that they must be transgressed, when one event is put in immediate juxtaposition with another with which it has no connection, or rather from which, in point of principle, it seems as far as possible removed. The restoration of the Jews is connected, by those whose views I am opposing, with the second, and not with the first, coming of Christ; but the passage before us, from its nature, must apply to the first coming of Christ, and is so applied by the apostle, Rom. xv. 12. This seems to justify the opinion that chronology has nothing to do with the passage before us, and that we must determine the order and relation of the events predicted by a reference to other parts of Scripture, rather than to this. This is, by no means, an unusual instance of the disregard of chronological order to be found in the prophet Isaiah. The 7th chapter furnishes another, and more instances might easily be produced to justify the position in question.

But another difficulty arises from the 11th verse. "And it shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand, the second time, to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left," &c. I should at once admit the future return of the Jews to their own land to be a reasonable expectation, if there had been no dispersion and restoration between the period when Isaiah wrote and that one when Jerusalem was destroyed; but such a dispersion and restoration being matter of history, unless it can be clearly made out that there was something in those events which does not account for the prediction, I cannot understand why they should not be admitted to be the accomplishment of it. We are able to show that the Jews returned from Assyria, from Egypt, and various other places, to the land of their fathers. The nation recovered its independence, renounced its idolatries, and manifested a religious separation from the nations around, in a more decided way than at any former period of its existence. In the days of Ptolemy Philadelphus, there was, if we may credit Josephus, a remarkable deliverance of Jews from Egyptian servitude. The number whom the king liberated amounted to above a hundred thousand; and to expect another restoration, because of certain expressions in the prophecy which may seem to us to go beyond any thing that history has recorded respecting the known restoration that took place subsequent to the date of the said prophecy, does not seem to me to be at all warranted by the necessity of the case; and I cannot but think, that to justify the supposition that this prophecy relates to a future restoration, the words should not be "the second," but "the third time;" for is it natural to suppose that the prophet would, in this place, altogether overlook the event, on which, in other places, he so emphatically enlarged? Hear how Isaiah wrote of the deliverance and restoration of which Cyrus was to be the chosen instrument; let any one begin at the 21st verse of the 44th chapter, and read on in the 45th, and he will find language employed relative to the deliverance from Babylon, which will accord very badly with the taste of those who seem anxious to make as little

as possible of that event, that the prophecies about the restoration of Israel may be transferred from it to a future restoration. For my own part, the more I consider the character of that deliverance, the more I am disposed to view the beautiful psalm referring to it as simply descriptive of a state of feeling produced by what was equally marvellous and unexpected. "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then said they among the heathen, JEHOVAH hath dore great things for them."-Psal. cxxvi.

T. K.

ON CHURCH DISCIPLINE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

SIR, Various circumstances, which it would be useless to detail, have prevented me from noticing the letter on Preaching in Strange Dioceses, which appeared in the Examiner for December, and that on the same subject in your Supplement. I shall now trouble you with a very few words in reply to both.

Apostolic Discipline, the writer of the former of those let ters, gives up his cause by his very signature. The question is not whether preaching in strange dioceses was prohibited in the days of the Apostles, but whether it is prohibited in these days and in this country. By endeavouring to change the question he has confessed his weakness; and were he able to succeed in proving that all who were ordained in the apostolic age were ordained as missionaries, he would fail in the attempt to infer from thence that all are now so ordained. But he could not prove even the proposition which he has undertaken; for even in the apostolic days there were local appointments; and the first indication of the propriety of some limitations, conducive to order, we find in the conduct of St. Paul, who expressed his determination not to build on the foundation of another. What was his di rection to Titus? To ordain elders in every city. What do we find in Acts, xiv. 23? That the same Paul ordained elders in every church; "that is," says Scott, in his comment, "stated resident pastors of each church, and not preachers of the gospel at large." And in the early age of the church the clergy were prohibited from quitting the diocese in which they had been ordained, unless with the leave of the bishop; and those who transgressed this rule were not only prohibited from officiating, but not even admitted to communion.

Apostolic Discipline regards the strictness with respect to licensing preachers, for which I contend, as of Romish origin. Let him look to the injunctions issued in the reign of Edward the First,

N. S. VOL. II.

3 D

and he will find it directed that " no man shall be allowed to preach but such as are licensed thereto by the King, the Protector, the Archbishops of Canterbury and of York, each in his own province, or the bishops of the diocese."

Let him look to the injunctions issued by Queen Elizabeth, in 1559, and he will find in them the very same order, with this addition, "That none shall preach out of his own parish, but such as shall be so licensed." And again, in the canons of 1571, we find "that no one shall preach in his own parish, without a license from the bishop; nor out of his own parish, without a license from the crown, or the archbishop of the province, or the bishop of the diocese."

Those were not Popish times, nor was Laud, who seems to have been thought by Apostolic Discipline the author of those restrictions, then born.

Let us see what Stillingfleet, no favourer of Popery, says to his clergy in his charge in 1696: "The care of souls, committed to persons among us, is not an absolute and indefinite thing, but limited as to place, persons, and duties. They are to teach the people committed to their charge. By whom? By the bishop, when he gives institution. They are to give private as well as public admonitions, as well to the sick as to the whole. What! to all? No; but to those within their cure? These things,' says that eminent man, "are so express and plain in the very constitution of this church, and owned so solemnly by every one that enters into orders, that there can be no dispute about them."

But we are fallen on evil days, when Sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido. When the exercise of lawful authority is called tyranny, and to disobey it is denominated Christian freedom.

Apostolic Discipline (whom I shall designate hereafter A. D.) says, "that the Question is in a nutshell-is the commission to preach restricted or not ?" I answer, that if words and oaths can restrict, it is restricted.

I have taken a weak ground, A. D. says, by dragging forward the oath. Now, really, I know not what ground is strong, if an oath taken by a clergyman be not strong. On the interpretation of that oath I have cited the high authority of Bishop Heber, an authority of which A. D. thinks so lightly that he dismisses it without attempting a reply. I again refer to that authority, and I beseech A. D. to reflect maturely before he hazards a deadly responsibility by acting against it, or exciting others to act against it. I call upon him to answer Heber's argument.

He endeavours to get rid of the obligation by stating a case in which it might operate injuriously. The case is easily answered. Suppose the eloquent preacher to be Robert Taylor, who, we know, was employed as a preacher near Dublin, till Archbishop Magee, in the just and necessary exercise of this now disputed power, silenced him; was the pecuniary loss to a charity to be set against the mischief which the continued preaching of such a man would occasion?

I will meet the case imagined by A. D. by one which I know to have been real. The author of a most pestilent heretical book had a parish adjoining one in a different diocese, the minister of which often exchanged duties with him, till his preaching in that diocese was prohibited by the bishop. Does not such a fact, as well as that of Robert Taylor, show the necessity of Discipline? But if the commission is restricted, as I contend, then, urges A. D. it involves the very essence and existence of a man as a minister. To this, I answer, No. He is under the control of the bishop only so long as he holds either benefice or curacy in the church. If his sense of duty leads him to be a missionary, he can free himself from his obligation to his ecclesiastical superiors, by resigning the situation which places him under their control. While he holds such a situation, his oath of canonical obedience remains in full force.

Let me now advert to DROMORIENSIS, and commence by stating that I never wrote under the signature of ARMACHIENSIS. Whether that writer suggested a harsh use of that power, which certainly ought not to be lightly called into action, I do not know. I am only concerned to prove the existence of the power. Dromoriensis is so little acquainted with the history of our church as to imagine Laud to have been the founder of this school of discipline. I have answered him in the preceding part of this letter by showing that the discipline existed before Laud was born.

Laud's superstitious formalities in consecrating a church, or his intemperate conduct towards Davenant, have nothing to say to the merits of the question under discussion. The latter was the result of that ungoverned irritability of temper, which rendered Laud so utterly unfit for the station in which he was placed; the former seems to have arisen from the same cause which urged him to show his hostility to Puritanism, by falling into the opposite extreme of ceremonial observances. He might also have thought that such observances would, without compromising any doctrine, have induced Roman Catholics to conform to the church. That the same temperament might have led him to harsh enforcement of discipline, cannot be doubted. But the misuse of lawful authority does not prove that it ought not to exist.

I quite agree with Dromoriensis, that we ought to think more of our duties and less of our rights; but I will add a qualification, by excepting the case in which the exercise of our rights becomes necessary for the performance of our duties.

DISCIPLINE

EXPELLED AND EXCOMMUNICATED,

A NARRATIVE.

It was a fine morning in June-the sun was ascending the heavens with that brilliant majesty which gives promise of a glorious midsummer day, when the students of Ċ***** College were taking their usual stroll along the serpentine, but dirty, walks of the ground attached to the institution. There was a gravity in their deportment which seemed quite out of keeping with the character of their hour of relaxation. Some topic of general interest seemed to absorb them; all were serious and solemn, and separated into little clusters; their whispering conversation and downcast looks, as if each party were anxious that their observations should not pass the boundary of their own coterie, indicated that a matter of deep interest was under discussion. No loud laugh echoed along the walks-no frolicsome youngsters swept past, full of mirth and glee; the very aspect of the place, sombre as it usually is, was dark and sad; the junior lay-boys were absent from the green, the scene of their recreations; while numbers of the seniors appeared to be debating some agitating question with fear, alarm, and terror, strongly expressed in their

countenances.

The chapel bells rung the warning note of separation and retirement, the usual morning call to solitude and labour; but they rung not out that light, quick note to which the students were so well accustomed-no; the heavy muffled peal which they gave struck strangely on the ear, and spread an additional sadness over many faces.

"Will he be really changed into a dog?" inquired one, while he seemed to tremble with horror at the idea. "Will his head be turned on his shoulders?" asked another, evincing similar, if not stronger apprehension. But these questions had scarcely time to be answered; the students, repeating the "angelus domini," and throwing on their surplices, hastened to the chapel. The mass commenced, with more than its ordinary pomp and ceremony; and be whose name is familiar to the British nation, as the Antæus of polemical and political strife, officiated as arch-priest. Though usually harsh and repulsive in his tones, he seemed, on this morn ing, determined to vie with the raven in musical harmony. The windows were closed-the altar hung with black-the pit muffled -the waxen tapers flinging their rays flickeringly through a gloom rendered more portentous by the recollection of the bright sunshine which lighted up nature outside the chapel-every thing which art and artifice could bring together to make an impression on the mind, were united, in order that the "scene" about to be exhibited might be rendered as effective as possible. There was an awful pause-when the Right Reverend Doctor spoke nearly as follows:

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