partly false, will depend on the nature of the errors; and lastly, that the leading ideas which will take philosophers by the shortest and most infallible cut to all truths, physical or metaphysical, are latent in the Scriptures, if philosophers have but religion enough to find them out. All the great discoveries of speculative men have been made by first taking some theory of a very high and general nature, closely connected with the na ture of Almighty God.' This being the case, as it has fared with speculative men in time past, we must expect that it will 'fare with them in time to come. If there ever was philosopher,

whose course was likely to have coincided with the above assertion, it was Kepler. But we shall see, notwithstanding, that he has declared that any religious theory would have led him, not to, but from, his discovery of the Elliptical Orbits. His great contemporary, Galileo, was the head of an opposite school. He is generally understood to have been a speculative man, and to have made some discoveries; and he has recorded his opinion not merely against religious theories, but against all suppositions of preconceived relations. Men ignorant of geometry might perhaps lament that the circumference of a circle does not happen to be three times the diameter, or in some other assignable pro'portion to it, rather than such that we have not yet been able to explain what the ratio between them is. We are at a loss which to admire most, Mr Sewell's recklessness in stating principles, or in stating facts.

The question, so put, resembles a question of cause and effect, more than an ordinary case of analogy. To take first the persons of no religion. From what has been said above, it would not appear to signify much, on what subject they employed themselves. Being by the supposition no more rational than somnambulists, they must employ themselves equally in vain on

all. In another place, however, it is suggested, that a sepa'ration between the Athanasian creed and the discoveries of our human philosophy' must operate much more injuriously in our researches into the mind of man, than into the world of matter. If any inconsistency in such a writer could surprise us, it would be surprising to be told, immediately after this, that the effect of a want of knowledge of some infinite good being' was (not the stultifying of Aristotle and Plato, or the confining their contemplations to the material world, but) that of compelling the 'highest Greek philosophy to throw all its energies into purely 'metaphysical speculations.'

The Hindoos seem to have been worse off with their religion than they would have been with a religion which is treated in the last paragraph as equivalent to none at all. As Mr Sewell's

VOL. LXXVI. NO. CLIV.

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style of philosophizing might lead us to expect, learned Bramins would have as much difficulty in recognizing their mythology and Avatars in the following description, as in subscribing to the supposed effects:- The doctrine of the unity of the Di'vine Being, exclusive of all plurality, and of the purely spiritual nature of God, unconnected with the doctrine of the In'carnation, crushed in the East all science whatever.' The reproach of the East in this place agrees but ill with the panegyric on it in another, where its learning is said to have stood like a gigantic temple on the solid foundations of antiquity-in which Plato acquired the best part of his knowledge, and in which the light of God's primitive revelations was kept alive.

But, at other times, and with other people, marvellous effects are attributed unconditionally to the simple doctrine of the unity of the Divine Being. For instance, it is said to have led to the truest ancient astronomy-and to have suggested, that the heavenly bodies were globular, and moved in circular orbits! Kepler, on the contrary, submitted his own marvellous imagination so far to facts, as to see in this supposed suggestion, the origin not of truth but error. If planets were carried round by angels, (he says) their orbits would be perfectly circular; but the elliptic form, in which we find them, smacks rather of the lever and ' material necessity.' Mr Sewell adds, that if the framers of this system had but believed in an author of evil, and in his final subjugation, as well as in an author of good, they might not have left it to modern astronomers to discover, that the mechanism of the heavens was full of disturbing forces, and nevertheless its regularity was faithfully maintained ! In the same manner, Newton's discoveries are stated to have been owing to his belief in the unity of the Divine Being. The same line of thought would suggest the undulating theory of light; the whole theory of vegetable bodies as analogical to those of animals; the identity of electricity and lightning; the ' application of steam to navigation; the discovery of the New • World.' It is easy to assert, that the unity of the Divine Being would suggest all these wonders. To make out the several steps, by which the supposed suggestion would work out its way, is not merely difficult, but impossible. If all that is meant by a belief in the unity of the Divine Being, is a belief in the uniformity of the laws of matter, atheists might make experiments, and might reason (and were just as likely to do so) on that belief. But Mr Sewell's argument requires more than a mere possibility of suggestion. It should have been shown that the doctrine of the unity of the Divine Being, or some equivalent theological tenet, did in fact suggest these different discoveries. If it did not, we

must suppose them to have been made by accident; seeing Mr Sewell has before informed us that all discoveries must be made by accident, or by the means of a religious creed.

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The discoveries of modern chemistry are mentioned as being among those lucky accidents, which modern science insists on calling discoveries by experiment. Mr Sewell takes as an instance of this perverseness, the principle of definite proportions.' This, he says, is, in other words, only the Pythagorean theory, that the world was formed by Numbers. Supposing the discovery to have been made by one of these experimental accidents, Mr Sewell is of opinion that the more natural and simple way would have been to have had recourse to one of his theories of a high and general nature connected with the nature of Almighty God. Mr Dalton should have gone at once either with Pythagoras to the ancient traditions of a revelation which 'invested numbers with a mysterious character, and which traced up their various combinations to one primitive root-the num"ber three; and that to a still prior root of unity, which nevertheless could not be conceived to exist without the other;' or he should have taken example from the ancient fathers who 'made use of the same mystery as enunciated in Scripture, for their interpretation of the innumerable passages in Scripture, where numbers are introduced.' Men of science, we apprehend, have shown more wisdom in taking a warning, in the oppo site direction, from the seventeen years which Kepler wasted in these bewildering mazes. Mr Sewell nevertheless expects (and his book abounds in passages, which prove how strongly the association is bound up with all his philosophical hopes,) that the mysterious numbers of the Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity, are incorporate with all knowledge. Perhaps the

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book of nature may be like the book of the gospel, and con'tain a whole world of enigmas only to be opened by this 'key.' With this view, Mr Sewell notices the deficiencies' of Logic and of modern Physics, as sciences of classification. He observes, that if the recent theory of what is called circular arrangement-classes entering into classes, one within the other, vegetable, animal, and mineral-should, as is probable, change the face of natural history, it must modify the process of syllo'gism also.' Now, on what is founded the probability that the new theory of circular arrangement will turn out true? On the fact, that the former theory did not correspond with the form ' of the Divine Nature as laid down by the church:' and, on the fact, that the name of circulation' was the name given to 'the true Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity, when it became necessary to state it formally, in order to contradict the very

same principle of classification and subordination, which a " logical Arianism endeavoured to introduce.'

Many very religious men have been materialists. They would be astounded at hearing, that the miracle of the Incarnation (Perfect God and Perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human. flesh subsisting,') was considered to be a conclusive argument against them; whereas, they might to the full as reasonably aver, that the distinction implied in the above passage between the Man-God and ordinary man, was a conclusive argument in favour of their opinion.

The assumption, that all creation is a shadow and revelation of God himself, is connected with the inference that, in that case, even brute matter may bear on it an inscription recording the mysteries of his nature. Dr Buckland, accordingly, must begin the world anew. I believe, then, that a geologist, deeply 'impressed with the mystery of baptism-that mystery by ' which a 6 new creature' is formed by means of water and 'fire'-(how fire in baptism?) would never have fallen into the absurdities of accounting for the formation of the globe solely by water, or solely by fire. He would not have maintained either a Vulcanian or a Neptunian theory. He would have suspected, as most men now suspect, that the truth lay in the union of both. And in conceiving a typical connexion between the material earth and the spiritual church, he would have been justified by the whole tenor of Scripture.' Can any thing be madder than this ?-except what follows. For, in like manner, geologists, zoologists, and mathematicians, must take up the Cross with them in their studies. I believe that a spiritualized eye, seeing all the human race shut up in the per'son of our Lord, having before it always the figure in which it 'pleased Almighty God to place him before us on the Cross, might expect to find a similar figure-the figure of the Cross-placed here and there all over the work of creation; as a religious spirit. in better days than the present erected that Cross on high, where' ever a human foot might be arrested by it; and as the ancient 'fathers detected it in the most hidden allusions of Scripture :Moses stretching out his hands to the Amalekites-his rodthe branch which he threw into the bitter waters-the wood of ' the Ark—the tree of life. In every animal and material nature 'he would expect to discern the figure of a cross; and he would not be surprized to find that all mathematical figures were reducible to this element; or, as modern anatomists have suggsted, that the whole animal world is framed upon this type-a cen'tral column with lateral processes. It is one of the grand spe⚫culations of zoological science.'

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So, Oxford philologists are tutored to look on language (not merely on Greek, which, we are told, was formed for Christianity, and Latin, which was maintained by Popery, but on all language, from Sanscrit to Cherokee,) with the deepest reverence. They are not to permit themselves to dream of its being an invention of man, weighing carefully the mysterious title of 'the Word given to our Lord.'

The application of this kind of reasoning to the affairs of civil life is as easy as putting on a glove. While we are disputing what proportion of the property of the country may be necessary to maintain the poor, the clergy, and the temples of God, we have forgotten the doctrine of revelation upon this subject. Would it be fanciful to suppose that a tenth might probably be 'the amount?' Does Mr Sewell mean that he would recommend the adoption of the Jewish law of tythe throughout? Does he know what it really was? And, if the law of tythe, we should like to know, what one point our return to the Mosaic dispensation is to stop at, rather than another. The mistake of the French Revolutionists in serting apart the tenth day for rest, in place of the seventh. was set right it seems by the nature of things, as well as by the fourth commandment. They were compelled to re'turn to a seventh: because (?) human nature it was found could not labour for a longer term together.'

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Among our scientific desiderata, it is supposed that we are in want of a model by which we may explain the organization of the human body, and the theory of vegetation. Such a model, it is assumed, is to be found in a perfect ecclesiastical polity modelled after the pattern seen on the Mount.' In explanation of this, we are gravely asked, if we have not near us a body and a tree 'full formed with all its organs more perfectly developed, written in larger letters, and of which we know that man's body and the 'tree are but the types and symbols?' It the church be really any such tree and body, it is no wonder that Mr Sewell and his friends attach immeasurable importance to questions of church government. In Mr Sewell's unparalleled jargon, the problem of reconciling plurality with unity' is constantly recurring in all questions, ecclesiastical and temporal. It is solved in the following manner; Let each insulated fact be made the type and representation of one common principle, and at once they fall into unity, however diversified in their accidental circumstances. Thus in the Scrip'tures, as was said before, the Cross of Christ is seen in the tree of life, in the wood of the sacrifice laid on the shoulders of Isaac, in the rod of Moses, in the pole on which the serpent hung, in the staff of David, in the wood of the ark, in the bough 'thrown into the bitter waters. So the mystery of Baptism is