His lordship again remarks in a note

"There can be no question that every clergyman is pledged to a strict conformity; and though in some particulars it may be the custom to depart slightly from the rubric, yet such irregularities cannot justify any clergyman in other irregular courses. Indeed, our obvious duty is to relinquish such practices, if any exist, and return to the course enjoined by the Church." (p. 38).

So again we read

"A clergyman who feels himself bound by his solemn engagements, as every conscientious person must, will read the services without mutilation, or omission, or alteration." (p. 25).

How much more sound is this doctrine, than that which is propounded by Mr. Scobell throughout his work, and by Mr. Robertson in many instances, who appear to imagine that we are to be guided by circumstances, rather than by the letter of the rubric. We are thankful to find a distant prelate giving utterance to such sentiments. His lordship also remarks—

"What I shall labour to see established throughout this diocese is uniformity in practice. This will easily be attained, if all doubtful points are submitted to the bishop, in accordance with the rubric." (p. 27).

Here is the true secret of uniformity. Let the bishop settle doubtful points. Were such matters generally referred to the bishop, all our prelates would find it necessary to meet and come to some unanimous decision; and thus uniformity would be secured, even in those minor matters which are not settled by the rubrics. Had this necessary rule been observed, uniformity would have been secured in the diocese of London. But, instead of complying with the wishes of their diocesan, many of the clergy acted as if episcopal power were lodged in themselves, and not in the bishop.

It is worthy of remark that the views of the Bishop of Guiana are directly at variance with those of the Quarterly reviewer. It is singular, too, that they were delivered to the clergy as long ago as the month of April, before the Quarterly article could have been seen. His lordship could have known nothing of the various books which have appeared on the subject during the last twelve months; yet it is pleasing to reflect, that while some persons at home, and the Quarterly reviewer among the number, were preparing to sap the foundations of uniformity by a lax interpretation of the laws of the Church, a distant prelate should at the same time be engaged in diffusing sound and orthodox opinions on the very same subjects. No sound Churchman will have any difficulty in deciding between the Bishop of Guiana and the Quarterly reviewer.

343

ART. III.-Histoire des Vaudois, des Vallées du Piedmont. Par ALEXIS MUSTON. Tome premier. 8vo. Paris et Strasbourg. 1834.

2. Recherches Historiques sur la Véritable Origine des Vaudois, et sur le Caractère de leurs Doctrines Primitives. 8vo. Paris et Lyons. 1836.

3. An Enquiry into the History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses. By GEORGE STANLEY FABER, B.D. 8vo. London. 1838.

4. Valdenses, Waldenses, Vallenses, Valdesii, Vaudés or Vaudois. Article in the Seventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. By W. S. GILLY, D.D.; and republished as a separate Treatise. 1841.

5. The Crown, or the Tiara? Considerations on the present Condition of the Waldenses.

6. Report of the Vaudois Committee for the Relief of the Waldenses, or Vaudois. December, 1842.

THERE are many urgent reasons in the present aspect of the Church, and in the bold front assumed by Popery, why we should take our part in defence of that ancient community in Piedmont, whose name and history are as dear to Protestants as they are unpalatable to Romanists. To English Churchmen the interests of the Waldenses ought to be a most tender concern; for what body of continental Protestants is so capable of being shaped to our own ecclesiastical form, and of being made an instrument for good in our hands? Their wonderful, if not to say miraculous, preservation from age to age, their position on the Italian side of the Alps, their inclination to study, and to be moulded by our theology, commend them to our notice, and encourage us to promote their welfare and improvement. We are aware that some good and able men turn a cold eye upon them, because they are not exactly what we might wish them to be; but, nevertheless, we shall persevere in advocating their cause, and in bringing their perilous situation before the world, that the plots against them may be seasonably exposed. Heartily, therefore, do we range ourselves against adversaries, who are doing something more than "whetting their tongues like a sword, and shooting out bitter words," who are absolutely clamouring against the little remnant of a Christian race

"Whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;"

but from whose

"Martyr'd blood and ashes sown

O'er all th' Italian fields,"

we pray with Milton, that there yet

"May grow a hundred-fold."

It is time to lift up the veil, and to show that precisely the same spirit which roused the Albigensian crusade, established the Inquisition, and excited the massacres of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the valleys of Piedmont, is at work at this very moment, and, under the same pretexts, is calling for the same severe enactments, in the same devoted regions where blood was spilt so profusely one hundred and fifty years ago. The priests of Rome, and their adherents, are openly avowing principles which they disclaimed fourteen years ago; and if the Earl of Winchilsea, the Bishop of Exeter, and others, who took part in the celebrated controversies during the agitation of the Roman Catholic question, before the bill of 1829 was carried, had, in their forebodings of future evil, ascribed sentiments and intentions to Papists which are now publicly professed by Papists themselves, they would have been accused of raising an unfair hue and cry, and of bringing the whole Roman Catholic Church under false and slanderous imputations.

It was but the other day (August 15) that Lord Brougham, from his seat in the House of Lords, confessed "to his astonishment, commingled with bitter disappointment, the fulfilment of former prophecies:"

"I have been one of those (said his lordship) who held most cheap all the predictions of my noble friend opposite (Lord, Winchilsea), and of the other adversaries of the Catholics. But I grieve to say his prophecy has been fulfilled, and my prediction has been signally frustrated."

The Protestant is not only denounced as heretical and accursed, wherever the Romanists are numerically strong or influential enough to do so with impunity, but his property and person are rendered insecure; he is absolutely proscribed, persecuted, and assailed with a degree of insolent virulence, which shows that the aggressive movement against the Reformed religion is going on with all the implacable rancour of former ages. The Roman Church has once more thrown off the mask, and there she stands, as tyrannical, as cruel, as treasonable, as rapacious, as perfidious, as unrelenting as she was in the worst days of her usurped power. See what have been her achievements since 1829; and what has been her return for the peace-offering tendered to her by Protestant England in the Catholic Emanci

pation Bill. In the Prussian provinces on the Rhine her highest ministers have been in open collision with their Protestant sovereign. In Belgium she excited that successful rebellion which expelled the House of Orange, and changed the dynasty, which was guaranteed by all the powers of Europe. In Austria she has insisted on the banishment of the Protestant inhabitants of a whole district-the inoffensive Zillerthalers of the Tyrol. In France she has managed to turn that part of the charter, which was intended to secure religious liberty, into an intolerant edict, and has boldly told Louis Philippe, by the mouth of the Archbishop of Paris, that pledges have been given "at the foot of the altar of Mary" of the speedy restoration of that time when "all Frenchmen shall be united in the bonds of one faith," and Romanism shall be avenged on Protestantism. In Germany and Holland her menacing aspect has been equally alarming. In England she has been measuring her strength, counting heads, and advancing in a close and compact phalanx against the divided force of the Established Church. In Ireland she is performing a part which threatens the public peace and the division of the empire. Her bishops there have become fomenters of an agitation, which a Roman Catholic peer (Lord Beaumont) has lately described as being like a "deadly poison, envenoming and corrupting the social system, and leading multitudes into an abyss of havoc and ruin." Look where we will, we cannot discover any set-off against these acts of aggression. Nowhere is Rome generous, or even tolerant or forbearing, towards those of a different creed or ritual from herself. In the Pontifical States, where she can exercise power as well as influence, she is reviving the severities of the Inquisition; and so recently as June last an edict issued from Ancona, which will have the effect of banishing the Jews from the Papal dominions. After citing eleven articles, it adds, "They who violate the above articles will incur some or all of the penalties prescribed in the edicts of the Holy Inquisition." In Piedmont Romish councils have succeeded in reviving the Draconic code, which was written in blood three hundred years ago, and a royal ordonnance has been signed, which is enough to drive the whole Protestant population of that country to despair.

At this crisis, when every Reformed Church is in danger from a blow that may be aimed at any one of them, we cannot be silent, and we have selected the six publications whose titles are announced at the head of this article as the authorities for some statements which will show that for several years there has been a systematic train laid for the ruin of the most ancient Protesting community in Europe; and we exhibit her

treatment of the Waldenses as a sample of what every religious community may expect from ascendant Rome. Popery is a power which never abandons her purpose or relaxes her enmity. Her object is the universal and absolute subjection of body and mind to her will, in order that "there may be no possession of the goods of this life, no marrying, no inheriting, no devising, no ruling, no judging, no speaking, no feeling, no thinking, no living, and no dying in peace, without her leave."

Mr. Faber's "Enquiry," &c., is an acute and able vindication of the principles of the Waldenses, and a complete answer to the accusations which have been heaped on them from the time they first came into notice. Though it dwells more on their past than on their present history, yet it forcibly developes the practical effect which a reiteration of old calumnies is likely to have on the condition of the generation which is now in jeopardy. One of Mr. Faber's notes contains the following extract from a continental journal, dated 22d September, 1837. The writer of the communication seems to have been a native of the valleys of Piedmont, and to have foreseen the bursting of the cloud which then threatened the little Church of the Alps :

"We have been impatiently expecting this long time the publication of the new civil code of Sardinia, which a committee of jurists has been labouring at during the last seven years. We had hoped that, in the absence of political liberty, we should at least be blessed with a good civil legislation; but our expectations, I am sorry to say, have been most cruelly deceived. The code in question has just appeared; and the first thing that struck us, on opening the book, was a legislative enactment which throws us back at least two centuries. The Protestants are placed, by the new code, in a condition inferior to that of the Jews, as regards civil rights. A circular has lately been addressed to all public notaries, forbidding them to draw up deeds in favour of Protestants, such as acts for the alienation or purchase of property. Persons of our persuasion are no longer to be allowed to give evidence as witnesses; in short, we are replaced under the law of 1610. Behold how we proceed in the walk of civilization." (p. 550).

Mr. Faber, when he transcribed this passage, had the sagacity to understand that the proceedings, to which it alludes, had been occasioned by a repetition of the very charges which he has so completely refuted; and it is for us now to explain that these charges, propagated in all their foulness and falsehood by an Italian Popish bishop, through the Parisian press, have been reproduced by the literary organs of Popery in London and Dublin, and have been instrumental in preparing the way for a series of oppressive enactments, which, if not repealed, must extinguish the Protestant Church in Piedmont.