lyon." And, thirdly, (3), the adoption of a Greek word for the description of these Balaamites, would serve to express the un-Jewish character of the persons who are here spoken of; namely, that they were men "who said they were Jews and were not," (ver. 9), being Greeks rather than Jews in everything except the name.

Ver. 7. Translate, "To him that overcometh,-I will give to him to eat," &c. After the words "To him that overcometh," we are to imagine that a pause is made; either that the hearer's attention may be thus excited, or that the speaker may consider what reward he shall in this case give.

"I will give to him to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." By "the tree of life" we are to understand, not a single tree, but a number of trees; those, namely, which grow on each side of the river of the water of life (see xxii. 2). Similarly, in the Mosaic description of Paradise, we are to take the expression "tree of life" as a collective term. That there was only one tree of life in the garden of Eden, is a popular misconception.

Ver. 17. "To him that overcometh,-I will give to him to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone :" i. e. I will give to him the two main distinctions of the high priesthood. These were, 1, the Thummim stone, which is here represented as a bright diamond, and is therefore called "white :" and 2, the manna, which was kept "hidden" in the inner sanctuary of the Jewish temple, and to which therefore the high priest alone had access. St. John's allusion is to Psalm xvi. 5, of which the meaning, according to the old Rabbinical reading, is, "The Lord is the manna of my portion: thy Thummim is mine inheritance." And it is here to be observed, that there is a peculiar propriety in the choice which was thus made of a recompense for such as were faithful in the church of Pergamos. What they had to contend against were the temptations to idolatry and fornication (see ver. 14), which were laid in their way by the Nicolaitanes, or Balaamites, of Pergamos: as a reward for overcoming in this contest, they are made high priests. Similarly, it appears from Numb. xxv. (compared with Numb. xxxi. 16), that these same sins of fornication and idolatry were the sins into which the children of Israel had been led by the Old Testament Balaam: and the reward which was then given to the faithful Phinehas was the same which in the Apocalypse is promised to those who should be faithful at Pergamos, namely, the high-priestly office. God said, “Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace: and he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God."

Ver. 20. "That woman Jezebel which calleth herself a prophetess." In 2 Kings ix. 22, "What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel, and her witchcrafts, are so many?"

Ver. 28. "And I will give him the morning star." The meaning is: Beside the "power over the nations" (ver. 26), I will give him power over the kings; I will even put into his hand that mightiest of all the kings, who in Isaiah xiv. 12 is described as "Lucifer, son of the morning." The Lucifer of Isaiah's prophecy was the king of Babylon. And, similarly, the morning star of the Apocalypse is another king of Babylon; the king, namely, of that mystical Babylon which in xvii. 18 is called "that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth."

M. J. M.

MEMORIAL OF GURNALL; AUTHOR OF THE CHRISTIAN

ARMOUR.

For the Christian Observer.

OLD reminiscences are sometimes a solace to me in descending the vale which lies before the hill of Zion. If the following notice should be acceptable, it is much at your service.

It is greatly to be regretted that we have no account of the life of Gurnall, the author of the "Christian Armour." Mr. Chalmers (the Editor of the Biographical Dictionary) told me that he could not obtain any materials for one when compiling his work; but I found in the British Museum, a Funeral Sermon for him by Burkitt, the Author of the Commentary on the New Testament, from which I collected the following particulars. He died 12th Oct. 1679, aged 63; so that it pleased God to prolong his life twenty-four years after he wrote the preface to his great work, which is dated in 1655, in which he says, "My dropping-house bids me prepare for another world." The funeral sermon says he laboured thirty-five years at Lavenham, and 66 was faithful in all God's house, like Moses, whilst he lived; and not unlike him at his death, his meek soul gliding from him in a fine imperceptible vehicle, and he, dying, as the modern Jews tell us Moses did, as it were with a kiss from God's mouth. It was no more betwixt God and him but this, 'Go up and die.'" Burkitt enlarges much on his persevering diligence, and faithfulness in his place and station; his eminent humility; his diffusive charity; his singular application and industry-being never unemployed; and his almsgiving, which was very remarkable. Burkitt notices his habit of preaching many sermons on a single text, (like Flavel, who has a whole book of sermons on Revelation iii. 20); and he mentions one series in particular upon the text, "Why stand ye here all the day idle." The whole of Gurnall's chief work is a rich mosaic of theology and metaphor, and indicates the great fertility of his resources. Burkitt says he had a delicate frame; not an uncommon case with what used to be called "painful" or pains-taking ministers. He also notices, with high commendation, the very peculiar attention and regard he had shewn to his aged parents. The sermon is dedicated to Gurnall's widow. The preacher concludes by saying, he was "a Christian in complete armour," which is the only allusion made to his celebrated work. Burkitt was Rector of Milden, in Suffolk, when he preached this sermon; and the following beautiful sentiment occurs in it: "The mistakes of a minister are not like the errors of a pocket-watch, which mislead only a single person, but like those of the town-clock, which misguides a multitude." I quoted this phrase against Mr. Wilberforce's advocacy of the Roman Catholic claims; but the Act passed notwithstanding. Another remark is, "A heterodox life will carry an orthodox creed to hell."

ZENAS.

THE CHURCH AND THE ESTABLISHMENT.

For the Christian Observer.

It was always important, but never practically so important as at present, for every religious member of our national Zion to keep clearly in view the distinction-yet the union-between the CHURCH and the

ESTABLISHMENT. Our Church is a spiritual communion; her doctrines and her discipline were not framed by Acts of Parliament; the Bible, not the Statute-book, is her charter; her Articles were not drawn up by secular men, or for secular purposes, but by her own synodical assemblies, and for spiritual objects; as their very title proves: "Articles agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of both Provinces, and the whole Clergy, in the Convocation holden at London in the year 1562." And so of the Liturgy, which was the compilation of the Church, not of the State. The proofs are patent to all who know anything of the history of our Protestant Anglican communion. Even the despotic Henry the Eighth, whose designs were overruled by an all-wise Providence educing good out of evil, did not dare to usurp the office of the Church. It was the Convocation, not the King, which in the year 1537 composed "The godly and pious institution of a Christian man." It was the Convocation which three years afterwards drew up the "Necessary doctrine and erudition;" and it was a committee of Bishops and Divines, appointed at the request of the Convocation, which in the year 1540 revised the ritual; which the Convocation reconsidered in 1542. All this was in the transition-state during the reign of Henry VIII.

In the Protestant reign of Edward VI., it was the Convocation which in the year 1547 declared, with one voice, that the Lord's Supper ought to be administered "under both kinds." It was a committee of Bishops and learned Divines-headed by Cranmer-which compiled the Book of Common Prayer, which was set forth by the consent of Convocation in the two provinces of Canterbury and York. All the subsequent revisions also were made by the Church; the secular power confining itself to receiving what the Church had agreed upon. "Whosoever will," says Bishop Sparrow, "may easily see the notorious slander which some of the Roman persuasion have endeavoured to cast upon our Church, that her reformation hath been altogether lay and parliamentary." Wheatly says: "This reformation was regularly made by the Bishops and Clergy in their provincial synods; the King and Parliament only establishing, by the civil sanction, what was there done by Ecclesiastical authority.' Bishop Burnet observes: "It was indeed confirmed by the authority of Parliament, and there was good reason to desire that, to give it the force of a law; but the authority of those changes is wholly to be derived from the Convocation, who, only, consulted about them and made them. There was no change made in a tittle by Parliament; so that they only enacted by a law what the Convocation had done. The twentieth Article declares, that "The Church"-not the State-has power to regulate spiritual matters; and that secular authorities have no such power. The Act of Uniformity expressly mentions, that the Book of Common Prayer and the offices had been "made and presented to his Majesty by the Convocations;" and all that the Legislature did in that Act, was to give the civil sanction to the book so made and presented. All this is thorougly anti-Erastian; and ought to be kept prominently in view, not only in replying to the Romanists, but to Protestant Dissenters.

But are we then ashamed of being a National Establishment, as well as a Church? Very far indeed from it. Our own publication has from its commencement been "conducted by members of the Established Church;" and we heartily concur in the following observations of Bishop Burnet, in his "Vindication of the Orders of the Church of England :"

"Was it ever heard of that the civil sanction which only makes any constitution CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 98.

to have the force of a law, gives it any other authority than a civil one? The prelates and other divines that compiled these forms did it by virtue of the authority they had from Christ as pastors of his Church; which did empower them to teach the people the pure word of God, and to administer the sacraments, and to perform all holy functions, according to the Scripture, the practice of the primitive church, and the rules of expediency and reason; [that is, in matters of subordinate order and regulation]; and this they ought to have done, even though the civil power had opposed it; in which case their duty had been to have submitted to whatever severities and persecutions they might have been put to for the name of Christ, or the truth of his Gospel.

'But, on the other hand, when it pleased God to turn the hearts of those which had the chief power to set forward this good work; then they did, as they ought, with all thankfulness acknowledge so great a blessing, and accept and improve the authority of the civil power, for adding the sanction of a law to the Reformation, in all the parts and branches of it."

Our National Church is, therefore, entitled to that designation, both as a spiritual communion, and a legal institution. The clergy and laity, in every parish in the kingdom, were represented in Convocation; the visible community of the faithful (for God only can try the hearts of individuals) were ecclesiastically and spiritually compacted; and what was thus effected in a religious capacity, was legislatively recognised and acted upon. But in these days, when Romanists and Protestant Dissenters taunt us with being nationally only an Act-of-Parliament corporation; and that as a church we are not "The Church of England,' any more than the Baptists, or Independents, or Quakers; it is of great moment that the members of our communion should maintain their just standing. We complained last month of clergymen, and church laymen, allowing their names to appear in a list in which they are not allowed to be designated as members of "The Anglican Church," or "The Church of England." Our objection was not to what is specified in their being entitled of "The English Established Church;" but to what was intended to be excluded. Every sound-hearted Anglican, in saying that the Reformed episcopal communion is established, means not merely de facto but de jure; it was established by law, and it was by choice the National Church. When, for instance, for convenient conventional specification, the projectors of the publication in which we are writing inscribed on its cover "Conducted by members of the Established Church," they did not mean to set up the de facto to the exclusion of the de jure; or to assert an Erastian instead of a spiritual claim. So far from it, in the very first page of their first Preface (as throughout all their pages) they vindicated the right of our Church to be called "The Church of England ;" and in their very first "Theological" paper (Vol. I. p. 8) we read: "The Editors are members of the Established Church; and with them sound theology must mean the doctrine of the Church of England ;"-that doctrine being, they firmly believed, grounded upon the oracles of God, the only rule of faith. They could not foresee that the time would come when any members of our Church, in order to unite with twenty or forty bodies of its oppugners, would consent to waive their right to be entitled members of "The Church of England," and be content to call themselves only members of "The English Established Church," in distinction to the English Baptist Church, or the English Presbyterian Church, or the Plymouth Brethren Church, or the Congregational Churches. Words take shades of meaning from passing occurrences; and a phrase good in itself may be made evil by association. The word "Established," as applied to the Church of England, did not formerly convey to the popular ear an Erastian sense. In the first sentence of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," in the Preface addressed "To them that seek

(as they term it) the reformation of laws and orders ecclesiastical in the Church of England," we read: "Thus much concerning the present state of the Church of God established among us.” We have always regarded this phrase as tantamount to "Which God in his providence has planted among us ;" and though Hooker, in the next page, speaks of "The present form of church-government which the laws of this land have established," there was no difference of opinion between him and his opponents as to the duty of a nation, in its corporate capacity, to set up the worship of God; the only question was what form of doctrine and discipline was to be preferred. "The Puritans," says Mr. Hanbury, Hooker's Non-conformist Editor, "would have no reason to triumph, being themselves advocates of a religious establishment." Hooker's opponent Cartwright not only insisted upon the duty of maintaining National Church establishments; but would not allow of toleration; for, said he, "Those who would withdraw themselves, should by ecclesiastical discipline, at all times, and now also under a godly Prince, by civil punishment, be brought to communicate with their brethren." In those days, therefore, no idea of secular degradation was attached to a church on the ground of its being established: the Church was the primary idea; its adoption by the State was distinct and subordinate; but when in the dark and degenerate times of our Church, especially during the eighteenth century, our clergy and laity were apt to merge the Church in the Establishment, and were contented with such unsound defences of the Anglican communion as Warburton's "Alliance," it behoved that the distinction should be kept clearly in view by all who wished well to our national communion.

THE REV. S. MARSDEN'S MISSIONARY VISITS TO NEW ZEALAND. (Continued from page 16.)

WE resume with much pleasure the account of Mr. Marsden's visits to New Zealand. What hath God wrought! What human likelihood was there thirty, or even twenty, years ago, that New Zealand, savage, pagan, cannibal, would in so short a period of time be placed, at the desire of her own Chiefs, under the protection of the British Crown; that pagan customs and barbarous rites would be rapidly disappearing; that large bodies of her population would be Christian in profession, and not a few Christian in heart and in life: that infants would be baptized; children trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; churches built; the Bible extensively diffused and devoutly studied; the Christian Sabbath kept holy; a considerable number of clergymen be officiating, with all the regularity of an English parish, to large congregations, and administering the Lord's Supper to many of the converted and consistently-walking aborigines; that a bishopric would be established; and now a college projected for training school-masters, catechists, and pastors, both from among the converted Aborigines, and from that considerable body of young persons, the children of the Missionaries, and other Europeans resident in New Zealand;-Natives though not Aborigines. This is an important class of persons. They are New Zealanders by birth; their habits and associations are connected with the land of their nativity; England is not their home; and if they are sent hither for education, they are liable to be attacked with pulmonary disease, and are obliged to return to New Zealand, the