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they wish to convince; and although every accusation may be short of the truth, yet a reformer, and especially a Christian reformer, will fail to hem in the world by the violences of censure. The party he attempts to surround, will be violent in selfdefence. 66 Undique recalcitrat tutus." It will be, indeed, a false safety; but it will spurn away a reprover, who, had he come with stronger indications of good-will and sympathy, might have prevailed, and imparted unknown blessings.

Let not Mr. Irving accuse us of kicking against the whole of his indictment; the language of which is frequently more severe than the substance. We think him to be perfectly justified in supposing any degree of deviation, however great, from the faith, in some one or other of the various divisions of the church. The transition from good to evil is too natural; being the regular course of human kind, in the things most nearly affecting their happiness. We may observe this in the gradual decline of religious families. The grandfather was a decided and consistent Christian, and bequeathed to his son the knowledge, and perhaps the profession, of serious religion; and the profession, by the Divine blessing on a parent's prayers and example, might eventually be sincere. In the third generation, the forms, and possibly the opinions of religion, had become hereditary; but these were followed by nothing better than a support of the popular institutions of the age, as by a kind of traditionary duty performed outwardly; while the affections are secretly placed upon the world. This species of degenerate family religion is deeply injurious to the Christian cause. Its touch is pollution, and the more detrimental, because of its being connected with the veneration due to the family name, from the remembrance of what it once was; as, in another relation, we cannot look at the descendants of a Marlborough or Sully whether worthy or unworthy in

their own personal character-without feeling the claims of their ancestry. But if a family of the religious world can suffer spiritual decay, and finally become re-absorbed into the mass whence the grace of God originally delivered it, churches, which are only collections of individuals and families, may pass through the same process. The discerning spirit of Milner, in his remarks on the degeneracy of the church of Sardis, finds a parallel to such a state of things in modern times. He writes, "The love of the world increases with the abatement of persecution. Lively Christians are removed by death; their juniors, inferior in all solid godliness, superior only in self-estimation, reduce the standard of Christian grace lower and lower: what was once experimentally known, becomes matter of barren speculation; sensual and worldly objects allure the carnal mind with success: lucrative speculations in commerce devour the spirit of godly meditation; the seasons of religious duty are jostled out by the throng of business; and excuses of necessity are easily admitted. Men find a pleasure in being no longer reputed fanatics; and professors will now ask leave of the world, how far it will permit them to proceed in religion, without offence." This is a plain statement; and if it cannot be confirmed, and accurately exemplified in the present age of the church, we may ask, by what process has the human heart of the nineteenth century lost the stigmata of all previous time. Are the brand-marks worn out? We know what the church was, in what are called its earliest and best days; and it might be a useful exercise of the imagination to carry ourselves back, for example, to an open committee or general meeting of the Corinthian church, convened for the purpose of considering the first of St. Paul's Epistles. It is easy to fancy the impatience, the irritation, and, as the world calls it, the wounded pride, which would be

a delicacy, and gentleness combined with whatever severity he used, as one commissioned from above, to shew the Corinthian converts the ingratitude and danger of their conduct *. In the example of Mr. Irving, we may find what we will concede to be fidelity of reproof, however deformed and weakened by unchastised language; but we look must we say it? we say it grieving-in vain for that spirit of sympathy, self-condemnation, and remembrance of the cause of the difference between the elect and others, which breathes throughout the writings, and the most stern exercise of St. Paul's authority. It will be also recollected, that the Wesleys, and others of their age, whom Mr. Irving has incidentally mentioned with somewhat of a contemptuous feeling, confessed in their spiritual maturity, how much, in the early period of their zeal, they neglected to temper their exhortations and alarms to a wicked world with expressions of tenderness for its guilt and misery. Christ wept over Jerusalem at the very time when he declared that its last days were approaching; and, according to this perfect example, there is no inconsistency in lamenting over a city inevitably doomed to destruction.

discovered under these circum- sionate one. There is an address, stances. Consciousness of guilt, mingled with something approach ing to the feelings of the fallen spirit, described by Milton as "high disdain from sense of injured merit," would agitate the bosom of many a member of the lapsed church. There would be attempts to re-criminate, and to lower the authority of the accuser; and beneath the shelter of the confusion thus created, to hide guilt, and to escape, for the time, from the upbraidings of conscience. We have no occasion, indeed, to imagine these things. They are written for our instruction; and, with all the emphasis of fact, in the inspired records of the church. Let any one carefully read the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and he will observe that St. Paul uses, if we may so speak, all his address, and all the innocent arts of self-defence, in order to find shelter for the truth; while, at the same time, he conciliates a party which had evidently resisted apostolic and inspired authority. An instructor, thus disparaged, was driven to self-commendation; or rather, to assert his real claims, because they were disputed by fac tious disciples, and by individuals striving to shun punishment. He says, "I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended of you; for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest Apostles, though I be nothing. I fear, lest when I come, I shall not find you as I would, and that I shall be found unto you, as ye would not; lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, back-bitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults; and lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness, and fornication, and lasciviousness which they have committed."

But if St. Paul was a faithful reprover, he was equally a compas

Mr. Irving's plan, like all schemes of a headlong character, betrays him into many curious anomalies. One of these appears to be his high notion about the enormity of dis

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for St. Paul's character, than that his ex"Nothing more raises our yeneration treme sensibility of heart, and his rare delicacy in consulting the feelings of others, is never exercised at the expense of his integrity. There are many upright minds, whose honesty is yet somewhat disfigured by a harsh temper. They are too conscientious to censure unjustly; but, knowing the censure to be merited, they have rather a pleasure in inflicting the correction. And though they are not glad the offender deserves it, they are not sorry it is their duty to impart it. St. Paul never severely reproved another, that he did not inflict a wound on his own

feelings."-Mrs. H. More's Essay on St. Paul. Vol. II. eh. xiii.

sent from either of the established churches of Great Britain. Now when it is considered that one of these communions is Episcopal and Liturgical, and the other Presbyterian and Anti-liturgical; to say nothing of what is called the ultraCalvinism of the Scotch Confession, and of its other points of discre pancy from the Thirty-nine Articles and external discipline of the southern establishment, and its unmea. sured denunciation of that establishment in its official documents, it is certainly an effort to draw matter of consistent accusation from these various and distant sources. They do not rise, like Bruce's springs of the Nile, within a few yards of each other, and by a speedy confluence uniting in the same stream; but from fountains bubbling up in different regions, and supplying waters of distinct qualities, while the rivers, thus originated, flow separately, and are regarded as the boundaries of tribes by no means disposed to form alliances, but rather engaged in endless warfare; for we suppose that Episcopalians and Presbyterians would be considered a sort of natural foes, the French and English of the ecclesiastical world. We should, indeed, be ourselves exceedingly happy to witness the final close of such hostilities; and would that peace were restored in our spiritual Zion: but we cannot very clearly understand Mr. Irving's anxiety to make the same man faithful to two sides; fitting to the same head, the quaint cap of John Knox and the mitre of a bishop; investing the same arms with lawn sleeves of one colour, and stuff ones of another; and, thus arrayed, proceeding to join the masked multitudes under the character of a reformer; frowning reproof alternately upon the right and the left hand groupes, as they severally smiled at his array and angry bearing.

But Mr. Irving's element is-we were going to say-intolerance. If we have faltered in making this assertion, we are nevertheless pre

pared to aver, that his treatment of our religious societies might, for its indiscriminate and unkind hostility, have issued from a Papal or Socinian partisan. He is, indeed, the Ishmael of the Christian world, his hand being against every man: and if the parallel reach farther, he has himself extended it, by provoking all hands against himself; for it is difficult to say what class has escaped the edge of his cimeter. Has Mr. Irving yet to learn the distinction between the principles, regulations, and general management of any given institution, and the imperfection or inconsistency of certain among its agents? His rule, if applied to the two establishments from which, with all their varieties in doctrine and discipline, it seems to be equally criminal to dissent, is, in its own nature suicidal. For, certainly, he brings such heavy accusation against the ministers of these sister, or half-sister churches, as would practically snap the links which now bind him and his followers to either communion; each of them, by his own account, being very badly administered. it is to be an impetuous reformer; to pull down a building, in the act of repairing it. Mr. Irving is too well acquainted with the history of his own church not to be aware of the spiritual decay and desolation to which it was lowered, even so lately as the days of Witherspoon *; and why did not that excellent man, and such as he, desert it? But if intolerance be too hard a word to designate our author's character, it shall be softened down to dissatisfaction; an emotion by no means confined to men of his excitability. In such a world as this, how few things cross our way, but what we wish, in some points, to be altered to the pattern existing in our own imagination!

But this

There is an ideal

See his Ecclesiastical Characteristics,

and Serious Apology for that performance; both published in his works without a date, but written, we believe, about the middle of the last century.

perfection in every mind, which ruminates on the infinitely diversified imperfection discernible all around ; and as no two minds will quite agree in their estimates of the evil done, or the good which might be done, a wise man will soon be cured of expecting much beyond a general gratification in what is actually achieved. He will never be able to crane up even the best of mankind, when acting in masses, to his wishes; and he will, on the other hand, be checked by reflections on the wide interval stretching between his own theories, and the theorist's practical consistency. Now Mr. Irving seems to be always beating the bushes, to start a fresh object of dissatisfaction. He is, for example, highly displeased with the revival of sound divinity in the Glasgow editions of theological works; because they are prefaced by some of our living, popular writers, as though recommendations of this kind were one of the mischievous novelties of the day. Mr. Irving cannot surely be ignorant that long before he or his reviewers were born, such things were in being; and flourished on either side of the Tweed, and in the comparatively infant churches of America.

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of fashionable resort, that it would not have been any disparagement to his diligence or talents, if, engrossed in the more pressing duties of his important sphere, he had not been able to find either leisure or inclination for devoting himself to the service of the church by means of the press. We have understood that his ministerial labours have been greatly blessed of God, to the spiritual benefit of many of his auditors, stated and fluctuating; that his efforts have proved highly beneficial for the promotion of the great religious institutions which adorn our age and country; and that his zeal and piety in opposing the gaieties and immoralities of a luxurious Bethesda, especially the race-course, have in numerous instances been productive of much good. To these local services in the work of his Divine Master, he has added the publication of the present volume of discourses, in addition to those which have before issued from his pen. Considering the influence which Mr. Close's station affords him over the minds of many who may attend his ministry, during a temporary residence either for health or amusement in his vicinity, we cannot regret that he has availed himself of the wide diffusion of the press, to address his occasional, as well as his parochial hearers, in a volume so full of sound and valuable Chris

tian instruction as that before us. Many such persons, we would hope, will be induced to read and meditate upon these excellent discourses, and thus, by the blessing of God, for ever have reason to be grateful for an occasional sojourn in a spot of public resort, where; while they sought, perhaps, only the balmy air, the invigorating waters, or the volatile recreations of the place,

they heard words which, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, weaned them from the vanities of the world, to seek durable riches and righteousness. It is but justice to Mr. Close to say, that both the topics chosen by him, and his method of

discussing and applying them, are excellently calculated to subserve this end. Instead of giving, in proof of this remark, a dry index of titles, and a few abrupt extracts, we have copied the first discourse at large, as a family sermon, thus affording our readers themselves the best opportunity for forming their own judgment of the author's style and

doctrine. May the blessing of God rest upon all his arduous labours, and not least upon this truly pastoral and Christian volume, which, while it is highly creditable in point of literature, is most truly commendable for its zealous and heart-searching appeals to the heart and conscience of the reader.

LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE,

&c. &c.

GREAT BRITAIN. WORKS preparing for publication, and in the press-A Topographical and Historical Account of Methodism in Yorkshire; -The History of the Roman-Catholic Question; by J. Bedford;-An Analysis of Burnet on the Articles, with Notes; by T. Newland, A.B.;- The Siege of Derry; by the Rev. J. Graham.

Oxford.-The University Prizes this year were adjudged as follows:-Latin verse, J. E. Wilmot, of Balliol; English Essay, G. Denison, of Oriel. Latin Essay, W. Sewell, of Exeter; English verse, T. Claughton of Trinity. Theological Prize, on the Causes of the Persecutions of the Christians in the first Centuries, W. Jacobson, of Lincoln's Inn.-The subjects for next year, are, Latin verse, Tyrus; English Essay, The Character of Socrates; Latin Essay, "Utrum apud Græcos, an apud Romanos magis exculta fuerit civilis scientia ;" English verse, The African Desert; Theological Prize, "Whether the doctrine of a God, differing in his nature from all other beings, was held by any heathen nation or sect of philosophers before the birth of Christ.”

A return has been laid before parliament of the publications in progress by the commission for public records. The works printed, or in contemplation, will form the most ample collection of documents ever projected. They comprise more than half a score great public works; the expense of one of which only, the Rolls of Parliament, is estimated at 45,000l., and several others also are extremely costly. This munificent gift will be of great value to posterity.

An ancient manuscript chronicle, in the
CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 332.

Harleian Library, has been published in the last volume of the Archæologia, in which occurs a passage which curiously illustrates Shakespeare's remark on the death of Cardinal Beaufort, "He dies, and makes no sign." The priest who attended the death-bed of Edward the Third is stated in this chronicle to have addressed the monarch as follows: "Because your voice faileth, lift up your eyes unto the Lord, that we may see you both penitent and asking mercy: presently he lifted up both his eyes and his hands to heaven, drawing sighs as it were from the bottom of his heart, no doubt signs of his repentance. Then the priest admonished him, that forasmuch as he had unjustly punished his servants, he would repent him, and shew the aforesaid signs, which devoutly he did."

A case was lately argued before the Court of King's Bench, in which the court decided that the sale of an advowson while the incumbent was in a dying state (in the instance in question he died the very day of the sale) was simoniacal; but the House of Lords has reversed the decision. The reversal opens a wide door to new abuses, though indeed the whole system of buying and selling ecclesiastical offices is a most disgraceful abuse. A magnificent collection of the late Mr. West's paintings, comprising one hundred and eighty-one lots, was lately sold by auction for the sum of about 19,000. Most of the pictures sold for much less than the artist could have obtained in his lifetime; for instance, his picture of "Christ rejected," for which he is stated to have refused 8000 guineas, sold for 3000l.

At the recent sale of Dr. Hibbert's valuable library, the celebrated Polyglot 3 X

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