these are endowed or partially supported by Government grants; others are entirely dependent on benefactions and subscriptions. In four or five, the regular congregations exceed a thousand each, and the salaries of the ministers are for the most part above the average of the English benefices. All this church accommodation is independent of the revenues of the Establishment, and would not suffer by their entire alienation. Then, again, we have to consider that portion of the nominally Protestant population for which there is absolutely no ecclesiastical provision. For instance, we have, in the pamphlets before us, a table of seven benefices taken from different parts of Ireland, and containing sixtytwo Protestants, in which there is no Church, and no resident clergyman, while the parochial income from tithes amounts to £2888 a year. In another table of fifty parishes, containing 527 Protestants, the united revenues of which are £11,897, there are forty-two without a resident clergyman, and forty-one without a church. In 210 benefices, there is no church; in 157 parishes no Divine service is performed; and in many instances where there is a church, there is no congregation. The provision which the Ecclesiastical Establishment makes for the members of the Episcopal Church. is in a ratio directly the reverse of the prevalence of Protestantism. Thus, while in Armagh, the churches are as one for every 900; in Tuam, they are as one for every 300, and in Cashel, as one for every 200, men, women, and children! Under these circumstances, it is difficult to come to any exact estimate of the numbers for whose religious benefit the State provision is rendered available. Excluding the Episcopal chapels supported by free contributions, and the parishes in which no service is performed, it may be questioned, whether the Establishment actually provides for a sixteenth of the population. Half a million, taking the actual attendance at two-fifths, would give 200,000 worshippers in the churches and other places of worship supported by the revenues of the Church throughout Ireland! In Scotland, the spiritual instruction of each member of the Establishment costs 3s. 4d. per annum. In Ireland, it costs 17. 18. 5d.; that is, taking the members at 752,972, and the expenditure at £807,533. But estimating the actual attendance at 200,000, we have a cost for church-room, of £4 3 head! In Scotland, non-residence is unknown; in Ireland, the larger proportion of the Church revenues are enjoyed by nonresident incumbents. Almost all the town parishes are of small value; while, in the large and rich benefices of the rural districts, the duty is generally performed by proxy. There are many parishes in the south and west of Ireland, where the benefices are £1000 and upwards in value, and where the clergyman has not more than twenty Protestants to take charge of. In Ireland, every thing is anomalous and arbitrary. The actual teachers of

the people, the resident incumbents of small benefices and the stipendiary clergy, receive little enough: the bulk of the wealth is absorbed by the Ecclesiastical Staff, the dignitaries, and pluralists, and sinecure rectors of this holy and apostolic Establish

ment.

Such is the corrupt and odious system of fraud and injustice which it is sought to perpetuate in the name of Religion, and to identify with the interests of the Protestant faith. To uphold this system, are we put to the expense of a standing army for the military occupation of the country, in order that the claims of the Minister of the Gospel of Peace to the tithe of the widow and the pauper may be enforced by the soldier's bayonet!

In the month of April last, the Rev. T. Locke, another Protestant clergyman, was compelled to employ for ten whole weeks, a force, consisting of several armed Policemen, about sixty rank and file of the eighty-fifth Regiment, and thirty bailiffs, in order to collect a small portion of the Tithes then due to him in the parish of Newcastle. "Seven distraints having been effected, with the loss of several lives, and at considerable expense to the Government, without the example having served to any practical purpose," (we borrow the words from a letter written by Mr. Locke himself,) the Rev. Gentleman proposed, "that a considerable force should be encamped in a central and commanding situation, there to remain until the arrears were collected." Government not having thought proper to comply with this request, the troops were withdrawn, after seventy days of harassing but fruitless, labour. In the Autumn, additional aid was granted; sixty men were again placed under the orders of Mr. Locke, and so continued from the 22nd of October until the 11th of December following. They were out every day, during this period, collecting some days 81., some days 201., some days as much as 50l. and 601., but never obtaining any money without a distraint being effected, and leaving, at the end of their Tithe campaign, as it has been most justly termed, 5001. still due, which they saw no chance, or possibility, of recovering. Well might Mr. Shiel say of this unhappy and unholy system, "that it had cost England millions of her treasure, and Ireland torrents of her blood."' p. 29.

To persevere in this system is, happily, no longer possible. The fate of the Establishment has been sealed by the fatuity of the Orange party and the virulent hostility against His Majesty's Ministers, which has sacrificed the interests of the clergy to the intrigues of a desperate faction. The rejection of Lord Morpeth's Bill by the Peers and the Bishops can have but one effect; that of hastening the downfall of the Sacerdotal usurpation and the final removal of the Monster Grievance, which has too long been the Incubus of Protestantism in that mis governed country,-once the asylum of learning and the nursery of the infant civilization of Western Europe.

Art. VIII.-1. The Treasury Bible: First Division: containing the Authorized English Version of the Holy Scriptures as printed in Bagster's Polyglott Bible, with the same copious and original Selection of References to Parallel and Illustrative Passages, and similarly printed in a centre Column. Second Division: containing the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, consisting of a rich and copious Assemblage of upwards of 500,000 Parallel Texts from Carne, Brown, Blayney, Scott, and others, with numerous Illustrative Notes. Interspersed in one thick volume fcap 8vo. 30s. London. 1835.

2. The Same, printed in quarto, on fine Writing Paper, with lines in the fabric of the paper for manuscript matter. In cloth. 30s.

3. The Condensed Commentary and Family Exposition of the Holy Bible: containing the Text according to the Received Translation; with Notes embodying the most valuable Criticisms of Ainsworth, Patrick, Lowth, Whitby, Poole, Henry, Gill, Scott, Clarke, Doddridge, Guyse, Macknight, Campbell, &c., and other Criticisms gleaned from Leigh, Parkhurst, Horne, Bloomfield, Townsend, Calmet, Harmer, S. Burder, and other Biblical Labourers, with many original Notes and Reflections for Family Use, never before Published, an Introduction to the Bible, Indexes &c. Imp. 8vo. Part I. to IV. 2s. 6d. each. Med. 4to. 4s. each. London. 1835.

4. The Holy Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments, Revised from corrected Texts of the Original Tongues, and with former Translations diligently compared. With Critical and explanatory Notes. By B. Boothroyd, D.D. Editor of the "Biblia Hebraica," &c. Royal 8vo. Part I. to IV. 3s. each. (To be completed in Ten Parts.) London, 1835.

THE axiom which is appropriately placed as a motto on the titlepage of "The Treasury Bible", if not absolutely and in all cases true, requires only to be slightly qualified, in order to be at least a safe general rule: Bonus Tertuarius est bonus Theologus.' What is a good textuary? Not the man who has the

text of Scripture at his fingers' ends, or, as we once heard it expressed in nautical phrase, who can box the compass from Genesis to Revelations. There have been many individuals who, with the aid of a good memory, have acquired a familiarity with the letter of Scripture, that has enabled them to cite it for any purpose, and with apparent appositeness, on any occasion, but who have at the same time been very indifferent divines. To a polemic, such an acquaintance with the text of Scripture is an indispensable weapon; but dexterous disputants are not always safe or judicious commentators. The memoriter knowledge of Scripture is highly useful, when it is the result of habitual study, not the substitute for it. But a good textuary, by which we

would understand a well-instructed student of the sacred text, in its scope, connection, and bearings, will be assuredly a good theologian, one of the best sort; not having merely the μogowo τὴς γνώσεως καὶ τῆς αληθείας εν τῷ νόμῳ, but, & in the spirit as well as the letter", an able "minister of the New Testament."

The advance which has been made of late years in Biblical science, the consequence, no doubt in great measure, of the fresh impulse given to the circulation of the Scriptures, is one of the most auspicious circumstances of the present times. The authority of the Scriptures, as the only Rule of Faith, was recognized at the Reformation; but it was as the authority of an arbiter, rather than of a teacher or guide, as an ultimate court of appeal, rather than as an accessible and intelligible medium of evidence and source of information. The notion which then prevailed, and which is still maintained by many, is, that the Church must teach, and the Scriptures prove the doctrines of Christianity. Thus, the Protestant confession, or symbol, was too much put in the place of the Romish Tradition, as the Rule of the Rule, till the original statute-law of Heaven was well-nigh lost in the mass of constructive law, composed of adjudications and opinions of its official administrators, grafted upon the Divine code. Such, however, were not the views of the most enlightened Reformers, -of those who laboured to restore the Bible to its character and office as the great instrument of Divine teaching. They sought not merely to prove from the Scripture what they taught, but to make the Scriptures teach; in order to which they must be not only cited, but searched and studied. To this end, they multiplied translations of the Bible in the vernacular dialects of the people, aiming less at a precise and rigid imitation of the verbal forms of the original, than at a perspicuous expression of the sense, in language which, though to us antiquated, had then all the freshness of conventional use. We require, in the present day, to be recalled to that free, unembarrassed, and cordial handling of the Word of God, which distinguished the practice of the early Reformers. Wedded to the phraseology of the English Vulgate', with its artificial and ill-executed divisions of the text into chapter and verse, we have been led too much to overlook the scope of the familiar letter of Scripture; and the modern practice of sermonizing upon detached clauses and portions of clauses, with little regard to the context, has not a little contributed to encourage this superficial use of the Word of God.

6

There is evidently, however, a change taking place-a religious 'march of intellect-occasioned partly by the extension of education and the means of religious knowledge, partly by the increased distribution of the sacred volume itself, which is working upward from the taught to the teachers, and making itself seen and felt in the popular species of biblical literature

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which it is calling into existence. Verbose and dogmatical commentary is going out of fashion, and in its place, the commonsense principles of interpretation for which Coverdale and Tindal contended, are beginning to be recognised. Disquisition is beginning to be displaced by exegesis, and annotation by criticism. We hail the salutary change. The complaint that the Scriptures are hard to be understood, has rarely proceeded from the unlearned; for their true import, while hidden from the wise, has been revealed unto babes in human lore. The Bible is the most popular of all books; it is emphatically the people's book; and with the aids of criticism and illustration which are now within every one's reach, the plainest member of a Dissenting church may with ease make himself a better textuary, and thereby a better theologian, than by digging for years in the dark mines of casuistical and polemic divinity, such as employed the painful toil of divines of other ages.

But we have been betrayed into a prefatory excursion which we did not contemplate, and must now proceed to notice the publications before us.

The Treasury Bible presents the most complete and attractive apparatus for the attainment of a thorough textual knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, that has ever been presented to the studious and devout. Having been in the practice for many years of using the Polyglott edition of the English Version, we can bear our testimony to the accuracy and appropriateness of the marginal references contained in that edition; and we were really not aware that there could be found room for such copious and useful additions to that judicious selection. The Sacred Harmony,' which is the foundation of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, we have not hitherto had the opportunity of examining; but a very important improvement has been introduced into the present arrangement. In the Harmony,' the whole of the references to a verse, we are told, were arranged thus:

The verses were first introduced that belonged to the chapter to which the verse under consideration belonged; then the chapter in the book itself; after which the references were arranged, in the usual order of English Bibles, from Genesis to Revelation. If the references belonged to every part of the verse equally, there would be great propriety in this arrangement; but as many of the verses require elucidation in their separate parts, a mode of dividing them, to save labour to the student, was considered necessary. This has been easily accomplished where marks are thrown into the text to correspond with those in the margin, but to accommodate a divided mass of references to the text, without the use of arbitrary signs, necessarily involved the introduction of the Present Plan, which is best exemplified by the following verse, and shows the peculiar necessity of a division of the parallel passages :