We turn with pleasure from this distressing statement to another Oxford divine, Professor Garbett, who well remarks in his recent Bampton Lectures

"The doctrine of Justification, as laid down in those Tridentine decrees which are now held forth as the genuine expression of the Catholic faith, was not to be found in the ancient Catholic Fathers. We can trace its genealogy-we know who It does not its parents were-we can tell the day and hour when it was born. come from Clement, or Ignatius, or Polycarp; it comes not from Irenæus, the disciple of him who talked with John, nor from the martyr Justin, nor from the great Athanasius, nor from holy Augustine, with his mind capacious of Divine truth; nay, the last of the Fathers of the Church, who, through Scripture, still held fellowship with the apostles of Christ and the primitive Church in the darkest times, holy Bernard, utterly repudiates it. Heathen metaphysics have as much to do with it as the Gospel; and as it is now held and defended by the Romish Church, it is the work of those speculative and scholastic heads, under the influence of whose vast but perverted power, the study of Scripture was banished from the schools. Holy Writ grew insipid by the side of dialectic fence and metaphysical refinement; and the homely truths enunciated by our Lord, and enforced and expounded by the apostles, gave way for three centuries to the philosophy of Lombard and Aquinas.

In a note Mr. Garbett adds,-"It is a formidable sign of the times, that the new theology draws its stores and definitions directly from those masters of the schools, who were the great corrupters of the Gospel theology, and gave a name and fixity to what before were unacknowledged and unsystematized errors."

DISSENTING MINISTERS.

THE Rev. John Alexander of Norwich, at a recent municipal Dinner in that borough, in returning thanks after the mayor had given as a toast" The Dissenting Ministers of Norwich," made the following remarks

"Gentlemen, the term Dissenting ministers,' very imperfectly designates either our ecclesiastical position, or our evangelical sentiments. Many of us have never voluntarily belonged to the ecclesiastical establishment at all, and therefore, have never actually dissented from it; and we are all of us non-conformists, merely for the purpose of thereby conforming more exactly to those principles which Christ has declared in His Word. We claim for ourselves the inalienable right of making the Bible, and the Bible only, our religion, and of deriving from it exclusively our religious sentiments and our ecclesiastical laws; and, as the Pastors and Bishops of Christian Churches, we deem it our great and highest duty to preach the Gospel of Christ, for the sole purpose of making men holy and happy in time and in eternity. As subjects, we yield a cheerful and patriotic allegiance to the King as supreme in all civil affairs; we render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's; and we give honour to whom honour is due, by testifying our respect to you, the Magistrates and Councillors of our city. But as Christians, as Ministers, and as Churches, we belong to a kingdom which is not of this world; we call no man on earth master; we ask from the State neither patronage nor emolument; we refuse from the State any degree of interference with our religious institutions; and we ask from you, our fellow-citizens, no degree of respect or influence but that which is due to holy character and to useful labour; and if ever Dissenting ministers should become destitute of such moral and spiritual qualities, then, gentlemen, cease to wish them either health or prosperity.

"Gentlemen, we most respectfully united with you in the preceding toast which referred to the Bishop and his Clergy; for though we differ from them in many points confessedly of great importance, yet we cheerfully yield to others the same rights of conscience which we claim for ourselves With many of them we cor

dially unite, whenever opportunity offers, in promoting the great cause of our commonChristianity; and we trust, that by the increasing diffusion of Gospel knowledge, the time will soon come when we shall all see eye to eye, and, under the influence of one Divine Spirit, recognise each other as the disciples of Christ, and join all our efforts to advance His glory."

On the question-"Who are clergymen ?" a Letter lately appeared in The Hereford Times, containing a passage worth transcribing:

"I venture to think, that the pastors of Dissenting churches are not clergymen. A clergyman is generally understood to be a member of a hierarchical corporation, which constitutes an order distinct from and superior to the laity;' and every such clergyman of the English Establishment is endowed by the law of the land with certain rights and powers, civil and religious, in the parish over which he is appointed; and he claims to be the spiritual functionary for all men, good, bad, and indifferent, within the limits of that ecclesiastical cure. His clerical character is indelible he is a clergyman wherever he goes, and in whatever he does, as long as he lives. But the pastor of a congregational church possesses no such hierarchical character. His office is discharged in an assembly of faithful men, and beyond that limit he has no office at all, except as evangelist. He pretends to no 'clerical' character, in the right use of that word, which is not possessed by the humblest member of his flock, who are all the clergy of God' in the language of St. Peter-(see the Greek.) He does not pretend to administer sacraments to the irreligious, nor to perform religious services for the profane, nor to impart efficacy to his ministrations by any mysterious virtue resident in the order to which he belongs-all of which are qualifications contained in the popularly received idea of the clerical character.' His business is to explain the Bible, and to promote its influence over the hearts of his hearers by his example and advice; and he trusts to the power of the truth for his success, much rather than to the authority' of his office."

THE TALENTS.

"We read that in the delivery of his goods to his servants a different portion was intrusted to each of the three here particularly mentioned: Unto one he gave five talents (a talent being an ancient sum of money, generally computed at about £180); to another, two; and to another, one." The modern sense of the word 'talent' (which seems almost as if borrowed from this parable,) serves very well to explain and illustrate what is meant by the talents' intrusted to His servants by the Great Householder; namely, whatever powers or advantages we possess, whether of body, mind or station; for (as the creatures of God, formed for His service and glory,) what is the re in any of us of any value, but we have received at His hand? Our health and strength; our immortal souls, with all their faculties; the knowledge we have acquired by education; the money which He has intrusted to us; the particular station in which He may have placed us; the influence or authority which He may have given us; and, above all, the spiritual gifts which He may have bestowed on us. These talents, we are told, the Householder divided among His servants, to every man according to his several ability;' that is, none have more intrusted to them than they are able to make a right use of, if they choose; none are overburdened with the trust committed to them; because it was laid upon them by One who knoweth their ability; and none are so poorly gifted, but they have quite enough to turn to good account, if they are disposed so to do."-The Parable of the Talents practically applied, by William Hancock, B.D.

(From a Correspon lent of The Record.)

THE Rev. John Natt, B.D., and Vicar of St. Sepulchre's, was formerly fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, which he resigned on accepting the Vicarage of St Sepulchre, in the gift of the President and Fellows of that Society, in 1830. Mr. Natt, for some period of his residence at College, filled the office of Tutor, and was at the same time Vicar and Lecturer of St Giles's, Oxford. Here he was peculiarly faithful in his ministrations; preaching, without fear or compromise, the Gospel of the grace of God, in all sincerity, and this at a time when such preaching was rare within the precincts of the University; so much so, that to attend service at St. Giles's Church, caused a young man to be regarded with an eye of suspicion, and sometimes even to call forth the expressed disapprobation of those who were more immediately put in authority over him. Meanwhile the Vicar of St. Giles's kept on the even tenour of his way. He used no extraneous means to attract a congregation. The service at his Church was peculiarly plain and simple, more like that of a remote village Church. That his ministrations were blessed to the souls of many-gownsmen as well as others, his parishioners and those who attended his ministry from choice-cannot be doubted. Mr. Natt ultimately resigned St. Giles's, and after a few years accepted that of St. Sepulchre's, London, from a sense of duty. His health was certainly not good, and he was enabled to do far short of what he wished to do in that widely extensive and populous parish. Mr. Natt was naturally of a retiring disposition. He was incapable of courting popular favour or applause. His sermons marked a mind distinguished for great clearness. They were sound, in the best and most legitimate sense of the word. Amidst conflicts and confusion Mr. Natt remained fixed. Novelty in religion had no charm for him. He could at once detect, whilst he deprecated quackery in religion. He was a sincere and conscientious minister of the Established Church; and the same sentiments which were uttered, and the same truths which were set forth in 1818 at St. Giles's, had undergone no change at St. Sepulchre's. It is certain that Mr. Natt had latterly viewed with extreme distress the workings of the Tractarian school. The only work of which I am aware, that he sent forth to the public, was a small volume of excellent serinons, about two years ago, containing discourses preached at St. Giles's and at St. Sepulchre's. The evangelical spirit pervading them bears ample testimony to the soundness of the author's views, the spirituality of his feelings, and his true insight into the Gospel dispensation as supplying a full and a free remedy for the guilt of sin. Mr. Natt was a man of no small powers of mind-an accomplished scholar. He accompanied the present Bishop of Calcutta, and the Vicar of Islington, in a continental tour, which gave rise to Letters from an Absent Brother. The Bishop frequently refers to the gratification and improvement received from his intimate friend.

JOSEPH'S PROPHETIC DREAMS.

"And Joseph remembered the dreams which he dreamed of them.' More than twenty years had elapsed since he had been favoured with those bright and prophetic visions, and yet he had not forgotten them. No; they had been the daystars of his troubled voyage. He had looked up at them from the pit, and they gave him hope; he had seen them through the bars of his prison, and they gave him patience; from the second chariot' of Egypt, and they gave him humility; and now they shone for the last time upon him, (for their cheering light was no longer needed,) when his brethren bowed before him, and they filled his heart with gratitude and praise. For by their light he plainly saw the hand of a faithful and merciful God in every event, as it was passing over him, since they had made plain the great result with which all was to conclude, even before he left his father's roof. With some such feeling will the Christian, who is permitted, through free and undeserved grace, to enter the heavenly mansions, look back, perhaps, at the bright anticipations, the rare though blessed foretastes of coming glory, which a merciful God permitted to cheer his path and gladden his soul during the years of his earthly pilgrimage."-Blunt on the Pentateuch-Genesis.

The following passage is extracted from the Charge of November 1842 :—

"Suffer me, my reverend brethren, to add, that if united action be indeed a thing of moment, it becomes us especially to guard against the introduction of new causes of disunion, which may add fearful bitterness to those which, alas! before existed, and widen breaches which we fondly hoped were closing up. Of these, there must be always danger proportioned to the vigorous acting of religious feeling. For, unless the individual will so quickened is at the same time softened and restrained by a deep humility, it will ever be breaking forth into some peculiarity of tenet or some eccentricity of conduct; and these will soon become, even in the best men, new causes of ruinous disunion in the Church. That such dangers now beset us, I am sadly and unwillingly convinced. Surely it must be so, if there has been amongst us a tendency to introduce into our sacred offices peculiar customs, uncommanded in our rubrics, unsanctioned by our fathers, unpractised by our brethren in the Church. Such conduct must, of necessity, put unity in peril. For if they be points of moment, then, with no commission to warrant our so doing, we gravely censure others; if they be trifles, then, for the sake of trifles, we wantonly disturb the Church's peace, and provoke a mischievous re-action. And if, at the same moment, there is seen an inclination to depreciate all that is peculiarly Anglican; to exalt what, to say the least, borders upon those impurities of faith and practice, which, through God's grace, and in the strength of their manly Saxon hearts, our forefathers cast off, then is our danger greater still. But it is greatest, my reverend brethren, if there be growing up on any side a hankering after those corruptions of the faith which issued of old in the Papacy itself; a longing for a visible personal centre of union as the condition of the unity of Christendom; a shrinking from the simple boldness of statement, which marks the declaration of the Gospel of God's grace throughout the inspired epistles; a tendency to confound that faith, which alone justifies, with the crowning grace of charity, in the burning brightness of which faith should issue; if there be a studious inculcation of that which, in this most mistaken sense, some unhappily have learned to speak of as 'the great doctrine of justification by works; if there be, lastly, a disproportioned care for the outer parts of our religion, combined with any inclination to depreciate its individual spiritual life in every heart in which it dwells;—surely, if there be but a suspicion of these things,there is ground for watchful caution upon our parts; a caution which should act, not in leading us to reject what we suppose to be the peculiar views of others, (for all mere negative religion is a poor thing at the best ;) still less in making us willing to suspect, with party readiness, those who differ from us, or to impute to them lightly, with party bitterness, such fearful errors; but in leading us to embrace for ourselves, with a more earnest hold, and to exhibit to others in a sharper outline, that positive and substantial form and body of Christian truth which will be our safeguard from errors on each side, and which, of God's mercy, is so well set forth in our own Articles and Liturgy.

Marked, indeed, was the training by which the holy men who have left to us this precious legacy were fitted for their work; bitter was the struggle through which they for themselves discovered their deliverance from the body of this death;' scorching were the fires of personal suffering through which they were brought out into the large room, which we, of God's goodness, have so peacefully inherited; and thus there was a broad impress of reality stamped upon their views of doctrine; whilst, by God's special mercy, they were kept clear from material error, on the one side, by their acquaintance with Puritan excesses, as, on the other, by their knowledge of the deep corruptions of the Papacy. With them, my reverend brethren, let us hold fast, with thankful hearts, the clear, simple, well-marked character of old Church of England piety. Yes, my reverend brethren, may this, through God's grace, be wrought deeply into each one of us; may we ourselves be indeed dwelt in by His grace; may we be men of earnest prayer, men of a large and unsuspected charity to all; may the cross of Christ be everything to us ourselves; may we bear stamped upon our lives the marks of a holy, courageous, humble, self-denying faith; that, having borne meekly His blessed yoke for our hour of service, we too, being washed in His precious blood, may enter into His rest, and be found indeed amongst His saints at His coming.'

"After remaining an hour or more in this situation (of suspense and alarm) Christian Africaner made his appearance; and after the usual salutation, inquired if I was the missionary appointed by the directors in London; to which I replied in the affirmative. This seemed to afford him much pleasure; and he added that, as I was young, he hoped that I should live long with him and his people. He then ordered a number of women to come. I was rather puzzled to know what he intended by sending for women, till they arrived, bearing bundles of native mats, and long sticks like fishing-rods. Africaner, pointing to a spot of ground, said, 'There you must build a house for the missionary.' A circle was instantly formed, and the women, evidently delighted with the job, fixed the poles, tied them down in the hemispheric form, and covered them with the mats, all ready for habitation, in the course of little more than half an hour. I lived nearly six months in this native hut, which very frequently required tightening and fastening after a storm. When the sun shone, it was unbearably hot; when the rain fell, I came in for a share of it; when the wind blew, I had frequently to decamp to escape the dust; and in addition to these little inconveniences, any hungry cur of a dog that wished a night's lodging would force itself through the frail wall, and not unfrequently deprive me of my anticipated meal for the coming day; and I have more than once found a serpent coiled up in a corner. Nor were these all the contingencies of such a dwelling, for as the cattle belonging to the village had no fold, but strolled about, I have been compelled to start up from a sound sleep, and try to defend myself and dwelling from being crushed to pieces by the rage of two bulls which had met to fight a nocturnal duel.

"But to return to my new habitation, in which, after my household matters were arranged, I began to ruminate on the past-the home and friends I had left, perhaps for ever the mighty ocean which rolled between-the desert country through which I had passed to reach one still more dreary. In taking a review of the past, which seemed to increase in brightness as I traced all the way in which I had been brought, during the stillness of my first night's repose, I often involuntarily said and sung'Here I raise my Ebenezer, Hither by Thy help I'm come.'

STATE OF DR. SOUTHEY.

THE following is an extract from a communication from Mrs. Southey (formerly so well known as Caroline Bowles,) to Mrs. Sigourney, an American authoress, in answer to a letter, in which the latter lady desired to be remembered to the Laureate:"You desire to be remembered to him who sang of Thalaba the wild and wondrous tale.' Alas! my friend, the dull, cold ear of death is not more insensible than is my dearest husband's, to all communications from the world without. Scarcely can I keep hold of the last poor comfort of believing that he still knows me. The almost complete unconsciousness has not been of more than six months' standing, though more than two years have elapsed, since he has written even his name. After the death of his first wife, Edith,' of his first love, who was for several years insane, his health was terribly shaken. Yet for the greater part of a year that he spent with me in Hampshire, my former home, it seemed perfectly re-established, and he used to say, 'It had surely pleased God, that the last years of his life should be happy.' But the Almighty's will was otherwise. The little cloud soon appeared, which was in no long time to overshadow all. In the blackness of its shadow we still live, and shall pass from under it only to the portals of the grave. The last three years have done on me the work of twenty. The one sole business of my life is that which, I verily believe, keeps the life in me-the guardianship of my dear, helpless, unconscious husband.'

TO BE

LET. The following Advertisement, which appeared in the London Newspapers for October 1841, reads curiously: "Gentlemen or Ladies desirous of introducing the Total-Abstinence Principle into any District, can be supplied with intelligent, active Advocates on very reasonable tems. Apply at the office of the British and Foreign Society, &c.