4. CORFU.

I SAT beneath an olive's branches grey
And gazed upon the site of a lost town,
By sage and poet chosen for renown;
Where dwelt a Race that on the sea held sway,
And, restless as its waters, forced a way

For civil strife a thousand states to drown.
That multitudinous stream we now note down
As though one life, in birth and in decay.
Yet, is their being's history spent and run,
Whose spirits live in awful singleness

Each in his self-formed sphere of light or gloom?
Henceforth, while pondering the fierce deeds then done,
Such reverence on me shall its seal impress,
As though I corpses saw, and walked the tomb.

5.-FRANCE.

FRANCE! I will think of thee, as what thou wast,
When Poitiers shewed her zeal for the true creed;
Or in that age, when holy Truth, though cast
On a rank soil, yet was a thriving seed

Thy Schools within, from neighbour kingdoms chased.
E'en of thy pagan day I bear to read;
Thy Martyrs sanctified the guilty host,

True sons of Blessed John, reared on a western coast.

I dare not think of thee as what thou art,

Lest thoughts too deep for man should trouble me.
It is not safe to place the wayward heart

On brink of evil, or its flames to see,

Lest they should dizzy, or some taint impart,

Or to our sin a fascination be.

And so by silence I will now proclaim

Hate of thy present self, and scarce will sound thy name.

CORRESPONDENCE.

The Editor begs to remind his readers that he is not responsible for the opinions
of his Correspondents.

ORIGEN, AS TREATED IN THE PAPERS ON "THE DARK AGES." DEAR SIR,-Many of your readers must have been sorry to find the agreeable writer on "The Dark Ages" speak so slightingly of Origen. Surely those holy men whose cause he advocates would have been more startled at such expressions applied to that eminent Father, than ever they could have been by the manes of Virgil. Gregory, alluded to, may certainly be read with a very different The epistle to impression from that which he has described. If you should think it worthy of insertion, I think few of your readers would be offended at the beautiful application of Scripture history to enforce a truth

which it would be well for us if we attended to a little more in the present days-viz., of the little value, nay, the danger, of all pursuits, whether of science or literature, when they are not made subservient to the great cause of Christianity.

"But I would have you use all the faculties with which nature has endowed you, with Christianity for their end, and on such things only as means. For this purpose

I would have you take up the philosophy of the Greeks as studies which may be preparatory and subsidiary to Christianity; and also whatever, from geometry and astronomy, may be useful for the reading of Holy Scripture. As the sons of the philosophers speak of geometry, and music, and grammar, and rhetoric, and astronomy, being associate handmaids to philosophy, so may we also say of philosophy itself with respect to Christianity. And perhaps something of this kind is signified in that which is written in Exodus, where the children of Israel are told, that they should ask of their neighbours jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment; so that by spoiling the Egyptians they might be provided with materials for the service of God. For it was from these spoils of the Egyptians that the Holy of Holies was furnished by the children of Israel, the ark, and the cherubims, and the mercy seat, and the golden pot in which the manna was laid up, the food of angels. Now, these things were probably made out of the best gold that came out of Egypt. (And from that which was inferior in value, and the silver and the raiment, &c. &c., the following) —

*

"But not to dwell any longer on the uses to which these things might have been applied, which the Egyptians had before turned to no good purpose, but the Hebrews, through the wisdom of God, converted to the services of divine worship. The divine Scripture, indeed, knows that to go down to Egypt from the land of Israel was evil; signifying, that to sojourn among the Egyptians, that is to say, in worldly studies, after being enrolled into the law of God, and the worship of Israel, is injurious to many. Hadad, the Idumean, is an instance of this; as long as he was in the land of Israel, and had tasted not the Egyptian bread, he made no idols: not so when he had fled from the wise Solomon, as it were from the wisdom of God, and became related to Pharaoh, by marrying his wife's sister, and had a son who was brought up among the sons of Pharaoh. Therefore it was, that although he returned unto the land of Israel, it was to cause divisions among the people of God, and to make them to say to the golden calves, These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.' And I may assure you, from my own experience, that rare is the instance of one who hath taken the goods of Egypt, and hath come out from thence and applied them to the service of God; but many the brother of the Idumean Hadad. These are they who, from out of some Grecian subtlety, have conceived heretical notions, and, as it were, set up golden calves in Bethel, which is, being interpreted, The house of God.' It appears to me that, by these things, it is signified, that in the Scriptures, which are figuratively called Bethel, and wherein dwelleth the word of God, they set up the fictions of their own imagination.

"But do thou, my Lord and Son, before all things, give attentive heed to the reading of Holy Scripture-yea, attentive heed. For much heed and attention do we require in the reading of divine things, that we may neither say nor think anything concerning them with rashness. And giving this attention to the perusal of Scripture, with a faithful preparation of mind and such as may be pleasing unto God, knock thou at those parts that are closed, and the porter shall open unto thee, concerning whom Jesus said, to him the porter openeth.' And thus attentively studying the Scriptures, seek thou, with rectitude of purpose, and with an unswerving faith in God, for that understanding of the divine letter which is hidden from the But do not think it sufficient to knock and to seek only, for that which is of all things the most necessary towards a right understanding of divine things is prayer. Our Saviour, in his exhortation, hath not only said, knock and it shall be opened unto you,' and 'seek and ye shall find,' but also, ask and it shall be given you.' I have been so bold as to say these things to you, from the paternal affection I bear you. Whether it be well or ill that I have done so, God knows, and His Christ, and he that partaketh of the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of Christ. And may you ever partake of an increase in the same, &c."

many.

Whether this is the letter alluded to or not (for I am not sure) it

will serve to prove that Origen was not inclined to give any undue sanction to profane studies, but was well aware that any pursuit which takes the lead in the mind forms the character, and that religion will hold the first place, or none at all. The allusion to the spoils of Egypt must remind us of the same application in the Christian year, for the third Sunday in Lent, and the same book will exemplify throughout Origen's view of the subject. I am, Sir, yours truly,

W.

CHURCH OF ROME.

SIR,-Perceiving in the January Number of your Magazine a letter signed "Philalethes," commenting on a work entitled "Poynder's Popery in Alliance with Heathenism," I beg to submit a few remarks on some of the practices of the Church of Rome, which your correspondent conceives, as I think, erroneously, not to be prohibited in the New Testament.

And, first, of incense; see Heb. x. 8, 9 :—

"The Apostle argues, in these two verses, that these words are a plain declaration of the utter insufficiency of the Jewish sacrifices, when Christ puts his own suffering and sacrifice to supply their defects; and, by doing the one, he abrogates all further use of the other."-(Pyle, from Notes to Mant's Bible.)

2. With respect to votive offerings, and other ceremonies of the church of Rome; see Gal. v. 1.

3. Tutelary saints. The existence of such, one may not be disposed either to affirm or deny, nothing having been clearly revealed in the New Testament for our belief respecting them. Still, however, it may be asked, will not a belief in a protecting, a guardian saint, gradually lead the believer to "honour the god of forces"-Dan. xi. 38,-gods who are protectors, to regard them with such an esteem as shall deprive the supreme God, whom we are taught to love with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our strength, of the honour due unto his name? Col. ii. 18, contains an admonition against "intruding into those things which we have not seen."

4. Religious processions. Though not prohibited by the letter, is their tendency in unison with the spirit of Christianity? Does not a slight knowledge of ourselves inform us?

5. With respect to the Sacrifice of the Altar, I will quote an explanation by Archbishop Sharpe, copied from notes in Mant's Bible :

"We do not indeed deny but that every time we approach to the Lord's table for the receiving of the holy communion, we offer sacrifices to God, for we offer alms which we beg of God to accept as our oblations, and these, in the language of Scripture, are 'Sacrifices with which God is well pleased.' We likewise offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God for the death of our Saviour, and all our prayers and supplications we put up in his name, and in the virtue and for the merits of that sacrifice which he offered to God in our behalf, and in so doing we commemorate that sacrifice both to God and before men; and this is all that the ancient church meant by the great Christian sacrifice, or the sacrifice of the altar."

Having thus laid before you the few remarks which I designed, I shall only add, that, in these times, when so many are industriously

endeavouring to make it appear that many of the points of difference between the church of Rome and the Christian catholic church of England are immaterial and indifferent, it becomes a duty which we owe to our spiritual parent on earth to shew that, whether on smaller or on greater grounds, we are each alike prepared to maintain the character as well as the name of, Sir, your obedient servant, A PROTESTANT.

ON THE LORD'S SUPPER.

SIR,-Will "Philalethes" allow me to ask him on what authority he refers to Matthew, v. 23, 24, in his letter on Mr. Poynder, in your last number, in proof of the Christian sacrifice of the Lord's Supper; or what evidence he can offer that our "blessed Redeemer" spake the words there recorded, as in allusion to a Christian "Altar"?

To me, this appears a new and wholly unsupported application of the words, and a "selection of weapons" as "unfair and injudicious" (by way of argument) as any I can suppose Mr. Poynder to have made, with whose work, however, I am unacquainted. I cannot conceive any ground on which such an interpretation of our Lord's words can be maintained. At the time they were spoken, in the first year of his ministry, and before any public mention of his own great sacrifice of himself had been made, (even supposing that any mention of it subsequently made could have borne such an interpretation as " Philalethes" contends for, previous to the institution of the commemorative ordinance,) it seems to me quite impossible that the mention of an "altar," in the above passage, can have had any reference except to the Jewish right of offering. Our Lord spoke to "the multitude" of Jews as a Jew, and could, I imagine, only refer to the altar and offerings ("thy gift") with which all his hearers were familiar. Till the great Christian sacrifice was complete, the law of sacrifices under the Mosaic law was unrepealed and in force; and our Lord, in the words in question, gave no intimation of a cessation of the Mosaic offerings, but cautioned his hearers against the error of supposing that their offerings could be of any value, even as an act of obedience to the law, if their spirit, and inward temper and disposition, were such as to be inconsistent with the law of brotherly love. This, if the words are taken in conjunction with the two preceding verses, appears to me too self-evident to need insisting upon. I take the liberty of drawing the attention of "Philalethes" to this point, because I think every writer on such subjects is especially bound to be most cautious how he brings forward scripture in support of his arguments for any doctrine of the Christian church. It is obvious that, if his interpretation will not bear him out, he is in danger of injuring the cause he is desirous to defend-of doing, in short, the very thing for which he remonstrates with Mr. Poynder, " marring his usefulness by (I think) an unfair and injudicious selection of his weapons, (p.43). How far " Philalethes" may extend his meaning of the word "sacrifice," I will not now inquire; though I suspect he carries it a little further than I should be able to go along with him, if I understand him correctly in his two-fold division of (1) "strict and true," and—(2) 66 commemora

tive." It seems to me inseparable from the notion of a "proper material sacrifice," that part of the offering which is laid on the altar should be so devoted to God as not, in any material form, to return to the offerer. This appears to have been always the case in every material sacrifice, and, to my apprehension, is a sufficient objection to the use of the word "sacrifice," as implying the Christian sacrifice in the Lord's Supper, in its strict and proper sense. As a typical commemorative sacrifice, the case is far otherwise, in which sense only can we repeat and represent the "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction," made upon the cross, for the sins of the whole world. So far as regards the nature of this sacrifice, it seems so clearly expressed in a little tract of old date, "The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice," by Dr. Brevint, (an author whose unanswered and unanswerable writings against the corrupt doctrines of the church of Rome are now scarce, and deserve to be better known,) that I hope you will permit me to transcribe his words. They are from the sixth section:

"Nevertheless, this sacrifice, which by a real oblation" [the italics are the author's] "was not to be offered more than once, is, by an eucharistical and devout commemoration, to be offered up every day. This is what the apostle calls, to set forth the death of the Lord-to set it forth, I say, as well before the eyes of God, his Father, as before the eyes of all men. And what St. Austin did explain, when he said that the holy flesh of Jesus Christ was offered up in three manners-by prefiguring sacrifices under this law before his coming into the world, in real deed upon the cross, and by a commemorative sacrament after he is ascended into heaven. All comes to this-first, that the sacrifice, as 'tis itself and in itself, it never can be reiterated; yet by way of devout celebration and remembrance, it may nevertheless be reiterated every day. Secondly, that whereas the holy eucharist is by itself a sacrament, wherein God offers unto all men the blessings merited by the oblation of his Son; it likewise becomes, by our remembrance, a kind of sacrifice also, whereby to obtain, at his hands, the same blessings, we present and expose to his eyes the same holy and precious oblation once offered. To men, it [the holy eucharist] is a sacred table, where God's minister is ordered to represent, from God his Master, the passion of his dear Son, as still fresh, and still powerful for their eternal salvation; and to God, it is an altar, whereon men mystically present to him the same sacrifice, as still bleeding and still sueing for expiation and mercy. And because it is the high priest himself, the true anointed of the Lord, who hath set up most expressly both this table and this altar for these two ends,—namely, for the communication of his body and blood to men, and for the representation and memorial of both to God,-it cannot be doubted, but that the one must be most advantageous to the penitent sinner, and the other most acceptable to that good and gracious Father who is always pleased in his Son, and who loves of himself the repenting and the sincere return of his children."

I trust, Sir, you will excuse the length to which I have extended this letter; and if it appear to you worthy of admission into your valuable publication, it may perhaps draw the attention of more able correspondents to a subject which is avowedly of high importance, and, as it seems to me, too frequently disregarded by zealous advocates of all sentiments: I mean the importance of never claiming the support of Scripture in cases where the words do not obviously bear the interpretation sought to be put upon them. I daily receive proofs of so much mischief arising from the disregard of this caution, that this warning of the humblest adviser can hardly be considered uncalled for, or presumptuous.

I remain, Sir, your most obedient servant, E. B. P.