neral remarks. The first volume contains twelve, and the second fourteen discourses. The first sermon was delivered before the University of Cambridge, on January 30, 1807. It is from Isaiah xxvi. 8, 9*. The design of it is to shew, that, in point of fact, nations, when in prosperity, ordinarily forget God, and are only awakened to serious consideration by afflictive visitations. The first branch of this subject, the Dean illustrates by a review of our national history, and more especially of the blessings of the Reformation, which, though they were interrupt ed for a time, are still continued to us, accompanied by numerous other benefits of Almighty God. This course of prosperity has been attended with a corruption of our manners, of our religious opinions, and of our religious practice, spring ing from a gradual neglect of the pure doctrines of the Reformation, and accompanied with a most dangerous lukewarmness on the subject of Popery. Under the second head t, the Dean proceeds to shew, that our nation is under the Divine chastisements, and should therefore learn righteousness. He describes that critical moment between the Divine forbearance and the execution of deserved punishment, when God waits, as it were, to see whether we will turn to him: he then urges us to a renewed attention to the principles of the Reformation; and concludes with a just panegyric on our late venerated Sovereign, The editor should have united the two verses as the text, and omitted the words, "And in the next verse the prophet adds." Nothing can be more auk ward than the way in which they now stand. The editor has allowed this second division of the argument, which is exactlysixteen printed pages from the close, to begin with the words, "To conclude;" probably inserted by the Dean in the hurry of writing, and when he was not aware to what a length his observations would still proceed. CHRIST. OBSERV. No, 229. The whole discourse is striking and energetic, though exceedingly desultory and ill arranged. The generaleffect must, however, have been, as we conceive, very powerful on the learned audience towhich it was addressed. The following passage contains his opinion on the decline from the doctrines of our Reformers which has taken place in this country; and it is delivered with great force. "Modern historians and political their praises of the Reformation from writers have been copious and loud in Popery; but it is very plain that the thing these writers are chiefly in love with is merely the civil liberty of the Reformation, which was indeed one blessed effect, but by no means the most important effect, of our emancipation from papal despotism. The revival of pure Christianity, which took place at the Reformation, is what forms the boast of that glorious era; and I am deeply something like another revival of the and awfully convinced, that, unless same spirit should again manifest itself among us, we shall, in no great length of time, be found to have let go the substance, and retained only the shadow of Protestantism. "I can have no fear of incurring a charge either of ignorance or temerity when I only repeat in substance what of late years has been frequently much more than intimated from the first épisdom, and knowledge in the Scriptures copal authority (if learning and wisand in the history of the church, be any foundation for authority), that in too many instances even the clergy of the Establishment have materially deviated from the natural, unsophisticated meaning of the Articles and Homilies of the Church of England; that they have, in fact, preached too much from Socrates and Seneca, and too little from Christ and his everlasting Gospel; that the reading-desk and pulpit have often been at variance; and that, instead of pressing upon the conscience, with energy, the great and peculiar doctrines of the Gospel-such as the doctrines of original sin, justification by faith, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit-there has been, in many cases, substituted in their place, little more than a vain system of frigid ethics, accommodated to the pride and blindness of human reason. My G own little experience entirely accords with the admonitions of this learned prelate, now no more; and with him I further believe, that the doctrine of justification by faith, as stated in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth Articles of our Church, is the very cornerstone of the whole system of the first Reformers. It was the doctrine both of Luther and Calvin, and of Philip Melanc thon, and, lastly, it was the doctrine of the whole college of Apostles. "How far, in the distant periods of the Puritanical excesses, this fundamental doctrine was by some hypocrites perverted to wicked purposes (as the very best things are ever liable to abuse), or how far, in modern times, some fanatical and illiterate itinerant teachers have given just occasion to Autinomiau interpretations of the same thing, I will not take upon me to decide; but I have no doubt, that in the anxiety to resist and expose the dangers of Antinomianism, many, of late years, actuated by more zeal than knowledge, have mutilated the whole Gospel-system, totally destroyed the analogy of faith, and expressed themselves in such a way as scarcely to have kept clear of the grossest errors of the Pelagian heresy." pp. 22—25. His peroration on this branch of His peroration on this branch of his argument warms into genuine eloquence. "It is on this account that I would to God the true nature of the Protestant Reformation were better understood, and particularly in the grand article respecting faith and works: for then the doctrinal Articles of our own Church, which are in perfect harmony with the sentiments of the best and wisest Reformers, would soon be better understood likewise; controversies con cerning their meaning would vanish apace; the well-disposed, who had been educated in unfavourable circumstances, would be delivered from darkness into a marvellous light, and would receive the truth with a godly joy and thankfulness. This would be the cure of every unhappy departure from the Protestant faith: this would be the revival of Christian principles: this would put an end to unlearned and injudicious declamation against Methodism, for Methodism would scarcely exist. It would soon be found, that neither illite. rate enthusiasts, who by coarse allusions and intemperate language often, with the very best meanings, burlesque the most momentous doctrines; nor conceit. ed philosophers of modern times, who, like their ancient brethren, can never relieve the horrors of a guilty conscience, nor make the wicked man turn away from his wickedness, by their insipid harangues on candour and humanity;-it would soon be found, that neither open enemies, nor false friends, nor deluded brethren, could make much stand against the glorious and salutary truths of the Gospel, delivered by those properly commissioned to deliver them, with wisdom, animation, and affection. Then would our prayers be offered up not merely with the lips in the name of Jesus, but from the heart delivered up to its Redeemer and Sanctifier." pp. 28, 29. The review of the history of the Great Rebellion, and that of the Catholic Question, are too long to be extracted. We doubt, also, whether the peculiar veneration of the Dean for the cause of our Reformers may not have led him to speak in somewhat too unqualified terms on the subject of Popery. At all events, we are deeply persuaded that a temper of love and charity, rather than one of irritation and hostility, is the disposition called for in the present times. We enter not on the question of political enactmentsthese may be fair points of discussion-but we do say, that three centuries of angry debate have made comparatively little impression on the corrupt system of the popish hierarchy. The course of controversy was perhaps necessary, when we were first coming out from the Romish pale, in order to establish the truth, to justify our secession, to gain friends, and, we may add, to save souls. It might also be further necessary, so long as the Protestant cause was weak, and we were in danger from the political designs of Catholic pretenders. But now all danger of this kind has vanished: the chief enemies with which we have to contend are ra ther scepticism and infidelity: the battle we have to fight is for Christianity itself and its institutions; or, if we have cause to dread the influ ence of Popery, it is rather as its spirit is at work within the church, than as it threatens us from without. It seems, therefore, expedient that the arms with which we combat the popish system should be henceforth as much as possible those of peace and love, of conciliation and kindness. We have tried the effect of contention and severity, and found them unavailing to any purposes of conversion: let us now try more Christian methods of winning them to the truth. We mean not that we should lessen our due vigilance against the arts of the adherents of the Church of Rome, or that we should discourage discreet and manly controversy where it has the reasonable prospect of doing good-much less that we should relax in our altachment to the doctrines of the Reformation, and in our abhorrence of the false and fatal tenets which are opposed to it; but we do mean that we should prefer the quiet and peaceful diffusion of truth to mere irritating attacks against error, and to the imputation of principles and motives which must be felt by every Catholic as a personal wrong. We infinitely prefer the silent argument of the Bible Society, and the tranquil and conciliatory but most efficacious piety intwined around it, to all the hostile array of open defiance, and bitter reproach, and insulting denunciation. And we observe that the reports of all the best informed and most devout Englishmen, who have visited the chief Roman Catholic states, concur in shewing, that nothing is found so rapidly to subdue the mighty errors of that superstitious form of Christianity, as the sacred but noiseless influence of scriptural light. When, moreover, we consider how we are assailed by the evils of blasphemy and infidelity, of in subordination and contempt of all piety and virtue, and by the insidious and multiform arts of Unitarians, we certainly are not disposed to regard Popery as the only enemy which we have to fear, or to oppose it with an animosity which will inevitably strengthen the forces of adversaries so much more deadly. The second discourse in this volume is on the duty of observing the Sabbath, from Mark ii. 27, 28. It is a calm and striking statement of this obligation, and will afford much satisfaction to all who will read it with a candid recollection of the various extenuating circumstances we have mentioned as calculated to disarm the severity of criticism. Indeed, it is impossible not to be struck with our author's effective grasp of his subject; with his vigorous, though certainly careless, style; and with the familiarity, and yet the force, of his address. Dean, in this sermon, first considers "the Scripture-history and doctrine of the great duty of observing the Sabbath;" and, 2dly, enforces "the duty in a practical manner." We cannot afford space to follow his argument, but must confine ourselves to a few quotations. The He views the notion, that the record of the institution of the Sabbath in the book of Genesis was only an anticipation of its institution under the Law, as altogether unfounded. "There is not a syllable said to give countenance to it. And I could just as soon believe that the world was not created according to the Bible-narrative, or that the sun did not shine as soon as it was made, as that the seventh day was not sanctified for the use of man. From the moment that there was a man upon earth, it was the will of God that a seventh part of his time should be immediately consecrated to His service." p. 57. The mean selfishness of those who would add the seventh day to the other six appointed for labour, in order to increase their gains, is strikingly rebuked at p. 62; but the chief attraction of this discourse is in the answer he gives to the objection, drawn from the change of the Sabbath, under the Christian dispensation, from the seventh to the first day of the week. He begins by stating it to be clear that God sanctified the seventh day immediately after the creation, and before the Jewish or any other dispensation had taken place. Man was then innocent; and though after his fall he might not employ it as he ought, yet there can be little doubt that he would still feel his obligation to observe it, as resulting from his relation to his Creator. The next mention of the Sabbath is in Exodus xvi. before the Law was given. Here all that can with certainty be collected on the subject of this particular day is, that the Israelites were to gather manna six days, and make a Sabbath of the seventh. "Nothing can be more uncertain, than any opinion which we may attempt to form, whether the Israelites, before their bondage in Egypt, had preserved an uniform and regular account of the first day of the week, reckoning from the creation of the world; or rather, the thing appears to be extremely improbable. And in regard to their keeping such an account during their bondage in Egypt, there is almost positive proof that they had absolutely lost the weekly reckoning. Not only the circumstances of their bondage, consisting in harsh treatment and in compulsion to labour, but the long absence of Moses in Midian, and the want of all religious observances, exclude the probability of the Sabbath being kept up among them while they remained in that idolatrous country.' pp. 66, 67. The revival of the Sabbath by Moses is distinctly stated in Deut. v. 15. to have been in commemoration of the deliverance from Egypt. The ancient Sabbath could scarcely have been kept during the captivity; and thus the precise number of days and weeks since the creation, must have been lost, although the proportion which the resting ought to bear to the working days would be known and remembered. Moses, therefore, when he restored the long-forgotten day of rest, appears to have reckoned from the day of the de liverance from Egypt. The terms of the Fourth Commandment itself, our author argues, harmonize with this view of the subject. "The Jews could never have deter mined from the Fourth Commandment be kept. It says, Six days shalt thou on what day their first Sabbath was to labour, and on the seventh thou shalt rest: which implies no more than that, after six days' labour, the seventh was to be a day of rest, and to be kept holy. Therefore I maintain, that in the sense of the Fourth Commandment, the Christian Sabbath is as much the seventh day as the Jewish Sabbath was the seventh day. It is kept after six days' day, reckoning from the beginning of labour, as that was; and it is the seventh our first working day, as well as their Sabbath was the seventh day, reckoning from the beginning of their first working day. "Moreover, the reason given in the Fourth Commandment why there should be six working days and then a resting day, is a reason which remains in full force under the Christian dispensation; namely, because God himself set the example of working six days in the creation of the world, and then resting on the seventh day. It is in the propor tion of our time-namely, one part out of seven-dedicated to rest and to sacred purposes, in which the essence of the commandment consists: the day when we begin to compute, abstractedly considered, is of very little consequence. There may, indeed,be circumstances sufficient for the determination of the commencement of the Sabbath-day; nor can' any thing be conceived more satisfactory than the account I have just given of the commencement of the Jewish Sabbath, at its revival, on account of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea. They adhered to the divine original institution of six days of labour and one of rest; and on their first day of rest they commemorated their deliverance from slavery. The real day being lost, in all probability, it must then have undergone a change. The shadow was of no moment, when the substance was preserved. "The very same things may be said of the Christian Sabbath: The real day of the week, reckoning from the creation, had long been utterly unknown, and was probably irrecoverably lost; and it was changed again, for reasons worthy of being engraved on the heart of every grateful rejoicing Christiannamely, the resurrection of our Lord from the dead-his victory and triumph over death and sin, and his rising again for our justification. But never forget, that no change whatever was made in the principle on which the original commandment rested; which commandment, by its appointment, was divine, substantial, reasonable, and important in its very essence, and evidently found. ed on the relation in which man, as a dependent creature, stood to his Maker and Benefactor from the first moment of his existence." pp. 68-71, We certainly think that this argument is ably conducted; it separates what is certain from what is ambiguous; while it leaves in their full force all those subsidiary considerations which have usually been chiefly relied on, such as the uniform practice of the Christian Church, from the primitive timestheir meetings on the first day of the week, recorded in the New Testament and the remarkable expression of the last of the canonical writers, who calls it the Lord's day. Under his second division, the Dean enforces, in an affectionate and earnest manner, the observation of the duty which he had established under his first. We should be glad to extract largely from this part, but our limits forbid it. We will just notice, that he distinguishes with much acuteness between the formal and reluctant observance of a few of the outward duties of the Sabbath, and the willing consecration of the day to spiritual communion with God and the fervent exercises of devotion. He remarks, that there is no sin, except perhaps idolatry, which is more severely censured throughout the Old Testament than the breach of the Sabbath: he reminds his hearers, that in a life of only forty years, there are more than two thousand Sabbaths; cautions them against admitting convenience, instead of necessity, as an excuse for not frequenting public worship; and proposes, as a test of their right discharge of the duties of the day, to inquire, whether, when its public services are over, they are more inclined to muse on what is to be done in the way of business, or pleasure or diversion, on the next day, than on the spiritual comforts and blessings they have experienced. The whole discourse is well calculated for edification. The third discourse, on Col. iii. 17, is of a different character from the two which precede it. It does not enter on the consideration of great national and ecclesiastical events, as the first-nor on the explication of a grave theological difficulty, like the second-but is properly a practical exhortation to the Christian duty of doing every thing in the name of the Lord Jesus. The following devout and affectionate aspirations, near the beginning of the sermon, will give our readers a somewhat new view of the mind of the author. "Let no one think me more precise, explicit, and tedious, than is necessary in opening this subject. Rather let it be our earnest prayer, that the same blessed Jesus, in whose name we are enjoined to do and say every thing, may teach us to good purpose what this precept meaus-not only in the letter, but in the spirit; not in word only, but in power-that we may, in fact, make it our habitual practice to He knows do every thing in his name. how corrupt, and blind, and self-sufficient, and crooked, and prejudiced our natures are, and how slow and dull of heart we are to understand and receive his commands and admonitions. Be it our prayer, then, that he may give us a • In page 75, fifteen pages before the end of the sermon, the expression "in what remains of this discourse" occurs: in page 83 the words" in conclusion" are found; and five pages farther on, the similar term " to conclude." Besides these marks of inattention in the editor, which are afterwards frequently repeated, the paragraph beginning on page 85, should obviously follow the second paragraph on page 88; that is, a page or two of the MS. have been, as we strongly suspect, transposed. |