QUERIES AS TO THE PERFORMANCE OF DIVINE SERVICE.

SIR,-I should be thankful if, through the medium of your Magazine, the following questions could be answered:-In the service for the holy communion, should the congregation kneel during the exhortation and address which precede the confession? Should they join in the prayer of consecration, or only listen to and meditate upon it, and seal it with a hearty amen? Is it correct to stand during the Psalm in the office for churching of women? As the rubric speaks of kneeling as the fit posture for the woman, surely the congregation, to whom the Psalm cannot apply (in the sense it is there used), should sit, and wait till the minister begins the prayers which follow? Should not the minister alone repeat the Psalm, and not alternately with the clerk? In the communion service, should not the minister and congregation repeat the penitential Psalm together, and not alternately, as I have heard is occasionally done? Should not the congregation stand during the previous part of the service?

I remain, Sir, your constant reader,

B. A.*

ON THE OXFORD TRACTS.

REV. SIR, A paper in your last July number, on reserve in communicating religious knowledge, escaped my eye till this morning. The writer, after having, in terms calculated to excite prejudice, described the disapprobation which has been expressed against the Oxford tract doctrines, as "opposition manifested from certain quarters," (whereas among these are not only men of eminence as theologians, and holding rank in the church, as Archdeacon Townsend, Stanley Faber, and both the professors of divinity at Oxford,-but the bishops of Exeter, Chichester, Chester, and Calcutta, of London also, and of Oxford, in a manner publicly, and it may be others also, as I am aware others have done privately ;) and after attributing this opposition" against the whole series," especially to the tract On Reserve, &c., he proceeds: "The objections to the doctrine as stated, so far as I have traced the arguments of the opponents, have principally turned upon the presumed novelty of the Oxford writers' views,-novelty, I mean, in the Anglican reformed church,† for beyond this I have not seen objections extended." He then goes on to remove this sole objection to the principal cause of "the opposition which has been manifested against the whole series" of the tracts, by stating that "the present Bishop of Winchester, in his work on the ministerial character of Christ, pursues a course of argument differing in no material point from that which is followed by the author of the above-mentioned

tract."

Now, it may be that your correspondent has not consulted more

[The Editor is sorry that this letter has been so long mislaid.]
The italics are my own.

This

than one of all those writings against the tracts of which he thus undertakes to abstract the general argument; and the author of that one pamphlet may content himself with noticing the novelty of the doctrines, and may instance especially in the doctrine of reserve. Mr. Bird professedly does; and as he is of the same college as your correspondent, I am the more confirmed in my opinion that he has read that gentleman's pamphlet, and none else. At any rate, it is most certain that your correspondent is as much in error in limiting the grounds of objection which have been taken against the doctrine of reserve to the fact of its being new, as he is in attributing to the doctrines advanced in that single tract, as a principal cause, the opposition which has been manifested against the whole series. Mr. Bird, in a pamphlet professing to be a letter of information to a friend abroad, and professing not to go any further into an examination of the doctrines, simply calls his friend's attention to the point, that the tract system of doctrine is a new one " in reference to what you and I used to take to be the prevailing views in the church of England."

But not only does Mr. Bird himself, after noticing this point, and stating the doctrine of reserve as promulgated by the Oxford writers, proceed himself to argue in condemnation of it upon quite other grounds, but I undertake to say that this which your correspondent mentions is not the argument which opponents have principally urged against this doctrine. "The arguments of the opponents have not principally turned upon the presumed novelty of the Oxford writers' views," and it is a pity, that a man taking upon himself the responsibility of writing to influence the judgment of others upon a very solemn question, should not be more careful in examining the ground beforehand. A general description of a subject, if not according to the fact, is not justified by the cursory admission, "as far as I have traced the arguments," and "for, beyond this, I have not seen the objections extended." There can be no hope of people coming to a knowledge of the truth, while their judgments are prepossessed in this hasty and inconsiderate manner. Moreover, I assert with confidence, that there is no agreement in principle or sentiment between the Bishop of Winchester's work and the tract on reserve; but I am persuaded that the "lay graduate of Trin. Coll. Cambridge," has not made himself master of the subject. No one in his senses can doubt that it is the duty of a wise and good servant, whom his lord shall set over his household, to give every one his meat in due season, "that doctrine also which ministers of the gospel preach be not only true, but seasonable with respect to the state and condition of the hearers." But has the Bishop of Winchester any chapter with a negative argument "on the necessity of bringing forward the doctrine of the atonement?" Does he shape and apply the rule to the disapproval of such "modes of extending Christianity" as "that of bringing churches near to the houses of everybody, cheap publications and national schools?" Does he find in it anything unfriendly to "the circulation of the scriptures?" Is there, in fact, in the Bishop's view of the principle, anything like an argument to deny the presence and operation of God to His word, and to confine it to the sacraments and the episcopal suc

cession? If your correspondent will examine a little further, he will find, I think, that the doctrine of reserve, "as stated in the tract, (No. 80)," is not a thing apart, nor has been so treated by opponents, but that it is, and has been treated as part of a system, a part, however, in which the character, bearing, and tendency of the other parts is in an especial manner manifested. And he may find, that passing over the question of its novelty, it has been opposed by this course of argument, both by Mr. Bird and others, that the principle and the rule, as explained in the tract, is repugnant to the express commands of Scripture, as well as to the example of the apostles, and the form of doctrine which they teach.

I am, Rev. Sir, your obedient servant,

AN OPPONENT OF THE OXFORD TRACTS.

MR. MILMAN AND JOSEPH MEDE.

SIR,-In your October Number I find a letter, signed "J. H. G. W.,” exposing the unfairness or ignorance (it is no compliment to Mr. Milman to be reduced to a choice between the two) which Mr. M. has shewn in attempting to enlist the authority of the learned Mede on the side of the German rationalists in his and their views with regard to the reality of demoniacal possession. The proof which your correspondent affords of Mede's innocence of this heresy (for, in truth, it deserves a little better name, and such men as Mr. Milman would, in other times, having been proved to be arrant heresiarchs, go near to be thought so) may not, to those who are ignorant of Mede's writings and character, appear so strong as it is; because, having no doubts on his own mind as to the reality of such possession, he never thought of guarding himself against the possible suspicion of entertaining such doubts; his object being, in the sermon in question, to account for the apparent abundance of such possessions in our Saviour's days, but neither to defend or impugn the fact. However, to put the question with regard to this great writer's opinion on this point beyond all possibility of doubt, and to send Mr. Milman (who seems disposed to believe no other miracle except that connected with his favourite JULIAN, the apostate) to some other quarter than Mede for English authority for his neologisms, I subjoin the following extract from Mede's "Apostasy of the Latter Tines," which will leave no doubt on the mind of the reader as to the author's belief in the reality of demoniacal possession. He is discussing the meaning of the word Damon, and thus proceeds :

"To the first, therefore, for the use of the word Aapovov in Scripture, I say, that because those which the Gentiles took for demons, and for deified souls of their worthies, were indeed no other than evil spirits, counterfeiting the souls of men deceased, and masking themselves under the names of such supposed dæmons, under that colour to seduce mankind; therefore the Scripture useth the name dæmons for that they were indeed, and not for what they seemed to be. For no blessed soul or good angel would admit any honour which did derogate from the honour of the only true God who made them. Neither do the glorified saints in Heaven, or the blessed VOL. XIX.-Jan. 1841.

I

angels, though apostate Christians now invocate and worship them, accept this honour, hear their prayers, or condescend to their devotions, by any sign or act whatsoever; but whatsoever is made seem to be done by them, is done by the selfsame wicked spirits which heretofore were masked under the name of dæmons."p. 635.

From this passage it appears that Mede not only believed in actual demoniacal possession, under the Jewish economy, but also by the gods of the heathen. Mr. Milman had better confine his references, as he seems unfortunately to do his reading, to the mystical but antimysterious tomes of his German acquaintances.

I am, Sir, yours faithfully,

R. P.

ON THE MYSTERIES OF SWEDENBORG.

SIR,-In his Vera Christiana Religio, printed at Amsterdam in 1771, Baron Swedenborg hazarded the following statement:-" Seven years ago, when I had called to mind those things which Moses wrote out of those two books, the Wars of Jehovah, and that which is called Enuntiata in Num. xxi., certain angels came to me, and told me that those books were the Ancient Word, of which the historic parts were called Wars of Jehovah, and the prophetic parts Enuntiata. And they assured me that that Word is still preserved in heaven, and is used there among those same ancients amongst whom that word had been whilst they were in the world."† . . . After some useless verbiage, he proceeds: This may further be stated concerning that Ancient Word which was in Asia before the Israelitic Word-viz., that it is still preserved there among the nations who inhabit Great Tartary. I conversed with the angels and spirits from that country who were in the spiritual world, and they told me they possessed that Word, and had possessed it from ancient times; and that they performed their divine worship according to it; and that it consists of mere correspondencies. They assured me that it likewise contained the Book of Jascher, which is mentioned in Joshua, chap. x. 12, 13, and in Samuel, chap. i. 17, 18; and that they were in possession of the books of the Wars of Jehovah and of the Enuntiata, which are mentioned by Moses, Num. xxi. 14, 15, and 27 to 30. And when I read aloud to them the words which Moses cited from those books,

Verse 27, Anglicè, Proverbs.

+ In his Doctr. Nov. Hierus. p. 48, be says that these were the Canaanites, Syrians, Mesopotamians, Arabs, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Sidonians, and Tyrians, whose whole religion was in the science of correspondencies. Those who knew the interior correspondencies of this Ancient Word were first called Wise and Intelligent, and afterwards Diviners and Magi. But as this Ancient Word expressed celestial and spiritual things by remote correspondencies, which were often misinterpreted, another Word with less remote correspondencies was substituted. It contains, besides the Wars of Jehovah and the Enuntiata, the seven first chapters of Genesis verbatim.-Ibid. p. 49.

That is to say, it is entirely steganographic, and admits of no literal interpre

tation.

they searched whether those words were there extant, and found them. By this it was clear to me that the Ancient Word still exists among them..... The angels and spirits of Great Tartary are separated from the Christian world because they possess another Word."-Vera Religio, etc. p. 183, 4. Ay, marry are they, far enough. But we may here observe the unguarded admission that the country which he nicknames Great Tartary is in Christendom, and that its spirits and angels are ostensibly Christians, and no otherwise separated from Christianity than by their secret books and devilries. As Barruel says of the Illuminati, "Les provinces et les villes changent de nom dans ce langage, c'est une geographie* nouvelle que le novice doit apprendre," tom. iii. p. 64. Bavaria, he adds, was called Achaia; Suabia was Pannonia; and so forth. And that method is as old at least as the Paulician Manichees described by Peter Siculus, whose heresy afterwards inundated Europe. With them, Cibossa was Achaia, Mananalis was Macedonia, Mopsuestia was Ephesus, &c. I conjecture that Swedenborg means Germany by Great Tartary.

Swedenborg may perhaps not have been aware that the Abbé Villars had already somewhat rudely drawn aside the veil of mystery from this matter by putting in the mouth of the Rosicrucian brother, Count Gabalis, whom he describes as a German residing near the Polish frontiers, these words, "We have the histories of them (viz., of sexual unions between spirits and human beings) in our possession, in the Book of the Wars of Jehovah, cited in the 23rd chapter of Numbers."Comte de Gabalis, p. 140. The marriages of the male and female angels, of which Swedenborg declares himself to have been witness, belong to the same head as the Rosicrucian marriages of the philosophers with the spirits of the elements. And the same book seems to contain, in its correspondentiæ, the key to them. It is not for us to carry the torch into such mysterious recesses. That Swedenborg was admitted to the Rosicrucian Arcana, and that he was connected with Elias Artista, are but synonymous propositions, and also are true ones. Barruel, in stating that the "more profound adepts of Swedenborg took refuge in the caves of the Rosicrucian freemasonry understates the case, for he clearly was Illuminè Rosecroix himself.

Swedenborg repeatedly informs us that a man's resurrection instantly follows upon his death; a proposition as false in theology as it is true of those allegorical resurrections which consist in being initiated in the έφυγον κακον, εὗρον άμεινον. This language was known to gnostical heretics before him. "Væ! inquiunt, qui non in hâc carne resurrexerint. . . . Tacitè autem hoc sentiunt. Væ qui non, dum in hâc carne est, cognoverit arcana hæretica."+ Swedenborg made use‡ of these expressions-"I belong to the Society of Angels, in which things spiritual and celestial are the subjects of our discourses, although

Swedenborg mentions that the names of places in Canaan and the neighbouring parts of Asia have the like signification (significant similia) in the Bible and in the Verbum Vetustum.-Doctrina Nova Hierus. p. 49.

+ Tertullian de Resurrectione, chap. xix.

Cited by Mr. Rosetti, p. 396, without specific reference, but between commas, and therefore (no doubt) accurately.