tion," as he defined it, is "the criterion of a stand

ing or falling church." The consequences are significant as they are immense. A Scriptural reformation was Catholic Restoration; the Scholastic reformation could only end in ecclesiastical suicide, and in the evolution of endless divisions and conflicting sects.

4. THE ARTICLES.

But, at such a moment, when the Latin churches were committing themselves more and more inextricably to school doctrines which had been enlarged and shaped into dogmas and unlimited refinements upon the Faith, and when the Protestant Reformation was given over to like speculations, as yet indeterminate and embroiling its leaders one with another, it was impossible that Scholasticism should not be at work among the profoundly learned and thoughtful scholars and divines of England. When we look at the case as it thus stood under Parker, we may wonder, indeed, at the issue. Revising the draught of Cranmer and Ridley, and reducing their Articles to thirtynine, he gave us, substantially, what we still retain. What are they? Not a "Code of Belief," in any sense, though they include the Creed and the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils. A correction of school doctrine, by Scripture and antiquity, is found in twenty-six articles beginning with the ninth. Viewed apart from these, they amount to a rejection of Scholasticism as a system, and a strict limitation of Scholastic teaching to certain theses.

The age was rife with Scholastic discussions. It was impossible that Anglican divines should have no opinions about them. Their public teaching, however, was hereby restrained in a practical manner, within certain bounds, allowing freedom of inquiry and of thought, but setting metes and safeguards to controversy. In this view, I admire the Articles. They practically eliminated Scholasticism from the domain, of conscience and made us free, as Truth only can. After the debates of a century, in which they furnished an escape valve for the spirit of disputation, it was left for our great theologian, Bishop Bull, to secure what Hooker had promoted, a practical end of controversy. In his "Defence of the Nicene Creed," he illustrated our Catholic position so admirably as to win the homage of Bossuet and the whole Gallican Episcopate. In his "Harmonia Apostolica," he refuted the Lutheran and Calvinistic theories, and placed the exposition of our Articles upon a sure foundation. The famous Seventeenth Article1 ignores the crucial point of Calvinism and Arminianism alike, and leaves the outline of truth indeterminate as to causation. This enables all Scriptural minds to accept it. As diversions and gymnastical exercises, the old discussions will never wholly die out; they exist in the nature and the moral faculties of the human mind. But they no longer ensnare or enslave men's consciences. The results fully justify the wisdom and purpose of the Articles; nor, so long as St. Augustine is remembered and studied, can they ever cease to be useful. 1 See Note F"".

5. THEIR CATHOLIC CORE.

In the Sixth Article is embodied the great Nicene principle of our Restoration; and in the Thirty-fourth, to say nothing of others, we have the pith and marrow of the Vincentian Rule practically applied. The Sixth I must quote in full. It is on "The Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation," as follows:

"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

This golden Article merely imitates the great Councils, putting the Scriptures on a throne in the midst of the Church, as the oracle of Christ's infallible Vicar, the Holy Ghost. It was accompanied by the golden canon which affirms Vincent's rule, and restricts preachers to the word of God, and what "the Catholic Fathers and old bishops have gathered from its teaching."

6. THE FORMATION OF THE TRENTINE CHURCH.

Thus the English Church was restored before "the Roman Catholic Church" was in existence. I must thank the French savant, Quinet,1 for a suggestive statement of facts which demonstrate what professed historians have too generally overlooked. The spirit which Constance and Basle had striven to eliminate was made at Trent, as he says, 1 See Note G"".

"the very Constitution of the Church." In other words, Trent created a new Constitution, organizing what remained of the Latin churches into a Western spiritual and temporal empire, -a provincial church claiming to be the whole Church. Quinet observes, that "the artifice consisted in making this change without anywhere speaking of it. . . . From that moment Popedom usurps all Christendom."

He notes how craftily all the notes of the old Ecumenical Councils were got rid of. The East and the North were almost equally wanting; Italian prelates, one hundred and eighty-seven; only two German bishops; Spaniards, thirty-two; Frenchmen, twenty-six; and the voting changed from churches to individuals, a vote for every member of the Council personally, so that the Italian bishops swallowed up all the rest. The French were so ill-treated that their ambassadors left the Council. The Spanish bishops were virtually driven out. "Exeant, Let them go," shouted the Italians. "Laynez, the Jesuit, became the soul of the Council, and, reaction against the North prevailing over every other idea, the organization of the Church assumed a new form." In other words, the modern "Roman Catholic Church"-a gigantic sect, but a sect only was thus created. It emerged from that portentous conventicle of seventeen years' duration with only a vestige left of the Latin churches, as such. They had been absorbed, or rather they were caged in the iron framework of a new and anomalous union. France, refusing the discipline and accepting only the new

creed subject to Gallican interpretations, preserved the Gallican name to live," while doomed to die. And so a new church emerged from the Trent caldron, (1) with a new Canon of Holy Scripture, including the Apocrypha, as equal with the Prophets; (2) a new Creed, that of Pius IV.; (3) a new "Code of Belief," necessary to salvation, embracing all the interminable definitions of the Trent Council; (4) a new system of church polity, in which a presbyterian theory of the ministry is made dogmatic,1 and the Episcopate is no longer recognized as one of the Holy Orders; (5) a new main-spring of vitality, wholly sectarian in its character, namely, the consolidation of the Society of Jesuits with the new Constitution, in such manner as to make their General its practical lord and master, and the Pope himself only the mouthpiece of their decisions and decrees. From absorption into this sect, and all the ruin and debasement which have followed in every nation that has accepted it, the Nicene Church of England was saved as "a brand plucked from the burning." Such was "the arrow of the Lord's deliverance," when Queen Mary died, and Don Philip went to found the Inquisition and prosecute his cruelties in Spain and the Low Countries. These he had designed for England when by the Divine Providence Parker became Metropolitan, exclaiming, "Lord, into what times hast thou brought me?"

1 See Note H"".