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myself heard it maintained by great living theologians that those who cannot be said to have had "a fair trial" in their life, such as the classes just mentioned, may be expected to have a probation in the next. It must also be remembered, that this judgment gives full liberty to your clergy to teach openly the doctrine of Purgatory, for they could only be condemned for teaching precisely what the articles mean by doctrina Romanensium, which it would be impossible to prove legally. Of this liberty they will doubtless have the wisdom to avail themselves. On the whole, we may fairly consider that this judgment rather diminishes than increases impediments to Re-union. I believe some such view has been put forward by one of your journals, the Ecclesiastic, but I have not seen it. S. Augustine, I may add, seems to regard the ultimate condition, even of the lost, as one, in some sense, of a lower kind of natural rectitude.-Your obedient servant, A ROMAN CATHOLIC. P.S. A good letter on this subject appeared lately in the Times under the well-known signature "Anglicanus."

MR. DE LISLE ON RE-UNION.

SIR,-As an Anglican member of the A.P.U.C., may I call your attention to a remark of Mr. de Lisle's at p. 163 of the March number of the UNION REVIEW? "The Association has no other object but to bring all men within the bosom of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and into communion with the great centre and divinely-established foundation of a Catholic unity, the Holy See of S. Peter, as held and taught in the whole Church from the days of the Apostles even to our own times." The sting of this sentence lies in the expression "to bring all men within the bosom,” as if those who are not in communion with the See of S. Peter were not in the Church at all. One has been taught that by baptism every man is admitted into the Church, and continued so till by some act of heresy or schism he puts himself beyond her pale. No one yields to me in reverence for the See of S. Peter, but it is just because its present claims are not those which have been "held and taught in the whole Church from the days of the Apostles even to our own times," that England is not in communion with her now. The Anglican position is that by the sins of men sanctity has been impaired and unity broken, but in that broken unity we believe that the members of the separate bodies have the same share in the blessings of the Church, and that the loss of unity is a misfortune shared in equally by Romans, Greeks, and Anglicans—a fact which some of our Roman Catholic brethren seem inclined to forget.

This point is very necessary to be guarded against, especially in such an Association as the A.P.U.C., in which so many different views find a common centre, that common centre being the blessed

ness and necessity of unity, and the belief that united prayer is the one great means of obtaining it. The moment we quit that primary position we open the door to misconstruction and eventually to dissension. I remain, Sir, yours, &c.,

DUNDEE, March 7, 1864.

J. N.

[There are three aspects of the great question of Re-union-the Roman, the Greek, and the Anglican. Mr. de Lisle naturally and reasonably takes the former, our esteemed correspondent at Dundee the latter. Either, in his respective sphere, is no doubt working quietly, but successfully, for the general result.-ED.]

THE DUBLIN REVIEW ON RE-UNION.

SIR,It is quite natural that Canon Oakley, whose article in the Dublin on the Re-union Movement I have just read with interest, should be annoyed that the revival of Catholic principles in the Anglican Establishment continues to progress just as satisfactorily, now he and his friends have left that communion, as it did before.

But speaking as a Catholic, whose ancesters have always been Catholics, I can safely assert, that had our bishops-good Bishop Walsh amongst the rest-followed the dictates of their own conscience, instead of having been unwisely led by the convert Anglican clergymen in their mistaken policy with regard to the Church of England, a very different result would have been attained by this time than unfortunately is the case. I remember Cardinal Wiseman (he was then only Bishop Wiseman) stating to me, more than twenty years ago, his conviction that a corporate re-union between the Church of England and us could be easily arranged. I have no hesitation in saying that the dogmatic principles-the substantive teaching-of the two Churches are one and the same; and, still further, that there is no material distinction whatsoever of any real importance between the whole of the Anglican clergy who have approved of the Oxford Movement and the old-fashioned sound and sober Catholic priests. The novelties which have been introduced by Anglican converts serve to make our religion now as different from what it was when I was a boy, as the religion of the Church of England is to Wesleyan Methodism. The exaggerated and fanciful Lives of the Saints, issued at the Oratory, were condemned at one time by all our Vicars Apostolic except one, and little favour would be shown even now by the Catholic bishops, (were not their hands tied,) to the wild extravagancies and foreign eccentricities of rhapsodical Anglican parsons who, in undue haste, have been turned into sentimental unmanly priests at Clapham, at Bayswater, and at Brompton.

As to corporate Re-union, he must be a short-sighted student of Church history who can deny that corporate Re-union of separated churches has continually taken place, and will take place again

If

notwithstanding Frederick Oakley and George Ward-whenever the Church in her wisdom shall find people prepared for the same. an individual conversion be right and good, niuch more must be the conversion of ten, twenty, two hundred, or ten thousand people at

once.

It is impossible to ignore the Church of England. She has not been more active for good or stronger for many centuries. Her words and work are before God and man. In these we deal with facts. I quite believe that many imperfections in her system need to be amended, and must be amended; but to write against the excellent men who are preaching corporate re-union is to work against God and to fight against God, which the wise Gamaliel advised the Jews of his day not to attempt.

With respect, Sir,

Yours truly and obliged,

CATHOLICUS DUNELMENSIS.

DEAR SIR,-The recent paper in the Dublin Review on “The Union Movement" is a sure testimony to the progress of your principles amongst Catholics, and I consequently write to congratulate you. If our own liberal periodicals are deliberately gagged by Dr. Manning and his coadjutors, there must be an outlet for wounded feeling and a fair expression of opinion-even when that opinion is contrary to the policy of our bishops-somewhere or other. Be as fair, then, Sir, to Roman Catholics as you are to Anglicans, and many will not only support the REVIEW, but always be glad, like myself, to send a communication to its pages. I was specially pleased with your truthful article on "Roman Catholic Schools of Thought in England." Yours obediently,

Pall Mall, S.W., April 16, 1864.

S. K. L.

LITERARY NOTICES.

MR. J. G. Hubbard, M.P., has re-published a letter to the editor of the "Church Review" On the Attendance of Non-Communicants at the Administration of the Holy Communion (London: Masters), in which he makes a signally unsuccessful effort to argue against that practice. Less astute, if not more impartial than those "writers of eminence and repute" (who are they? we know none save Mr. Philip Freeman) who adopt his side, he has given in brief the arguments which demolish him, and has brought forward only the veriest shadow of a counter-statement. He is compelled by the stern logic of facts to admit that his view was not held by any except the most extreme Puritan faction under Elizabeth. But he nevertheless endeavours to banish non communicants on the very original ground, that the rubrical direction for the convenient placing of the communicants involves the withdrawal of the rest of the congregation, because those who go up to the altar may have to struggle past those on the same bench, who do not intend to do so. Unfortunately, this argument applies equally to the not impossible case of the immense majority of the congregation designing to communicate, as happens in many places at Easter, when the pushing of communicants past each other is likely to be quite as great as any inconvenience suffered, according to Mr. Hubbard's hypothesis, on ordinary occasions in a mixed congregation. Moreover, if he had even gone into a foreign Church on a great festival, he would have seen how the communicants do separate themselves in some degree from the remainder of the people, without any banishmeut becoming necessary.

The amount of care or scholarship which he brings to bear upon the matter may be gauged by his remark, that the rubric directing the minister to deliver the Sacrament to the "people" shows that only communicants are in theory present. It is no shame to a laynan, long immersed in merely secular occupation, to be unaware that the rubric he refers to is merely a translation of one occurring in the majority of Liturgies, pointing out that the clergy is to receive first.

But it would be shame for any clergyman to be so uninstructed as to accept Mr. Hubbard's explanation. Two more of his assertions are less excusable, because the least attention to obvious facts would have prevented him from adducing them. One is, that attendance on the Holy Communion is, in certain churches, morally forced on unwilling congregations. That might be done for one or two Sundays, but when the very churches he refers to are crowded week after week, the inference is, either that there is no compulsion, or that the congregations are not unwilling. The other statement is even more extraordinary; for he alleges that he never met with a proposition for the expulsion of non-communicants. We can only

say that we have found the effort made in S. Paul's Cathedral, in Westminster Abbey, and several other churches of more or less note. In conclusion, we would remind Mr. Hubbard and his readers of one thing. He, as a successful merchant, might fairly be expected to be an authority on all financial questions. Yet it is a matter of history that his scheme for re-adjusting the income tax has been laughed down by every financier and political economist who has looked into it. In the present case (where we are sorry to say that rumour charges him with a personal motive for his polemics), to which he brings no special means of information, he cannot but expect the same fate at the hands of every scholar and theologian.

If we are not mistaken, the able and painstaking Warden of the House of Charity has already published two learned and telling essays, demonstrating the right of all the baptised to be present at the Christian Sacrifice, so that the later developments of the Catholic revival, in this particular, have been rendered easier of accomplishment through his valuable instrumentality. Once again, for the third time, he has come forward to expand and give point to his previous statements. In reply to the unsound and mischievous teaching of the "Church Review," we have, in his recent pamphlet, Communion in the Prayers, the Right of Communicants (London : G. J. Palmer), a very learned defence of the Catholic doctrine and practice upon this point. We prefer recommending the argument in its totality to attempting to give any abstract of it. Suffice it to say, that it is fortified throughout by a series of authorities of the highest weight; while the actual experience of the author is made to tell forcibly in the same direction. No one is more competent than Mr. Chambers to re-cast the whole of his pamphlets on this subject into a sound, solid treatise in a technical and systematic form, which should utterly refute the Protestant notions of Messrs Scudamore and Philip Freeman,—a labour, we trust, at his leisure, he may be induced to undertake.

We have received two large and handsome volumes, containing the Complete Works of S. John of the Cross (London: Longmans) translated from the Spanish by Mr. David Lewis of Jesus College, Oxford, edited by the Oblate Fathers of S. Charles, with a preface by Cardinal Wiseman. They will be noticed at length in a future number. On the present occasion, in cordially recommending them to the attention of our readers, it will be sufficient to point out that the great Bossuet remarked that S. John's writings possessed the same authority in mystical theology as do the writings of S. Thomas, Aquinas, and the Fathers in dogmatic theology.

The Scottish Guardian, for April (Edinburgh: R. Grant & Son) can hardly be said to be an improvement on its two predecessors. While it is certainly more dull and heavy as regards its literary articles, it is in no degree improved in its ecclesiastical tone. Flatness and insipidity in both departments are two of its leading cha

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