to be bright indeed, especially as no fear need be entertained that the religious liberty now enjoyed by Protestants throughout the peninsula will be curtailed. The two greatest Italian statesmen, Cavour and Garibaldi, rival with each other in the decided advocacy of the principle of religious liberty, and Garibaldi has even denounced in a public speech the papacy itself as antichristian, and such a declaration from the most popular man of the country cannot fail to prove a heavy blow to the Roman Church.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.-It is difficult to obtain reliable information on the position of the Roman Catholic priesthood with regard to the extraordinary political changes of the two last years. It cannot be doubted that quite a number of them warmly sympathize with the cause of the union. The pope himself not long ago publicly expressed his regret that a Neapolitan bishop had written to him in favor of Garibaldi. In the city of Naples an association of priests has been formed to labor for the confirmation of the Union, and their committee has issued a pamphlet, in which they solicit the co-operation of the entire clergy of the kingdom. The colporteurs also report from various parts of Italy that they occasionally meet with priests who gladly buy the Bible, and approve of the objects of the Bible Societies. But only a few have as yet been found willing to shake off openly the belief in the spiritual supremacy of the pope, and to embrace the principles of evangelical Christianity.

soon as the oppressive weight was removed. Protestant associations were known to have been organized in different parts of the country, and to be in secret correspondence with each other, though no details could be published, as they would have exposed the converts to the rigor of the Spanish law, which does not authorize the profession of Protestantism. Toward the end of August, 1860, the flight of a young stu dent from the clerical seminary in Granada led to the arrest of Mr. Alhama, a hatmaker of Granada, who has been for several years presiding over the Protestant society in that city. A search in his house led to the discovery of the names and addresses of nearly all the Spanish Protestants in Granada. At first eighteen persons were arrested, but it seemed as if the government was afraid openly to admit how widely Protestant ideas have spread, and all of them, except Alhama, have since been discharged, either entirely or on bail. In Malaga and Seville no arrests were made; but in Barcelona, on October 8, another leading man among the Spanish Protestants, Manuel Matamoros, was arrested, and more information on the Protestant associations fell, on that occasion, into the hands of the police. Matamoros was sent, toward the close of December, to Granada, where he is to be tried, together with Alhama and others. Both the prisoners astonished the judge by frankly acknowledging that they no longer believed in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, but only in the word of God. Matamoros says that the work in Barcelona has not suffered in the slightest degree; that in Andalusia (of which Seville is the capital) they have received a fearful blow; but time will obliterate their panic, and all go on as before. According to another report, six Protestants have fled to Gibraltar, to avoid captivity. The English branch of the Evangelical Association has solic

SPAIN.

PROTESTANTISM.-It has been well known for some time in the Protestant world, that the work of evangelization, so auspiciously begun in Spain a few years ago, during the short period of liberal government, had not been extinguished, but was smouldering on, ready to burst forth with increased power as

behalf of the prisoners; and Lord John Russell has assured the committee who waited on him that he cordially sympathizes with the object of their petition, though it may not be in the power of the government to give to it an official support.

TURKEY.

THE GREEK CHURCH.-The election of a new patriarch of Constantinople, to the

importance of which, under the present circumstances, we called attention in the October number of the Methodist Quarterly Review, (p. 674,) took place on October 16. It was the first time that the representatives of the laity took part in this important act, and the innovation had awakened in the Protestant Churches of Europe and America many hopes for the beginning of a thorough reformation in the Greek Church. The result of the experiment, however, does not confirm such hopes. The proceedings of the election bear a comparison with the most disgraceful events in Church History. According to the right conferred on them by the new constitution, the patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops of Turkey had nominated for the vacant see, by writing, the candidates who to them seemed most worthy to occupy it. The National Assembly, consisting of about forty clergymen and eighty laymen, was convened in September, and selected from the names nominated by the bishops eleven names which were handed over to the Porte, to see if the government would object to any of them. The Porte in this case did not make use of the right of veto, and the National Assembly chose three candidates, from which the clerical members had to elect the patriarch. Before the election took place, a portion of the assembly insisted that those clerical members who had been convicted before the Porte of having been guilty of bribery and other scandalous crimes, should not vote. This gave rise to a most disgraceful quarrel, in which ecclesiastics and laymen, high and low, mingled in a general and uproarious fight. One of the bishops was nearly strangled by an archdeacon, who, it is said, in his turn lost three fourths of his beard by the unsanctified hands of a layman who came to the rescue of the bishop. The result of the whole was that a man has been chosen to the office of patriarch who has always shown himself a decided opponent of any reform, and is even now in favor of overthrowing the entire new constitution. The election has been confirmed by the Sultan, but a large and respectable body of the Greeks have strongly protested against it. The Bulgarians, who had been treated with entire neglect when the new rules were being framed, utterly refused to be represented in the assembly for electing the patriarch, either by laymen or ecclesiastics, saying that it was a matter in which they had

no concern, as they were not going henceforth to acknowledge the Greek patriarch. They have, in fact, so far as it is in their power, severed all connection with the patriarchate of Constantinople. They had long been threatening that if the Porte would not concede to them a national Bulgarian patriarchate the whole nation would go over to Rome, and place itself under the protectorate of France. As the Porte refused to comply with their demand, all the preliminaries for a union with Rome were taken, and Roman Catholic papers in Europe and this country even prematurely announced the consummation of the union. According to the last advices, however, only a limited number, including the editor of a Bulgarian paper in Constantinople, have been found willing to take the final step. The bulk of the nation are still hesitating, and waiting for further developments, and many are said to prefer to enroll themselves civilly as Protestants, as this step would not require of them a sudden change in their religious profession, which they may feel not to be warranted by political causes.

THE ARMENIAN CHURCH.-We referred in the January number of the Methodist Quarterly Review (p. 142) to the efforts made by the High Church Episcopalians in England for establishing a closer union between the Church of England and the eastern Churches. Intelligence has since been received from Turkey that the Armenian press, which has risen to considerable importance since the establishment of the American missions in Turkey, has taken up the subject, and seems to regard it with favor. A pamphlet has been issued whose object is to show how nearly the Armenian Church is like that of England. The pamphlet, to this end, quotes from the prayer-book the whole of the twenty-fifth Article of Religion, but so cunningly shapes the translation as to make it appear that the Church of England, as well as the Armenian, believes in seven sacraments, though five of them, the pamphlet says, are received only, as they are by the Armenian Church, as secondary sacraments. Several Armenian theologians are quoted in support of this theory. As this is the very same scheme by means of which Henry Newman and other Oxford Tractarians endeavored to prove the possibility of harmonizing the thirty-nine articles with the decrees of the Council of Trent, it is believed that

English Puseyites aided in the compilation of the pamphlet, which has the imprimatur of the patriarch on the titlepage.

Information is also given by Armenian journals of an interview which Rev. G. Williams, of Cambridge, had with the Armenian Archbishop of Tiflis, in Georgia, relative to the scheme of a union between the English and Armenian Churches. Mr. Williams was the bearer of letters from the Bishops of Oxford and Lincoln, who, it appears, assumed to speak in the name of the Church of England to "the catholicos, patriarch, bishops, etc., of the orthodox Eastern Church." He was to see "the holy catholicos," the head of the entire Armenian

Church at Echmiadzin, but being somewhat unwell, and his time of absence having almost expired, he abandoned his journey to Echmiadzin, and spent ten days in Tiflis to confer with the archbishop of that city. He expressed, in the name of the Church of England, his acknowledgement of the Armenian Church as a true, orthodox, and apostolic Church, and kissed "the sacred hand of his holiness." The archbishop in return granted to him his episcopal blessing, and expressed a thousand good wishes for himself and his people. To the proposition of Mr. Williams to send a few young Armenians to Cambridge for an education no definite answer was given.

ENGLAND.

The Life and Times of Aonio Paleario, or, a History of the Italian Reformers of the Sixteenth Century, by M. Young, (London, 1860, 2 vols.,) is a work on a subject which just now commands a more than common interest. The "Second Reformation," which for some years has so auspiciously begun in the Apennine peninsula, has naturally drawn back the attention of the Protestant world to the glorious history of the first reformation, and to the many good and great men who were the leaders of the evangelical movement. Antonio, or as, in accordance with the predilection of his times for classic names, be later used to call himself, Aonio Paleario, has established, by his work On the Benefit of Christ's Death, (noticed, p. 340,) a just claim to be counted among them.

Among the most important recent English works on Church history belongs the Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury," (London, vol. 1, 1860,) by Dr. Hook, the well known High Church dean of Chichester. The work contains much more than what the title would indicate, for it not only gives the biographies of the incumbents of the See of Canterbury, of many of whom nothing is known except their names, but it makes the life of every prelate who is under review the center around which we see the ecclesiastical world revolve; and thus the work re

ceives in fact the character of a history of the Church of England. The work will be completed in five volumes, the period. The Christian Observer, of Lonfirst of which contains the Anglo-Saxon don, the monthly organ of the evangelical school in the Church of England, devotes a long article to the work. It justly censures the prejudices and fanaticism of the author, "whose intellect is at once disturbed when the specter of a Methodist or a Puritan crosses his path," but at the conclusion of its article it

acknowledges the partial merits of the book in the following terms: "As the historian of a period of our history which has had some charms for ourselves, we admire his diligence, and admit not only his accuracy and research, but the skill with which he has disentangled obscure and complicated events, and the interest which he has thrown over those portions of the story which in other hands might have been dry and barren."

The same number of the Christian Observer reviews Dr. Hessey's Bampton Lectures on Sunday: its Origin, History, and present Obligation." (London, 1860.) The Bampton Lectures have of late regained their ancient celebrity. In 1858 Mr. Mansel exerted his logical mind against the German Rationalism now making its advances in England. In 1859 Mr. Rawlinson brought modern discovery to bear on the history of the

ancient world, and on the defense of the Bible from critics of the same school. Dr. Hessey followed, in 1860, with the lectures above mentioned. The Observer thinks we may thank Dr. Hessey "for a clear historical account of the Sunday from the apostles' time to our own," and expresses its agreement with much that he says; but strongly dissents from some of his views, as smacking of neology.

On the history of the celebrated Jansenist Convent of Port Royal, on which we already have excellent works in German by Reuchlin, and in French by St. Beuve, the first thorough English work has been recently published by Beard, Port Royal: a Contribution to the History of Religion and Literature in France, (London, 1861.)

On the atonement, which has been for several years the subject of an animated theological discussion in England, as neological views concerning it have found many advocates both in the Church of England, and among Dissenters, a new extensive work has been

published by Robert S. Candlish, (The Atonement: its Reality, Completeness, and Extent, pp. 400, London, 1861.) The Christian Observer recommends two small treatises, published on the subject in 1860, by Wilson, (The True Doctrine of the Atonement Asserted and Vindicated,) and Bagot, (The Atonement: an Argument,) as containing more of the results of patient thought upon this great doctrine than has been lately given within so small a compass.

Of Alford's Greek Testament, vol. 4, part ii, is announced, which completes

the work.

Among other new publications are the following: Maurice's Lectures on the Apocalypse; Hugh Miller, The Headship of Christ, and the Rights of the Christian People; Foulkes, A Synopsis of Hindu Systems and Sects; Palmer, Egyptian Chronicles, with a Harmony of Sacred and Egyptian Chronology.

Among the important works which are announced as forthcoming, are a new and improved edition of Kitto's Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, by W. Lindsay Alexander, D.D.; a History of the Church of England, (from the death of Elizabeth to the present time, in 3 vols.,) by Rev. J. J. Perry; The Latitu dinarians, by Rev. E. Churton, Archdeacon of Cleveland; Historical Memoirs

of the Archbishop of Armagh, by E. H. Todd, D.D.; The Churches of the East by Rev. G. Williams, D.D., of whose recent travels in the East we have spoken in our department of Foreign Religious Intelligence.

GERMANY.

An important contribution to the biblical literature of Germany is a new manual of "Introduction to the Holy Scriptures," by the late Professor Bleek, of Bonn. (Einleitung in die heil. Schrift. Berlin, 1860.) It was left nearly ready for publication by the deceased author, and only the necessary references to the literature published since the death of Bleek (1859) had to be added by the editors, T. F. Bleek and A. Kamphausen. The first volume contains the introduction to the Old Testament; the second volume, the New Testament, is to be issued during the present year. The work is introduced by a preface of the venerable Dr. Nitzsch. The great reputation of the distinguished author is a sufficient guaranty that this new manual will rank among the best of its kind.

"The Life and the Doctrines of John Scotus Erigena in their Relation to the Preceding and to Modern Philosophy and Theology, (Leben und Lehre des Joh. Scotus Erigena, Gotha, 1860,) is the, title of a new work, by Rev. Th. Christlieb, the pastor of a German congregation in England. The work is introduced by a preface of Professor Landerer, of Tübingen, and is certainly a very seasonable one, for there is hardly one among the prominent theologians of the middle ages whose doctrines offer a better field for new investigation and elucidation, than Scotus Erigena. Simultaneously with the above work, another has been published by Dr. Kaulich on the speculative system of Scotus Erigena, (Dus Speculative System des J. S. E. Prague, 1860.)

A collective work of great excellence was commenced a few years ago by a number of distinguished divines of the Reformed Church, (among them are Hagenbach, Baum, Schmidt, Sudhoff, and others,) under the title, "Lives and Writings of the Fathers and Founders of the Reformed Church." All the volumes hitherto published have met in the theological world with great applause, and are classed among the best works