The Eclectic Review (Volume 24; V. 88)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1848. Excerpt: ... Art. VIII.--The English Review. No. xix. September, 1848. London: Rivingtons. We have placed the title of the last number of the 'English Review' at the head of our present article, on account of a paper it contains on the British Anti-State-Church Association. It is our intention to examine the principal statements and arguments of this paper, and we proceed to do so under the pursuasion that we shall thus furnish ourselves with means of defenaing the movement they are designed to impugn. A good cause gains as much by the objections of its enemies, as it does by the recommendations of its friends. It is, perhaps, necessary for us to inform our readers, that' The English Review1 is a quarterly publication, devoted to the interests of the High Church party. It has set itself unceasingly to sing a cuckoo song about the unity, catholicity, and authority, of what it calls Anglicanism. This system it holds in the most exclusive form possible, and it is therefore engaged in a constant warfare, not only with Roman Catholicism and Protestant Dissent, but with all the parties, except its own, into which the Church of England is divided. The effect of this is somewhat curious. Loftier pretensions and more extensive aims than are here asserted and developed, it would be difficult to find; and yet the great characteristic of the ground on which these proud hopes are built is its extreme narrowness. The views both of doctrine and polity entertained are eminently little; their bigotry is of the smallest kind; and a total want of sympathy with anything beyond the very confined limits they embrace, is one of their most striking features. As we have perused the pages of this Review, we have been led to suppose that the air of superiority assumed in it, arises as much from...