of the Church of Rome. The last dream of his failing intellect was the reconciliation of the divided Churches-that in one Church, neither Anglican, Roman, nor Nonconformist, all minds and consciences might find repose. As his insanity became violent, he was removed to Bethlehem Hospital, then to a private asylum; and when some mitigation of his symptoms occurred, he was transferred to his own house at Ramsgate. There, among bursts of violence, appeared some coruscations of his former genius. When excited against his favourite builder, Myers diverted his passion by reproving him for the delay caused at Beverley by the absence of drawings. He then asked for a pencil, and on the back of an envelope he sketched a vane, so accurate, clear, and beautiful, that this touch of his cunning hand supplied the actual ornament which now stands on the corner pinnacle of Beverley. This was his last effort. Soon after, the worn body yielded to the mental excitement, and an attack of convulsions closed his life in September, 1852. Thus, at the age of forty, while so much was looked for, and might have been achieved by his powers, a great genius was extinguished. His letters show that his religious emotions, however, as we feel, misdirected, were earnest ; and his character seems to have softened in his later years. His designs and publications contributed to the purifying of English taste, and in the new and better era of architecture on which, after two centuries of decline, we have entered, an important, though not the foremost, place may be fairly assigned him. A great architect we cannot call him; a useful copier of good models, and a corrector of popular errors, he unquestionably was. Nor should it be forgotten, for the testimony on this point is clear, that a powerful mind, betrayed at its starting into alienation from our Reformed Church, ended in regarding it, first with abated enmity, and then with kindly regard. On the other hand, the impressions of fancy, which led him as a convert to the ceremonial and doctrines of Rome, passed away at a nearer view, and diminished under maturer reflection; till the trickery and tinsel, which had dazzled his youthful eye, being detected, there remained for his advanced reason only doubts and painful questionings, and feelings of variance, which grew with years. We commend the lesson to those prurient imaginations which are attracted by Romish services; still more to those whose halting steps tremble on the brink of the cliff; or who having made the plunge, and immersed in the muddy waters, begin to find their error, to sound the shallows, and to doubt what may be the end.

MOZLEY'S REVIEW OF THE BAPTISMAL CONTROVERSY.

A Review of the Baptismal Controversy. By J. B. Mozley, B.D., Vicar of Old Shoreham, late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. London: Rivingtons. 1862.

THE Tractarian warfare is over; its echoes have not yet died away. The master minds of the controversy have quitted the field; the few combatants who still remain there are rather noisy than dangerous. The Baptismal question in particular was, as Mr. Mozley states, the controversy of the first half of this century. It produced treatises from a succession of divines of great ability: archbishop Lawrence, bishop Mant, Mr. Biddulph, Mr. Faber, bishop Bethell, Dr. Pusey, dean Goode, archdeacon Wilberforce, and others. It came to a head in the Gorham trial, and has since dropped; or if continued, it has been by inferior hands, who understand the science of abuse better than the dialectics of scholars and divines. Political dissenters have taken up the quarrel which the old leaders of the Tractarian party have wisely abandoned; and the grave and earnest, but courteous controversies of the study are now exchanged for the brawls of the kitchen. The Evangelical clergy who used to be denounced as inconsistent, have lately heard themselves denounced as unprincipled and false,―base men, who subscribe to what they know to be a falsehood, and teach what in their hearts they believe to be a lie. This is the charge brought against them by a few violent dissenters, rather than by their old opponents of the ultra-high-church party. Though we must admit that, in the case of one or two of the most distinguished of the Tractarians, they were assailed with the same bitterness, and the same vulgarity.

At this juncture we hail with satisfaction the appearance of Mr. Mozley's work. Coming from such a quarter, it will be received by those whom we fear we must still designate as our opponents, with the less suspicion ; yet it establishes the points for which the Evangelical party have all along contended. It is well and ably written, the work of no mean scholar, or weak reasoner; but it is a complete defence of the Evangelical clergy from the charges brought against them, whether by highchurchmen, or angry dissenters, of dishonesty in subscribing to the Baptismal services in our Book of Common Prayer. It is very gratifying to perceive that the precise ground which dean Goode took up in the Gorham controversy, is now defended from an independent quarter, and often with his own arguments and authorities. We do not trouble ourselves much when the controversy descends to hard words and abusive language; but we are persuaded that we shall hear little hereafter about

the dishonesty of the Evangelical party in subscribing to the Baptismal service, or making use of the Church Catechism. Mr. Mozley, considering that the controversy is now virtually closed, has undertaken to review the whole with perfect candour. And we must do him the justice to say, that while it is evident that he is not of our party, yet it is no less evident that he is not ill qualified to sustain the judicial character, difficult as it is, that he has voluntarily undertaken. The two positions to which, in the present treatise, his inquiries are limited, are those which not only lie at the root of all our differences, but which do in fact embrace and comprehend them all, by consequences more or less remote. The one is, that the doctrine of the regeneration of all infants in baptism is not an article of faith; the other, that the formularies of our Church do not impose it. These two positions, which occupy respectively the two parts of the present treatise, have this connexion, that, if the one is proved, the way is prepared for the proof of the other. And an honest subscriber to our Book of Common Prayer has it perfectly open to him to adopt either the hypothetic, or the conditional theory; and in the case of those who have lived and died in sin, to reject the doctrine of regeneration in baptism altogether.

Mr. Mozley opens with a chapter on the question, What is fundamental in Christianity? and on this he remarks, that no rule has been laid down for determining fundamentals, which will bear a strictly logical test of adequacy; and he quotes Thorndike as saying: "It is the masterpiece of all the divines of Christendom, to say what is fundamental in Christianity and what is not." The Romish test, besides being one which we do not admit, is nothing more than a test of simple obedience to Church authority; for though it professes to leave a distinction between open questions and those which are decided, the decision which leaves a multitude of points, great and small, all without distinction under anathema, practically ignores intrinsic distinctions of rank in doctrines, and only tests ecclesiastical obedience. The rule laid down by our own Churchnamely, that no doctrine shall be held necessary to be believed, which cannot be proved from Scripture-is in its very terms, and was no doubt meant to be, a rule, not for deciding what is fundamental, but for deciding what is not. The rule of St. Vincent of Lyrins, "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," or, what has been universally believed by the Church at all times, and in all places, rests neither upon facts nor logic; nor can any reason be given, why some things not necessary to salvation may not have been believed, or universally believed even in the first ages of the Church; and we have hints in the New Testament to prepare us for what really happened that corruptions should enter in, grievous wolves

making havoc of the flock, even before the last of the apostles had quitted the scene. There remains a third criterion which, upon the whole, we have no doubt is by far the best; Waterland and Sherlock have adopted it, as, of course, have all Evangelical divines. Waterland makes it to "consist of such doctrines as are found to be intrinsical, or essential to the Christian covenant, while such as are plainly and directly subversive of it are fundamental errors." Sherlock states it thus: "A fundamental doctrine is such a doctrine as is in the strict sense of the essence of Christianity, without which the whole building and superstructure must fall; the belief of which is necessary to the very being of Christianity, like the first principles of any art or science." Mr. Mozley himself adds, that some divines, in the absence of definite external tests, have attempted to lay down an intrinsic criterion, and have formed systems of fundamentals by selecting certain central and cardinal truths, singled out by our religious sense and feeling, and their own evident rank in Scripture. This may fail in definiteness and precision, but he admits that it still has great and just weight, from the circumstance "that we cannot help ourselves being judges as to what is essential, or not, to the religion to which we ourselves belong; our hearts naturally fix on certain truths which appear the most deep and central ones. It may be an informal criterion, and argumentatively defective, but there is none that does such practical service in producing substantial agreement among Christians." Has not the Lord of the Church Himself intimated, that it is to this standard or criterion of doctrine that we must come at last? 'My sheep hear my voice, and will follow me; a stranger will they not follow, for they know not the voice of strangers." If it be asked again, who are to be the judges of this proof from Scripture? we may answer in the first place, that the difficulty, if it be one, docs in no degree explain away the doctrine itself. This has bewildered many; it ought not to perplex the simplest mind. Here is an act of parliament, a statute law; no statute law, or act of parliament, contains a clause informing the public how it is to be explained; but is it less a statute of the realm on that account? The Bible is far more explicit; it gives us the plainest intimations that the Author of the book will Himself explain its meaning to them who ask for the assistance of His Holy Spirit. And after all, our author well states the matter, thus :—

"The meaning of proof is in no way affected by the omission to decide who is the judge of proofs; because, whoever the judge is, the question of which he is the judge is the same: viz., of proof of a particular doctrine from a particular document. Whether the universal Churches, then, or a particular Church, or an individual, be the judge of such proof, it is this proof, and this alone, of which he has

to judge. The decision which the judge, whoever he be, undertakes to make is, whether such and such a doctrine is satisfactorily proved by the terms of Scripture alone; diverging from which question, and coming to the decision that Scripture admits of an interpretation in agreement with this doctrine, supposed to be proved by antiquity, he deserts his proper task, and abandons the office of judge of proof from Scripture."

Mr. Mozley shows that those of our divines who most insist on the authority of the Church-for instance, Field and Thoradike-acknowledge this ultimate right in the individual.

The question now arises, whether the position, that all infants are regenerate in baptism, is an article of faith, or, in other terms, one of the fundamental doctrines of religion. If it be, it can be proved by Scripture; for the absence of such proof at once excludes it from the class of fundamental doctrines. But on reference to Scripture, we find, in the first place, no express mention made of the baptism of infants, and, in the second, no statement from which the obligation to baptize them can properly be inferred. God has, indeed, declared His good will towards infants, and we rightly use the liberty, which Scripture does not deny us, of baptizing them. But the omission of a command to baptize infants carries with it, as Mr. Mozley contends, the omission of infant regeneration by baptism. We find in Scripture a general connexion of regeneration with baptism; but after thus generally connecting this grace with the sacrament, and mentioning faith and repentance as the conditions of receiving this grace in the case of adults, the New Testament stops short, and does not inform us of the relations in which those stand to the sacrament, who from tender age are incapable of fulfilling these conditions. Our Twenty-fifth Article speaks with moderation. Infant baptism is to be retained as most agreeable with the institution of Christ. Wall, in his great work on baptism, arrives at the conclusion that pædo-baptism should be treated as an open question, which ought not to separate members of the same church; for our own part, we have long been of the same opinion. We agree with him, too, and with our author, in censuring Anabaptists, both of ancient and modern times, because they will not treat the question as an open one, but absurdly deny to others a liberty which they hesitate to use themselves. Except in showing that infants may properly be admitted into the Church of God, the argument from circumcision has no great weight. It was a rite, by the very form of its original institution, equally designed for infants and adults; they stood on equal ground in respect to it by the very letter of Scripture; and the exclusion of females from any similar rite, or, indeed, from any visible token of admission to the Church of which they were unquestionably members, leaves but little value to