the esteem it received. With the mildest | The new creature, 2 Cor. v. 17. SERM. temper, and the most affable and engag- VII. The conflict between the flesh ing manners, he united a steadiness to and spirit, Gal v. 17. SERM. VIII. his purpose which never compromised the The advantages of the gospel above interests of truth and virtue. Singular the law, John i. 17. SERM. IX. True politeness and facility of expression, a love to Jesus Christ, 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. lively imagination, a correct judgment, a SERM. X. Joshua's choice of the true memory retentive and ready on every SERM. XI. occasion; the gentleness, modesty, and religion, Josh. xxiv. 15. benevolence pourtrayed in his person, Death conquered, 1 Cor. xv. 55-57. gave charms to his conversation more It only remains for us to offer our easily conceived than described. Never opinion of the Sermons themselves, niggardly of his stores of knowledge, he and of the manner in which they have was particularly communicative to young been rendered into English; and that persons, especially to those in whom he we shall do as concisely as possible. discovered promising dispositions. He Indeed Mr. Allen is now so well felt pleasure in imparting the information known among us by his excellent, which they sought; and that not with we had almost said his matchless, magisterial superiority, but with the freedom and familiarity of a friend. In the translation of Calvin's Institutes, that domestic circle he was truly amiable: a we might probably be excused from condescending master, an affectionate delivering our opinion respecting the husband, and a tender father. In the manner in which he has acquitted pulpit he was qualified to shine, but his himself of the task he undertook. grand aim was to be useful. Clear state- A rival he may have, but as a faithful ments of Christian doctrine and practice, translator he has no superior. The solid arguments addressed to the understanding, exhortations and reproofs pres- given with perspicuity, we believe we meaning of his author is always sed upon the conscience, urgent persuasion and kind remonstrance, tones and might add, generally with elegance; gesture perfectly natural, pathos produced and, from the slight comparison that by the overflowings of a pious heart, we have been enabled to make be conspired to place him among the first tween the English version and the preachers of his age. In counsels and original, we are persuaded that the admonitions to his exiled brethren, the former approximates the latter as French refugees who composed part of nearly as any thing of this kind that his auditory, he was more than commonly has been hitherto attempted among impressive. His instructions from the us. With regard to the Sermons pulpit were enforced by the unblemished themselves, we certainly cannot recommend them as a model of imita tion to any English minister, and yet there are few if any among us that might not read them, again and again, with increasing advantage. The author's sentiments respecting the character of God---the fallen state of man--1 -the way of salvation---the purity of his life. He always exhibited a sanctity becoming his profession: but in his latter years it seemed to acquire additional lustre. To those who visited him in his retirement, his conversation was truly edifying. He was particularly careful to impress upon them the necessity of possessing the religion of the heart as well as of the head. Long familiarized with death, he beheld its approach without alarm and without regret: he even desired and prayed for its coming, to dissolve his earthly tabernacle, and remove him to a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens." of the Saviour--the Christian grace character---and the hopes and prospects which the gospel reveal, are in general consonant to what we consider to be the truth as it is in Jesus; and we could readily produce from The volume before us consists of them passages in abundance that only eleven Sermons, but they are of would justify a much higher characconsiderable length, and we subjointer of them than we have yet given; a list of the subjects and the texts on which they are founded. SERMON I. The mysteries of Providence, Is. xlv. 4. SERM. II. The importance of Salvation, Heb. ii. 8. SERM. III. The glory of the primitive innocence, Eccles. viii. 29. SERM. IV. Man ruined by himself, same text. SERM. V. Christ the only way of Salvation, John xiv. 6. SERM. VI. but after all, it strikes us that what Robinson said of Saurin's Sermons will apply in an inferior degree to these of Superville--" they deserve the attention of any teacher of Christianity, who wishes to excel--but there are many articles taken separately, relating to doctrine, rites, discipline, and other circumstances, in which our ideas differ entirely from those of Monsieur Superville." "His colleagues are Levites, holy to the Lord ---ambassadors of the King of Kings, administrators of the new covenant, who have written on their foreheads, holiness to the Lord, &c. In the writings of Moses, all this is history ---in the Sermons of Mr. S. all this is oratory; in my. creed all this is nonentity." Remarks on Saurin's Sermons, in Robinson's Works, vol. 1. p. 150. As a specimen of the animated stile of the volume before us, we shall give an extract from the close of it. "Ye christians, long attached to Jesus Christ, who desire yet to draw closer the bonds which unite you to him; how great is your happiness! I cannot, indeed, suppose you to be without imperfections and infirmities, without some trepidation and dread at the dissolution of the body and the prospect of the tomb. But these relics of weakness are not sufficient to counterbalance your assurance and joy. Persevere in the means which we have been recommending, and which will always be useful to you as well as to the feeblest of your brethren: perpetual supplication for pardon, mortification of sin, the formation of the new man. Yet a changed saints on whom death shall have no power, and whom the Lord will change in a moment, by that energy whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself." What happiness, my brethren, to find ourselves at that great day, and to find ourselves there under the propitious eyes of Jesus Christ, and at his adorable right hand, surrounded by the righteous, separated from the wicked, and united to the choir of angels! What felicity, to be caught up together with Christ in the air, to follow him to paradise, to see all the gates of heaven unfold, and to enter them in triumph! Then, casting our crowns before Him that sitteth on the throne, and before the Lamb, we shall shout with inexpressible transports: 'Thanks be to God, which hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." God grant us this grace. Amen." Facts and Evidences on the subject of Baptism in Three Letters to a Deacon of a Baptist church; with an Introduction, containing Three Letters to the Editor of the Baptist Magazine, proposing exceptions to certain errors in Dr. Ryland's Statements. By the Editor of Calmet's Dictionary of the Holy Bible. London: C. Taylor, Hatton Garden, 1815. little while, and your labours will be ended. Soon the angels will come to bring you to the Ancient of days,' to carry you to the bosom of Christ. Ah! WE have had our eye upon this pubwhen will that glorious day arrive? Me-lication for a considerable time, and thinks I behold it, all grand and delight- felt a wish to make a few observaful! The heavens open; the clouds di- tions upon its extraordinary contents; vide; Jesus descends, surrounded by che- but a reluctance to force too frequentrubim and seraphim. The earth trembles, ly on the attention of our readers a sensible of the approach of its God. The mountains sink; the sea retires, the abyssioned a deluge of bitterness and controversy which has already occases appear dry. The trumpet sounds; the voice of Christ is heard, and his power is felt even to the centre of the earth. All nature, agitated, beholds itself teeming with new bodies, formed from the dispersed bones and scattered dust of all mankind. There re-appear our first parents, the first fathers of the world whose bodies returned to their original elements so many ages ago. There I behold again those martyrs who, devoured by beasts of prey, swallowed up by monsters of the ocean, burnt, consumed in the flames, seemed to have not a particle of matter remaining properly their own. Tyrants, persecutors, death, what have they gained? Christ retrieves and reassembles all the precious relics of his beloved. But in what state will their bodies be raised? How great must be their beauty and glory, fashioned like to that of their Master himself! The infirm, the decrepid, the infant have bodies, how different from those which they left! There I behold also that happy generation who shall pass to immortality without dying; those wrath, has induced us to procrastinate Our sentiments on the subject of baptism cannot fail to have been fully ascertained in the preceding volumes of our work; nor indeed in the present day is there the least policy or propriety in concealment: however, we never intended our publication to be the exclusive vehicle of any denomination, and it affords us considerable pleasure whenever we ascertain it is not thus considered by the public. To this day we have to acknowledge the obliging communications of gentlemen, whose views of many doctrines and duties are different from our own; and to unite their continued co-operation will be our unwearied endeavour. If any observations in the following paper should savour of severity, they are to be considered as the thoughts of an individual who usurps no authority over the faith of others-that in themselves they are of individual application—and that the writer only takes a privilege which the author on whose work he remarks has in the fullest degree assumed for himself. We must however correct the anticipations of our readers, if they expect any thing like a critical reply to the matter of Mr. Taylor's argumentation. To his mode of treating the word of God we have the most decided abhorrence; and express it as our firm opinion, that if any doctrine or duty cannot be ascertained without such a kind of literary process, it is not of a moment's consideration whether it be understood or not. Remarks, however, of this nature, will be more in place at the conclusion of our review. sented as carrying his conscientious The divine Legislator of the christian dispensation in prescribing laws for the regulation of his church, had to anticipate the diversified circumstances, in which, in the lapse of ages, that church would be placed. True religion, indeed, is the same in every age; but variations in constitution, in character, in prejudices, in habits, in clime, &c. are almost infi Before entering immediately on the subject, it will be necessary to set the public right with respect to the local circumstances which gave rise to these pamphlets, and which give such an air of interest and importance to the discussion. It is here represented that a deacon of a Baptist church for some time had his "conscience harassed by painful uncertainties" respecting the mode of administering the ordinance of baptism-that" in this galling situation, he had made application for instruction on the subject, to those ministers with whom he had been in communion, and to other of the most res-nite; and it therefore pleased the pectable of their brethren-farther still, he had repeatedly applied to a publication professedly the organ of the body, and had been as repeatedly repulsed. Baffled, therefore, where he had a right to expect assistance, and thus wounded in the house of his friends;" the young deacon is repre great Head of the church rather to condense the plan of his legislation into a few general and fundamental principles, than to retail his will in a multitude of minute particulars. Had one of our modern Sectarians been in the confidence of the Son of God at the time that he instituted the as laws of his kingdom, he would have suggested the necessity of this and the other regulation, till the New Testament would have been voluminous as the Statutes at large. He would have urged, too, the importance of a precise and methodical phraseology in the delivery of every precept; that the terms should be squared and measured with the most guarded suspicion; that every word should be avoided which could be capable of misconstruction; and in fact, that they must be delivered in all the technical formality and circumlocution of a legal instrument. But thus did not the Son of God.but then it requires a considerable The general and unmeasured language in which he chose to deliver his will, sufficiently proves that he left it to the piety and good sense of his followers to take his meaning in the most obvious form, and to fill up the outline he had given by the dictation of that Spirit which was the promised companion of the church to the latest ages of time. It formed no part of his plan to supersede the application of judgment and enquiry; but adapted his communication so as to afford the greatest inducements to their developement and exercise. tone of impious confidence, vulgarly called wit, that "there is no proof in the New Testament that any person in the act of baptism, was so much as in the water at all!!!" Now, if it is criticism that has made them thus wise, this said criticism must surely be one of those last plagues which were to be poured out upon the earth, and in which were filled up the measure of the wrath of God. It requires comparatively but a small share of wit to explain away, and evaporate the meaning of the plainest passages of scripture, by the aid of a distorted and overstrained criticism; From the foregoing remark, it is obvious that there is a point, in the application of criticism to the illustration of scripture, at which we must stop; and to go beyond that point is not to explain the word of God, but to confuse it; not piety but presumption. The gospel of the Son of God in the first age was emphatically preached to the poor; and every important part was delivered in a variety of obtuse, simple and obvious propositions, which would readily commend themselves to the most uncultivated capacities. The application of the laws of criticism to the word of God is of far less use in substituting a supposed and latent meaning instead of the plain and obvious one, than they are in discovering minute and concealed beauties, which either illustrate, or ornament, or establish the truths to which they refer. They are a kind of optical glasses, which reveal what is not discoverable to the naked eye; but which never change the nature of what they exhibit. To afford one instance in illustration of what we mean, in reference to the subject in hand; we have been lately told, in a portion of impiety to do it. In every age of the world, the impugners of revelation have drawn their main weapons from the word of God itself, setting it in the shape of self-contradiction; and the wildest phantoms that have ever been bred in the imaginations of enthusiasts, have been supported by a partial, or erro neous, or overstrained, criticism of the sacred text. We are fully convinced, that there is not a system or sentiment that has ever been broached from the day of the apostles to the present, but what the author of the work before us could find plausible arguments to support, if he were thus inclined. What an admirable auxiliary would he have made to the various crude and contradictory sectaries of different ages; and how well qualified would he be to write a "View of Religions," in which it could be proved to a demonstration, that though all were contradictory, yet all were true. Surely this is a desideratum in the most extensive library. It would be a curious speculation, if, by some mighty miracle greater than that which threw down the walls of Jericho, greater than that which raised Lazarus to life, greater than that which converted the persecutor Saul, this champion of pedobaptism should be brought to change his sentiments on this subject; to ascertain what would be the method he would take to controvert the learned arguments by which he had sustained a former opinion. Perhaps we might be accused of wantonness were we to hazard a conjecture on the subject; however, we will venture to say, that it would be neither a 4to. nor an 8vo. nor a 12mo. volume, but a penny tract, Just begging pardon for insulting the, Common sense of the world, and supplicating the divine pardon for laying such unhallowed hands on his sacred truth. [To be continued in our next.] A Narrative of John Donald, who was executed for Burglary, at Carlisle, September 14, 1816. Carlisle; Printed for F. & J. Jollie, 1816. pp. 32. octavo. THERE is, to us, something uncommonly interesting in this little pamphlet; and its interest makes us overlook the inaccuracies of style in which it is drawn up, and the still more defective manner in which it is printed. It furnishes one of the most striking instances of the power of the gospel to disarm the enmity of the human heart, to tame the ferocity of the tiger, to give good hope towards God in the most dreadful circumstances in which a human being can be found out of hell, and in short to produce genuine repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we ever remember to have seen. In some respects it even surpasses Mr. Inglis's celebrated pamphlet respecting the case of William Mills, to which we had lately occasion to advert. See our Magazine, Vol. II. p. 200. JOHN DONALD, was born in the village of Clough, near Down-patrick, in the county of Down, in Ireland. During the late war, he volunteered into His Majesty's Navy, and entered on board a tender at Belfast, which conveyed him to England. Arriving in the Downs, he was drafted on board the Triumph of 74 guns---and was serving under Lord Duncan in the action with the Dutch fleet--he was also under Admiral Parker and Lord Nelson at Copenhagen, in the Glatton of 54 guns---at Boulogne, under Lord Nelson, on board the York, of 50 guns---he went out with the Isis of 50 guns which conveyed the Duke of Kent to Gibraltar, then returned home and was paid off. We are not furnished with materials to enable us to detail the history of his life from that period to its awful termination; but we learn that he was engaged with two other persons of the name of Kinghorn and Pollet in breaking open a house near Carlisle, for which they were all appreYOL. III. hended, and Kinghorn having turned King's evidence, the other two forfeited their lives to the injured laws of their country. Donald, says the writer of this narrative, who appears to be Mr. John Cockburn, a baptist teacher in Carlisle, and whose instructions were eminently blessed to him---Donald was naturally possessed of an acute mind and quick apprehension; nor was it difficult to gather from his conversation, that he imagined he had so dexterously arranged matters connected with his trial, that it would not be possible to convict him. He had sworn his accomplices to secresy ---and though his reputed wife had been taken into custody at Whitehaven, and to save her own life had intimated her intention to impeach the offenders, Donald had the address to convey a letter to her, instructing her how to act, so as to save herself and him, and such was the ascendancy he had obtained over her, that he effectually diverted her from her purpose. "Another woman was brought from Whitehaven, to identify his person in Carlisle jail; and, as soon as he saw her, he gave her a significant look, which was fully understood; her resolution was unnerved at once; and she turned away without answering the expectations of those who had introduced her, saying, this cannot be the man I thought of." Such were the ingenuity and address of John Donald!!! Who, that thinks justly, tuted ingenuity; deliberately abandoning can refrain from lamenting over prostiitself to work wickedness with an indefatigable perseverance, that only renders itself more extensively mischievous. How pungent must Donald's feelings have been (for he was a man of strong passions) when he was apprised, that Kinghorn had turned King's evidence; contrary to his sanguine expectations. To secure more effectually their evasion of justice, as he confidently. flattered himself; Donald, with an audacity peculiar to an inventive and intrepid genius, had administered an unlawful oath to his own accomplices, only a few minutes before Kinghorn was brought out of his prison yard into the turnkey's lodge: which was on Friday, the day immediately preceding his trial. While Kinghorn was detained in the lodge by a conference with three gentlemen; where an offer of mercy was tendered for his acceptance, on condition that he would turn King's evidence, and candidly inform the Grand Jury of every circumstance connected with the burglary; Donald was observed to be agitated with extreme fear, auger, |