if you yourselves were no sharers in it. Do not do this, even in the case of the worst, the deepest criminals. Not even in the case of Achilli can we allow the breach of plain, simple justice, which is involved in parading, with the exulting precision of place and date, the catalogue of his sins, without one single thought on the premature committal of him to the trial. Never till that day comes, when the secrets of all hearts shall be made manifest, can it be known whether a deep, an incalculable wrong was not done to this man by that act of his Church. It is easy, according to superficial notions of justice, to shove aside the case of such a man, as if he could have no rights and no wrongers, and because he is now a criminal had always been an outlaw. But no one can possibly tell how far his first offence originated in his having had a, to him, unduly hard trial put upon him; how far the succeeding offences were consequences of the first, and therefore how far the whole ultimate accumulation of guilt may fall back step by step upon the original act of his Church, though not, of course, to the relief of himself from responsibility. This is a mysterious subject. All we know is that a course of sin when once begun has very soon the effect of hardening the mind, and that the beginning of sin may be a trial which ought not to have been placed upon a man. We cannot cut this matter short by saying,- The man had freewill, therefore he could have avoided the sin, therefore he was not wronged by the trial. Scripture has a larger and more complex mode of treating this subject. It treats man certainly as having freewill, but the sort of freewill which it describes is a mystery, and not a single definite power cognizable by the understanding. It is clear from Scripture that such freewill as the Gospel secures to us, is not a power of doing anything whatever of a moral or spiritual kind; because Scripture says expressly, that a man may have one gift or spiritual power, and not have another. But though it is as clear as the day that this is the view of Scripture, and though it is sufficiently clear that, if it is, Achilli was wronged in having a trial imposed upon him at an age when he could not know whether he had the corresponding gift,-not once has it occurred to the controversialists of the Roman Church to acknowledge this wrong. Yet, if a clear wrong has been done to a man, even though it be one single one, and though he himself be the vilest criminal under the sun, that wrong ought to be acknowledged; especially if it was done at a critical and telling time. Dr. Newman may say, You, Achilli, are the scandal of the Roman Church: but how can we possibly know, whether Achilli may not say with truth-yes,

and with a truth which, in spite of, nay, rather in consequence of his very sins, will be recorded in the Divine register,-You, the Church of Rome, have been an offence unto me. The Roman controversialists had, indeed, a clear right to remind Achilli that he had disqualified himself by his crimes for appearing as a witness and preacher against the Roman Church. But that right ought to have been exerted with forbearance, and under the check of the consciousness that Achilli himself had his ground of complaint, and a real one against Rome. But so far from being conscious of any wrong on their side, or being checked by it, they have, on the contrary, with the blindness of men who can see no fault in the system to which they belong, taken especial pains to urge that very point, that the vow taken at the age of seventeen did include the state of celibacy, to urge it— will it be believed?-as against Achilli, and for themselves. They have been possessed with the spirit of folly to that degree, that they have mistaken a clear argument against them for an argument in their favour, and have called the special attention of the whole world to this injustice in their system. At the late trial before the Queen's Bench, the counsel of the defendant was instructed to fix upon the vow which Achilli took at the age of seventeen, the special interpretation of a vow of celibacy. The unfortunate man himself, indeed, endeavoured to evade the force of the vow, on what principle, we confess, we are unable to see, except on the general one of denying all acts whatever that were charged upon him by the opposite side. But a witness on his own side expressly fixes this meaning upon the vow.

Dominico Pogge, formerly a Dominican monk, now principal of a Protestant educational establishment at Seacombe, near Liverpool, crossexamined by Sir A. Cockburn: "You were one of the Fathers?" "Yes." "What vows did you take?" "I took the vow of obedience as a Dominican, but always thought, that though not explicitly, implicitly those of 'poverty' and 'chastity' were included. The book of Ferraris is one of authority, but there are things in it which have become obsolete." "But this is an edition of 1783, and it states, Tria vota, paupertatis, castitatis, et obedientiæ, sunt essentiæ religionis ex jure divino. Now is this so; that the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, are of the essence of the religious life?" "All that is perfectly true, according to the belief of the Church of Rome." "So that it would be an essential part of the vow taken by a Dominican, to obey the injunction of chastity?" "Certainly.""

The other caution which we shall give to our Romanist friends, is one on which the limits of this article will not allow us to enlarge. But we will give it in two words. It relates to their language respecting their system. Do not boast too much of the effectiveness of your system. Undoubtedly it is effective. But how is that effectiveness obtained? Is it not at the cost of a clear violation of the rule of the New Testament-that rule

which only echoes after all the voice of reason, the instincts of charity, that no one should be committed to extraordinary trials before his strength can be ascertained? What gives your Church its effectiveness, is your system of celibacy. That system supplies you with a powerful and disposable force. But is not your practical system, nay, your formal system, as set forth by your authorities on this question of celibacy, at variance with the plain recommendations of Scripture? Do you practically regard Scripture as inspired on this question, or rather, do not you take a line of your own, quite independent of whatever Scripture may say? If so, the effectiveness of your system is not after all so enviable a one; there is a blot upon it which it cannot wipe off. When you boast of your effectiveness, your antagonists have only to go to the New Testament. They see there, as plain as words can speak, a whole different view of this question of celibacy, to that of your Church. They can feel confident that under whatever obstacles their own system may labour, it is not all right with yours. You look to effectiveness, as if that were the one object which a Christian Church ought to aim at, and as if there were no rules, no limits laid down, in Scripture or reason, by which this aim should be modified. So long as you can get your force up, whether by conscription or by guile, by whatever recruiting arts, you care not; the result is obtained: your force is collected; your system is effective. You are quite satisfied; you boast; you call the attention of the world to your success. You say-Look at us, how strong we are, how effective we are. What is the natural result of this system, proceeding upon human ideas which have thrown off the check of Scripture? Tremendous scandal. Shocking disclosures from time to time take place, which show what the interior working of such a system, in a greater or less degree, always is. What then is your reply? Oh, these scandals are necessary: we must run the risk of them, if we are to have an effective system. But who told you of any Divine command to be effective at all risks? We never heard of one. There is no such command. You have invented it. We allow then the effectiveness of your system, and while we allow it, we do not grudge it you too much. We think the first command to be attended to, is the commandment of charity, the rule of the Gospel. We are ready to allow that our own shortcomings may be owing to other and not so good reasons; but so far as the observance of that rule takes away from the effectiveness of our system, it is not a weakness to be ashamed of.

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ART. VI.-The Study of Words. By the Rev. R. CHENEVIX TRENCH, B.D. London: John W. Parker.

THERE is no test by which to measure a man's state of thought, education, and intellect, so accurate as his choice of words. It may, indeed, be only a truism to assert this; but, at least, it is a truism not enough in men's thoughts, and not used as it might be as a safeguard against pretenders and shallow thinkers. For most men, if they would exert their powers of discrimination, are judges of a clear address, and are alive to the charm of nicely fitting words, well adjusted to the thought they clothe. Accurate thinkers cannot talk-much less write-in a slovenly fashion. Loose talkers cannot be accurate thinkers, and we may well mistrust the reasoner who would turn us from an established train of thought if we can detect in his own line of persuasions terms applied at random, and arguments set forth in a vague and uncertain phraseology.

That man ought to inspire no confidence who uses his words without weighing them, who attaches to them different meanings as suits his purpose, and who is so little alive to his own inaccuracies that he takes for granted his hearer follows him in all his changes, and accepts every term in the sense in which he uses it showing himself to have no fixed unchangeable definitions in his mind, no other idea of the meaning of words than that which he assigns to them at the moment, and remaining all the while blind to the confusion and mistiness of thought, which this habit propagates and engenders. And yet how many talkers, preachers, and writers might be thus described who have made some figure in the world; how many unprofitable disputes have arisen and been maintained, at the expense of truth and charity, solely by the zealous efforts of this band of vague and yet positive thinkers!

But, happily, all inaccurate talkers do not think it necessary to give wide circulation to their errors. Our concern, taking up the subject from the volume before us, is rather with the mass of mankind who are content to talk well or ill to their own immediate circle. And whatever sphere this is, a man shows by his choice of words what fruit he has gained from the experience and education which have fallen to his share. Man's first use of language, like the first life of language itself, is of its literal simple phrases, perfectly expressive of plain wants and simple thoughts. Conscience keeps him, it may be, tolerably clear, in his apprehension of the first abstractions that come in his way,

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