Should Mr. Crosthwaite take the matter in hand, let him by all means do it. But at the same time, let him not fall, either into the frequent irrelevancy of adducing the circumstance that no case of an ordination by presbyters exclusively occurs in old records, or into the common error of fancying that he has done his business merely by establishing (what no sane person doubts) the apostolical institution of governing bishops. The first is nothing more than what might be expected from this very apostolical institution; while the fact of even a consecration by two bishops and a presbyter is not easily accounted for, save on the principle evidentially laid down by Jerome, and corroborated by Clement. The second is an absolute waste of time, both because it is a work of pure supererogation, and because it bears not in the slightest degree upon the real question. 7. At present, until better informed, I perceive not why my sentiments should differ from those of the excellent Bishop Hall. If Mr. Crosthwaite chooses to be ἐπισκόπου ἐπισκοπώτερος, he doubtless has an Englishman's right to follow his own humour. Quisque suos patimur manes. A scandal, says the sober and moderate prelate, is intended to raise envy against us, as the "uncharitable censurers and condemners of those reformed churches abroad which differ from our government. Wherein we do justly complain of a slanderous aspersion cast upon us. We love and honour those sister-churches, as the dear spouse of Christ. We bless God for them; and we do heartily wish unto them that happiness in the partnership of our administration, which I doubt not but they do not less heartily wish unto themselves. For "Good words! you will perhaps say; but what is all this fair compliment, if our act condemn them, if our very tenet exclude them? if episcopacy stand by divine right, what becomes of those churches that want it? "Malice and ignorance are met together in this unjust aggravation. "First, our position is only affirmative; implying the justifiableness and holiness of an episcopal calling, without any further implication. "Next, when we speak of divine right, we mean, not an express law of God, requiring it upon the absolute necessity of the BEING of a church, what hindrances soever may interpose; but a divine institution, warranting it where it is, and requiring it where it may be had. "Every church, therefore, which is capable of this form of government, both may and ought to affect it; as that which is, with so much authority, derived from the apostles to the whole body of the church upon earth; but those particular churches to whom this power and faculty is denied, lose nothing of the TRUE ESSENCE of a church, though they miss something of their glory and perfection, whereof they are barred by the necessity of their condition; neither are liable to any more imputation in their credit and esteem, than an honest, frugal, officious tenant, who, notwithstanding the proffer of all obsequious services, is tied to the limitations and terms of a hard landlord."Bp. Hall's Humble Remonstrance. Works, vol. ix. p. 634. 8. It was on the principle, and in the very language of Bishop Hall, that, in my Primitive Doctrine of Justification, I ventured (let Mr. Crosthwaite forgive me this wrong) to style the established church of Scotland our valued sister in Christ; and it was on the same principle that I vindicated (if, in matter of fact, such vindication should be necessary) the character of legitimate churches to the two ancient communions of the Vallenses and the Albigenses. Yet, with much amusing simplicity, Mr. Crosthwaite puts to me the following very ugly question; whereby, sans all hope of escape, he would fairly drive me into a corner: "Are we to understand that, sooner than give up the two churches of history, Mr. Faber is willing to join the presbyterians?" Bishop Hall, I dare say, would tell Mr. Crosthwaite, that I might do many better things than the one, and that I might do many worse things than the other. But while I perceive no evidential reason for giving up the two churches of the Vallenses and the Albigenses, I perceive, saving Mr. Crosthwaite's presence, just as little logical reason for my joining the presbyterians. With my own episcopal ordination, and with my own episcopal church, I am perfectly satisfied; but because I am disinclined, without evidence, to unchurch the presbyteral church of Scotland, I really, even with all the aid afforded me by Mr. Crosthwaite's dialectic spectacles, am not acute enough to discern WHY, under such circumstances, I should be morally obliged to desert my own church, and join another church. As good Bishop Hall speaks, SISTER-CHURCHES, inasmuch as they constitute the dear spouse of Christ, may surely love and honour each other, without any implication of a binding necessity, that the contented children of the one SISTER should therefore deem it imperative, with bag and baggage, to move bodily and permanently into the quarters of the other SISTER. A good-humoured visit of cousinship might, peradventure, be no bad thing; but I see not why, under the tutelage of Mr. Crosthwaite, instead of a visit, we should inflict a visitation. If my lot had been fixed in romantic Scotland instead of merry England, I should have dutifully rejoiced in placing my humble ministration under the superintendence of such a man as Bishop Russell; but I should not, therefore, have rapidly jumped to the conclusion, that I was pledged to pick a quarrel with the not reverend Dr. Chalmers. II. I now turn to my other assailant, Mr. Dowling, whose attack upon me appears in the same number of the British Magazine as the attack of Mr. Crosthwaite. 1. Mr. Dowling adroitly contrives to kill two birds with one stone; for while be politely joins me with Gibbon and Milner in the charge of having treated the subject of the Paulicians "hastily and superficially," (to say nothing of a "supercilious violence," which, it seems, is also discerned in my penmanship,) he thence, by a sort of sidewind, ingeniously, through a perfectly intelligible insinuation, appropriates to himself the praise of a special profundity. Yet how, in point of fact, does the matter really stand? I had, confessedly, not read the tractate of Photius. I diligently had read, from beginning to end, the tractate of his contemporary, Peter Siculus; as also the statement of Cedrenus, who flourished three centuries later than Peter, and who, in all the main points, fully agrees with him. My superficiality, then, consists in my not having read the tractate of Photius, and also in my not having read the speculations of sundry modern writers, including Mr. Dowling himself; to which grave offence I honestly plead guilty. But what then? Photius and Peter being our two oldest, and therefore most important authorities, Mr. Dowling, so far as I am able to see, can only make out a charge of superficiality against me by establishing the point-that Photius is an infinitely fuller and better authority than Peter; and consequently, that I was unpardonable in not, at any trouble, procuring and reading him. Yet, in what manner stands the balance between these two writers? Photius never visited the Paulicians, but, according to Mr. Dowling, wrote two or three years before Peter; while Peter, though peradventure he might labour under the manifest disadvantage of having written two or three years after Photius, yet amply redeemed that disadvantage by having visited them during the long term of nine months, either in the year 870, or (as Mr. Dowling says, a matter, evidentially speaking, of not the slightest consequence) in the year 868. Now, under this aspect, which of the two is the most valuable witness? I humbly venture to think that that praise appertains to Peter, who paid them a long visit, not to Photius, who never visited them at all, at least, so far as I ever heard. Yet I am complimented with the cheap ascription of superficiality, because, while I never read the infinitely less important witness, Photius, who was Peter's contemporary, I had carefully read only the infinitely more important witness, Peter himself. 2. What, then, is the testimony borne by Peter, bigoted as he was, and predetermined, at all events, to compel the Paulicians to be hardened Manichèans? Truly, from his own personal knowledge, he declares that they rejected the writings of the Manichèans, which their ancestors, prior to their conversion in the seventh century, had received; and, in strict harmony with such rejection, that they repudiated and detested, with prompt minds, Scythianus, and Budda, and Manes himself, who were the princes of the whole Manichean sect. Nor is this all. What is the testimony borne antecedently, though only through hearsay, even by Mr. Dowling's favourite, Photius? Why, this very Photius, as adduced by Mosheim, testifies, that "the Paulicians expressed the utmost abhorrence of Manes and his doctrine." 3. Mr. Dowling says, that the Latin translation of Peter Siculus, which I used from the Bibliotheca Patrum, is a bad translation. Very likely it may be so; but how does this bear upon the matter in hand? Will Mr. Dowling come forward and assert, that Peter, in his original Greek, never says a single syllable as to the Paulicians rejecting VOL. XIV.-Nov. 1838. 4 A the writings of the Manichèans, and as to their repudiating and detesting, with prompt minds, Scythianus, and Budda, and Manes, the princes of the sect? This he has not done, though it would have been far more to his point than talking about the Latin version of Peter being a bad one. As little, moreover, though he denounces my superficiality on the score that I have never read Photius, and though, to give me the harder hit, he lauds that writer to the skies,-does he venture to impugn the accuracy of Mosheim's statement, that, even according to Photius, who is to demolish me root and branch, "the Paulicians expressed the utmost abhorrence of Manes, and his doctrine." Do Photius and Peter make, or do they not make, such declarations ? Mr. Dowling gives no denial to the alleged fact, that these precise declarations have been made both by Peter and by Photius; though such a denial, had it been possible, would have been quite pat to his purpose. Nay, verily, he admits the fact, but assures us that "this evidently proves nothing." Such, then, being the case, if Mr. Dowling be stoutly determined to manufacture a community of Manichèans, or quasi Manichéans, out of a race who rejected the writings of the Manichèans, and who formally repudiated Scythianus and Budda, and Manes himself to boot, I dispute not his Anglican right to deal in paradoxes, though I may doubt the beneficial tendency of his Anglican churchmanship. If he admits Bossuet's pretended facts to be actual verities, he stands pledged to meet Bossuet's actual dilemma, built upon these pretended facts. And if, with his hands good-naturedly tied up, according to the wily Gallican's very wish and intention, he be unable to escape one horn of the dilemma, he can only, so far as I am able to perceive-at least, on the supposition of his also assailing the continuity and orthodoxy of the Vallenses escape a grievous impalement on the other horn by resolving incontinently to turn papist. III. Lest the length of this epistle should alarm you, I beg to assure you, Mr. Editor, that I have neither wish nor intention to continue a very bootless controversy; but since you have admitted two attacks made upon me by name, you cannot, in common equity, exclude a statement, with which, save for those two attacks, your pages would never have been encumbered. The Welsh justice, as I remember, made it a point, as being by far the least troublesome, to hear only one side of a question; but the Editor of the British Magazine will never forget the wise old proverb-Audi alteram partem. G. S. FABER. Sherburn House, Oct. 19, 1838. HISTORY OF THE WALDENSES. SIR,-The following remarks may possibly be useful in case of Mr. Maitland's "Acts and Documents" coming to another edition :1. I do not perceive that he employs the contemporary work of Alanus de Insulis," Adversus Hæreticos et Valdenses," edited by Papirius Masson, Paris, 1612. It is in two divisions; the 1st against the Albigenses, under the title of Hæretici, and the 2nd against the Valdenses. The very title and division of the work seems nearly fatal to the chimera of the witnesses. For the author, a native of l'Isle de Venaissin, or of l'Isle de Medoc, is understood to have died either in the middle of the 12th, or at latest at the very commencement of the 13th, century. See Roquefort in Biogr. Universelle, art. Alain de l'Isle; and Alani Anticlaudianus, ed. Basil, 1536. He was the Doctor Universalis, and was buried at Citeaux with this epitaph, Alanum brevis hora brevi tumulo sepelivit, Qui duo, qui septem, qui totum scribile scivit. A complete edition of his works, by de Visch, appeared at Antwerp in 1654. Since this eminent and most ancient authority declares the Waldenses not to have been heretics, it is manifest that they could have been neither Berengarians, nor Iconoclasts, nor otherwise dissenters in any material point of doctrine as distinct from authority and discipline. Though hostile to both sects, he evidently well knew them to be entirely different. Since they were expressly acquitted of heresy then, and are now considered, and are, the most extreme of heretics (in the Romish acceptation), it follows of necessity-either, that the Romish doctrine as to orthodoxy has entirely changed, which all agree to be untrue; or else, that they themselves have, at or since the Reformation, completely changed from what they were in the twelfth century. The latter being the fact, how then have they testified during nearly 1260 years? Having given contradictory testimony, they are unfaithful witnesses. As illustrating this general change, by which their pretended testimonial character is destroyed, should not some remark be bestowed on their title of Pauvres de Lyons? It belongs to the same interpretations of the baptismal covenant, and the scriptural texts concerning the rich and the poor, which had given rise to anachorets, eremites, or monks, to coenobites, and in their own days, to friars, and especially to their immediate opponents, the brothers, preachers, or friars of St. Dominic. Whatever be the faults or merits of the ascetic life, it was a part of that middle-age piety now commonly denounced by the name of monkery. Whatever was the precise extent or nature of Waldensian poverty, and however distinguishable from that of the celibatary orders, it belonged to the same system. The Calvinists of the Piedmontese valleys have no such discipline or doctrine now, and, like the Genevese, the Scotch, and indeed all other protestants, are not a bit poorer than they can help. Here is one striking circumstance to confirm the testimony of Alanus and others, that they were men of manners and opinions conformable in the main to the age in which they lived, and distinguished from it by no heresy. Here, at least, is such a material change as renders other great changes probable, and disproves a providentially preserved and uniform testimony. 2. Another curious document has escaped Mr. Maitland's persevering research. It is the dialogue between the Dominican Izarn and |