The internal history of Anglicanism is the history of the struggles and alternate victories and defeats of these two tendencies. Henry the Eighth, the first to break with Rome, was a Catholic, saving so far as concerned the papal supremacy, and making the monarch the head of the Church. He wrote in defence of the Catholic faith against Luther, and made the profession of Protestantism a capital offence. Under his reign, the Catholic tendency was sustained in the Church, and very few changes were made at the demand of Protestantism or in accordance with its spirit.

Under Edward the Sixth, the son and successor of Henry, the Protestant spirit gained the ascendency, and the Church of England was made a Protestant Church, and conformed, substantially, save in outward organization, to the model of the Protestant and Reformed Churches of the continent. Important changes were introduced into its doctrines, discipline, and ceremonies. Severe denunciations of the doctrines, discipline, and usages of the Romish Church were pronounced, and the greater part of religious antiquity was disowned. Mary followed, reopened communion with Rome, and did what she could to restore the ancient Catholic order. The daughter of Katharine of Arragon inherited many of the better qualities of her mother, and deserves a more honorable mention in history than she receives. She was devout, sincerely attached to the Church, but her injudicious zeal weakened her own cause, and strengthened the Protestant tendency of the country.

Elizabeth, daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn, had strong Catholic tendencies, and would, most likely, have continued the Anglican Church in communion with Rome, if she could, on Catholic principles, have maintained her right to the crown. But, in the eyes of the Holy See, and of all good Catholics, her birth was illegitimate. She was, therefore, obliged to be a Protestant, in order to secure her seat on the throne; and, in return, compounded with her conscience by being in all other respects as Catholic as possible. Under her reign, the Anglican Church received its definite form, and

was finally settled. It was less Catholic than under Henry, and more so than under Edward. The Catholic tendency, in reality, predominated, though the Protestant tendency was strong, and powerfully resisted it. Neither, however, could entirely suppress the other; and the principle seems to have been finally adopted, and acted upon, of making the basis of the Church so broad, and of expressing its faith in terms so general and indefinite, that the great body of those affected by either tendency might come within its pale. The Thirty-nine Articles have been said to be "articles of peace," and they seem to us to have been drawn up, not for the purpose of defining the faith of the Church, but of leaving it so equivocal that either of the two parties might conscientiously interpret it in its own favor.

The Catholic tendency, though powerfully resisted, maintained, however, under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, the predominance in the Church, if not in the kingdom; and for a moment, under Archbishop Laud, - a much calumniated prelate, it appeared not improbable that the Anglican Church herself might return to the communion of the Holy See. But in the Revolution of 1688, Protestantism gained the victory, and, with the accession of the House of Hanover, was firmly, and, we fear, permanently, established. During the whole of the eighteenth century, the most inglorious period of the Anglican Church, it reigned without a rival; the Catholic tendency seemed to have wholly died out; and scarcely a sign of life was discernible, if we except the spasmodic twitches and contortions of the Evangelicals, till the recent movement of the Oxford divines.

After the revolutionary fanaticism, which marked the conclusion of the last century, had in some measure subsided, and men began to feel the impotence of the Naturalism which had been its concomitant, a reaction in favor of religion and the Church commenced throughout Christendom. This was seen in the movement of the Evangelical party in Germany, to revive the old forgotten symbols of the early Protestants; but more especially among the Catholics of Germany and France. The

man who contributed, perhaps, more than any other to this reaction was the Abbé de la Mennais, then a genuine Catholic priest, and not unworthy of his high and sacred calling. His Essai sur l'Indifférence en Matière de Religion was a clap of thunder from a cloudless sky. It startled the world from its sleep of death to the fatal consequences of the Protestantism, Philosophism, Deism, Atheism, and Indifferentism, which they had followed, and which could be averted only by a sincere and hearty return to the Church of God. That book sealed the doom of French infidelity, and, under Providence, has been a powerful means of preparing a religious future for the French people.

Oxford felt, no less than Paris, the reaction against the Rationalism and Infidelity which had been so madly fostered and so widely diffused. A devout spirit, a meek, humble, self-denying, Christian spirit, was reawakened, and, with this, the old Catholic tendency revived. Always, in the history of the Anglican Church, do we observe, that, just in proportion as learning, piety, religious zeal and devotedness revive, as its members become more simple-minded, less worldly, more self-mortifying, more devout, more willing to spend and be spent in the cause of Christ, do the old Catholic tendency and party revive, and acquire new force and prominence. It is only as men grow fanatical, or cold, worldly, proud, arrogant, self-conceited, self-willed, rationalistic, turbulent, or disorderly, that the Protestant tendency and party predominate. The movement of the Oxford divines, though not in all respects unexceptionable, was yet, at bottom, a truly religious movement. Its exponents felt something of the old Christian spirit working in their hearts, -something of that spirit which had tamed the savage and barbarian, enriched the history of the race with myriads of saints and martyrs, covered Europe over with the monuments of zeal for God and of love for man, and made the whole earth hallowed ground, and they felt that they, too, might be sons of the great Christian family, and heirs of its sacred traditions and precious mem

ories.

This movement renewed, in the bosom of the Anglican Church, the old struggle between the Catholic and Protestant tendencies, which that Church had accepted in its origin, but which it had never reconciled. We have watched this movement with alternate hope and fear; but, alas! at present, only the fear remains. For a moment, we ventured to hope that the Catholic tendency would carry the day, and the Anglican Church become, in very deed, a living branch of the Church Universal; but, unhappily, that Church is under the Erastian curse; completely subject to the secular power; bound hand and foot; and, what is worse, seems to love her chains, and to glory in her shame. The civil power in England is, and must be, Protestant. The crown swears to defend the Protestant religion, and to maintain the Protestant succession. The king, nay, the queen, is the spiritual head of the Church, and no good can come of it till it breaks its accursed thraldom, and reasserts and maintains religious liberty. We see no hope for the Anglican Church, till there is requickened in her bosom the old martyr spirit; till her sons come to feel that they are the descendants of those to whom rich livings, the pride, pomp, and power of kings and civil rulers, nay, bonds, imprisonments, and death, were but the veriest trifles, when in the way of Christian duty, and, above all, when in the way of Christian sanctity. Restore us, O God, this glorious martyr spirit! restore us the power to count all things but dung and dross, if we can but win Christ, and merit that crown of life which thou hast laid up for them that love thee, and which thou wilt give to all who fight the good fight, and finish with honor the work thou hast given them to do! O, is it true that the race of English saints expired with the separation from Rome, and that no saint adorns the English calendar, born since that fatal epoch?

In this country, the Episcopal Church is, providentially, free from all subjection to the state, and in possession of the most perfect religious liberty. Here there is no Protestant sovereign to repress her Catholic

tendencies, and prevent her from developing the Catholic elements she has saved from the general wreck of the sixteenth century. With double interest, therefore, have we watched, and do we still watch, the struggle between the two hostile tendencies,- and the more so, because we ourselves, alas! are without a home. Feeling our own sad condition, we naturally turn towards the Episcopal Church. It is professedly the Church of our ancestors; it speaks our own mother tongue; and to enter it is not to go among strangers, to desert one's friends and kindred. In it, we have felt we might sit down with our own kith and kin, with our friends and neighbours. We have asked ourselves, What is to be the result of the present struggle? Will the Church succumb to the Protestant tendency? Will she shake off her Protestantism, and take her stand on truly Catholic ground? Will she become a true mother to us, afford a home to us, who have been storm-tossed on the tumultuous sea of sectarianism, poor shipwrecked mariners, cast naked and starving upon a foreign strand, waiting for the blessed angels of mercy and charity to come to our relief?

We have feared and hoped, and hoped and feared, and nothing has tended more to depress and dishearten us than these Letters by the able and accomplished Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont. We had felt, that, whatever might be said of the irregular origin of the present Anglican Church, she might, in her American branch, at least, so develope her Catholic elements as to be able to satisfy the Catholic faith and longings of a soul which has burned to abjure Protestantism. We had counted on Bishop Hopkins, a zealous Churchman, as one likely to stand forward in the contest, and to become a powerful champion of the Christian movement commenced by Froude, Newman, and Pusey. We are grieved and disappointed at finding him, on the contrary, taking the lead in the opposition, and contending, with all his zeal, wit, eloquence, learning, and ability, for views which we had supposed quite too ultra-Protestant for the great body of even the so-called