into what I hold touching the Trinity, by freely thinking and seriously considering what I occasionally met with, here and there, now and then." It appears from an expression, incidentally dropped by the author of the Reply, (p. 5,) that Mr. Firmin was beginning to grow weary of the "fruitless contention" about the Trinity; and this may have been a reason with him for requesting permission to lend the manuscript to his "learned and worthy friend," instead of advising its publication. Bishop Fowler published a third defence of his Twentyeight Propositions, which was answered in a tract, entitled, The Reflections on the "xxviii Propositions touching the Doctrine of the Trinity, in a Letter to the Clergy, &c.," maintain'd, against the Third Defence of the said Propositions, 1695. This answer occupies the third place in the Third Collection of (Unitarian) Tracts, and contains a complete exposure of the weak arguments and illogical deductions of the Bishop. Annexed to it, by way of Postscript, is a reply to Mr. Howe's short notice of the Letter to the Clergy; and the conclusion of this Postscript is well worthy of attention, on account of a very striking quotation from Athenagoras's Apology for the Christians, addressed to Marcus Antoninus, which, as the author of The Reflections maintain'd observes, is as conclusive against a plurality of divine natures or essences, for which the Realists contend, as against a plurality of Gods.

Dr. South, who had long been silent, published about this time his Tritheism charged upon Dr. Sherlock's new Notion of the Trinity, and the Charge made good. London, 1695, 4to. This work, like the Animadversions, was anonymous. It contained a reply to Dr. Sherlock's Defence, in answer to the Animadversions; but it has been observed that, in this second work, as well as in the former one, the good sense and great learning of Dr. South are constantly made the dupes of his boundless and inexhaustible wit. Dr. Sherlock was unhappy in his matrimonial connection; and to this untoward circumstance in his domestic history, Dr. South is said to have alluded in the following characteristic passage. "The soul of Socrates vitally joined with a female body, would certainly make a woman; and yet, according to this author's principle, (affirming that it is the soul only which makes the person,) Socrates, with such a change of body, would continue the same person, and consequently be the same Socrates still. And in like manner for Xantippe, the conjunction of her soul with another sex, would certainly make the whole compound a man, and nevertheless Xantippe would continue the same person, and the same Xantippe still; save only, I confess, that upon such exchange of bodies with her husband Socrates, she would have more right to wear the breeches than she had before."

Immediately after this second work of Dr. South had issued from the press, appeared a defence of Dr. Sherlock, bearing the following title. Reflexions on the good Temper and fair Dealing of the Animadverter upon Dr. Sherlock's "Vindication of the Holy Trinity;" with a Postscript concerning a late Book, entituled, "Tritheism charged upon Dr. Sherlock's new Notion of the Trinity" in a Letter to a Friend. London, 1695. These Reflexions were anonymous; but the author was a Trinitarian, and a zealous defender of the Dean of St. Paul's. In the opening paragraph of his pamphlet, he expresses his surprise

that Dr. South's Animadversions had been allowed to remain " without any full and particular rebuke" to the time of his writing; and alludes to an intimation, which he had received from the friend to whom he addressed his Reflexions, that the Doctor was "about to offer new occasion to increase" his " concern and wonder." While the Reflexions were passing through the printer's hands, this "new occasion for concern and wonder" made its appearance; and the author, in a Postscript, says, "I had the charity to believe there might be, after all, something of the gentleman remaining in him; and therefore was inclined to think that, at least, some part of this book, that of it which is so abominably gross, was writ by another hand. But they who pretend to know him, say 'tis no such matter; book and dedication, reasoning and railing, elegancy and oyster-wife rhetoric, 'tis all his

own."

The Church of England, at the time of which we are now writing, contained within its own bosom, as it is said to do still, Trinitarians of every possible shade of opinion, from the highest form of Tritheism to the lowest form of Sabellianism; and the author of the Reflexions, above noticed, was by no means singular in his advocacy of the extreme views of Dr. Sherlock. "If," says the author of An Account of Mr. Firmin's Religion, (p. 53,) "we will say the truth, Dr. Sherlock was no more overseen in this Explication of the Trinity, than the principal divines and preachers at London and in both Universities." Among the latter was the Rev. Joseph Bingham, M. A., Fellow of University College, Oxford, who afterwards attained to great eminence as a writer on "Ecclesiastical Antiquities." This clergyman, on the 28th of October, 1695, (the festival of St. Simon and St. Jude,) delivered a sermon before the University, in which he openly defended the notion of Dr. Sherlock; asserting," that there are three infinite, distinct minds and substances in the Trinity," and "that the three persons of the Trinity are three distinct infinite minds or spirits, and three individual substances." At this undisguised Tritheism, the friends of Dr. South took the alarm; and on the 25th of November, in the same year, the subjoined Decree was passed in Convocation, censuring this doctrine as false, impious and heretical; at variance with, and contrary to, the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and especially to the commonly-received doctrine of the English Church; and prohibiting all persons connected with the Universities from inculcating any such doctrine, by preaching or otherwise.

In Conventu D. Vice-Cancellarii et Præfectorum Collegiorum et Aularum Universitatis Oxon. Die Vicesimo quinto Novembris, A.D. 1695.

Cum in Concione nuper habitâ coram Universitate Oxon. in Templo S. Petri in Oriente, ad Festum SS. Simonis et Judæ proximè elapsum, hæc Verba, inter alia, publicè prolata et asserta fuerunt, viz. [There are Three Infinite distinct Minds and Substances in the Trinity]. Item [That the Three Persons in the Trinity are Three Distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits, and Three Individual Substances.] Quæ Verba multis justam offensionis Causam et Scandalum dedêre:

Dominus Vice-Cancellarius et Præfecti Collegiorum et Aularum, in generali suo Conventu jam congregati, Judicant, Declarant, et Decernunt prædicta Verba esse Falsa, Impia, et Hæretica; Dissona et Contraria Doctrinæ Ecclesiæ Catholicæ et speciatim Doctrinæ Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, publicè receptæ. Quapropter præcipiunt et firmiter injungunt Omnibus et Singulis, eorum

fidei et curæ commissis, ne tale aliquod Dogma, in Concionibus, aut aliàs, in posterum proferant.

Ex Decreto Domini Vice-Cancellarii et Præfectorum.

BEN. COOPER, Not. publicus

et Registrarius Universitatis Oxon. The effects of this Decree upon the clergy were perfectly electrical. The Doctor's former abettors began to desert him in great numbers, and he was left almost alone. They said that Universities seldom speak in an authoritative tone; but that, when they do, it is always to some purpose. The very same clergymen, dignitaries, and even bishops, who had before cried up the Dean's sentiments as orthodox, and boasted of his writings as unanswerable, now charged him with heresy, and were among the foremost to justify the issuing of the Oxford Decree. A new light seemed to have burst in upon their minds; and Dr. Sherlock, who had before received the homage of multitudes of admiring votaries, was suddenly deprived of his oracular dignity, and pronounced to be only one degree higher in the scale of Orthodoxy than Valentine Gentilis himself. Manchester.

R. W.

WOMEN AND PRIESTS.

JOHN KNOX put forth the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women. He ought to have written against the monstrous regiment of priests, which in kingdoms, as in private families, is always most powerful over women, because women are more docile, more confiding, have a much greater yearning after heaven, than men. Moreover, they are almost sole patentees of the virtue of selfdenial; and if once they can be convinced that humanity, pity, toleration, or what you will, is a self-indulgence and a self-seeking, it follows as necessarily as u after Q, that cruelty, hard-heartedness and intolerance are a mortification of the flesh, meritorious exactly in proportion as it is painful. . . . . . .

We believe that women, when they do err, err far more frequently from superstition than from passion, and that their worst errors proceed from too great a distrust of their common sense and instinctive feelings, and too great a reliance on men or serpents or priests, who promise to make them wise. Under the name priest, we comprehend all creatures, whether Catholic or Protestant, clerks or laymen, who either pretend to have discovered a by-way to heaven, or give tickets to free the legal toll-gates, or set up toll-gates of their own; or either explicitly or implicitly discredit the authorized map, and insist upon it that no one can go the right way without taking them for guides and paying them their fees.-HARTLEY COLERIDGE-Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire.*

It would seem almost as if the writer had wilfully left out of his catalogue the framers of the authorized maps and the chartered receivers of the toll.-The Transcriber.

EXTRACTS FROM MY JOURNAL.-SWITZERLAND.

No. III.-GRAND ST. BERNARD.

66

YES, I can remember, as if it were but yesterday, where I first broached the plan of making the ascent of the Grand St. Bernard. We were just emerging from the clouds and the snows of the Grimsel, and threading our way amidst a forest of lofty trees, which there hang over the rapid Rhone, as it boils and foams and rushes on in its headlong and impetuous course. A little disappointment seemed to have cast a shadow over one of our party that more had not been accomplished in the short space of time allotted to us, when, as my good genius would have it, I proposed the ascent of the Grand St. Bernard. The very thing! Smiles and good fellowship were again restored, and the third day after our decision found us assembled at five o'clock in the morning outside the Poste at Martigny. It was a dark and a murky morning was the 15th July, misty and drizzling as a Scotch November-calm, however, as an infant's breathing; whilst up, up aloft, above the pasturages, and the forests, and the bare gigantic rocks, and the everlasting snows, the clouds were chasing away one after another, telling of the strife of elements in that other world which, with all the impudence of the Titans, we were about to attack. Cœlum ipsum petimus stultitia." Signs such as these would have been sufficient to have deterred any but a party pressed for time, or obstinately bent on accomplishing what had grown in their minds into a great object. But there was no drawing back now; the chars à bancs were at the door; mules and drivers and dogs were all vying with one another as to who could discourse the sweetest music; whilst, forming a critical circle around us, were ostlers and hungry guides either gibing at the beasts or whispering their no less sarcastic remarks upon their masters for the time to be.-There is always an agreeable excitement about the commencement of an excursion, greater or less in proportion to the magnitude of the undertaking. All the little necessary preparations, and the changes in our usual habits consequent thereon, produce a species of revolution in our feelings; that ennui and sense of weariness under which we had been sinking into the slough of despair only the day before perhaps, are driven away, and we become as elastic and hopeful as childhood itself. What desires long cherished are about to be gratified-what wonders about to be revealed-what pleasures await us, according to our age or temperament or education, on the sunny slope, or down in the shady valley, or up again on the cloud-capped height to which imagination in its boldest flights has scarcely dared to ascend! Aye, there is a pleasure at the "setting out" which none but the wanderer knows; and if there is any thing in life to which I could compare it, it is to that deep and undefined sensation of enjoyment which courses through our veins when the purple bloom of youth is upon the cheek, and Hope-too often deceitful Hope-paints the prospect in glowing colours. Such were our feelings at setting out this morning; for, I must confess it, hope and wonder had made a strange confusion in our heads. We were about to visit the Grand St. Bernard -Grand!-the very name was imposing. Call it Petit St. Bernard, and it sinks down at least 4000 feet. Then there was a moral interest

attached to it which can only be felt. The hoary Mount seemed to be covered all over with superstitious legends, and with great historic facts with which the world has rung, and with thrilling tales of courage and suffering and love, known only to Him who reared the everlasting hills, but the very thought of which swells our heart with generous sympathy and compassion, and fills our eyes with tears. The mother sinking in the drifting snow and clasping her infant to her bosom-the charitable Christian monk bearing through the howling wilderness succours to the despairing traveller-the hero, strong in the might of human daring, planting his banners on those dreary heights-and the saint communing amidst those sublime and awful solitudes with his God,-were so many pictures in our minds which no human pencil could have traced, and which imagination had painted in colours both deep and vivid. No wonder, then, is it if, with thoughts so complex and so serious, our hearts were not so lightsome as when we glided over the surface of Lake Leman, but labouring rather under a sense of oppression-the result, not of painful indeed, but intense feeling.

The early part of the route runs through the vast basin in which Martigny is situated; but as soon as the path which leads over the Col de Forclaz to Chamouni is passed, the ascent begins, so insensibly, however, as scarcely to be perceptible, and we were congratulating ourselves on the prospect of an easy day's journey. Here we came on the first traces of Alpine scenery. A mountain thickly covered over with wood springs from the very edge of the path-way, rising up and terminating the eye cannot tell where; whilst below us, on the left, boils the Drance, which, leaping from height to height, or eddying round many an isolated rock, seems as if determined to bear it on to the valley beneath. Farther up the gorge, the traveller meets with a slight aerial bridge, which, thrown as if by magic hands from rock to rock, affords a safe, though trembling, passage over the raging torrent far down beneath our feet. And then the scene is changed: instead of the bold and savage scenery which hitherto had almost appalled us, we now entered all at once on some of the greenest pastures and some of the sweetest nooks one could possibly desire. Indeed, these changes from stern to soft, from dark to sunny, are characteristic of a Swiss defile. One labours up a broken path, tumbling over the knotted roots of trees which intersect it, shivering with the cold which seems to issue bodily from the impenetrably gloomy forest of pines on the right or left, when an unexpected turn in the defile brings us all at once beneath the full power of the sun, and places us on some verdant spot of earth enamelled with flowers of so delicate a texture, as to be in strange contrast with the wild scenes amidst which they bloom. Often as I have ascended one of these Alpine gorges in a fanciful and moralizing mood, has it seemed to figure forth the life of man. Sometimes he pursues his path through much gloom and disappointment, and then, when he least expects it, it emerges on some of those pleasant oases which Divine Love distributes even in the most threatening wilderness. Instead of cloud, the warmth and light of the blessed sun cheer and revive him; instead of thorns which obstruct his path, sweetest flowers salute him; and, thus encouraged, he continues his chequered route, believing that He whose presence is indicated by the sunbeam and the flower, is not far from him even amidst the raging of