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gine that any layman was ever authorized in the Church of England to administer the Lord's Supper; but lay baptism was allowed by Hooker to be valid, and no distinction can be drawn between one sacrament and the other. Language more to the purpose is to be found in Tertullian,-I think in the Treatise De Coronâ Militis,—but at any rate he states first of all that the mode of administering rather than communicating in the Sacrament was a departure from the original practice; and then he explains the origin of the practice by using the word "Præsidentes" not "Sacerdotes" or "Presbyteri ;"—that is, the person who presided at the table for order's sake would distribute the bread and wine; and in almost every case he would be an elder, or one invested with a share of the government of the Church, but he did it not as priest, but as president of the assembly; which makes just the whole difference. But, after all, the whole question as to the matter of right, and the priestly power, must be answered out of the New Testament; no one disputes the propriety of the general practice as it now stands; but the Church of England has not said that it adopts this practice because it is essential to the validity of the sacraments and is of divine institution, but leaves the question of principle open; and this of course can only be decided out of the Scriptures. That the Scriptures are clear enough against the priestcraft notion, is to me certain; the more so that nothing is quoted for it, but the words of St. Paul, "The bread which we break, the cup which we bless," &c.; words which quoted as a text look something to the quoter's purpose, because the ignorant reader may think that "we" means St. Paul and his brother apostles; but if any one from the text looks to the passage, he will find that the "we" is the whole Christian congregation, inasmuch as the words immediately following are, "for we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread." 1 Corinth. x. Yet this text I have both seen in books and heard in conversation quoted as a Scripture authority for the exclusive

right of the clergy to administer the Communion. Wherefore I conclude, independently of my own knowledge of the New Testament, that such an argument as this would not have been used, if any thing tolerable were to be had.

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CXXIII.

*

TO DR. GREENHILL.

Rugby, October 31, 1836.

I was very much obliged to you for your letter, and much gratified by it. It is a real pleasure to me to find that you are taking steadily to a profession, without which I scarely see how a man can live honestly. That is, I use the term "profession" in rather a large sense, not as simply denoting certain callings which a man follows for his maintenance, but rather, a definite field of duty, which the nobleman has as much as the tailor, but which he has not, who having an income large enough to keep him from starving, hangs about upon life, merely following his own caprices and fancies; quod factu pessimum est. I can well enough understand how medicine, like every other profession, has its moral and spiritual dangers; but I do not see why it should have more than others. The tendency to Atheism, I imagine, exists in every study followed up vigorously, without a foundation of faith, and that foundation carefully strengthened and built upon. The student in History is as much busied with secondary causes as the student in medicine; the rule "nec Deus intersit," true as it is up to a certain point, that we may not annihilate man's agency and make him a puppet, is ever apt to be followed too far when we are become familiar with man or with nature, and understand the laws which direct both. Then these laws seem enough to account for every thing, and the laws themselves we ascribe either to chance, or the mystifications called "nature," or the "anima mundi," the "spiritus intus alit" of Pantheism. If there is any thing special in the atheistic tendency of medicine, it arises, I

suppose, from certain vague notions about the soul, its independence of matter, &c., and from the habit of considering these notions as an essential part of religion. Now I think that the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection meets the Materialists so far as this, that it does imply that a body, or an organization of some sort, is necessary to the full development of man's nature. Beyond this we cannot go; for,-granting that the brain is essential to thought, still no man can say that the white pulp which you can see and touch and anatomize can itself think, and by whatever names we endeavour to avoid acknowledging the existence of mind,-whether we talk of a subtle fluid, or a wonderful arrangement of nerves, or any thing else,still we do but disguise our ignorance; for the act of thinking is one sui generis, and the thinking power must in like manner be different from all that we commonly mean by matter. The question of Free Will is, and ever must be, imperfectly understood. If a man denies that he has a will either to sit or not to sit, to write a note or no, I cannot prove to him that he has one. If again, he maintains that the choosing power in him cannot but choose what seems to it to be good, then this is a great tribute to the importance of good habits, and to the duty of impressing right notions of good on the young mind, all which is perfectly true. And, in the last case, if a man maintains that his nature irresistibly teaches him that what we call good is evil, and vice versâ, then I find at once the value of those passages in Scripture which have been so grievously misused, and I see before me a vessel of wrath fitted for destruction, fitted, as I believe, through its own fault; but if it denies this, then at any rate fitted for destruction and on the sure way to it.

But no doubt every study requires to be tempered and balanced with something out of itself, if it be only to prevent the mind from becoming "einseitig" or pedantic; and, ascending higher still, all intellectual study, however comprehensive, requires spiritual study to be

joined with it, lest our nature itself become "einseitig ;" the intellect growing; the higher reason-the moral and spiritual wisdom-stunted and decaying. You will be thinking that I have been writing a sermon by mistake, instead of a letter, but your letter led me into it. I believe that any man can make himself an Atheist speedily, by breaking off his own personal communion with God in Christ; but, if he keep this unimpaired, I believe that no intellectual study, whether of nature or of man, will force him into Atheism; but, on the contrary, the new creations of our knowledge, so to speak, gather themselves into a fair and harmonious system, ever revolving in their brightness around their proper centre, the throne of God. Prayer, and kindly intercourse with the poor, are the two great safeguards of spiritual life;-its more than food and raiment.

CXXIV. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, November 16, 1836.

I have begun the Thessalonians, and like the work much; but I dread the difficulty of the second chapter of the Second Epistle. You will not care to hear that I have got into the fourth Book of Gaius. But you will not, I hope, find it against your conscience, so far to aid my studies of law, as to get for me a good copy, if you can, of Littleton's work upon which Coke commented. Coleridge recommended it to me as illustrating the early state of our law of real property, with the iniquities of feudality and the Conquest as yet in all their freshness. I am fully persuaded that he, who were to get the law of real property of any country in all its fulness, would have one of the most important indications of its political and social state. We have got Coleridge's Literary Remains, in which I do rejoice greatly. I think with all his faults, old Sam was more of a great man than any one who has lived within the four seas in my memory. It is refreshing to see such a union of the highest philosophy and poetry, with so full

a knowledge, on so many points at least, of particular facts. But yet there are marks enough that his mind was a little diseased by the want of a profession, and the consequent unsteadiness of his mind and purposes; it always seems to me that the very power of contemplation becomes impaired or perverted, when it is made the main employment of life. Yet I would fain have more time for contemplation than I have at present; so hard is it τυχεῖν τοῦ μέσου.

CXXV. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN.

Rugby, November 25, 1836.

Thank you very much for your inclosure against neutrality, which I suspect would be repelled by the state of mind of those for whom it is designed, like a cannon ball by a woolpack. Neutrality seems to me a natural state for men of fair honesty, moderate wit, and much indolence; they cannot get strong impressions of what is true and right, and the weak impression, which is all that they can take, cannot overcome indolence and fear. I crave a strong mind for my children, for this reason, that they then have a chance at least of appreciating truth keenly; and when a man does that, honesty becomes comparatively easy; as, for instance, Peel has an idea about the currency, and a distinct impression about it; and therefore on that point I would trust him for not yielding to clamour; but about most matters, the Church especially, he seems to have no idea, and therefore I would not trust him for not giving it all up to-morrow, if the clamour were loud enough. ... We look forward with some yearnings to Fox How, and we much wish to know when you will all be coming over. It is but an ostrichlike feeling, but it seems as if I could fancy things to be more peaceful when I am out of the turmoil, down in Westmoreland, and I find that I crave after peace more and more. But it is πω, ουπω. . I shall have occasion soon to set to work at the Celtic languages.

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