all Christendom.' The Nonconformist Brightman suggested that James was no other than the Michael of the Apocalypse, for which monstrous flattery he was corrected by the venerable High Churchman and great Oriental scholar, Dr. Kellet,2 the devout admirer of Archbishop Laud. The admired Nonconformist preacher, Samuel Ward, was even more 'fulsome.' He not only told James that he was 'the Archangel of the Covenant' and 'an Angel of Light,' but that he was' perhaps the Angel of the Sixth Vial,' and that he 'excels all other kings in Science,' &c.3 If a Bishop had written these words, they would be cited over and over again by our intolerant Liberationists.

A certain casuistical twisting of historical nomenclature, which is common to all these writers, will strike the expert as peculiarly disingenuous. Our modern Separatists during the last quarter of a century have been absurdly calling themselves 'Nonconformists.' Their recent study of the origin and history of Congregationalism, superficial and shallow as it is, has opened their eyes to the truth that the Nonconformists and the Separatists were sworn foes, that the Nonconformists always spoke of the Congregationalists as schismatics, and that Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry (in his last writing) were at least as bitter against the Nonconformists as they were against the Bishops and the common Christian people. The Congregational Union's seven historians try to escape the proper consequences of so unpleasant a discovery by playing a trick with the nomenclature. In order to conceal from the 'young Congregationalist' the truth that he is not a Nonconformist, they resort to the not very honest shuffling of words. Wherever they find the word 'Nonconformist' applied to one who was really a Nonconformist—that is, to one whose quarrel was not with the very being and substance of the Church, but only with the form or forms of the Church-there they erase it, and wilfully substitute the word 'Puritan.' They call every Nonconformist a 'Puritan,' and they call every Separatist foe of the Nonconformists a 'Nonconformist.' Yet 'Puritan' was not the name by which the Nonconformists called themselves; it was the nickname which the common conscience of the Christian people of England affixed upon Nonconformists and Separatists alike. They were both Puritans.

Dedication to Reasons out of God's Word, 1604.

2 Miscellanies of Divinitie, 1635, i. 152, 153.

3 A Coal from the Altar, p. 87; A Peace Offering to God for the Blessings we enjoy under His Majesty's Reign, Oct. 9, 1623, pp. 134, 135.

Dr. Brown virtually pronounces judgment against himself and his colleagues for the adoption of this piece of legerdemain by citing a contemporary who collected for himself the maine opinions of the rigidest sort of those that are called Puritanes,' whom, however, he does not name. The person who distinguished the two sorts of Puritans' into '(1) those that will communicate with us,' and '(2) others that will not,' was the Lord Keeper Puckering. The first sort were the Nonconformists; the second sort of Puritans,' said he, are now called Barrowists,' and he gave eleven particulars in which the Separatists differed from the Nonconformists. The chief of these are the fourth, fifth, and eleventh: That the Church of England is no true member of the Church of Christ'; That the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, as they are administered in the Church of England, be no true sacrament'; and 'That the Church of England, as it standeth now by law established, professeth not a true Christ, that it hath no Ministers indeed and no Sacraments.' That Congregationalist Separatism was founded upon these fanatical and intolerant assertions of the rigider sort of Puritans,' 'the Puritans now called Barrowists,' can be fully proved by quotations from Brown, Barrowe, and Greenwood, and from Penry's latest writing, and particularly from the bitter writings of the last three against the Nonconformists.

We know of only one apology which the seven quasihistorians can make for this disingenuous confusion and falsifying of terms. They may say that if the fathers of Separatism had a right to call a Separatist meeting a 'wedding,' although they knew that it was not a wedding in the real sense of the word, so their descendants have a right to call themselves 'Nonconformists,' although they know that they are not Nonconformists in the real and historical sense of the word. Their casuistry in this matter has been exposed in the columns of the Church Times, and possibly this exposure may account for the damaging confession which Dr. Mackennal has put into a footnote, as if it were an afterthought, at the end of his chapter on the 'Separatists in Exile' (p. 125). Having quoted in his text a quotation from Dr. Waddington, in which John Robinson speaks of 'the Unconformable Ministers,' and contrasts them with 'us,' 'the Independent Separatists,' Dr. Mackennal explains that Robinson means those whom he and his colleagues call exclusively 'the Puritans.'' The term Nonconformist,' this unfortunate Balaam is obliged to add, 'was originally applied to nonconforming members of the Church of England, and not to those who had VOL. XXXVI.-NO. LXXII.

I I

separated from it.' Had Dr. Mackennal and his colleagues only known this, or had honestly owned it, when they began their absurd caricatures of history, the whole contents and character of their unlearned Tendenzschriften, as well as their nomenclature, would have been different.

SHORT NOTICES.

Primary Convictions. Being Discussions of which the greater part were delivered in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, before the President, Faculties, and Students of Columbia College in the City of New York. By WILLIAM ALEXANDER, D.D., Hon. D.C.L. Oxon., Hon. LL.D. Dublin, Lord Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. (London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., 1893.) THIS book has an interesting history. The Bishop of Derry mentions in his preface that the trustees of Columbia College were wishful 'to give renewed effect to an old foundation' by endowing a series of Conferences or Discussions, primarily addressed to the students of the College, upon subjects connected with the Evidences of Christianity, to be delivered in some suitable and convenient Church,' and that in response to the invitation of the Bishop of New York he delivered in substance' the greater number' of the Discussions he has now published in the Church of the Heavenly Rest, New York, in March 1892' (Preface, p. v). Besides its interest as telling the history of the contents of the volume, the preface contains a very valuable passage on a subject which is not dealt with in the book. Bishop Alexander refers to the topic of 'the cumulative character of the Evidences of Christianity' mainly that he may say that he felt it to be too abstruse and difficult for the particular purpose he had in view, but he does not pass it by without illuminating by the following passage an idea which may claim the support of Bishop Butler and Mr. Davison :

"If that which we are concerned to prove has one strong circumstance or principle of apparent truth, the reasoner succeeds in constituting one improbability of falsehood. But if he succeeds in exhibiting two or three or more such circumstances or principles, a process goes on beyond simple addition of two or three or more improbabilities of falsehood. The improbability of the simultaneous coexistence of so many characters of truth is something quite different from the separate existence of one or more of these characters of truth.

'Let us suppose that there are seven great heads of probable evidence for the truth of Christianity-prophecy, miracles, the morality of the Gospel, the propagation of the Gospel, the existence of the Church, the character of Jesus, the moral and intellectual character formed by Christianity.... The degree of probability arising from the simultaneous existence of all these seven departments is something different from, and calculably greater than, the seven separate characters of truth' (Pref. pp. vii-ix).

We are inclined to wish that the Bishop of Derry had used his powers in an attractive presentation of a line of thought of so great

importance as that to which we have referred. For it is the logical inference from converging arguments which affords the great intellectual verification of the Christian Faith.

Yet readers of these Discussions have no right to complain because the Bishop put his first thought aside. For they will find most of the Articles of the Creed treated with a suggestive power that is rare, and an interest in human life and a knowledge of secular thought which must have had much attraction for the congregation he addressed. It was the preacher's aim to emphasize and explain the central facts of Christianity as distinguished from the methods in which they have sometimes been expressed, to state the essential, irreducible credenda' of 'the two great creeds of the undivided Church,' and to show that they claim an 'assent' which may rightly be called a 'conviction' (Pref. pp. xiv, xv).

It is true that the full logical consistency of the Christian Faith can only be seen in its most complete development. Each one of the subordinate doctrines which are grouped round the central verities is an additional piece of evidence for the truth of the whole system. For each one of them is a proof that what is central will bear to be applied, and that the result is in harmony with a need of a department of human life. But for the sake of not a few at the present day, and perhaps not less in America than in England, it may sometimes be well to lay much emphasis simply on central

truths.

There is a clear statement about omissions in the Creeds:

'All thoughtful persons must have noticed that there are remarkable omissions in both Creeds-more especially in the earlier-omissions of much significance in any formula which is to be regarded as a summary of the Christian Faith. Some of the principal of these may be briefly mentioned. The Christian Church presents herself to the nations with a book, or "library" of books, in her hand. In the Apostles' Creed not a syllable is said about the book. In the Nicene Creed, no doubt, there are two references to it, both, however, to one portion of it, the Prophets. Justification by faith is a wholesome and comfortable doctrine, but it is not explicitly mentioned. The existence of angels and archangels is a verity of revelation, soothing and magnificent for a believer. Not a word is said about these exalted beings in either of the Creeds, unless they are to be included in the "all things invisible" of which God the Father Almighty is the Maker. Sacraments are necessary for the very existence and sustenance of the Church. In the Apostles' Creed neither is mentioned. In the Nicene Creed Baptism is splendidly summarized, "One Baptism for the remission of sins." But even in it the Eucharist finds no place, though the hearts of the redeemed then and ever murmured round it, like bees round the flowers. The special miracles of Jesus (one of the two main pillars of Christian evidences) are not adverted to in either Creed; the Creed is so busy with the Miracle which Jesus is that it cannot now look even to the miracles which Jesus

1 We understand the reasons why the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds alone are referred to, but there are passages in the preface (p. xiv) and in pp. 7-18 which make us wish that it had been mentioned, perhaps in a note, that the Quicunque vult has practically been accepted by the whole Church.

did.

Christians believe that there is such a thing as final separation from God; neither is that directly and distinctly mentioned in either Creed' (pp. 11, 12).

We need not remind our readers of the very similar point of view in the late Bishop of Carlisle's Foundations of the Creed, except to say that those who are familiar with that book will yet find much in Bishop Alexander's volume which will repay their thought.

Among the many subjects which are treated in a helpful manner is that of the exceptional position of man according to the teaching of science and according to the Bible. The physical structure of man in, among other features, brain and skin and voice and hand is regarded as prophetical of his special place in the universe; and the harmony between this thought and the narrative in Genesis is shown. The profound truthfulness to human nature of the history of the Fall is pointed out and strikingly illustrated. The unique character of the Manhood of Christ in its fulfilment of prophecy, its perfect holiness, its lasting power, no less than in the features of the histories of it and its end in the Resurrection, is made clear. The assertion of the reality of Christ's sympathy touches a subject on which many thinking minds are sorely perplexed.

Useful as is much to which we have referred, and much which the limits of our space compel us to pass by unnoticed, we are disposed to count among the most valuable parts of the book the Bishop's treatment of the Resurrection, of the penal side of punishment, and of the indications of the Deity of Christ.

'The Resurrection is not a fraud. The despised apologetics of the last century have at least done this service, that they have blown this coarse and clumsy theory into space. The Resurrection is not a singular recovery of a lacerated and tortured man, awakened from a death-like swoon by the coolness of the rocky chamber or the pungency of the spices. We have to account for cowards turned into heroes, for the faith that overcame the world. The Gospels imply the lustre and beauty of a new life—a form with suffering lifted off until it seemed "other." Á brow marked with thorns, a frame cramped with agony, a lamed man, a crawling spectre, skulking and whispering-could that have seemed the risen Lord, the Prince of Life? Strange source of deathless joy! Strange spring for that full tide of which each Easter is but one flashing ripple!* Nor, again, is the Resurrection the projection of creative enthusiasm. As the Church is too holy for a foundation of rottenness, so is she too real for a foundation of mist' (pp. 82, 83; compare p. 104).

It is too frequently forgotten that punishment is penal as well as restorative and exemplary, and it is therefore with much satisfaction that we have read the striking passage on this subject. Punishment, we are told,

'has surely an element which is purely penal-vindictive, if the word

1 The Bishops agree in regretting some parts of Bishop Pearson's great work on the Creed, including his treatment of the last clause.

2 An almost identical expression of the same thought has been published more than once in our own pages (see Church Quarterly Review, January 1880, p. 314, July 1891, p. 302).