committed to the memory, it would have been impossible for Miriam, and the women who accompanied it with timbrels and dances, to have joined simultaneously in it. In Numbers vi. 23-26, another stated form occurs, which Aaron and his sons are commanded to observe; in expiation of an uncertain murder, the elders of the city next to the slain were ordered to use a deprecatory one (Deut. xxi. 7, 8): formularies were likewise appointed (Deut. xxvi. 5, 13) for those who offered their tithes and first-fruits, and in the prophetic works allusion is made to others. The Psalms were designed for the joint use of the congregation in the Levitical service: many of them are strictly precative, and all are, in the fullest sense, liturgical. St. John the Baptist too gave a form of prayer to his disciples, (Luke xi. 1,) and our Saviour did the same: the apostles, in some instances, used precomposed forms; and we may readily conclude, that those now existing among the Jews, contain many of the materials of those which were sanctioned in this age. Had we space, we might raise this point almost to the rank of a demon stration. Wherever the apostles are said to have prayed or sung with one accord (óuovuadov), their prayers and divine songs must have been previously composed; and this necessary consequence of the historical assertion proves every thing that we want respecting the evangelical authority of stated forms. Nor could Paul and Silas have prayed and sung praises to God in the prison, so as to be heard by the other prisoners, without joining in the same prayers and the same songs; otherwise, instead of really praising God, they would have confused and disturbed each other. The very words of one of the early precomposed forms are inserted in Acts iv. 23, sqq.; for as the Greek plainly expresses that the voices of the assembly were lifted up in conjunction, such a conjunction could not have occurred in an extemporary prayer. St. Paul prays, that the Romans might "with one mind and one mouth glorify God," (Rom. xv. 6,) óμolvμadòv év Evì σróμari, which certainly, as Koppe writes, refers to the doxologies and litanies accustomed to be publicly used in the church, but can have no definite meaning if the interpretation by which the dissenters have perverted it be be received. The practice of each having had a psalm, a doctrine, a tongue, (1 Cor. xiv. 26,) in some of the Corinthian assemblies, by its condemnation, yields a strong evidence in support of our position: it has a direct parallelism to the question between the church of England and the dissenters. Such passages as Col. iii. 16, Eph. v. 19, must, on this unavoidable principle, have related to fixed forms. In our last Number we showed, that the Lord's Prayer had close analogies in the Jewish writings; and that Christ intended it to be a standing formulary in his church, is evident from Luke xi. 1. How could it be otherwise? We observe him by his own example sanctioning set forms; and even the prayer which he offered up in Gethsemane appears, from its repetition thrice, to have been of this description. The hymn, too, which he sang after his last supper, was the Hillel, and must have been well known, from the circumstances of his disciples joining in it; and even those solemn words which he uttered on the cross were the commencement of the twenty-second Psalm, which an ancient tradition affirms him to have entirely repeated. Thus, the objections which the Separatists from our communion raise against these scriptural attestations in favour of our discipline and Liturgy, are meagre and void of argument: forgetting those texts against dividing the body of Christ, and those which enforce a preservation of the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, they seem as if they were desirious to pull down the whole household of faith, rather than not attain temporal power and aggrandizement. To effect this object we have seen, that they can cooperate with people diametrically opposed to their private sectarian notions; but the Church is erected on an impregnable rock, and sustains no lasting injury from the assaults of its enemies: Si fractus illabatur orbis, There never has been a time (as Mr. Holmes remarks) in which the church of England has manifested a more tolerant spirit, more firmly maintained the sound principles of the Christian faith, more purely and more faithfully inculcated the doctrines of the gospel, than in the present day: never had dissenters less cause for complaint: yet never than in their present confederacy with Romanists and infidels, have they railed against her with greater bitterness, nor assailed her with greater violence. If, in the plenitude of her christian charity, she grants demands even unreasonable in themselves, fresh extortions are urgently pressed upon her, and claimed as a right; and in exact proportion to her concessions are the virulence and the unjustifiable hostility exerted against her establishment. God's heritage is exhibited as fit spoil for the rapacious plunderer: his Church, instead of being "Holiness unto the Lord," is made a bye-word and a scorn by ignorant and designing men. And this profanation of all that is holy and commended in the Scriptures is veiled under the name of religion, by those who not only lead astray silly women, but silly men also-men of a sorrowful countenance, who make long prayers whilst they object to our prayers, -spiritual demagogues, who only want civil power to become persecutors in the most extended sense. By them the practice and testimony of ancient times, sealed by the blood of martyrs, are disregarded: the declamations of apostles and their successors against heresies are absurdly deemed inapposite: and Christ's religion of concord is converted into a religion of acrimony. Instead of venerating institutions to which antiquity has borne illustrious testimony, men are required by them to accept opinions only recommended by boldness, novelty, and folly; whilst the civil magistrate and the sovereign are wished, in matters of religion, to assume the character of a Gallio, and " care for none of these things." But "thus saith the Lord; stand ye in the ways and see, ask for the OLD paths, where is the GOOD WAY, AND WALK THEREIN, AND YE SHALL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS," Jer. vi. 16. Yet again to use Mr. Holmes's words, "It may well appear a strange proposition to those, who have been accustomed to look with deference on the practice of ancient times, and to venerate the old ways, especially on matters of religion, that the system which alone was sanctioned by divine appointment, and adopted and continued in all the churches of Christ, approved by the ancient fathers, and retained by the holy reformers, should be pronounced by certain religious communities in modern times, as unscriptural and unlawful,-as an intolerable evil, whose end is most devoutly to be wished for by every lover of God and man,'* and whose destruction is to be attempted by agitation and clamour, and by a strange and unnatural combination of those who profess themselves the true followers of Christ and his apostles, with all those who, either avowedly or practically, are the enemies of religion itself." We likewise fully concur in Mr. Holmes's observation, that the reason which deterred Christ and his apostles from specifying the obligations, duties, and responsibilities of Christian kings and governors, consisted in the existing circumstances of the rising church, in the wish not to give unnecessary offence to the Roman government, and in a desire not to arouse its enmity. But must we therefore infer from the New Testament, that governors are not positively bound, by the spirit of their religion, to make suitable provision for the celebration of divine worship, and an extensive diffusion of christian knowledge?— that therefore there should not be a national religious establishment-especially as all the national prepossessions of the laws were in favour of establishments?-or must we conclude, that the propagation of scriptural truths should be left entirely to the casual and voluntary exertions of pious individuals? An able writer has remarked, that the principle of allowing no establishment tends to subvert all national religion, and all recognition of whatever is peculiar to Christianity.+ But if a religious establishment had not been intended by Binney's Appendix to Address, &c. + Dr. M'Crie. Christ, if the preceding reason for his not settling it be allowed to have force, as his divine prescience must have foreseen, and did foresee, the events of his Church,-why was it not interdicted by himself and his apostles? Why, if it would be an evil, and if the objections of the separatists be rightly founded, was it not positively denounced? Those who argue from the silence of the New Testament to their particular point, are bound to resolve these questions. God, who instituted the Levitical economy, never so totally abrogates his own institutions, as these nonconformists would persuade their hearers. God is the same, and changes not. He made the Mosaic law typical of good things to come: those good things came, but he destroyed not, for he fulfilled, the law by them; intending that the system of an established religion should continue, but that it should be brightened by a more glorious revelation,—that all that was carnal should give place to that which was spiritual,that God should be worshipped in truth with spiritual offerings and spiritual sacrifices-that God, by the advent of Christ, should be manifested as he is, to the true worshippers-that the barriers which insulated Israel should be removed, and the Gentile be admitted to a participation of the Messiah's gospel. And those fanatics who affect, by the guidance of their new light, to discern a radical difference between God's dispensations, are as sadly deficient in scholarship, as they are proved to be in charity; they are much like those of old, who hewed out to themselves broken cisterns, which could hold no water,-much like the men whom Ezekiel represents daubing their wall with untempered mortar. If the voluntary system, which some of these clamorously advocate, were ratified by law, the want of a national religious establishment would very shortly be discovered; for many districts parsimony would leave unprovided with a teacher: at first, indeed, upstarts would be found ready to declaim, and vulgarize the christian faith with crude and illiterate opinions, perhaps outvying Southcott herself,—and hearers might be found to attend to them. But, as we have always observed the sermons of nonconformists to have a peculiarly metallic tendency, and to be most energetic on the necessity of a collection for the saints, we suspect that the voluntary system would voluntarily cease to produce preachers, where the children of this world would not supply the mammon of unrighteousness. It is, however, time that we check the excursions of our pen; thanking both Mr. Holden and Mr. Holmes for the unanswerable arguments by which they have defended our Church. They have proved, that the spirit of Christianity and human learning are in vigour among our clergy:-their works must be proudly classed among the most splendid monuments of christian truth." ART. XII. Parliamentary Debates. First Volume of the Session 1837. Hansard, Paternoster-Row. ON the last day of January 1837, the third session of the twelfth parliament of the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was assembled by his most gracious Majesty. The high-minded peer, and the honourable commoner, gathered round his Majesty's throne, to listen to that rich production of councillors and statesmen-a king's speech. The élite of all parties were holding solemn conclave; the Ultra-conservative, the unbending, the impracticable Anti-reformer was there : he listened in vain for any bold expression of adherence to our protestant institutions." The busy, the reckless, the violent Destructive was also there; and he heard a few whispers about the stability of the Established Church, and smiled when he thought how soon that stability would be whispered away. His Majesty's ministers were there-a Melbourne, with his heart bursting through grief at the proceedings of the National Association (See his speech, Hansard's Debates, col. 16)—a Lansdowne, eager to break a lance with any antagonist who should venture to assault the O'Mulgrave of Ireland-these mighty ones were there, together with their long-sought chancellor, good easy man! who cannot boast even of the slovenliness of an Erskine, or the fidgetiness of a Brougham. Rambling with this document in our hand, we may visit every shore of this our globe, in a confused and spider-like course; we may halt awhile on the banks of the Tagus, and among the wilds of Lower Canada; and we may repose at last within "the establishment of a joint-stock bank," or in that sleeping place of the wretched and the friendless-the "legal provision for the Irish poor." As we glance at the venerable structures which adorn the villages of our land, the signs of the times would lead us to question the stability of these time-honoured structures; but, on referring to the document before us, we may take comfort to ourselves with pleasing reflections according to the measure of our faith or self-interest. These are the soothing words of the comprehensive address :— "We are required to convey to you his Majesty's desire that you should consult upon such further measures as may give increased stability to the Established Church, and produce concord and goodwill." Without commenting very severely upon this paragraph, we regret the loss of the concluding words, which may perhaps have been secretly blotted out by some unknown hand. Among whom is it expected by his Majesty, that "further" measures may produce concord and good-will?" The production of concord implies the existence of discord; and "further" mea 66 |