be open to other objections; we doubt whether they necessarily imply a wrong conception of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. If there is any unconscious want of fairness here, it is the more to be regretted because of the general soundness of the contention that, in view of the idea of the priesthood which had become common, the attitude of the Council of Trent was of such a kind as to open the way to misconceptions of a very serious kind' (p. 234), or rather to abstain from closing the way which was already open.

What, then, was the work of the Anglican Reformers in the same matter? Dr. Moberly wisely does not go out of his way to contend that the Anglican Ordinal represents' in every particular' 'the highest perfectness of proportion or expression that is ideally possible,' or 'to deny that some traces of the great influence of the Protestant reaction are discernible in it,' or that the restoration of a somewhat richer and more generous fullness in some 'respects' such as 'the formal delivery of the chalice and paten' and 'direct mention of Eucharistic" offerings" or "sacrifice" would enhance the beauty of the service alike from the historical and from the theological points of view' (pp. 288-9). But he, no less wisely, lays great stress on the significance of the 'deliberate retention' '' of the three Orders' and of the word Priest 'in the midst of the rising tide of destructive Protestantism,' and in view of the exaggerations' to which 'Cranmer had himself been prepared to go some years earlier in the direction of denying the spiritual character of Order,' and the 'close fidelity to the language of Scripture' which 'was always to the Reformers a palmary object' (pp. 234-8). And he clearly avows his

'conviction that the Anglican Ordinal has gained something far more vital and substantial than anything that it can be supposed to have lost; it has restored, in the main, what had been gradually lost in the accretions of the medieval Ordinal, the true proportion between the outward and the inward; it has restored the essential relation and harmony between Eucharistic leadership-with all that it involves and a right conception in Christ's Church of the meaning of ministerial priesthood as a whole' (p. 289).

An abandonment of the word 'priest' in the sixteenth century would, says Dr. Moberly, have been 'deeply and perilously wrong' (p. 239). He justifies this assertion by showing that the conception of the Christian religion which is presented in the New Testament and the earliest Fathers is sacrificial (pp. 263-82). In so doing he repudiates the idea that to understand the true meaning of the words 'priest' and

'sacrifice' it is necessary to 'go back''to what they meant in the Old Testament,' or 'in the ancient pagan world,' or 'in the mouths of those who may be supposed to have first devised the terms.' So far from this being the case, the true meaning of them is only to be seen in the Person of Christ. In considering the sacrifice of Christ Dr. Moberly avoids two opposite mistakes. He does not deny that the 'entire life' of our Lord 'in mortal flesh was a sacrifice,' and he asserts that, though 'Calvary' was 'the indispensable preliminary of the 'true consummation of the sacrifice,' that 'true consummation' itself was 'not Calvary taken apart' or 'Calvary quite so directly as the eternal self-presentation in Heaven of the risen and ascended Lord' (pp. 243-6). For the truth about sacrifice is :

'It is not the death itself which is acceptable to the God of life: but the vital self-identification with the holiness of God, the perfect self-dedication and self-surrender which is represented, in a life that has sinned' [or, in the case of our Lord, a life which is the sin-bearer], 'by voluntary acceptance of penitential or penal death. It is the life as life, not the death as death; it is the life which has been willing to die, the life which has passed through death, and been consecrated in dying, the life in which death is a moral element, perpetually and inalienably present, but still the life, which is acceptable to God' (p. 245).

From this conception of the priestly work of Christ follows a corresponding truth about the office of the Church. For 'what Christ is, the Church, which is Christ's mystical body, must also be.' If Christ is Priest, the Church is priestly.' So in the New Testament 'priestliness of character is a consequence which outflows upon the Church from the Person of Christ' (p. 251). This 'sacrificial priesthood of the Church is ' 'her identification with the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ'; ' in her Eucharistic worship on earth'she' 'is identified with His sacrificial self-oblation to the Father.' Further, this 'identification' means the reproduction in her of the Spirit of Him who sacrificially offered Himself' (pp. 254-5). Therefore the sacrificial office of the Church has 'two aspects.' She is 'priestly because from her proceeds the aroma of perpetual offering towards God' and also 'because her arms are spread out perpetually to succour and intercede for those who need the sacrifice of love' (pp. 255-6). Similarly, the priesthood of the ministry has two aspects: 'its highest typical expression, the mystical culmination of its executive privilege' is its leadership in Eucharistic worship,' but in this are involved 'many corollaries of spirit and life-the bearing of the

people on the heart before God; the earnest effort of intercessory entreating; the practical translation of intercession into pastoral life, and anxiety, and pain' (p. 261).

It is, of course, true that, as the Eucharistic Sacrifice has its meaning because of the Real Presence of the Lord upon the Altar, so also the minister of Christ is a priest because he is empowered to offer that sacrifice. But, as is pointed out in the work before us, 'the higher you go in the grade of responsible office, the less is it true' that you can define the office simply by the 'external duty of action.' It would be a very imperfect description of a great viceroy to define his office simply by the things which he and no one else can do. No one would dream of really defining the sovereignty as the prerogative of signing pardons, or of subscribing statutes, or anything whatever of the kind,' while it is manifest that

'the real nature of the meaning of his mighty office could only be described, with any approach to adequacy, by emphasizing responsibilities and duties which were not strictly distinctive of the personal sovereignty, because they were shared with the viceroy (of course in very varying degrees) by every one of those who, under him, were responsible for the welfare of the country' (pp. 294-7).

There is an Appendix on 'the recent Roman controversy as to the validity of Anglican Orders.' Into any details on this subject it is unnecessary that we should enter after the full treatment which it has recently received in our pages.' The special point which Dr. Moberly emphasizes is closely connected with the general character of his book. It is that the Roman Catholic and the English Churchman approach the question from different points of view, the Roman Catholic from a narrowed and cramped conception of the priesthood, the English Churchman from a more adequate realization of the true Christian idea. We should be sorry to say that the first half of this statement is true of all Roman Catholics any more than we can claim that the latter half of it is true of all English Churchmen; that it is true of many Dr. Moberly certainly shows, and the force of what he says is strongly supported by the public utterances of Cardinal Vaughan, and has received a significant confirmation in the Vindication of the Bull Apostolica Cura,' which has been published by the English representatives of the Pope. And in the matter of intention, on which so much is now said to depend, it may not be out of place for us to point out that, whatever might or might not be the opinions of the English

1 Church Quarterly Review, January and April 1896, Anglican Orders'; January 1897, 'The Papal Bull on Anglican Orders.'

Reformers on certain doctrines or matters of detail, it is at least certain that they intended to 'continue' those 'Orders of Ministers' which had been in Christ's Church' from the Apostles' time'1 and to secure the existence of such Ministers as our Lord Himself had intended should be in His Church.

We have said enough to show our high appreciation of Dr. Moberly's work. Any criticisms we have to pass upon it are almost wholly those of method. Questions raised in the preface might well be discussed at length in a book, and the treatment of them suffers from the absence of expansion and explanation. The work generally is under the disadvantage of not corresponding with the 'original design' and of having 'been meant to form part of a much larger whole' (Preface, p. v). The phraseology of many passages is unnecessarily complicated and involved, and there is a danger of this fault discouraging some readers and embarrassing others. There are paragraphs and pages we would gladly see altogether rewritten. The power of the author's thought is not always reflected in his style.

To show that the common opposition between the spiritual and the outward is an altogether false antithesis; to explain that the more strongly the priestly character of the whole Christian Body is realized, the more logically and the more fully can the priesthood of the ministry be asserted; to vindicate for the Church of Christ the rightfulness of true sacerdotalism and for the Church in England the possession of a real priesthood - these are among the main objects of the present book, and its author's treatment of his chosen subjects merits the most careful reading and consideration from all English-speaking theologians.

ART. II. BUTLER OF WANTAGE.

Life and Letters of William John Butler, late Dean of Lincoln, and sometime Vicar of Wantage. With portraits. (London and New York, 1897.)

THE pastoral care of the parish of Wantage was 'the chief work of [William Butler's] life' (p. 36), and while the strong character of the man could not but reveal itself wherever he was and whatever he did, it was at Wantage, for thirty-four years of strenuous labour, that he devoted the prime of his

1 Preface to the Ordination Services in the Book of Common Prayer.

manhood 'to teach, and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lord's family; to seek for Christ's sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for His children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they [might] be saved through Christ for ever.' In his own words, humorously but most truly said, 'Wantage was written on his heart as Calais was on Queen Mary's' (p. 163). It was there that he placed before the clergy of such places as Wantage was-the country towns of the South of England-the pattern which is described in the language of the ordinal. He did at Wantage for the south what Dr. Hook did at Leeds for the great industrial centres of the north 2-showed that the lofty exhortation of the Ordination Service could be translated into reality. If we may borrow a word from Dean Burgon, Butler's unsuccessful opponent at the proctorial election for Convocation in the Oxford diocese on February 21, 1874 (the anniversary of Newman's birthday) (p. 281), we may call Butler the 'remodeller' of the parson of the country town, as Burgon styled Bishop Wilberforce the remodeller of the Episcopate.' We are sure that we shall take a right view of Butler's life-one that he would have acknowledged to be right and wished to be taken, and one, we must add, on which it is important to insist very strongly in these daysif we regard him as a plain parish priest, simply fulfilling to the utmost of his power what he believed to be the duty of a parochial clergyman. His earlier life, as a child, at school and Cambridge, and as a young clergyman, contains some incidents and marks of character of which we shall see the development at Wantage. The honours which came to him in the Oxford diocese, and the posts of dignity at Worcester and at Lincoln, will be regarded from this point of view as the natural though the late recognition of his Wantage work.

3

William John Butler was born on February 10, 1818, and was brought up religiously in the school of old-fashioned, orthodox Churchmanship. During a thunderstorm, when he was between three and four years of age, he was heard to repeat the collect 'Lighten our darkness' (p. 2), an early indication of his fidelity to the Prayer Book. From school at Westminster he went as a scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge, and having no taste for mathematics decided not

1 Exhortation in The Form and Manner of Ordering of Priests.

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2 Canon Overton says that Butler, as an efficient and successful priest at Wantage, almost rivalled Dr. Hook at Leeds' (The Anglican Revival, p. 142).

3 Lives of Twelve Good Men, ii. 1. Compare the testimony of the Rev. W. G. Sawyer on p. 94 ; and see Church's Occasional Papers, ii. 334.