and were conjoined with them in faith, as partners of the same invisible church; that they might render thanks to God, who had given them perseverance in the faith; that God might be prayed to bestow on us the same constancy and virtue. For those who had not died in perfect sanctity, they prayed that, the remains of sin being purged, they might be translated into the heaven of the blessed, the rigour of the last judgment being mitigated."

With a few extracts from the writings of Philo the Jew, who wrote in 140; I shall conclude. "If the person who offers is bad and unjust, the sacrifices are not sacrifices, the sacred things not sacred; and his prayers, instead of bringing good, produce misfortune and malediction. So far from remitting sins, they bring them to remembrance. On the contrary, if he who offers a sacrifice to God is holy and just, the sacrifice remains whole and entire, though the flesh be consumed. Can a finer sacrifice be found than the good affection of the soul towards God, the good courage of which is never forgotten, being registered in the register and tablet of Him, and lasting eternally with the sun, the moon, and the world? The priests sacrifice only for their parents, friends, and those of their own country; but the high-priest sacrifices not only for all the human race, but, moreover, he prays and renders thanks for all the works of nature and parts of the world, earth, air, fire, and sea; because he esteems the world as his country, and is accustomed to render Him who governs it propitious by prayers and offerings, requiring Him to make his creation a partaker of his mild and merciful nature. The high-priest is a near and common parent to all, rendering justice according to his laws and ordinances to those who do any thing contrary to them, and praying and sacrificing every day for all the people, asking of God, for them, as for his father, mother, brothers, and children, all good and happiness; in order that all persons of the nation, of whatever age they may be, may join and unite themselves as parts of the body in one agreement and community, having peace and good government in commendation. The law wills that the spirit of the sacrifice be sanctified, being exercised in good and profitable thoughts, and then that his life be furnished with good works, that when he puts his hands upon the head of the beast, he may say with a pure conscience: These hands have taken no gift to do evil, have shed no innocent blood, have wounded no one, have done no wrong, nor injury, nor attempted any, nor assisted in any thing liable to blame or reproach, but have been ministers of all good and useful things, which are prized and praised by just, honest, and wise persons. The blood which is poured around the altar signifies our souls, and by it the soul is offered.' He who has never fallen into adversity, either of body or goods, ought by hymns, praises, and sacrifices, holily to thank the Governor of the world. He who offers should consider not so much whether the offering be without spot, as that his soul is clean, entire, and perfect in all good works. He presents it either to render thanks for benefits received, or for their continuance, or for some benefits to come, or for the removal of present or approaching evil. God receives the smallest thing from holy persons: if they present themselves accomplished and perfect in virtue and honesty, they present to Him a great sacrifice, honouring Him as the Benefactor and Saviour of the world by hymns and praises. Melchisedec offered bread and wine, as a priest.' Philo that thorns signify passions, which illustrates St. Paul's

says

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"thorn in the flesh," upon which so much nonsense has been written. These passages explain the existing liturgies, and show that the apostles founded the Christian sacrifice upon those of the Jews; and, however unpleasant it may sound to ultra-protestant ears, my conviction is, that the apostles taught the canon of the mass in every church which they founded under heaven. Yours respectfully, WM. PINCKARD.

Towcester.

THE KIRK OF SCOTLAND.

AN agitation has been created among the ministers of the Scottish Establishment, which, in its consequences, bids fair to finish the career of "the best Reformed Church." Last January, the commission of the General Assembly suspended seven ministers in the presbytery of Strathbogie, which is a district in the counties of Banff and Aberdeen, watered by the little river Bogie, which unites with the river Deveron. These ministers were placed in a dilemma by the opposite decrees of the Court of Session and the General Assembly; and they chose to obey the former rather than the latter, especially as its decree by many was not considered altogether canonical. That presbytery consists of twelve parishes, one of which is at present vacant and which forms the basis of this dispute between the civil and the ecclesiastical courts. Those ministers who were suspended form the majority of that presbytery, and they claimed the protection of the Court of Session, which issued its interdict against the decree of the commission, and authorized them to preach and officiate in their own parishes as if no such decree of the commission had existed. The Lord President of that court, in delivering judgment, said, "The question, in his opinion, came into this short compass, whether there were or whether there could be in this country any body of men or any individual man who were above the law,-who not only thought themselves entitled to disobey, but to the utmost extent of their power to punish those who do obey the law? That was the simple question. It was said by the church courts that they had an independent jurisdiction; but who had given it to them? The law gave it to them; the law gave it to them, and nothing else; and they had not one power or privilege beyond what the law gave."

This is pretty well; but what follows is rather an unkind cut from one who has sat as a lay elder in the Assembly for the long space of fifty years; and now, at the end of half a century of official connection, tells them: "The presbyterian form of government was not innate. It was not created by itself; on the contrary, it was well known that the Reformation was established in this country about thirty years BEFORE presbytery was heard of! The Reformation took place in 1560; but presbytery did NOT EXIST till the act of 1592. How was it created? With any powers assumed to itself, either in the First or the Second Book of Discipline, or any powers it might afterwards assume? No: that establishment was given on the express terms that the Church was bound and astricted to

take trial of and admit the presentee of the lay-patron. That was the charter of the Presbyterian Church, which existed only by law, and in virtue of that act of parliament. And yet it was said that they might disregard their own charter, they might go beyond the power given them by the law of the land, they might usurp any powers and privileges which they might choose to call necessary for their ecclesiastical functions. This had been called an imperium in imperio: he would rather call it an imperium super imperium, for it attempted to set itself above the law. Was it possible in this or any other civilized country that there could exist two co-ordinate or supreme powers, legislative or judicial? The thing was impossible; society could not exist-no government could exist under such circumstances.

"When a collision arises between two courts, who is to judge between them? The civil law is one thing; the ecclesiastical law is another thing. Can both these jurisdictions stand? were both of equal authority? No,' says the Church, they are not; for ours is supreme; ours is to be the law that shall be obeyed; you have no right to judge whether we have exceeded our powers or not; we exercise our power, and we are the sole judge whether we exercise it right or wrong.' Now all this was done in enforcement of the veto act: the Court (of Session) held the veto act as now having no existence. That act is a nonentity. It was declared by the supreme court of the country to be ultra vires; it was declared that the Church had no power to pass that act, which was declared null and void. All the attempts" (on the part of the General Assembly) "to enforce that act-all the proceedings upon it-all the punishment of those who refused to obey it, must from the nature of the thing be utterly illegal."

The Court of Session has accordingly thrown the shield of its protection over the seven suspended ministers, and compelled the presbytery of Strathbogie to admit Mr. Edwards to trial, who has been presented to the vacant parish of Marnoch, and, if found qualified, to ordain and induct him to the parish. Since the interference of the civil court, Mr. Cunningham, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, was sent to officiate in Keith, one of the suspended parishes; and, as a symptom of the spirit in which the dominant party have acted, of which he is one, we quote his own words as addressed to a public meeting:-" He had the honour, the second day after the sentence, to preach in the parish of Keith. In the name and by the authority of the Commission, and in the Lord Jesus Christ's name, under which he believed they had acted, he and others had preached in the parishes; they had proclaimed what, he was afraid, was a very unusual sound in those parishes-the glad tidings of the Gospel; the people listened to them, and many were led to inquire what must they do to be saved! GOD thus bearing the testimony of his approbation to the sentence of the Commission, by over-ruling that sentence through the guidance of his Spirit to open a wide and effectual door for the preaching of the Gospel, and the conversion of the souls of men."

Mr. Guthrie, minister of the Old Grey Friars, Edinburgh, preached in another of the parishes, Botriphnie, after he had been legally served with the interdict, and, holding the paper up, proclaimed to the congregation that he had achieved the honour of being the first to break it. His example, it appears, has been followed by others. These are the good old times of the covenant returned; but the powers of the Queen's Advocates and the Claverhouses of the present day will not be so

safely disobeyed as they were in former times. To show that all the ministers of the Scottish establishment are not smitten with the same judicial madness, we quote the speech of the Rev. Mr. Leslie, minister of the parish of Fintray, delivered at a meeting of the presbytery of Aberdeen.

Mr. Leslie rose and brought forward his motion in its integrity. That, though it is a principle of the Church of Scotland that no minister be intruded into a congregation, yet intrusion meant the forcing on a parish an unqualified presentee, as we read in the First Book of Discipline, drawn up in 1560.— But violent intrusion we call it not, when the Council of the Church, in the fear of God, and for the salvation of the people, offereth unto them a sufficient man to instruct them, whom they shall not be forced to admit before just examination.'-that, therefore the Veto Law, being founded on an erroneous definition of Intrusion,' must be held to be unsound, and ought to be rescinded: and, as it was contrary to statute law, and, in its effects, practically ruinous; and, as its enactment was unconstitutional and illegal, owing to the presence of a body of ministers and elders of chapels of ease, not acknowledged by statute law, it was the duty of the Presbytery to overture the General Assembly to take steps to remedy these evils.

Mr. Leslie said he thought, some time since, that he had done with the business of Church Courts; but the late extraordinary proceedings of these Courts had induced him to shake off his indolence, and return to his post, as it would be criminal to stand aloof. He was convinced that the measures which the Church was now pursuing were hastening her on the road to ruin. He had but rarely attended the meetings of Presbytery, partly on account of his age, and the distance of the parish of Fintray from Aberdeen, but chiefly because he could not fall in with the unconstitutional views of the reigning party in the Presbytery, and he had therefore retired for the sake of peace; but he held that, at the present crisis, it was the duty of young and old to stand forward and avow their sentiments. He thought it his duty, as an old man, and having long experience as a member of Church Courts, to offer his advice to his younger brethren-not to those of like standing with himself, the first half dozen on the roll. He wished to offer his advice, when a gross delusion seemed to overspread the land-when the Church was tottering to her foundation—and when she was in danger of falling, not by the efforts of her enemies, but by the mistaken zeal of her friends.

He would now refer to the question of Non-Intrusion. No one could deprecate more than he did the intrusion of an unqualified minister on a congregation, and he had long admired the checks which the Church, in this respect, had put on the Patron, the Presbytery, and the people. He would suppose that a minister had accepted a presentation he was a friend to patronage, and thought that it had been a blessing to Scotland if he were found deficient in literature, in moral character, in prudence, or in any ministerial qualification, he would be sorry to see him entrusted with the spiritual superintendence of the people. He could conceive a man of piety, of literary and other necessary attainments, and yet ill fitted for the charge to which he was presented, by physical or vocal debility; he would rejoice to see such a man settled in a small parish, suited to his strength. When the patron gave a presentation, it was for the Presbytery to take the presentee on his trials, and the people had also a right to be heard. It belonged to the Presbytery to support the rights of the patron and the presentee on the one hand, and the rights of the people on the other; but to allow the people to sit as judges in the case to allow them to reject a presentee without any trial, without any charge being brought against him, for no reason but their arbitrary nolumus, was just setting the scholar above the teacher, and he could not conceive any thing more preposterous or absurd—it was an insult to common sense. He therefore considered the Act of 1834, and the decision of last General Assembly, to be decisions contra bonos mores et mentem sanam, and as iniquitous as the Popish Inquisition. It sanctioned the rejection of a presentee, without any charge being brought against him. It was, therefore, in the first place, contrary to the first principles of justice. Secondly, it was contrary to the spirit and precepts of the Gospel All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.' Thirdly, it was contrary to the example of Jesus Christ, who, on his trial before the Jewish High-priest, said, 'If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil.' Fourthly, it was contrary to the example of St. Paul, who said to Festus,

'If I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die; but if there be none of these things whereof these men accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them.' The General Assembly had prohibited seven ministers from preaching, because they had obeyed the enactment of a Civil Court; and this he would denominate downright tyranny. Fifthly, it was contrary to the laws of the British nation, which provided that no man should be condemned without a trial, and without an opportunity of being heard in his own defence. Sixthly, it was contrary to their oath of allegiance. After the decision of the House of Lords had been received, to continue the Veto Law he conceived to be little less than setting the laws of the land at defiance, and rearing the standard of rebellion. Seventhly, it was impolitic, at a time when the Church was making application to Government for additional endowments. Eighthly, it claimed for the people privileges to which they had no right, either by the Word of God, or by the laws of the land. Ninthly, the Veto was a step towards priestly domination, and would pave the way to an undue influence on the part of the Church.

The Veto was sanctioned neither by the Word of God nor the law of the landbut it would serve a double purpose. It was artfully calculated to blind the people, and to secure their support while it would open a door to the Church of Scotland, as had been done by the Church of Rome, to introduce any thing whatever under the name of spiritual. The Word of God declared that they who resisted the Civil Magistrates resisted the ordinances of God; and he had yet to learn that the General Assembly possessed a dispensing power to absolve men from their oath of allegiance. He might be called an Erastian for holding these views, but he did not care. It has been said that the Church was independent of the State in spiritual things; his reply was, that this was, in one sense, true; in another sense, it was erroneous. As a branch of the Catholic Church of Christ, the Church of Scotland derived her authority from her great Head alone; but, as the Church established by law, she derived her authority from the State. Did she not receive endowments from the State, and was she not bound by the terms on which these endowments were granted? When he considered these things he could not help smiling when he heard the changes that were rung on the rights of the Christian people,' 'the privileges of the Christian people,' and other cant phrases of that kind.

Mr. Leslie then, after referring to the acts which established patronage as the law of the land, and in allusion to those ministers who said that they were ready to throw their stipends to the wind, admitted that it was perfectly competent for them to do so if they pleased; but for his part he adhered to the State, and gratefully accepted his stipend from it. But if they all resigned their charges, and became dissenters and truly, in consistency, he thought that they ought to do so, though even that would not prove the goodness of their cause, for infidelity itself had had its martyrs- they would still be indebted to the State for toleration. In the present case, it was not the State which had broken faith with the Church, but the Church that had thrown down the gauntlet to the State. But supposing, though not admitting, the Veto Act to be good, he would object to it as defective; for it ought to extend to ministers who were already settled. If there was good reason for rejecting a man, after hearing him once or twice, there was surely better reason for

1 We have given the word Church as it is used and understood by the Lord President and Mr. Leslie, without meaning to compromise the truth; but against the calling the Scottish Establishment, which is not in communion with any branch of the Catholic Church, or even of any of the numerous sects which have cut themselves off from it, a "branch of the Catholic Church, we must protest. The Kirk has pronounced the whole Catholic Church, but especially the Anglican branch of it, to be an anti-christian corruption, and has decreed its utter extermination.

2 The ministers of the Scottish establishment are not beneficiaries, but stipendiaries. At the Reformation the tithes fell to the Crown, to the lords of erection called titulars, i. e., the abbots and priors, who were turned into temporal peers, and who seized the lands and clerical privileges of their abbeys, -- and to the lay-patrons. Charles I. commuted the tithes for an annual stipend, corresponding to the valued rental of the land, and which is paid in grain or money half yearly, agreeable to the average half-yearly price of grain, by the proprietors of the land.