9. L'Education, Journal d'Enseignement elementaire, pour les Ecoles et les Familles. Paris, Rue Garan- ciere, 10. 1851. ... ... ... ... V. Cases of Conscience, or Lessons of Morality. For the use of the Laity; extracted from the Moral Theo- VIII. The Catholic Florist. A Guide to the cultivation of Flowers for the Altar; with a list of such as are appropriate to the several Holy Days and Seasons of the Ecclesiastical Year; the whole illustrated by Historical Notices and Fragments of Ecclesiastical Poetry. With a Preface by the REV. FREDERICK X.-Letter to His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, on the subject of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, and the Charge addressed to the Clergy of Dublin in 1851. ... I.-1. Memoirs of William Wordsworth, Poet Laureate, D.C.L., by CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, D.D., Canon of Westminster, 2 vols. London: Moxon, 1851. II.-The Life of the Rev. Aloysius Gentili, L.L.D., Father of the Institute of Charity, and Missionary Apos- III-1. Jesus the Son of Mary; or, the Doctrine of the Catholic Church upon the Incarnation of God the Son, considered in its bearings upon the reverence shewn by Catholics to his Blessed Mother, by Rev. JOHN BRANDE MORRIS, M.A., 2 vols. 8vo. London: ... IV.-The History of the Church of Rome, to the end of the Episcopate of Damasus, A.D. 384. By EDWARD Ecclesiastical Commission; and Arch- bishoprics and Bishoprics, Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 16 June, 1851. VI.-Cecile; or, the Pervert. By Sir Charles Rockingham, THE DUBLIN REVIEW. SEPTEMBER, 1851. ART. I.-1. A Charge delivered by the Lord Bishop of Chester. 1841. 2. A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of Exeter, on the Present State of the Church. By HENRY, Lord Bishop of Exeter, 1851. 66 WE E suppose that if ever there was a day when its warmest supporters were bold enough to deny that the Anglican Church was a house divided against itself," that day has long since passed away. Each of the publications, the titles of which stand prefixed to the following pages, is a standing proof of this fact. Each of the two great factions, (to say nothing of lesser subdivisions,) into which the Establishment is divided, avow it and lament it in the plainest terms. To use the happy phrase of Bishop Philpotts, it is no longer a 'logomachy' which ranges men now as leaders of opposing parties in the English Communion; it is nothing less than a very war of principles, a vital conflict of opinion as to the primary truths of the Christian faith and revelation, which keeps them asunder. These rival principles, struggling as they are for victory in the heart of a communion whose main end and object is the reduction of objective truth to mere subjectivity, the softening down of all unpalatable asperities in Creeds, and the fusing of them in one harmonious whole of comprehensive negation, happily seem, now at least, far beyond any chance of reconcilement. When the Bishops of that communion who, for the most part, have maintained a calm and dignified silence amid the strife of tongues, and VOL. XXXI.-No. LXI. 1 have lived, like the Epicurean deities of old, a life unruffled by the concerns of this lower world-when its Bishops take up the arms which have hitherto been wielded by their Presbyters alone, and enter the lists as champions of two rival and antagonist systems, it needs not any great amount of skill in divination to prophecy the speedy downfal of the Establishment of which they are at once the strength and the weakness. For we have, on this head, to guide us, not merely common sense, but the plain axiom of Holy Scripture, which warns us, that "a house divided against itself must fall." For ourselves, we suppose that most men, in their boyish days, have been wont to associate the name of “Pastorals" with all that is peaceful and contented in that happy rustic life which poets have sung from the days of Theocritus and Virgil. And we suppose that when they grew older, and found out by experience that all was not gold which glittered in their utopian state of bliss, they reluctantly gave up all idea of a Bishop acting as the wise and gentle shepherd of an united flock; and found out that by a "Pastoral" was meant an Anglican Bishop's controversial letter to his Clergy. But it has been left for them now in these days to attach a far stronger meaning to the word; and we think that if any unprejudiced person will "read, mark, and inwardly digest" the 120 pages of which the Bishop of Exeter's Pastoral Letter is composed, he will not be likely to differ from us when we say that it is by far the most warlike "Pastoral" that we ever read. It is "Arms and the man" from first to last. It is no weak and puny composition; it is not subdued and querulous in its tone, far from it; it is a bold, open, and indignant avowal of the author's unswerving hostility against his Metropolitan, for a deep injury inflicted; its words breathe"siege and defiance" to the "fautor of heretical tenets," who is the present Protestant occupier of the Protestant See of Canterbury; and we may safely say, that if any one of our readers fully realizes to himself the unity of faith for which our Blessed Lord prayed, and is anxious to know to what extent differences on the very highest and most vital points are allowed to be carried in the Anglican communion, we cannot do better than advise him to bestow his most careful attention on these two controversial writings, which, with a few remarks by way of preface, we now beg leave to introduce to his notice. |