"Columbian College. "Messrs. Editors: I observed, in your paper of September 17, a communication, bearing the signature of Fair Play,' the purport of which seemed to be to solicit explanations on some points connected with the Columbian College, in this District. No reply has yet appeared, from which fact infer that the more immediate friends of the College have not thought it necessary either to take any notice of complaints grounded on so slight authority, or to express their gratitude for the gratuitous counsel which your correspondent has bestowed. "The patriotic sensibilities of 'Fair Play' appear to have been unpleasantly affected by the discovery that an individual in this country had thought proper, in a letter directed to a friend in England, and there published, to employ the term National College,' in reference to the Columbian College in this District. This does not seem to be a very serious offence; and, if it were, the proper question would be, how far the managers of the College were answerable for it. The individual who used the expression is, I presume, entirely unknown to these gentlemen. He is not a Calvinistic Baptist, and has no connexion with the great body of Baptists in this country. His remark, that they are rapidly verging to Unitarianism, was shaped rather by his wishes than by fact; and it conclusively indicates the degree of importance which should be attached to his statements and expressions on the subject before us. "The term alluded to is certainly an improper one; and it has never, to my knowledge, been used by the authority of the Trustees of the College. If any one acquainted with the character of the institution has at any time employed it, it has been applied in that general sense in which the Intelligencer, and other newspapers, have assumed the title of National? Its location at the seat of government, and its prospects already partially realized, of becoming a resort for young men from every quarter of the Union, may have led some to apply to it an epithet, not correct in point of official character, but deserved precisely in proportion as the institution shall perform the functions and afford the ad vantages of the National' Seminary, contemplated by the vaticinations of 'Fair Play. Nevertheless, his own implied confession that he had never before heard of this appellation, although a resident in the immediate vicinity of the College, proves that it has never been assumed. "I have thus replied to the only material part of your correspondent's remarks. He has bestowed some sound instruction respecting the constitution of the United States and the charter of the College, accompanied by a few hints by way of advice, all which the friends of the College, who doubtless are quite as much attached to these instruments as himself, and probably understand thein nearly as well, will, I presume, take into serious consideration. "Before I conclude, permit me to quiet the apprehension of your correspondent, by assuring him that the proceedings of the Agent of the College, while in England, have had no tendency either to mislead in regard to its character and title, or to implicate, in any degree, our national honour. "K." SIR, Clapton, December 6, 1823... mined Whiston's Memoirs, for FIND that I very imperfectly exsome account of the Collet family (p. 650). He, no doubt, designs the physician, who is the subject of N.'s inquiry, when he speaks (p. 420) of "Dr. Collet's very Serious and Seasonable Address to the Jews; or a Treatise of their Future Restoration. Printed 1747. This book," he adds, "though containing, I think, many mistakes which want to be corrected, does yet give a particular and wellattested account of the goodness of the country of Judea, and of the Jews' happy condition there, upon their restoration, when the Messiah will establish his kingdom at Jerusalem, and bring in the last glorious ages." I have found also, in a volume of inaugural medical dissertations, one, de Peste, delivered at Leyden, in 1731, for his Doctor's degree, by Joannes Collet, Anglo-Britannus." It appears (Mem. 296), that Whiston's " great and good friend, Mr. Samuel Collet," whom I mentioned p. 650, was a Baptist," and a most 66 punctual attendant on the "Society was Whiston mentions again (p. 355) "Mr. Collet," with whom he " at Newbury in 1748," where he "heard Mr. Mace preach in the same Meeting-house where he had heard Mr. Pierce preach before he went to Exeter." There was also a "Rev. Joseph Collet," of "Coat, in Oxfordshire," on whose death, in 1741, a sermon was preached there by the father of the late Dr. Stennet. In the conversation which I noticed p. 650, Dr. Toulmin informed me that Governor Collet, who had held an appointment in the East Indies, and of whom I promised a further account, was, he believed, the person addressed in a pamphlet, now before me, entitled, "Two Letters to a very eminent and learned Gentleman, attempting to subvert the Doctrine of the Arians. Being Animadversions on a very famous Arian Manuscript, wrote by Him, some Years since, in India. By a Country Gentleman. 3rd Ed. 1751." In the preface we are informed, that "the author of these Letters, and the learned Gentleman to whom they were addressed, being occasionally in con versation, arguments arose concerning the Arian scheme: and the author, for several good reasons, declining to enter into the controversy, was pleasantly told by him, that his unwillingness proceeded from a consciousness of the badness of his cause, which, indeed, was the only reflection that could have roused him, or provoked him, to engage at all in this debate ; not being willing to enter the lists with a gentleman to whom he stood greatly obliged." Of this gentleman, who appears to have died before the publication of the Two Letters, he further says, (p. ix.,) that “he was, in truth, a man of great ingenuity, learning, humanity, charity and good sense but was so particularly eminent for his Arian sentiments, (which he was far from endeavouring to conceal,) that had the author leave, and was he so inclined, it would be altogether needless to publish his name." The "Country Gentleman," thus challenged, now borrowed his Arian friend's MS., and " after some considerable time" sent the first letter, to which he received "a very short letter, which did not contain an answer to any one of the author's arguments, but instead thereof, a pamphlet came with it, bearing the name of one Chubb, for its author." This_pamphlet was, no doubt, "The Supremacy of the Father vindicated," with a dedication "to the Reverend the Clergy; and in particular to the Right Reverend Gilbert [Burnet] Lord Bishop of Sarum.” (2nd edition, 1718.) Whatever Chubb may appear in his later writings, he is here as strictly Christian as Dr. Clarke in his "Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity." Yet the " Country Gentleman" says of him, (p. 73,) ́" What he drives at, 1 am well aware of; and by that way of reasoning, we may bring ourselves into downright Deism, which, I think, the Arian scheme naturally leads to." He, also, there mentions" the pamphlet wrote by Philanthropus," sent to him by the author of the MS., as 66 a full answer" to his first letter. The "Country Gentleman" soon sent the second letter, to which his friend," being much indisposed, caused a sort of answer to be wrote by another hand." Neither of these letters was he permitted to publish. The " Country Gentleman" having mentioned" (p. 22) "his Arian friend's preface to Mr. Stennet's book of Hymns," in which he had inferred, from Pliny's Epistle to Trajan, that "the Christians of that time sang songs or hymns to Christ as God," laments, in a note, that he should "afterwards renounce that important article, and continue so to his death." I had the curiosity to look into Stennet's "Hymns for the Lord's Supper, 3rd edition, 1713." After an 66 Advertisement to the Reader," there is "The Preface by another hand," written chiefly "in vindication of the practice of singing the praises of God as a part of Christian worship." The writer describes himself as one who "laboured under the prejudices of education to the contrary." At the end of the preface, in which are numerous quotations from the New Testament, all in Greek, there is a hymn written by the same hand, upon his being convinced that singing is a part of divine worship." The " Country Gentleman" quotes, incorrectly, not, I hope, with design, his friend's translation of Pliny, whose Latin is in the margin, for, in the preface, the words relied upon are," to Christ as a God," the proper sense of Pliny, who, familiar with the Pagan deification of heroes, and of favourites of fortune, who were no heroes, would easily misunderstand the language of grateful praise for blessings received through the mediation of Christ, which must, then, have abounded, as it always ought to abound, in the worship of the Christians. I have observed very little out of the way of modern Arianism in the quotations from the MS., except that the writer appears to have adopted Biddle's notion respecting the Holy Spirit, as he is said "to take much pains to prove the Holy Ghost to be a creature, though with degrees of excellency superior to other creatures." Also, the author of the MS., having put "the doctrine of the Trinity upon a level with Transubstantiation," the " Country Gentleman" describes the latter (p. 17) as a God made by a creature, which," he adds, "is downright nonsense, as well as blasphemy, and is very near of kin to that Arian position, that a creature can create principalities, angels and worlds." Yet the "Country Gentle man" had said, incorrectly, (p. 14,) that "those in the Arian scheme generally triumph when Christ is sometimes spoke of as mere man, as if that bespoke him to be nothing more." Incorrectness should, however, be excused, for "these letters were not designed for the press; the author was far enough from such a thought; but they having been perused by divers gentlemen, that were called good judges in this controversy, the author has been prevailed on, by their importunity, to do violence to his inclinations, and suffer them to come abroad." Having, however, done what he thinks "sufficient to convince gainsayers," as to those "that are fond of engaging in controversies—he does not design to reply to any thing they may object;" having discovered, after disputing through nearly 100 pages, that "disputes are endless, and not his province." 66 "That Jesus Christ is God by nature, of the same essence with the Father," is "the proposition" which the "Two Letters" are designed to prove. Some of these proofs would, probably, be rejected, as insufficient, by our more cautious Trinitarians. However easily a Country Gentleman" might be satisfied, a practised polemic would not, I apprehend, venture to argue, as in the conclusion of this preface, that "if there is a God the Father, it necessarily infers, that he has a Son that is God also; or the epithet Father, is impertinent and superfluous;" and again, "that if there is God the Father, there must be God the Son, or he must be a Father without a Son, which would be an absurdity." Yet if the "Country Gentleman" was no great clerk, he was not a confident and pitiless distributor of divine vengeance on supposed heretical pravity, such as too many great clerks have proved themselves. He was "not one of those who damn to hell all that differ from him in this point, though he would not be one of them, nor choose to take his lot amongst them." He may also put to shame, unless they are shameless, our Christian persecutors, who still " cry havock," though they have already brought an indelible stain upon the character of British freedom, and have done more than infidelity could ever effect, to dishonour "the worthy name by which they are called." As to "the Arians," (p. vi.,)" who are in a very dangerous mistake," he is for "calling for the word to convince them, but not for the sword to destroy them;" because "fire and faggot, fines and imprisonments, are the engines of hell and Rome, but tend nothing to convince any one of the truth as it is in Jesus, who never suffered the least injury to be done to any that rejected his doctrine, except the Gadarenes, who preferred their hogs to heaven; and, therefore, he justly suffered the Devil to take possession of them, but did no harm to these vile wretches themselves." In this spirit once argued St. Athanasius; and it were well could he gain the attention of those Christian persecutors, who heard unmoved the dictates of truth and freedom from Hume and the late lamented Ricardo. "The Devil," says the orthodox Saint, when suffering under Arian persecution, "does therefore use violence, because he has a bad cause, and the truth is not in him. Jesus Christ, on the contrary, uses only exhortations, because his cause is good." (See "A Sermon, on Jan. 30, 1732," in Gordon's Tracts, 1751, II. p. 294, Lardner, IV. 281, 282, IX. 212.) Lactantius, as quoted by Lardner, thus concisely settles the question: "Nec potest aut veritas cum vi, aut justitia cum crudelitate conjungi," a decision which may teach us what the Christianity must be, to which a persecutor can successfully appeal as part and parcel of the law of England;" whether that oracular dictum proceed from a Hale or a Jeffries, a Bailey or a Best. To return, once more, to the author of the MS. and the Country Gentleman," of whom I wish any of your readers may give a further account. Both the disputants appear to have held a common faith in a supposed natural religion, on which so many pages had been expended, till the necessity of revelation became very fairly a question. Thus, as Dr. Ellis well observes in his "Knowledge of Divine Things," (1771, p. 12,) zeal for natural theology had well nigh destroyed all religion, and Dr. Clarke fell a sacrifice to Tindal by the very weapons he had put into his hands." 66 a I quoted in p. 326, col. 2, President Edwards, as providing for the elect in heaven, as "a relish of their own enjoyments," the sight of their nearest and dearest connexions on earth, writhing in the indescribable torments of their eternal damnation. I have since found that the President was thus anticipated by a divine of the Church of Scotland: "No pity shall then be shewn to them from their nearest relations. The godly wife shall applaud the justice of the judge, in the condemnation of her ungodly husband: the godly husband shall say amen to the damnation of her who lay in his bosom: the godly parents shall say Hallelujah, at the passing of the sentence against their ungodly child: and the godly child shall from his heart approve the damnation of his wicked parents, the father who begat him, and the mother who bore him." Mr. Thomas Boston, who died minister of Etterick, in 1732, is the author of this description, in his celebrated Calvinistic treatise the Fourfold State. (State IV. Head IV. See. 9.) Well might my friend Dr. Southwood Smith (from whose Illustrations, p. 381, I have quoted the passage) say of such theologians as Boston and Edwards, that "there are persons in whom system has so completely subdued the feelings of humanity, that they have brought themselves to view this horrid picture with a steady gaze, to contemplate it with complacency, nay, even to affirm that it is beautiful and glorious." A description of hell-torments is, I suspect, among the sober-minded of those who believe in the endless misery of the non-elect, no longer a favourite topic as it used to be when that awful subject was treated from the pulpit and the press with horrible minuteness and a most presumptuous confidence. Yet even of those rash intruders on futurity, very few probably can be found, who proposed, like Boston and Edwards, to consummate the bliss of heaven by a contemplation of the torments of hell; and those torments hopelessly endured, perhaps, by "husband, father, wife, And all the dear companions of our life.” In the same page 326, according to a favourite distinction of the mode 66 rate Calvinists, I have mentioned he doth predestinate to his children." preterition or reprobation," though Institution, (1634,) p. 462. it is, indeed, scarcely any thing but a distinction without a difference, or according to Wesley's explanation, “God did not damn them, but decreed, They never should be saved;" Though Bishop Burnet, in his Exposition, would prepare the 17th Article for an Arminian subscription ex animo, because "it does not make any mention of reprobation; no not in a hint." Calvin understood this subject better, and maintains the rigorous consistency of his horribile decretum against the moderates of his day; deciding, at the same time, that the non-elect will comprise a large majority of the human race, a decision, against which humanity has revolted in the gentle bosoms of many followers of Calvin, though it was worthy of a Christian persecutor who could conscientiously betray his correspondent Servetus into a prison, glory in his destruction, and insult his memory. Calvin thus writes: "Multi, ac si invidiam a Deo repellere vellent, electionem ita fatentur, ut negent quemquam reprobari; sed inscitè nimis, et pueriliter. Quando ipsa electio, nisi reprobationi opposita, non staret. Dicetur segregare Deus quos adoptat in salutem: fortnitò alios adipisci, vel sua industria acquirere, quod sola electio paucis confert, plusquam insulsè dicetur. Quos ergo Deus præterit, reprobat: neque alia de causa nisi quòd ab hæreditate quam filiis suis prædestinat, illos vult excludere." Instit. L. iii. C. xxxiii. S. 1. The old translator thus gives the sense of Calvin: " Many indeed, as though they would drive away the malice from God, do so grant election, that they deny that any man is reprobate but they do too ignorantly and childishly for as much as election itself could not stand unless it were set contrary to reprobation. God is said to sever them whom he adopteth unto salvation: it should be more than foolishly said that other do either by chance, or by their own endeavour obtain that which only election giveth to a few. Therefore whom God passeth over he rejecteth: and for none other cause, but for that he will exclude them from the inheritance which I have been very desirous of noticing, before the conclusion of your present volume, a passage (p. 55, col. 1) in the Obituary of Dr. Aikin. I was the arbitrator chosen by the other party in 1806, and have still a distinct recollection of Dr. Aikin's patient investigation of the subject in dispute, and of the anxiety he discovered to perform the duties, not indeed of an advocate or a partizan, of which he was incapable, on such an occasion, but of an equitable judge such as an arbitrator should always consider himself, however, on commencing an inquiry, he may be, unavoidably, prejudiced in favour of the party who appointed him. I well remember that when the examinations were closed, and we had met to discuss the merits of the question, Dr. Aikin postponed the discussion, that he might re-examine some alleged fact which he apprehended that he had too hastily admitted. These representations I have considered as becoming my respect for the memory of Dr. Aikin, though quite unnecessary to sustain, either among his acquaintance, or before the world at large, the reputation of his character for just discernment and strict integrity. J. T. RUTT. P. S. I can bear testimony to the "eccentricity of character" of Dr. George Edwards, (p. 179, col. 1,) from the recollection of a conversation I held with him in 1792, in company with some literary and political associates. Yet I suspect that you were misled, in imputing to him that very extraordinary dedication. Mr. George Edwards, the celebrated naturalist, in 1751, prefixed such a dedication to the fourth volume of his " History of Birds." It is quoted, at length, in Biog. Brit. V. 554, where Dr. Kippis remarks, that it was without doubt, very piously designed, but that the wisdom of it cannot be commended. Such an assumption," he adds, with his usual sense of propriety, "is too great for any human creature, and the few instances of the kind that have occurred in the history of literature have always been justly disapproved." |