first grand attempt of allying all denominations of evangelical Protestantism. When the third General Assembly of the Alliance was to be held in Berlin the Evangelical Church Gazette warned against any participation in the proceedings. The Alliance was called a false union with sectarians of all kinds, and with despisers of the sacraments; and its tendency was said to be to break up the State Churches and to undermine sound Church principles. According to Hengstenberg, the extreme Low Church organizations, such as the Independent and Baptist, were to derive the greatest advantage from it, and finally it would prepare the way for a new victory of rationalism and revolutionary liberalism. To these views Hengstenberg still adheres, and the High Lutheran party of Germany was therefore again unrepresented at the late General Assembly of the Alliance at Geneva.

In one instance Hengstenberg and his friends were found willing to give up their isolation and join hands with the German Reformed Church for a common combat. It was in 1848, when many timid Christians of both the orthodox parties feared the speedy inauguration of a reign of atheism. Then the leading men of both parties agreed on the establishment of annual German Church Diets, which were to deliberate on the best means of strengthening in Germany the cause of Christianity. For several years the Diets were entirely harmonious, Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, of the evangelical party, acting as first president, and Stahl as the representative of the High Lutherans, being annually elected vice-president. But since the meeting of the Alliance at Berlin, in 1857, the parties became more and more estranged; and in 1859, when the executive committee refused to bring up for discussion some propositions of Dr. Stahl on which the two parties differed, Hengstenberg, Stahl, and most of their friends withdrew, and the Church Diet became one of the assemblies of the evangelical party and of the more moderate Lutherans.

It is admitted by Hengstenberg that he holds, with regard to the Church of Rome, a far more conciliatory position than the Lutheran Church of the sixteenth century. Yet in this question many of his friends and a large portion of his party have run ahead of him. Stahl assigned as one of the reasons

why he could not join the Evangelical Alliance, its aggressive policy toward the Church of Rome. Professor Leo, of Halle, with a few other leading men of the party, even held, in September, 1860, a conference with a number of prominent Roman Catholics in order to devise means, if possible, for uniting the Roman Catholics and the conservative and High Church Protestants of Germany in a common combat against the democratic and progressive tendencies of the age. In determining the platform of the conference, the Protestants participating in it went so far in their concessions as to declare the temporal power of the pope the most legitimate sovereignty of Europe, and to call the "division of the Church" in the sixteenth century a national calamity. With this step Hengstenberg has gently remonstrated in the preface to his Church Gazette for 1861; but while rebuking his friends, he declares himself that he has no sympathies whatever for the national movements in Italy, for Cavour and Garibaldi; that the modern attacks on the papacy appear to him to involve an attack on our common Christianity, and that he finds the antichrist more in the opponents of the papacy than in the papacy itself, and that in this point he differs from the Protestants of former centuries who lived in other circumstances. He even expresses his belief that the fall of the Roman Church would not be advantageous to the evangelical Church, but in many respects injurious. These views are fully shared by the majority of the party, and seem to be spreading, as the large circulation of Roman Catholic books in Protestant districts, their frequent recommendation by Protestant ministers, the favor with which the project of a political union between the High Church Protestants and the Roman Catholics is received, and other signs of the times indicate.

We therefore fully share the opinion of those who fear that the High Lutherans of Prussia, under the able leadership of Hengstenberg, are drifting in an un-Protestant and Romeward direction. Whether this tendency will finally result in as severe losses to Protestantism as those brought about in England by the Tractarian movement, or whether a counter current will set in, in time, to lead the bulk of the party back to a more consistent Protestant basis, the future alone can determine. But while deploring the fatal influence which the

ill-guided course of Professor Hengstenberg has already exercised on German Protestantism, we cannot but acknowledge the many noble features in his character. He is not, as has often been charged upon him, especially by the rationalists, a vacillating flatterer of the secular government. He has attacked several provisions of the Prussian law which appeared to him to be at variance with the doctrine of the Bible, with the utmost severity, and called on the clergy to disobey them; he has denounced the Freemasons and other secret societies, which he considers as unchristian, with unparalleled violence, although it was generally known in Prussia that the prince of Prussia (the present king) was the grand master of the Freemasons; he has demanded the most stringent legislation of Church and State against dueling, although it is the favorite practice of the high aristocracy. He has, we believe, misled the Protestant Church of a great nation, and thereby done great injury to the cause of evangelical Protestantism; yet this course has been prompted by no impure motives, but only by the belief that he was laboring for the re-establishment of true Christianity.

In the preceding article we have only discussed the great influence of Hengstenberg on the religious life and the ecclesiastical organization of the German Churches. He is equally distinguished as the author of many excellent exegetical writings, and on this field he has gained the applause and the admiration of the evangelical denominations in general. We may have occasion to discuss his achievements in biblical literature, and his influence on the scientific theology of Germany, in another article.

ART. VII.-WESLEYANISM AND TAYLORISM-SECOND REPLY TO THE NEW ENGLANDER.

Wesley's Sermons. On Rom. v, 15, and on Gen. iii, 19.

New Englander. November, 1859. Art. IV. Dr. Taylor on

Moral Government.

Methodist Quarterly Review. January, 1860. Synopsis of the Quarterlies.

New Englander. May, 1860. Art. X. Reply to the Methodist Quarterly Review.

Methodist Quarterly Review. October, 1860. Art. IX. Wesleyanism and Taylorism-Reply to the New Englander.

New Englander. July, 1861. Art. III. Theology of WesleyReply to the Methodist Quarterly Review.

THE singular attempt perseveringly prosecuted in the pages of the New Englander, to interpolate into the theology of Methodism one of the obsolescent dogmas of ultra-Calvinism, forces upon us the task of discussing one of the highest points of human speculation. It were to be wished that such a discussion should be pure from any alloy of malign feeling. But it comes upon us in the shape of so strange an imputation, and is urged with so resolute a pertinacity, that it necessarily contracts some personal elements. The reviewer complains of our want of candor, of our imputing ignorance and claiming superiority. But the article to which our last was a reply was anything but amiable. It was written in a tone of sullen assumption, and with so little appreciation of the hazard the writer was encountering, that there seemed a demand for some wholesome severity. His articles present from end to end not one touch of personal courtesy to reciprocate; yet the diminution of some unpleasant traits renders asperity less unavoidable, We, therefore, shall now perform what, as we announced in our last number to be our apparent duty, namely, place on record the complete and easy refutation of the entire attempt.

Never in all our experience have we known an outcry so excessive and so irrational about an opponent's not making verbatim quotations. These complaints, in order to be satisfied, would require us to quote the whole of Mr. Wesley's two

sermons and the large share of his own first article of sixtythree solid pages. They are false in point of fact, for the proportion of our quoted matter to our original is far greater than his own. Our synoptical notice of his article was full one quarter quotation, and our reply, full four in fourteen pages. With regard to Mr. Wesley's sermons we had a fair right to assume that nearly every one of our readers had a copy in his possession; and not being able to quote the whole, we did the next best thing, gave a condensation, after specifying the particular sermons, and inviting our readers, as our check, to verify our accuracy. Besides, of the five points we made upon Mr. Wesley's sermons, three are expressly founded upon what he did not say; and how shall we quote a man's silence? But how pedantic the notion that verbatim quotations are any test or security of fairness! A dishonest disputant can as easily misrepresent in quoting as in omitting to quote. Our reviewer, as every one else, necessarily bases a large share of his remarks on unquoted passages, otherwise an article would have to fill a Quarterly. Fairness consists not in furnishing an opponent's express terms, but in stating with a truthful spirit his exact positions and giving the full force of his arguThat to the best of our power we have done. Our opponent most self-complacently errs in imagining that he can say anything that we are not ready to face before any audience. Happy, indeed, should we be if both Reviews presented the entire discussion; for so clear and conscious is our own mastery of our opponent upon every point, that nothing would gratify us more than that the readers of either should be the readers of both.

ment.

Near two pages and a half does our reviewer take at the close of his article in exposing to the readers of the New Englander how great an ignoramus is the writer of this article. It seems there are in the history of past New England theology two Dr. Wests, one of Newport, and the other of latitude to us unknown; one being Stephen and the other Samuel. Now these two Wests, in our reply, we blended into one, making "a mythical personage;" and as one was Calvinistic and the other Arminian, we made him out a decidedly self-contradictory and self-explosive character. At this, our masterpiece of ignorance of matters and persons so conspicuous