Should any body of Anglicans, bishops, priests, deacons, laity, high and low, succeed in placing themselves in full communion with the Holy See upon similar terms, who can say who might not join them?

I had sent the foregoing to press before I was aware of the appearance of Dr. Manning's pamphlet, "The Crown in Council," and of the article in the Dublin for this month, entitled "The Union Movement." I have a few words to say on both.

1. Admitting as I do the full force of all that Dr. Manning has urged against the Royal Supremacy, I must not, for that very reason, disguise my apprehension that we ourselves are likely to be sufferers before long from just the opposite inconvenience, namely, that of abnormal dependence upon a foreign Court. That dependence is not the less abnormal because that Court is ecclesiastical. How can it possibly imply a healthy state of things amongst us, for that excellent good man to be seen running off year after year to Rome to invite and encourage criticism by the Propaganda of all that is doing or to be done in England; to get certain projects confirmed or condemned there, and all free discussion of subjects in England, whether by clergy or laity, superseded? How infinitely more manly, -how infinitely more in accordance with his own high-souled antecedents, to aim at leading or influencing public opinion at home; and by his own persuasive powers and force of argument (to which I for one shall never cease to bear grateful testimony), to bring people over to his way of thinking; or else, finding his own views unpopular or untenable, to abandon them generously for those endorsed by public opinion among Roman Catholics in this country! Can Dr. Manning forget or be ignorant of the language applied by S. Bernard, and by Gerson, by Robert of Lincoln, and by John of Salisbury,-all of them good Catholics; one of them a Saint of the Church, to the Court of Rome, as distinguished from the Pope? Can he really be for risking all that the latter has regained here, by resuscitating pretensions and practices on the part of the former, against which even the middle ages rose in arms? I thought one of the main reasons for re-establishing the hierarchy here had been, that all that concerned England should be settled in England, and not abroad. Give me by all means a spiritual, not a royal, Head of the Church; by all means an

of Lorraine and the French Bishops, in the xxiiird Session of the Council of Trent, v. Waterworth, p. ccviii., who, however, omits to tell us how it was that they were got rid of.

ecclesiastical, not a political, Court for its last appeal. But give me equally, competent ecclesiastical courts, and a competent hierarchy, within this realm, for the disposing of all our ordinary business; and let nothing be referred out of the kingdom-even to Rome, but what is of the last importance, or affects in reality the doctrine and discipline of the whole Church. If you ask me, which I prefer as an English Churchman, to have to refer to the Queen's Courts in extreme cases, or to have to refer to Rome in all cases, I answer unhesitatingly that it is a choice of evils, and that it would be but small relief to me to be quit of the first merely to accept the second. While, therefore, I am far from encouraging Anglicans to acquiesce in the Royal Supremacy, I would have them certainly think twice before they close with our own existing bill of fare. God's will be done. God's purpose cannot but

be good; and far be it from me to arraign any events which He has ordered, or to suggest to individuals any other course than that of implicit obedience to His dictation. Yet speaking as a man-looking at what has happened in other ages-at what is happening in other countries, besides my own-I must be permitted to express my doubts whether it has ever been a really good thing for the Church of Rome, when people have flocked to her as individuals from other Christian communities. Each new batch of accessions is too apt to be regarded as so much additional proof that our existing system is all it need be, that it wants nothing added to it or taken from it to render it the best possible for all times and places, and the result has been that almost every change has been brought about by a revolution, when nothing else would suffice.

I have some few remarks left for the writer of the article in the Dublin Review. His tone is highly to his credit throughout, and will not, I trust, be lost on the UNION REVIEW. But in reference to p. 293, which of course contains the gist of his position, I do not in the least see why the promoters of the Union Movement should be deemed indifferent to the practical blessings of communion with our great centre of unity-the Holy See, or to the abstract principle which is involved in it. It is quite possible to be in full communion with the Pope, and yet not use the Roman Liturgy, nor be under the same discipline that the Roman Catholic Church in England now is. The cases which I have alleged prove this, and of these one-that of the Uniates in Lithuania-is more Western than Eastern. At all events the question is neither more nor less than what was suggested by our own illustrious Cardinal, in his excellent letter on Catholic Unity

to Lord Shrewsbury, some twenty years back, and never since retracted" Litera scripta manet." I strongly commend the perusal of it to my friend of the Dublin. It was then far less probable than it is now, and it has still to be solved—namely, what answer would be made by the Pope, were the Church of England, as a body, to send deputies to Rome, offering to come to terms with him, on condition of retaining their own services and usages, after the manner of those Greeks. Neither the writer in the Dublin nor I have any right to assume beforehand what that answer would be.

This, then, is what I consider the Church of England to be gradually coming to, and I know some eminent men who are of the same opinion that have never seen or heard of the UNION REVIEW. And this is one of my chief reasons for supporting it. Still, I will not disguise from the writer in the Dublin, that there is another which has also some weight with me, and it is this: the Home and Foreign Review excepted, there is not a single vent for free thought in Roman Catholic literature that I know of for laymen in England. The hierarchy seems disposed to tie up our tongues and our limbs, in a way that I venture to predict must produce a violent recoil before long-it may be schism, it may be scepticism-unless we can be entrusted by them with more freedom, and treated more like intelligent beings, capable of thinking and acting for ourselves, where no questions of faith are concerned. This is a feeling by no means confined to 'verts, like myself. At least one of

the most highly-gifted and nobly-born of English Roman Catholics, besides 'verts, of whom there are not a few, is on the staff of the Home and Foreign. The Editor of the UNION REVIEW well knows how many old Roman Catholics, as well as 'verts, find his REVIEW the best exponent of their sentiments. The writer in the Dublin will do well to use any influence that he may possess with our authorities, to induce them to pursue a more liberal and comprehensive course towards us than they have hitherto done, and least of all, to attempt to impose any fresh shackles upon our hands or mouths.

FRAGMENTA VARIA.

NO. VIII. THE BISHOP OF ABERDEEN ON RE-UNION WITH THE HOLY EASTERN CHURCH.

THE following interesting statement and proposition, with regard to actual Re-union with the Eastern Church, was drawn up under the auspices of the present Bishop of Aberdeen when a clergyman of the diocese of Edinburgh, immediately after the decision of the Privy Council in the Gorham case. Its arguments are so telling, and its propositions generally so very much to the point-whether we regard either the Eastern or Western communion-that, at the request of several persons of weight and influence, we gladly reprint it in our pages. The intercourse which, in times past, members of the Stuart dynasty held with the Court of Rome, and the kindly feelings which have always existed there for the Scottish Episcopal Church, were said to have been duly had in consideration when the Roman Catholic hierarchy was established in England; and consequently no appointments were made for Scotland, where, as our readers are aware, the Roman Catholic organization retains the mere character of a simple mission. Many hold strongly that the Re-union of Christendom will take its first practical operations in a communion wholly untrammelled by State influence :

Well nigh twenty years have revolved since the following words heralded the dawn of a movement, which has been felt throughout the Anglican Communion, and has affected the feelings, and influenced the tone of thought and the principles of religious action of no inconsiderable portion of Christendom.

"I am but one of yourselves-a Presbyter, and therefore I conceal my name, lest I should take too much on myself by speaking in my own person. Yet speak I must, for the times are very evil, yet no one speaks against them. "Is not this so? Do not we "look one upon another" yet perform nothing? Do we not all confess the peril into which the Church is come, yet sit still each in his own retirement, as if mountains and seas cut off brother from brother? Therefore suffer me, while I try to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats, which it has been our blessedness hitherto to enjoy, to contemplate the condition and prospects of our Holy Mother in a practical way; so that one and all may unlearn that idle habit, which has grown upon us, of owning the state of things to be bad, yet doing nothing to remedy it."

Actuated by a similar impulse, irresistible, uncontrollable, the persons who now address you have,-not certainly without hesita

tion, nor without an overwhelming appreciation of the tremendous responsibility which such an act infers,-ventured to direct your attention to the religious circumstances of our own day, and to the position which the Anglican Church now holds in the communion of Catholic Christendom. A feeling similar also to that which led the author of the first Tracts for the Times,' from which the above quotation is taken, to conceal his name, influences those who now address you; while the circumstances under which this communication is made render it unnecessary to dilate on the causes which have originated it.

That

"The Times," indeed, are very evil." The evil which was "negative" when the writer of the above passage penned his heartstirring appeal, has now become absolute and "positive." It is not now as it was then,-that we have but to unfurl the Standard of Truth, and see men gather with awe and devotion around it. Standard has been unfurled-that Sign has been recognised-men have awhile followed it, and fought under its shadow, and carried it boldly forward into the thickest of the fight against active Heresy and supine indifference; but the Battle has not been wonthe Victory is not ours.

It is not now as it was then, that we have but to proclaim the Truth, in order to arouse the expiring energies of a living and real Member of the Catholic Family. The Anglican Church has been awakened; her energies have been aroused ;-but a voice-not the voice of God-has been heard in her temple, which has drowned the voice of the Catholic Faith; and a hand too powerful for her to resist has pressed heavily on her, cramping her energies, and stifling her efforts. For although her most learned Theologians and the wisest of her sons have raised their testimony against the oppression-they have not been heard; and the Power of Cæsar triumphs over the Heritage of Christ.

And even the testimony of those who vainly protested against the usurpation of the civil power over the majesty of the Church, becomes feeble and daily feebler, as one by one, wearied of looking for a dawn that gives no symptoms of its appearance,―tired perhaps of watching for a result which seems never nearer its accomplishment, and doubting even the mission of a Church which has yielded so tamely to the indignities heaped on it by the powers of this world, they relapse into indifference, or seek that safety in the bosom of the Romish Church, which they may not hope to find in a communion which sanctions contradictory teaching upon even the "principles of the doctrine of Christ."

How strange that those who yet remain, after the refusal of the State to listen to their appeal, and seeing their ranks daily becoming thinner and thinner, should make no effort of a practical character to gain a more stable position than that which they at present occupy! The only answer they have to offer is, that they wait till some other of their number, to whom they look up, shall