“Contradictoriness” of the Articles and Prayer-book. (1.) It is said that the Subscriptions are made to documents “contradictory to each other in spirit;” (p. 22) and that this is felt by those who are called on to sign the Prayer-book, and the Articles;—the former being devotional and sublime, the latter scholastic, and less impressive;—the former emanating from ancient sources, the latter being the product “of the Calvinistic, and in some measure even the Scholastic period.” (pp. 16, 17.) This is popularly but scarcely correctly put; but I would ask, whether the difference between the “two documents” is greater than between Aquinas’ _Summa_, and his _Pange Lingua_?—or between any man’s didactic statements and his devotional offices? And if not, then how cannot the same man honestly sign both—each in its plain and obvious sense? Personally, I do not feel the least difficulty in the case; and I cannot recollect meeting with any clergyman who could sign the one, and yet had difficulty about the other, except as to a few phrases here and there. The general “contradictoriness,” which is affirmed by Dr. STANLEY, I believe then is not commonly perceived by the Clergy, and I do not myself perceive any other difference than the nature of the case demands. The purely Theological language of the earlier Articles—then the mixed statements of the “anthropology,” as it is called—and the terms of the Sacramental Articles,—may almost in every instance be traced in Catholic fathers, from St. Augustine to St. Bernard. And yet they are not recondite, but so intelligible to educated English people, that some years ago as a matter of edification I went through them, with a class of fifty of the laity in my parish, and a few clergy, who for several weeks were glad to devote attention to the subject; and I venture to think that the idea never occurred to one of us, that there was the least want of harmony between the two documents. We really did not see the “calm image of Cranmer” reflected on the surface of the “Liturgy,” as Lord Macaulay fancied he did (p. 18); and as to the “foul weeds in which the roots were buried,” we did not discover them there;—(nor did Lord Macaulay, I suppose, as it was not his custom to go to these “roots.”) I think I am entitled, then, to meet the charge of the “contradictoriness” of the Articles and the Prayer-book, with an assertion that there is a thorough inward harmony, which not a few of us feel; and we cannot be talked out of this conviction by the contrary assertions of microscopic thinkers. I should grant, of course, that it would be a “practical evil” of no small kind, demanding immediate redress, if I could admit any real opposition between the Formularies which we have to sign. But I unreservedly deny it. I know indeed what objectors would mean when they say this: but I know also that the same objectors would find “contradictoriness” in different parts of Holy