ble is thronged by characters who laugh to utter scorn any idea connected with the exhibition on the wall, and do at the time CRUCIFY

THE SON OF GOD AFRESH AND PUT HIM TO AN OPEN SHAME!"

"Yes, Sir; but that is the conduct only of profligates. Surely you do not include in this censure others." "I include all who are not genuine Christians; even the men whose conversation is modest, and whose habits are temperate. Sobriety and temperance may coexist with the most bitter infidelity. If the conversation of the dinner party be neither blasphemous nor impure, it may yet be sprinkled with infidelity, not gross perhaps, and there fore more seductive and malignant. An unbeliever is not necessarily a sensualist: his temptations are of an intellectual description: his passions are quiet, but his understanding is the busy genius of darkness. By confining religion to sobriety of conduct, we limit the inspired description of the influence of the Gospel to one of its effects, and to one which many probably find to be the easiest we are required to live not merely soberly, but RIGHT

EOUSLY AND GODLY IN THIS PRESENT

WORLD."-" Appeals to Scripture I am not prepared, Sir, to answer. If the world be what you esteem it; if human nature be thus corrupt; if Christianity be hated except when it ministers to the fine arts, I would be convinced of all this by reason; for I presume that you do not plead for a faith irrational."

As we left the Castle, my uncle enquired how the Duke was, who, as I then learned for the first time, was languishing under a fracture. The porter informed us, that his Grace had passed an unquiet night, and that he was unable to take any nourishment. I rather sunk at this

Possessed of all this extensive edifice, he is confined within the narrow dimensions of one chamber. With forests and parks stocked with game of every sort, with lakes abounding with fish, with gardens and hot-houses full of every variety of fruit, with cellars overflowing with the wines of all countries, he can take nothing. He would at this moment sacrifice half of his estate to insure a day's quiet. We must estimate every thing according to its actual value, and its value when most wanted. The Duke is now just on a level with my labourer, who lies in the county infirmary under the effects of a similar accident. They are both well attended; but no medical science can do for the Duke what it cannot equally do for the peasant."-" But all Dukes do not fracture their limbs."-" No. Nor do all peasants. I only wish your reason to tell me, what is the specific value of the world's most splendid possessions, if they are so easily alienable as to be lost by a fall from a horse."—"Well, then, I will grant that, in peculiar cases, their value is gone."-" Ah, Sir Arthur," returned my companion, "you see that your favourite's estimate of honour is something more than an apology for cowardice. Can honour set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? A word. Who hath it? He that died o’Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it.' And the value of earthly possessions amounts to just the same. It may seem irreverent to couple with the enquiry of a voluptuous wit a citation from Scripture. But I may here ask, WHAT IS A MAN PROFITED, IF HE GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSEI will not complete it by adding, HIS OWN SOUL-but even his health and tranquillity!"

the Testimony of Baron Swedenborg?

We will endeavour to perform this task by following our author, as closely as we can, through the successive portions of his work, and interspersing such argument and reflections, as our fixed principles concerning truth and importance naturally suggest.

The introductory address of Mr. Clowes to his congregation, contains many judicious, useful, and highly important observations, and we had only to regret their station and appearance in such heterogeneous company. Here the author insists upon the necessity of some preparation, in order to a just view and consequent reception of the peculiarities of Swedenborgianism. The directions given, many of them, are just and applicable to every inquiry after religious truth; yet we think the pious author, for such we do certainly esteem him, has gone rather too far, however such a principle might subserve his purpose, when from "the essential character of all heavenly truth to oppose and contradict the preconceived opinions of men," he infers, that this character, where found, so far from being an argument against the doctrines in question, affords rather a strong presumption, if not an absolute demonstration in their favour." P. vii. We indeed should not esteem it a strong presumption, much less an absolute demonstration in favour of any religious system, should it affirm that two and two are equal to eight, or that the part is greater than the whole. The author should have specified the character of the preconceived opinions which religious truth opposes; but this would have proportionably in jured the argument in favour of the doctrines in question. Mr. C. makes "as unreasonable a demand, when he requires of the aspirant to the mysteries of Swedenborgianism, that he should peruse the writings of the honourable author "extensively." What is meant by extensively fill

he is converted? We have heard it observed, that the inquirers after truth in the philosophy and theology of Hutchinson, become converts on having made some progress in the fifth volume of the twelve bulky octavos of that author. But here, and in a much wider sea, no limits are prescribed; and a bark, which is but provisioned for a short, and that a necessary voyage, is to lose its time and risk its safety, by committing itself to an ocean, agitated by a contest of all the elements and infested with monsters of every description, in the search of an island which does not exist in this globe. And how can Mr. Clowes require the same mode of interpretation to be applied to an author addressing his cotemporaries, and in language perfectly understood both by the writer and his readers, as to compositions written at the distance of near eighteen centuries, in languages not generally understood, and in an idiom and with allusions still more remote from modern intelligence? how can he require, as he does, that Baron Swedenborg and the evangelists and apostles should be interpreted by the same rule? pp ix-xi.

We now proceed to the Plain Answers. And the first number of them asserts, which will not be contested, that the Baron "respected and embraced in his system of theology some of the most interesting and edifying doctrines of the Christian faith and life." p. 2. In the third number, which proposes to vindicate the new prophet's view of the doctrine of the Redeemer and Redemption, we first meet with his peculiar notion concerning the trinity, which we shall notice in its proper place. What is said concerning redemption, the subject in hand, is first to be attended to.

66

Redemption then," says our author," according to this testimony," the testimony of Swedenborg, "doth not consist in the vicarious suffering of one God to appease the wrath, or, as some express it, to satisfy the justice of another God; but

it consists in the labours, the temptations, the combats, and the victories of the ONE ONLY LIVING and ETERNAL GOD, the GOD-MAN JESUS CHRIST, whereby he satisfied the divine emotions of his own infinite love, requiring that men should be saved, and requiring further the only orderly means or mediums of salvation, viz. the subjugation of the infernal powers, and the glorification of that HUMANITY, by which he might again have access to his creatures, and his creatures have access to him." pp. 9, 10.

We have here to give Mr. Clowes full credit for not dissembling the heresy of his prophet. But we beg leave seriously to ask Mr. Clowes, whether he does or does not believe that sin is offensive to God; whether he does or does not believe, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men; whether he does or not believe the state of man, in this respect to have been affected by the advent and acts of the Saviour? What does he mean then by the Socinian language, which, in contradiction to the subscribed articles of his own church, as well as to the Scriptures, he has permitted himself to use?

The next number is on the trinity and here is pretty fairly revealed the doctrine broached by Sabellius, and openly asserted in every part of Swedenborg's writings. The three divine persons, according to the Baron, "all concenter and are united in the one divine person of the LORD GOD THE SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, who, as to his essential divine nature, is called and is THE FATHER, and as to the human nature, which he assumed and glorified, is called and is THE SON, and as to his divine operation, or proceeding virtue and energy, is called and is the HOLY SPIRIT." p. 12.

This Mr. Clowes calls the orthodox or right opinion. It is true it is Swedenborg's, and he illustrated it by a kind of human trinity, body, soul, and operation in man. It may It may

be proper to add that this reviver of Sabellianism expressly condemns both the Nicene and the Athanasian creed. To us it appears evident, that this fanciful and unfounded doctrine is nothing more than a modification of deism, and that it is the result of that dilemma which arises from a desire to conform to Scripture, and an inability to make the required submission of the human understanding: it is a kind of compromise between the reveries of natural reason and the dictates of divine revelation..

The fifth number is intended to vindicate the hypermystical interpretation which Swedenborg gives to the Scriptures. There is, according to him, in every part, a literal, a spiritual, and beyond this, a celestial sense. Mr. Clowes calls the last their inmost or highest sense. It would probably rather amuse than edify our readers, to give them a specimen of the mode of interpretation as the Baron has applied it to the Decalogue. The "heavenly marriage," which is described as taking place between the divine perfections, powerfully reminded us of the Eons of the Gnostics.

In the sixth number is represented the doctrine of Swedenborg concerning the atonement, which is perfectly in unison with what we have already transcribed, and commented upon, on that subject. In the next, we are indistinctly taught what the system under consideration teaches on the subject of justification. This doctrine is so dependent upon the former, that we may naturally expect the same observations in the one as in the other. And indeed, Mr. Clowes advocating his prophet, asserts, "that a saving life is the joint effect of faith, of charity, and of good works united, and that to separate any one of the three from the other two is to destroy all." p. 28. This, it is true, is the doctrine of Bishop Bull, and of his fol lowers, but not of the church of England, which deliberately asserts in her article on the subject, that

"We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings." He who will take the pains to consult Swedenborg's "True Christian Religion," &c. will perceive that the author is peculiarly hostile to the doctrine of justification by faith alone. And lest it should be replied, that he is only to be understood of a solitary, unproductive faith, and therefore as opposing the solifidian hypothesis alone, it will be proper further to observe, that the doctrine, upon this subject, which he condemns and reviles, is the doctrine as it was held particularly by Luther, Melancthon, and the reformers in general; for in the interview which he had with these persons in the spiritual world, the unhappy Melancthon more especially is represented as undergoing a course of purifying discipline, in order to wean him from this doctrine, and to induce him to give the due honour, hitherto denied, to charity.

The conclusion adduces other arguments in favour of the mission of Swedenborg: but the most curious part is that, in which his present advocate answers the requisition of miraculous evidence to attest his extraordinary pretensions. The Presbyter has not informed us, as the Seer honestly has, that this objection was originally urged in the spiritual world, the scene of his greatest honours. Some of the inhabitants of that state had the hardihood, in a confused murmur, to say to their visitant, Do miracles and we will believe. It was replied, that the very visions with which he was favoured were miracles.

This did not satisfy the spirits: they rejoined, Reveal future events. The Baron excused himself upon the plea of the inconvenience which would result from the communication of such a power*.

True Christian Religion, containing the Universal Theology of the New Church towards the End.

It is hardly possible not to call to mind the very similar manner in which Mahomet replied to the same requisitiont. The author with whom we are now concerned, endeavours to prove the impropriety of requiring miracles in the present case, because they would be equally neces sary in the case of every expositor of Scripture. Is Swedenborg then nothing more than an expositor of Scripture? Mr. Clowes will not admit this. Indeed he defends the visions of the Baron, after the Baron himself, as being themselves miraculous. Now allowing these visions to be, as they are said to be, supernatural communications, they are not miracles, in the sense of divine attestations, to any other than the individual himself. But have there never been visionaries, mystics, fanatics in the world before? Have not many persons so deluded retained great consistency of character? Do not Montanus, Mahomet, Lord Herbert, and Jacob Behmen; the Gnostics, the monks, and saints of the Romish communion without number, immediately press upon the mind, as soon as such claims as those of Baron Swedenborg are preferred? But where in Scripture are we encouraged to expect, or when pretended to receive, such revelations as those proposed by the honourable Swede? Mahomet shewed some art, but greater ignorance in proclaiming himself the promised Paraclete: but where is the character, advent, and mission of the modern prophet designated in Scripture? We feel ourselves therefore under an invincible obligation of joining with the Baron's opponents, both spiritual and human, in urging the absolute and highest necessity of miracles to substantiate so extraor dinary, and we may add, superfluous a claim as his.

We think we have now gone through the greater part, if not the whole, of what is deserving of remark in the pamphlet of Mr. Clowes; + See Sale's Koran, 8vo. vol. ii. pp. 58, and 108, or chap, xiii. and xvii.