they are thus compelled to yield to her authority. The influence of the cause just mentioned is much assisted by that lassitude, which is the natural consequence of the gratification of the more violent passions. The fervit impiety by which many of the writers in question are animated, urges them to so eager and intense a pursuit of their object, that the wearied spirit at length calls for intermission and repose; and there are moments, in which the most thorough-bred persecutor feels himself disposed to exclaim with the poet -Parce, precor, precor; Non sum qualis eram. The passion, however, only rests to refresh itself: it only sleeps to recruit its strength for new exertions and new gratifications. honesty does to the swindler; it enables them both to practise upon the credulity of mankind to a much greater extent than a rigid consistency of character and conduct would admit. Further, it deserves to be noticed, that if the insidious commendation which is sometimes bestowed by Anti-Christian authors be accompanied with an air of buffoonery or irony, the effect upon the minds of many is superior to that of the most unqualified vituperation or the most virulent invective. These considerations render it evident, that the main object may be promoted by those very means which appear to counteract it; and that, Parthian like, the enemy may be conquering even when he seems to yield. But this is not all: there is observable in the writings of those who have distinguished themselves by their hostility to the Christian cause, an evident affectation of imitating the manners of the classical philosophers and historians of antiquity, on the subject of religion. They study them as models, and endeavour to exhibit the same affection of mind towards the Christian Religion, which is apparent in those heathen writers towards the superstition of their country. The inference upon which they presume, and which is the very end and reward of their exertions, is, that both religions are of the same authority; or, in other words, that neither possesses any. The resemblance, however, is not quite so perfect as it is intended to be. The heathen surveys the Religion of his country with no apparent emotion of resentment: he contemplates it with the placidity and composure of one, The who is convinced of its falsehood; he betrays no apprehension with respect to the result of an inquiry into the subject.* On the contrary, the ad It may be observed, that falsehood naturally produces its own remedy, by destroying the credit of its author. Hence arises the necessity, in those who have an interest in its success, not to frustrate its effect by exhausting their reputation; but, at intervals, to repair the waste of that important instrument of influence, by a submission to truth. But the indulgence which our Religion occasionally experiences at the hands of its enemies, is not the effect of the force of truth, of lassitude, or of necessity alone. There is a policy in it. Their apparent suspension of hostilities is only a varied method of conducting them with more effect: they assume the mask of friendship, that the wound which they inflict may be the deeper. For we are not to imagine that by their partial concessions any sacrifice is actually made. enemies of our faith are contented to be believed in what they concede, provided they may be believed in what they assert. They are secure of the event. They are satisfied what judg ment must be formed of a religion, of which much that is dishonourable, and something that is favourable, may be affirmed. We are likewise to understand, that a well-placed exhibition of candour gives the same advantage to the infidel, which an occasional act of tation, that Epicurus and his disciple LucreIf it should be objected to this representius discover a considerable degree of irritability upon the subject of Religion, it must be recollected that the object of their attack was not the superstition of their country alone, but Religion in general. In this circumstance they agree with the characters next to be considered; and he who reflects upon the anxious solicitude which Lucretius, throughout the versary and assailant of Christianity, in spite of the disposition which he affects to discover, appears to regard the Religion which he desires to destroy with considerable perturbation. It is continually in his thoughts, and seems to haunt his imagination like a spectre. Under the ill-supported character of a philosopher, but with the irritability and rancour of a petty sectarist, he, in general, calumniates and insults it with a brutal malignity. Though for tified by an obstinate determination not to yield to conviction, he pertinaciously declines a sober and impartial inquiry into the subject; not daring, from a dread of the issue, to commit himself to such a state of mind. The whole of his opposition to the Religion in question betrays symptoms of a heart ill at case, and as much oppressed by fear as irritated by resentment: the flimsy veil with which he endeavours to conceal his, agitation, serving rather, by attracting attention, to make it more conspicuous, and recalling to our minds the pitiable condition of those, concerning whom the philosophical historian observes—“ Quanto magis occultare et abdere pavorem nitebantur, manifestius pavidi." How then are we to reconcile this matter? how are we to account for so remarkable a difference, where a perfect resemblance was intended? It can be accounted for rationally on no other supposition, than that they are different subjects, upon which the minds of the different parties operated; and that the Religion which the zealots of impiety are so anxious to put upon a level with one confessedly fabulous, is distinguished from it by every mark which can distinguish a true from a false Religion. This distinction, resulting from the whole of his work, betrays, to inculcate upon mankind their obligations to his master, for having delivered them from fear, by overturning the belief of a providence, a moral governor of the world, and a future state, will find cause to think, that there was some truth in the observation which Cicero puts into the mouth of Cotta concerning Epicurus-" Nec quenquam vidi, qui magis ea, quæ timenda esse negaret, timeret; mortem dico et Deos." De Nat. Deor. Lib.i. c. 86. †Tac. Hist. Lib. i. § 88. truth of the one and the falsehood of the other, is fundamental and invincible, and will always produce a corresponding difference in the regards of men towards them, whatever artifice and labour may be employed to conceal it. We feel, therefore, no extravagant emotions of gratitude for the favour which our adversaries are occasionally pleased to show to us; and all we desire of them is, to know that they are understood. April 27. J. M. FRENCH ANECDOTE. A FRENCH Emigrant, while endeavouring in the reign of Robespierre to escape out of France, arrived in a provincial town of that country at the same time with an Emissary of the government, who was charged with the duty of directing the people in the choice of a sound Jacobin to an important situation in the department. The Emigrant had the curiosity to go with the mob into the church where the elec. tion was to take place. Some leading persons among the multitude introduced three men to the Emissary, the principles of every one of whom they warranted to be excellent, though there was one of the three whom they specially recommended, declaring him to be more fully established in the true French philosophy than either of the others. The Emissary, somewhat to the surprise of the assembly, paid little attention to what was said of the soundness of the principles of the individual candidate who was presented to him, but abruptly asked this short question -A't il des passions? Is he a man of strong passions? The leaders of the mob replied, that if strength of passions was to be the test, one of the other candidates had certainly the advantage, and the man who was distinguished by the violence of his temper was instantly nominated by the Emissary, and elected by the people. Let me add a few words of application. It would appear from this anecdote (which is a perfectly true one, the writer having heard it from the Emi grant who was present) that not only a Jacobin is, as we all know, a man of strong passions, but also that every man of strong passions may be said to be a Jacobin. I conceive, Mr. Editor, that, according to this principle, we have now some Jacobins among us, who by no means possess that name. For instance, I doubt much whether certain men, who take the very name of Anti-jacobins, I mean some of those who conduct the Anti-jacobin Review, (I include indeed only a part of them in my remark,) do not come under a suspicion of being of that very sect which they oppose. Ont ils des passions? is the question; Are they men of strong passions? I think they are, and as such I denounce them as Jacobins before the tribunal of the public. I own, however, that I am disposed to denounce some of their antagonists in like manner, and among these I reckon every violent separatist and every fierce and passionate contender for even the soundest doctrines of our religion. I hope, Mr. Editor, that you will remember this definition of a Jacobin, and that in your future numbers you will judge of men's principles, both in politics and religion, by the test which I have just proposed. I hope, in short, that you will reckon Christian gentleness and candour, to be a symptom both of loyalty and of orthodoxy, and an ungoverned temper to be a mark of disaffection both to Church and State. INFIDELITY BROUGHT TO THE TEST OF EXPERIMENT. Fas est et ab hoste doceri. MR. Godwin, in writing the life of Mary Woolstencraft, meant, without doubt, to recommend infidelity to mankind; but, happily for them, he has in these memoirs exhibited what may be termed a series of experiments, from which they may learn its tendency, both as to morals and happiness. In the beginning of the work he informs us, that Mrs. Woolstencraft "had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and that her religion was almost entirely of her own creating"-that "she expected a future state, but would not allow her ideas of that future state to be modified by the notions of judgment and retribution." Now let us hear the progress of this self-created religion. It led her, first, to remissness in attending public worship, and, at length to discontinue it entirely. Mr. Godwin indeed thinks, “it may be admitted as a maxim, that no person, of a well-furnished mind, that has shaken off the implicit subjection of youth, and is not the zealous partizan of a sect, can bring himself to conform to the public and regular routine of sermons and prayers." Her religion was as chaste as it was devout. It allowed her to live as a wife with Mr. Imlay, without being married to him, and afterwards on the same terms with Mr. Godwin, to whom she was at length married, only to prevent her complete exclusion from decent society. Her attachment to Imlay seems to have been violent. His neglect of her gave her the most poignant distress. The religion of her own creating, totally unlike that which God teaches, affording no resource for her wretched mind, she twice, in the course of five months, resolved on suicide. One attempt to destroy herself, is thus related by Godwin: "She took a boat, and rowed to Putney. It was night when she arrived at Putney, and by that time it had begun to rain with great violence. The rain suggested to her the idea of walking up and down the bridge, till her cloaths were thoroughly drenched and heavy with the wet, which she did for half an hour, without meeting a human being. She then leaped from the top of the bridge, but still seemed to find a difficulty in sinking which she endeavoured to counteract by pressing her clothes closely round her." She, however, was discovered, and taken out of the water. "After having been for a considerable time insensible," continues her biographer, "she was recovered by the exertions of those by whom the body was found." But let us hasten to the conclusion. She died in child bed. In the detail of this awful scene, we have the following affecting passage; "Her religion, as I have already shewn, was not calculated to be the torment of a sick bed; and in fact, during her whole illness, not one word of a religious cast fell from her lips." In other words, she died like an atheist. The paradoxical cast of her mind was visible in other things, as well as in the affairs of religion. She ridiculed the fashion of the English women in keep ing their chamber for a month; and for herself, proposed "coming down to dinner on the day immediately following her being brought to bed;" but she was too ill to execute her design. The hour was at hand, the awful hour that was to put a period to all her visionary ideas, and all her opportunities of preparing for another world; yet she would still utter her philosophical reveries. Describing what she had suffered, she told Godwin, "that she should have died the preceding night, but that she was determined not to leave him." Such is the good sense, such the piety and comforts of the new philosophy. These are the enlighteners of mankind. These are the people who undertake to cure us of our prejudices!! For the Christian Observer. VIATOR. ON looking the other day into the first volume of the Spectator, I met with the paralleled by what is done every day by a great part of mankind. A little reflection supplied me with many instances of an affirmative solution of my query; to every Christian observer of the transactions of the world they will readily occur. When, for instance, men confine all their care to their bodies, and abandon their souls to destruction-when they grasp, with trembling eagerness, the treasures of this world, but carelessly suffer those of a better to slip for ever from their hands-when they toil to obtain the applauses of mortals, like themselves, but disdainfully reject that "honour which cometh from God”— when they impatiently pursue the gra tifications of sensual luxury, but forego all the solid and lasting pleasures of religion-when (in short) men hold fast the trifles of time, but prodigally relinquish the inestimable blessings of eternity-what do they but emulate, or rather surpass the folly, without possessing the excuse of him, who, while he pocketted a pebble, threw his watch away? WRITTEN IN A WINTER'S WALK. As the earth, when enwrapped in a mantle of snow, From the centre diffuses a heat, following passage-"A little before our That prepares every seed in due season to club-time, last night, we were walking together in Somerset Garden, where blow, And each flow'ret to scatter its sweet; fies Of cold malice and envy the blast, Till the storm of affliction be past.- thaw, Will Honeycomb had picked up a small So the soul, robed in innocence, proudly depebble of so odd a make that he said he would present it to a friend of his, an eminent virtuoso. After we had walked some time, I made a fuil stop, with my face towards the west, which Will knowing to be my usual method of asking what's o'clock in an afternoon, immediately pulled out his watch, and told me we had seven minutes good. We took a turn or two more, when, to my great surprise, I saw him squir away his watch a considerable way into the Thames, and with great sedateness in his looks, put up the pebble he had before found in his fob." After indulging a hearty laugh at the ludicrous circumstance with which the foregoing narrative concludes, I began to consider seriously, whether the mistake of this absent man might not be The snow ran in torrents around; Vain mortal, said I, with humility draw The instruction that speaks from the ground. Thine innocent robe should a Saviour remove, How naked thine heart would appear;And dissolved by the beams of his mercy and love, How fast flow the penitent tear. But he who thus softens the clods of the earth, And make his sins whiter than snow. R. > 1. REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. XV. Mrs. WEST's Letters on important sub- (Concluded from p. 244) In a popular explanation of the thirtynine articles, much novelty of thought is not to be expected. Without servilely copying any expositor, Mrs. West pays a high degree of deference to the opinions of Bishop Prettyman and Dr. Hey; but in many instances deviating from both, she boldly adventures to illustrate abstract subjects by natural objects*, and too frequently allows, where the tenets and practice of Dissenters are concerned, the full force of truth to common report. Can she conceive that the doctrine of original sin is elucidated by a plant or a flower not appearing as a standard of perfection to a fastidious imagination? The critic on a flower may be deceived in his estimate of its properties; or if he be not, there is a mighty difference between perfection and corruption. God, who uses not comparative, but positive terms on this subject, has confirmed his numerous declarations of the corruption of man, by the strongest proof in the power of omnipotence; by giving his only begotten son, himself the blessed God, to die for the sins of all men. Such stupendous means would not have been used for the restoration of human nature, were its fault only the absence of perfection. The angels may be charged with folly, when scrutinized by the eye of Omniscience, but no Saviour is made an offering for them. "The carnal mind" being "enmity against God," it must not only be frail and prone to evil, but determinedly averse to all that is good. This state, as the article declares, "deserveth God's wrath and damnation." Mrs. West considers this representation of human nature as more likely to gratify an uncharitable temper, than to benefit mankind. Unless, however, the extent of the corruption of man be ascertained, trifling remedies will be used, serving only to quiet just alarms, and to sooth into fatal security; when Christ has declared, that "except a *Vol. ii. p. 131. Christ. Observ, No. 5. man be born again, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven;" and the apostles teach that we are all "by nature children of wrath," that we are to "be renewed in the spirit of our minds;" must "put off the old man, which is corrupt, &c." Much useless controversy on this subject might be avoided, were a proper distinction made between absolute and relative qualities. God judges of actions, from the motives which caused them; if the motives, therefore, be wrong, that is, have no reference to the divine will, the actions, however fair may be their appearance, are also wrong. This judgment comprehends the whole case, and referring only to one rule, is absolute. But man cannot judge actions by their motives, which do not appear; he, therefore, determines them to be right or wrong from the preponderance of apparent good or evil. He often, also, allows his judgment to refer to different standards of rectitude and obliquity in morals and religion. This relative judgement must necessarily be defective, and defective in proportion to the want of knowledge and the imperfection of the standard by which it is formed. The most important advantage immediately resulting from the belief of the doctrine of human corruption, as now stated, is the production of Christian humility. This primary virtue corrects that misanthropic spirit frequently observable in people of the world, when compelled by experience to admit the existence of that inherent depravity which they would not believe on the declaration of Scripture. But the Christian, esteeming others better than himself, and being filled with gratitude for divine blessings bestowed notwithstanding the greatest demerits, is not in "danger of becoming capricious, morose, and unattractive," from a consideration of the "guilt of his fellow-creatures." In proportion as the power of natural corruption is felt, the necessity of conversion or regeneration, and of the agency of the Holy Spirit, will be per 2 R |