spirit of religion in the higher ranks; but the body of the people care little for the National Church, and are easily won from it. This dif ference between the two Churches is striking, and as strikingly exemplifies the superior policy of the one, as it does the truth of the other." This is the most important aspect under which the subject can be considered. The present is no time to doubt whether Cranmer's wish for the conversion of the cathedrals into theological colleges-a measure which, in one point, would have completed the Reformation— would have weakened that alliance between Church and State, which is supposed to be preserved by the secular intercourse of the clergy, and the connexions of private friendship, and private tuition, which are formed in our schools and universities-or whether the provision which our cathedrals (on their present footing) offer to the younger sons of powerful families, (as the monasteries once did,) pledges not those families more deeply to the maintenance of the Establishment. The pillars of the Church are not the rich, but the poor-for to the poor was the Gospel preached. It is to the neglect by the Church of the inferior orders of society-an unavoidable neglect, and not chargeable on individuals, many of whom have manfully, if unavailingly, struggled against it-that the chief evil, accidentally resulting from the Reformation, is attributable. Suffice it to say, that Cranmer's theological colleges,-with the attachment thereto of readers of divinity, of Hebrew, and of Greek,-would probably have opposed to the puritan heresy, the effectual opposition of a learned clergy. The sects have taken advantage of the undefended positions of the Church, and have there established their strongholds. An armed body of orthodox divines, in the several districts of the nation, would have created and given confidence to public opinion, in favour of the Establishment. A regular theological education also, including Hebrew, and the Fathers, would have increased the labourers in the vineyard; and, if falling systematically to the lot of all intended for the ministry, cheap as it might have been made, would have raised from among the inferior classes, those youths of genius of whom nature is sometimes fertile. It was by "yeomen's sons," says Latimer, "that the faith in Christ had been hitherto maintained chiefly." The attachment of the common people to the friars, proceeded from the feeling that they had a personal interest and relationship in their ministry. A well regulated class of preachers of this kind, for the stray sheep of the house of Israel," is much to be desiderated; a class of orthodox preachers, connected with the National Establishment, who, in the conversion of the profane vulgar, should draw them into no sectarian fold, but into the bosom of the Catholic Church. This is the one thing needful-it was needful in times past-it is needful now! And in consequence of this need, the Reformation, excellent as it was in other respects, is rightly chargeable with the important sin of having, till within the last sixty years, effected no change in the character of the lower orders. Their religious feelings had been rather deteriorated than improved, in their having been weaned, rather than won, from popery. It has been well said, that the breasts at which they had sucked in superstition had been withdrawn; but no provision had been made, as in Scotland, for rearing them upon more salubrious food. Lament

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able it is to reflect, and it ought to operate as a warning how we engage in revolutions under the name of Reform,-that for the first one hundred and fifty years after the Reformation, much of the evil prevalent in society, whether politically or religiously considered, inhered in the very nature and essence of the change effected by it; and that of the good, which for the latter century and a half, has been enjoyed where it has obtained, much might equally have been expected without any alteration at all. These things are undeniable; and the only set off which we have to balance against them, is, the utility of controversy, as awakening the intellect, and dispensing instruction. But beyond the instruction so diffused, none appears by any other means to have been distributed. No provision was made for the sufficient education of the people. Reading and writing were as scarce among them as they had been two centuries before; and their habitations, their dress, their hours, their habits of life remained unaltered, the cultivation of the potato, and the use of tea, excepted.

The convents had been aforetime the general academies, and the speaker of the Lower House, in the fourth year of Elizabeth, lamented the loss of such a number of places of education. The establishment of schools, nevertheless, was regarded with jealousy. There were probably not more than three in all London, and yet Dean Colet found difficulty in founding that of St. Paul's. This, however, was on the eve of the Reformation. Add to this, the condition of the students at the Universities was most miserable; Edward would have founded many grammar schools as seminaries of sound learning and of religious education-a few he succeeded in establishing. They were, however, not sufficient to preserve the popular masses from theological empiricism-an evil which would have been more extensive than even now it is, but for the private foundations, that are to be preferred in almost all respects to our commercial schools.

What a glorious task it would have been for our modern Reformers, if, in their plans of amendment, and for the promotion of the intellectual march, they had reared up the improved superstructure of the State on the firmer and repaired basis of the Church Establishment! Only pious men will make good subjects. How wise would it have been in them to rectify first the defects of the Reformation; and instead of a money qualification for voters, whose tenure, as attached to`a borough corporation, is founded not on the possession, but the honest pursuit of wealth, to connect the privilege with institutions completitory of the designs of our Ecclesiastical Reformers, and thus united political powers with the interests of the Church Establishment. But the interests of the Church were not in the hearts of the pseudo-reformers of these degenerate days.

Turn we from them, and make our appeal to the Church herself; and to her we say, and say again :-Preach the Gospel to the Poor! The Church of England, if she be to live, must cease to be a landlord's Church only; it must be also, under proper regulation, the Church of the People. The clergy must not chiefly desiderate a well-dressed congregation, but should labour to fill their churches with the labouring classes-nay, to the outcasts of society they should go forth. We repeat that they must not look on their calling as a gen

teel profession only, but one of hard and disagreeable duty, which must be borne willingly for the sake of Him who willingly bore the cross for us. Four sorts of services, says an old preacher, must be done by them who would go to heaven-hard service, costly service, derided service, and forlorn service. The whole of these services the clergy must bind upon their shoulders, and must, moreover, go out into the highways and the desolate places of society, or, if they do not, God will give the reward with the labour to other hands. This is avouched by the institutions of Methodism in this country-and warning should be taken by the example.

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May not, too, advantage be taken of the work thus done by the divine permission, though by other hands, and of the workers too? This is a point of view frequently brought under notice, and advocated by more than one prelate of the Church of England. Concerning the general and remoter consequences of Methodism," says Mr. Southey, opinions will differ. They who consider the wide-spreading schism to which it has led, and who know that the welfare of the country is vitally connected with its Church Establishment, may think that the evil overbalances the good. But the good may endure, and the evil be only for a time. In every other sect there is an inherent spirit of hostility to the Church of England, too often and too naturally connected with diseased political opinions. So it was in the beginning, and so it will continue to be, as long as those sects endure. But Methodism is free from this. The extravagances which accompanied its growth are no longer encouraged, and will altogether be discountenanced, as their real nature is understood. This cannot be doubted. It is in the natural course of things that it should purify itself gradually from whatever is objectionable in its institutions. Nor is it beyond the bounds of reasonable hope, that, conforming itself to the original intention of its founders, it may again draw towards the Establishment from which it has seceded, and deserve to be recognized as an auxiliary institution; its ministers being analogous to the regulars, and its members to the tertiaries and various confraternities of the Romish Church. The obstacles to this are surely not insuperable, perhaps not so difficult as they may appear. And were this effected, John Wesley would then be ranked, not only among the most remarkable and influential men of his age, but among the greatest benefactors of his country and his kind."

But nowhere had the Church to contend against lack of zeal, or positive outrage among her own children. A sceptical disposition is the natural consequence of those systems which call upon every man to form his own judgement upon points of faith, without respect to the authority of other ages, or of wiser minds, without reference to his own ignorance or his own incapacity; which leave humility out of the essentials of the Christian character, and, when they pretend to erect their superstructure of rational belief, build upon the shifting sands of vanity and self-conceit. And the great body of the populace? They knew nothing more of religion than its forms. was the Bible, indeed, but, to the great body of the labouring people, the Bible was, even in the letter, a sealed book. For that system of general education which the fathers of the English Church desired,

"There

and which saintly King Edward designed, had never been provided." In return for all these wrongs, the Reformation had effected one great advantage—it had set the intellect of the nation free, and, from spiritual bondage and idolatry and superstition, had emancipated the soul. But too little care had been taken to embue the better classes early with this better faith, and the population were in a state of heathen, or worse than heathen, ignorance.

Three measures, then, says the biographer of Wesley, on this subject," three measures, then, were required for completing the Reformation in England: that the condition of the inferior clergy should be improved; that the number of religious institutions should be greatly increased; and that a system of parochial education should be established and vigilantly upheld. These measures could only be effected by the legislature. A fourth thing was needful,-that the clergy should be awakened to an active discharge of their duty; and this was not within the power of legislation. The former objects never for a moment occupied Wesley's consideration. He began life with ascetic habits and opinions; with a restless spirit and a fiery heart. Ease and comfort were neither congenial to his disposition nor his principles wealth was not necessary for his calling, and it was beneath his thoughts: he could command not merely respectability without it, but importance. Nor was he long before he discovered what Sir Francis and his followers and imitators had demonstrated long before, that they who profess poverty for conscience sake, and trust for daily bread to the religious sympathy which they excite, will find it as surely as Elijah in the wilderness, and without a miracle. As little did the subject of national education engage his mind; his aim was direct, immediate, palpable utility. Nor could he have effected anything upon either of these great legislative points. The most urgent representations, the most convincing arguments, would have been disregarded in that age, for the time was not come. great struggle between the destructive and conservative principles -between good and evil-had not yet commenced; and it was not then foreseen that the very foundations of civil society would be shaken, because governments had neglected their most awful and most important duty. But the present consequences of this neglect were obvious and glaring; the rudeness of the peasantry, the brutality of the town populace, the prevalence of drunkenness, the growth of impiety, the general deadness to religion. These might be combated by individual exertions; and Wesley felt in himself the power and the will both in such plenitude, that they appeared to him a manifestation, not to be doubted, of the will of heaven: every trial tended to confirm him in this persuasion; and the effects which he produced, both upon body and mind, appeared equally to himself and to his followers miraculous. diseases were arrested or subdued by the faith which he inspired; madness was appeased, and, in the sound and sane, paroxysms were excited, which were new to pathology, and which he believed to be supernatural interpositions, vouchsafed in furtherance of his efforts by the Spirit of God, or worked in opposition to them by the exasperated Principle of Evil. Drunkards were reclaimed; sinners were converted; the penitent who came in despair, was sent away with the full assurance of joy; the

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dead sleep of indifference was broken; and oftentimes his eloquence reached the hard brute heart, and opening it, like the rock of Horeb, made way for the living spring of piety which had been pent within. These effects he saw; they were public and undeniable; and looking forward in exulting faith, he hoped that the leaven would not cease to work till it had leavened the whole mass,-that the impulse which he had given would surely, though slowly, operate a national reformation, and bring about, in fulness of time, the fulfilment of those prophecies which promise us that the kingdom of our Father shall come, and his will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

With all this there was intermingled a large portion of enthusiasm, and no small one of superstition; much that was erroneous, much that was mischievous, much that was dangerous. But had he been less enthusiastic, of a humbler spirit, or a quieter heart, or a maturer judgement, he would never have commenced his undertaking. Sensible only of the good which he was producing, and which he saw produced, he went on courageously and indefatigably in his career. Whither it was to lead he knew not, nor what form and consistence the societies which he was collecting would assume, nor where he was to find labourers as he enlarged the field of his operations, nor how the scheme was to derive its temporal support. But these considerations neither troubled him, nor made him for a moment forslack his course. God, he believed, had appointed it-and God would always provide means for accomplishing his own ends. In all this belief he was right; for those ends were accomplished, and their accomplishment proved the matter to be of God.

The great objection to the union proposed, is, we apprehend, the recognition by the Church of lay-preachers, or, at best, of those whose ordination is equivocal, though of apostolical descent; Wesley, like Luther, having proceeded from the Established Church. But the historical line is not of such importance as to justify a Church historian, with a leaning to sectarianism, in his anxiety to find proof of a presbyterial Church at all hazards, nor to vindicate an episcopal Church in the non-adoption and neglect of whatever is expedient for the safety of souls and her own temporal interests.

By the same rescript which requires that every man shall have a reason to give for the faith that is in him, even were the orders and offices in the Church as clearly defined in the written word, as they are clearly otherwise, still the Church would not be bound in a slavish bondage to refrain from doing things not commanded. "Let them

cast back their eyes unto former generations of men," says Hooker, " and mark what was done in the prime of the world. Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Job, and the rest that lived before any syllable of the Law of God was written-did they not sin as much as we do in every action not commanded? That which God is unto us by his sacred Word, the same he was unto them by such like means, as Eliphaz, in Job, describeth. If, therefore, we sin in every action which the Scripture commandeth us not, it followeth that they did the like in all such actions as were not by revelation from Heaven exacted at their hands. Unless God from heaven did by vision show them what to do, they might do nothing-not eat, not drink, not sleep, not