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feeling between parties who needed to act in the utmost harmony and sympathy. The conduct of Leicester still more thoroughly diverted the confidence of the leading Dutch statesmen, and occasioned the formation of factions between whom the bitterest animosity was excited. The keen Spanish general was not slow to take advantage of these facts, and notwithstanding the almost desperate condition of his own troops, and the great lack of needful appliances, he was slowly advancing towards the subjugation of the rebellious provinces. In military affairs the English lord was no match for the Italian prince. In the midst of these complicated affairs, Leicester was seized with a desire to visit England. Serious as it would have been merely to leave the country at such a crisis without any head, it were less serious than the arrangements which he made for its government during his absence; especially those by which he committed two of the most important posts to already suspected officers, who in due time betrayed them to Parma. This of course widened the breach between the two nations. Leicester and the States waxed hotter all the while the former was in England. All sorts of animosities were thereby excited in the Netherlands; and these were still more inflamed by two or three mischief-making agents of the governor.

The quarrel of

"Here, then, were Deventer and Leicester plotting to overthrow the government of the States; the States and Hohenlo arming against Leicester; the extreme democratic party threatening to go over to the Spaniards within three months; the Earl accused of attempting the life of Hohenlo; Hohenlo offering to shed the last drop of his blood for Queen Elizabeth; Queen Elizabeth giving orders to throw Hohenlo into prison as a traitor; Councillor Wilkes trembling for his life at the hands both of Leicester and Hohenlo; and Buckhurst doing his best to conciliate all parties, and imploring her majesty in vain to send over money to help on the war, and to save her soldiers from starving." U. N. Vol. II. p. 237.

After an absence of six months Leicester returned, but his administration was marked with the same imprudence and party spirit as before. Up to the date when he resigned his office, which he did in no long time after, the English alliance had done little for the Netherlands.

Most fatal to all hopes of success, as well as a continual source of powerful irritation, was the negotiation for peace in which the English government had indulged, with intended secrecy at first, but afterwards more openly, from almost the very commencement of the alliance. The Queen and most of her ministers were intensely averse to war, apparently on account of its expense. The overtures of peace on the part of England were eagerly encouraged by Farnese, to whom they were made; and he made reiterated and most solemn asseverations of his sincere desire for the restoration of amicable relations. Yet he was at the very time the chief agent in one of the vastest plans ever laid, for the invasion of England, and the dethronement of its monarch. The gigantic duplicity and audacious lying which were practised by Alexander in these negotiations, makes us almost forget the infamy of the hypocrisy in contemplating the grandeur of its proportions. But it was kept up till the very moment when he expected the arrival of the Invincible Armada and his own summons to lead his troops to London and take possession of that kingdom in the name of Philip!

We cannot follow our author in his fine panoramic view of the expedition of the Armada, its battles, its defeat, and the disastrous termination of a project of so many years' formation, and so costly an outlay. The description is the most satisfactory we have ever seen. The present volumes close very nearly with the close of this great enterprise; and we wait with impatience for the remaining chapters of a history which more. strongly than ever substantiates the truth of a proposition of late more and more believed, that "the history of the world is the history of Christianity."

ARTICLE III.

THE BATTLE (OF THE BOOKS.

1. Recent Inquiries in Theology, by eminent English Churchmen; being "Essays and Reviews." Edited, with an Introduction, by REV. FREDERICK H. HEDGE, D.D. Fourth American edition. 12mo. pp. xiv., 498. Boston Walker,

Wise & Co. 1862.

2. Tracts for Priests and People. By various Writers. Second edition. 12mo. pp. viii., 372. 1862. (Same Publishers.)

3. Replies to " Essays and Reviews."

Essays and Reviews."... With a Preface by

the Lord Bishop of Oxford, &c., &c. 8vo. pp. x., 516. Oxford and London: John Henry & James Parker. 1862. 4. Aids to Faith: a Series of Theological Essays. By several Writers. Being a Reply to "Essays and Reviews." Edited by WILLIAM THOMPSON, D. D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. 12mo. pp. 538. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1862.

WE devoted an article to the first of this family-circle in our former volume, at page 261. It certainly must be considered quite a stimulative work; for the progeny of books, pamphlets, and review-articles which have sprung out of its publicationis already of a patriarchal count. If the notice thus taken of it were really, for the most part, a defence set up against its individual assault upon the Christian faith, we should say that the attention so bestowed were greatly disproportionate to its merits. Its papers are neither marked by originality, strength, or any sort of convincing power. They are little else than the old English deism, written down to the present times, with continental annotations and emendations the last style of respectable "free thinking" airing its well-bred manners in the bands and cassock of the Church which pays its salary to preach just the contrary sentiments.

Beyond the largest pretensions of these Essays and Reviews,' however, the subject of Christian belief has an ever-living value of its own, which more than justifies all the labor devoted to it in the controversy now going on over this famous volume. As the essayists and reviewers put their observations and arguments. into several brief and disconnected dissertations, so their opponents have followed the same plan in the works above indicated. This gives the whole discussion a fragmentary character, unfavorable to completeness of treatment; but, on the other hand, it relieves the matter of a wearisome prolixity, and gives it a better chance of a popular reading. It is evident that the writers, on both sides, desire a wider than merely learned and scholarly hearing. "For the debate (as Mr. Hughes says, in one of these papers) has come down to the every-day, working world. Men and women, occupied with the common work of life who are earning their bread in the sweat of their brows, and marrying, and bringing up children, and struggling, and sinning, and repenting - feel that the questions which schoolmen are discussing, are somehow their questions."

Mr. Hughes is right.

The Tracts for Priests and People,' which this gentleman, of Tom Brown' reputation, opens, is an attempt to build a dyke against this ocean of German unbelief upon the sandy and flat lands of the Broad Church catholicity. It is rather a review of the reviewers of the Essays and Reviews,' than a refutation of that work; and in its zeal against the opponents of the essayists, it becomes their frequent apologist. It has no fears that these bold speculators will do any special harm; has much hope that their shaking the old oak of the Christian creeds will fix it the more firmly, which doubtless will be the case, but with no thanks to this effort to pull it up by the roots. "What I do fear (writes Mr. Hughes) is the dishonesty of the attempts which have been made to put them down, and to stifle free inquiry." This strikes the key-note of the volume. It would find and occupy a juste-milieu, where, in the nature of the case, there is none.

These gentlemen decline to draw the line between their position and "the seven" as between believers and unbelievers. They think this illiberal, and, as we presume, the denial of legitimate investigation. We see not to what else they should

apply this censure; for the legal processes to deprive the essayists and reviewers of their benefices in the Church of England, would seem to an outsider a simple business remedy to stop a party who has broken a contract from appropriating any longer its avails. But holding the above charitable view of their erring brethren, they probably regard all this as persecution. So their handling of the points in debate is feeble and inconclusive. Their argument, like Agag, walks delicately. What they do say is often well enough; but it omits far too much of positive truth to give it strength and triumph. The paper on the 'Atonement' singularly illustrates this. It is indeed a "sacrifice;" but only in the sense of a thank-offering of human nature, in the person of Christ, to God, for mankind. This is the propitiation. Its connection with the Divine justice is too equivocal to justify any direct statement. The article belongs to the "negative theology;" so much so that another hand finds it necessary to supplement it with a declaration that Christ does give us deliverance from sin and punishment, but not in any actual sense of ransom, redemption, satisfaction to God's offended government. The "postscript" to this paper, (being its third part,) concerning "the pacifying of God's wrath," strikes us as the most puerile piece of misconception and empty exegesis which we have recently encountered. It contains, however, an interesting fact in ecclesiastical history, showing how Pauline was the theology of the first framers of the Articles of the English Church. In the copy of 1562, the phrase "pacifying God's wrath" stands where the term "propitiation was substituted in the text of 1571. earlier form is really nothing more than a literal translation of the latter; and so it was understood by the primitive Churchmen, whatever diluted sense some of their successors may now put upon it. Neither expression, as any tolerably intelligent Sunday-school scholar should know, implies the appeasing of implacable resentment in God; but this the satisfying the demands of a firm and stern judicial disapprobation of sin, and of a determination that it shall not go unpunished.

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These Tracts' do not set aside the miracles of the Testaments; they wish to protect them from their impugners. But

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