of the marriages between the sons of God and the daughters of men : "The same became mighty men, which were of old men of name,' (vi. 4;) and an additional object with the builders of Babel was thereby to become men of name: " Let us make us a name."

5. It is quite clear that the existing diversity of languages must be attributed to a supernatural origin; but it is not so clear that it is to be considered as the effect of a divine judgment. There is every reason for supposing that one common language was in use among the Antediluvians; and it is very possible that the diversity of tongues in the new world held some necessary relation to the altered circumstances of man. I would place the curtailment of human life, and the use of animal food after the flood, on the same footing with the diversity of languages; and suppose that all three were equally introduced without any reference to the transaction at Babel.

W. B. WINNING.

PARENTS NOT TO BE SPONSORS.

SIR,-It has not unfrequently occurred to me, when on the point of administering the sacrament of baptism, that one or both of the parents has expressed a wish to be permitted to stand sponsor for the infant. I have urged, that the intention of the church evidently is, that the sponsor should be bound to perform a charitable Christian duty to the child, in the event of the decease of the parents, or of their neglecting to perform their Christian duty of educating it in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; and that I should be doing an act of unkindness to the child if I were to defeat this charitable purpose of the church, by depriving it of such aid, in the case it might hereafter be unhappily required; and that the parents were already bound by every tie of nature and religion to perform for the child the very duties which the church wisely and kindly requires that certain sponsors besides them should be engaged, if requisite, to perform. But as a canon often may have influence where my own arguments might fail, I have thought it desirable that the twenty-ninth canon, which is headed, "Fathers not to be godfathers in baptism," &c., and beginning, "No parent shall be urged to be present, nor be admitted to answer as godfather for his own child," &c., should be inserted before the office of baptism, in what are called the "books of offices," used by the clergy upon such occasions. The canons not being inserted in all the prayer-books, I have sometimes not been able to point at once to the canon which made it imperative upon me to deny what those who made it doubtless thought a very reasonable request; though a sight of the canon would at once have convinced them that I was not at liberty to comply. CLERICUS.

STOPPING UP FOOT-PATHS THROUGH CHURCHYARDS. SIR,-Would you allow me to ask, through the medium of your Magazine, whether there is any less expensive and more summary

way of stopping up foot-paths through churchyards, than by the regular legal process? As is not unfrequently the case (in many parishes), my churchyard seems to have been the spot chosen, above all others, to be intersected by foot-paths. There is an entrance at each of the four corners, and they are joined to each other by footpaths in all imaginable directions. Perhaps some of your correspondents, who have had experience in these matters, would kindly give me the benefit of it. Two of the entrances might be stopped up without requiring the public to go twenty yards out of their way, which would reduce the number of paths to one, and that simply along one side of the churchyard. But I understand that the expense of stopping them by the ordinary way would be from £25 to £30 at the least. Has the incumbent, or the churchwardens, any power in such cases? I am, Sir, your obedient servant, G. M.

WALDENSES IN ENGLAND.

MY DEAR SIR,-Though I am sure that the article extracted from Blair's History of the Waldenses, in this month's Magazine, page 387, was inserted with a view to shew what absurdity is seriously published, and how people are hoaxed by ignorant writers on that subject, yet I do not think that it ought to pass without some remark and explanation.

There may be readers even among those of the British Magazine, who when they find it broadly stated, in a work of a good deal of pretension, in two pretty full octavo volumes, with a vast many references to books which they do not know, that "Sometime between the years 1182 and 1197, a company of Waldenses was allowed to settle in peace, as tenants of the manor of Darenth, in the county of Kent;" and just after, without its being very clear how much is included in the attestation, "These facts are attested by the original deeds still extant in the library of Lambeth House, and by the archives of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester;" there may, I say, be readers who will be afraid to question such authority, and suppose themselves bound to believe that, notwithstanding all that is said of the horrible persecution of the Waldenses, even in England (as Mr. Blair and other writers pretend), only a few years before, yet the Archbishop of Canterbury had a settlement of pet heretics living hard by his metropolitan city, under his special protection as his tenants; and this too while the said archbishop was chief justiciary of England. I know not how far Mr. Blair has correctly copied the Archæologia, to which reference is made, for I have not the work at hand. That he was ignorant and absurd enough to copy almost anything that could come to his hands, his large book testifies; as well as that he was quite capable of making nonsense where he did not find it. But if he has fairly copied the Archæologia, is it not a disgrace to a Christian nation that such matter should be found there? And does it not indicate a state of sad ignorance as to the history of that church to which we belong?

'The simple explanation is, that "these facts," attested by deeds, are the facts, or rather the single fact, of the exchange of lands, by which the archbishop became possessed of Lambeth; and I apprehend that the deeds contain nothing about Waldenses. That part of the business belongs, I imagine, to a more modern document; but whether or no I think that when it is once suggested, nobody will doubt that these Waldenses were the same persons who were otherwise called in the "latinized English" documents relating to that part of the country, "homines de Walda," or men of the Weald of Kent.

That thelatinized English" has been ignorantly and incorrectly translated seems pretty clear; but if I had the book at hand, it would be absurd to occupy your pages with such rubbish as a criticism of the translation would be. I am, dear Sir, yours very truly,

S. R. MAITLAND.

MR. FABER ON PRESBYTERIAN ORDINATION AND THE

PAULICIANS.

SIR,-As you have inserted in the "British Magazine" for this current October two attacks by Mr. Crosthwaite and by Mr. Dowling upon my work on the Vallenses and Albigenses, you will, I conclude, not refuse to insert also some few remarks upon those attacks.

I. That your readers may understand the matter in hand, it will be necessary to begin with giving a correct statement of the case, so far as respects the attack of Mr. Crosthwaite.

1. The apostolical institution of bishops, with the power of governing superintendence over the clergy, is so clear, both from scripture and from ecclesiastical history, that no sane person would ever think of disputing it. Hence it follows, that any question respecting episcopacy does not, in the slightest degree, hinge upon this point.

But, while all must admit the apostolical institution of governing bishops, a question forthwith arises touching the aspect under which the apostles thought it good to institute governing bishops in the church.

(1.) Did they institute bishops, as a new and distinct order in the ministry, with certain privileges, such as that of ordination, EXCLUSIVELY INHERENT in them quoad ordinem?

(2.) Or did they, under the official name of bishops, institute certain presbyters to preside over other presbyters, only as the first among equals, with certain privileges, such as that of ordination, WISELY INTRUSTED to them quoad disciplinum?

2. Here, I take it, lies the true question. Consequently, if any person, when entering upon the subject, merely sets himself to prove the apostolical institution of bishops, he throws away his valuable time and labour in establishing what (as I have said) no sane person would ever think of disputing.

3. Now the possible, not the certain, case of the Vallenses and the Albigenses led me to notice the FACT of the consecration of Pelagius

to the episcopate of Rome, in the year 558, by two bishops and a simple presbyter conjointly.

(1.) This FACT seemed to draw after it the inference-that, in the middle of the sixth century, the POWER of ordination was thought still to reside in presbyters; so that, in cases of necessity, they might validly exercise it, although, in every ordinary case, discipline required that it should be exercised only by the presiding bishops.

Except such an inference be admitted, it seems impossible to account for the recorded FACT; a FACT the more remarkable, because, so far as I am aware, there is no evidence that Pelagius, when in full possession of the Roman episcopate, was ever re-consecrated by three bishops exclusively, on the score, that his first consecration, by two bishops and a presbyter, was in itself null and void.

(2.) For let us, in imagination, transfer the case of Pelagius to pre

sent times.

If an unprincipled government wished to force an obnoxious bishop upon any English diocese, and if no more than two existing bishops could be found willing to join in his consecration; how, in such a supposed case, would that government act?

Would they, like the imperial legate Narses, and the two Bishops of Perusium and Terentinum, and the clergy and the laity who constituted the party of the unpopular Pelagius, call in a presbyter, because they could not procure a third bishop?

Or would they at once proceed to a consecration by only two bishops; alleging that, where three bishops could not be procured, two were amply sufficient?

That they would adopt the latter plan, there can, I think, be no reasonable doubt; and they would adopt it, evidently, on the ground that it were useless to call in a presbyter who possessed no POWER of ordination, and whose concurrent officiation would thence be justly deemed altogether nugatory and invalid.

If, then, in the present day, a presbyter would not be called in, on the ground that he possessed no POWER; then plainly, in the sixth century, since a presbyter was called in, Andrew of Ostia to wit, that he might join in the episcopal consecration of Pelagius, there must have been a general persuasion among the enemies, as well as among the partisans, of Pelagius, that he possessed the POWER albeit no more than a presbyter; though, in ordinary cases, for the sake of discipline and unity, and the better government of the church, the exercise of that POWER was suspended.

4. On this FACT, which lay before me recorded by Anastasius the Librarian, I thought that some light might possibly be thrown by the historical testimony of the Roman Clement in the first century, and by the exactly concurring historical testimony of Jerome, in the fifth century; which last is somewhat more than a hundred years older than the recorded FACT itself.

Clement tells us that, in his time, there were in the church three ranks or gradations of clergy analogous to the high-priest and the priests and the Levites of the Mosaical dispensation; but then, by the very necessity of his application of a prophecy of Isaiah, he also tells

us, that these three ranks of clergy constituted no more than two orders; for, through the medium of the prophecy, he declares, that there were only two orders in the church, that of bishops and that of deacons, thus sub-including (as I suppose it must be allowed) the class of presbyters in the class of bishops.

Such is the testimony of Clement; and in words, at least, that of Jerome exactly agrees with it.

These two testimonies, I apprehended, though perhaps very erroneously, threw light upon the otherwise apparently inexplicable case of Pelagius, and, at the same time, served to explain the language of Ignatius.

Whence my general conclusion was-that, until better informed, I would not venture to deny the validity of presbyteral orders; and thence, by implication, unchurch both the established church of Scotland and perhaps all the various protestant churches of the continent.

5. Such was the substance of my note; wherein, I trust, there was nothing either unseemly or dogmatical; and Mr. Crosthwaite, in a tone which possibly might have been exchanged not unprofitably for a better, would apparently meet it by asking, whether it was necessary to inform me that, by Hooker, and Bingham, and Potter, the evidence of Jerome has been demonstrated to make nothing for our adversaries.

Certainly it makes nothing for those adversaries who, in their day, would contend that episcopacy is an unlawful form of ecclesiastical government, and that all the world is bound in conscience to adopt exclusively the presbyterian model; but this, I take it, is not precisely the point before us. The question, as I have fully stated it above, is altogether of a different character; and it may be doubted whether those eminent writers either answer it or even attempt to answer it. Be this, however, as it may, I guess (as our transatlantic brethren say) that Mr. Crosthwaite would have done better had he explained Clement of Rome, and untied the knot of that consecration of Pelagius from which we occidental clergy may all be said to derive our pedigree, instead of taunting me with questions which in some societies will haply be thought not altogether becoming.

6. So far as I can understand the drift of Mr. Crosthwaite's letter, his real business was this-to establish, upon adequate historical testimony, the alleged FACT, (for this, I suppose, is the FACT which he would allege,) that governing bishops were appointed by the apostles, as a new and distinct order, in the strict technical sense of the word order, with the power of ordaining others, EXCLUSIVELY INHERENT in them quoad ordinem, and not SIMPLY INTRUSTED to them quoad disciplinam.

The impossibility of establishing this alleged FACT I was very far from asserting. I merely intimated, that I would not rashly venture to deny the validity of presbyteral ordination, as it occurs in the established church of Scotland, until the alleged FACT was established. I hope there is neither harm nor disgrace, as I claim not to be a pantologist, in confessing my own inability to establish it; but I have not the vanity to say, that it is therefore incapable of establishment.