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THE

CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.

JANUARY, 1839.

ADDRESS

TO THE PUBLIC ON THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE TWENTYFIRST YEAR OF PUBLICATION.

THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER, or CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE, having now completed its Twentieth year, it becomes the gratifying duty of the Editor to offer his cordial and most grateful thanks to those numerous friends, who have, during that period, afforded the work their powerful and undeviating support. The objects which the original projectors had in view have, it is to be hoped, been, to a great extent at least, accomplished. The interests of "the United Church of England and Ireland, as by law established," have been fearlessly and uncompromisingly maintained; every matter relating to the UNIVERSITIES, the GREAT CHURCH SOCIETIES, and PAROCHIAL AFFAIRS generally, have been faithfully chronicled; and a mass of information on subjects relating to DOCTRINE and DISCIPLINE, to FAITH and PRACTICE, has been collected into one great arsenal, from which may be drawn at leisure arguments equally calculated to refute our opponents and gainsayers, and to strengthen and encourage our friends and supporters.

If proof be demanded to show that all this has been done in our work; ample evidence of the fact may be found in the volume for 1838. That alone contains THIRTY-FIVE REVIEWS of books; ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE LITERARY NOTICES; EIGHTY ARTICLES on miscellaneous subjects connected with the CHURCH; TWELVE ORIGINAL SERMONS by eminent and orthodox divines of the Establishment; together with a LAW REPORT of

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the highest interest and importance to the Clergy; and a mass of UNIVERSITY and ECCLESIASTICAL INTELLIGENCE, that will be vainly sought in any other periodical. Such being our position, we think we may, with justice, challenge the patronage and support of every well-wisher of the cause of the Establishment; and consequently we address them on this occasion with a firm persuasion that our appeal will not be made in vain.

It is not for ourselves, individually, that we solemnly call upon the christian public to promote the circulation of this truly CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE: the labour in which we are engaged is one of paramount importance to one and all. All who profess themselves members of the Church of England, are imperatively bound to maintain her institutions to the utmost extent of their abilities, in their original purity and integrity. Her enemies have of late years increased both in numbers and malignity;-Popery is again rampant in our land ;Socinianism cherished by professing friends; - Dissent openly aspires to the possession of our churches and cathedrals;-and Infidelity is countenanced by one and all of these conflicting sects, in the hope that the downfal of the Church may prove the uprising of the conventicle. They would fain, indeed, "come up to the height of our mountain, and to the sides of our Lebanon, and cut down the forest of our Carmel !"

But let our zeal in the defence of our altars only equal the inveteracy of their attack; let the religious, the CHURCH-OFENGLAND press receive, at the hands of the great and good amongst us, the support which the infidel and sectarian press invariably commands from those opposed to us; let the tried and proved leaders, who have so long fought in the van, be backed by fresh recruits, and still increasing levies; and there cannot be a doubt but the cause of God and holiness, the cause of christian peace here, and christian blessedness hereafter, will signally triumph. In these days, however, "Woe to them that are at peace in Zion." Every engine of assault is already called into requisition against us; spiritual wickedness in high places is predominant; the battle rages fiercely under the walls of our last "stronghold;" the buttresses have been removed; many a DEMAS has forsaken us; but still all have not bowed the knee to Baal-a little flock remains: that little flock must be united, for UNION alone constitutes STRENGTH.

The chief thing required is manifestly a rallying point, and that rallying point the CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER

and CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE offers to the sound religious portion of the community. We were the first to take up the gauntlet, and for twenty years of spiritual warfare we have striven to "do the Church some service." That our labours have been duly appreciated is evidenced by the gratifying fact, that a large portion of our earliest subscribers have adhered to us through" evil report and good report;" and to this day encourage us by their counsel and approbation to proceed in the honourable career we have thus far successfully pursued :-a subject of no mean congratulation, when we take a close survey of the religious and periodical world.

The fact is, we started upon fixed principles, we nailed our colours to the mast, as it were, and never have we deviated either to the right hand or to the left; THIS CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE has consequently been hitherto looked upon as safe authority. The sterling character of the writers, many of whom have risen to high professional rank; the soundness of the criticisms, emanating from individuals not more distinguished for extensive reading than profound judgment; the laboured accuracy of the details;-all have combined to make it a valuable advocate of THE CAUSE: and the new Editor ventures to hope that the support and patronage thus far conceded will not now be withdrawn; but that, following in the footsteps of his able and highly esteemed predecessors, and aided by the judgment and talent, which the valued contributors by whom it has been raised to its present high character, have, for so many years, exercised in its pages, the CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER may advance in interest and usefulness, and prove a valuable ally to the altar and the throne.

These are not times, be it remembered, in which we can dispense with the services of the humblest friend. Cast your eyes across the Irish Channel; watch the proceedings of O'Connell and the priests; take a survey of the agitation of the political dissenters; look at the doings of the anti-churchrate faction; mark further the doubtful friendship of some who pretend to say, "God speed;" and, above all, watch the suspicious policy of our rulers; and then say whether we can have one publication too many-one superfluous line written in our defence!

Contrast, moreover, the situation and conduct of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United Kingdom, in this respect, with the infant establishment of the United States. Here we

have two Archbishops, twenty-four Bishops, about thirty thousand Clergy, and some millions of laymen, members of our Protestant Episcopal Church. There we find eighteen Bishops, about nine hundred Clergy, and less than half a million of laymen, professing Protestant Episcopacy. Here, however, we barely afford a precarious support to some half-dozen periodicals, and some of them even of doubtful value; whilst our Episcopal brethren in America, just struggling into existence, and barely able to afford a decent maintenance to the priesthood, from the unhappy circumstance of being unconnected with, and unrecognised by the State, by which the prosperity both of the ecclesiastical and civil polity is compromised and endangered, feeling the immense importance of the press to the success of their cause, absolutely maintain five times that number, with a twenty-fold circulation!!!

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In doctrine and discipline the Establishment. is essentially primitive and apostolical; in being hated also, and persecuted, our opponents seem desirous that we should carry about with us the marks and characteristics of apostolicity.

These facts speak trumpet-tongued to every reflecting member of our Church, and prove to us the necessity, as well as the duty, of guarding against the efforts of this hatred and persecution, by every legitimate means within our reach. The press is their great weapon of offence; let us meet them with the same powerful engine. It cannot be said that there is less ability, less research, less piety in the Church, than in the conventicle. Let not our zeal, then, appear slack. The cause is a holy cause; its friends are numerous and powerful; and watchfulness and energy are alone required to secure the sanctuary of our faith. At this crisis, every one who would prove himself a faithful member of the Established Church is bound to contribute his mite, in some shape or another, to the maintenance of THE GREAT CAUSE. We invite one and all to join us in the mighty warfare, in which we have been so long engaged, against our various and ever-varying opponents; and with that powerful aid, which we have up to this period enjoyed, and by the blessing of Almighty God, THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER may, for many years to come, prove a SOUND, PRACTICAL, CONSISTENT and ABLE

CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

5

ART. I.-The Chronological Prophecies; as constituting a connected System, in which the principal Events of the Divine Dispensations are determined by the precise Revelation of their Dates; demonstrated in a Series of Lectures delivered in the Chapel of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, in the Years 1833, 1834, 1835, 1836, on the Foundation of the late Bishop Warburton. By FREDERICK NOLAN, LL.D. F.R.S. M.R.S.L. Vicar of Prittlewell, Essex. London: Pickering. 8vo. Pp. xxvi. 518.

THE main pillars of the christian faith which have been rested in miracles and prophecy, have suffered so extensively from the designing and deluded, that every effort to rescue them from the pollution of the rude and unhallowed hands by which they have been so frequently and so pertinaciously assailed, cannot fail to secure the approbation of the religious portion of the community. The contending parties, between which, at the present day, the orthodox Churchman, who would avoid the extremes of popery and puritanism, is placed, have shaken them to their very foundations. The Romanist thinks we have reformed too much-the Puritan, too little. The former endeavours to maintain an usurped authority by false miracles; the latter supports his spiritual pretences by misinterpretation of the word of God and lying prophecy. By the imposture and illusion, on either side, it is unavoidable that the miraculous powers and divine inspiration by which our faith is mainly established should be brought into disrepute. As no discriminating or reflecting mind can be influenced by the evidence which enables the fanatic to deceive himself, and the hypocrite to impose upon. others, no resource is left from the bondage in which the uninformed and unsuspecting are enslaved, but to seek refuge in hardened and contemptuous infidelity.

Under one or other of these descriptions, a large class of expositors may be reduced, who undertake the interpretation of the prophetical writings, without a solitary qualification to fit them for the office. Unacquainted with the opinions, customs, and antiquities of earlier ages,-ignorant of the very language of the author whom they presume to inte pret, that they should mistake his meaning, can excite little surprise in the Christian or the scholar. And, in fact, the limited extent of their perversion of the Book of God is rather to be imputed to their want of power, than want of inclination,—at least if we may ground our opinions on the Douay and Rheims Bibles, and Unitarian New Testament: in reference to which latter unauthorized work, we find Dr. Carpenter has within the last few days condescended to acknowledge the Son of God as the man Christ Jesus, neither equal nor co-eternal.

But this has ever been the practice of self-interpreting polemics, who travel the to them unknown-Holy Land, without one prayer to God

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