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red years, been making rapid strides in every species of improvement, and a corresponding alteration in the laws on every subject has taken place; during this period nothing has been remedied in the church,' (the italics are ours). So grievous are the abuses which the anomalous constitution of the Anglican church has entailed upon her, that Dr Short hesitates not to say, (with his usually interjected perhaps,' whenever he gives utterance to an unpalatable sentiment) that the temporal advantages which the establishment possesses, are, perhaps, more than counterbalanced by the total inability of the church to regulate any thing within herself, and the great want of discipline over the clergy; . . . while the absurd nature of our ecclesiastical laws renders every species of discipline over the laity not only nugatory, but when it is exercised, frequently unchristian, ridiculous, and in many cases very oppressive,' as in the case of excommunication, by which a man is deprived, not only of all ecclesiastical privileges, but even of civil, yea, of all social rights.

Some of our readers may be inclined to ask, if all these things be in reality so, how does it happen that good, pious, enlightened men remain in the communion of the church of England. Now this is a question that ought not to be asked, and being asked, ought not to be answered. We judge no man. To his own master he standeth or falleth. We can, however, assign one reason, which, besides the all-powerful one of the prejudices of education, is sufficient to account to our own mind, and that without any imputation against them, for such men remaining in the Anglican church, and that is, total ignorance of her character and constitution. Let not this insinuation startle our readers. We shall prove that such ignorance exists. Dr Short, in the preface to his work, (p. 1) assigns as the reason that led him to commence his history, that he discovered, after he was admitted into orders,' and when engaged as tutor in his college,' that the knowlede of English ecclesiastical history which he possessed was very deficient. .. He was distressed that his knowledge of the sects among the philosophers of Athens was greater than his information on questions which affect the church of England.' Dr Short's is no singular case. The ignorance of Anglican ministers upon the history and constitution of their own church would astonish our readers. A memorable intance of this has recently come to light in this city, and we allude to it because the well-known conscientiousness and high character of the party concerned gives the instance all the greater authority. The Rev. D. T. K. Drummond,

by one of her own ministers, altogether exempt, still it is incomparably the best work on the subject which an Anglican clergyman has ever produced.

for whom personally we entertain the very highest respect, has shown, in one of his recent tracts, that he never, till within the last few days, had examined, or at least understood, the canons of that sect of which he was a minister; or at all events, that he was ignorant of what it regards as by far the most important part of its services, the communion office. Mr Drummond was, for years, a minister in that body, and it does not appear that a shadow of suspicion ever crossed his mind that its constitution contained anything either positively erroneous, or sinfully defective; indeed his character is a sufficient guarantee that no such thought ever found harbourage in his breast, for had he but entertained the suspicion, he would not have remained one day in that communion. And yet in the constitution and liturgical offices of that sect there existed all the while a plague-spot so deadly, that, on its discovery, Mr Drummond is compelled, as he values his own soul, to come out of Babylon, that he be not a partaker of her sins and punishSuch will also be the result to which pious ministers in the church of England will be brought, should they ever unprejudicedly and dispassionately examine her constitution. And should Mr Drummond, as we doubt not he will, continue his investigations in the spirit in which he has commenced them, we shall be astonished, indeed, if his love of truth, and of Him who is the truth, does not lead him to renounce all communion with the church of England, as he has already done with the Scottish prelatic sectaries. A sifting time is at hand; and when the breath of the living God has blown over the thrashing floor of the church, we confidently anticipate that only the chaff shall remain in the church of England.

ment.

ART. II.-Manual of Presbytery; comprising, 1. Presbyterianism the truly Primitive and Apostolic Constitution of the Church of Christ; or a View of the History, Doctrine, Government, and Worship of the Presbyterian Church. By SAMUEL MILLER, D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Princeton, New Jersey. 2. The Character and Advantages of Presbyterianism, ascertained by Facts; with an Appendix. Pp. 288. By the Rev. J. G. LORIMER, Glasgow. Edinburgh: Johnstone. 1842.

Why am I a presbyterian?' is a question which ought to be put to himself by every minister and member of the church of Scotland, in the present day especially, and to which he ought

to be prepared at once, for his own satisfaction, and for that of others who may apply to him for information, to furnish a distinct and intelligent answer. And this is all the more necessary, if, as was the case at least in our early days in our divinity halls, the student never directed his earnest attention to this important subject during his theological curriculum, and was licensed by one presbytery, and perhaps ordained by another, without the slightest inquiry into the grounds on which he professed presbyterian principles; and we are greatly mistaken if this statement does not apply to a considerable proportion of the ministers of our church. And if it hold true as to our clergy and students of theology, there is reason to believe that it is true to a still greater extent as to the elders and deacons, and members of our church, very few of whom have been instructed by their ministers in the distinguishing principles of our ecclesiastical government, or have examined them for themselves, so as to be prepared, from a conviction of their scriptural authority and practical excellence, to hold them fast without wavering in the season of trial. How different in this respect has been the state of our ministers for nearly a hundred years from what it was, not only in the days of George Gillespie, and Rutherford, and Wood, and Brown of Wamphray, but even of Rule, and Forrester, and Willison of Dundee, when the great majority of the presbyterian clergy were well acquainted with the grounds of their principles, and defended them with a variety and extent of learning, and a force of argument, which are rarely to be met with in the present day. And how different is the state of a large proportion of the elders, and deacons, and members of our church in the present time, in regard to their knowledge of the evidence for their principles, from that of the elders at both these periods, and of the body of the members; for Bishop Burnet acknowledges, that when he and nine other episcopalian divines were sent to Ayrshire, to endeavour to propagate the principles of episcopacy, the peasants and day-labourers were fully a match for them, from the readiness with which they could quote and apply the scriptures.

We are aware that this want of professional knowledge on the part of our ministers, where it exists at present, or was exhibited formerly, is to be traced in part to the want of pains in our professors of divinity or church history, for a lengthened period, to furnish their students with information on this subject while they were attending their classes; and when their course was finished, for any thing that they had heard from them, they might have been either episcopalians or independents as soon as presbyterians. Nor was it remedied by the ministers of the parishes in which the students resided, who seldom took care to point

out to them any books which could communicate to them information respecting presbyterian church government. Nor was it provided for by presbyteries, who in too many instances licensed them as probationers, and inducted them afterwards to the pastoral charge of parishes or congregations, merely upon their subscribing the formula, without a single question, or at least with very few, to ascertain whether they had any clear and accurate views of the evidence for presbytery. And it was to be attributed in some measure to the latitudinarian principles which were taught by Dr Hill and Dr Campbell of Aberdeen, the first of whom asserted with Hooker and Stillingfleet, that no particular form of external government was binding on the church, while the latter, who followed the hypothesis of Sir Peter King, and copied him occasionally, without acknowledging it, maintained that the polity in the church in the apostolic age was that of independency, which was altered subsequently for presbytery, a statement which, when corroborated by the authority of Mosheim, in his treatise De Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum Magnum, misled many who never examined for themselves the writings of the fathers. And along with these lax and inconsistent sentiments, which were in direct opposition to the standards of our church, it was a favourite opinion with many pious individuals at the time to which we refer, that it was of inferior moment what was the external government of a church, if they only enjoyed the preaching of the gospel, so that they might be presbyterians to-day, if they were pleased with their minister; independents to-morrow, if there was a more attractive preacher of that connexion; and by and by episcopalians, if some clergyman of that church happened to strike their fancy. From all these causes little attention was paid for a long time to the study of the principles of our ecclesiastical polity. Many ministers were settled in parishes who held them only nominally, for the sake of their livings. Elders were ordained in innumerable instances, and subscribed the formula, who had never inquired into them. No attempt was made, as in the seventeenth century, to instil them into the minds of the members of the church. And though a different spirit has been evinced of late in some parts of the country, and some of our professors have begun to teach them to the students who attend them, yet this is all that is being done to supply this defect in the whole of our universities; and such is the want of thorough information, which we have reason to believe prevails too generally, at a time when we are called to repel one of the most violent and formidable attacks which has ever yet been made by prelacy on our venerable establishment.

We had been living in peace for a considerable time with

our episcopalian neighbours, and those of them especially who resided in the south, so far from injuring us, took no interest in our matters, and displayed, on some occasions, the most amusing ignorance of the state of our church. So much was this the case, that the late Dean Andrews, the favourite preacher of George the Third, asked a friend of ours whether the whole of the ministers of the church of Scotland were not Unitarians. And we ourselves were asked, a number of years ago, by an English gentleman of superior literary attainments, and a near connexion of the pious Lord Dartmouth, the friend and patron of John Newton, how we could get on without diocesan bishops. Of late, however, they have begun to regard us with very different feelings, and seem to have combined their efforts, in both parts of the island, to weaken, if not to overthrow, our presbyterian church. Some of them, like Bishop Terrot, represent us merely as a less perfect church, though, if the apostolic church is the standard by which we are to be tried, we are willing to be compared with any of their churches. We have not, indeed, diocesan bishops, but we challenge them to prove that any such ministers were admitted along with the apostles to govern the church during the first century, or were appointed to succeed them, for they have never yet produced a single passage in which the qualifications which are necessary to that high office are particularly specified. We want confirmation, but so did the members of the apostolic church, for it was not performed on the Saviour or his apostles, or any of their converts. We have no prayer-book, but neither had Paul nor John, nor any minister of the apostolic church. We do not use the sign of the cross in baptism, nor observe Christmas or Easter, or any of the other festivals of the church, the want of which was deeply lamented by one of our ministers who lately left us; but these things did not exist in the apostolic church, and the last of them is affirmed by Socrates in the fourth and Sozomen in the fifth century, to be an unprofitable and unnecessary human invention. And we possess in some measure a godly discipline, while our episcopalian churches, in their prayers on Ash Wednesday for hundreds of years, have acknowledged their want of it, and have entreated God to send it to them, which surely is no very strong indication that they are a more perfect church. But while such is the language of more moderate episcopalians, others of them deny that we are a church at all, and maintain that our ministers are not Christian ministers, because they have not derived their orders from diocesan bishops in an unbroken series from the apostles; that our sacraments have no virtue; and that no presbyterian can have any revealed and covenanted title to salvation. In short, their churches alone, and the church of Rome, the mystical Baby