ism, our country has been great and glorous still-yes, through vicissitude, great; in adversity and disappointment, in privation and suffering, in all changes and chances, in arms and arts, in literature and benevolence. The monuments of her majesty reflect the glittering of every star of heaven; and not a wind can blow that has not wafted from her shores some freight of charity. And she would be great, were this assuming sect lost in oblivion, with all its robes, and forms, and wealth, and creeds: still to her would the nations look, as to an elder sister of the earth, pre-eminent in wisdom, grace and majesty. "Yes; England, independently of adventitious circumstances, or predominant sects, must be admired and loved by all who can rightly think and feel; nor would the hand that might not object to pull down the clustering ivy from the oak, whose strength it wasted, and impaired its beauty, touch profanely one leaf of the hallowed tree. O my country! land of my birth, my love, and my pride; land of freedom and of glory; land of bards and heroes, of statesmen, philosophers and patriots; land of Alfred and of Sydney, of Hampden and Russel, of Newton, Locke and Milton; may thy security, liberty, generosity, peace and pre-eminence, be May thy children prize their birthright, and well guard and extend their privileges! From the annals of thy renown, the deeds of thy worthies, the precious volumes of thy sages, may they imbibe the love of freedom, of virtue, of their country! May the pure gospel be their portion! Through every future age, may they arise, as of yore, the protectors of the oppressed, the terror of tyrants, the guardians of the rights and peace of nations, the champions of civil and religious liberty; and may they be the possessors and diffusers of genuine Christianity to all countries, through all generations! Amen!"-Pp. 49-51. ⚫ eternal! The subjects of Lect. III. are "Religious Liberty and Nonconformity;" "an appropriate transition from the mischiefs and miseries of the Antichristian apostacy, to the gospel in its native simplicity, power and blessedness."-P. 52. A just distinction is made of the liberty of Christian Churches into external and internal, that which they claim of the civil power, and that which they allow to their own members. The latter, it is truly said, (P. 53,) even by sincere and eloquent advocates of the former, has been too often misunderstood, overlooked or violated. The history of religious tyranny is traced, pp. 59-62, with the hand of a master. In the following passage, the abstract argument for dissent is admirably stated: "We dissent because human legislators exceed their province when they pretend to fix the religion of the country. Society cannot exist without government. It is for the good of the whole that we should have laws, and that their administration and execution should not be left to indivi dual zeal, but be the peculiar duty of persons appointed to that office. This requires the surrender of much natural right, of how much, human wisdom must decide: it may fairly include even life itself, which, when the good of the community requires, should be offered a willing and a patriotic sacrifice: but the rights of conscience are, from their very nature, inalienable. Man never did give them; he never can give them. The right of believing where he sees evidence of truth, and of worshipping where he finds characteristics of divinity, as it cannot injure society, cannot belong to society. It is inherent in man, as a rational creature, and he cannot divest himself of it, till he can re-create himself, and become another being, and his own God. What, then, does a legislator mean, when he says, You shall believe this doc trine; you shall worship that God; you are born to this religion; we decree that you shall be a Deist or a Christian, a Mahometan or a Pagan, a Catholic or a Protestant, and will punish your disobedience. And who gave you this right? God? Produce the commission, and work the confirming miracle. Man? When and where? None could do it for themselves, much less for others. But you have the power-true; so had Herod, (who was devoured of worms,) when he slew James; so had Nero, (who was assassinated,) when he martyred Paul; so had Pilate, (who died in miserable exile,) when who died in splendour, but who wait in he sentenced Christ; and so had others their graves the righteous judgment of God. To issue the decree? You have the power-to do what? And so you have to decree that robbery is religion, and persecution for the glory of God: so you have to decree that the sun shall shine by night, and the moon by day, and they will as soon obey your bidding as the mind and heart of man. But you can inflict the penalties: yes, and make martyrs of the thing more. firm, and hypocrites of the fearful-noeither the right or power to make any No human authority has system the religion of any individual. We reverence human laws and governors up to this point; but with our consciences, our worship, and our God, they have no business. We cannot belong to the Church of England, because, however mildly exercised, she recognizes this claim of man to tell with authority his fellow-man what he shall believe, and whom and how he shall adore. Her Articles and Liturgy have been rightly described, by one of her own prelates, as a long act of parliament;' a decree of the senate deciding what we are to think of God, how we are to feel and speak in his presence, and by what to obtain his blessing! Did they appear to us absolutely true, and supremely excellent, we have never delegated, nor can we ever acknowledge, the authority of others to decide for us that they were so, and compel us to their belief and use." Pp. 64-66. This is the unanswerable argument for Nonconformity with regard to political or national Churches. Of some of the more palpable reasons for dissent, the author says, perhaps with too much smartness, "I have not patience to rake together the pettifogging absurdities, contradictions and superstitions about crosses, and rings, and kneeling, and bowing, and altars, and Easter, and such like things, which in rich abundance disfigure the practices of the Church, and to one edu cated a Dissenter make it a matter of some toil and study to drill himself, so as to execute, correctly, the manœuvres and evolutions of divine worship. If men Mr. Fox thus answers one of the popular arguments for a national establishment of religion: "But religious instruction for the bulk of the people should be provided. Let it by all means. Who instruct them now? Whose schools exclude half the population of the country-those of the Sectaries or of the Establishment? Who raise the character of the poor by discourses which they can understand and feel? What sort of instructors will they generally be, who owe their office, not to the people, but to patronage? What is the fact? Where dissent is tolerated, is not more knowledge diffused by voluntary exertion than by established institutions? We may read, in broad characters, the importance of liberty to religions light, in those countries where the genuine spirit and tendency of slavery is unmitigated by the corrective of even tolerated dissent. How deplorable is their condition! There the populace are: uniformly sunk in the most abject ignorance and superstition. There priests and people, blind leaders of the blind, sink together into the very barbarism of ignorance. There is the grave of intellect and of knowledge, of morals and of freedom." Pp. 79, 80. The Lecture concludes (pp. 8587) with a truly Christian plea for charity, towards such as may hold an intolerant system. Lect. IV. is "On Unitarianism." In the introduction, the "immense importance" of the doctrine of the Divine Unity is illustrated by an assemblage of metaphors, which reminds us of the style of an age long gone by. "It is the soul of Judaism, the foundation of Christianity, the noblest discovery of reason, the glory of revelation, the centre of religious truth, the antidote of infi delity, the death blow of idolatry, the spring of Reformation, the guiding star of free inquiry, the companion of liberty, the parent of piety, the source of light in the mind and goodness in the heart, and the inheritor of supreme dominion over faith, to which it is directed by prophecy, and will be conducted by Providence, in all nations."-P. 88. Mr. Fox very judiciously separates the private opinions of Unitarians from Unitarianism. "The discussion of Unitarianism has been much embarrassed, and its cause injured, by its being mixed up with the private opinions of its friends. There is gross mistake, or wilful injustice, in reckoning whatever is held by certain Unitarians essential to Unitarianism itself. The humanity of Christ is not essential to Unitarianism. Although differing from most respectable authority, I have no hesitation in deeming such limitation most improper. It is inconsistent with the etymology and meaning of the term, and its historical use. Dr. Price was an Unitarian as well as Dr. Priestley; so is every worshipper of the Father only, whether he believe that Christ was created before all worlds, or first existed when born of Mary. Philosophical Necessity is no part of Unitarianism: to some Unitarians it seems the plain dictate of reason and Scripture, illustrative of the character of God and plans of Providence, a glory around the cross of faith, and a rock for the anchor of hope; but others think it inconsistent with the threatenings and promises of God, and the responsibility of man; and a similar diversity obtains among the speculative of other denominations. Materialism is no part of Unitarianism. Some of us believe that man is formed of one substance, others of two some that unconsciousness prevails from death to the resurrection; and others that the transition is immediate to bliss and glory, or to punishment, of the separated spirit. The denial of angels or devils is no part of Unitarianism: some believe in one, or the other, or in both.”— Pp. 91, 92. He then describes the doctrines in which Unitarians agree, amongst which is incorrectly placed that of "the ultimate restoration of all things," it being well known that many Unitarians believe in the final destruction of the impenitent. There is great weight of argument in that part of the Lecture which considers Judaism as Unitarianism, and represents this principle of Judaism as adopted by Christianity; as also in that which treats of " certain general characteristics of Christianity given in Scripture, to which Unitarianism and Trinitarianism may be brought as tests." With equal ingenuity and judgment, the author points out" indications of danger and apostacy, noticed by the apostles in the primitive Church." He exposes himself, perhaps, to misrepresentation in his description of "different classes of Unitarians who are out of the pale of Christianity;" though the agree ment of so many wise and good men in the doctrine of the Unity of God, surely proves, as he says, (p. 119,) either that it is "the plain dictate of right reason, preached by the heavens and the earth, where man will hear their voice; or that it is a fragment of some original revelation, passed down by tradition to all ages and countries, and selected by the wise and good from the mass of accompanying absurdity." In Lecture V. Mr. Fox descants "On Creeds, Controversy, and the Influence of Religious Systems on Society," topies of large and undefined extent. They are treated in nearly the reverse order in which they are given in this title. The remarks on the influence of religion and the effects of the different systems of it are peculiarly striking. As an instance of the boasted perfection of Creeds, it is observed, (p. 443,) that "in a collection of sixteen creeds of Protestant Churches, published at Geneva, 1612, there are only six (of which that of the Church of England is not one) that speak of the providence of God, and eleven take no notice of the resurrection of the dead." Amongst other proofs of the utility of controversy, Mr. Fox appeals to the retreat of the assumed orthodox from their own proper system. Calvinistic Dissenters to frame their creeds, "Had the Church of England and the without precedent to guide them, the Thirty-nine Articles would not originate with the one, nor the Assembly's Confession with the other. The standard of orthodoxy is lower than it was; and it continues to sink but if the party be right now, they have been wrong; if now they are strictly scriptural, they have been unscriptural, and they have to thank their opponents for driving or shaming them back into the right road. While individuals (in no small number) have completely renounced the system, the whole mass has slowly receded; the tide yet ebbs and flows at intervals; but the old mark is not reached at its height, and at its inflix the old bank is left unwashed by the billows; for generations yet the fluctuations may continue, but all will finally settle at the point of truth.”—Pp. 150, 151. Mr. Fox discusses in Lect. VI. the interesting but difficult question of "War." His object is to shew that "War is a great, but not insuperable, obstacle to that general improvement in the state of man which Christianity tends and was designed to realize." And he represents war as opposed to the well-being and progress of society by the misery it inflicts, the criminality it implies and the mischiefs it produces." 86 There is truth as well as imagination in the following description: "It is the tendency of war to produce war, and thus to extend and multiply better than links to connect one war with miseries. Treaties of peace seem little another. They leave something ambiguous for future dissension, some germ of discord, which grows into a poison tree. Indeed, the professed object of hostility is seldom determined in favour of either party, by the peace. In the series of wars which have for ages desolated Europe, we may generally see one growing out of another. The various connexions and interests of nations serve to spread bosparticularly exemplified in the late contility when once commenced. This was test, into which nation after nation was drawn or forced. The torrent of blood swelled, as it rolled on; still fresh sluices opened, till it spread and widened, and seemed without fathom or bound. Like the Glacier, from the mountain's top, it rushed on, accumulating as it fell, and finding in one work of ruin materials to render the next more wide and dreadful. It stretched from the old world to the new, wrapping both continents in its flames, and covering the earth as with a fiery deluge of desolation."-Pp. 170, 171. The Lecturer admits the right of resistance to aggression or tyranny, but this, he contends, is not war. "Defensive war is a solicism.-A license to attack is essential to war." Pp. 208, 209. To encourage the hope of the ultimate abolition of war, the author says, "Two facts are cheering. 1. Peace now scarcely differs more from war, than modern warfare does from an cient.-2. The tendencies of society have been, and are, to limit war, and consequently to abolish it ultimately." Pp. 181 and 185. The more common pretexts of war are examined, (pp. 184-187,) and as they come under review, they make us blush for human nature. In conclusion, Christianity is represented as incompatible with war, and its universal diffusion and influence, guaranteed by prophecy, is argued upon as tantamount to the abolition of the nefarious practice. on this subject, the author dismisses Dr. Geddes." Let him consult Dr. This Lecture has of necessity a political complexion; but though the author exercises in it his wonted mental courage, he has not laid himself open to any other animadversion than that of the critic. We write this after Lord Castlereagh's new Bills have been proposed to Parliament. Mr. Fox praises au historical character, not often the subject of eu "What a fine contrast to Yorkists, the rest who wade through slaughter to a throne,' was Richard Cromwell! He was advised to take off a seditious leader, and secure his father's elevation for himself. No,' said he, I will not purchase authority at the price of one man's blood.'"-P. 185. 6 An Appendix to this Lecture is devoted to the examination of Paley's Chapter on War in his Moral Philology: sophy, and here the author displays great acuteness. He is somewhat Lancasterians, Stuarts, Bourbons, and all heretical on the subject of the "Jewish wars." "Their example," he says, (p. 199,) "justifies massacre, or it does not justify war." He adds, "The power that should attempt to repeat the frightful scenes of the conquest of Canaan, would soon be blotted out of the map of the world, by an universal combination of civilized states." True, but it may be asserted with equal justice, that the nation that should now practise the atrocities of which the Canaanites were guilty, would be justly treated as the enemy of all mankind. Their human sacrifices, not to mention other crimes, were more abominable than the slavetrade, against which there is now a confederacy of all Christian states. On this ground we rest, and we think safely, the defence of their destruction. In the final sentence of his paragraph The VIIth and last Lecture is "On Human Perfectibility." All that the author means by this is "a state of very high improvement, of knowledge, liberty, peace, virtue and felicity, to which man will be, in the latter days, couducted by Christianity." And the expectation of this is undoubtedly justified by reason and Scripture. Mr. Fox separates from his theory the notion of " organic perfectibility, the triumph of mind over matter," which was entertained by the system-builders, who, a few years ago, maintained "Human Perfectibility;" but we question whether he allows sufficient weight to the influence of disease and death in keeping down man, as an individual, to the level on which he has hitherto stood. Still, who would check those hopes of a better age, which tend to realize themselves, and to advance, at the same time, the virtue and the happiness of mankind? Cold must his heart be who cannot, in some of the better moments of existence, give himself up to the influence of the Lecturer's glowing anticipations of "millenial glories." As a whole, we think this Lecture inferior to the preceding; but its defects are more than compensated in the Notes, in which the author briefly discusses the theory of Malthus with a degree of ability that leads us to wish that he would take up that subject in a separate publication, and give a popular refutation of the new hypothesis; in so far, at least, as it may be thought to present an obstacle to the best Christian hopes, and to countenance war and the degradation and oppression of the mass of the human race. This volume has, we learn, and as we should have expected, excited public attention, in an extraordinary degree, to the Course of Lectures which Mr. Fox is now delivering; and every friend to Christian truth must rejoice in knowing that multitudes are receiving assistance in their religious inquiries from 80 able and enlightened a champion of "the faith ouce delivered to the saints." ii. 18, 24, iii. 12,* iv. 2, 15, v. 9. In a single case we have found him substituting conjecture for a reading supported by unimpeachable authority.+ Yet he modestly speaks of himself as having adopted the alleged emendation. We may refer to Wetstein, (in loc.,) whose inner margin presents this note, "KATEXWY) TO Katexov. P. Junius, R. Valesius." It should be added that the Syr. Transl. has the neuter participle. Of the claims of Philalethes to the merit of faithfulness and perspicuity, our readers will in some measure judge from the extracts laid before them: these have purposely been numerous; and if there be any individual who, on such a subject, condemns the desire of attaining the nicest accuracy, let him know that his censure is egregiously misplaced. To possess as exact a version as possible of the records of the revealed will of Almighty God, must be an object of vast importance: the translator of these writings then should be as scrupulously attentive to every part of his undertaking as though he were weighing grains of precious metals for the young and inexperienced. Although the doctrines of the gospel do not depend on the refinements of verbal criticism, yet the evidences, the character, and, in many cases, the sense, of the books of Scripture, cannot without this criticism be justly ascertained. Let no mao conceive that his mind is comprehensive and profound only because it is incorrect. He who suffers himself to be ignorant of minute circumstances and particular facts, will never be master ART. II. A new Version of some of of general principles: his pretensions the Epistles of St. Paul, &c. (Concluded from p. 699.) IT T remains that we speak more particularly concerning the merits of this volume. Philalethes is much to be commended for making an accurate text the basis of his version. We have already perceived that, with a few trifling variations, he follows the readings of the best critical edition of the Christian Scriptures. The principal instances of his departure from it, besides those we have previously enumerated, are Coloss. ii. 13, iii. 12, 15, iv. 13; 1 Thess. ii. 15, iii. 2, iv. 13; 2 Thess. i. 10, ii. 2; 1 Tim. i. 4, vi. 4; 2 Tim. ii. 19, iv. 1; James are refuted both by the reason of the thing and the history of literature and science. Superficial and conceited, he in vain aspires to the character of a philosopher and scholar. There is an admirable remark of Dr. S. Clarke's,‡ which cannot be too deeply inscribed on every student's memory: "Levia quidem hæc, et parvi fortè, si per se spectentur, momenti. Sed ex elementis constant, ex principiis oriuntur, omnia: Et ex judicii consue The beginning of this verse is not translated interrogatively by Philalethes. + 2 Thess. ii. 7. Præfat. ad Homer. Iliad. |