tions, admits of satisfactory proof, as they may be verified in the course of mundane events, over which it may be presumed that Providence has exercised an immediate control. In the whole of God's dealings with that nation whom he had chosen for his people," the course of events maintains a constant and uniform tenor. In the order and regularity with which his dispensations were conducted, the object is not merely apparent,-to establish them in "a rest" at an appointed time, but at intervals in which the sabbatical division of it is predominant; instances of which have been recently adduced from the Jewish and Christian writers.-Pp. 307-311.

The glorious period commencing with the opening of the seventh and last millennium, when "those on whom the second death hath no power shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years," is thus graphically and powerfully described:

His kingdom having become commensurate with the sound of "the Everlasting Gospel"..."which is gone out into all the world;""every nation and kindred and tongue and people" to which "it is preached," shall yield a willing submission to his authority. The pale of the Church will then know no bounds but those of the habitable world. The living structure, which "is founded on the prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone," as sanctified with his presence, will "grow into a Holy Temple of the Lord,... a habitation of God through the Spirit." When "the thousand years which sbould be fulfilled" have thus come to a close; as time passes into eternity, and the last transition is made from the great to the everlasting sabbath, the promise of that holy rest which God ratified with an oath will be carried into plenary effect. The Divine purposes being thus achieved, the prophetic vision will be fully and finally realized: "Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people; and God himself shall be with them, and be their God."-Pp. 325, 326.

From what we have already said, and the extracts given, it will be at once conceded that Mr. Nolan has discharged his duty in a most masterly style. In his writings, indeed, the sublimity and beauty of the prophecies are no less powerfully delineated, than the appositeness of the whole sacred volume to fix the heart upon the attributes of the one true God, and lead the creature to fall down and worship the Creator. The fulfilment of prophecies written ages before the events occurred, and written with such accuracy that they appear more like histories of that which is past than predictions of things to come, proves at once the author and finisher to have been God,-omniscient to foresee, omnipotent to accomplish. The perfect adaptation of the whole scheme of government for the universe to the condition of man, as we trace his history from Adam to our own time, is a further proof that our God is a God of love, long-suffering, and of great goodness. And all this, and far more, the perusal of the work under consideration has forced upon us. We lay down the volume, indeed, with a grateful feeling that we have received additional light respecting the things that belong unto our everlasting peace; and we humbly hope that that light may be, under Providence, a "light to lighten" us on our pilgrimage to the kingdom of our Lord, and make us meet to be partakers of the joys and triumphs of the everlasting Sabbath.

ART. II-The Church of Rome's Traffic in Pardons, considered in Three Letters addressed to the Rev. T. L. Green, Roman Catholic Priest of Tixall. By GEORGE HODSON, M.A., Vicar of Colwich, and Archdeacon of Stafford. London: Hamilton, Adams and Co. 1838. Pp. 42.

MR. GREEN having found some tracts which, according to him, misrepresent his creed, writes to the Archdeacon, who here offers to prove that the tracts which he disseminated are substantially correct in regard of the charge adduced by Mr. Green; and that they contain but a true statement respecting the sale of indulgences, and the Roman Church's traffic in pardons. The tract is, (we presume,) one of the series put forth by the Bristol Church of England Tract Society. It gives nine reasons for protesting against the Church of Rome. The 8th is

"I protest against the church of Rome, because she believes that pardon for sins, past, present, and to come, may be sold by her clergy, and that they have the power to grant such pardons, unconditionally, for money."

Neither the articles of the Council of Trent, (remarks the Archdeacon,) nor the Trent catechism, nor the Creed of Pope Pius IV., say any thing in so many words about granting pardons for money. But if the Council of Trent expressly sanctions the doctrine of indulgences, and if it can be shown that indulgences are, to all intents and purposes, synonymous with pardons; and that it has ever been, and is to this day, the practice of the Church of Rome to sell indulgences, we shall go some way, I think, towards establishing the position with which I set out, and vindicating the author of the tract which has called forth your remonstrance, from the charge of having made a calumnious and unwarranted assertion.-P. 3.

The decree of the Council of Trent defines nothing. It simply affirms, that Christ has left to his church the power of bestowing indulgences; declares the use of them to be very salutary to Christian people; anathematizes those who hold a contrary opinion; and makes some show of restraining the abuses which, by its own confession, had attended the administration of them, -P. 3.

The decree itself was one of the very last that was promulgated, at the hurried close of the last (the 25th) session, not without strenuous opposition from several of the learned Fathers, some of whom were for framing the decree differently, others for making no decree at all upon the subject.—P. 4.

Deep and loud as were the complaints which from every quarter assailed their ears respecting these abuses, they drove off the consideration of them to the very close of the last session of a council which had been sitting, with occasional prorogations, for eighteen years. Two days before the council broke up, the major part inclined to the opinion, that it was best to supersede inquiry into indulgences, as they were a subject of considerable difficulty and embarrassment; though many Fathers still desired that some slight notice should be taken of them, lest they should appear altogether passed over in silence. At length, the very night before the council was dissolved, a decree was hastily drawn up, and adopted the next morning, not without the expression of a strong opinion on the part of several of the members that it was better to omit the subject altogether. And what, after all, does the decree amount to? Does it absolutely prohibit the sale of indulgences? No such thing. It merely says that scandalous abuses are to be checked, and all nefarious traffic in indulgences done away with. As to other abuses, arising from superstition, ignorance, or any other cause whatever, the correction of them was left to the bishops and the supreme pontiff, the very men who had most notoriously sanctioned those abuses. Why, if the holy Fathers were so very careful to retrench abuses, why did

they not simply prohibit the sale of indulgences? Why restrict their prohibition to nefarious traffic in them, leaving it to every pope, cardinal, bishop, confessor, to determine for himself what is and what is not nefarious? Why did they refuse to insert a clause in the decree, as at first proposed, which did expressly prohibit the charging of any certain sum of money for indulgences, even when what are called suspensions were given. (See Mendham's Council of Trent, sess. 25, p. 312.)—Pp. 19, 20.

Those who are at all versed in the Romish controversy, are well aware that no greater contrariety can be found than that which exists between the more learned Latinists of former, and the more shallow expositors of Popery in later times. Upon this point of indulgences, contradictory evidence was given, says Archdeacon Hodson, before a Committee of the House of Commons in 1825 (previously to "the God-denying Bill of 1829," as it has justly been called), by the Roman-catholic bishops, Kelly, Doyle, and Murray.

The Romanists cannot be consistent in their defence of falsehood. They first tell you to go to the Council of Trent; and in the next place refer you to Bossuet or Veron, authors of no authority. And, as was done by Dr. Brown, the head of the Benedictine College of Downside near Bath, in the controversy held in the college chapel between him and Mr. Tottenham, they explain away the Council, and instead of venturing to defend it, take their stand on other ground.

Bossuet, Gothen, Challoner, Milner, C. Butler, (of whom the present incomparably learned Bishop of Lincoln has remarked, that it is never safe to take his quotations upon trust,) tell us, says Archdeacon Hodson, that indulgences do not mean pardons. But, he adds:

For the present, may I be allowed to ask, whether the expositions which I have above quoted of the doctrine of indulgences are authorized expositions? Are Mr. Gothen, Dr. Challoner, Dr. Milner, Mr. Charles Butler-is the Bishop of Meaux-are the Vicars Apostolic of England, authorized expositors of the views entertained by the Roman-catholic Church on this and other disputed questions? If they are not, I suppose we need not be detained by their statements. If they are, then I must own I am exceedingly puzzled how to reconcile those statements with the language of the indulgences themselves, granted from time to time by the heads of their church. The popes, I presume, are at least as high authority as the bishops and inferior pastors of their church: yet I find in their bulls, expressions which seem to me, I must confess, not a little contradictory to those I have just quoted. Pope Urban II., toward the close of the eleventh century, promises to those who should join the banners of the cross against the infidels, not only indulgence of all their sins (which looks very much like pardon of sins,) but also an entrance into the paradise of bliss. Baronii Annal. ad an. 1095.-P. 6.

Again, in p. 9, Archdeacon Hodson quotes from a jubilee bull of Boniface VIII., A. D. 1300, "Non solum plenam et largiorem, imo plenissimam omnium suorum concedemus et concedimus veniam peccatorum." Our author refers, in his Second Letter, to the Tax-tables, and to a work entitled "The Spiritual Venality of Rome;" and to the Commentary of the learned Claude D'Espense, who is admitted to have

been one of the most able and erudite Romanists of the 16th century. Having in his Commentary (Titus i. 7.) expressly referred to the Centum Gravamina of the German Princes presented in A.D. 1523 to the Pope's nuncio at the Diet of Nuremberg, he proceeds to say, that "all these charges might be considered as the fiction of the enemies of the Pope, were it not for a book printed and exposed to sale at Paris, entitled the Tax Book of the Apostolic Chancery, in which" (these are D'Espense's own words) "more wickedness may be learned than in all the summaries of all vices; and in which license of sinning is proposed to most, and absolution to all who will buy it."

In p. 26, Archdeacon Hodson mentions that the practice of selling indulgences continues to this day, as is very well known to travellers in Roman-catholic countries, and might be shown by numerous extracts from their writings. He refers to Eustace's Tour, iii. 131; Rome in the Nineteenth Century, ii. 267-270; and Townsend's Travels in Spain, ii. 171-173. Would it not be worth while for popular legislators, who rule and shift upon the principles of expediency, to procure such an indulgence as that which Clement VI. granted in 1351 to the King and Queen of France and to their successors," to set aside such oaths, taken

or to be taken, as they cannot conveniently keep?" This apostolical fragment, our author draws from Dacherii Spicilegium, edit. 1723, tom. iii. p. 174.

Archdeacon Hodson admits a verbal inaccuracy in the assertion, that indulgences are unconditionally granted for money. But what conditions? Let the reader consult the History of the Seven Roman Basilicas, by Onuphrius; he shall find an indulgence suspended on a weathercock. As if in mockery, the pious penitent is commanded to look up to a certain vane, and lo! he is sure of an indulgence. So there are plenary indulgences at Jaffa, to him that shall there for the first time set his foot on the Holy Land; as we read in a little book of Processions made by the Franciscans in divers places in the Holy Land, inscribed at once to the honour of God and the glory of St. Francis; printed at Antwerp, 1670. We hope that the Archdeacon will expand this little tract, and illustrate it more copiously.

ART. III.-On the Education of the People of India. By CHARLES E. TREVELYAN, Esq. of the Bengal Civil Service. Longman. 8vo. Pp. 220.

We took up this volume with great interest, for there is much in the increased facility of intercourse, and the extension of knowledge, now commencing in the East, which may claim the attention of the Christian mind, and suggest, even to the most sober, the thought of the similar

fusion of mankind, and the approximation to one standard of intercommunication, which preceded the introduction of the gospel, and so remarkably facilitated its propagation. But we were disappointed to find, that the work before us is but a crude and partial vindication of certain crude and party changes, recently introduced by the authorities in India, in the method of appropriating a certain sum, which is assigned for educational purposes in the British possessions. Under such circumstances, we should have thought that a brief notice of this production would have sufficed for the readers of the REMEMBRANCer. But upon further consideration, the principles, which Mr. Trevelyan advocates, appeared to demand a more extended examination, both because they seem, by their plausibility, calculated to mislead the religious public, and because they are similar to those which are so pertinaciously urged by the opponents of classical learning; who, as though the heart and imagination had been exhaled away from men by the furnace of Reform, deny the name of useful to every acquirement which is not scientific.

It would appear that the legislature, in passing the charter of the East India Company in 1813, resolved, with justice and wisdom highly meritorious to their right feelings, to set apart a fund (10,000l. per annum) "for the revival and promotion of literature, and for the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories." Now here two objects are plainly announced,one, doubtless, the promotion of scientific pursuits, and the second as plainly relating to literature; but the dispute now is, what kind of literature had the legislature in view. Upon this point, we have the misfortune to entertain opinions entirely opposed to those, not only of Mr. Trevelyan, but of the late governor-general, Lord William Bentinck.

All written authority must be interpreted by traditional aid, because the sense in which it is received cannot itself be written contemporaneously with the written authority, but must be collected when the sense is afterwards disputed and must be ascertained. The sense in which the above resolution of the British parliament was at first received, was to the effect, that the English rulers of India thereby designed to supply that encouragement to learning which the native princes had bountifully granted, but of which their decay and impoverishment had deprived the professors of eastern literature. This was the universally received sense of the meaning of the legislature, and the sense at first acted upon; and if this be the real design of parliament in making this provision, no doubt can remain as to the meaning of the sentence which expresses it. The learning which the native princes encouraged consisted in Muhammedan and Hindú history, poetry, theology, metaphysics, mathematics, and astronomy. We are not bound to commend their