prising to us that he has found time to do as much as he has done in this respect; but practical measures of great moment ought not to be postponed to topics of more political or party. interest perhaps, but of much more speculative advantage. Whilst a moderately-reforming Ministry is engaged, night after night, in parrying the thrusts of the Tories on the one side, and the ultra-reformers on the other, subjects of the most grave and complicated nature are delegated, one after another, to Parliamentary committees, who examine witnesses—make a report— and there the matter ends. A curious and instructive return might be made of the lost labours of Select Committees of both Houses for the last twenty years; nay, the time occupied by their enquiries has oftentimes been worse than lost; for it has sometimes had the effect of shifting the responsibility of organizing reforms from the only quarter capable of pursuing them with effect-namely, the Government. Hence, a strong opinion. is beginning to be entertained, that either a regular Minister of Justice is required, or a Central Board, acting (like the Poor Law Commissioners) in some degree under the Secretary of State: but invested with sufficient power for the regulation and management of the police, the prisons, and all branches of the penal system, without the necessity of constant reference to the Home Office. We venture to predict, that many years will not elapse before the establishment of some such authority is found indispensable; and, although the present want of it ought not to be an excuse for any member of the legislature relaxing his individual exertions for the good of society, the deficiency, until supplied, cannot but impair the efficiency of the executive, and operate injuriously to the public service. ART. V.-Patience and confidence the Strength of the Church: A Sermon, preached on the Fifth of November before the University of Oxford, and now published at the wish of many of its Members. By the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, and Canon of Christ Church. 8vo. Oxford: 1837. WA "HAT times are coming upon the earth, we know not; but the general expectation of persons of all character in all ⚫ nations is an instinct implanted by God to warn us of a coming 'storm.' So says Dr Fusey; and assuredly, to the other fig'tree' signs which announce approaching changes, he has added one of no insignificant character. That a sermon should have been preached before the University of Oxford, on the day appointed for the remembrance of the deliverance of England by the Revolution of 1688, in which the preacher reversed the precedent of Balaam, and mounted the pulpit to curse, where he was appointed to bless-in which the great work of our forefathers is plainly denounced as a sin, and held up as deserving of national humiliation, instead of thanksgiving-is a phenomenon of importance and interest to those who watch the course of events. The place, the occasion, the dignity of the bold innovator, and the assent of a large portion of his congregation, implied in their request for the publication of the sermon, command an attention very different from that which might have been excited by a mere expression of sentiment from an insulated individual. The contingency of the last 5th of November falling on a Sunday, and its service being thus attended by numbers for whom the celebration of the political festival would have had no attraction, afforded undoubtedly a strong provocation to preachers whose zeal against the wickedness of modern governments was ready to boil over on the first opportunity. Accordingly, that day seems to have been selected for a simultaneous pulpit-attack, from the ecclesiastical high places of England and Ireland, against her Majesty's Ministers and Commons,-although it must be confessed that the onslaught bore little appearance of concert; for while the right wing, posted at Oxford, was directing its artillery against the Whigs through the sides of William III., the left, at Dublin, was battering the Catholics through those of James II.;-both, however, agreeing in letting off an occasional volley at Guy Fawkes, whose shade must have been surprised and gratified at the participation of such eminent associates in his annual martyrdom. But with the greater part of Dr Pusey's sermon on that occasion, we have no concern; much of it is beautiful as well as appropriate; and it if be true, as he alleges, that the doctrine of non-resistance to established authority is one which meets with little practical attention at the present day, it is at least one which no sincere believer will endeavour to controvert or to evade. We merely wish to express our sentiments on the last part of it—the application of that doctrine to the question of the Revolution-a portion of his subject which the author has but briefly touched in his sermon, but which he evidently considers as the prominent point in it,-judging from the long justification which he has attached to it in the shape of a preface. And now, perhaps, we may the more readily learn our lesson from that other event, for which we this day render to God thanksgiving, the arrival on this day of him who became William III. Man's sin is no hinderance to thankfulness for God's mercy; rather, the more we sinned, the more should we be thankful to God for not giving us over to our sins, for making that, as it now is, at last legitimate to us and our duty, which in our forefathers was sin, yea, and for the chastisements with which he has visited our sins. The arrival of William was in itself, ou God's part, a blessing; it was not, we may trust, on that of the prince, a guilty act; at all events we may separate the mercy of God from the sin of man; it prevented further acts of tyranny on the part of James; it probably saved the nation from the miseries of anarchy and civil war, which, but for his arrival, had men pursued the same course, might have followed; and in this the church and nation might have been grievously injured; and for this, and for the preservation of our church amid this convulsion, we have great cause of thankfulness.' But 'It is not without an apparent providence that these two events are so brought together upon the same day, the one in which, without his own merit, man was passive, and God delivered him from extremest peril; in the other, where, had men, like our bishops and a confessor of this place, remained passive under the shadow of God's wing, the ty ranny had passed over, man interposed schemes of his own; they did that, which our Lord upon the cross was taunted to do, but did not; they "sinned themselves," and so they were permitted to mar the good purpose of God. I say "mar, " for though God has been abundant in mercy, no one can have traced the state of our church and nation, since that second rebellion, without seeing God's judgments, though tempered with mercy. Let any one ask when was the golden age of our divines? All will say the reign of Charles II., when their passive virtues had been called out, and they exercised by suffering. The last century, every one as readily condemned as the deadest and shallowest period of English Theology and of the English Church. And this could be traced, were this the place, to the line which men took in resisting James's evil. The state feared and hated the Church, which it causelessly suspected; it could not understand that men might on principle object to the act which set the sovereign on the throne, and yet upon principle obey, yea, teach others cheerfully to obey the sovereign whom God had permitted to be so placed. It ejected a valuable portion of her members, the nonjurors; divided and so weakened her; cut off from her one element of teaching; gave her bishops for secular ends, and profaned her offices to strengthen secular parties; wilfully corrupted her, and stirred up enemies against her and our holy faith. As clearly could it be shown that the present storm, which lowers around our Church and State, is but a drawing out of the principles of what men have dared to call the "Glorious Revolution;" as that revolution (though in this portion of our country, by God's mercy, without bloodshed, as indeed, besides his other mercies, he generally restrains men in a second revolution, by an implanted instinct, from renewing the miseries of the first) was the sequel and result of the first rebellion. The name given to the act of 1688 is no question of words; the service of this day evinces the feeling of the Church that it is not indifferent to God how we look back upon his dealings with our forefathers; if we would not be partakers of other men's sins, we must disavow them; while we boast of them, we make ourselves sharers in them; if we would cut off the curse entailed by the fathers upon the children, we must disclaim the act which has entailed it; we should thankfully acknowledge God's undeserved mercies, not glory in our fathers' sins, so may he exempt us from the impending chastisement.' Strange as such sentiments appear to Englishmen, and have appeared ever since the name of Englishmen became a title of honour among the nations, it will not be imagined that we are about to make solemn charges of sacrilege and heresy against Dr Pusey and his admirers on account of them. The Revolution has for us no more sanctity than any other great political act of which the consequences still survive: the State, by fencing it round with an imaginary sacredness, and intruding the commemoration of it into the solemn service of the Church, did, in our opinion, nothing more than provoke mocking and encourage hypocrisy. To see its principles attacked in fair and open controversy excites no scrupulous horror in us; and it is always agreeable to see the opinions of any class of reasoners fairly pushed to their legitimate extent, without any regard for mere appearances, or scruple at offending the consciences of less thoroughgoing brethren. Above all things, we would disclaim all foolish sneers against the loyalty of the party whose sentiments we have now to consider. To charge its leaders with a desire to disorganize the established connexion of church and state, from mere dislike to the principles on which the latter is now administered, would be, we are well aware, to cast a very unjust imputation on them;-whatever we may think of the possible dangers to which their views might expose that connexion, if carried fully out by ardent and unflinching partisans ;-for Sacheverell, - too, stickled for non-resistance, and his mob illustrated the doctrine by 'destroying meeting-houses, plundering the dwelling'houses of eminent Dissenters, threatening to pull down those of the Lord Chancellor and other Whigs, and preparing to attack the Bank!' Still, many of those views, and especially such as are contained in this Sermon of Dr Pusey's, are daring novelties. It is true, that they exhibit only a return, such as is ever taking place in the revolution of human affairs,-to ancient notions and principles, long since entombed with their zealous supporters; but when this whirligig of time' brings us round again to the very same point which public opinion had reached some centuries ago, the old doctrines are become new to us; and this is the only sense in which any thing in politics can be said to be a novelty. For in matters ecclesiastical and civil, there is nothing strictly new under the sun. The democrat, whom we call an innovator, can appeal to his own favourite authorities,-to the States of Italy in the middle ages, and to those of classical Greece long before,-for precedents to countenance his boldest flights. So it is with the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience. They were in favour, it should seem, under Nebuchadnezzar and Darius the Mede. In England, they 'skulked in old homilies,' to use a phrase of Bolingbroke, before King James I.; but were talked, written, and preached into vogue in that inglorious reign.' In 1622, the University of Oxford solemnly sanctioned them; and, by a noble stretch of her principles of discipline, enacted that all persons promoted to degrees, were to subscribe articles to that effect; and to take an oath, that they not only at present detested the opposite opinion, but that they would at no future time entertain it! In 1683, the same University again proclaimed them by a 'solemn judgment and decree,' which, in 1709, the House of Lords was ill advised enough to condemn unanimously to the flames. But, by an unusual circumstance in human affairs, the burning of the decree by no means promoted its popularity; and the doctrines in question went so quietly to sleep, that he who now arouses them from their century of oblivion may fairly be termed an innovator. As such, we recommend him to the grave rebuke of that learned body whose repose he and his confederates disturb by their new-fangled conceits. Our concern is with the truth of his doctrines only;-the doctrines of one of the ablest, certainly the most learned of the writers of his party, on a subject not of mere historical interest, but applicable to every time, and perhaps in an especial manner to our own. We must therefore buckle on once more the armour of our old Revolution prinçiples to meet this fresh antagonist ;-armour which has stood the |