the garb of Christian ministers, and bearing upon their souls the vows of a Reformed Church, who have endeavoured to revive this practice, is a circumstance from the shame of which our Church will not soon recover; and until the plague be stayed, the sin, let it be remembered, rests, in some measure, upon the Church itself. "In the confessional, the priest is more than man, and the penitent is less. It is the perfect consummation of arrogance on the one side, and blasphemous assumptions of the prerogative of God; and on the other, of prostrate imbecility, of cringing weakness, of the folly which, distrusting God and all His promises of grace, has confidence in the mumbled spell of an impostor." * But, thirdly, Christians are to confess their faults one to another. So teaches St. James; and it is the only passage of Sacred Writ in which the advocates of Auricular Confession have professed to discover traces of its practice in the primitive Church. Two obvious and insuperable objections meet their interpretation. First, the Epistle is addressed, not to the laity, to instruct them in their duties to the Clergy, but to the Church of Christ, composed of Jewish converts "scattered through the world." All those to whom it is sent are to confess to one another those lapses, those offences, of whatever kind, which, while offending God, have, at the same time, caused a brother to offend, or grieved his spirit. And this was as much the duty of Presbyters towards laymen as of laymen towards their Presbyters; for no shadow of distinction is drawn between them. And, secondly, this mutual confession is joined with mutual prayer: "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another." The confessor and the confessed stand upon the same footing. One does not confess, and the other absolve. There has been an offence given; a meek acknowledgment is made by the offender; and now both parties unite in prayer for one another. A happy spectacle, and a holy one. For "how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity!" How sweet are the returns of love after the clouds of passion and the storms of sin, even amongst the family of Christ! And this mutual confession and forgiveness is the bounden duty of all those who would obey the Gospel. "If thy brother trespass against thee seven times a-day, and seven times a-day turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him." The confession, it seems, must precede the forgiveness. The offender is not entitled to the returns of his brother's love until he has acknowledged his transgression. The injured man, if a real Christian, will indeed entertain neither malice nor hatred in his heart. will yearn, with something of his Master's love, over one of Christ's flock whom he sees under sore temptation. But he must "rebuke him : he will no doubt pray for him too; but until he says, "I repent," he cannot, and, in very many cases, he ought not, * Churchmanship of the New Testament. Hamilton and Co. 1848. He to restore him to his confidence and friendship. For this would be to make light of sin. It might harden the offender's heart, encouraging him to think little of those evil tempers and selfish passions which God abhors.-Only let the injured party beware of his own spirit. For here a harsh, vindictive temper often buries itself, like the worm beneath Jonah's gourd, under the profession of zeal for the purity of Christian morals. "If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye that are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of .meekness." Such is the teaching of the word of God upon the subject of Confession; and we will add, such, too, is the teaching of the Church of England. We might here dismiss the subject, but that perhaps no fitter occasion will present itself to offer a few remarks upon the forms of absolution in our Book of Common Prayer. Of these, by far the strongest, and to many devout Churchmen, we must add, the most objectionable, is that in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. Now the question is, not whether the Service itself be judiciously drawn up; or whether this form of absolution should be amended or withdrawn-points on which, at present, we offer no suggestions and express no opinion, but simply what was the meaning attached to the absolution by those who framed the office; and upon this point there is no room for any reasonable doubt. It was meant as an assurance of Christ's willingness to pardon sin undoubtedly; but, beyond this, it is a mere release from Church censures under which the penitent was supposed to lie. In the Hampton Court Conference, A. D. 1603, scarcely five-andforty years after the Reformation, when the Romish interpretation was for the first time, we believe, publicly charged against it by the Puritans, it was defended on this ground and on this alone. Whitgift the Primate, Bancroft Bishop of London and the other prelates, friends and pupils of the Reformers, understood it thus ; and King James as the exponent of their views, which were those of the High Churchmen of the day, were to the same effect; namely, that the form of absolution in the Office for the Sick implied nothing more than an authoritative declaration of pardon for sin "on the terms prescribed in the Gospel." "What was private and particular in it had reference to Church censures." "It was to be applied," said the King," to special parties who, having committed a scandal and repented, are absolved; so that, where there precedes no excommunication nor penance, there needs no absolution."* It is, then, an absolution from Church censures. It was never designed as a conveyance of pardon for sin as committed against God. The Reformers taught, indeed, that to God only History of the Hampton Court Conference, &c., published (by authority) by Barlow, Dean of Chester. 1604. pertaineth the forgiveness of sins, and that "the Romish doctrine concerning pardons, is a fond thing vainly invented, grounded upon no warrant of Scripture, and repugnant to the word of God." (Article XXII.) Nor must we overlook the fact, that, according to the Sixtyseventh Canon, while the minister, "if he be no preacher," is obliged to make use of this Service in his visitation of the sick; on the other hand, "if he be a preacher," then he is at liberty to act "as he shall think most useful and convenient." If he were a preacher ;-for at the Reformation, and long afterwards, ninetenths of the Clergy were not preachers. The bulk of them were ignorant men; the great majority had been Romish priests; for out of ten thousand parishes, not quite three hundred of the ancient "Mass Priests" resigned their livings at the Reformation. These men could not preach. They knew little or nothing of the Gospel; and to prevent false teaching, to secure sound doctrine and competent ability in the pulpit, a few of the best clergymen in every county were licensed to preach, and the rest were absolutely forbidden to do so; forbidden to attempt an office which they could only degrade by their incompetence. Yet these nonpreaching clergymen are commanded to use the absolution. The men who are forbidden to preach are instructed to absolve. And, further, the preachers are to be left to their own discretion; they may or they may not absolve. The inferior, the ignorant minister, must use it; the wiser, the superior minister, may do as he thinks fit. He may refuse to make use of this form of absolution, and there is not the least hint given that he is to absolve at all. His duty is to visit the sick, "to comfort and instruct" him; but he may do it in whatever manner his maturer judgment and experience shall suggest. We add no more, for we mean to provoke no controversy and to embark in none. We state historical facts, and we do so simply to quiet some anxious doubts and satisfy the scruples of many whom we respect and love. Whatever may still be thought of the wisdom of the Reformers, of their intention there can, we think, be no doubt; or is it possible that they should have treated a subject of such unutterable moment as the forgiveness of sins-meaning thereby the sins which still incurred the wrath of God-after such a sort? Could they possibly have committed such a discretion to preachers, as to leave it to their caprice to forgive a dying man his sin? Could they, if they believed the Priest had, according to the Romish theory, the power to forgive sin, have delegated this trust especially to men who were no preachers? Or can we really believe that our Reformers committed the forgiveness of sins-as a matter of inferior concern-to the ignorant minister, while they left the holier and wiser man, the preacher of God's word, at liberty to please himself? Yet all this must be conceded before we can admit the Romish interpretation; which, be it said with shame, too many professing members of the Church of England are attempting to impose upon the office. But we return from this digression. The Scripture doctrine of Confession of Sin impresses us with an overwhelming sense, both of the righteousness and of the purity of God. Of His righteousness; since no sin can be forgiven which the transgressor strives to hide. He compounds with no offences; He overlooks no secret faults. The law of the Lord is perfect; it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; it pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. Of His holiness and spotless purity. All the defilement of his creatures is known to Him, and yet He receives no taint. All the foul offences of heart and thought; the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eye, are carried hourly into his presence by tens of thousands of his penitent, believing people. What mortal could listen without pollution? But they do not defile the purity of God. We fly to his presence from the contagion of our own hearts; but the Holy One himself invites. us to uncover their hideous sores in his presence. He does not turn away in abhorrence; he dreads no infection. Wonderful, then, must be his compassion-wonderful the love of Christ. He can not only listen to the loathsome disclosure of our guilt, He can actually take it on himself. Words cannot express his hatred of sin, yet that sin He makes his own. And, in return, He imputes his own righteousness to us; so that, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, we stand with the confidence of children in his presence, having peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. DR. JOHNSON. Letters of James Boswell, addressed to Rev. J. Temple. We have prefixed this title to our Article, but we do not recommend the work to our readers. Though the story of the way in which it came to light is a strange one, we do not question its truth. But the work itself is worthless; it is an unblushing history of folly and vice. We all know Boswell as the biographer of Johnson: these Letters give us what we did not know-a portrait of Boswell himself. That he was vain, froward, and foolish, all the world was aware. That his principles and practice were anything but strict, we had reason to suspect. But we were not prepared for such a flagrant exhibition of continued licentiousness. His confessions are frank; and they seem to have lost nothing of their openness because they were addressed to a Clergyman. But they give such a picture of early profligacy, such perseverance in habits of licentiousness, such ignorance of religion, and such familiarity with vice, that we are sure no one will be either wiser or better for reading them. They have only this advantage, that they show us the habits of the day, and teach us the superiority of Johnson to those with whom he associated. If his practice and opinions are marked by a severe morality, he drew none of this from the society in which he lived. This may serve to illustrate his merit, and to direct us to its source. And we may, therefore, thank this book, however in itself worthless, for recalling us to one whose worth has not been sufficiently estimated, and who, in the midst of his learning, the powers of his conversation, and the variety of his gifts, has not had full justice done to him for the practical religion which guided his life. We shall render, as we think, some service to our readers, and offer them a subject which has by no means lost its interest, if we dwell for a little on the religious opinions of Dr. Johnson, and on the impulses drawn from religion which regulated his life. In forming a just opinion, we must carefully avoid estimating Dr. Johnson's position from the religious standing which we have reached, and from the knowledge of religion which distinguishes the present age. The age in which Dr. Johnson lived was in one of the lowest conditions to which religion ever sank in England. He was himself a High Churchman, and he inherited those opinions from his father, and he clung to them with the tenacity which distinguished his character. Towards Dissenters his antipathy was great-a compound of aversion and contempt. Now the only religious movement which broke the apathy of a hundred years came from the Methodists; and the Methodists, as dissenters from the polity of his Church, Dr. Johnson disliked and despised. He was attracted, indeed, to Wesley by his literary attainments and his conversation; but it is doubtful if he ever heard him preach; and he regarded Whitfield as a mountebank and buffoon. Thus tied and bandaged by his opinions, he was held in fetters. He would have regarded it a sin to enter a Methodist tabernacle ; and if any accident carried him there, he wore such chainarmour of prejudice as to make him invulnerable against the shafts of eloquence and persuasion. He was confined, therefore, to what he could learn in the Church of England; and the fare which the Church of England's Sermons supplied to its hearers was indeed meagre. Good men there were within the Church, learned men, and prelates of piety; but the sermons usually preached were low-caste moral essays, far inferior to those of Plato or Cicero. That we do not exaggerate in such a statement, we have the highest testimony. The celebrated Blackstone settled in London early in the reign of George the Third. He had a strong curiosity, and he went to listen to every preacher then of note in the Church within |