contained therein as Divine revelations, to which our understanding must be subject. Jesus Christ is our all. He is the Son of the living God-he has revealed the will of the Father to us,-he has filled the chasm between earth and heaven, which has been caused by sin,-he has reconciled mankind to God,-he has redeemed us by his precious blood on the cross, and has sanctified us through the Holy Ghost,—he is the only mediator between God and man,-before him every creature must bow in the dust, for he is the only begotten of the Father. On account of this my candid confession, I am persecuted from all sides,-not only by the Roman Church, but also by Ronge's party, who deny Christ, and who attempt to raise the human understanding to be an object of worship. But I am not surprised at this persecution, for Christ has predicted to all his true followers, that they should be persecuted for his name's sake. If they have persecuted Christ, how should they not persecute his followers? The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.' But you, beloved brethren, in a far country, I request, assist us with your earnest prayers, that God may give us grace to care for his kingdom with all our strength. Do not withdraw your kind hand, for we are now orphans, and forsaken, and are only supported by our trust in God. We believe that this God of love will awaken the hearts of our brethren, and that they will assist us in our need, and will unite their exertions with ours for the spreading of the kingdom of God upon earth. "Yours faithfully in Christian love, "J. CZERSKI." BOOKS RECEIVED FOR REVIEW. The Titles of various Works received omitted from want of room. 15. Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature. By John Kitto. Parts 12 to 24. Edinburgh: Black. 1845. 16. A Review of the Principles of Apocalyptical Interpretation. By the Rev. Augustus Clissold, M.A., formerly of Ex. Coll. Oxford. Vols. I. and II. 8vo. Pp. 356 and 344. London: Newbery. 1845. 17. The Millennium; or, the Doctrines of the Second Advent, and Personal Reign of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Earth; as held and taught by the Students of Prophecy in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland: together with the Opinions of the Ancient Jews and Primitive Christians on these subjects. In a Letter to a Friend. By Omicron. Third edition, corrected and enlarged. 12mo. Pp. 84. London: Nisbet. 1844. 18. Memoir of Mary Reid, of Paisley, who died 30th November 1836. 18mo. Pp. 43. Paisley: Gardner. 1845. 19. The Apostolical Christians and Catholics of Germany. A Narrative of the present Movement in the Roman Catholic Church. Second edition, revised and oorrected by Henry Smith, Esq., Author of the "Pilgrim's Staff." With a recommendatory Preface by the Rev. W. Goode, M.A., F.S.A., Rector of St Antholin, Watling Street. Foolscap 8vo. Pp. 209. London: Wertheim. 1845. 20. The Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries. Illustrated from the Writings of Tertullian. By John Bishop of Lincoln. Third edition. 8vo. Pp. 548. London: Rivington. 1845. 21. The Jesuits as they Were and Are. By Edward Duller. Translated from the German by Mrs Stanley Carr. With an Introduction by Sir Culling Eardley Smith, Bart. Foolscap 8vo. Pp. 200. London: Seeley. 1845. 22. Three Essays on Total Abstinence, and Total Abstinence Societies, addressed to professing Christians and Ministers of the Gospel. By Andrew Paterson, Author of a Treatise on 66 The Nature and Efficacy of Prayer." 18mo. Pp. 58. Edinburgh: Dalrymple. 1845. 23. Glimpses of the Dark Ages; or, Sketches of the Social Condition of Europe from the Fifth to the Twelfth Century. 18mo. Pp. 192. London: Tract Society. THE PRESBYTERIAN REVIEW. No. LXXIII.-JULY 1846. ART. I.-Hora Decanica Rurales: An Attempt to illustrate, by a Series of Notes and Extracts, the Name and Title, the Origin, Appointment, and Functions, Personal and Capitular, of Rural Deans, &c. &c. &c. By WILLIAM DANSEY, M.A., Prebendary of Sarum, Rector of Donhead, St Andrew, Rural Dean. Second Edition. London: Rivingtons, 1844. JOHNSON, in his exquisite epitaph on Goldsmith, makes it one of the attributes of his friend's genius, that he could with equal facility move to laughter or to tears. But he does not say that he could at one and the same moment perform this double feat. What Goldsmith could not do, Mr Dansey does in this book of his. The learned trifling-the laborious folly-the silly pedantry-the childish foppery of the two volumes before us, are all most egregiously fitted movere risum,—but, coming from a minister of Christ, from one who seems to be honoured with the confidence of the Bishop of Salisbury, and written, too, on so serious a matter as church discipline, they are no less fitted movere lachrymas in every mind not so desperately gone in folly and foppery as their author's. This is a second edition; the first, which we have not seen, appeared about ten years ago; altogether it has cost Mr Dansey about twenty years to amass and arrange this galamatias of mediæval precedents and authorities, belonging to a period, it will be observed, in which Antichrist, not Christianity, was dominant, and the Gospel either altogether unknown, or monstrously perverted and overlaid with semi-pagan superstitions; when, as the author's quotations show, even the office of rural dean did not save clergy or people from falling into the most grievous irregularities. VOL. XIX. NO. III. X Now, this would not be so bad, could we suppose that Mr Dansey has been riding this hobby only during short intervals of recreation from more serious avocations. Far from that-the compilation must have cost immense reading, while the result has been that two small quartos have issued from the press, in all whose pages, amounting to about a thousand, if we except the Appendix, one might hunt for grains of useful information as he would seek for a needle in a hay-stack. We cannot say, indeed, that we have read the whole. We should think it a sinful waste of time to do so, and if here we are right, what must have been the waste of that precious commodity on Mr Dansey's part? Judge then how the smile and the tear strove for the mastery, when on the reverse of the title page we found those beautiful verses from the book of Job: "For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, And prepare thyself to the search of their fathers, This, in so far as we can discover, is the only quotation from that vulgar book, called the Bible, of which Mr Dansey is guilty. But he does his best, it must be confessed, to avoid the low practice of vulgar Protestants who quote texts in plain English, and add book, chapter, and verse. The quotation here is in Greek capitals, and looks very learned. Hebrew might have looked still more so, but then Mr Dansey probably knows nothing himself of that venerable tongue. Neither is there any acknowledgment of the source whence the passage is taken. Ah! Mr Dansey, are our days upon earth but as a shadow? Then surely they might be better spent than in laborious pedantry. And if we are to go for wisdom to former ages, surely one might find some periods of the church's history better than those with whose bad Latin and worse theology you overwhelm your readers. Besides, when you had your choice of the Greek, the Vulgate, and our English version, was it not wretched taste to prefer the worst? Who ever compared the Septuagint translation of the book of Job in particular with the English, without being struck with the immeasurable superiority of our own? The Greek capitals are typographically pretty: ΧΘΙΖΟΙ ΓΑΡ ΕΣΜΕΝ, ΚΑΙ ΟΥΚ ΟΙΔΑΜΕΝ ΣΚΙΑ ΔΕ ΕΣΜΕΝ ΗΜΩΝ Ο ΒΙΟΣ ΕΠΙ ΤΗΣ ΓΗΣ. But much more simple and touching is the sentiment as expressed as above in English! Such is the author's itch for showing off his peculiar learning, that, on the reverse of the dedication to the Bishop of Salisbury, we are treated to no fewer than four quotations, one in Greek, two in Latin, the last in English, all in small capitals, with a sprinkling of old English titles. These at once reveal the grasping power, the inadequate superintendence, and the glaring injustice of the Episcopacy that gradually succeeded that of the New Testament and its times. What reason was there for flocks that happened to reside in the country not having their full staff of office-bearers, or for their being deprived of the immediate oversight of a pastor, co-ordinate in point of rank with the pastor of an urban flock, and not liable to be interfered with by pretended superiors, whom a residence in towns must have rendered ill qualified to judge aright in regard to country churches? Not so, however, thought the town officials, and as rural populations are notoriously more passive under wrongs, than are the inhabitants of towns, they were too successful in destroying the independence of the rural flocks. We have first, the 57th canon of the Synod of Laodicea, (A.D. 364,) laying it down, that no bishops, but only itinerant ministers should be placed over country villages. We have this decree clenched by the dictum of Isidore Mercator, a collector of canons who is supposed to have lived about the end of the 8th century, and by the canon of some obscure provincial council of the year 850, which, however, does not reduce the other flocks so low as to be superintended by mere presbyters, but places over them (singulis plebibus) archi-presbyteri, with presbyters under them. Lastly, we have Bishop Gibson's reference to the first of these authorities, in which, however, we observe, that for the nous of the Laodicean canon he substitutes chorepiscopi' who had the inspection, under the bishop, of the clergy in the country, and of those parts of the diocese which were remote from the episcopal see; thus adroitly insinuating that it was not 'bishops,' but an order of men inferior to bishops, that the council prohibited being placed over country villages. In all this no simple Christian, whose notions on the subject are derived from Scripture alone, can fail to perceive selfish principles at work in perverting and corrupting, mutilating and weakening the institutions of the Church. And we wish it had only been their authority and influence that the urban clergy and their bishops wanted to enhance. We fear avarice had fully as much to do with the change as ambition. For, be it remembered, that the cathedral was tho grand recipient of the people's offerings, and by multiplying bishop rics and cathedrals, the amount of these contributions received at each, was necessarily diminished. Hollinshed, as quoted by Mr Dansey at note (1), page 59, throws a deal of light on this. These Churches,' says he, are called cathedrall, bicause the bishops dwell or lie neer unto the same, as bound to keepe continuall residence within their jurisdictions, for the better oversight and governance of the same: the word being derived a cathedrâ; that is to say, a chaire or seat wher he resteth, and for the most part abideth. At the first, there was but one church in every jurisdiction, whereunto no man entered to praie, but with some oblation or other toward the maintenance of the pastor, for as it was reputed an infamie to pass by anie without visitation, so it was a no lesse reproach to appear emptie before the Lord. And for this occasion, also, they were builded verie huge & great for otherwise they were not capable of such multitudes as came daily unto them to heare the word, and receive the sacraments.' And is it so that the vast size and magnificence of cathedral churches that which of all things is most fitted to inspire the modern beholder with awe and respect for the devotion of mediæval times—that which is constantly referred to as a proof of the self-sacrificing spirit of those times, whenever religion made a demand on the pocket, really sprang from the very same spirit of monopoly and money-making, which leads so many of the merest worldlings of our day to do their best to crush all the minor fry in their several trades, and to attract shoals of customers into shops and warehouses of immense extent and dazzling splendour? Can it be that York Minster and Durham Cathedral were, after all, but very attractive, and necessarily extensive, showshops, in which the brilliant dresses of the priests, the richly-coloured windows, the architecture, at once minute and magnificent, the music and the prayers, chanted in the pleasing mysteriousness of an unknown tongue, were put forth to attract crowds from all quarters, and to dispense for money the most sacred ordinances of the Christian faith! How much reason had the court preacher of old to reiterate from the pulpit, vite avaritiam-to make text, sermon, and all consist of no more than the two words vite avaritiam. But had that injunction been but preached and practised by the professed ministers of the gospel in the course of the middle ages, where would now have been those stupendous and richly-fretted fabrics which are now pointed to as demonstrative proofs of the triumph of Christian liberality over avarice among the people of Christendom during those very ages? Mr Dansey's passion for quotations appears again at the opening of the preface, where we find, under a vignette, representing, |