the Corinthians." He seems, however, to feel, that it is going rather too far to lay down this pattern as a universal rule, and so he resorts (as elsewhere in these books) to the Romish notion (expressed, too, in all the technicalities of popery) of one sort of religion being required in some particular persons, and another in the generality of mankind.

We are not saying that penance is not true penance if it falls short of St. Adamnan's, or that it must needs take the peculiar shape of his austerities. There are ordinary Christians who serve God acceptably without being called to the eminences of the saints. Penance may be true penance, and yet have none of that heroicity in it which the promoter of the faith would demand if canonization were claimed for the penitent.—pp. 129, 130.

The reader will please to recollect that this passage occurs in the same life, and a few pages after the passage in which the Jesuits are called "the most noble and glorious company of St. Ignatius ; which, next to the visible church, may, perhaps, be considered the greatest standing miracle in the world."

Unless, then, these books be written by disguised Romanists and Jesuits, they are the work of persons anxious to appear as patrons and admirers of the enemies of their own church. There is, in truth, all through them, a studied affectation of the phraseology of Romanists. Take an instance in connexion with the passage under consideration.

What is the first step which a rightly instructed Christian must take, when it pleases God to give him the grace

VOL. I.

C

of compunction? Clearly he must resort to the consolations of the Gospel and the merits of the Saviour as laid up in the sacrament of penance.-p. 127.

And a little before:

Sacramental confession does not exist among us as a system: penance has no tribunals in the Anglican church. Of course many consequences result from this, such as that it makes our ecclesiastical system so startlingly unlike anything primitive, that the long prevalent arrogation to ourselves of a primitive model seems an almost unaccountable infatuation.-p. 125.

As if any moderately informed person believed that sacramental confession was a primitive notion, or auricular confession at the tribunal of penance had any pretension to be considered a part of primitive discipline. And yet this writer talks of the Anglican church (too cautious, perhaps, to compromise the rights of "the holy Roman church" by saying the church of England) as if he were really and honestly a member of our communion. "Sacramental confession does not exist among us as a system." But we must allow him to proceed.

This is, perhaps, not of paramount importance to a community which has a duty nearer home and more at hand— that is, reconciliation with the present Catholic church.— Ibid.

Plain speaking, truly; and it is hoped that " Protestants and other heretics" who are in the habit of

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vilifying the holy Roman church," will bethink themselves in time, when they are thus informed, that the real and (now) the avowed object of this

movement is, to enforce, as a duty-nearer home and more at hand than any trifling details of reformation, such as sacramental confession and the tribunal of penance-" reconciliation with the present Catholic church." Lamentable indeed it is, and most humiliating, to see clergymen of a Protestant church entertaining projects so irreconcilable with their profession and obligations. But if they will set about revolutionary designs of this sort, we cannot be too thankful that they have avowed them so distinctly.

CHAPTER III.

LIVES OF THE ENGLISH SAINTS: PRAISE OF

MONASTICISM.

FROM what has already been transcribed from these books, the reader will be prepared to find Monasticism forming one of the main features of the system they are written to recommend. In truth, a very large portion of the series is occupied with this subject alone. But to give an idea of the manner in which it is put forward, the following extracts may suffice:

monastic discipline is only Christianity in its perfection, hallowing and taking up into itself the meanest relations of life.-St. Gilbert, p. 54.

The church, by regulating monastic vows, only pointed out one way of doing what Christ prescribed in the general, and furnished her children with the means of gaining this blessing. The Bible says nothing about monks and nuns, but it says a great deal about prayer and about taking up the cross. p. 51.

Just so: and one has only to assume that prayer and taking up the cross mean monastic vows, and then it is quite clear, that, though "the Bible says nothing about monks and nuns," yet "monastic discipline is only Christianity in its perfection," and monks and nuns are, as Mr. Newman would call them, "Bible Christians."*

* Sermons on Subjects of the Day, p. 327.

Again, in the Life of St. Stephen,—

Monastic vows are, in one sense, only the completion of the vows of baptism.—p. 5.

A notion, which does not quite harmonize with what is found in another part of the same volume, where the author says:

To the generality of the world many of the commandments of Christ are precepts of perfection; but to monks who have sworn to quit the world they are precepts of obligation.— p. 24.

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And so, although these monastic vows be " only the completion of the vows of baptism," yet they are not binding on all, as "precepts of obligation;" but to some,-nay, "to the generality of the world," -in fact, to all but those who have taken these self-imposed vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience,- many of the commandments of Christ" (all and every one of which Christians have hitherto considered themselves bound by "the vows of baptism" to obey) are only "precepts of perfection." If this be not what is meant by making void the commandments of God, in order to establish the traditions of men, the church has yet to learn in what the crime consists.

Such a passage as the following must appear simply absurd and ludicrous—even to many respectable Roman catholics:

True monks everywhere have a sort of instinct of what is the good and the right side; they have no earthly interest to dim their vision of what is God's cause, and we