He was succeeded by Mr. Philip Taylor, grandson to Dr. Taylor, who had been his assistant the last two years. In an extract of a letter from the latter, now before me, he says, "Mr. Brekell's congregation never distinctly understood what his real sentiments were on doctrinal points, but I judged from his private conversation that he was an Arian. My friend, Dr. Enfield, who, some years after his death, had access to his papers, however, told me that from them he could ascertain him to have been, in fact, a Socinian. He passed with his people as an orthodox man; and from an idea, then very prevalent among free-thinking ministers, he conceived it his duty not to endanger his usefulness among them by shocking their prejudices."

Mr. Brekell, in conjunction with Dr. Enfield, compiled, in 1764, "A Collection of Psalms, proper for Christian Worship, in Three Parts," which, with subsequent additions, was used in both congregations till a very recent period, and was well known under the name of the Liverpool Collection. It contained a few anonymous original compositions by him, but of no remarkable merit.

SIR,

H. TAYLOR.

TAKE the liberty of sending for the Repository a few remarks on a late Sermon of Mr. Belsham's. If the principles of that author were not well known, I should suspect that the discourse alluded to was the composition of some enemy of revelation in disguise. But this cannot be thought of Mr. Belsham, whose talents have ever been pre-eminently employed in promoting the knowledge and supporting the divine authority of the Scriptures, and whose character is an ornament to his profession. His positions are, that the Pentateuch is not the composition of Moses, but a compilation from more ancient documents; that the Jewish lawgiver, in his account of the creation, while unexceptionable as a theologian, so far from being divinely inspired, is only a retailer of vulgar errors. The Jewish

in Renshaw Street, in October, 1811, since which time the former chapel has been occupied by a society of Welsh Methodists.

nation, from the earliest ages to the present period, have, I believe, uniformly attributed these books to the pen of Moses; and this testimony is indirectly confirmed by Christ and his apostles: nor does Mr. B. presume to invalidate the historical testimony to their authenticity. He rather grounds his conclusions on internal evidence alone; but, surely, the internal evidence is decidedly against him. For the same characteristic qualities, the same unvarnished simplicity, the same easy and natural flow of sentiments and language, varying only with the nature of the subject, the same freedom from that fiction and wildness which prevailed in the fabulous ages, the same unity of design and tendency of each succeeding incident to establish that design, namely, the evidence and government of one God;—all these unequivocally mark the Mosaic records, and lead us to consider them as the productions of one and the same author. The style and manner of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and Aristotle, are sufficiently peculiar; yet these immortal writers by no means supply a surer criterion of authenticity than can be discovered in the books of Moses. Where, then, is this internal evidence to be discovered? In his account of the creation this divine author

first calls God Elohim, in a second stage he styles him Jehovah Elohim ; in a third, Jehovah; in a fourth, Elohim again. From these variations Mr. B. infers, that these several stages or portions must have been the writings of different authors. But surely no inference was ever so hasty and unfounded. If these several designations present any difficulty, this is cutting the knot instead of untying it; a solution unworthy of an enlightened critic. But they do not; and it remains to shew that Moses had an important end to answer by these different appellations. I do not here pretend to be altogether original, but I am not above receiving information when I can get it. Essenus, a treatise on the first three chapters of Genesis, ascribed to Mr. Jones, speaks to this effect:

:

lute, is never enjoyed by one man without the participation of a few who carry on his administration and form his court. It is in reference to this circumstance, that in most tongues, a king, though numerically one, is described as if he were many; and in our own country, the use of the pronouns we and our, in the sense of self, is an exclusive prerogative of royalty. Analogy is sufficiently clear to warrant its application to the Almighty, in the relation of a Sovereign. Jehovah himself, indeed, is absolutely one, uncompounded in nature, indivisible into parts or persons; but he is nevertheless considered as surrounded with those spiritual beings called angels, who constitute his celestial court, and execute his will through boundless space. The term Elohim, therefore, is not improperly used to mean God; but we should remember, that Moses uses it not to express his essence as an infinite being, but his sovereignty, as the creator and governor of the universe; the term, therefore, which comes nearest to the original is Almighty."

The term Elohim only is used in the first chapter, and if the above statement be just, the propriety of it consists in holding forth the Almighty, not only as the Creator, but as Šovereign of the world, presiding over it by his providence, and giving effect to its stated laws by his power and authority. When, in the next chapter, the heavens and the earth are said to be finished, the historian calls God Jehovah Elohim. Now, Jehovah means a being that is self-existent, eternal and immutable; a being that will be to-morrow what he is to-day, and what he was yesterday. A reader of the Mosaic history, arguing from effects to their causes, might suppose that the Creator then only began to exist when he began to create, or, at least, that some change took place in his being and character, corresponding to the change produced in the new order of things. When the world was destroyed by the deluge, the early Pagan philosophers seemed to have thought that the God who presided over it was himself involved in the universal ruin; and this is the origin of the fable, that Saturn was supplanted by his son Jupiter in the government of the universe. In oppo

sition to some conclusions like these, Moses introduced the term Jehovah, and intimates, by the use of it, that though the heavens and the earth began to exist, their great Author was then what he had been from all eternity.

In the third chapter, Moses takes up the history of Cain and his descendants, and it is observable, that he dropped altogether the title of Elohim, designating God by that of Jehovah, The omission must have been the effect of design, because it is uniform from beginning to end, and the meaning of Elohim as Sovereign or Governor, unfolds the intention of the historian. Cain, by his wicked conduct, became an alien from God, and Moses, by suppressing the term Elohim, intimates that God was no longer related to Cain as Lawgiver and King. When again he resumes the narrative of Adam, he resumes also the title of Elohim, shewing by this means that God and Adam sustained towards each other the relation of a monarch and his subject.

These observations will throw some light upon various parts of the Jewish Scriptures, and among the number upon the following: "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, ‘I am Jehovah, and I revealed myself unto Abraham and unto Isaac and unto Jacob as an Almighty Sovereign; but my name, Jehovah, I did not inake known to them."" Exod. iv. 3. The patriarchs might well know Jehovali to be a title of God, and, indeed, must have known it, because they knew him to be an eternal, unchangeable Being, and because he was so designated in regard to Cain. The meaning of this passage then must be, that God did not reveal, did not designate, himself as their God under that denomination. To them he revealed himself as a sovereign, whose laws they obeyed, whose protection they enjoyed, and to whose promise they looked forward with hope and joy. If we generalize the words, they imply, that the Almighty holds the relation of a moral Governor only towards those who keep his commandments, while to the sinners who break his laws he is but Jehovah in other words, that he is related to such men merely as the Author of their being, the canse of their existence; the very relation, and

that only which he bears to inert matter; that as such he will suffer them, as he did Cain and his posterity, to end in destruction and mingle for ever with the mass of inanimate nature.

SIR,

A

BEN DAVID.

(To be continued.)

Manchester, December 31, 1821. CONTROVERSY is now carried on in this town between the Catholics and orthodox Protestants, which was begun by the Catholic Priest of one of our Catholic chapels, in (as appears to me) a weak and impolitic attack upon the Bible Society. My view in this communication is not to give an account of the combat or the combatants, but to direct the notice of your readers to the following passage, extracted from the priest's second piece in the controversy, concerning Unitarianism.

"For my own part, I have ever considered Unitarians, if not the best, at least the most consistent Protestants; and my reason for considering them so, is, because they adhere more closely than those of any other denomination to the principle of private judgment. Rejecting the authority of catechisms and creeds, the Unitarian takes the sacred volume into his hands, and, before he opens it, thus argues with himself: This book is given to me by the Almighty; from it, by the means of my own judgment and understanding, I am to gather the truths of salvation. Now I know and feel, that, unlike the animals of the brute creation, I possess within myself a rational soul, which is the very principle of judgment and understanding, and, consequently, I must practise nothing, I must believe nothing, that is not completely conformable to the reason which my Creator has given me. He then opens the sacred pages, and, reading them with the full persuasion that they contain nothing above the standard of his reason, if he meet with any thing that wears the appearance of a mystery, he very justly reduces it to that standard, by adapting it to a sense that is not at variance with his understanding and his judgment. Such is the mode of reasoning which the Unitarian adopts; and such ought to be that of every consistent Protestant."

Though the Catholic Priest intends

the above remarks as a manifest reductio-ad-absurdum of the Protestant principle, with which, in its bearing upon the Unitarian, his evangelica opponents will readily acquiesce, yet, upon the whole, the picture is not drawn with an unfriendly hand, nor much caricatured: and it is a curious circumstance, with which many of your readers may be unacquainted, that not only in the Church of England and Scotland, but also in the Roman Church, there are many disguised Unitarians. From a French geographical work of merit, I extract the following passage:

"The principal Christian sects are: The Unitarians, Socinians, or Antitrinitarians, whose opinions are protected in Transylvania and in Russian Poland: a very great number of Catholics, of Lutherans and Calvinists, are secretly attached to this system." Malte-Brun, Geography, I. 579.

The number of adherents affords no presumption in favour of a system. Motives of interest will always sway a fearful proportion of mankind. The great mass of the unlettered and ignorant are deluded by the arts of zealots and enthusiasts-many of them, no doubt, hypocrites. And, perhaps, a still greater proportion of men are indifferent to all systems, and readily embrace, as far as they can be said to embrace, that which is nearest at hand. Numbers, therefore, are no criterion of truth. Yet, if there be an instance in which a sect has risen and spread on all sides, without much activity in its partisans, without much party spirit, with scarcely any union and co-operation among its adherents, the members of which cannot possibly be actuated by interested motives, and its chief promoters have been men generally of a studious, retired and unobstrusive character, there exists, I imagine, a strong presumption in its favour. Unitarianism has the advantage of such a powerful presumption.

CRITO.

trimony." Neither of his biographers, whom I formerly mentioned, has reorded the family name of Chandler's wife. Three daughters by this marriage survived their father. One becaine the wife of Dr. Harwood, and another died a few years since, having, with equal justice and gratitude, been supported in old age and under strait circumstances by an annuity specially voted, on the recommendation of the venerable Dr. Rees, at the Annual Meetings of the Society for the relief of Dissenting Ministers' Widows, which had owed its origin, in 1748, almost entirely to Dr. Chandler, whose daughter thus happily proved how

“The father's virtues shall befriend

his child."

Dr. Towers relates (B. Brit. III. 430) that Dr. Chandler "by the fatal South-Sea scheme, in 1720, lost the whole fortune which he had received with his wife. His income as a minister being inadequate to his expenses, he engaged in the trade of a bookseller, still continuing to discharge the duties of the pastoral office." I have now before me "The True Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion in opposition to the False Ones set forth in a late Book, entitled The Grounds and Reasons, &c. London, printed for S. Chandler, at the Cross Keys in the Poultry, 1725." The publication was anonymous, but probably acknowledged by Chandler when he presented a copy to Archbishop Wake. That Prelate, in a letter from "Lambeth House, Feb. 14, 1725," says, "I cannot but own myself to be surprised, to see so much good learning and just reasoning in a person of your profession; and do think it a pity you should not rather spend your time in writing books than in selling them." (Ibid. 431.) The Archbishop was probably further surprised to find, at the end of the pamphlet, among "books printed for, and sold by S. Chandler-Cassiodorii Senatoris Complexiones-Editio altera. Opera et cura Samuelis Chandleri.” It was, however, while a bookseller, that Chandler preached those Lectures, first in concert with Lardner, and afterwards alone, the substance of which formed the principal parts of his pieces against the Deistical Writers. About 1726, on becoming minister at

the Old Jewry, he appears to have resigned his trade; for, the " Vindication of Daniel," published with his name, in 1728, is "printed for John Gray, at the Cross Keys in the Poultry," probably his immediate successor.

66

P. 697, col. 2. 'Dear King George that good and great man. He looked well and smiled upon his people;" on whom he could scarcely have been so ungrateful as to have frowned. On the same day, July 7, this "good and great man," just before he smiled upon his people," had "signed the dead warrant against twenty-five of the Preston prisoners in Newgate." Yet sedition was not then so severely punished as we have seen, more recently, in the annals of "the illustrious House;" for a person" convicted of drinking the Pretender's health, and calling King George a Turnip-hougher," was only "sentenced to pay a fine of forty marks, to be imprisoned for a year, and find sureties for his behaviour for three years." (Salmon's Chron. Hist. II. 66.)

It is said, I think, by Young, that he "knew a man who lived upon a smile, and well it fed him." This "dear King George" appears to have now left his people to exist on the grateful recollection of a royal smile, without the personal presence of a King, during the next six months, while he was astonishing his Germans with the splendours of a British monarch, in all the gloss of novelty; for as we read (ibid. 69), it was not till

January 18" following, that "King George arrived at Margate from Holland," the Parliament having been, in the mean time, prorogued five times, seemingly to accommodate the royal pleasure.

P. 698. You have said all which an editor could say to counteract an unavoidable impression to the prejudice of the letter-writer. The letter, indeed, singly considered, by no means involves his integrity, for it ought to be conceded that a truly ingenuous inquirer after truth might find himself, during his progress, in the painful situation which Chandler has described. Nor can it be fairly disputed, that between September 13, the date of this letter, and December 19, the day of his ordination according to Secker, (XVI. 572,) Chandler's religious in