the College,-"That the term Sacrament may be more widely applied to mean any holy rite-that generally [necessary to salvation] means here universally, i. e., to all men-that the Sacraments are necessary, not to God, as instruments whereby He may save us, but to us, as God's appointed means of salvation, the channels in which His grace flows to us."-On this the Bishop says: "Our Church does not speak of two great Sacraments, leaving us to infer that there are lesser Sacraments, and that the Church of Rome, in adding to the Sacraments appointed by Christ, has only erred in not making a due distinction' between the two great Sacraments, and other holy rites or Sacraments."*

Here the Provost wisely refers the Bishop of Huron to what he would regard as authoritative expositions of the tenets of the Church. Accordingly, he quotes as follows from the Homily of the Common Prayers and Sacraments :—

"As for the number of them, [the Sacraments,] if they should be considered according to the exact signification of a Sacrament, namely, for the visible signs expressly commanded in the New Testament, whereunto is annexed the promise of free forgiveness of our sin, and of our holiness and joining in Christ, there be but two, namely, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.-But in a general acceptation, the name of a Sacrament may be attributed to anything whereby an holy thing is signified. In which understanding of the word, the ancient writers have given this name, not only to the other five, commonly and of late years taken and used for supplying the number of the seven Sacraments, but also to divers and sundry other ceremonies, as to oil, washing of feet, and such like; not meaning thereby to repute them as Sacraments, in the same signification that the two forenamed Sacraments are."t

Upon the term, "generally necessary,' we shall subjoin the opinions of two eminent divines, adduced by the Provost.Bishop Wilson says, "Because without God's grace we cannot be saved, (Ephes. ii. 8.,) and God hath determined to give His grace to those only who seek it in the devout use of these Sacraments, where His providence affords them. By which Sacraments we bind ourselves to be God's faithful servants, and God

* Letter of Bishop of Huron, p. 15. VOL. XIV.-NO. I. 11

+ Letter XI., p. 64.

obligeth Himself to give us all graces necessary to fit us for heaven."-And Dr. Nicholls, in his Commentary on the Book of Common Prayer, affirms that "by generally necessary, we understand that all persons, of what rank and quality soever, are obliged to the performance of them, unless they labor under an incapacity by reason of their age or otherwise, or are hindered therefrom by an invincible necessity."*

5. The Bishop of Huron further objects, that young men in Trinity College are "instructed, that the recipient of the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper partakes of the "glorified humanity of the Son of God," and regards this teaching as "dangerous in a very high degree."+-The Provost here reminds the Bishop, that he omits the word "faithful," before "recipient ;" and, that the opinion, thus objected to, is that of the Rev. Francis Procter, in his work on the Common Prayer, a learned, thoughtful, devout, and cautious writer. While the same sentiment is elaborately expressed by Hooker, and other great divines, it may be sufficient, for the satisfaction of the Bishop of Huron, to say, that it is strongly affirmed by Archbishop Usher :

He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him.' Declaring thereby, first, that by His mystical and supernatural union, we are as truly conjoined with Him, as the meat and drink we take is with us, when by the ordinary work of nature it is converted into our own substance. Secondly, that this conjunction is immediately made with His human nature. Thirdly, that the Lamb slain,' that is, 'Christ crucified,' hath, by that death of His, made His flesh broken, and His blood poured out for us upon the cross, to be fit food for the spiritual nourishment of our souls, and the very well-spring from whence, by the power of His Godhead, all life and grace is derived unto us."‡

The participation, by the faithful, in the "glorified humanity" of our Lord, by means of the Sacrament of His Holy Supper, though we may think it unwise to press any discussion upon it, is therefore a defensible and reasonable doctrine.

*Letter XI., p. 66.

+ Letter, p. 13.

Letter XI., p. 74.

Christ in this Sacrament is present to the faithful in some mysterious way; certainly not simply as God, nor simply as man, but in those conjoined natures, as He ascended up into heaven. To assert His humanity only as present, might leave the transition easy to transubstantiation; to call it His glorified humanity, would appear most consistent with fact. Yet it is a point too sublime, too much beyond our reach, to be argued ; and we are better content with the simple assertion of His spiritual presence, than with the most subtle disquisitions upon the manner of it.

6. The Provost has been also accused of lamenting, that the Church of England "lost certain valuable practices at the Reformation, which it would be our duty, if possible, to have restored;" and by one of the Students, with whom the Bishop of Huron was in communication, it was stated as his strong impression, that it was "when speaking of prayers for the dead." To this the Provost replies as follows:

'Any one who has attended my Lectures must know well, that I have taken every opportunity of exposing the danger of prayer for the dead, and the fallacy of the arguments used in support of the practice. He must know also, that I have never indulged in maudlin regrets respecting the losses we sustained at the Reformation,' and that there can be no possible color for the charge, except it be, that, in reading of admirable early usages, which our Reformers did not venture to restore, such as that mentioned by Justin Martyr, the conveyance of the consecrated elements to all sick members of the Church, after every public celebration of the Eucharist, I have said, that we might well regret, that we possessed not this usage in our Church, but that our regret should be controlled by the remembrance, that a necessary consequence of the grievous abuses which preceded the Reformation, was to abridge our liberty, and to deprive us of good things which might have been safely enjoyed in happier times."*

We have adduced enough, we think, to enable our readers to adjudge the issue between the Bishop of Huron and the Provost of Trinity College. We have, on the one side, charges surreptitiously derived and weakly sustained; and on

Letter of Bishop of Huron, p. 10.

Letter I., pp. 33, 34.

the other side, their honest denial or most triumphant refutation. We hardly think the Bishop of Huron will venture to continue the controversy: for, unless he goes outside the Church of England, he must fail to support his positions by legitimate or sufficient authority: the high and strong ground is all on the side of his opponent. Nor will Trinity College, as we believe, be lowered or depreciated as the result of these discussions in the judgment of honest minds, she will come out brighter and purer from the ordeal.

Still, with these convictions, we have our regrets. The warfare, though as we believe unjustifiably provoked,—a war simply of defence on the part of the College,-is an unseemly one. It exhibits the picture of a divided house, and threatens the weakness and disaster which must follow from such division. Strife will beget unkind feelings, and enemies will triumph when friends are at variance. The Church in Canada has years, perhaps generations, of struggle before her; she has a multitude of the dissentient and erring about her, and her honest assumption of the high ground of truth only embitters their opposition. They are tolerant and kindly when she descends from the dignity of her position, and takes equal rank with themselves. But her divine institution and lofty mission forbid this unholy sacrifice. If she is not what her Lord made her, she is nothing; if she clings not to the pattern set forth by Apostles and Prophets, she abjures the fact of a Church of God at all. It is no time, then, to be splitting her strength, and effacing the distinctive lines which mark her proportions, and assure her integrity: she must go forth to her Master's work, in the majesty and might of truth and unity. If she parts with this, hers will be a slow and doubtful progress; and, if the sacredness of her principles is kept down, her vitality is at stake. It may be that the wickedness of the land will provoke the judgment and the calamity; but, if she is unfaithful to her trust, we may believe that her candlestick will be removed from our midst.

These are our regrets and our warnings; but we have also our hopes. Good, we believe, will come out of the evil of this fraternal strife. It will constrain the great body of Church

men to think, and search, and prove. It will help to drive them from the meagre and tainted theology of equivocal tracts and party newspapers; and it will impel them to the fountainhead, to those giants in Christian literature, the lustre of whose learning makes the Church of England a light-house to religious inquirers. We hope it will be of service to the Bishop of Huron himself; that it will cause him to ponder more the value of a thorough theological training, and not fill the ranks of his clergy with men whose ignorance and presumption must have the effect of shaming well tutored Laymen from their allegiance to the Church. He may be led to adopt a better test of qualification than the cant of party phraseology, or the power to give ready utterance to a crude and meagre treasury of ideas.

We augur from it, too, good to the Church at large, in the interesting country, where, with much of promise, she has had so many trials. There she has been stripped of her adventitious support, and must be built up and spread by the faithful and liberal hands of her sons and daughters. For success and prosperity she must rely upon her principles; if she adopts any compromise, there may be the uplifting of an imposing gourdlike plant, but, with the first wane of a capricious popularity, it will droop and wither. She must fling to the winds any creeping bias towards the opinion, that all religious bodies can rightfully claim the designation of a Church; and she must lead on her children,-gently, firmly, affectionately,—to assert the position her Divine Master has assigned her. For this hopeful result, we look largely to her Church University in Canada; and so we say, from our heart of hearts, God avert the day when TRINITY COLLEGE shall cease to be the dispenser of sound learning and a religious education.