will fully respond, because such The other consideration is, that these volumes contain the dis courses of an invalid. It was remarked in the brief memoir of this excellent person, which appeared in our pages for the month of May last, that his health had from early life been broken up by excessive application to study, and that such efforts as he was able to make were the effects of a great flow of animal spirits, and of the remains of a constitution, naturally robusti struggling against infirmities whielt would have utterly incapacitated most other men. We have there fore before us not only posthumous discourses, but discourses written under great disadvantages in the intervals of convalescence, under the pressure of the debility and exhaustion produced by disease, on the spur of some instant call of duty, and at the risk of much subsequent suffering. These considerations rest on facts so well known to all who knew Dr. Milner, and are so obviously applicable to the case before us, that we might scarcely have thought it necessary to mention them, if it had not been for a further circum→ stance on which it gives us pain to be compelled to animadverti The editor of these volumes has failed most lamentably in almost all the duties of his office; an office which we allow to be difficult, but which the high reputation of the Dean of Carlisle, and the still higher and more important interests involved in the publication, should either have taught him to sustain aright or to have transferred to other hands. All posthumous works demand a most vigilant, laborious, and even scrupulous attention on the part of an editor. But in the case of sermons prepared only for the casual occasions of popular instruce tion, and with no view to the press, care and circumspection would have been more peculiarly requi site. The general aim, and the known deliberate sentiments of the author, should be perpetually kept in view, and nothing permitted to come forth which it might reason' ably be concluded that author, if living, would himself have disapproved and expunged. The circumstances of the Dean's ill-health, as well as the other difficulties unė der which the discourses were composed, only increased the imperative obligations to which we have adverted. And yet so deplorably have these been neglected in the present instance, that we doubt if the English language furnishes an example of a great name more provokingly degraded, than has been that of the Dean of Carlisle by these volumes. The entire task seems to have been performed with a negligence and carelessness which would be almost ludicrous were it not for the serious effects arising from them. The discourses are ill arranged. The most ob vious errors of the pen are left untouched. Occasionally a sentence remains incomplete. Repetitions, which perhaps are unavoid able in discourses hastily composed, and which may occur without the slightest inconvenience in such dis courses when delivered from the poipit, are here scrupulously retained. Some pages are, as we strongly suspect, transposed. In short, these volumes which, from the circumstances already mentioned, should have had the utmost pains and labour bestowed on them, have been edited with an utter disregard even of the most common requisitions of syntax; and we may safely say, there is scarcely one sermon which the author would not have forbidden to be published in its present crude and unfinished state, and of which, therefore, his old and best friends must not poignantly regret the indiscreet and immature publication. who have been distinguished for the strength of their minds and their intellectual superiority." So far is well He then observes, that the Dean of Carlisle was entitled" to great deference and authority on all subjects, to the consideration of which he brought the stupen dous powers of his mind." Well again. The following paragraph, however, excites our most unquali fied disapprobation. "He is well known," says the editor," to have been a supporter of that body of the clergy which is called Evangelical; and it seemed but justice both to himself and the sacred cause which he espoused, that his name should be enrolled among those who have so ably and so successfully maintained the doctrines which distinguish this part of the community." Does the editor imagine, then, that he honours the memory of so great a divine of the Church of England, by converting him into the mere partisan of a particular body, however pious and respect. able, while he gives currency, by his language, to the calumnious re presentation that the persons whom he has designated are guilty of assuming to themselves an obnoxious party-name? Was it not enough to leave the Dean to declare his own sentiments, without attaching to them in the outset a term which would instantly awaken jealousy, and arouse the spirit of distrust and prejudice ? It is with extreme reluctance that we make these severe animadverHad the editor so sions on the editor: but as he has, little knowledge of human nature, however unintentionally, injured so as not to be aware that to adopt deeply the fame of one of the great and appropriate a reproachful epis est divines of our age, it is only an thet is the way to bar up the en act of the most common justice to trance to the reader's mind, aud transfer the blame from the author cast a mist around every determito the person who is really in fault. nation of his judgment? Or did - But this is not all. A preface he know so little of the Dean's is prefixed to the discourses, which, sentiments and habits as to be ig if possible, aggravates the other norant that nothing would have delinquencies of which the editor grieved him much more than, ins has been guilty. He begins it bytead of being allowed to expatiate stating, that "There have not been freely in the wide field of our com wanting men ready to assert, that mon Christianity, and to appear pure and vital godliness has not as the assertor of those reformed ranked among its advocates many doctrines which be loved so warm ly, and which he had spent his life in illustrating and defending, to be cooped up within the narrow and contracted limits of some petty inclosure in the church, and exhibited as dwindling into the mere partisan of a sect? No man indeed would have avowed more openly his attachment to the great doctrines of the Church of England, which he considered to be the purest of all the reformed communities, than the Dean of Carlisle; nor would any one have endured with more firmness the reproach with which passion or prejudice might choose to load him on that account; but at the same time there was no man who would have sooner shrunk from the extraordinary folly of which his editor would here make him guilty-that of soliciting calumny, and provoking opposition, by assuming an appellation, which, however innocent or even laudable in the abstract, he knew to be calculated to offend the prejudices of the age, and unnecessarily to awaken the spirit of party, and to stir up controversy in the church, And what can the editor propose to himself by speaking of our venerable author first as espousing with his stupendous powers the cause of pure and vital godliness; and then as a supporter of that part of the clergy which is called Evangelical, among whom also his name is to be enrolled? Does be intend to represent pure and vital godliness, and the doctrines of this evangelical body as identical; or does he, on the other hand, mean to represent the late Dean as supporting both, although inconsistent with each other? But, to leave these questions to be answered as they may, we would further ask, with what truth can the Dean be said to have been a supporter of the body of the clergy which is called Evangelical? What steps did he ever take, what books did he ever write, what proceedings did he ever institute, that should desig nate him as a member of any par ticular section of the church, except as he studied most deeply, and maintained most resolutely, the great reformed doctrines on which that church is founded? And if it was necessary that “justice” should be done to his real sentiments as a theologian, had he not done this himself in his imperishable work of the History of the Christian Church? We might abstain from further observations on this unfortunate preface, if it were not for the following avowal towards the close of it. Many of the texts will be found inaccurately quoted: these have likewise been left as they came from the author's pen, for he has always retained the general import of the passage."-Surely the most ordinary duty of an editor of posthumous sermons, would be to take the trouble to correct the slight inaccuracies which a mind full of the Scriptures, in preparing discourses hastily for the pulpit, may easily commit. Such an omission, we really believe, no editor. ever wilfully made before; and the statement of it must serve to lessen, so far as it extends, our confidence in his judgment as to other matters. And this remark becomes the more important, as it is to be feared that other writings of the late Dean may possibly fall into the same bands. An essay on the nature of human liberty, and some other manuscripts, are stated by the editor himself as probably to ap pear at a future period. Our ardent wishes lead us to hope that large materials for a continuation of the Church History may be amongst these papers. And we should most seriously lament that so important a work should be deprived of the advantage of that judicious care, and vigilant circumspection, without which no posthumous publications can be made useful, or obtain acceptance with the public. If another portion of the Church History should appear, differing materially from the admir able volumes already published, the consequences would be most full of various knowledge, deeply deplorable: the most important impressed with the supreme imand most popular ecclesiastical portance of the subject-matter, history of our day would be fatally and anxious to impress it on the discredited, and the venerated me- understanding and the heart of the mory of both the Milners be great- auditory. If we were asked what ly injured. We most earnestly en- is their leading excellency, we treat the editor of these volumes should be disposed to say, That of to submit to more experienced awakening and fixing the attention hands any future edition of these to the concerns of religion. We discourses which may be called for, hardly ever read any discourses as well as the care of revising and which rouse the attention so effec-, editing the remaining manuscripts tually, and also communicate such of the author. The country will vivid and convincing explications then forgive the present failure, of scriptural truth. Originality is and attribute to haste or inadver- accordingly a characteristic of tence, and not to intentional negli- these volumes: every thing wears gence, the defects by which these the charm and freshness of the volumes are disfigured. writer's own conceptions. And they are also distinguished by a. habit of independent thinking, and by a vein of native sagacity and powerful good sense, which run. throughout. As it regards Christian doctrine, these sermons every where display a scriptural simplicity, an unlimited subjection of the understanding to Divine Truth in all its parts, a rich, and well proportioned, and matured knowledge of the Gospel, and a constant application of every doctrine to the. hearts and lives of the hearers. In the midst of this sober, unaffected, devout, and earnest course of instruction, the occasional lights of a great mind dart forth on a variety of topics: they are repressed, indeed, almost as soon as they appear, lest they should divert the attention from the infinite importance of practical truth; but they still shed a brightness around, and when they fall on kindred minds will awaken the most delighful associations. But the knowledge. which appears most conspicuously in these sermons, is knowledge of a less brilliant but far more valuable description; we mean, an intimate knowledge of human nature. The author appears to seize the leading features of the several characters he would describe, with a truth and accuracy which approach Having thus dispatched a very painful preliminary duty, which the intrinsic excellence of the matter of these volumes, together with the high expectations formed of them, seemed to render indispensable, we now come to the discourses themselves. And we cannot help hoping, that the candid reader who shall take them up with the information which we have just given, will derive great delight from the perusal; for they do indeed come from the hand of a master. They are neither of the class of essays on the one hand, where all is polished down to an easy flow of general observation; nor of regular and well-divided logical discourses on the other, where the several parts arise gradually from the main subject, and the discussion is carried forward with perspicuity from the commencement to the close. They are rather warm and powerful addresses than what we generally understand by sermons. A vigour of conception, a striking exhibition of important truths, a constant and most forcible appeal to the heart and conscience, characterize them throughout. They are the extemporary effusions of a powerful intellect, reduced to writing. Every thing marks a mind of great force, to intuition. He sketches the portrait by a few bold strokes, and the reader is astonished at the resemblance. When he would represent the language either of inquiry, or excuse, or remonstrance, or unbelief, as used by different classes of his hearers, we seem to listen to the very words which such persons would be likely to utter. The direct practical tendency which so appropriately belongs to the great doctrines of the Scriptures is also exhibited by the Dean in the most luminous and striking manner. Every part of his sermons is obviously framed with a view to the production of a holy state of heart, and a virtuous course of conduct. He allows the hearer to rest on nothing as the end of religion, but spiritual and devoted obedience to God: not that the Moral Law is enforced by him, as separated from the Gospel,-not that justification is in any degree attributed to our own feeble and imperfect performances-not that the grace of Christ in pardoning sin, or the agency of the Spirit of Christ in mortifying it, or the deep corruption of human nature, which render the influence of both so indispensable to man, are in any measure concealed or obscured;-but all these truths are constantly represented either as tending to prove the necessity of a renovated aud holy state of heart and life, or as they exhibit the means of acquiring it, or as they serve to convict of presumption and enthusiasm those who would disjoin the belief of Christian doctrine from the unwearied pursuit of holiness. We are not sure if any volumes in our language contain a more distinct and prominent statement of the doc trines of grace on the one hand, and yet a more clear and affecting ex. hibition of their holy purpose and spiritual and heavenly fruits on the other. Indeed, so intimate is the union, in this work, of these different parts of the Christian system-the end, and the stupendous means employed in accomplishing it-that their separation seems almost im-: possible. In this respect, as well? as in many others, we venture ta› recommend these discourses to the study of such of the clergy of our church as are anxious to form scriptural habits of thinking and preaching. We do not indeed pro: pose them as specimens of good composition, as patterns of neat and luminous arrangement, as discourses finished and fitted, as adequate models of pulpit eloquence: a variety of sermons might be named which are much ⠀ better adapted for these purposes but we scruple not to recommend them as breathing the genuine spirit of the Gospel, as dictated by a powerful and enlightened mind, as rich in materials for thinking, and pregnant with the seeds of great conceptions. We recommend them as the unequal and irregular, but: solid and weighty, testimony of ą distinguished divine to the truths of the Christian revelation. propose them as a specimen of the true tone and temper of the Refor mation; as the production of one who having mastered the history of that important period, and imbib." ed the very mind of Luther and· his companions, has poured out, in the midst of the obstructions and infirmities of disease, but still with prodigious force, the dictates of an affectionate and pious heart. And: we hesitate not to say, that he who once allows himself to kindle with the warmth which these sermons are fitted to inspire, will easily forgive those inaccuracies of composi tion which almost necessarily attach to a posthumous publication, and even that more provoking carelessness by which the editor has unhappily aggravated the defects which he ought to have lessened or removed. We We now proceed to give some! particular account of the volumes on which we have offered these ge |