The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-07-26 00:00:00

LITERARY NOTICES.

Provincial Letters.. By G. Stanley Faber, B.D. London

W. E. Painter, 342, Strand

We have from time to time had occasion to speak of these
letters, which have appeared periodically in the pages of The
Churchman, published by Mr. Painter. We have here re-
printed, i❑ a very neat volume, the first ten of the series ;
and to those of our readers, who are desirous of making
themselves acquainted with the most abstruse points of the
Tractarian heresy, upon which are founded its most dan-
gerous doctrines, we recommend an attentive perusal of Mr.
Faber's present work. To the theologian and the scholar,
the name of its author will be a sufficient guarantee of its
orthodox character and its learning. Few men have be-
stowed more unwearied attention and more extensive research
upon the very difficult subjects of which he here treats, and
with exceeding clearness and perspicacity. And those
churchmen, even, who may be infected with the high views
—the new lights, or old lights puffed in again—which,
amongst a certain class of people in the present day, have
become fashionable, Mr. Faber's testimony cannot be lightly
esteemed, inasmuch as the rev, writer is as far as possible
removed from the lax or low church principles of which they
are in the habit of complaining.

It is a common assertion made of the Tracts for the Times,
that they are addressed to the learned, or at all events to the
educated, amongst churchmen. Again and again has it been
said to the Protestant, startled at the system of semi-Popery
which he has seen stealing into light around him—amazed at
and denouncing the coquetting with Rome and her usages
which he has heard and witnessed from Protestant pulpits
and before Protestant altars—" Read the Tracts themselves,
study their principles, and estimate the unimpeachable lives
of their authors, before you condemn ! " To the educated
man we might be induced to say so too; and we might add,
"Read also the letters of Mr. Faber." There is but one
error into which we should fear that an educated churchman
could be misled by Tractarian writers—but to how many
does that one lead ! The true church of Christ—the CA-
THOLIC CHURCH-if we believe the promises of its founder,
we must believe to have existed upon the earth without in-
termission up to the present moment. The Tractarians tell
us that that true church has been the Romish church ! They
falsify history to prove it ! Upon this ground they build
their plea for being reconciled with Rome—for union—for for-
giveness from "the mother of churches." Upon this ground
they denounce the Reformation, because it separated us from
Rome and her idolatries. Mr. Faber has ably controverted
this dangerous position of the Tractarian party--has cut their
fallacies to shreds—has gibbeted their jesuitical falsehoods;
and for such a service he deserves eminently the gratitude of
the Protestant church throughout the world, and should be
read, as the antidote, by every Protestant who submits him-
self to the contact of the Tractarian poison.
To the unlearned Protestant—to the man who is content
to adhere to his Bible and the teachings of hisfaithful clergy
—we say, of the Tracts for the Times, " Touch them not."
Jesuitical tongues may tell of the learning and piety of their
writers; envenomed tongues may rail upon those who do
not choose to crawl to the foot of Rome through the portals
of azford ; filth may be thrown by such, at those you love
and revere ; but still, stand ye fast upon the rock of the
Word of God, and upon that only !

The Church of England Quarterly Review. July, 1842
London : W. E. Painter. Liverpool : Waring Webb.

The Church of England Quarterly, just published, is one
of the best of the series. With one of its articles, especially
that entitled " Modern English Monarchy," we have been
inexpressibly delighted. The lofty spirit of old English
Toryism breathes out in every line ; and we are compelled,
as we read it, to sigh over the evidences, which we see and
hear around us, of that fainting, half-and-half conservatism,
which scarcely dares to breathe to itself a noble sentiment or
a chivalrous aspiration, lest they should chance to ruffle the
smooth hair of liberalism, or induce to the suspicion of a
love for the " old ways" of our venerable constitution, or
the wisdom of our ancestors, by whom it was planted and
watered, until it grew up to shed a glory over the land.
The article in question is a review of a work entitled
" Government from the Queen, and attempted Government
from the People," recently published by Henry Drummond,
Esq., in which the reviewer boldly throws down and tram-
ples upon the notion that England is one whit more happy
or more virtuous for all which modern enlightenment (!)
philosophy, and the progress of liberalised institutions has
done for her. Hear how nobly he lashes the upsetting
vanity of the presumption in question!

" Starting with these principles, Mr. Drummond speedily
comes to the conclusion, that " the most brief, and at the
same time most accurate, of liberalism is, that it is
irreligion." This is startling language ; and were it intended
to proclaim by it that all liberals are void of religion, it, would
be as cruel and unjust as startling; but as tersely describing
the practical tendencies and effects of liberalism, we hold it
to be strictly true ; from the most brilliant article in the
Edinburgh Review, sparkling with the gorgeous splendours
of Mr. Macauley's eloquence—from the flippant sneerings
of the Globe—from the coarse slang of the Sunday papers—
we have never derived one holy religious thought ; all alike
speak of men, of earth, the wonders of science, the ingenuity
of philosophers, the wisdom of statesmen, the liberties of the
people ; these are the themes of liberal enlogium, the objects
of liberal investigation. Talk to a liberal, philosophical, lite-
rary, or otherwise, of faith, humility, reverence, mysterious-
ness, and be will laugh at you ; bid him see in the anointed de-
scendant of a long line of kings, a being endowed with some-
thing more than the common dignity of man, and he will quote
some miserable sentence from Godwin or the Edinburgh
Review, about a petty constable : bend low to receive a
priestly blessing from the lips of the hundred and fifty-third
successor of St. Peter and St. Paul, and he will, with learned
delight, begin to detail the iniquities of the popes, and
the passions of prelates, during what he calls 'the dark
ages ; or if he be of an unusually philosophical turn of mind,
he will praise the wisdom of church polity, and rank paro-
chial clergy in the same category of usefulness with poor law
commissioners and rural police; thus, while professing to
raise the state and elevate the ideas of the people, he is in
reality lowering them, beating them down to earth, and
chilling each shoot that would fain struggle up to heaven.
How dinrent Is this vulgar spiritless materialism from the
bueryant, chivalrous, soul-stirring spirituality of by-gone
days!' And bow different, alas ! is the condition of the
lower Orders now from what it was then. Together with the
notion of sacredness in kings and nobles, and all in authority,
hai departed the kindred notion of their responsibility :
together with reverence for the church and her offices, has
vanished the joyous celebration of her holydays. The village
maypole has disappeared with the uncovered head to the vil
h-
e priest ; and the yule log has ceased to be lighted in the
hail with the fealty that bound the carousers to its honoured
pouessor. Merry England is merry England no longer ; in
our teeming manufactories, our comfortable houses, our
orderly prisons and workhouses, in our poverty-striken,
white-washed, and locked-up churches, we plainly read this,
that' self, mammon, and independence, have driven away
from their old haunts among the green woodlands, and
smiling valleys, and cheerful villages of England, neighbour-
liness, charity, and devotion."

The utilitarian may sneer at this picture. Heaven help
him ! He never saw even the little which still remains of
" merry England." His smoke-dried, Mammon-calcined
heart never bounded as he trod by the bright streams or
over the heathy hills which were unprofaned by the blackness
and the smoke of dinning worldliness. His foot never en-
tered the humble cottage under which dwelt humble, guile-
less, and unperverted souls. A crowd of unsightly chimnies ;
muddy streets, passengered by starving, half-clad infants,
hurrying to their toil ; wretched furnitureless hovels, sur-
rounding the splendid gin-palace ; careworn, wretched faces,
listening to the ribald flaw of demagogues, or imbibing the
infidel trash of socialism and chartism, in an atmosphere of
tobacco-fumes end curses—these are the objects from
amongst which the utilitarian has constructed the bean ideal
of an earthly paradise ! With such a state of squalid wretched-
ness as this it is that liberalism would cover the lice of that
which was wont to be " merry England!" ()tve us back,
rather, vie say, and so says our reviewer, the wealth of the
days of old, which consisted in the fewness of our wants ;
give us back the contentment, the dependence of the days of
old, which was LIBERTY compared to the real serfdom of
"Ten "ho now boast and philosophise, in rags, about " free-
m," " inalienable rights," and " equality;" give us the
happy heart of the cottager and the yeoman, the patient
thrift of the tradesman, the liberal hand of the merchant,
the squire, and the noble ; and we would give up with glad-
ness all which modern liberalism would present us withal,
when it hold* up to our view its gaudy picture of the condi-
tion of the first commercial, manufacturing, and philosophi-
cal nation of the earth.
Liberalisrn has made giant strides of late in the spread of
her hard utilitarian philosophy--in banishing from the heart
of the people of this empire the chivalrous sympathies, the
love of the beautiful in form and thought and deed, the pure
pleasures and healthful aspiriugs which characterised society
in bygone times. Our reviewer is sanguine in the expecta-
tion that brighter days are in store; that the onward march
of democracy, of Malthusian principle and heartless unbelief,
is about to be arrested. Would that we could confidently
entertain such a belief, which is thus beautifully expressed
by the writer !

The struggle is to he made, the battle is to be fought,
and amidst all the luxury and crime, and intellectual pride,
and irreligion,
around us, we say, that
._. the struggle is not so
desperate, the battle not so decidedly against monarch de_
prive of v
prive us of hope. A:e have still the
• an agri-
we have still, " thank
dGod ! a House of Lords 1" -7
above all, we have still among us,
a population—and above
his Church. Let no one
then living witness of God'sati
his own place, and after his
then despair, but let each,
strengthen the hands of the cove_
own way, endeavour to s
more well-merited respect to be paid to the
reign, to cause to those above them
lower orders
aristocracy,
to
knit theofresponsibility and obedience,
in the sanctifying bands
.s
weeds that at present
and to clear away the obnoxious
obstruct the triumphant progress of the catholic church to
"
universal empire. But people will say, It, is too late--things
dream to talk about divine
have gone too far; it is the merest. .
limit church ;
and a triumphant
right, and a submissive people, as these."
' such
the time is not propitious for notions
of
to the
We say, it is propitious. From one end England ige 0
f the
other, the poor people are awaking to a knowledge
unreality of the shams which are being palmed off upon them
free
under the names of liberty, and apress, and the dignity
of human nature. The aristocracy are opening their eyes to
the fact that they have high ah.l holy duties to perform, as.
well as privileges to enjoy. The clergy appreciate, and teach
others to appreciate, more and more the awful trust that is
committed to them ; while,
" Like some old vision of a fairy bright,
Armida, Glorian, or Titantia light,'
on the throne of the Athelings, the Plantagenets, the Tudors,
and the Stuarts, sits one, round whom may well rally all that
remains of chivalrous loyalty, unhesitating obedience, un-
doubting faith, and uncalculating devotion—` one,' in the
glowing language of a young senator, ' more simple and
unostentatious than Anne, more courageous than Elizabeth,
more constant in her attachments than :Mary Stuart, more _