elements. Last of all, in the fourteenth century, the great though silent protest against the magical theory of Baptism itself was effected in the postponement of the rite of Confirmation, which, down to that time, had been regarded as an essential part of Baptism, and, as such, was administered simultaneously with it. An ineffectual stand was made in behalf of the receding doctrine of Augustine by Gregory of Rimini,known amongst his 'seraphic' and angelic' colleagues by the unenviable title of Tormentor 'Infantum;' and some of the severer Reformers, both in England and Germany, for a few years clung to the sterner view. But the victory was really won; and the Council of Trent, no less than the Confession of Augsburg and the Thirty-nine Articles, has virtually abandoned the position, by which Popes and Fathers once maintained the absolute, unconditional, mystical efficacy of sacramental elements on the body and soul of the unconscious infant. The Eastern Church, indeed, with its usual tenacity of ancient forms, still immerses, still admits to communion, and still confirms its infant members-a living image of the Patristic practice. But in the Western Church the Christian religion has taken its free and natural course; and in the boldness which substituted a few drops of water for the ancient bath, which pronounced a charitable judgment on the innocent babes who died without the sacraments, which restored to the Eucharist its original intention, and gave to Confirmation a meaning of its own, by deferring both these solemn rites to years of discretion, we have at once the best proof of the total and necessary divergence of modern from ancient doctrine, and the best guarantee that surely, though slowly, the true wisdom of Christianity will be justified of all her children.

It is unnecessary for any practical purpose to pursue the history of Baptism further. That unconditional efficacy which was once believed by the Fathers, and is still believed by the Eastern Church, to flow from both the sacraments alike to infants and adults, has been restrained within narrower and narrower limits, till, in this country at least, it has (except by a very few individuals) been withheld from infant communion, from adult communion, from adult baptism, and lingers only in the now disputed region of the baptism of infants. But, although it is foreign to our purpose to enter into that dispute itself, it is satisfactory to be assured how genuine and almost universal is the agreement which, after all this toil and conflict, prevails upon the practice around which the dispute rages. All Christian parents feel that in bringing their children to the font they are obeying the natural instincts of a Christian heart, by

dedicating their new-born offspring to the service of God, in the hope and prayer that the rest of his life may be led according to this beginning. And, whatever may be the response

Infant baptism

in modern times.

which particular portions of the service of the Church of England may awaken in their minds, yet with its main spirit, with its fundamental idea, they recognise in themselves the most entire sympathy. They may be perplexed or instructed, exasperated or soothed, as the case may be, by those passages which crowd together, by a perhaps not unnatural anachronism and accommodation, into one brief act, at the commencement of life, the various forms which once expressed a long preparation, a deliberate intention, a complete reformation of character at the most critical moment of mature years. But they can all alike enter into the solemn words in which the Church recalls their thoughts to the touching scene in the Gospel narrative, on which, and on which alone, the Liturgy rests the practice of Infant Baptism,-when they are reminded of the words of our Saviour Christ,' 'how He com'manded the children to be brought unto Him; how He 'blamed those that would have kept them from Him; how He 'exhorted all men to follow their innocency.' This is the true basis of Infant Baptism, as it appears in the New Testament. This is the doctrine of the Church of England, as it exists on the face of the Liturgy. This is the blessing which Christian parents seek and find in that sacred ordinance. On this immoveable basis they may rest, without fear of disturbance from any modern speculation. In this wise, and wholesome, and holy doctrine, and in its application to Christian education, they may find enough to occupy their thoughts and their energies, without craving for an authoritative statement on points which can be apprehended by the wisest and best of men only in faint and partial glimpses, and which, for the most part, lie altogether beyond the province of human discernment, certainly beyond the ordinary limits of religious edification. In the favour of Him who embraced little children in His arms, and laid His 'hands upon them, and blessed them,' there is enough to satisfy the longings of every truly Christian heart, without insisting upon Mr. Gorham's 'prevenient grace' on the one hand, or on the Bishop of Exeter's 'unconditional change of nature' on the other hand.

Conclusion.

We have now gone through the main points of interest in this controversy. Many topics have necessarily been omitted altogether; many treated most imperfectly. But there is one misconstruction which we would deprecate

before we bid farewell to the subject. We have spoken of the dispute as a strife of words, rather than of realities,—we have spoken of its social effects and of its historical origin, rather than of the doctrine which it is supposed to involve. Such a view of the matter constantly exposes its advocates to taunts of indifference to truth, or of insensibility to the feelings of those whose interests and sympathies are warmly enlisted in the struggle. Against these insinuations, from whatever quarter they come, we most solemnly protest. We have spoken as we have spoken, in part from our profound conviction that the importance with which the controversy has been invested is adventitious only, not real. But we have spoken also from a conviction no less profound that there is a truth as lofty as ever Council decreed,—an image of Christianity as holy as ever won the admiration of Saint or Martyr,—which by such controversies is obscured, corrupted, denied. It is not this or that tenet of any particular school, but the moral and spiritual character of religion itself, which suffers in struggles like these. It is not in behalf of any party in the National Church, but in behalf of the Church itself, in this its truly Christian and apostolic mission, that we have endeavoured, however faintly and humbly, to lift up our voice.

The end of the controversy is still unknown. It has already, we are told, filled four octavo volumes, and may fill many more. Court after Court has been, and may yet again be, called to adjudicate the tortuous case. The effects of the Judgment, to which we have endeavoured to render its deserved tribute, may be marred by some new turn in this labyrinth of litigation. The malcontents of the Church may, from some mistaken point of honour, some imaginary grievance, some desperate step of their own choice, precipitate a rupture for which none but themselves will be answerable. But, whatever be the result, it will still be a satisfaction for those who have laboured to set forth the higher considerations of justice, mercy, and truth, in this disastrous agitation, that they have done what in them lay, faithfully to keep the deposit committed to their trust for future generations, truly to build up the Church that is amongst us for the great and holy purposes for which it was established in these realms. Such purposes it may still accomplish, if it is but true to itself. And if, after all, it should lose-not by its own fault, but by their fancy-some who would else have been amongst its most distinguished ornaments, there will still be left for those who remain, the noble task of proving, by greater energy and devotion, that zeal is not inconsistent with toleration,

nor the love of goodness incompatible with the love of truth.

'These things,'-may we thus venture with due humility to conclude in the words of the great Chancellor ?— these things 'have we, in all sincerity and simplicity, set down, touching 'the controversies which now trouble the Church of England, ' and that without all art and insinuation; and therefore not 'like to be grateful to either part. Notwithstanding, we trust what hath been said shall find a correspondence in their minds ' which are not embarked in partiality, and which love the whole 'better than a part: wherefore we are not out of hope that it may do good at least, we shall not repent ourselves of the 'meditation.' 79

"Bacon, On Church Controversies, vol. iii. p. 60.

D

26

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.1

THE history of religious panics would form a curious chapter in the annals of mankind—a chapter conveying many lessons, both of humiliation and of consolation. The memory Religious panics. of the scholar leaps back to the earliest on record, the agitation which seized the Athenian people on the morning after the mutilation of the Hermæ. When we review the 'whole course of these proceedings,' says the Bishop of St. David's, at a distance which secures us from the passions that ' agitated the actors, we may be apt to exclaim : "În all history "it will be difficult to find another such instance of popular ""frenzy." The Bishop, however, immediately corrects himself by the recollection that 'these are the very words in which 'Hume spoke of our own Popish Plot.' He might correct himself still further by recalling the various panics through which the religious public of England has passed during his own lifetime. He must remember the wild alarm which pervaded the academical and ecclesiastical world in 1834, at the prospect of the admission of Dissenters to the Universities, and which deprived the greatest college in Cambridge of the services of her most illustrious scholar and teacher. He must remember the consternation occasioned by the schemes for Church Reform, which agitated the public mind from 1833 to 1836, and almost drove from his position the most eminent schoolmaster of our time. He must remember the two Hampden controversies of 1836 and 1847, which, but for the firmness of the Prime Minister of the day, would have succeeded in excluding first from the Chair of Divinity at Oxford and then from the episcopal throne of Hereford, one of the most Conservative bishops of the present bench. He must remember the Gorham controversy, which threatened to expel first one section and then the other of the two main sections of the clergy from the pale of the Establishment in 1850. He must remember the panic of the Papal Aggression in 1851, when bishops and chapters were deluged with addresses, and responded with unanimous Edinburgh Review, April 1861. Thirlwall's Hist. of Greece, vol. iii. p. 397.

1

2