after to Versailles, and governed France and its capital from their palaces. This state of things lasted one hundred and thirty years, and then the cannon of the Bastille were again heard, but it was to proclaim the fall of the monarchy, and to announce the birth of Revolution.

In 1814 and 1815 Paris underwent two capitulations, but in neither case was there any siege, and only in the first case any fighting. On the 30th of March, 1814, the allied troops were close upon Paris, but the city was unprepared for defence. The first Imperial Government, in this respect a true prototype of the second, had allowed the Parisians to remain in complete ignorance of the real situation of affairs up to the time that the enemy was at the gates of the capital. Whatever, however, could be humanly performed at so brief a notice, was effected; and a battle one of the most brilliant in history, although obscured in the immense blaze of military glory, or the military carnage, of the Empire was delivered under the walls of the city, before Belleville, by the marshals Marmont and Mortier, against the allied armies. The two marshals had but about 22,000 or 23,000 men to oppose to 170,000, of whom 100,000 were actually engaged against them. They withstood this enormously disproportionate force for an entire day, and put 12,000 of their enemies hors de combat. Marshal Moncey at the same time defended the barrière de Clichy, at the head of a detachment of National Guards, against overwhelming numbers-a feat of arms which has been commemorated in a picture of Eugène Delacroix, and by a statue erected on the theatre of his exploit, which statue, strangely enough, was only completed and uncovered on the day when the news of the defeat of Wissembourg arrived in Paris. By a strange coincidence of destiny, a prince who entered Paris in the train of the allied sovereigns fifty-six years ago, supported by armies numbering about 700,000 men, is now engaged again in hostilities before the capital, and submitting it to a siege of unprecedented magnitude. What may be the results of this immense military enterprise, it is impossible to foresee. Paris may yet

organize and discipline the forces at present within her walls so as to be able to meet the Prussians in open field; and if France is not degenerate to an incredible degree, she has in her provinces millions of men and indefinite resources for organizing forces far superior in numbers to those which Germany now has in the field, and with which she can march to the relief of the capital. We can, however, speak with certainty of the past, and say that the stately and unrivalled capital of France has as yet behaved in a way worthy of her splendour and her secular renown; and that the fortitude and concord of her citizens in this her hour of adversity have hitherto disappointed her enemies, and equalled the expectations of her friends. WILLIAM STIGAND.

IT may be desirable to add a few remarks to the article on the Athanasian Creed contained in the August number of the Contemporary, because since its publication strong confirmations of the positions contained in it have appeared from two different quarters.

I. One was the interesting paper published under the title of "A Few More Words on the Athanasian Creed," in the October number of this Review. It is not our intention to enter into any personal controversy on this subject, least of all with one who bears the honoured name of the writer of that essay. But it may be well to point out how singularly it supports the conclusions arrived at by those eminent theologians who, from Chillingworth down to Bishop Lonsdale, have condemned the use of the Athanasian Creed. We do not mean by this merely the fact that Mr. Maurice, with his usual candour, expresses his conviction "that it is impossible much longer to retain the Athanasian Creed as part of our services, and that if a composition so weighty and awful, treating of the most transcendent topics in the most distinct language, requires explanations and compromises which destroy reverence and introduce confusion, its worth for our common worship must be gone." This acknowledgment, however valuable, might be considered as reluctantly extorted from a generous adversary. It is more important to observe that the grounds of that reluctance-the grounds on which the revered

author of that essay tells us that he himself admires the Creed-are such as more than establish the conclusions at which he has arrived; that "just because one honours it and has learnt deep lessons from it, one must desire that it should not be heard in public, that it should be kept only for secret meditation.”

These grounds are that by tracing the ideas of the Creed behind its outward form into the inner source from which they spring, and by tracing back the meaning of its words as they occur in the Creed to the meaning which they have in the Bible (so far as they occur there at all)—a true and valuable sense may be found both for its dogmatical statements and for its condemnatory clauses. The sense which Mr. Maurice finds is far more spiritual and exalted than that ascribed to the Creed by its usual advocates. But on this very account it may be taken as the most favourable specimen of the endeavour to affix to an ancient document a meaning entirely different from its ordinary, and, as far as we know anything of the matter, its historical sense. What that ordinary and historical sense is has been already indicated in our original article. But it may be useful to take this occasion of pointing out that the like process might be applied to almost every serious document ever put forward by any Church in Christendom, and that in spite of any such possible interpretation such documents have nevertheless been discarded as unfit for public use.

1. We would take two examples. One is "the Solemn League and Covenant." Whatever may be said of the original adoption of the Athanasian Creed by the French or Spanish Church, it can hardly be said at any time to have been consciously adopted as the expression of the faith of the English nation. But the Solemn League and Covenant may truly claim the credit of having, alone of all British Creeds, received the deliberate assent of the whole Legislature, and the ardent welcome of the whole kingdom. Its very title is a history of the profound conviction and general acceptance with which it was adopted. It is "the Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation and Defence of Religion, the Honour and Happiness of the King, and the Peace and Safety of the Three Kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland; agreed upon by Commissioners from the Parliament and Assembly of Divines in England, with Commissioners of the Convention of Estates, and General Assembly in Scotland; approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and by both Houses of Parliament and Assembly of Divines in England, and taken and subscribed by them, Anno 1643; and thereafter, by the said authority, taken and subscribed by all Ranks in Scotland and England the same Year; and ratified by Act of the Parliament of Scotland, Anno 1644: And again renewed in Scotland, with an Acknowledgment of Sins, and Engagement to Duties, by all Ranks, Anno 1648, and by Parliament 1649; and taken and subscribed by King Charles II. at Spey, June

23, 1650; and at Scoon, January 1, 1651." No other Confession of Faith in any time of our ecclesiastical history-certainly not the the Thirty-nine Articles, still less the Creed of St. Athanasius-has been accepted with such an overwhelming weight of moral enthusiasm, as that which was exhibited when the Solemn League and Covenant was signed with tears and blood in the Greyfriars' Church at Edinburgh, or when it was read to both Houses of Parliament and to the Assembly of Divines from the pulpit of St. Margaret's Church in Westminster, "with an audible voice article by article, each person standing uncovered, with his right hand lifted up bare to heaven, worshipping the great name of God, and swearing to the performance of it." And most assuredly it would be quite as easy in its case, as in the case of the Athanasian Creed, to discover a true Biblical sense in the sacred words which it uses, and a Christian significance which may be wrapped up in its strange statements and bitter denunciations. Its damnatory clauses are almost as dogmatic and almost as unsparing as the Athanasian anathemas. Its subscribers are pledged to "the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy, (that is, churchgovernment by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors, and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical Officers depending on that hierarchy,) superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness, lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues; and that the Lord may be one, and his name one, in the three kingdoms;" to the "discovery of all such as have been or shall be incendiaries, malignants, or evil instruments, by hindering the reformation of religion, dividing the king from his people, or one of the kingdoms from another, or making any faction or parties amongst the people, contrary to this League and Covenant; that they may be brought to public trial, and receive condign punishment, as the degree of their offences shall require or deserve, or the supreme judicatories of both kingdoms respectively, or others having power from them for that effect, shall judge convenient;" and to "the securing and preserving the purity of religion against all error, heresy, and schism, and namely, Independency, Anabaptism, Antinomianism, Arminianism, and Socinianism, Familism, Libertinism, Scepticism, and Erastianism." No doubt here (as possibly in the Athanasian Creed) there may have been a ground in the circumstances of the time, or in the nature of the opinions and things denounced, for the fierceness of these denunciations. No doubt, even at the time, qualifying statements and "explanatory notes" were adopted by those who signed it. "The word 'League' was put into the title by Sir Harry Vane as thinking that it might be broken sooner than'a Covenant,' and in

the first article he inserted that general phrase of reforming 'according to the Word of God.' When Mr. Coleman read the Covenant before the House of Lords in order to their receiving it, he declared that by 'prelacy' all sorts of Episcopacy were not intended, but only the forms therein described. Thus the wise men on both sides endeavoured to outwit each other in wording the articles."* A whole catalogue of "salvos" were drawn up, by which those who were discontented with it might "take it in their own sense." And, in fact, most of "the episcopal divines who made the greatest figure in the Church after the Restoration did not refuse it ;" nor did the gay Charles II., nor did the chivalrous Montrose, nor the politic Elector Palatine, nor the holy Leighton. All ministers, old and youngnoblemen, gentlemen, common councilmen, officers in the armyall pressed or were constrained to take it. One voice from amongst the dominant party resisted the general enthusiasm or the general compulsion. It was the same voice that afterwards was raised against the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed. "Mr. Baxter,” we are told, "kept his people from taking the Covenant lest it should be a snare to them." It is evident that whatever explanations are applicable to the Athanasian clauses would, if it were still in use amongst us, be applicable to the Covenant. A staunch Episcopalian could have used the denunciations against Episcopacy with a similar "Explanatory Note" to that which enables a charitable or inquiring divine to use the Athanasian Creed. And had it seemed good to the Church of England or to the Church of Scotland (as it has still seemed good to that small section of the Church of Scotland which prides itself on being the only true representative of that body) to preserve and recite this document amongst its standards of faith, a devout and philosophical Churchman might have found reasons for doing so, as now for the Athanasian Creed.

Yet, in spite of these reasons for retaining this solemn Confession, thus grandly inaugurated, it has, in the Church of England, been suppressed altogether, and in the Church of Scotland been reduced to that condition in which the Athanasian Creed, according to the proposal of a distinguished living prelate, ought to be reduced in the Church of England, namely, relegated to the close of its authorized formularies, without any binding obligation for its general use. One only echo remains of that which was once the voice of the United Church of Great Britain. The sect of the Cameronians, or, as they call themselves, "the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland," still subscribe and still recite the Solemn League and Covenant. In the north of Ireland, where they are cut off from the *Neal's "Puritans." iii., 58–62, 370; Stoughton's "Church of the Civil Wars," .i. 324.