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same fate that they have undergone, and Berkeley could not escape from despoiling it, by the very artifice which he had used in disinheriting the others, of all certainty. A given. body, then, appears to him nothing but an assemblage or congeries of sensible impressions, or ideas collected by our different senses; ideas which our mind unites in one and the same body, that is to say, to which it gives a name, for it has observed that they accompany one another. But a body did not appear to him to be a being distinct from these sensations.

"After having broken the subject into fragments, the doctrine of Locke must needs end in doing the same to the object. After having destroyed the unity of being in the me, it must needs destroy the external world. This is what Berkeley has done, with a profound sagacity, and a resoluteness truly wonderful. His terrible analysis of sight finishes the work of taking away all certainty in relation to the primary qualities of body, which philosophers had distinguished from mere sensation. Evidently then, primary qualities must go with the secondary qualities. All, in passing under the level of sensation, must share the condition of sensation, that is to say, be reduced to a modification of the mind, to a mere appearance. "What a strange spectacle. in the history of philosophy! Descartes taking spiritualism for his point of departure, tries with all his might to demonstrate the existence of the material world; and Berkeley, a disciple of Locke, and assuredly the ablest of the metaphysicians of sensation, does all in his power to save the spiritual world, and to annihilate the idea of matter! It is thus that Berkeley meets Malebranche in the system of Vision in God, that we see all things in God. The one starts from Descartes, with cogito, ergo sum, the other from Locke with sensation; both end in an analogous doctrine.

"But we must say that this doctrine is much more studied, much profounder in Malebranche, than in Berkeley. Malebranche is the great interpreter of the text of St. Paul, understood in this sense: In Deo vivimus, et movemur, et sumus. As to Berkeley, what is properly his, what establishes his place and his rank in the history of modern philosophy, is, above all, his having conducted the doctrine of sensation to this terrible abyss. The system itself of immaterialism, or of pure spiritualisin, negation made up of all substances destitute of thought, is very little developed in his works. He is rather occupied in overthrowing matter and materialism, than in building up spiritualism.

"But having come after Locke, and so evidently from his school that it could not have been developed without him,

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Berkeley has had a twofold influence, very remarkable. On the one hand, his sagacity has furnished materialism with its most boasted discoveries. It is from him, in his analysis of vision, that Condillac, a spirit void of invention, has drawn his books; it is he who has inspired the famous axiom of Helvetius, that without our hands we should be yet browsing in the forest; and it is from him, in fine, that Hume professes to have borrowed all the arguments of his skepticism. But more lately, it is he, also, who has made the partisans of Locke beat a retreat. The offspring of Berkeley and Hume, what is called the Scottish school, is startled at the obscure labyrinth into which these two powerful reasoners had carried it away; it loses somewhat of its faith in sensation; it asks if Locke has not been too hasty, if he has not forgotten something; it seeks with nicest eye through what broken stitches has entered the deluge of doubt which invades every thing. Then comes Reid, and, in his train, that little flock of reasoners, who compose the school, from him down to Dugald Stewart, minds for the most part so feeble, and with so little penetration, that one is really embarrassed to call them philosophers. They attempt by a thousand little means, by all sorts of shifts and artifices, to escape skepticism; they live by contradictions; they are of the school of Locke, and are not of it; they hold his doctrine to be the master-piece of philosophy; he is for them the father of veritable logic and metaphysics, and yet they make against him a reaction, which they strive to render fundamental. But, while they toil and struggle without much effect, Kant, solitary and alone, resumes the problem of philosophy where Berkeley and Hume had left it. Philosophy changes its soil, and returns to visit the country of Leibnitz. By the side of the original effort of Kant, the attempts of the Scottish school appear but the quaking of pigmies. It is, then, to Berkeley, that we must refer, in a great measure, the efforts the psychologues have been obliged to make, even down to our own times, to ascertain what is necessary to be held in regard to the origin and certainty of human knowledge."

ART. III. Tracts for the Times. By Members of the University of Oxford. New York: Charles Henry. 1839. Second Edition. 3 vols. 8vo.

We have not introduced these Tracts, which have created so much excitement, and concerning which so much has been said and written during the last few years, for the purpose of going into a critical examination of their literary, or their theological, merits; nor, indeed, for the purpose of entering far into the question of the claims of the Anglican Church to Catholicity, which they open up; but because they happen to furnish us with a convenient text for some rather desultory remarks, on the very important religious movement, of which they are one of the pregnant signs.

So far as they broach the claims of the Church of England to be the catholic, or a catholic, church, we, probably, should not altogether agree with their learned and pious authors. Regarded as a question of outward organization and canonical communion, the claims of the Church of England to catholicity, on her own admitted principles, do not appear to us to stand on any better footing than those of the other Protestant communions. She holds, and rightfully, that the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church is supreme, under God, in all matters of faith and discipline. It is true, she adds, it is not lawful for the church to ordain any thing contrary to, or besides, God's word written, to be believed for necessity of salvation; but this does in no wise impair her authority; because she is the keeper and interpreter of the word written, as well as of the word spoken; because it is she herself, by virtue of her authoritative interpretations of the word, that prescribes, and interprets, the limitations and extent of her own powers; and because she alone has the right to judge of their infraction, and also of the mode and measure of redress. She cannot suffer the individual member, or any number of individual members, as such, to judge her acts, or to plead the Sacred Text against her decis

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ions; for this would be to authorize Dissent, and Individualism, against which she protests.

Now it is undeniable, that from the sixth to the sixteenth century, to say the least, the Church of England had no separate, independent existence. It was an integral portion, canonically considered, of the catholic church, the acknowledged head and centre of which were at Rome. This catholic church, one and indivisible, including all national or local churches in communion with it, was, during the period we have named, supreme, and therefore competent to legislate on all matters of faith, discipline, and church organization, for all its members. Whatever modifications in regard to faith or discipline, or to the constitution and administration, the distribution or concentration of power, she chose to introduce, she was competent to introduce; and they must override all ancient usages inconsistent with them, and be as obligatory upon all the members as if they had existed from the beginning. Grant, if you will, that in some cases the modifications, or by whatever name you choose to call them, which were actually introduced, were injudicious, contrary to the principles of the gospel, oppressive even, although this is hardly admissible by a good churchman, — redress could rightfully be sought only in and through the orderly and official action of the church herself, that is, in and through the body; not in and through the members, acting on their own responsibility.

We must not forget the unity of the church. There is no reserve to be made in favor of national churches, as if the church existing in a given nation were an independent church, subsisting by itself, and holding communion with the church existing in other nations, not as the necessary condition of its own vitality, but as a mere act of Christian and ministerial courtesy; for this would be to deny both the unity and the catholicity of the church. It were a real rending of Christ's seamless garment. The church of Christ knows no geographical boundaries, no national limitations, no national distinctions. The member of Christ's church here in Boston

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is a member of it in every part of the world, and in communion with the whole body, wherever it is. If not, it is idle to talk of unity and catholicity. Assuming these principles, which the Church of England does, and must, assume, as the foundation of her own claims to catholicity, we confess that we see not how she can justify herself in separating, as she did, in the sixteenth century, and setting up a particular communion, without going the whole length of Dissent, and abandoning entirely her own principles. On the ground, then, that it is necessary to have maintained, from the first, the unity of the Lord's Body unbroken, we think she not only fails to prove herself to be the catholic church, but to be, in the catholic sense, even a church at all.

But we do not wish to pursue the discussion. The question in this form is, to us, one of only secondary importance. We own that the Church of England has never been able to convince us, on the ground she assumes, of the validity of her claims; but shall we, therefore, seek to unchurch her? God forbid! There is, and can be, but one catholic church. If she is that church, all not in communion with her are unchurched; and all, who are not members of her communion, are out of the pale of the church; therefore out of Christ; therefore, again, out of the way of salvation. Shall we say all this? Shall we say, that all the members of the Roman Catholic Church, of the Greek Church, the Arminian Church, the Lutheran, the Presbyterian, the Congregational, the Methodist, the Baptist, are out of the way of salvation, and can be saved only by becoming members of the Church of England? It were a terrible responsibility to say so, and we are not aware that our Anglican brethren do say so. On the other hand, shall we say, that all, who have lived and died in the Church of England, since the time of Henry and Cranmer, have lived and died out of Christ? We dare not say so.

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The fact is, those of us who believe in, and seek, the unity of the Lord's Body, must be careful how we begin by laying down principles which unchurch all

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