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"And with respect to such particular points of doctrine as may be called the private opinions of his own Church, not being a part of the Catholic Faith, he does good service to his own church by so examining and clearing them as to hold them in a catholic sense, as little repugnant as may be to the judgments of other churches, and of those doctors whom our Church acknowledges with respect, where these are not founded in manifest error, and especially to the earliest times; and by resolving them as nearly as may be into the immediate consequences of those points of universal faith with which they are connected."-Pp. 12, 13.

The English Mother; or early Lessons on the Church of England. By a Lady. Bath : W. Pocock. London : Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. and J. Burns. 1840. Pp. 84.

On the whole we have been much pleased with this little book. The object of the author is to explain, in a manner intelligible to children, the character, offices, liturgy and festivals of our Church. The information conveyed is in general correct, and the duty of attachment to the Church is set upon the right grounds. "It is the love of Christ, my dear children, that must constrain us to love His Church, for His sake, for she is His spouse, deriving all her excellency from Him, purchased by Him with his own blood. Of herself she has no saving power, but it is hers to lead us to the Saviour, for He has made her the pillar and ground of the truth' on earth."-P. 81.

Parents putting this book into the hands of their children, would probably find it necessary to qualify one or two statements on subjects on which good men differ, even within the pale of our own Church. Amongst these we should place the remarks on the terms' visible' and 'invisible' Church in pp. 18, 19.

MISCELLANEOUS.

[The Editor is not to be held responsible for the opinions expressed in this department of the Remembrancer.]

ON THE REVIVAL OF CONVOCATION.

SIR,-I observe that during a late debate in the House of Lords on ecclesiastical matters, the assembling of a Convocation was held to be a thing desirable on many grounds, if it could be compassed without certain supposed insuperable inconveniences. It may be therefore

worth while to consider whether two of the chief of those inconveniences might not be obviated, as follows. First, instead of extemporaneous debate, let all matters be discussed by written arguments. After due notice of any matter to be brought forward, let it be propounded in the form of a motion, that a committee shall be appointed to bring it forward. On this point let a vote be taken without any debate; and if carried in the affirmative, let those who vote for it appoint a committee of themselves to prepare a statement of the arguments in favour of it, limited in length, according to circumstances; and let those who vote against it appoint a committee to prepare arguments against it. The argument of the one committee having been read before the house and handed over to the other committee, their reply might be brought forward in the same manner; and arrangements might be made by

which every member, who had any suggestion to make either way, would have opportunity of making it, at least before one or other of the committees, to be by them brought forward or not according to their judgment. Every reason of real weight might thus be submitted in due order to Convocation, without the risk of that scandal, which is thought likely to arise from public reports of expressions used in the heat of extemporaneous debate. And every motion made, and every argument read, in support of it, or otherwise, might be published in a report issued by the Convocation itself, from which the daily papers might take what portion they pleased for the information of the public.

Besides the risk of scandal from the unseemly wranglings which are apt to take place amongst debaters, another chief objection to the assembling of a Convocation is the inconvenience of drawing away so many of the most efficient of the clergy from their parochial cures. Here I would suggest that, instead of an annual meeting of Convocation, it would answer every purpose to have one about once in every ten years. It may reasonably be doubted whether the State fares the better for having its laws under revision for the best half of every year. For the Church it would probably be enough that its rulers and representatives assemble in solemn deliberation at longer intervals, a power being reserved to enter upon business more frequently, if any emergency required it. As to the necessity of a Convocation for the right government of the Church, as well as the expediency of remodelling the elements of our English Church Convocation, I cannot do better than refer your readers to an excellent tract, which carried conviction to my own mind on both these points, "The Church's Self-regulating Privilege. By the late Rev. J. Kempthorne." Hatchards.

Yours, very truly,

Alderley Rectory, Congleton, June 16, 1840.

CHARLES GIRDLESTONE.

ON THE IDOLATRY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. SIR,-On a nice distinction between images and idols, and the reve. rence expressed towards them by douleia and latreia, the Romanists endeavour to vindicate their worship from the charge of idolatry. The futility of this plea has been often shown by divines, from the indiscriminate use of those terms among ancient writers. The extensiveness of the prohibition in Deuteronomy, which was framed with a fulness and precision that preclude all evasion not wilful and intentional, leaves no real ground for reply or evasion. The passage of the sacred text, though inadequately expressed, is thus rendered, in our version: "Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female." Deut. iv. 16.

While every species of similitude appears to be interdicted by this text, the precise description of the images, expressly forbidden, has been disputed. The defender of the idolatrous worship of the Romish church has thus found a loop-hole to escape the comprehensive stringency of the precept. While he pleads in his defence the example of Moses, who formed the cherubim, and placed them in the Holy of Holies; in this example he finds a justification for the particular object to which he offers religious worship.

It thus becomes of importance to the decision of this question, and the controversies which it has occasioned, to fix the precise meaning of the terms employed by the inspired writer. The inquiries which have been recently prosecuted into hieroglyphics have thrown a light upon this subject which has been in vain sought from antiquarian research or philological subtlety. We might, indeed, reasonably look to such a source for the solution of the difficulty. The Israelites, to whom the precept was addressed by Moses, had but recently come out of Egypt; where they were imbued with the religious errors of the natives, for which he was to provide a remedy or correction. The extent to which the evil had grown, the worship of the golden calf very fully attests; which was obviously taken from the veneration offered to Apis To render himself at all intelligible to those who had yielded to such error, and had been misled by such influence, he must have accommodated his precept to the ideas and language of those for whose use it was delivered. It is therefore but reasonable to conclude, that in the customs and expressions of the Egyptians the best insight is afforded into the rites and worship by which the Hebrews had been perverted.

After a patient investigation of the subject, it unluckily proves to be the case, that the object of worship, in disclaiming the veneration of which the Romanist places his security against the charge of idolatry, is that alone which is permitted. While, on the contrary, images of every kind, in offering a veneration to which he excuses himself from the imputation, are formally and strictly forbidden.

The late learned and regretted M. Salvolini, by whom the hieroglyphic literature was placed on strictly philological grounds, in analyzing the texts of the trilingual inscription on the Rosetta stone, has supplied a clue to unravel the intricacies of the subject. In a collation of the hieroglyphical symbols with their translation in the Greek, and proper force in the Coptic, he has fixed the meaning of the principal terms in the passage of Moses. On taking the version of the Septuagint, which was made by native Egyptians, along with the analysis of M. Salvolini, which forms a just comment on the sacred text, the meaning of each of the terms employed by the sacred writer may be fixed with critical precision.

Referring to the text of the Rosetta stone, iii. 9, the learned and ingenious hierogrammatist observes: "Je ne doute nullement que nous ne devions lire notre groupe par тVεTWν, TNETON, similitudo, portrait, image, &c. . . . . La lecture et le sens du groupe une fois fixés, qu'il me soit permis d'ajouter une réflexion relative à la manière dont on interprète généralement le mot eikóva, qui lui correspond dans le texte Grec. On traduit ce mot par statue; je pense, d'après l'étymologie de l'expression qui lui correspond dans les deux textes Egyptiens, qu'il serait plus exact de le traduire par image, représentation, ou portrait d'un individu, soit peint, soit sculpté en bas-relief." (Analyse de differ. Textes Égypt. vol. i. pt. 1. p. 254.) The hieroglyphic group, to which allusion is here made, is that marked in Mr. Sharpe's Vocabulary, No. 540. He proceeds with equal precision to identify the terms statua and Eóavov, which he shows is expressed in hieroglyphics by a figure seated on a throne, as statues were usually formed; and is properly termed in Coptic OvwT, THUоT instead of TNETon.

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From these preliminaries, with the assistance of the Greek version of the Septuagint, and the derivative force of the Hebrew, it may be now easily shown, that both species of figure, the statue and the image, are alike prohibited in the precept of Scripture. In the original, the phrase, which is translated in the Lat. Vulgate sculptam similitudinem aut imaginem," is rendered in the literal version of Pagnini, "sculptile, imaginem omnis similitudinis." Of these terms, (1) is synonymous with Eóavov, statua; such is implied in the radical force of the term, as derived from the verb D, sculpsit, dolavit, which expresses the process used in the formation of statues. (See Wilkinson's Mann. and Cust. of Anc. Egypt, vol. iii. ch. 10. p. 336.) With this meaning, the rendering of the LXX. accords, which employs γλυπτὸν ὁμοίωμα, λUTÒν óμоiwμa, "a graven likeness," and thus aptly expresses, in a paraphrase, a statue. (2) With the term,,-ɛikov, image, is synonymous, which expresses a yet more general sense, as every statue was an image. Such is consequently the term by which it is accurately rendered in the LXX, and which is conveyed under the radical, 1, species, forma, from which the Hebrew term is derived, or to which it is related. (3) Under the still more general term, D, also strictly rendered opoiwμa by the LXX, "every" species of "likeness" is prohibited. On the meaning of this term in the original no doubt can be entertained, although the radical from which it is derived is not extant in the languages of Shemitic origin.

It is thus obvious, from the mere force of the terms used by the inspired writer, that the prohibition includes every distinction of idol or image, as well generic as specific, and consequently individual. And that no exception might be pleaded from the generality of the term, by which it might be evaded, he adds a further qualification, by which the meaning is restricted; "a likeness (composition) of male or female:" employing the generic nap 18, as not less applicable to animals than to man (Gen. i. 27; vi. 19), in place of the specific TUN IN WIN, 66 man or woman." By this distinction, every representation of the Saviour, or the Virgin, according to the conception of the painter or sculptor, was interdicted as an object of worship or religious veneration. The equivocation was consequently precluded, under which it might be pleaded that, as it professed not to be "a likeness" of Jesus or Mary, it came not within the scope of the divine prohibition.

It is no less deserving of remark, that the term eidwλov, idolum, or the idea which it conveys, to which the Romanist is so sensitive in his distaste, is not included in the scriptural interdict. In the veneration

of images, which he avows, he thinks himself exempt from censure, and holds that the veneration of idols is alone forbidden, and exposes the worshipper to condemnation. On the nature of the veneration in which he claims an indulgence, I may take occasion to speak at large hereafter, and shall confine my present observations to the object of veneration. How futile the distinction on which he grounds his defence really is, and how ineffectual for his vindication or excuse, may be easily shown from the proper force of the particular term, on the meaning of which he supposes it turns.

In an unedited lexicon, quoted by Biel, the Greek term is thus explained and exemplified: Edwλov Kai óμoiwμa, K. T. . Lexicon, p. 426,

&c. Biel, Thesau. Phil. v. opoiwμa. "An idol differs from a likeness: the idol has no existence; but the likeness is a representation or image of something. As the Greeks make figures of things which have no existence, such as sphinxes, tritons, centaurs, they call idols the image of things which do not exist; but likenesses the representation of things which exist, as of the sun, moon, stars, men, beasts, and reptiles." The distinction applies to the cherubim, and at once discloses the reason why those symbolical figures were not included within the divine prohibition, but were, on the contrary, formed by the divine command, after a prescribed pattern, and placed in the holiest part of the sanctuary.

That the cherubim were objects of the nature of hieroglyphics, and conformable to the description of the preceding extract from the Greek lexicographer, is obvious from the example of the sphinx, by which he illustrates his meaning, and with the form of which Moses must have been familiar. See Dr. Nolan's Warb. Lect. p. 349. It is equally apparent, from many symbolical figures of the same kind, with which recent investigation into the Egyptian hieroglyphics has made us acquainted. From the account of Plutarch (de Isid. cap. ix. p. 452, al. 345, b.) it is obvious that the symbolical figure which combined the head of a man with the body of a lion expressed-wisdom united with power. In the hieroglyphic, not only two of the figures combined in the cherubim are thus included, but those divine attributes are imaged which are manifested in inspiration and miracles, from whence revealed religion derives its divine authority. But a hieroglyphic figure which is described by M. Champollion (Panthéon Egypt. livrais. 2me.) brings even fuller confirmation to the same position. It is tricipital, the middle head being human; that to the right, of a lion; and that to the left, of a vulture, a bird which we are assured was frequently confounded with the eagle. (Vid. Alex. More ap. Ramir. de Prado Pentecont. p. 51.) When the observation, already made, on the worship of the golden calf is taken into the account, should the conformity between the Egyptian and the Hebrew figures be considered ambiguous, it will be hardly denied that they were objects of the same ideal symbolical character.

I shall conclude these observations on the objects of religious veneration, from which it was the purpose of Moses to wean the Israelites to a purer theology, with the remark, that it was as remote from his intention to prohibit those which were merely symbolical, as to permit those which professed to represent any real existence. The Romanist, of consequence, in his veneration of images, finds as little justification from the cherubic figures which were placed in the inmost recesses of the temple, as from the distinction between them and idols : from which he pretends to deduce an apology for his idolatry.

HERMOCRATES.

THE PRAYER BOOK, THE PASTOR'S HELP.

DEAR SIR,-I have often thought that, in the discharge of the duties of the pastoral office, and more especially, in our ministrations among the sick, it would lead to unity of judgment and uniformity of practice, if we endeavoured to avail ourselves of the assistance to be derived from

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