them; unless you wilfully undertake things for which you are incapacitated by the statutes; unless you indulge in a general contempt for the laws and authorities of the place, and persevere in an obstinate neglect of them.' Were these words inserted in the oath, could there be any complaint? But such a course would be full of objections. They were, therefore, placed by its side, and put into the hands of the student by the very persons who impose the oath; and yet it was supposed that such a burden was too hard to be borne-that it was a snare for tender consciences!

There is a passage in St. Bernard's tract, De Præcepto et Dispensatione,' so apposite, that we cannot refrain from quoting it. It is addressed to those who complained of the impossibility of conforming to the rules of a religious life, and therefore refused to undertake it.

St. Bernard was indeed a monk; and in the nineteenth century a monk is likely to carry with his opinions but little weight. But he was also a man of a most stern, uncompromising conscience; the great reformer of the monastic system-as some petty men would prove reformers of Universities and Colleges-and, not only for deep learning and powerful talent, but for practical knowledge of the world and vast influence on society at large, certainly the most extraordinary man in the middle ages. The whole of the thirteenth chapter of the above-mentioned tract deserves to be read. But a short extract may be sufficient, and we give it in the original Latin, because it is scarcely more than a repetition of former observations. He is speaking of the monastic rules:

'Partienda est proind cnobis in duo diversa hæc observatio regularis, in præcepta videlicet, et remedia; præceptis instituitur vita contra peccatum; remediis restituitur post peccatum innocentia. Sic ergo utraque ista complectitur nostra professio, ut professus quisque cum in aliquo forte regularium mandatorum deliquerit, si ad remedium æque regulare confugerit, etsi convincitur transgressor mandati, non tamen pacti prævaricator. Solum itaque censuerim fregisse votum, violasse propositum, pactum prævaricasse, qui et præceptum contempserit et remedium. Nam illum sane dico securum, qui etiamsi interdum obedientiæ limitem præterit, consilium non respuit pœnitentiæ. Regulares namque terminos, etsi sæpe deliquerit, non evadit, qui censuræ, quæ ex regulâ est disciplinam non subterfugit. Quod ergo dicitis, a nullis posse observari ad integrum quicquid a magistris præcipitur, verum est; sed levis culpa inobedientiæ est, et facilis cura ejus invenitur in regulâ, si quidem sit transgressio sine contemptu.'

If any one will compare these and the observations which follow with the Epinomis and the statutes of the University of Oxford, he will scarcely believe that one is not copied from the other.

At

At any rate, he will recognise the same wise contrivance in the numberless minute penalties attached to almost every violation of every statute, and the indulgent provisions of the dispensing power, set side by side with the strictness of the promise to obey. Mr. Tyler-and he has with him no small number of well-disposed, but not deep-thinking men—asks (p. 73), if the necessity of so long and elaborate an explanation, and of what is and is not perjury, does not condemn the oath itself?'. He seems to think that the difficulty of framing a proper machinery is a valid argument for rejecting all machinery whatever. But he is too good a man not to understand from experience the main problem of moral education to which we before alluded, which man, whenever he deals with man in his present imperfect state, must solve as well as he can, and must solve as God has solved it. He must lay down a law of perfect obedience which yet he knows will be transgressed, for without such a law there will be no effort to reach the highest goodness; and he must then provide loopholes for escape when the transgressions are committed, that the perfectness of the law may not prove death to him who violates it. What the law of God in the Scriptures and the Christian vow at baptism are to the moral government of a Christian, the oath of obedience to the statutes was to the student. The illustration is not too high; for in the regulation of man's moral nature, the same principles must be employed throughout, in small and in larger cases alike. And what the opportunities for repentance, the hopes of forgiveness, the restriction of God's utter vengeance to notorious denials of his faith, to profligate violation of his laws, and to hardened obstinacy—what these are towards the offenders in religion, the provisions of the Epinomis are towards the transgressing student. There is no ingenuity in the illustration, but a close harmony between the two cases, arising from the identity of circumstances to which the machinery is to be adapted.

And yet in its shallowness and impatience the spirit of the age clamours against such arrangements as complicated and artificial; as if man was a simple being to be governed by simple principles. And it fancies that the whole difficulty may be removed by limiting the obligation to a promise instead of an oath; as if the law of honour, or any moral law whatever, did not require the same bold rigid outline, and the same power of compromise, adaptation, and indulgence to human imperfection; and as if it was not, in fact, far more harsh and far more unbending, and therefore far more dangerous. And with the false notions now prevalent of God, as a Being who regards words only and deeds, and not the heart-and of an oath, as an act of imprecation, drawing down vengeance on the offender by an inevitable sacramental chain

men

men fail to see that the very thing which gives to a promise the slight degree of elasticity which may be absolutely necessary for its fulfilment or execution, is the oath which refers it to God, which makes our obedience to it obedience to God as well as to man, and therefore God the person to whom we must render an account, and not ignorant, unforgiving man alone or chiefly-which gives our transgressions a refuge under his promise of pardon on repentance-which permits us to move beneath its pressure with an ease sufficient to fulfil our work, and without which the work could not even be attempted-sure that He who knows all things will understand our motives and make allowance for our errors.

Take away the oath and retain a promise, and no man who values either his own Christian liberty or the right discharge of his duty will venture to undertake any complicated trust, much less such a trust as the hereditary transmission of our collegiate institutions, where he is bound down to the strict letter of the law, under circumstances never contemplated by the entrustor, and is subjected, as his only judge, to the ignorant, unfeeling criticism and reprobation of man. And if the promise then be withdrawn, no institution now existing will remain for many years longer, because no external visitatorial power whatever can watch with sufficient strictness over them; and that very power itself, if placed under no moral control, will be tempted to abuse its authority. And still less will any new foundations be laid of systems which are the glory of the country, when no one shall be able to obtain in such a work the only security within his reach for perpetuating these blessings to posterity.

We have ventured to repeat these observations, on account of their great importance; but we cannot enter farther into the subject. If the principles are correct, the application of them will be easy; but without reference to principles, any alteration in our system of oaths must be most hazardous and unwise. All that we are pleading for is caution, humility, deep thought and self-distrust in disturbing our ancient landmarks. It is true, indeed, that oaths have been multiplied of late to a very alarming extent, that they have been admitted where they should never have been tolerated, administered irreverently, trifled with publicly and wantonly, and perhaps even by the best of men not observed with that solemn feeling which they are intended to inspire. And therefore, says the spirit of the age, let them be swept away root and branch. They have been abused, and now we will destroy them. May we not ask if the very abuse and multiplication does not prove the truth of some good principle from which they sprung, and which still may be found in a portion of them? Can we indulge in safety this wild, promiscuous

promiscuous demolition, without attempting to fix very deeply and very clearly the limits of the good and the evil? And ought we not to look, as the first means of correction, to the seat of all abuses, the human heart, and give fresh sanctity and power to oaths, by inspiring reverence, and truth, and piety into those who administer or accept them?

It is true also that the early Church, though its practice, like the authority of Scripture, in many remarkable instances sanctioned the enforcement of some oaths, spoke against them in general with the most unmeasured severity. Scarcely one of Chrysostom's earlier homilies occur without strong and repeated denunciations against them; but those oaths were such as fell under the exceptions established above. They were voluntary, wanton, administered without authority and for private purposes, without regard to the temptation to violate them, assertory, imprecatory, and such as tempted God by unwarranted appeals to his supernatural vengeance. The real principle of an oath the early Christian Church enforced in every way. Let a man swear by his life,' 'let the name of God be upon every action,' were her favorite mottos. And if she refused the formal declaration of the principle, it was only because the necessity of any declaration seemed to impugn and throw doubt upon the sincerity of her inward feeling. Afterwards, when this high tone of Christian piety was lowered, and it became necessary to avow and enforce religious sanctions publicly, because in secret they were so often neglected, the Church, from the time of Constantine, began to inultiply oaths indefinitely, and to apply them to all the duties of life in which religion could be naturally infused. Particularly all the relations of society which depended on mutual faith, such as allegiance to a sovereign, fealty to a lord, service to a master, were all sanctified by oath. And in our own country, from peculiar circumstances, the system of purgation was admitted to an extent which shocks and astonishes the conceited ignorance of the present day. We forget that we are living under a totally different system. We make no allowance for the necessities of a half-formed state of society, and we neither study nor understand the many admirable contrivances by which, under the administration of the Church, even the superstition of the ordeal was rendered no despicable instrument for detecting crime, deterring perjury, and sheltering the innocent.

Upon this followed an age in which, with the corruption of the Romish Church, all other truths and systems became corrupted likewise. Then oaths were made instruments of worldly policy, and abused to the lowest purposes. And now they are all to be cast off, because piety is so lost, and men's hearts are so hardened,

that

that the name of God no longer acts as a warning or a terror. For this is the true cause—not that we reverence God more than former ages, but that we reverence him less. And that has come

to pass in our own days which Plato (De Leg. 12 L.) lamented even in his days, and against which, in his usual deep, penetrating, masculine wisdom, he made the same provisions which we have endeavoured to point out at present, and which cannot be stated, in conclusion, better than in his own words.

'There was,' says he, a legislator of old, who laid down a law for his tribunals which we may well admire. He saw that men around him believed in God; for there were children of God still upon earth, and he himself was one. To God, therefore,

and not to man, he entrusted the decisions of justice, by imposing upon each litigant an oath. But now when of the men around us some believe that no God exists,-some that he cares not for mortals, some, the most common and most wicked, that by offerings and flatteries he may be bribed to become their accomplice in villany-now, in an age like this, the rule of that great legislator would indeed be folly. Man's piety has changed, and our laws must be changed also; and therefore in all our Courts prohibit the oath of both parties. Let the plaintiff record his charge, not swear to it; let the defendant enter his reply, but deliver it unsworn. For,' he adds, it would indeed be awful for trial upon trial to occur within our walls, and for us to know and feel that nearly half the parties to them were perjured souls; and yet to mix with them, meet them at table, talk with them, intermarry with them! Let,' he concludes, an oath be taken from judges," from magistrates, from electors to high offices, from all in whom is reposed any weighty trust, and who have no interest in perjury. But whenever perjury would lead to gain, decide the cause without an oath. Let no one swear to enhance his credit; let there be no imprecation.'

6

ART. VI.-Secret History of the Court of England from the Accession of George III. to the Death of George IV.; including, amongst other important Matters, full Particulars of the Mysterious Death of the Princess Charlotte. By the Right Honourable Lady Anne Hamilton, Sister of his Grace the present Duke of Hamilton and Brandon and of the Countess of Dunmore. London. 1832. (2 vols. 8vo.)

WE

E notice another infamous publication, but for a somewhat different object, and with very different feelings from those which guided our observations on the Diary of the Times of George IV.' In that work a lady of rank endeavoured to transfer

the