narian, and have suffered in consequence. Hence we have almost embraced the doctrine, that God conveys grace only through the instrumentality of the mental energies, that is, through faith, prayer, active spiritual contemplations, or (what is called) communion with GOD, in contradiction to the primitive view, according to which the Church and her Sacraments are the ordained and direct visible means of conveying to the soul what is in itself supernatural and unseen. For example, would not most men maintain, on the first view of the subject, that to administer the LORD's Supper to infants, or to the dying and apparently insensible, however consistently pious and believing in their past lives, must be, under all circumstances, and in every conceivable case, a superstition? and yet neither practice is without the sanction of primitive usage. And does not this account for the prevailing indisposition to admit that Baptism conveys regeneration? Indeed, this may even be set down as the essence of Sectarian Doctrine, (however its mischief may be restrained or compensated, in the case of individuals,) to consider faith, and not the Sacraments, as the proper instrument of justification and other gospel gifts; instead of holding, that the grace of CHRIST comes to us altogether from without, (as from Him, so through externals of His ordaining,) faith being but the sine quá non, the necessary condition on our parts for duly receiving it.

It has been with the view of meeting this cardinal deficiency (as it may be termed) in the religion of the day, that the Tract on Baptism, contained in the latter half of this volume, has been inserted; which is to be regarded, not as an inquiry into one single or isolated doctrine, but as a delineation, and serious examination of a modern system of theology, of extensive popularity and great speciousness, in its elementary and characteristic principles.

OXFORD.

The Feast of All Saints, 1835.

CONTENTS.

RECORDS OF THE CHURCH.

TABLE OF THE TRACTS,

SHOWING THEIR

ARRANGEMENT ACCORDING TO SUBJECTS.

I.

LITURGICAL.

63. Antiquity of the existing Litur- 64. Bishop Bull on the Ancient

ON THE APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.

52. Sermons for Saints' Days. No. 1.

54. Ditto. No. 2.

57. Ditto. No. 3.

60. Ditto. No. 4.

48. Bishop Wilson's Meditations,-
No. 4.-Wednesday.

50. Bishop Wilson's Meditations.-

No. 4 (concluded).

53. Ditto.

No. 5.-Thursday.

55. Ditto. No. 5 (continued).

62. Ditto. No. 5 (concluded).
65. Ditto. No. 6.-Friday and Sa-
turday.

In binding, the Notes on the Tract on Baptism, to which no number is

attached, must be put next to No. 69.

I AM Sorry my delay has been so considerable in answering your remarks on my Letters on the Church. Indeed it has been ungrateful in me, for you have given me an attention unusual with the multitude of religious persons; who, instead of receiving the arguments of others in simplicity and candour, seem to have a certain number of types, or measures of professing Christians, set up in their minds, to one or other of which they consider every one they meet with belongs, and who, accordingly, directly they hear an opinion advanced, begin to consider whether the speaker be a No. 1, 2, or 3, and having rapidly determined this, treat his views with consideration or disregard, as it may be. I am far from saying our knowledge of a person's character and principles should not influence our judgment of his arguments; certainly it should have great weight. I consider the cry measures not men," to be one of the many mistakes of the day. At the same time there is surely a contrary extreme, the fault of fancying we can easily look through men, and understand what each individual is; an arbitrary classing of the whole Christian family under but two or three countenances, and mistaking one man's doctrine for another's. You at least have not called me an Arminian, or a high Churchman, or a Borderer, or one of this or that school, and so dismissed me.

To pass from this subject. You tell me that in my zeal in advocating the doctrine of the Church Catholic and Apostolic, I

"use expressions and make assumptions which imply that the Dissenters are without the pale of salvation." So let me explain myself on these points.

You say that my doctrine of the one Catholic Church in effect excludes Dissenters, nay, Presbyterians, from salvation. Far from it. Do not think of me as of one who makes theories for himself in his closet, who governs himself by book-maxims, and who, as being secluded from the world, has no temptation to let his sympathies for individuals rise against his abstract positions, and can afford to be hard-hearted, and to condemn by wholesale the multitudes in various sects and parties whom he never saw. I have known those among Presbyterians whose piety, resignation, cheerfulness, and affection, under trying circumstances, have been such, as to make me say to myself, on the thoughts of my own higher privileges, "Woe unto thee Chorazin, woe unto thee Bethsaida!" Where little is given, little will be required; and that return, though little, has its own peculiar loveliness, as an acceptable sacrifice to Him who singled out for praise the widow's two mites. Was not Israel apostate from the days of Jeroboam; yet were there not even in the reign of Ahab, seven thousand souls who were "reserved," an elect remnant? Does any Churchman wish to place the Presbyterians, where, as in Scotland, their form of Christianity is in occupation, in a worse condition under the Gospel than Ephraim held under the Law? Had not the ten tribes the schools of the Prophets, and has not Scotland at least the word of God? Yet what would be thought of the Jew who had maintained that Jeroboam and his kingdom were in no guilt? and shall we from a false charity, from a fear of condemning the elect seven thousand, scruple to say that Presbyterianism has severed itself from our temple privileges, and undervalue the line of Levi and the house of Aaron ? Consider our Saviour's discourse with the woman of Samaria. While by conversing with her He tacitly condemned the Jews' conduct in refusing to hold intercourse with the Samaritans, yet He plainly declared that "salvation was of the Jews." "Ye worship ye

know not what;" He says, 66 we know what we worship." Can we conceive His making light of the differences between Jew and Samaritan?