whole and sole gospel of Christ, surely they who maintain it do with perfect consistency affirm that the doctrine of the Trinity is the fundamental, primal truth of Christianity. If a doctrinal standard of Christianity is to be set up, that doctrine is for its comprehensive significance well entitled to the distinction conferred on it. Now the Unitarian declares that this same Calvinistical scheme, when engrafted on the gospel, "takes off the rose from the fair forehead of" Christianity, "and sets a blister there." He who recognizes, as the true Christianity, the system promulgated by Dr. Priestley or Dr. Channing, would not hesitate to say, The God I worship is not the God of John Calvin. His gospel is in my eyes no gospel. It announces no glad tidings, but is the most frightful denunciation of misery to the human race that was ever proclaimed by lunatic or fanatic. Hence it follows that, in the college or lecture-room in which dogmatic theology is taught, the Professor must of necessity deny the Christian character to the teacher of the opposite system, as in the middle ages Pope and Anti-pope reciprocally excommunicated each other.

But does it therefore become the popular preacher so to denounce the rival teachers before the people? Certainly not. The denunciations of Mr. East and other popular declaimers against Unitarians as being no Christians, are scandalous, because the ignorant populace before whom these declamations are uttered at once jump to the conclusion that the anathematized are men who believe neither in a future state, nor a rewarding and punishing God, nor in a moral obligation, and that therefore they should be shunned as if infected by a spiritual plague. Happily, that high Calvinistic scheme which we have here exhibited without exaggeration, is so little understood by the numerous well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who, now that religion is fashionable, crowd into churches and chapels, that a great majority of them would feel only horror at a naked exhibition of it. Happily, too, in its intensest malignity, Calvinism is found only among a portion even of the Evangelical clergy. It was fiercely denounced as blasphemy by John Wesley, and is the object of just abhorrence still by Romanists, the High-church and Arminian Episcopalians, and the great body of Methodists. It is but fair to add, that this tone of vituperation against Unitarians is seldom heard among the clergy of the Establishment, who generally abstain from such language, as well because it is ungentlemanly, as on account of its uncharitable and malevolent spirit. But though this particular creed, the Calvinistic, or any other, may be justly rejected for its falsehood, it does not therefore follow that there should not be a doctrinal test-for some test, some mark or token, must be fixed upon to designate the Christian or any other character. And yet it may be suggested, as opposed to a doctrinal test, that one of character may be set up, and that whoever earnestly strove to exhibit in his life all that Christ taught as the end of his instruction, might fairly claim the Christian name, notwithstanding his avowed denial of the claims set up for Christ as, in a peculiar sense, the only Son of God and the especial Messenger of his will. This, in fact, is what is claimed on behalf of Mr. Theodore Parker and the other deniers of the Christian miracles. It is contended that perfect acquiescence in Christ's morals, and a recognition of the transcendent excellences of his character,-moral excellences, we mean, as distinguished from superna

tural powers and the assumption of a superhuman authority,—are all that is required to give a just title to the Christian name. Now, in the first place, this is a novel claim. Incomparably the most famous emanation from this school is Rousseau's "Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard," and its transcendent beauties as a composition have been willingly acknowledged by those defenders of Revelation who have availed themselves of his concessions in favour of the internal evidence of Christianity. Rousseau never claimed the Christian name for himself, though he exhibits his Vicaire as, notwithstanding his little faith, willing to perform the functions of a Catholic priest. We decline arguing the validity of this claim at length, thinking it sufficient for our present purpose, after deprecating the language of obloquy or reproach towards those who solicit the Christian name on any ground, however insufficient, to direct the attention of those claimants to what seems to us a conclusive distinction, viz., the essential difference between a religion and a philosophy. As to the one, the material question being one of fact, and the right to decide on its merits being usually disclaimed; as to the other, the merits constitute the main inquiry, the fact being seldom a subject of controversy; we submit to the one on the mere ground of authority; we assent to the other (every article being the subject of a fresh investigation) because we acknowledge its truth. We do not stay to inquire whether this is right or wrong, but this is what in all ages has been done. Whoever pleases, may compare the moral teachings of Jesus with those of Moses, Mahomet, or any of the Greek philosophers, studiously passing over any assertion of his own personal character or claim to obedience, contemplating him only in the lower character of a moral teacher; and, if he please, he may declare himself a Christian, as he might a Platonist or an Epicurean. But in order to do this (that there may be no mistake on the subject), he must ascend the Professor's chair; he cannot with propriety for this purpose mount the pulpit which is raised in a building set apart for Christian worship. We have not heard that our American friends have withheld from Mr. Parker the ordinary offices of respect and friendship; but we cannot wonder that they should reject his services as an advocate, and refuse to hail him as a Christian brother. To do this, it seems to us, would be as imprudent as to entrust the defence of our property to an advocate who, while he confidently affirmed his opinion to be that we had a good title to it, yet did not scruple loudly to declare that he held the title on which we had hitherto rested, and which the world had hitherto acknowledged, to be altogether bad and indefensible.

H. C. R.

JEAN PAUL.-IV. LIFE.

Am I then ripe for that fruit-warehouse, the churchyard? Is then every man ripe? Is not man as imperfect in his ninetieth as in his twentieth year? Man is the summer fruit which the wind blows off before its time. The other world is no trimmed alley or orangery, but the nursery of shrubs which have been here raised from the seed.

JEREMIAH WHITE, DOMESTIC CHAPLAIN TO OLIVER CROMWELL.

As the character of Oliver Cromwell is, at the present time, occupying much of the public attention, in consequence of the iniquitous attempt which has been made to exclude him from a place in our national senate-house, it will not be thought inappropriate to direct the attention of the readers of the Christian Reformer to some particulars of the life of a man intimately connected with him, and who, in common with his great master, has incurred no small weight of odium. Jeremiah White, a domestic chaplain of the Protector, has been almost solely known to modern times under such designations as "Cromwell's chief jester," or "Cromwell's buffoon ;" and the character of each has been made to bear unfavourably on that of the other. If, therefore, it can be proved that injustice has been done to the memory of Mr. White, it will proportionably affect our estimate of Oliver Cromwell.

ter.

Of the personal history of Jeremiah White, I have been able to trace but few incidents; but all of these, it will be seen, are much to his credit, and singularly at variance with the common idea of his characHe was born in the year 1629, at the very commencement of that struggle which only ended with the execution of the reigning prince. He pursued his early studies in the University of Cambridge, and, besides obtaining the degree of M.A., rose to the rank of a Fellow of Trinity College. While engaged in his University studies, we learn that he was much disquieted by doubts as to the compatibility of the doctrine of the eternal torments of the wicked with the character of a good and benevolent Deity. At length his mind became persuaded of the truth of the doctrine of the universal restoration, which he accordingly embraced, and advocated both in the pulpit and by means of works prepared for the press. The history of this conversion is thus quaintly given by the editor of one of his works:

"The occasion of our author's writing upon the subject is so very singular, that I believe some account thereof will be both acceptable and useful to such as shall incline to look into it. When he was at the University, and had studied all the schemes of divinity, he could not find from any, or from all of them together, that God is good, that God is love, as the Scriptures declare of him. This put him into a great dissatisfaction and perplexity of mind, from which he could no way extricate himself, but it grew upon him more and more, till it threw him into a fit of sickness, and that so dangerous, that there was no hopes of his recovery; but in it, at the worst, he had a beam of divine grace darted upon his intellect, with a sudden, warm and lively impression, which gave him immediately a new set of thoughts concerning God and his works, and the way of his dealing with his offending creatures, which as they became the rule and standard of all his thoughts and measures of things afterwards, as I have heard him declare, so they gave in particular the ground and occasion of this present design. And upon this he presently recovered."

The treatise, from the original Preface to which I have derived the above, is entitled, "The Restoration of All Things; or, a Vindication of the Goodness and Grace of God, to be manifested at last, in the Recovery of his whole Creation out of their Fall." It was not published till after the death of the author, the first edition appearing in 1712. It reached a third edition, which came out in the year 1779,

under the editorship of the publisher, John Denis. The copy of the edition of 1712, which is preserved in the Library of the British Museum, contains a MS. entry, dated "London, Sept. 9th, 1737," with the signature" A. C." Of this work it says, "This book has many valueable truths in it, but unluckily he builds the doctrine of the Restoration of all things upon that of Predestination, which is inconsistent, and therefore he is to be read with judgment, that the wheat may be separated from the chaff or tares." The original editor remarks upon this last circumstance in the following terms:

"He goes indeed upon the Predestinarian hypothesis, as will appear in several passages of his work; but by his additional scheme makes it quite another thing, and entirely evacuates it as to the severer part. But if any inur'd to other schemes of divinity are yet unsatisfied in this, they may take his general hypothesis of the Restoration, and graft it upon their own, and it will suit as well, and serve to rectify and improve it, as it has done this."

Whatever may be thought of the doctrine which he advocates, it cannot be denied that many parts of this treatise display great powers of argument. The style is eloquent and figurative even to a fault; and the whole breathes a spirit of love and benevolence to all men, which cannot but prepossess us strongly in the author's favour. One or two extracts will sufficiently bear out these remarks; and as I am desirous of avoiding in this notice all theological discussions, I will confine myself to his general observations on the nature of punishment.

"If we consider well the several grounds of vindictive and punitive justice, it is either for the good and correction of the person that is punished, or for the example and preservation of others, or to repair the honour and to secure the right of the party offended, or for the safety of the community in which and against which the crime is committed; or it is to restore and to maintain the authority of the law, which is the good, the safety, the welfare of all those that live under it, and which is vilified and weakened by every willful breach of it to the danger of the whole. Now, it the end of the law being the good, the safety, the welfare of all those that live under it, it is plain it must be the end of the punishment also. Now, it is plain that in all these cases, love and goodness is the principle that bestows upon justice whatever it hath of perfection, and that the end of the punishment must be the end of the law, which is the good of the whole, or else it is to shew that due hatred of and displeasure against sin, which is in God, and which also ought to be in us; but this is by no means to be accompanied with any ill-will to the sinner, but to discountenance and destroy the sin; and so love and goodness is still the root and fruit of it, the bottom and top of it. A right and true hatred of evil every where springs from a love of the person; wrath and hatred against sin is no bitter zeal against the sinner, but a due indignation of love and goodness against the sin. The destruction of sin and propagation of the Divine image, is still the principal intention where the indignation is right. The subject suffers only as it is in conjunction with that which is ruinous to itself and one another; and which God and all good men must hate or cease to be themselves."-"Sure I am, therefore, that every thing, even justice itself, must end where it begins. Justice riseth up from Love, is govern'd by it, and resolves it into itself."-"The true notion of Justice, the proper scope and design of it, is not punishment, but our preservation from those evils which are hurtful to ourselves and others; the vengeance, that is to be taken on wicked men is not the design of justice, but the necessary consequences of it; this is the meaning of all Divine laws, of all good laws whatsoever, a security of right and equity; this is the meaning of all the punishment annexed to the breach of those laws, to prevent transgression; so that it is the mainte

nance of that justice and right which is the common good: for justice is a thing, not of a private and personal, but a publick and common nature. All is to be prefer'd before any part whatsoever. God and no good man punishes any out of a delight in punishment, or in the sufferings of the punished; but all right punishment is either as physic for the recovery of the patient, or for the good of the whole; as a man consents to have a member of his own body cut off to preserve the rest, ne pars sincera trahatur, so that the source and fountain of all punishment is love and goodness. It is plain from all this, that the attribute of Justice does not at all clash with that of Goodness, it being indeed but a branch or particular modification of it: that Justice is an eternal branch of that perfect Love and Goodness which is the measure of all things; which is the source, the life, the soul of all morality, virtue and excellency whatsoever: that Love and Goodness bestows upon Justice whatsoever it hath of a moral perfection and excellency."

It appears that this work was originally more voluminous, but towards the end of his life the author was busied in contracting and preparing it for the public eye, and brought his labours to a conclusion a short time before his death. The first edition was published anonymously, the editor observing of the author, " His character is great, and has been more than once given to the world in print; though, on account of the offence many will be apt to take at the subject, it has been thought fit here to conceal his name."

With the sentiments which have just been expressed, it is not surprising that Mr. White should have attached himself to the only party which advocated religious as well as civil liberty,—that of the Independents. When the government of the realm devolved on these his friends, he was appointed Preacher to the Council of State, and received the further preferment of Household Chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. Both these appointments are highly creditable to the liberal spirit of the Commonwealth-men, as it appears that Mr. White never concealed his obnoxious opinions; and, on the other hand, his being chosen notwithstanding this avowal, is a signal proof of the high esteem in which he was held. During this period of outward prosperity, his conduct was praiseworthy in the extreme. "He was," says the MS. entry above alluded to, "a very good-natured man, very compassionate to all in distress, of whatever communion. He did severall good offices to severall of the suffering clergy in the time of the Great Rebellion, and to others also."

The Restoration of Charles II. deprived Jeremiah White of the patronage in the highest quarters which he had hitherto enjoyed. He retired into private life, "preaching occasionally, but not again undertaking any pastoral charge" [Calamy]: but his conduct had been such as to raise up for him many friends in this reverse of fortune, particularly among the Royalist nobility, to whom his wit and great powers of conversation recommended him. But it would seem that he ventured also upon graver subjects, and these hardly so congenial to his noble patrons, but which appear to have been taken in good part. We are told that, being once in company with the celebrated Earl of Rochester, "in the midst of all his extravagances, both of opinion and practice, and discoursing with him about religion and the being of a God, he took the opportunity to display the goodness of God in its full latitude," according to the scheme laid down in the work of which I have spoken; upon which the Earl returned him answer, That he

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