An address, expressing "deep gratitude" to the Archbishops of York
and Canterbury for their recent pastorals on the Privy Council judgment in the case of "Essays and Reviews," and fervently praying that their Graces "may be richly endowed with wisdom from on high," and "may be enabled with the other Pri- mates and Bishops of the United Church of England and Ireland, to take effectual counsel for upholding, amid the peculiar dangers of the present times, the Divine authority of the 13 oly Scriptures and the integrity of the faith, so that the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour may be taught in all its purity among ourselves, and handed on without diminution or addition to our children's children,"—has been circulated and numerously signed by great names, lay and clerical. We could join heartily in the prayer of the petition, for which there is, we think, only too much need,— but we cannot in any degree share the gratitude to either Primate. The Archbishop of Canterbury joined, we believe, in that part of the judgment which expressly denied that the meaning of the word translated "everlasting" is fixed by our formularies, and then affected in his Pastoral to have acquitted Mr. Wilson only on the ground of "not proven,"—and it is impossible to feel grateful for an evasion. The Archbishop of York has laid it down that the question whether the Bible is "co-extensive with the word of God" is "not a question of one doctrine, but of the doctrine on which all the other doctrines of the Church of England rest,"—and it is impossible to be grateful for a teaching which bases the Church of England, not upon Christ, but upon a false and illiterate tenet.
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