Adventures of a Protestant in Search of a Religion. By
"Iota." (Washbourne.)—This is a satirical story, somewhat after the manner of Mr. Paget, but with a different aim. Mr. Paget ridiculed Low-Church- men, and sought to show that everything outside the pale of Anglimen- ism was vulgar or immoral "Iota" goes further. Anglicanism is not .a bit better than Puritanism, except so far as it serves as the last point at which the traveller tarries before he reaches the teri-afirma of Rome. There are readers, we can easily imagine, whom books of this kind -delight. We can also believe, though not so easily, that the writer thinks that he is doing service to the truth, and is not aware how lamentably he fails in the good feeling and the good taste that conciliate Tethers. Passing rapidly over the volume, we noted one thing which has a certain ecclesiastical interest. " Iota," who may be presumed to be acquainted with Roman practice, tells us that the hero was baptised, :unconditionally, as far as we can make oat, on his admission into the Roman Catholic Church. Now he had been baptised as an adult in a Baptist chapel. As the Roman Church holds the validity of lay bap- tism, why this repetition? The practice is, we believe, to robaptiso aU converts who cannot give positive testimony to the use of the proper formula, no testimony being received but from a Roman Catholic. A clergyman, for instance, when admitted as a convert, is himself re- baptised, because it is presumed that his baptism, having been performed by a heretic, was invalidated by wilful or careless neglect; but if he testifies that he duly baptised his children, they are not rebartised. 'That, we have been given to understand, is the practice. But here the hero could testify that he had boon baptised with the right form (Which the Baptists always use) and with the right element (which they cannot bo accused of neglecting). Was it not sacrilege to robaptise him?
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