nexion with the church at Ipswich for ten years, when he left to take charge of the people at Gravel Lane, Wapping. After the lapse of a few months, Mr. David Edwards accepted the call of the desolate church, to which he became pastor in 1765. He left them in 1791, and was succeeded in 1792, by Mr. Charles Atkinson, of Homerton Academy. MR. NOTCUTT'S WORKS. 1. Plain Reasons for Dissenting from the Church of England. By a true Protestant. 21st edition, published in 1727. 2. A Believer's Evidences for Heaven. 2d edition, published 1724. 3. The Protestant's Resolution. 25th edition, published in 1728. 4. Short Explanation of the Assembly's Catechism. By W. N. pastor of a Congregation at Ipswich, 1726. 5. Prelude to the Plays. 2d edition, 1729. 6. Heavenly Register, 1728. 7. Antichrist Revealed: a Sermon, 1728. 8. A Serious Call to Young Persons: a Sermon, 1729. 9. A Treatise of Temptations, 1730. 10. Compendium of the Covenants, 1731. 11. Impartial Review of Barclay's Apology, 1732. 12. A Reply to H. B.'s Vindication of Barclay, 1733. 13. Jesus Christ set forth as Wonderful, 1733. 14. The Happy Exchange, 1733. 15. Repeated Calls of Jesus Christ to Sinners, 1734. 16. Jesus Christ most Precious, 1735. 17. Everlasting Love and Delights of Jesus Christ with the Sons of Men, 1735. 18. History of Joseph, in Verse, &c. 1736. 19. Looking Glass for English Faces, 1742. 20. True Representation of Drunken1743. ness, 21. Dying Pastor's Legacy, 1744. Ovinia Insulæ. ORIGINAL ESSAYS, COMMUNICATIONS, &c. THE onus probandi, the necessity of proving their position, evidently devolves on those who deny that the apostle is speaking of himself in this chapter; for that he is, his language, by the ordinary rules of interpretation, would lead every reader to suppose; he does not give a single hint that he is personating another. It would be difficult to find any passage of the same length, where the pronoun, which is generally used to designate the person speaking or writing, is so frequently employed, And if there be any weight in the remark which has often been made, that, in the practical parts of the Scriptures, the sense which presents itself to a plain, intelligent Christian, perusing his Bible in MILES. the exercise of devotional feelings, will generally be the correct one; it will operate with all its force against those who maintain that the apostle is here speaking of the conflict which sometimes takes place, between conscience and passion, in the breasts of the unregenerate, or even of his own feelings when he was first convinced of sin; for, probably, neither of these ideas ever occurred to a plain Christian left to the reflections of his own mind, or even would occur, to the end of time. They have been devised by critics or commentators labouring to support a system. The principal argument urged by those who deny that the apostle states what was his own experience, when he wrote this chapter, is, that there are some expressions in it which could not apply to Paul in his converted state, much less amidst all the high attainments which he had realized when he wrote the passage under con 66 sideration. How, say they, could that holy, heavenly apostle, who, under the influence of the purest motives, was devoting all his energies to the service of God, exclaim, "I find then a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me." I find a law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members." "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin." How, say they, could stronger language than this be found to express the most abject slavery to moral evil? To this I would answer, in the first place, that in the same chapter there are expressions, the application of which to an unconverted person, is much more difficult to be conceived, much more obviously contrary to the statements and principles of the Bible, as well as to the experience of the people of God, than the application of the passages which have just been quoted, is to the most eminent saint on earth. How, for instance, can it be said of any unregenerate person, that he approves of the law as "holy, just, and good," or that he " delights in the law of God after the inward man ?" To delight in the law of God is, in Psalm i. 1, 2., stated as the distinguishing characteristic of the good and happy man, " Blessed is the man" whose "delight is in the law of God." Can that which is the peculiar trait of a good man's character, the very substance of his moral excellence, the great evidence that he is truly blessed, ever be found in the breast of one destitute of true love to God and, consequently, to his law? This expression, "I delight in the law of God," &c. is, it appears to me, nearly as strong as that of David, "O how love I thy law!" And yet, in the very same Psalm, he exclaims, "My soul cleaveth to the dust." "I have gone astray like a lost sheep." The persons who maintain that the 7th chapter of the Romans cannot apply to Paul because of the expressions, "I am carnal, sold under sin," &c. might with almost equal propriety assert that the passages just quoted could never have been uttered by the author of the 119th Psalm, as a part of his own experience. How, they might exclaim, could any truly pious man, especially how could the author of this psalm, which discovers piety almost seraphic, say, "My soul cleaveth to the dust ?" How could he conclude all his devout aspirations, his strong expressions of love to God, and delight in his law, with the confession, " I have gone astray like a lost sheep?" And yet he has done so. And it is plain that these words referred to his present state, for he immediately adds, "Seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy word." But we may well retort the interrogations of our opponents, and ask, how can it be asserted of the "carnal mind,” which is "enmity against God," and "is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be," that it approves of the law as holy, just, and good," that it "delights in the law after the inward man ?" If this can be asserted of the unregenerate, in even their highest attainments, when they can say, respecting all the precepts of the law, as far as external conduct is concerned, " all these have I kept from my youth up," where would be the necessity for regenerating grace? where the essential difference between the righteous and the wicked? where the propriety of the expressions, "Unless a man be born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are done away, behold! all things are become new.". This delight in the man. law of God, most certainly one of the law of God, after the inward the principal dispositions of the renewed heart, would not, according to the hypothesis which we are opposing, need renovation, since it would exist in both the regenerate and the unregenerate. The work of grace, the change which it effects, is, by God himself, called putting his law into the hearts of men, and what is this but inducing them to delight in that law? " But to advance a step farther, it is unspeakably more difficult to conceive how the carnal mind can be said to approve of the law as holy, just, and good;" and to delight in it after the inward man, than how a truly good man, how even a saint of the highest order can say, "I am carnal, sold under sin." When men are the servants of sin they are free from righteousness, but the servants of righteousness are not free from sin. An unregenerate man is entirely devoid of any principles of true piety, of any real delight in the law of God; the apostle Paul himself was not entirely free from depravity, from some degree of aversion to the law, else how could he say, "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect." "Brethren, I count not myself to have attained." And hence, writing to the Galatians, he says, in language which he evidently meant to apply to Christians in general, "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that you would." These persons had only too much cause to say that they were carnal, sold under sin. In short, there is an important sense, in which it is consistent with truth for a regenerate man to say, I am carnal, sold under sin; there is no sense in which an unregenerate man can truly say, I delight in The persons who urge the objection which we are combating, seem to forget at what the apostle was aiming at nothing less than perfection in holiness. The expressions in question do not necessarily imply living in gross vice, or habitual subjection to any depraved disposition, but an inability to obtain entire freedom from sin; and till this is acquired, moral evil holds a man in some degree in captivity; he is still in a sense sold under it. Slaves in the East Indies, we are told, are free, when compared with those in the West Indies; and yet the former are still slaves, are sold under bondage, when compared with those who are literally and completely free; so the apostle Paul was free, when compared with what he was before his conversion; he was a slave, or carnal, sold under sin, compared with what he would be in heaven. Unless we maintain that he was perfect, in the strict sense of the word, we must allow that he would at times experience deficiency and deadness of religious feelings, vain thoughts, and irregular workings of passion. And his high attainments in holiness, including acute spiritual sensibility, would cause him to feel these most keenly, and consequently might induce him to use the strong expressions in question. Can any say that the least deficiency of love to God is tor trifling to warrant such language? The thousandth part of what Pau felt of remaining depravity would doubtless cause the highest angel in heaven, if experienced by him, to exclaim, "That which I do I allow not." I am "carnal, sold under sin." The apostle had in view angelic purity, and nothing short of it could satisfy his desires, or crown his hopes. Those who deny that the apostle is here stating his own experience, maintain that he very often personates a character which does not belong to him, frequently uses the pronoun I, or we, when he does not intend to include himself. But they have not been able to produce many passages in which he has done so, and none of these few are at all similar to this. I do not scruple to assert that there is not, in all his writings, perhaps I might say there is not in the whole compass of writing, which is seriously intended for the purpose of instruction, an instance in which the apostle, or any other person, speaks of himself so often, so plainly, and pointedly, without the least hint or intimation that he is personating the character of another, and yet advances something which cannot apply to himself. Macknight refers to only one instance, Rom. xiii. 11-13. "It is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed," &c. By what laws of interpretation or criticism, or by what process of reasoning, it can be rendered even doubtful that the apostle meant to include himself in this passage, I am utterly at a loss to conceive. I should think that every person, who will seriously consider it, must see that these verses militate against the hypothesis, in support of which they are quoted by Macknight. Similar observations might be made on Rom. iii. 6; 1 Cor. x. 30; 2 Cor. iv. 16; the only passages quoted by Doddridge. In the first and last of these Paul undoubtedly meant to include himself; in 1 Cor. x. 30. he supposes that his own liberty, as readily as that of any other person, might be judged by another man's conscience. Did I not fear being tedious, I might prove at large, that the apostle is careful to show that he is speaking, when he says "I am carnal," &c., of remaining de pravity, verse 17. "Wherefore it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." The 25th verse is plainly intended to be the key to the whole statement. Besides, the same person who is said to be carnal, sold under sin, is, in the 25th verse, said to have obtained deliverance," through Jesus Christ;" and in the 2d verse of the 8th chapter, to have been made "free by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, from the law of sin and death." It deserves notice too, that many of the most pious persons that ever lived, have used the language in question, as expressive of their own experience. I have no doubt that they were uttered by them, as well as by the apostle in the first instance, as the language of a soul deeply sensible of the holiness of the Divine Being, and of its own remaining impurity; and consequently feeling a holy impatience to be completely delivered from sin. No child of God will ever be able fully to do that which he " would," till he arrive at heaven. VOLENS. ་ SEPULCHRES AND CEMETERIES. THERE can scarcely be a more emphatic illustration of man's characteristic insensibility to his nearest and most urgent interests, than the levity and negligence with which so many habitually approach the most awful and overpowering of subjects. Death and the grave are words expressive of events and circumstances so momentous, as to claim, at least, seriousness and reflection from the mind when entering on their confines; and yet these are chosen by the Jester as the objects of his shallow mirth, and by the malignant infidel as the stand whence he aims his shafts against the peace of mankind and the glory of Jehovah. There are, however, better feel ings and holier sympathies in the human heart; and, though these are pure and enlightened only when exalted and refined by the influence of Christianity, yet they exist throughout the various kindreds of the human race. The relics of mortality are contemplated with reverence; a character of sacredness invests the sepulchre; and among all the tribes which people the surface of the globe, we may trace the vestiges, or observe the recent evidences, of the religion of the grave. Were this the place for an extended dissertation, or were not the subject of too large a scope for a light and limited essay, it might be neither ungratifying nor uninstructive to investigate the various modes of funeral celebra tion, and the different forms of sepulchral memorial. A few transient sketches are all that can be attempted here. The Cavern was, if not the first, yet an early depository of the wreck of mortality. The strong expression of the Patriarch-" Give me a possession of a burying-place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight" -is the language of human feeling in all ages. Even Affection cannot endure to watch the changes of death and the progress of dissolution; but it seeks out a secure resting-place for the remains, hallowed by a thousand recollections and associations, and that timehonoured spot is marked and memorized by monumental signs, or by the conspicuous features of natural objects. When Abraham deposited the body of his longloved Sarah in the cave of Machpelah, he imitated an ancient custom, and his posterity retained it so implicitly, that where the natural excavation was not to be found, a laborious imitation was made the substitute, and the sepulchres of the wealthy and the great were hewn out of the solid rock. Such were the tombs of the Kings of Judah; and it was in this way that our Divine Master "made his grave with the rich in his death." An inscribed Column seems to have been another mode of funeral record. The " pillar" which Jacob is said to have set up over the grave of his beloved Rachel, was of uncertain form. The original word is applicable to almost any mode of structural elevation, and may have been used in designation of a single stone, a cairn, a regular pyramid, or any other of the various erections, simple or complicated, which were used, in ancient times, to signalize the spot where lay the relics of the loved, the venerated, or the dreaded. But the Greeks were accustomed to employ the truncated column (stélé) specifically as the memorial of the dead; it was a monument of this kind that attested at Thermopylæ, the devotedness of the three hundred to the laws of Sparta, and that recorded Marathon, the gratitude of Athens to the heroes of Miltiades. at These were the simpler forms of giving security from insult or injury to the honoured remains of the departed, and of transferring their memory to fame; these durable but unostentatious monuments were well suited to the expression of private grief or a nation's sorrowing admiration. But vanity and ambition sought out more imposing inventions; they called into requisition the utmost efforts of genius and labour; and endeavoured to eternize "The glory and the nothing of a name," by the proud structures of the architect, and the living imitations of the sculptor. In the earlier stages of society, the bank of turf which marked the grave of the unnoted individual, swelled into the Barrow and the Cairn over the sepulchre of the chief, and this rude memorial of departed great |