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RIGHT ENDS AND RIGHT MEANS.

which we propose to ourselves; then we may hope to understand the means by which we are to seek them. Whatever may have been the case in former days, he is a foolish politician and a bad calculator, who in this day seeks for honour and respectability, and the esteem of the world, by bearing witness for the name of God, and defending his ordinances. If you seek these ends, I own, without a moment's hesitation, that the argument which a celebrated dissenting minister addressed to his own flock, is applicable also to you: "If you did not join the church in its high and palmy state, will you join it now, when even its admirers and patrons are forsaking it?" If, on the other hand, you desire to be witnesses for that spiritual and universal kingdom, of which your early friends delighted to speak, to spread it among men, to enter into the mysteries and truths upon which it is grounded, you cannot too quickly submit yourselves to God's laws, however simple or insignificant in human estimation, and thus resume the position which your fathers not in wilful obstinacy, but with much ignorance and precipitancy, abandoned.

Believe me,

Yours very faithfully.

* **

NOTE TO PAGE 99.

I RATHER fear that in the text of this Letter, I may have led the reader to think that I object to Dr. Pusey's theory of repentance chiefly because it presents the Gospel in so cheerless and hopeless an aspect to men. But this is not the view of his doctrine which is most. distressing to myself and to very many whom, with reason, Dr. Pusey would be far more grieved to offend. The light in which it exhibits the character of God, as willing the death of the sinner, as hardly persuaded to set him free (though the freedom he seeks is from Sin) the utterly selfish character which it imparts to penitence and prayer, the encouragement which it gives to the notion that we are not to seek for union with a Being of perfect purity and love, from whom by our impurity and lovelessness we have been separated, but by great efforts to alter the feelings and disposition of God towards us, are far more shocking to our minds than the consequences which we believe must follow from the doctrine, though we do not deny that those consequences seem to us to be nowhere so accurately described as in the article on Predestination; -if generally received, it would thrust men into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation." being our feelings, it would be rank cowardice to be deterred by the most unfeigned respect and admiration for the recent reviver of this tenet, or by our belief that he and his fellow-labourers are intended to confer great blessings on the church, or by our conviction that their hearts are probably far freer than our own from all the evil which we think is involved in the notion, from expressing, at every fitting opportunity, our intense dislike to this part of their system.

These

If we wished for a strong practical protest against it,

160

NOTE ON DR. PUSEY'S THEORY.

we should seek it in the following beautiful lines from Christian Year:"

the

And wilt thou seek again

Thy howling waste, thy charnel-house and chain,
And with the demons be,

Rather than clasp thine own Deliverer's knee?
Sure 'tis no heav'n-bred awe

That bids thee from his healing touch withdraw,
The world and He are struggling in thine heart,
And in thy reckless mood thou bidd'st thy Lord depart.

He, merciful and mild,

As erst, beholding, loves his wayward child;

When souls of highest birth

Waste their impassion'd might on dreams of earth,
He opens Nature's book,

And on his glorious Gospel bids them look,

Till by such chords as rule the choirs above,
Their lawless cries are tun'd to hymns of perfect love.

The lines on the first Sunday after Christmas are equally striking on the same subject—

How shall we 'scape th' o'erwhelming Past?

Can spirits broken, joys o'ercast,

And eyes that never more may smile :-
Can these th' avenging bolt delay,

Or win us back one little day

The bitterness of death to soften and beguile.
Father and Lover of our souls!

Though darkly round thine anger rolls,

Thy sunshine smiles beneath the gloom,
Thou seek'st to warn us, not confound,
Thy showers would pierce the harden'd ground,
And win it to give out its brightness and perfume.
Thou smil'st on us in wrath, and we,
Even in remorse would smile on Thee;
The tears that bathe our offer'd hearts,
We would not have them stain'd and dim,
But dropp'd from wings of seraphim,

All glowing with the light accepted Love imparts.

The lines in the "Lyra Apostolica," (a volume of beautiful poetry lately published by Rivington) beginning," I prayed, I fasted," are also a clear and admirable assertion of the truth which I think Dr. Pusey's tract contradicts.

LETTERS TO A MEMBER

OF THE

SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.

BY

A CLERGYMAN OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

No. III.

ON BAPTISM AND THE LORD'S SUPPER.

LONDON:

W. DARTON AND SON, HOLBORN HILL.