ready upon the first summons, there was freedom and firmness in all their operations. I confess 'tis as difficult for us, who date our ignorance from our first being, and were still bred up with the same infirmities about us, with which we were born, to raise our thoughts and imaginations to those intellectual perfections that attended our nature in the time of innocence; as it is for a peasant bred up in the obscurities of a cottage, to fansy in his mind the unseen splendours of a court. But by rating positives by their privatives, and other arts of reason, by which discourse supplies the want of the reports of sense, we may collect the excellency of the understanding then by the glorious remainders of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the building, by the magnificence of its ruins. All those arts, rarities, and inventions, which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the reliques of an intellect defaced with sin and time. We admire it now, only as antiquaries do a piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments, and disappearing draughts that remain upon it at present. And certainly, that must needs have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely, when old and decrepid, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise."—pp. 53–55, "We may bring anger under this head, as being, according to some, a transient hatred, or at least very like it: This also, as unruly as now it is, yet then it vented itself by the measures of reason. There was no such thing as the transports of malice, or the violences of revenge; no rendring evil for evil, when evil was truly a non-entity, and no where to be found. Anger then was like the sword of justice, keen, but innocent and righteous. It did not act like fury, and then call itself zeal. It always espoused God's honour, and never kindled upon any thing but in order to a sacrifice. It sparkled like the coal upon the altar, with the fervours of piety, the heats of devotion, the sallies and vibrations of an harmless activity. In the next place, for the lightsome passion of joy. It was not that, which now often usurps this name; that trivial, vanishing, superficial thing, that only gilds the apprehension, and plays upon the surface of the soul, It was not the meer crackling of thorns, a sudden blaze of the spirits, the exultation of a tickled fancy, or a pleased appetite. Joy was then a masculine and a severe thing; the recreation of the udgment, the jubilee of reason. It was the result of a real good suitably applied. It commenced upon the solidities of truth, and the substance of fruition. It did not run out in voice, or undecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe, silently and without noise. It was refreshing, but composed; like the pleasantness of youth tempered with with the gravity of age or the mirth of a festival managed with the silence of contemplation."pp. 64-66. "Love is the great instrument and engine of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spring and spirit of the universe. Love is such an affection, as cannot so properly be said to be in the soul, as the soul to be in that. It is the whole man wrapt up into one desire, all the powers, vigour, and faculties of the soul, abridged into one inclination. And it is of that active restless nature, that it must of necessity exert itself; and like the fire, to which it is so often compared, it is not a free agent to chuse whether it will heat or no, but it streams forth by natural results, and unavoidable emanations. So that it will fasten upon an inferiour, unsuitable object, rather than none at all. The soul may sooner leave off to subsist, than to love; and like the vine it withers and dies, if it has nothing to embrace. Now this affection in the state of innocence was happily pitched upon its right object: it flamed up in direct fervours of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbour. It was not then only another and more cleanly name for lust. It had represent and deserve hell. none of those impure heats, that both It was a vestal and a virgin-fire, and differed as much from that, which usually passes by this name now-a-days, as the vital heat from the burning of a fever."—pp. 63, 64. With all South's professed abhorrence of puritanism, he had studied deeply in its school, and was indebted to it for his doctrinal creed. He was decidedly evangelical, notwithstanding a few unguarded passages. He avows his belief of imputed righteousness, and though he disapproved the politics and the discipline of Geneva, he cordially approved the Calvinistic interpretation of Scripture. "Such a frame of spirit, such a perceiving heart as enables the soul to apprehend and improve the means of grace, is totally and entirely the free gift of God. Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive. It is a product of that mercy which has no argument but itself. "I say it is a free gift, and that, 1. In. respect of the motive, which is the mere compassion of God; there is nothing in man that could engage God to bestow grace upon him. We are by nature wholly in a state of sin and enmity against God; and how these qualifications should merit grace at his hands, I know not, unless by an unheard-of strange antiperistasis, the most hateful object should excite an act of the greatest love. 2. It is free in respect of the persons upon whom it is conferred. When God comes first to work upon us, we are presented to him in the lump, all equally odious, equally desirable. And that God gives grace to one, and denies it to another, it is not from any precedent difference in them; for it is only the gift and grace of God which makes them to differ. But as God's decree in chusing Jacob, and rejecting Esau, is most free and without relation to any good or evil done by them; so the execution of that decree in conferring grace upon one, and withholding it from the other, is equally free and irrespective."-Vol. viii. pp. 369, 370. When he dismisses the prejudices which clouded his better faculties, and addresses himself in earnest to the great business of his office, he is often admirably cogent and comprehensive. The following forcible passage is from a powerful sermon on the words Be sure your sin will find you out. "God has annexed two great evils to every sin, in opposition to the pleasure and profit of it; to wit, shame and pain. He has by an eternal and most righteous decree, made these two the inseparabie effects and consequents of sin. They are the wages assigned it by the laws of heaven; so that whosoever commits it, ought to account shame and punishment to belong to him as his rightful inheritance. For it is God who has joined them together by an irreversible sentence; and it is not in the power or art of man to put them asunder. And now, as God has made these two evils, the sure consequents of sin, so there is nothing which the nature of man does so peculiarly dread and abhorr, as these, they being indeed the most directly and absolutely destructive of all its enjoyments; forasmuch as they reach and confound it in the adequate subject of enjoyment, the soul and body; shame being properly the torment of the one, and pain of the other. For the mind of man can have no taste or relish of any pleasure in the world, while it is actually oppressed and overwhelmed with shame, nothing does so keenly and intolerably affect the soul as infamy; it drinks up, and consumes the quickness, the gayety, and activity of the spirits. It dejects the countenance made by God himself to look upwards; so that this noble creature, the master-piece of the creation, dares not so much as lift up either his head or his thoughts; but it is a vexation to him even to look upon others, and yet a greater to be looked upon by them. And as shame thus mortifies the soul, so pain or punishment (the other twin-effect of sin,) equally harasses the body. We know how much misery pain is able to bring upon the body in this life; (in which our pains and pleasures, as well as other things are but imperfect,) there being never a limb or part; never a vein or artery of the body, but it is the scene and receptacle of pain, whensoever it shall please God to unfence it, and let in some sharp disease or distemper upon it. And so exceedingly afflictive are these bodily griefs, that there is nothing which affects the body in the way of pleasure, in any degree the way of pain. For is there any pleacomparable to that which affects it in sure in nature, which equals the impressions of the gout, the stone, or even of the tooth-ake itself? But then further, which we have here mentioned, and a when we shall consider that the pains great many more, are but the preludiums, the first-fruits and beginnings of that pain, which shall be infinitely advanced, and finally compleated in the torments of another world, when the body shall descend into a bed of fire and brimstone, and be lodged for ever in the burning furnace of an Almighty wrath. This consideration surely will, or ought to satisfy us, that God will not be behindhand with the sinner in point of punishment, whatsoever promises his sin may have made him in point of pleasure."pp. 142-145. The nature of spiritual discernment is interestingly illustrated in his sermon on Deut. xxix. 4. "To have a perceiving heart and an hearing ear, is to have a spiritual light begot in the mind, by an immediate over-powering work of the spirit, whereby alone the soul is enabled to apprehend and discern the things of God spiritually, and to practise them effectually and without this, we may see and see, and never perceive; and hear again and again, and never understand. Christ may discourse with us as he did with those two disciples going to Emmaus, and in the mean time our eyes may be so held, as not to discern him. For as the Apostle says, The natural man cannot apprehend these things, because they are spiritually discerned. And the reason of this is clear, even from nature; because in order to apprehension, there must be a peculiar suitableness between the object and the faculty. Things sensible must be apprehended by sense; things intelligible, by the understanding and the reason; and so things spiritual, by some spiritual principle that is infused into the soul from above. And look, as the inferior faculty cannot apprehend the proper formal objects of the superior, sense cannot reach up to the things of reason; so neither can reason take in or perceive those objects which properly belong to this spiritual principle. Hence it is, that some souls can discern that spiritual secret, persuading force in the word, that shall strongly engage and almost constrain the affections to embrace and follow it: so that the whole man is insensibly fashioned and moulded into it, while others, void of this spiritual discerning faculty, feel no such force and power in it. Some also, from the help of this, spy out that true loveliness and beauty in the ways of God, as to enamour them to a practice of them, and that even with delight: while others, void of this power, do indeed see and behold those ways, but see no beauty in them, why they should desire them. Hence two sit together, and hear the same sermon; one finds an hidden spiritual virtue in the word, by which he lives, and grows, and thrives: another finds no such extraordinary virtue in it, but if it be rationally and well composed, it pleases his reason, and there's an end, And this proceeds from the want of a spiritual perceiving heart. As for instance, whence is it that a man is so affected with musick, that all the passions of his mind, and blood in his body, is moved at the hearing of it; and the stupid brutes not at all pleased? but because in man there is a principle of reason concurring with his sense, which discovers that sweetness and harmony, in those sounds that bare sense is not able to discern. Thus it is proportionably between mere reason and reason joined with a spiritual discernment, in respect of spiritual things. And so I have endeavoured in some measure to display the nature of a perceiving heart, and an hearing ear. But the truth is, when we have spoken the utmost concerning it that we can, yet those only can know what it is who have it; as he only knows what it is to see, who can see. As the groans, so also the graces of the spirit are unutterable. Grace is known by its own evidence. It is the white stone shining to him only that does possess it; for a man is no more able to express this work, so as to convey a full notion of it to the mind of him that has it not, than by words and discourse to convey an idea of colours to him who was born blind, or the proper relish of meats to him who has no taste." -Vol.viii. pp. 375-377. South is frequently very impressive in his exordium, and the citation which follows is, we think, an illustration of a very effective manner of exciting attention to the matter of a discourse. It is the commencement of his sermon on John vii. 17. The "When God was pleased to newmodel the world by the introduction of a new religion, and that in the room of one set up by himself, it was requisite, that he should recommend it to the reasons of men with the same authority and evidence, that enforced the former; and that a religion established by God himself should not be displaced by any thing under a demonstration of that Divine Power that first introduced it. And the whole Jewish œconomy, we know, was brought in with miracles; the law was writ and confirmed by the same almighty hand. The whole universe was subservient to its promulgation. signs of Egypt and the Red Sea; fire and a voice from heaven; the heights of the one, and the depths of the other; so that (as it were) from the top to the bottom of nature there issued forth one universal united testimony of the divinity of the Mosaick law and religion. And this stood in the world for the space of two thousand years; till at length, in the fulness of time, the reason of men ripening to such a pitch, as to be above the pædagogy of Moses's rod, and the discipline of types, God thought fit to display the substance without the shadow, and to read the world a lecture of an higher, and more sublime religion in Christianity. But the Jewish was yet in possession, and therefore that this might so enter as not to intrude, it was to bring its warrant from the same hand of Omnipotence. And for this cause, Christ, that he might not make either a suspected, or precarious address to men's understandings, out-does Moses, before he displaces him; shews an ascendant spirit above him, raises the dead, and cures more plagues, than he brought upon Egypt, casts out devils, and heals the deaf, speaking such words, as even gave ears to hear them; cures the blind and the lame, and makes the very dumb to speak for the truth of his doctrine. But what was the result of all this? Why some look upon him as an impostor, and a conjurer, as an agent for Beelzebub, and therefore reject his gospel, hold fast their law, and will not let Moses give place to the magician.”— Vol. i. pp. 214-216. We shall finish our specimens by the insertion of two or three extracts on miscellaneous subjects. "Contempt is a noble and an innocent revenge, and silence the fullest expression of it. Except only storms and tempests, the great things of the world are seldom loud. Tumult and noise usually arise from the conflict of contrary things in a narrow passage; and just so does the loudness of wrath and reviling argue a contracted breast: such an one, as has not room enough to wield and manage its own actions with stillness and com posure. "What a noise and a buz does the pitiful little gnat make, and how sharply does it sting! while the eagle passes the air in silence, and never descends but to a noble and an equal prey. He therefore that thinks he shows any nobleness, or height of mind, by a scurrilous reply to a scurrilous provocation, measures himself by a false standard, and acts not the spirit of a man, but the spleen of a wasp."-Vol. viii. pp. 202. in any "Diligence is the great harbinger of truth; which rarely takes up mind, till that has gone before, and made room for it. It is a steddy, constant, and pertinacious study, that naturally leads the soul into the knowledge of that, which at first seemed locked up from it. For this keeps the understanding long in converse with an object; and long converse brings acquaintance. Frequent consideration of a thing wears off the strangeness of it; and shews it in its several lights, and various ways of appearance to the view of the mind. "Truth is a great strong-hold, barred and fortified by God and nature; and diligence is properly the understanding's laying siege to it: so that, as in a kind of warfare, it must be perpetually upon the watch; observing all the avenues and passes to it, and accordingly making its approaches. Sometimes it thinks it gains a point; and presently again, it finds itself baffled and beaten off: yet still it renews the onset; attacks the diffi culty afresh; plants this reasoning, and that argument, this consequence, and that distinction, like so many intellectual batteries, till at length it forces a way and passage into the obstinate enclosed truth, that so long withstood, and defied all its assaults."-Vol. i. p. 239, 240. We have been led somewhat aside from the course which we had originally intended to pursue in the management of this article, and we regret, now that it is too late to rectify it, this departure from our first plan. There is a great deal in South that would have given us an opportunity of meeting him on several important points. His assaults on individual characters among the puritans, his coarse and splenetic abuse of the board of " Triers," the peculiar malignity of his personalities, as when, alluding to the "sightless eye-balls" of Milton, he calls him a "blind adder," would have enabled us to direct attention to many interesting circumstances connected with the history of his times. We find, however, on looking back, that our common habits of criticism have run away with us, and that instead of making South's sermons furnish text for our own comment, we have treated him with a fairness very much in opposition to his own practices, and given him large opportunities of speaking for himself. We are not unwilling that the article should stand in its present form, as furnishing our readers with the means of forming a correct estimate of the qualities of an exceedingly able, eccentric, and foul-mouthed man. We had intended to give a sketch of the life of South, but we have reached our limits, and we feel the less regret, since we have nothing to add to the information contained in the common biographical collections. He was born at Hackney in 1633, and, he died in 1716. ANALYTICAL AND CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. ་་་་་་་་་་་་་ By Private Thoughts on Religion. the Rev. Thomas Adam, late Rector of Wintringham. With an introductory Essay, by the Rev. Daniel Wilson, A. M. 12mo. pp. 300. Price 38. - London: Whitaker, 1823. THIS work has long been a prime favourite with us, and we are exceedingly glad to meet with it in this well-edited form. Mr. Adam was a man of vigorous understanding, a Christian of no common cast, and the traces of this advantageous combination present themselves in every page of his "Private Thoughts." They are rich in Gospel knowledge and religious experience, they analyse the heart of mah with extraordinary severity and depth, and they are remarkable for their faithful and forcible representations of human depravity, and the entire dependence of an erring and helpless creature upon divine interference, for the origination and maintenance of spiritual life. They are the genuine expressions of a mind dealing fairly with itself, and anxious above all things to be kept from self-deception, and they will amply repay the close and continued attention of every man who is seriously engaged in working out his own salvation in humble dependence on Him who alone can enable us both to will and to perform. Some things there are which are objectionable, and others which might have been more advantageously stated, but, as a whole, such, to our taste, is the excellence of this collection, that we place it among those few works which we take up the most frequently, and lay aside the most reluctantly. Some of the defects, as well as some of the more attractive qualities, of these "Thoughts," arise from the fact that they were strictly "private." They were written down in" a kind of diary," as they occurred to his mind throughout a space of thirty years, and they were selected by his surviving friends from the general mass of his papers. Had he lived to superintend the publication, they would have gained something, probably, in point of correctness, but they might also have lost a portion of the freshness and raciness with which they now appear. Mr. Wilson, with whose estimate, excepting in this particular, we entirely agree, seems to deny "force" to the style in which they are written; we should, on the contrary, place among the characteristics of their composition, a if not force itself, have all its effect. closeness and an intensity which, We shall give a few specimens casually taken. "For a great part of my life, I did not know that I was poor, and naked, and blind, and miserable. I have known it for some time without feeling it. Thank God, I now begin to be pinched with it. Stand aside, Pride, for a moment, and let me see that ugly thing— myself." "The dreadful and ever-memorable It is man, and not God, that throws nature into convulsions. O my soul, art thou an earthshaker?" earthquake at Lisbon! "Reading is for the most part only a more refined species of sensuality, and answers man's purpose of shuffling off his great work with God and with himself, as well as a ball or masquerade." "The spirit's coming into the heart, is the touch of Ithureal's spear, and it starts up a devil." "A work of grace is carried on in the way of our own thoughts, and with the consent of the will; but this concurrence does not effect the work, and is no more a proof of self-power, than the earth's fertility, which is wholly owing to a blessing from the clouds." "Begin the Christian race from the cross, and whenever you faint or grow weary look back to it." "In heaven, sin known and pardoned is the song of praise; sin known and unpardoned is hell." It is justly said by Mr. Wilson, that "Such a writer as Mr. Adam takes us out of our ordinary track of reading and reflection, and shews us ourselves. He scrutinizes the whole soul; dissipates the false glare which is apt to mislead |