in England may dismiss from our minds with little hesitation. But I think it would have startled us, had we found him attaching so much weight to the goodness and the ability of the Persian Imaums around him, as to conceive it possible that they might be right, and that he might find himself obliged to abandon his faith in Christ, and adopt Islam. Now, you will forgive me for saying that a passage in your letter did startle me nearly as much, when-impressed as it seems by the local and present authority of Newmanism-you imagined the possibility that you might be forced to look elsewhere than in the New Testament for the full picture of Christianity; that you might, on the supposed result of reading through certain books, written in the second and third centuries, be inclined to adopt the views of St. Paul's Judaizing opponents, and reject his own. I think that you state the question fairly,—that it does in fact involve a choice between the Gospel of Christ, as declared by himself and by his Apostles, and that deadly apostacy which St. Paul in his lifetime saw threatening,-nay, the effects of which, during his captivity, had well nigh supplanted his own Gospel in the Asiatic Churches, and which, he declares, would come speedily with a fearful power of lying wonders. The Newmanites would not, I think, yet dare to admit that their religion was different from that of the New Testament; but I am perfectly satisfied that it is so, and that what they call Ecclesiastical Tradition, contains things wholly inconsistent with the doctrines of our Lord, of St. Paul, of St. Peter, and of St. John. And it is because I see these on the one side, and on the other not the writings merely of fallible men, but of men who, even in human matters, are most unfit to be an authority, from their being merely the echo of the opinions of their time, instead of soaring far above them into the regions of eternal truth; (the unvarying mark of all those great men who are and have been-not infallible indeed-but truly an authority, claiming à priori our deference, and making it incumbent on us to examine well before we pronounce, in the peculiar line of their own greatness, against them)-because the question is truly between Paul and Cyprian; and because all that is in any way good in Cyprian, which is much, is that which he gained from Paul and from Christianity,-that I should not feel myself called upon, except from local or temporary circumstances, to enter into the inquiry. And, if I did enter into it, I should do it in Martyn's spirit, to satisfy myself, by a renewed inquiry, that I had unshaken grounds for rejecting the apostacy, and for cleaving to Christ and to His Apostles; not as if by possibility I could change my Master, and having known Christ and the perfections of His Gospel, could ever, whilst life and reason remained, go from Him, to bow down before an unsightly idol.

And what is there à priori to tempt me to think that this idol should be a god? This, merely-that in a time of much excitement, when popular opinions in their most vulgar form were very noisy, and seemed to some very alarming, there should have arisen a strong reaction, in which the common elements of Toryism and High Church feeling, at all times rife in Oxford, should have been moulded into a novel form by the peculiar spirit of the place, that sort of religious aristocratical chivalry so catching to young men, to students, and to members of the aristocracy, --and still more, by the revival of the spirit of the Nonjurors in two or three zealous and able men, who have given a systematic character to the

whole. The very same causes produced the same result after the Reformation, in the growth and spread of Jesuitism. No man can doubt the piety of Loyola and many of his followers; yet, what Christian, in England at least, can doubt that, as Jesuitism, it was not of God; that it was grounded on falsehood, and strove to propagate falsehood? So, again, the Puritans led to the Nonjurors; zealous, many of them, and pious, but narrow-minded in the last degree, fierce and slanderous; and, even when they were opposing that which was very wrong, meeting it with something as wrong or worse. Kenn, and Hickes, and Dodwell, and Leslie, are now historical characters; we can see their party in its beginning, middle, and end, and it bears on it all the marks of an heresy and of a faction, whose success would have obstructed good, and preserved or restored evil. Whenever you see the present party acting as a party, they are just like the Nonjurors,-busy, turbulent, and narrow-minded; with no great or good objects, but something that is at best fantastic, and generally mischievous. That many of these men, as of the Nonjurors and of the Jesuits, are far better than their cause and principles, I readily allow; but their cause is ever one and the same--a violent striving for forms and positive institutions, which, ever since Christ's Gospel has been preached, has been always wrong,-wrong, as the predominant mark of a party; because there has always been a greater good which needed to be upheld, and a greater evil which needed to be combated, even when what they upheld was good, and what they combated was bad. And if this same spirit infected the early Church also, as from the circumstances of the times and the position of the Church it was exceedingly likely to do, -if it infected all the eminent ecclesiastical leaders, whose power and influence it was so eminently fitted to promote,-if they by their credit, (in many respects most deserved,) persuaded the Church to adopt it,-shall we dignify their error by the specious name of the "Consent of Antiquity," and call it an " Apostolical Tradition," and think that it should guide us in the interpretation of Scripture; when we see distinctly in the Scripture itself that this very same spirit was uniformly opposed to our Lord and His Apostles, and when it is one of the commonest sophisms which History exposes, that the principle of error which a great truth had dislodged, should disguise itself in the outward form, and borrow the nomenclature of the system which had defeated it; and then assert that its nature is changed, and that the truth no longer condemns it, but approves it? If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers in the blood of the Prophets." Paul rightly condemned trusting to circumcision, but baptism is quite another thing." Whereas all the Newmanite language about baptism might be, and probably was, used by the Jews and Judaizers about circumcision; the error in both is the same; i. e. the teaching that an outward bodily act can have a tendency to remove moral evil; or rather, the teaching that God is pleased to act upon the spirit through the body, in a way agreeable to none of the known laws of our constitution; a doctrine which our Lord's language about meats not defiling a man, "because they do not go into the heart, but into the belly," puts down in every possible form under which it may attempt to veil itself.

CLXXVI.

*TO C. J. VAUGHAN, ESQ.

Rugby, March 4, 1838.

You have my most hearty congratulations on your success in the Examination, which I believe few will more rejoice at than I do. I cannot regret your being bracketed with another man; for, judging by my own feelings about you, his friends would have been much grieved if he had been below you; and when two men do so well, there ought, according to my notions, to be neither a better nor a worse of them. Thank you much for your kindness in sending the Class paper, and for your Declamation, which I like very much. How glad shall I be to see you when your Medal Examination is over, and when, the preparation for life being ended, you will begin to think of life, its actual self. May it be to us both, my dear Vaughan, that true life which begins and has no end in God. My wife and the children fully share in our joy on your account and join in kindest remembrances.

CLXXVII. TO THE EARL OF BURLINGTON.
(Chancellor of the University of London.)

Rugby, March 17, 1838. I fear that I may be too late in offering the following suggestions, but I had not observed the progress of the Committees, till I found by the reports, which I received this morning, that a resolution had been passed, but not yet, I believe, confirmed, to adopt the recommendation of the Vice-Chancellor, that the Examinations should be conducted entirely through the medium of printed papers. I think that is a point on which the experience of Oxford, entirely confirmed in my judgment by my own experience here, is well deserving of consideration,-because we habitually use and know the value of printed papers, and we know also the advantages to be derived from a vivâ voce examination, of which Cambridge has made no trial. I think that these advantages are much too great to be relinquished by us altogether.

1st. The exercise of extempore translation is the only thing in our system of education, which enables a young man to express himself fluently and in good language without premeditation. Wherever it is attended to, it is an exercise of exceeding value; it is, in fact, one of the best possible modes of instruction in English composition, because the constant comparison with the different idioms of the languages from which you are translating, shews you in the most lively manner the peculiar excellences and defects of our own; and if men are tried by written papers only, one great and most valuable talent, that of readiness, and the very useful habit of retaining presence of mind, so as to be able to avail oneself without nervousness of all one's knowledge, and to express it at once by word of mouth, are never tried at all.

2nd. Nothing can equal a vivâ voce examination for trying a candidate's knowledge in the contents of a long history or of a philosophical treatise. I have known men examined for two hours together vivâ voce in Aristotle, and they have been thus tried more completely than could be done by printed papers; for a man's answers suggest continually further questions; you can at once probe his weak points; and, where you find him strong, you can give him an opportunity of doing himself justice, by bringing him out especially on those very points.

3rd. Time is saved, and thereby weariness and exhaustion of mind to both parties. A man can speak faster than he can write, and he is relieved by the variety of the exercise.

4th. The eclat of a vivâ voce examination is not to be despised. When a clever man goes into the schools at Oxford, the room is filled with hearers of all ranks in the University. His powers are not merely taken on trust from the report of the Examiners; they are witnessed by the University at large, and their peculiar character is seen and appreciated also. I have known the eloquence of a man's translations from the poets and orators and historians, and the clearness and neatness of his answers in his philosophical examination, long and generally remembered, with a distinctness of impression very different from that produced by the mere knowledge that he is in the first class. And in London, the advantages of such a public vivâ voce examination would be greater of course than any where else, because the audience might be larger and more mixed.

5th. Presence of mind is a quality which deserves to be encouraged― nervousness is a defect which men feel painfully in many instances through life. Education should surely attach some reward to a valuable quality which may be acquired in a great measure by early practice, and should impose some penalty or some loss on the want of it. Now, if you have printed papers, you effectually save a man from suffering too much from his nervousness; but if you have printed papers only, you do not, I think, encourage as you should do, the excellence of presence of mind, and the power of making our knowledge available on the instant.

6th. It is an error to suppose that no exact judgment of a man can be formed from a vivâ voce examination. Like all other things, such an examination requires some attention and some practice on the part of those who conduct it; but all who have had much experience in it, are well aware that, combined with an examination on paper, it is entirely satisfactory. In fact, either system, of papers or of vivâ voce examination, if practised exclusively, does but half try the men. Each calls forth faculties which the other does not reach equally.

As it is not in my power to be present at the next meetings of the University, I have ventured to say thus much by letter. I trust that I shall not be thought presumptuous in having done so.

* CLXXVIII.

TO DR. GREENHILL.

Rugby, May 15, 1838.

I have been lately writing and preaching two sermons on the subject of prophecy, embodying some views which you may perhaps have heard from me six years since, for they have been long in my mind, although I never put them out fully in writing. I have some thoughts of publishing them now, in Oxford, with something of a Preface, developing the notions more fully. But, ere I do this, as I have never found any thing satisfactory on the subject, I wish to learn from one who admires and knows pretty thoroughly, the writings both of the early Christian writers and of those of the Church of England, what he would recommend, as containing a good view of the nature and interpretation of prophecy. This I know you can learn from Pusey, and I should be much obliged to you to ask him; nor should I object to your saying that you are asking

for me; only you need not say any thing of my intended publication, which indeed is a very hypothetical intention after all. I wish sincerely to read what Pusey, and those who think with him, consider as good on any subject; on this particular one, I do not know that their views would differ from mine. My small respect for those writers whom Pusey admires has been purely the result of experience: whenever I have read them, I have found them wanting. I should be very honestly glad to find some one amongst them who would give me the knowledge which I want. We are all tolerably well, but the weather is almost painful to me ;it seems to inflict such suffering on all nature.

CLXXIX. TO MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE.

Rugby, May 18, 1838.

The first volume of Rome will be put out on Wednesday, and you will receive your copy, I hope, immediately. I ask for your congratulations on the termination of this part of my labours, whatever may be the merits or success of the book. One object of publishing it in separate volumes, is, that the sensible criticisms on the first may be of use to its successors. I hope that I shall have some such, and I shall receive them very thankfully. I want hints as to points which require examination, for I may pass over things through pure ignorance, because I may know nothing about them; but as to the great point, the richness and power of the narrative,-to that no criticism can help me; my own standard, I believe, is as high as any man's can be, and my inability to come up to it or near it in my execution constantly annoys me. Yet I hope and think that you will on the whole like the book; you will not sympathize with all the sentiments about Aristocracy, but I think, if you ever see the subsequent volumes, you will find that I have not spared the faults of Democracy. Still I confess that Aristocracy, as a predominant element in a government, whether it be aristocracy of skin, of race, of wealth, of nobility, or of priesthood, has been to my mind the greatest source of evil throughout the world, because it has been the most universal and the most enduring. Democracy and tyranny, if in themselves worse, have been, and I think ever will be, less prevalent, at least in Europe; they may be the Cholera, but aristocracy is Consumption; and you know that in our climate Consumption is a far worse scourge in the long run than Cholera. The great defect of the volume will be the want of individual characters, which was unavoidable, but yet must lower the interest and the value of a history. The generalities on which I have been obliged to dwell, from the total want of materials for painting portraits, are a sad contrast to those inimitable living pictures with which Carlyle's History of the French Revolution abounds.

[After speaking of the London University.] What the end will be I can scarcely tell, but I have no pleasure in remaining in the University, and yet I do not like to leave it till the very last moment. It makes me feel very lovingly to Rugby, where I seem to have, in principle at least, what I most like, that is, a place neither like the University of London, nor yet like Oxford, where we are not ashamed of Christianity or of the Church of England, while we have no sympathy with those opinions and feelings which possess the majority of the clergy.