ly proper and
respectable. As to the heretics--the publicans and sinners, away with
them. Let their portion be shame in this life, perdition in the next.
Thus it is heretics have got a bad name. Church history has been written
by their enemies, by men who have honestly believed that a man of a
different heresy to their own would rob an orphan, and break all the
commandments. The Rev. Mr. Thwackem "doubted not but all the infidels
and heretics in the world would, if they could, confine honour to their
own absurd errors and damnable deceptions." The phrase "absurd errors
and damnable deceptions," is one a real theologian might envy, or at any
rate appropriate. In another sense also that hero of fiction is a type
of the spirit in which orthodox people often (thankfully we record the
existence of a better spirit in our day) have written on theology. "When
I mean religion," cries Thwackem, "I mean the Christian religion, and not
only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion, and not only
the Protestant religion, but the Church of England."

Still the question occurs, What is heresy?

It is not difficult to say what it is not. The African Bishops on one
occasion, in council in Carthage, decided that heretics were not at all
any part of the Church of Christ, but this opinion was modified by a
later council. "Heretics," writes Epiphanius, "are divided into two
kinds: those who receive the Christian religion, but err in parts, who
when they come over to the Church are anointed with oil; and those who do
not receive it at all and are unbelievers, such as Jews and Greeks, and
these we baptize."

According to the Articles of the English Establishment, "the Church of
Christ is a company of faithful people among whom the pure Word of God is
preached and the Sacraments rightly administered according to Christ's
institution." But on this very matter we find the Church divided. Low
Churchmen tell us that the ritualists do not rightly administer the
Sacraments, and the latter say the same of their opponents. The _Record_
suggests that Bishop Colenso is little better than one of the wicked, and
charitably insinuates that the late Dean Milman is amongst the lost. Dr.
Pusey places the Evangelicals in the same category with Jews, or
Infidels, or Dissenters, and has strong apprehensions as to their
everlasting salvation. Dr. Temple was made Bishop of Exeter, and
Archdeacon Denison set apart the day of his installati