pediency of the remedial covenant of gospel grace is here apparent, and the necellity of dependence upon the righteoufnefs and death of Chrift is demonstrated from the preceding account of God's unalterable juftice, and of the guilt of fin being the fame in all ages of the world.-Nothing elfe must be the ground of our hope-Not works, alas! we have none-None that will bear to be weighed in God's balance, or answer the demands of his juftice! Not fincerity: this has been adopted into our divinity, as if it were the gracious condition of the new covenant, in oppofition to the law of perfect obedience. But it is no where mentioned as fuch in Scripture.-Not faith and works, confidered as co-operating to our justification, and both together making a claim of acceptance; for works which are confeffed to have the nature of fin, by thofe who call in the aid of faith to fupply their imperfection, cannot be admitted to any fhare in our justification, and muit be excluded from it. Juftice muft be fatisfied; with all our duties fin is mixed-therefore we believe that the whole of what will be accounted our deliverance from the curfe of the law, is the righteoufnefs of Christ fatisfying the divine juftice by his obedience unto death, and to the praife of the glory of his grace imputed to finners for falvation. This is the anchor of the foul, fure and ftedfaft our full fecurity against all fears, our first and only juftification.

"The notion of a first and fecond juftification is the offspring of pride oppofing the truth of God. They who adopt it confider not the justice of God as ftill exifting in all its rigour; and fubftitute inftead of perfection what falls infinitely fhort of it.-We are prone to fubftitute a spurious kind of morality outward, partial, founded chiefly on love of reputation, with little regard to God, in the place of inward renovation-but true holiness, which confifts in profound felf-abafement and fubjection to the God and Father of our fpirits, in heavenly mindedness, in ardent longings after purity of heart, is the genuine product of a lively faith; and no where to be found, till the ever blessed name of Jefus, his grace and truth, his compaffion, dying love, and all perfect obedience, are the meditation, delight, and confidence of the foul.

In this view, and with thefe fentiments ftrong upon his mind, the author has endeavoured, in the following treatife, to delineate The Com plete Duty of Man. His book bears this title-from its comprehending the doctrines as well as the precepts of the gospel, from its placing things in their proper order, and preparing the way to Chriftian practice by Chriftian faith, and to faith by conviction of fin.

On this plan, the work confifts of forty Chapters, making thort lectures for as many Sunday evenings, under the following general heads, with fubordinate explanations. Of the Soul, its excellency, &c.-Of God, his character as defcribed in Scripture, &c.-Of Man-Of the Law-Of Faith-of the Holy Ghoft-Of Repentance-Difpolitions of a Chriftian towards Godtowards Men-Duty of Perfons in a married State-of Parents, Children, and Servants.-On Self-denial, in various Branches, with refpect to Intemperance, Impurity, &c.-On Prayer.On Scripture, and the method of studying it. On Chriftian Joy; its lefources, &c.

Fourteen prayers are annexed, adapted to the principal fubjects of the foregoing Sunday evenings' difcourtes. Six others are Family Prayers, for the mornings and evenings of the Lord's day, and for the ordinary days of the week. For fick persons, and a thankfgiving on recovery. The whole concludes with prayers for private perlons under particular circumstances, and in various fituations of life. They all breathe a spirit of genuine piety, and of Chriftian charity; are compofed in the beft ftile of the prefent time. In the prayer for Self-denial, we note the following paffage :-"Enable us to withstand and vanquish our natural defires after riches and worldly greatnefs. Make us content with fuch things as we have; and let our whole converfation be without covetoufnels. Infpire us with the will and the power to refift and conquer, in its fit appearances, the love of money, which is the root of ali evil; and to watch with a fufpicious eye the compla. cency we take in the profperity allotted to us. O keep us fatisfied with thyself, O God! as our all-fufficient portion, and never fuffer us to indulge fo much as a single with for any thing in this world more than food or raiment."

To the few religious books kept in fashionable families, we recommend this to be added, being calculated to

promote the temporal and fpiritual interefts of its readers.

M.

HE remarks on churches lead the THE Author to the confideration of monastic establishments, and confequently induce him to take a "furvey of London" at a former period.

"Henry the Eighth, the worse than Vandal of our English ftory, deftroyed the habitations and memorials which belonged to our ancient character, and exerted himself to the best of his power to make us forget we ever had ances tors."

What fhall we fay to the next para. graph, refpecting maffes for the dead? It is too long to quote, but we read it with pleasure; and finding in it so much fenfe and fenfibility, mingled with fuch pious and pathetic effutions, we are induced, although we wonder how it could get into a life of Chaucer, to give it our warmel approbation. But if we were furprised to find that mafies for the dead formed one of the features of this extended life, we were still more fo to difcover in others the whole Roman Catholic fyftem, as it branches into auricular confeffion, days of ab ftinence, extreme unction, period of the first confeffion, festival of the first communion, and confirmation, not only developed, but reafoned

on.

The Author feems to have confidered the title of his work in the light which Bayes did the plot of his drama, only of ufe as it enables him to attract the attention of the wondering reader to the brilliancy of his imagination, or the profundity of his learning. Let it be fo! Let it be fuppofed, that although the fubject is old, his manner of defcanting upon it is new; still we cry, Cui bono, to what good does it tend? or, indeed, What entertainment or inftruction is likely to be derived from it? Suppole, for inftance, that original biographer, Plutarch, had chofen, in any one of his lives, to have difplayed the whole Heathen Mythology, and had also given us a minute account of what was doing

at Athens and Rome at the time the hero was born, then had called in every collateral circumstance that happened during the period of his adolefcence, and brought every occurrence of the times in which he exiled, moral, religicus, and literary, to bear upon the object of his attention, whom, like a magnet, he had placed in the middle of the table, to attract every thing into his vortex, he might have compofed a work, defultory and entertaining as his " Morals," but it would no longer have been biographical; nor, like the production before us, would it have been very easy to determine under what fpecies of literature to claís it. But to proceed:

"Next after the ftudies, the literary compofitions, and the religion of any period," (fays the Author,) "there is no caufe that more powerfully tends to modify the youthful mind, than the fpecies of amufement that may chance to be prevalent."

True! but why diffect and difcriminate fubjects upon which volumes have been already written? Goldsmith was fond of playing on the flute, mutic had been one of the purfuits of his youth; yet we should have itared at his biographer if he had given us a hiftory of the inftrument, and of every piper from Pan down to Signier Flcrio. Our late ingenious and learned friend was also fond of playing with children, and of dramatic reprefentations; yet, although in his mode of rendering himfelf the life and foul of the company of the former he was unique, and in his opinions of the latter he was fingular, no Author upon earth, writing his life, would take it into his head to give us the history of every family he vifited, and every play he faw.

The brilliant rays of genius which, even in ages of comparative darknets, illuminated the fubject of minstrels, feems, by Gray, to have been drawn to a focus, in his. Ode of the Bard, a work

a work of enthufiaftic imagination, which throws even Pindar to a diftance: Let the reader but poffefs himfelf of the animating foul of that poem, and all that can be faid of minitrels will appear fuperfluous, and of as little ufe as wafting learning to prove that dan cing, tumbling, and jefting, were among the amusements of the age.

Legerdemain, as Mr. G. terms it, he well knows has always been one of the arts by which the minds of a rude peo ple have been impreffed. It would ap pear pedantic to talk either of the Priefts of Numa or the Druids; but it is certain, that traces of its operation are to be difcerned in the religious ceremonies, the amufements, and even in the domeftic habits, of favage nations. The American Areskoui, or the God of Battles, had among his minifters as many jugglers, as the ancient Mars, or the African MumboJumbo; nor need we inform him, that thofe kinds of ceremonies and tricks which feized upon the paflions while they lulled the fenfes of the multitude, were as much the practice of the Grecians and Romans formerly, as they are of the Laplanders and other polar nations to this hour.

Prophecy (fecond fight), and the fcience of drugs, are included in the talent alluded to. Magic extended itfelf from the earliest period of time to the reign of George the Second, in the ninth year of which, forcerers, enchanters, &c. it is thought were feared away, and the fpirits they had railed laid, for aught we know to the contrary, in the Red Sea, by the learning difplayed in the provifions of a falutary statute.

Referring to minstrels, Mr. G. thinks it neceffary to mention the toleration given to the family of Dutton; but he does not feem to be acquainted with the faving claufe in the Vagrant Act, 17 Geo. II. c. 5. f. 29, by which the right inherent to John Dutton, Efq. of Cheiter, &c. is till prelerved.

Connected, indeed molt intimately, with the fubject of Minitrels, are thofe of which the fixth Chapter is compofed, which includes the origin of the English ftage, Profane Dramas, Miracles, Plays, Mysteries, Masks, &c. Minstrels, the Author, we think correctly, afferts, were our first dramatifts. Is it not," he continues, "a little extraordinary, that this circumftance thould be fo little adverted to,

as no one of their productions of this fort appears to have come down to us?" We think not, if we confider minftrels, as they certainly were, as a kind of extempore hiftorians, or tory-tellers, men whofe ideas or memories, might probably be itrong, though their literature might be very flight. But, in fact, it is till uncertain whether fome of our early dramatic pieces were not by oral tradition brought down to us, and in a ftate of representation, as low as the middle of the last century: we here allude to our stageplays, as they were termed, because exhibited upon a ftage in the open air, which, from the nature of their conftruction, and the fabric of their verfes, many of which we have heard repeated, feem strongly to indicate that they bear no very diftant refemblance to the ori ginal effufions of thofe fathers of the English Drama.

In the parfuit of this fubject, we find that Mr. G. has thought it neceflary to devote fourteen or fifteen pages to the confideration of miracle plays, or myfteries. Here we conceive it would be a fleeveless errand, or bootlefs journey, to follow him, as we can difcern little but what we have before contemplated in other authors, and do not imagine the prefent deferves much praife for his power of connexion and combination. Chaucer, the name of the perfon, we would have the reader remember, whose life we are confidering, is not once mentioned in this Chapter, which proceeds to the conclufion with an account, novel as the former, of the profane plays and masquerades, French and Englili, which enlivened and civilized the inhabitants of this kingdom in the first part of the fourteenth, century.

In the feventh Chapter, Mr. G., who upon this fubject feems perennial, has continued the dramatic amufements of the fourteenth century; under which head he confiders the fealt of Fools, of the Afs, that is, the English Ais, and of the Innocents. The Lord of Mifrule next attracts his attention. In his account of this Nobleman, we are happy to fee, whatsoever temptation he might have had, he most laudably keeps clear of politics.

"Chaucer," we are glad to catch his name where we can, our Author obferves, after a long defcription of thofe fcenes of broad humour which were fo much the delight of our ancestors, that

they

they were parted from, even by the novelifts of the middle of the lait century, with reluctance, "however fuperior he may be confidered to the age in which he lived, had yet the frailties of a man, fpent his days, more or lefs, in fuch fcenes as have been defcribed, and was acted upon, like other men, by what he heard or faw, by what infpired his countrymen with approbation or with rapture." In short, like Banbury's Churchwarden, "though exalted he was till a man."

We now come to a part of the work which we have long bungered after; namely, the fumptuous entertainments and magnificent tile of living of the nobility; by which we learn, what we had learned before, that William Rufus built Westminster Hall for his diningroom, and are favoured with a bill of fare of Edward the Second. In this morceau we find that his good fubjects had committed great depredations among "the fwinifh multitude," though it might have occurred to our Author, that the vast quantity of pork, mutton, and beef, fo oftentatiously displayed, was acquired, by the Monarch's taking part of his revenue in kind, of which two more fubftantial veftiges than the provifions alluded to, or even thefe recording volumes, ftill remain; we mean, the two dwarf pillars near the front entrance of the faid Hall. These are the only fymbols of our ancient exchequer that are left. Betwixt thefe, the pay ments of various commodities for the fupport of the houshold were made; and here, probably, when they had too great a fuperfluity of the fame kind, they were expofed for the purpofes of barter.

The good eating and drinking of Thomas Earl of Lancafter, whom we are glad (because we would not have had it gone on the weft fide of the Bar) to inform the reader refided in the City, is properly noticed. The ten thousand perfons who every day fat down at the table of Richard the Second, are next reviewed; and, lastly, the hofpitality of the Earl of War. wick, of Warwick-lane, king-maker: though the Author feems to have forgotten the laudable cuftom prevalent in this Nobleman's kitchen, viz. that every citizen who came to the battery hatch by a certain hour was entitled to carry away as much meat as he could hold upon his dagger; which

is one way of accounting for the appearance of the dagger in the City Arms; nor has he noted that, according to the rules and orders of the prefent learned inhabitants of that pot of claffic ground, a citizen who thould apply to their difpenfatory, which may be termed a medical kitchen, is now much more likely to get a cathartic than a meal; or, in vulgar language, a purge than a bellyjul.

After this account of our ancient amusements and feafting, our readers might, in the name of every thing that is prolix, afk, What could next occur to impede the way to the pages destined to exhibit the life of Chaucer? We thould, had we not ourselves been a little verfed in the arcanum of bookmaking, have imagined nothing; but knowing these mysteries, which, by-thebye, are not moralities, we were not furprised to find, that after the good dinners which we are forry we had only occafion to contemplate, fhews very naturally pretented themselves, or, more correctly speaking, were prefented in the open air, to the great amulement of our ancestors.

Thinking of fhews brings into the Author's head morrices, may-games, the march of the Midfummer watch, and, lastly, the magnificent Spectacle of the inauguration of the Lord Mayor, which, we are forry from late obfervation to fay, has declined in fplendour, though it may have acquired additional folidity in the first initance, and liquefcency in the fecond.

The reader will hardly believe, though we take our credit on the veracity of the affertion, that in this piece of biography thefe different circumftances are accurately detailed, at the expense of paper and patience, through feveral pages, or that we have long hiftories of hawking, hunting, wreitling, archery, and prize-fighting, which latter gives the Author an op. portunity to quote a long paffage from Sir George Buck's Treatife on the Science of Defence, with which had he been contented, we fhould have been fo too, and confequently have, in confideration of its ufe at the present time, declined any further animadverfion on this part of the work: but when we find the challenge of Sergeant James Miller to Timothy Buck not only mentioned, but the whole of it tranfcribed from the Spectator, July 21, 1712, and commented on in a life of Chaucer,

we

we must confefs, that we think it as fingular a mode of swelling a work as any that our profeffional obfervation has furnished us with; though fill, as we find Mr. G. in the humour to increase the fize of his volumes, without troubling his head how their contents bear upon the fubje&t of his title, we have to thank him that he did not include the elegant correfpondence that paffed betwixt Broughton and Slack, and the well-written advertifement of the former, inviting amatears to his academy, or the valuable addition to the literature of this country, which, more than thirty years fince, accrued from the epiftolary communications of the valiant Nailer of Bristol to Darts, the no lefs valiant Butcher of Bath, and vice-verfa, and the controverfy that adorned the papers of thefe cities in confequence. does, indeed, take notice of bear and ball-baiting, and properly relates the dreadful accident that happened in Paris Garden, betwixt two and three centuries after the death of Chaucer, to whofe life we are not yet come; but he does not fay any thing, although, were it not for fear of running into the error which we have cenfured, we could fay a great deal of Hockley in the Hole; yet we must do him the juftice to fay, we fuppofe he alludes to fome gentle. men who have probably been initiated and bumanized at that celebrated feminary in the following paffage:

He

"Influenced by this confideration," (that is, because the ancient Puritans, a most amiable trait in their character, oppofed the cruel and unmanly sports of bear and bull-baiting,)" the author of Hudibras is inclined to treat a tafte for bear-baiting as a token of a frank difpofition and loyal temper; and more modern politicians, alarmed at certain recent inftances of innovation, have taught" (us,) "that fuch Sports" (they had better have taught us the fable of the Boys and Frogs)

are

a becoming fchool for courage, generolity, and benevolence, and a pledge for our retaining among us the virtues of our ancestors!"

Mr. G., with respect to the Bear and Fiddle, feems, to us, a plain matter of fact man, too laudably engaged in the purfait of truth to know any thing of allegory; and as we cannot, at prefent, ftay to teach him, we muft, in continuation, obferve, that cock-fighting is the next sport he mentions, and which,

1

like the former, he, very properly, reprobates.

Another prominent feature belonging to the portrait of thefe times, name ly, their infecurity with respect both to perfons and property, is next very largely defcanted on; allusions are made to the hiftory of Robin Hood, including Adam Bell and William Cloudefly. The ftory of the Brabant merchants and Winchefter juries is given; and the Author feems to think, that the dangerous and alarming practice of public robbery grew out of fome of the fports which he had before enumerated.

The rife and progrefs of chivalry is alluded to under the head of tournaments; we are prefent at feveral of these spectacles, from which we are very naturally led to the Round Table, and the foundation of the Order of the Garter: in this, for the prefent, we efcape the ftory of the Countess of Salif bury, though we think we can spy it in the back ground, and come to the following conclusion:

"From what has been ftated in this

Chapter refpecting the diverfions of the fourteenth century, it may be inferred, that our ancestors of that period were active, turdy, fond of humour, but exceedingly grofs and blunt in their conceptions of it, and paffionately devoted to whatever was calculated to imprefs the fenfes, in the mode either of turbulent or harmonious founds, of gaudy and variegated colours, or of folemn and magnificent difplay and oftentation."

To the fports and amufements fucceed the architecture of the fame period.

"There is probably," fays Mr. G., no age in the history of the world in which the art of building was more affiduously and attentively cultivated than in the period which elapfed from the Norman Conqueft to the birth of Chaucer. This was owing to two principal caufes; the infecurity of focial life in general, and the flourishing and profperous ftate of the Church. The former of thefe led to the erection of fortreffes; and the latter, of churches, convents, and abbeys."

To prove thefe, which we should have imagined were tolerably clear propofitions, the Author thinks it necellary to direct our attention to the confideration of military architecture, and to defcribe the caftelated

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