and haughty reserve upon their worldly integrity, honour, energy, prudence, and perseverance; and
forthwith began to rise to a station higher than the heathen Roman, and in three centuries have attained
a wider range of sovereignty, "from which they look down in contempt on what they were, and on the
religion which reclaimed them from paganism." And why should they not? Is it in the nature of the
divine law that man should go backward, or forward? It may be very melancholy to contemplate the fall
of any faith, whether paganism or popery; but history records no such catastrophe from which new
development has not begun. The law of the earth is to advance; and what seem to be retrograde movements
are but so many furtherances of it. The straight line in civilisation may be no where discoverable; but
progress, its object and law, never comes to a stand. The fire is dark when new fuel has been flung upon
it, but the light is not extinguished. New strength and brilliancy are to follow.

Nor is it simply Doctor Nicholas Wiseman and his friends whom it behoves to take this truth to heart.
Does any one doubt that our own divisions have been the chief inducement to the papal aggression? Does
any one, who looks the truth boldly in the face, hesitate to feel or say that something more must result
from the existing agitation, than the mere defeat of Roman Catholic pretensions? It is little to repel the
enemy from the gate if the traitor remains in the citadel. Nor will it suffice to remove individual
offenders. The ground of offence, the pretence for treason, must also be rooted out, at once and for ever.

The English Church was the result of a compromise with Romanism, which still lingers too much in her
constitution, her doctrines, and her services. Let her be compared with the protestant churches of France,
Germany, and Geneva, and this will be seen. Let comparison be made of her doctrinal confessions and
discourses with her thanksgivings and prayers. Let the agitation which denounced Doctor Hampden be examined
side by side with the determination which supported Mr. Gorham. Acts of uniformity have been passed in
vain. Between churches of the same profession, within a hundred yards of each other, are seen daily such
differences of doctrine and ceremonial as would only be intelligible in churches the most widely apart
even to the denial of a common Redeemer. Yet against the long and quiet usage of the one, the other can
oppose its rubric; and in the very face of the simple grandeur of the Liturgy may be flaunted the mystical
pretensions of the Articles. It is time that an end should be put to this, and that "new presbyter" should
be no longer mistakeable for "old priest writ large." Let us tolerate no longer in the English Church
even as matter of obsolete language, that blasphemous assumption of a power of absolution which
the form of Ordination allows, and which the simplicity of the Morning Service condemns. Let us
expunge those curses and mysteries of the Athanasian Creed for which the Litany offers no sanction. Let
us have no more unseemly disputes over that power of regeneration in baptism which no other
permitted miracle in our English Church warrants us in extending to an English minister. Mr. Bennet
told his audience at St. Barnabas three days ago that he could give rubrical authority for lighting
candles on the altar table and other fooleries committed in his church. This may be little excuse for a
man who knows the history of that rubric, and is under obligation as a Protestant minister to act in the
spirit of the intelligent faith he professes; but it is excellent reason for the instant abolition of all further
pretext or warrant for such absurdities. They cannot have any meaning within the walls of a Protestant
church. There, they are simply what Lord John Russell calls them in his admirable letter, mummeries.
What they may be where the Catholic worship is still believed in, and they form but part of the outward
signs of mysteries which still have awful sanction in the hearts of worshippers, is not to the present purpose
in the least. No Protestant has the right to affix Catholic signification to them.

What is the position of our leading English bishops, then, in this very matter? It was the Bishop of
London who officiated at the consecration of St. Barnabas, who previously approved of its Popish foppery
of decoration, and who, amid the candles and surplices and gorgeous accompaniments of the altar, did not
scruple to declare "his admiration of the splendour of God's house which shone around him, and his
appreciation of the imposing services in which he was engaged." Mr. Bennet is now using this fact as he
has a perfect right to do. Those very ceremonies and decorations, so stamped with Episcopal approval,
have since attracted crowds of Sunday rioters to interrupt the worship which they hold to be debased
by their continuance, and the interior of an English church has again been the scene of gross and revolting
disturbance. Mr. Bonnet's last sermon, protected by closed doors and many policemen, was in the form of
an appeal against the scandal and desecration of such scenes; but incidentally it exposed the much greater
scandal. "The Bishop of London," said Mr. Bennet, "came to this church on St. Barnabas day, the 11th
of June last. He entered this house of God, and examined with a critical eye every portion of it. Everything
was pointed out to him by me; nothing was omitted. He came on a grand festival of the Church:
he consecrated this house of God; he gave us his blessing, and went away leaving us his benediction and
God speed you. Now, what difference can there be between June the 11th and November the 24th?"

Ah! what difference indeed! How striking is this simple comparison of dates. God speed you! on the
11th of June. The devil fly away with you! on the 24th of November. But a great deal had happened
in the interval. In that interval the hope of establishing a Popery in England had been frustrated by the over-
eagerness of a Pope in Rome; and the spiritual tyranny which Charles James had been labouring for, Pio
Nono came too suddenly to claim. Let not this be forgotten in the midst of the present excitement, or its
result will be to abridge our liberties instead of extending and securing them. The Bishop of London, in
his charge of the 2nd of November, took the load in denouncing "anything which may seem to indicate a
wish to make the slightest approach" to what he had previously encouraged and assisted without scruple;
and he has been followed by men, formerly more active even than himself in sanctioning covert Popery
under the guise of Puseyism, who are now the loudest in swelling the general clamour, in denouncing the
rival Pope, and in crying out for stringent measures against him. This is what, most of all, we have to
guard against now. "We think we are carrying the Tractarians with us," says the excellent Dean of
Bristol; "but in fact they are tricking us into support of them."

Following the inestimable counsel of that true and honest divine, we repeat that all of us will have reason
to deplore the unexampled excitement now going on around us, if we do not pluck the flower from beneath
the nettle. What we want is not simply to drive away the Pope of Rome, but to extirpate the popes of
England. "If it could be proved to be really true," said the Dean of Bristol, at a meeting in that city, "that
the Church of England does speak with so uncertain a voice as to admit within her pale the superstitious
spirit of Rome, and its rites and observances, the people of England owe a great duty to the Almighty God