28 OCTOBER 1871, Page 22

Elementary or Primary Views of Religion, By the Rev. T.

G. Headley —This book contains an indignant complaint from the author about his treatment in the Church of England. The Bishop, he says, would not ordain him priest, " although he ordained boys (comparatively) at twenty-four, only because they were better up in school-lore." In other words, the author did not know enough of his subjects—theological sub- jects, it must be remarked—to satisfy the examining-chaplain. It is very hard doubtless on mon of forty-four, as Mr. Headley says he is, to have to pass examinations—and here and there the fence excludes, doubtless, noon of genuine power ; but there must be a rough-and-ready way of protecting congregations from ignorant pretenders. Then, again, the writer complains of his Rector, who turned him, he says, out of his curacy because he preached the Gospel. From this complaint we quote one sentence. Blind mon, he says, cast him " out of his church,—a church at the top of the Haymarket, which is publicly spoken of as worse than Sodom and Gomorrah ; and then those overseers, in casting out the witness of Josue, are surely as guilty as those in Sodom, who would have ill-treated God's messengers." We know nothing about the quarrel, but if Mr, Headley preaches such incoheronoios as these, we do not wonder at the Rector. The truth is, that " the Gospel" which ho seems to have preached, If we may judge from what he gives us hero, does not, ac- cording to any possible viow, harmonize with the teaching of the Church of England. On the subject of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ he is as heterodox as possible,