Illingworth, E.

APPOINTMENTS.

Appointment.

Domestic Chaplain to the Bishop of Chichester.
Chaplain to the Hereford County Gaol.

Chaplain to the Infirmary, Hereford.

Chaplain to the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.

Rural Dean for the Deanery of Charing.

Chaplain of the Sudbury Union.

Chaplain of the Malling Union.

Official Inspector of Schools.
Assistant Curate of Oldham.
Curate of Walcot, Bath.

Curate of Ruspar, Sussex.

Principal of Hull College.

Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Chichester.

Chaplain to the King of Hanover.

Rural Dean of Narbeth.

Second Mast. of Birmingham and Edgbaston Prop. School.
Curate of Illingworth, Halifax.

Hulme, G..

Humphreys, Dr.

Lane, E.

Langhorne, F.

Curate of St. James's, Manchester.

Chaplain to the Workhouse, Oxford.

Chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's.

Assistant Minister of St. John's, Cheltenham.

Chaplain to the Bishop of Chichester.

Chaplain to the Derbyshire General Infirmary.

The Right Rev. NATHANIEL ALEXANDER, D.D. Lord Bishop of Meath.

Late of Bagsworth, Somerset.

Of Braser.nose College, Oxford, at Lincoln.

At Wood-hall, Selby.

Curate of Stogumber, Somerset.

At Chudleigh.

At Westerham, Kent, aged 81.

Of St. John's Coll. Cambridge, at Mark's Tey, Colchester.
Curate of Ruspar, Sussex.

At the Rectory, Stapleford Abbots, Essex.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

"A Shepherd of the South" is in type, and is unavoidably postponed. This is also the case with "Phoenix," "F. G." and some other communications.

The Sketch of Bishop Luscombe's Sermon will certainly appear in our next number.

The Editor has been recommended, in many quarters, to give up the insertion of Sermons and the University and Ecclesiastical Intelligence. He will be glad to become more generally acquainted with the sentiments of his readers on these points.

The Memoir of Bishop Otter and the notice of Dr. Miller's Judgment are deferred till January.

THE

CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.

DECEMBER, 1840.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ART. I.-Christ's Discourse at Capernaum fatal to the Doctrine of Transubstantiation. By GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B.D. &c. London: Seeley & Burnside. 1840.

THERE is one argument by which the whole dispute respecting Transubstantion might at any time be cut short, in limine; and that argument may be stated as follows:-" I believe," says the Protestant-Catholic, "that the sacramental elements before my eyes are bread and wine; and why should I believe otherwise, in defiance of the testimony of my senses ?" "Because," says the Roman Catholic, "there is an authority much higher than the testimony of the human senses-even the word of Christ himself. And, by that word we are commanded to believe that, after certain sentences have been spoken over them, the elements are no longer what they seem, but are substantially converted into the body and blood of our Lord himself." "Well, but," replies the Protestant," how am I to be assured that any such authority can be produced? There is, I know, in the Bible, an alleged text to that effect; but, for the existence of that very text-nay, for the existence of the Bible itself—what have I to rely upon but the testimony of my senses—those very faculties which you have, this moment, called upon me to disregard ?" And, at this point, if the Protestant chooses to take his stand upon it, it appears to us that the controversy must come to a dead lock at once. We do not well see how it could possibly proceed one step further. It would be vain for the Romanist to reiterate,“ You are setting up the testimony of your own senses against the express and positive declaration of Christ." His antagonist might rejoin,—" I am doing no such thing. I am not resisting the declaration of Christ; I am only resisting a mode of interpreting his declaration, which, if once admitted, would make it doubtful whether any such declaration were ever pronounced at all." And here the discussion must inevitably be strangled in its birth. The Protestant would go his way, resolved to believe his senses in both instances, or in neither. And the Romanist would go his way, in wrathful or compassionate rumination on the hardness of brow, and the stiffness of neck, wherewith the heretic exalteth himself against the majesty of the church and the terrors of the Tridentine anathema.

But this, after all, is not the turn which the controversy has usually taken. It has seldom, that we are aware of, occurred to any Protestant controversialist to question, or affect to question, the existence of the text. The dispute, for the most part, has been, whether-the existence of the text being admitted-there is any possibility of reconciling it with the Protestant exposition: and, in our very humble judgment, it is a most lamentable thing that any such discussion should ever have arisen. Considered by itself, and merely as an opinion held by this individual, or by that, Transubstantiation really seems to us to be a harmless doctrine enough. There is nothing in it, that we can perceive, at all derogatory from the dignity and majesty of the Redeemer's person, work, or office. It may be, as we verily believe it is, an outrageous metaphysical absurdity. But, be the absurdity what it may, it is an absurdity which may be entertained, and which has been and is entertained, by many a lofty intellect, and many a devout and elevated spirit; and this, without injury or damage to the interior life of God in the human soul. If, therefore, a convert from Romanism were to say to his friend,-"I have renounced the Papal communion; I can endure no longer its superstitious vanities, and its rank corruptions, and its anti-christian arrogance; I can find no peace but in a purer and a simpler form of our common Christianity. But still there is one point in which I cannot but suspect that the church which I have quitted is nearer to the truth than that which I have joined. I know not how to get over the words of the institution of the Eucharist. I cannot altogether divest myself of the notion, that the human though glorified person of the Saviour lies mysteriously hidden beneath the semblance of the eucharistic elements. This, however, is, now, merely a private and individual impression of my own. I presume not to judge my brother; neither do I call on him to adopt this, my honest opinion, as an article of his faith" If, we say, a converted Romanist should privately address his Protestant friend in language such as this, what is there to hinder that they two should walk together in the house of God, and go hand in hand with each other to the altar? Could it be incumbent on the one to shun all religious communion with the other, as if he were still under bondage to heretical and superstitious pravity? The erroneous thinker, it is true, might justly be disqualified by his error for the office of a teacher and a minister in the Anglican communion. But, could his mistaken theory be righteously or charitably held sufficient to exclude him from joining, as a layman, in our sacramental celebration?

Be this, however, as it may, the doctrine appears no longer, if it ever did so appear, in the form of an innocuous, unobtrusive speculation. For many an age, indeed, it ranged throughout Christendom in the form of an opinion; but, of an opinion quite as imperious and terrible as if it were in truth a canonically recognised dogma of theology, invested with synodical authority, and bristling all over with the horrors of the anathema. And, in this state, it became the nucleus of a vast and pernicious accretion of intolerable corruptions; and it went forth into the world, like an angel of destruction, carrying with it the slaughter-weapon and the torch, the rack and the stake, and laying waste the peace and the freedom of mankind: till at length, with all its multiplied abomina

tions on its head, it was finally enshrined at Trent, among the immutable determinations of the infallible church. And there it remains at this day, and forms a part of that frowning fortress which Rome has walled and fenced up to heaven, thereby shutting out for ever the rest of Christendom from her communion.

With this history before us, it is impossible to consider the question of Transubstantiation as an open question. So long as the church of Rome is pleased to proclaim that all who reject the doctrine are accursed, so long must the doctrine remain a subject of debate. Silence, or concession, might be deemed no less than treason, not merely to the cause of truth, but to the cause of christian liberty. And, accordingly, whole libraries have been written upon this one question; and, in all probability, whole libraries still remain to be written upon it. The controversy will, doubtless, stretch onward to the day when all controversies shall be terminated for ever. The Romanist cannot yield, without surrendering the infallibility of his church. The Protestant cannot yield, without a sacrifice of faith, and conscience, and common sense. And this being so, nothing remains for both parties, but to conduct their dispute with as little damage to christian charity as the infirmities of human nature will allow. Each party, of course, from time to time, will claim the victory; but victory itself would be disastrous, if the yell of vindictive passion should mingle with the cry of battle, or with the song of triumph.

With the present state of the controversy in this country, our theological world is tolerably familiar. The conflict between Dr. Wiseman and Dr. Turton is at an end. Whether the Romanists claim a triumph for their champion, we do not pretend to be informed. We take it for granted, however, that they do claim it; or, what, perhaps, is equally probable, that they, most of them, rest with such unflinching confidence in the oracle long since delivered by their own church, as to regard with profound composure the issue of dialectic skirmishings, or hermeneutical discussions. Into the field, thus recently reaped, Mr. Faber has entered as a patient, vigorous, and strong-armed gleaner; and it appears to us that what can be done by a gleaner has been done by him. One good service, at all events (though of a very simple description), Mr. Faber has rendered to the cause. He has endeavoured to call away the attention of his readers from all arbitrary divisions of the discourse of our Lord at Capernaum; whether the versicular divisions of our printed Testaments; or, either of the proposed bisections of that discourse into two distinct portions, each supposed to relate to different matters respectively. And, with this view, he has printed the whole of the discourse, divided simply into paragraphs, to mark the successive interlocutions. And, if the discourse, thus printed, could possibly be read by any man of ordinary intelligence, utterly ignorant that the sacramental controversy had ever been heard of, we profess ourselves unable to imagine how any doubt could find its way into the mind of that individual, respecting the identity of the matter in the thoughts of our Lord, from the beginning of the discourse to the end of it. He might, undoubtedly, be startled by what he might consider as an unusual strength and boldness in the phraseology resorted to by our Lord. But we can scarcely conceive it possible for him to dream that our Lord