the most absolute and unqualified terms, as most glaring deceptions? How could the church herself, without the imputation of cozenage and imposture, intimate, that she has any authority to grant a licence, or withhold it, to enable or disqualify ministers in the performance of this miracle? She assumes in this instance as perfect a right as she does to license preachers in her visible human establishment.

"2. With respect to healing the sick, we know that there was an office for that purpose in the Liturgy of the Church of England, in which the infirm person was sup_ posed to be healed by the imposition of the royal hands, and a piece of gold about their necks. The portion of Scripture appointed to be read on this occasion was Mark xvi. 14-20. If this office is now omitted in our PrayerBooks, I know not by what authority it is done; and conceive that it still continues, as much as ever, a part of our parliamentary religion; and the gift, as much as ever, a part of the royal prerogative.

"3. With respect to the gift of the Holy Ghost, by means of the hands of the apostles, it was evidently miraculous, and attested frequently by the persons on whom it fell speaking with tongues. In the rite of confirmation the bishop declares, in an address to the Almighty, that he (God) has vouchsafed to regenerate these his servants by water and the Holy Ghost, and to give them forgiveness of all their sins. Then laying his hand upon the head of each particular person, he certifies him, by that sign of God's favour and gracious goodness towards him. We are told, that what the bishop then does, in laying on his hands, is after the example of the

holy apostles; which evidently means, with the same intention, and to produce the same effect.

The Ordination Service and the Visitation of the Sick, on which the writer then proceeds to animadvert, aré already noticed in the Lecture.

Queen Elizabeth seems to have been strongly disposed to retain the celibacy of the priesthood in her Reformed Church. That it was not absolutely enjoined is said to have been owing to the interposition of Cecil. The following regulation is copied from " Injunctions given by the Queen's Majesty," 1559.

" Item, although there be no prohibition by the word of God, nor any example of the primitive church, but that the priests and ministers of the church may lawfully, for the avoyding of fornication, have an honest and sober wife, and that for the same purpose, the same was by Act of Parliament, in the time of our deare brother King Edward the Sixth, made lawfull: whereuppon a great number of the clergie of this realme were then married, and so yet continue. Yet because there hath grown offence, and some slaunder to the Church, by lacke of discreet and sober behaviour in many ministers of the Church, both in choosing of their wives, and in indiscreete living with them, the remedie whereof is necessarie to be sought; it is thought, therefore, very necessarie, that no manner of priest or deacon shall hereafter take to his wife, any manner of woman, without the advice and allowance first had, upon good examination, by the bishop of the same diocese, and two justices of the peace of the same sheyre, dwelling next to the place where the same woman hath made her most abode before her marriage,

nor without the good will of the parents of the sayd woman, if shee have any living, or two of the next of her kinsfolkes, or for lack of knowledge of such, of her maister or mistresse where she serveth. And before he shall be contracted in any place, he shall make a good and certaine proofe thereof to the minister, or to the congregation assembled for that purpose, which shall be upon some holy day, where divers may bee present. And if any shall do otherwise, that then they shall not be permitted to minister either the word of (or) the sacraments of the church, nor shall be capable of any ecclesiastical benefice. And for the manner of marriages of any bishops, the same shall be allowed and approved by the metropolitane of the province, and also by such commissioners as the Queen's Majestie shall thereunto appoint. And if any maister or deane, or any head of any colledge, shall 'purpose to marrie, the same shall not be allowed, but by such to whom the visitation of the same doth properly belong, who shall in any wise provide that the same tend not to the hinderance of their house.

NOTE (1)-Page 48.

"The Church-of-England man is a sectarist, partly Papist, partly Protestant. He is a Protestant, because he asserts the sufficiency of the Scriptures. He is a Papist, because he, in the same breath, requires assent to certain additions to those Scriptures. He is a Protestant, because he has separated from the Church of Rome upon the plea of the right of private judgment.

He is a Papist, because he refuses the same liberty of separation to his brethren. He is a Protestant, because he maintains the unrighteousness of persecution, when he is himself the sufferer. He is a Papist, because, when opportunity offers, he has always shewn himself a persecutor in his turn. The Church-of-England clergyman also is a Papist, because in his Liturgy is found the Athanasian Creed. He is a Protestant, because, though enjoined by temporal and spiritual authority to recite it monthly, he hardly ever reads it. He is a Papist, because he subscribes the Thirty-nine Articles; and he is a Protestant, because he does not believe them."—Jebb's Works, III. p. 257.

To this may be added the testimony of an enlightened and amiable writer of the Roman Catholic persuasion.

"Of all Protestant Churches, the National Church of England most nearly resembles the Church of Rome. It has retained much of the dogma and much of the discipline of Roman Catholics. Down to the subdeacon it has retained the whole of their hierarchy; and like them has its deans, rural deans, chapters, prebends, archdeacons, rectors, and vicars; a liturgy taken, in a great measure, from the Roman Catholic liturgy; and composed, like that, of Psalms, Canticles, the three Creeds, litanies, epistles, gospels, prayers, and responses. Both churches have the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist, the absolution of the sick, the burial service, the sign of the cross in baptism, the reservation of confirmation and order to bishops, the difference of episcopal and sacerdotal dress, feasts and fasts. Without adopting all the general councils of the Church of Rome, the Church of England has adopted the first four of them;

and without acknowledging the authority of the early fathers, the English divines of the Established Church allow them to be entitled to a high degree of respect. On the important article of the eucharist, the language of the Thirty-nine Articles sounds very like the doctrine of the Church of Rome."-Butler's Historical Account of the Confessions of Faith of the Roman Catholic, Greek, and principal Protestant Churches.

NOTE (i)-Page 48.

The greatest statesman of modern times has described the views of the faction to which the Nonconformists, from a blind and bigoted hatred of Popery, sacrificed the cause of religious liberty, so as to throw great light on that and other periods of English history.

"The general character of the party at this time appears to have been a high notion of the king's constitutional power, to which was superadded, a kind of religious abhorrence of all resistance to the monarch, not only in cases where such resistance was directed against the lawful prerogative, but even in opposition to encroachments, which the monarch might make beyond the extended limits which they assigned to his prerogative. But these tenets, and still more, the principle of conduct naturally resulting from them, were confined to the civil, as contradistinguished from the ecclesiastical polity of the country. In church matters, they neither acknowledged any very high authority in the crown, nor were they willing to submit to any royal encroachment on that side; and a steady attachment to the Church of