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The opinions of the chief infidel penmen being thus fully examined, it might seem unnecessary to notice the effusions of an atheistical writer, restrained by no principles whatsoever of decency or criticism in hazarding his objections to the faith of which he had at one time been a minister. Mr. Godwin, with unparalleled assurance, declares, that bigotry and intolerance are encouraged by the Christian religion; that an improper stress is laid upon faith; and that there are moral defects in the character and temper of Jesus Christ.' These assertions our author examines with his usual accuracy. He allows--as every one must, with grief, be ready to allow-that 'too many individuals, and even parties styling themselves Christian, have deviated from the spirit of their religion, so completely as to encourage bigotry and practise intolerance; but that such dòctrines or practices are authorised by Scripture, we are warranted, by its whole tenor, in denying.' The objector has evidently fallen into the vulgar error of confounding the principles of the Christian doctrine with the mistaken notions and practices of some who have professed themselves bound to obey that doctrine implicitly.' The uniform conduct of our Saviour. his precepts, and those of his apostles, all evidently and recipro cally lead to the same conclusión,-that every attempt to injure a man on account of his religious opinions, that every attempt to support by force or fraud the tenets of any particular faith, every attempt at worldly superiority or advantage in right of a belief in Christianity, is contrary to the whole system and design of the Gospel. We scruple not therefore to assert with our author, that there is not in the whole compass of the New Testament a single passage upon which the charge of introducing or perpetuating bigotry and intolerance can be founded, without bidding defiance to all the established laws of accurate interpretation.'

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The second objection is shown to be equally void of foundation; and the miserable insinuation of the objector, as to the vulgar meaning of the word damned,' is at once destroyed by an examination of the Scriptural force of that term. No argument, indeed, could be more strongly advanced in opposition to any religion, than that an improper stress had been laid by its founder upon the subject of faith; if, as the objector asserts, with respect to the Christian, this saving faith had been left open in its records to controversy. But the futility of such an insinuation is clearly shown by our author.

No one acquainted with Scripture, will hesitate to pronounce, that the belief required in "the records of our religion," is the belief, that "Jesus was indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world""the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.""That they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, CRIT. REV. Vol. 35. August, 1802.

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whom thou hast sent," is pronounced to be "eternal life," even in that solemn and affecting address, which our Redeemer poured forth to the Father, just before the commencement of his sufferings. Whatsoever controversy may have been stirred about the meaning of these passages, it will, I apprehend, be an extremely difficult task, for the ingenuity of the most prejudiced unbeliever, to prove, that the fault lies in the ambiguity of the records themselves.' P. 304.

The infidel, we are convinced, will not be contented with this explanation; he will ransack the musty records of various churches, which he will insist upon being the truths of the Gospel; although he knows, or should know, that there is one record alone to be appealed to in such a question, by both Christian and unbeliever; and that, if the faith requisite for salvation be there explicitly laid down to be that Jesus is the Christ, the Saviour of the world, no addition to such faith, however well or ill intended by believers of any school, can alter the established terms of salvation, which can neither be diminished nor added to with impunity. It is this faith which draws the line between Christian and Unchristian; and happy would it have been for mankind, and widely would it have promoted the spread of the Christian faith itself, if they who deemed themselves included within its pale had prosecuted their religious inquiries into inferior articles with less acrimony, and had shown their obedience to the author of their faith by acting toward each other as brethren, and by adhering to that most beautiful and pathetic precept of our divine master-'Little children, love one another.'

The meek and holy Jesus is represented by Mr. Godwin as having poured out his curses in a most copious stream upon those who opposed his pretensions: the great preceptor who taught his disciples to love their enemies, who prayed for his enemies with his last breath, is delineated as worse than a Romish bishop in execrating those who were not of his own church. Now to curse a person implies a wish, on the part of the exeerator, that evil should fall on the object of his indignation. The meekest of men may punish offenders in the very commission of an atrocious act, as our Saviour did those impious men who were turning the temple of God into a den of thieves; but a mere prophecy of woe to a depraved people is a very different action, from that of a personal execration, and this distinction was completely overlooked by the objector when he hazarded so unjustifiable an attack upon our Saviour's character. Our author does not however appear to us, in answering this objection, to have explained with his usual success the words of Scripture, How can ye escape the damnation of hell?'—on which he offers this comment

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• How can ye escape that final and extreme punishment, which in

your own language is called the condemnation of Gehenna?—I grant that future punishment was in these words denounced against the Scribes and Pharisees.-I deny that it was denounced against them, merely for opposing Christ's pretensions. I maintain that it was denounced against that savage intolerance, which prompted them to scourge and to crucify Jesus and his followers-And if the doctrines of Jesus were true, if the miracles ascribed to him were really performed, if his life was holy, and if the apostles taught and acted, as they appear from sacred history to act and to teach, is there any shock given to our feelings of moral proportion between the guilt imputed to the Pharisees, and the punishment denounced against them?-Upon the question thus stated, I appeal to the justice, and even the candour, of every man who admits a moral government and a future life.' r. 316.

Here a laudable zeal seems to have carried our author much too far; and the word hell, in our vulgar language, has transported him at once from the visible to the invisible world. We flatter ourselves that a little more reflexion on what he calls a denunciation will teach him that the passage is simply a prophetic observation on the wickedness of their conduct; while the context assures us that the suffering it alludes to was completely verified on that evil and adulterous generation. The condemnation of Gehenna fell upon the unhappy city in which our Saviour uttered these words, in little more than forty years after they had been spoken; and we are thus relieved entirely from a comparison between the guilt imputed to the Pharisees, and the punishment supposed to be its consequence in a future life. The latter could not be an example to wicked nations; and the Jews, in their present state, are perpetually recalling to our mind that extreme punishment which overtook them on the destruction of their city.

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The defects of evidence in favour of the Mahometan religion form the subject of the last chapter, and are pointed out in a clear and concise manner; but we are rather surprised, that, in illustrating the truth of the Christian religion, a point of equal importance with the religion of Mahomet should have been overlooked or neglected. Two great impostures took their rise very nearly at the same time, and divided the Roman empire between them;--the one ruled in the east, the other in the west, with unlimited sway and horrid cruelty. The contrast between the modes by which these abominable impositions-popery and Mahometism-gained an ascendency in the world, and the conduct prescribed by Christianity, afford ample proof of the falsehood of the two former, and the truth of the latter; and, by demonstrating in what manner the wisest and best of systems, for both the present and future happiness of mankind, was converted into the worst of poisons, the greater part of the objections of the infidel are removed, and Christianity is proved

to be worthy of the source from which it issues. When the period shall arrive in which Mahometism and popery shall cease to disturb mankind, and future generations shall contemplate the rise and fall of these impostures, the wisdom of our Saviour's precepts will be seen in their full extent; every attempt to flatter the opinions of men by either force or fraud will receive the decided opposition of the Christian world; and Christianity, depending on itself alone, without any human support, will be found competent to all the purposes for which it was intended-to wit, the destruction of sin and death. Should our author enter into our feelings upon this subject, we may. flatter ourselves with the hope, that, in a future edition of this work, it will be made complete by an examination and refutation of the debasing principles of popery.

Should this idea be imbibed, the volume may, by dismissing two Latin exercises introduced into it, be still limited to its present bulk; and, however gratifying the perusal of these exercises may be to a few scholars, they are no recommendation to the general reader. In the first, the inadequacy of reason, without Revelation, to attain to the true knowledge of God, of a future state, or even the common duties of life, is shown, in good latinity, by a sufficiently ample investigation of the opinions of the ancients on these subjects. In the second, the much agitated question of Jephtha's vow is treated with great clearness and precision. The meaning of the words, in the original in which the vow is conceived, is first examined; whence it is perspicuously shown that the strangely adopted opinion of a Jewish general putting his daughter to death is without foundation; and that the reasons which have led others to contend for such a barbarity, were derived from conjecture, not from Scriptural authority. To offer up a human victim is contrary to an express precept of the divine law, in Deut. cap. xii. 29; and the argument deduced from its not being a general custom to devote virgins to sacred offices and perpetual virginity is no objection against its having been done in this particular instance. The lamentations on the celibacy of the daughter, and the loss of all hopes of family to Jephtha, are contrasted, with great propriety, with similar topics of sorrow in the Greek tragedians. Hence we say with our author

Nihil igitur restat, quam ut locum huncce sacri scriptoris, prout res ipsa se nobis auctorem præstat, et Hebraici textûs verba postulant, accipiamus. Id saltem maximopere cavendum est, ne ratas interpretationis leges et perspectas critices normas ita transgrediamur, ut historici verba ad eum sensum detorqueamus, qui, cum viros sapientes et pios vehementissime offendat, tum infidelium captiunculis atque irrisioni augustum illud et venerandum religionis nomen objiciat.'

P. 445.

The ample account we have thus given of the work before us will, we trust, be a sufficient recommendation to our readers; but we cannot dismiss the volume without expressing some regret that a person so well qualified to adorn his profession should plead incessant occupation in matters not always congenial with an early and habitual fondness for literature.'. Yet we hope there is less occasion for our regret than the passage seems at first sight to implicate; and that the writer, by a prejudice too common with men of literature, is apt to think every moment lost which is not spent in his study. It is frequently. useful to divert the mind from too close an attention to books; and an occupation of a different kind renders the reciprocal change both more pleasing and beneficial. We still hope, however, that the term "incessant' may be rather too strong an epithet for any engagements upon which so useful a character can be employed; for, while we hear with pleasure of professional exertions, and willingly bear testimony to the learning and erudition of the pages before us, we must always keep in mind the necessity of relaxation to those powers which, under due regulation, promise to be so beneficial to the church.-Detur aliquid otii rei domestica, et amicis; detur etiam valetudini.

The work is addressed to the author's patron-the lord bishop of Lincoln-in a dedication worthy of a scholar; in which he takes notice of a distinction of two characters, incapable sepa rately of performing any great service to the church, but of whom it may be said, with the poct

• Alterius sic

Altera poscit opem res, et conjurat amice.'

He, in whom these characters are so well united, may be justified in the following mode of expression.

A sort of paradoxical distinction has been sometimes set up between sound divines and useful ministers-a distinction very convenient, no doubt, for those, who would deprive the church of its most effectual defence against the opposite, but equally fatal, extremes of infidelity and fanaticism. Well does it behove the appointed guardians of our national faith to consider, by what better means they can secure it from the dangers with which it is menaced, by an avowed contempt for all religion on the one hand, and a fantastic pretence to excessive sanctity on the other, than by encouraging an accurate and profound knowledge of the holy scriptures among the teachers of religion. A learned clergy, employing their knowledge with zeal, and tempering their zeal with charity, is the best preservative, under Providence, against that ignorance and immorality, which, acting upon different intellects and different tempers, may frequently be regarded as alike productive of scepticism and superstition.' P.

iii.

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