man to the truth. So long as these endure, it will continue;honest doubt and earnest, than which there can be nothing nobler or more hopeful;-and dishonest doubt, than which there can be nothing lower. And yet how many minds seem to have an almost morbid dread of infidelity;-as though there were some especial and more dangerous power in this, because it is cf the intellect; therefore it must be put down in any case; and doubt itself, even, must be made somehow to

cease.

How much more blessed than this, could we but climb to the hight where the Master stood, and view this subject as He viewed it. How sublime was His position. He had no ambition to found a system, which should be philosophically impregnable. He came to redeem man to the life of God. Of what avail to Him, in this great view, that the sinful human spirit should be shut off in some one respect from opposing His truth, whilst all the rest remained. Of what avail, that when the will, and the affections, and the whole current of the life, should in any case set themselves against the truth of God, each cavil of doubt should be hushed, and the intellect be compelled to succumb. Rather in His sight may it have been of very necessity and design, that as the whole nature of man is lost in sin, so the whole soul, the intellect with the rest, should be allowed to set itself against the truth of God, in order that in the end all the Being, refined by the discipline of conflict and of struggle, saved as by fire, should humbly bow in willing and joyful submission.

This is the real significance of infidelity. It is the necessary correlate of the doubt which is essential in the very nature of Christianity as its highest means of discipline. We do not fear because of it. We rather rejoice; yea, welcome the doubt which is the very mother of a perfect faith; a faith which is not a blind and easy confidence on the one hand, nor the simple intellectual assent to truths which cannot be resisted on the other, but the exercise of the highest, most unperverted, and comprehensive reason; yea, of the soul itself in all its great capacities, yielding itself up to embrace the truth, and purifying itself to receive the light from God.

ARTICLE VI.-RELIGIOUS LIBERTY SINCE THE REFORMATION

Documents relating to the Settlement of the Church of England by the Act of Uniformity, of 1662. London: W. Kent & Co., Paternoster Row.

Etudes sur L'Histoire de L' Humanité. Par F. LAURENT, Professeur a l' Université de Gaud. Tome IV., Le Christianisme. Tome VII, La Féodalité et L'Eglise. E. JungTreuttel.

Le Christianisme et L' Esprit Moderne. Par ARBOUSSE-BASParis: E. Jung-Treuttel.

TIDE.

L'Eglise et L' Empire Romain, au IV. Siécle. Par M. ALBERT DE BROGLIE. Paris: Didier & Co.

Allgemeines Stautsrecht, von Dr. BLUNTSCHLI. München.

The Patriot and Nonconformist newspapers for August and October, 1862, with Reports of Bicentenary Sermons and Addresses.

Dr. Lushington's Decision in the Court of Arches, in the case of Rowland Williams, D. D., and the "Essays and Reviews."

THE volume at the head of the foregoing list is one of a long catalogue of memorial works produced in England during the past year, by way of commemorating the Bicentenary of Nonconformity. Beginning with the declaration of Charles II. from Breda, April, 1660, in which he promises "a liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted, or called in question, for differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom," it gives a series of upwards of twenty documents--now for the first time issued in a connected form-which exhibit the relations of the King, the Parliament, the Bishops, and the Presbyterian

divines, to each other, in the discussions which preceded and resulted in the Act of Uniformity of 1662. The subsequent acts of Charles II., which were intended to harass and destroy the Nonconformists, are next given in chronological order, and the volume closes with the Act of Toleration, in the first year of William and Mary, 1688.*

We have chosen this documentary collection, and the period which it covers, as our point of departure in an inquiry touching the elements and the conditions of religious liberty, and

*It may assist some who wish for a ready reference to such documents, to have the complete list contained in this volume.

I. Declaration of King Charles II., from Breda. II. Interview of the Presbyterian Ministers with King Charles II., at Breda. III. Discourse of the Ministers with King Charles II. in London. IV. The first Address and Proposals of the Ministers. V. Archbishop Usher's Model of Church Government. VI. Requests verbally presented to King Charles II. in consequence of the Act for Restoring the English clergy. VII. The Bishop's answer to the first proposals of the London Ministers, who attempted the work of reconcilement. VIII. A Defense of our Proposals to His Majesty for Agreement in Matters of Religion, IX. His Majesty's Declaration to all his loving subjects of his Kingdom of England, and dominion of Wales, concerning ecclesiastical affairs. X. The Petition of the Ministers to the King upon the first draft of his Declaration. XI. Alterations in the Declaration proposed by the Ministers. XII. Humble and grateful acknowledgment of some Ministers of London for the Declaration. XIII. A proclamation prohibiting all unlawful and seditious meetings and conventicles under pretence of religious worship. XIV. The King's warrant for the Conference at the Savoy. XV. The exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer. XVI. The Answer of the Bishops to the Exceptions of the Ministers. XVII. The Petition for peace and concord presented to the Bishops, with the proposed Reformation of the Liturgy. XVIII. The Rejoinder of the Ministers to the answer of the Bishops. XIX. Paper offered by Bishop Cosins, and answer thereto. XX. The Discussion on Kneeling at the Lord's Supper. XXI. The Discussion on the Sinfulness of the Liturgy. XXII. The reply to the Bishop's Disputants, which was not answered. XXIII. Petition to the King at the close of the Conference. XXIV. The Act of Uniformity. XXV. Efforts of Presbyterian Ministers to have the King's Declaration of October, 1660, enacted. XXVI. Extracts from Journals of Parliament relating to the passing of the Act of Uniformity. XXVII. The Six Hundred Alterations made in the Book of Common Prayer by Convocation, and adopted by Parliament. XXVIII. The Publication of the Book of Common Prayer. XXIX. The King's Declaration of 27th Dec., 1662. XXX. Proceedings in Parliament, upon the King's Declaration of 26th December, 1662. XXXI. The Conventicle Act, 1664. XXXII. The Five Mile Act. XXXIII. The Conventicle Act, 1670. XXXIV. The Test Act. XXXV. The Toleration Act.

its progress since the Reformation-though for a right understanding of the subject, it will be necessary to glance backward not only to the Reformation, but to the era of Constantine. A review of facts and principles, pertaining to the question of religious freedom, is of more than historical interest at a time when the theological standard of the Church of England, and the political status of the Church of Rome, are among the most vital issues of European Christendom.

Vinet has compared the truths that underlie moral and social order, to "those monumental inscriptions over which the whole community pass as they go to their business, and which every day become more and more defaced, until some friendly chisel is applied to deepen the lines in the worn-out stone, so that every one is forced to observe and to read them. The chisel is in the hands of a small number of men, who perseveringly remain prostrate before that ancient inscription, at the risk of being dashed upon the pavement, and trampled under the heedless feet of the passers-by." This persevering testimony of the faithful few needs to be reiterated from age to age, until the contested truth is wrought into the thoughts and habits of society; and the principle, for which men have suffered and died, becomes itself the life of once persecuting governments and institutions. Nor even then can this witnessing fidelity be wholly intermitted. Governments founded in freedom and right may degenerate into creatures of faction, of selfish ambition, of despotism working even through constitutions and laws. Institutions once vital with principles may stagnate and decay. Events of the hour are giving new significance to the threadbare motto that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty;" and political and religious freedom may yet have to win not Richmond and Rome only, but Washington and Westminster. Our national Constitution, ordained for liberty and justice, barely wrested from the grasp of a despotic oligarchy, is safe only within the lines of a million bayonets; and must at intervals be suspended, as to some of its most vital principles, in order that the whole may be the better shielded by military power. The laws are hushed amid the strife of arms; and liberty itself is restrained by the guards and bur

dens imposed for its defense. The grand political reformation begun upon this soil in the 18th century stopped short before a local oligarchy and a social caste, more radically hostile to liberty than was the colonial despotism of the mother country; and the religious reformation in England stopped short before a hierarchy and a religious caste which has sometimes proved more intolerant than the government of the Papal See. Slavery, harbored in the social system of the South, now threatens the subversion of political liberty upon this continent. A religious establishment, set up as a part of the political system of England, has more than once sought to annihilate the rights of conscience, and to enforce uniformity of belief and worship by civil penalties. The protection of slavery-whose extinction was anticipated by the fathers of the Constitutionhas of late been declared the end for which the Constitution was ordained; and the Act of Uniformity, the enforcement of which, two hundred years ago, caused two thousand ministers to renounce their livings and made religious conscientiousness a crime, has this very year been proclaimed in Parliament the Magna Charta of the Church of England. Whatever, therefore, may serve to give prominence to the first principles of civil and religious liberty, to recall the cost at which these have been established, to impress anew upon succeeding generations the worth of even commonest blessings for which the fathers periled all, suffered all-in a word, whatever gives fit occasion for reiterating the testimony of the past for truth, freedom, righteousness-should be seized upon and improved, as a means of preserving what is already gained, and of inciting to fidelity for the future. In this view the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a grand commemorative liturgy of faith; an Office" for the martyrs and confessors from Abel to Samuel and the prophets, designed to stir all after generations to holy zeal and patience in presence of this great encompassing cloud of witnesses:-and the apostle James bids us "take the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction and of patience." In each succeeding age the old monumental inscriptions should be cut anew; the old moss-grown letters cleansed and chiseled out