vigilant care of their officers, was in this instance so satisfactory; and I would earnestly hope that the favourable circumstances attending these interviews, if they have not directly opened the way for the fu ture admission of Christianity among the Loo Choo islanders, have at least not obtruded any impediment towards its introduction. Would that even this could be said of every nation with whom professed Christians have had casual or permanent intercourse! But can it be said? As one instance among many, take the western coast of Africa, and inquire what notion the natives have of the Christian character. Long must Sierra Leone exhibit its bright example; long must wisdom, benevolence, and piety go hand in hand for the amelioration of that continent,before the name of Christian will be heard otherwise than with suspicion and execration. The beneficial effects of habits of inflexible truth, justice, and cour tesy, in influencing the most uncivilized tribes and disposing them for the reception of Christianity, have in no instance perhaps been more forcibly displayed than in the wellknown case of William Penn and the Indians in Virginia. He expressly stipulated with his settlers, that it having been usual with planters to overrearch the natives, whatever was sold for their furs in his province should be sold in the public market-place, and there suffer the test, as to whether it was good or bad; if good, to pass-if not good, not to be sold for good; that the native Indians might neither be abused nor provoked; that if any planter should, in word or deed, affront or wrong any Indian, he should suffer the same penalty of the law, as if he had committed the offence against his fellow-planter;-that if any Indian should, in word or deed, abuse any planter, that the planter should not be judge in his own cause, but make a complaint to the governor of the province, or some neighbouring magistrate, who should take care, with the native chief, that all reasonable satisfaction should be made to the planter; and that all differences between planters and Indians should be settled by a jury of twelve men, six planters and six Indians, that so they might live friendly together and prevent heart-burnings and mischief. Familiar as are such sentiments in the present day, and generally as they are now applauded, they were, in the time of William Penn, as little popular in our colonies as at the present hour would be, in our West India islands, the adoption of similar regulations as respects the White and Black inhabitants. But happily the cause of mercy and of justice, of Christian knowledge and Christian practice, is powerfully advancing. Our own country in particular has been eminently an instrument in the hands of Divine Providence for promoting this glorious consummation! The kingdoms of the earth, we know, are, in the end, to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ; and he is to reign for ever and ever King of kings and Lord of lords; and British wealth, British influence, British piety, and British benevolence, stand foremost at present in the chain of causes which appear likely to bring about this splendid course of events. Let not then British Christians be wanting in their efforts to promote so great a cause. disciples of Christ, as lovers of their country, as well-wishers to the whole race of mankind, they are called to go forth manfully to the battle of the Lord, and to their utmost power to devise and prepare, under his blessing and in dependence on his Holy Spirit, all those subsidiary means which may appear likely to conduce towards the general consummation. VIATOR. As REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. Letters on Prejudice, &c. to prove our earliest reformers, and On the Use and Abuse of Party consequently the original construc- (Concluded from p. 181.) OUR readers will remember our having mentioned, in our last Number, certain prefatory sketches of the Reformation and the succeeding ages, given at the commencement of the second volume of the Letters on Prejudice, as introductory to the defence and vindication of those divines of a later school, who have come to be considered-whether by prejudice or not-as falling much below the standard of anti quity. From these prefatory sketches we had marked out two extracts, as indicative of the principle on which this defence and vindication are conducted. The extracts we shall now proceed to give in order. The first is on Predestination, and follows after an enumeration of the arguments* usually adduced These arguments comprise quotations from Latimer and Hooper, Ridley's difference with Bradford, the adoption of Erasmus's Commentary, with the neglect of Calvin's writings till some years after, when they confessedly became the textbook even of the universities. The statement is manifestly ex parte, and can never have been intended as a full exposition of the mode in which the doctrine in question was held generally by our leading reformers, particularly Cranmer; as well as even by the most moderate of the foreign divines. Indeed, we should venture to doubt the policy of our well-meaning letter-writer on this occasion, particularly when every statement must be accompanied with the concession that this very notice of conditional election was, within a very few years after, actually hunted out from the university of Cambridge, and, with about the same feelings as now the notion of absolute election; and in both cases, on the ground of being opposed to the doctrine of our church. The contrepoint is sufficiently curious; for our own parts, we plead for nothing but temperance and mutual toleration. “On the whole, a general, and (if you will allow me the expression) a conditional, predestination, as consistent with free and influenced, but not overruled, by agency, directed and encouraged, assisted the Divine grace (and not a predestination unconditional and absolute, involving necessity and irresistible impulse), appears to me to be the doctrine maintained by our reformers, and expressed in the Seventeenth Article as precisely as the great difficulty of the subject permitted; and this view of the doctrine seems clearly separable from any presumption of human merit or sufficiency, or from the ascription, in any sense, of a natural freedom and rectitude, to the human will, which seems to have been the error imputed to the Pelagians. This, however, involves another question-viz. Whether the grace to prepare and turn himself to faith and calling upon God, without which man is said to be utterly impotent, and even by his nature averse from such an effort, may not consist in this very liberation of the will; whether it is communicated partially or generally; and whether, if the latter, this first communication of Divine grace does not bring man generally into a capacity for salvation, and leave his final attainment of it contingent upon his obedience to the terms of the Gospel covenant, for which farther assistance is promised and vouchsafed in every step of his Christian progress? "It has indeed been objected to this view, that the doctrine of a conditional predestination involves a contradiction. But till we are able to solve the other difficulties in Scripture, and especially to reconcile the idea of moral responsibility with absolute decrees, this apparent inconsistency of the contingence of human actions with the foreknowledge of the Deity, affords no sufficient ground of objection to the doctrine. "You will remember that my present object is only to state what I conceive to have been the view of our reformers, and not to express any opinion of my own upon a question which I dare not investigate. Indeed, upon some of the posi tions educed in the subsequent controversy, I do not entertain the same hesitation; as I think I clearly perceive their repugnance to the general testimony of Scripture and of our church." Letters, vol. ii. pp. 109-112. as indispensibly necessary to the perfec- "It seems to have been from an indiscri The second extract is from the Letter on Justification, and follows after a considerable store of reasoning, and of appeal to the Homilies,minate use of the words justification and to prove that their writers, and our reformers, did not hold the identity of justification and salvation; that they made no very marked distinction between the several offices of faith and works; and that, in their opinion, our first pardon and final perseverance were by no means necessarily connected. "I need not trouble you with more quotations to prove a point of which you make no question-viz. that our reformers held at once the freedom of Divine grace in the remission of sin, and the contingency of final salvation. But, before we proceed, I must beg of you to distinguish between the Calvinistic doctrines of grace, and the Antinomianism which grew out of them, and against which much of the strong and controversial language of our subsequent divinity is directed. It is unfair' (says Dr. Jortin, who will not be suspected of much charity to Calvinism) 'to charge men with all the consequences which may follow from their opinions, when they neither draw them, nor perceive them, nor own them.' And this caution, whatever men may think of the principles, they should certainly observe, with respect to some eminent divines of our church, who, while they espoused the Calvinistic doctrines, strenuously disclaimed and controverted every licentious inference and interpretation. "But to return to our subject: It was not (I think) as a condition of justification, considered in its initial or primary sense (as the privilege of remission of past sin, through the application of the sacrifice of Christ), that our reformers taught the necessity of moral obedience. This original blessing they annexed to the simple act of laying hold on the offered propitiation, with an entire dependence on its sufficiency, and an humble acknowledgment of man's utter destitution of any claim of right upon the Divine mercy. They did not teach the necessity of good works, as contributing to the initial act of justification, but they prescribed them salvation, sometimes synonimously, and at others in a different sense, that the doctrine of our reformers upon this point has been brought into question. A similar application of these expressions in Scripture appears to have been at once their created any difficulty or dispute, till the example and authority, and not to have high Calvinistic doctrine of election precluded the notion of conditions altogether from the Christian covenant, as detracting from the free grace and mercy of God. "From this time we find, in the writings of our divines, a marked distinction between the original act of justification (an act perfectly gratuitous,) and the attainment of final salvation, which they still held to be conditional; and towards this attainment of final salvation, they taught the indispensible necessity of obedience; or, in other words, good, works.' "There is,' says Hooker, a justifying and a sanctifying righteousness:— 'that whereby we are justified is perfect, but not inherent; that whereby we are sanctified is inherent, but not perfect.' And again, Ye are made free from sin, and are made servants to God: this is the righteousness of justification:-ye have your fruit unto holiness: this is the righteousness of sanctification. By the one we are interested in the right of inheriting; by the other we are brought to the actual possession of eternal bliss; and so the end of both is everlasting life.' "If the distinction here so clearly expressed had been always held in view by our divines, the church would have been spared much unprofitable controversy; and the mysteries and duties, the privileges and obligations of our holy faith, would have been exhibited in beautiful harmony. But polemical zeal on either side appears gradually to have diverged from the primitive standard, till the consistent and co-active graces of faith and holiness were violently separated:-the Gospel doctrine of salvation by grace was urged to disprove the requisition of moral obedience, and the acknowledged inabi lity of fallen man to keep the law perfectly, was pleaded as an exemption from the obligation to attempt keeping it at all. "In opposition to this dangerous principle, which exhibited itself under various forms throughout the period we have been so hastily reviewing, and which was supposed to be latent in the theology of many who disclaimed it as a practical con sequence, the pulpit divinity of the subsequent age assumed a more preceptive character, and somtimes appears to have exhibited the morality of the Gospel more prominently than its peculiar doctrines. Whether, in so doing, the Gospel principle of salvation by grace was not occasionally overlooked by individuals, in their zeal to enforce the doctrine of responsibility, I shall not attempt to question: but I apprehend that the standard divinity of this school, which has come down to us, is not liable to such an objection; and I think you will find the doctrine of salvation by works, under any connection with the presumptuous notion of merit, as distinctly renounced by Tillotson as by Hooker." Letters, vol. ii. pp. 145-150. With respect to the first of these extracts, that on Predestination, we leave our readers, at present, to form their own conclusions. We must, however, though unwillingly, detain them from proceeding to the ultimate object of both of them,— namely, the defence of our low divines (as they are sometimes called), while we make a few remarks on the second extract, treating of justification, on which we feel it a duty to be very explicit; as we are sure our author, on a subject of such vital importance, would desire us to be. With respect to the point whether justification and salvation, in the primitive use of those terms, are intended to be identified, we have been so much accustomed to hear both sides maintained, as has happened to suit the argument in hand, that party spirit is not likely to be silenced by any decision to which the most impartial examination of the question might lead us. Bishop Herbert Marsh, for example, considers the terms as different in their primitive use: numerous other writers make them identical: and this is clearly the language of our Article on justification. Our letterwriter again makes them different. But a dispute about the mere usage of a word by uninspired writers is of comparatively little importance, so long as this great point stands clear (and it does stand clear, as we apprehend, in the writings of our reformers,) that both justification and salvation represent a state of actual acceptance with God, through Christ; that no acceptance with God, or access to Him, is to be had but through faith; and that no faith, from first to last, is to be accounted genuine, but that which works by love, and produces obedience. This is truly apostolical language; and it is all that we contend for. "By grace are ye SAVED, through FAITH; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: not of WORKS, lest any man should BOAST: for we are his workmanship, CREATED in Christ Jesus unto GOOD WORKS, which God hath BEFore ORDAINED, that we should walk in them." With respect to faith and works being indiscriminately used as conditions oneof justification, the other of salvation, or both of both-we equally doubt the correctness of this deduction from any expression used by one of our reformers on the subject. But of this more hereafter. We shall content ourselves, at present, with very strongly questioning the propriety of adducing HOOKER as an authority for a first justification by faith, and a final one by works, when it is certainly known as his opinion that righteousness imputed and righteousness imparted are simultaneous in time, inseparable from each other, and both equally indefectible even to the end. But now to the point-namely, our author's vindication of certain divines above mentioned, partly upon these principles, and partly upon the necessity we have adverted to, arising out of the blasphemy and infidelity which they found upon the field when they entered it. This vindication is conducted through nearly the whole of the remaining letters; and the necessity which unquestionably exists for conducting it, does, to a great degree, afford an exemplification of that true religious prejudice at which the shafts of our author are constantly aimed. We say to a great degree; for that men of such lofty minds, and such prodigious attainments in Christian knowledge, as Barrow, and South, and Tillotson, and Clarke, should be discarded either from the shelves or the tables and the privacies of any reading Christians of the present day, is a fact not wholly to be account ed for but upon the principle of religious prejudice. And yet, on the other hand, if the inquiry be carefully conducted, there may be some reasons given for a preference of other writings of a different stamp, not entirely discreditable to the writers in question, nor yet to the persons feeling that preference. Our letter-writer begins with Tillotson, whose main object in his works is properly described as fourfold; namely, to overthrow four prevailing errors of his time-Atheism, Socinianim, Antinomianism, and Popery. Educated originally in the strictest sect of the school of Calvin, he was yet of far too independent a mind to borrow his weapons of theology from any human master. We find, indeed, in his writings, no unmeaning attempts to traduce the labours or underrate the powers of that eminent Reformer and "master of Divine knowledge:" but we do find the outpouring of a truly original, enlightened, learned, and profound mind: thoroughly versed in every topic he handles; skilful in tracking all the windings and shufflings of the various sophistries he had to oppose, as well as to pursue his own plain straight-forward course of right reason and sound judgment both in faith and practice. His volumes form an invaluable depositary of practical and theological matter on almost every important head of divinity. The being and CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 256. attributes of God; the acts, offices, and character of the Redeemer; the nature and extent of spiritual regeneration; the importance of religion and virtue in general; and the wisdom of being religious, as the only true wisdom and the highest glory of man n; with many other topics-if there are many othersequally important, all find the fullest, most sober, and most manly discussion in the pages of this divine. His learning and information, without ever being displayed for ostentation, are always in use and always in point; and it is perhaps his ready and comprehensive mind, catching at the manners living as they rise, and applying his materials to the passing opinions and current writings and writers of his age, that, amongst some other things, renders his page occasionally tedious and distracting to those who are born in other times and under other stars. It would be impossible to follow our author in the remarks or quotations with which sentiments similar to these are supported in the Letters; but we cannot forbear giving our readers a taste of one sermon of the Archbishop's, describing the happiness of a future state, "as illustrative at once," in the words of our letter-writer, "of the piety of his heart, and the soundness of his doctrine; and surely enough to vindicate even these discourses from the charge of a cold rationality. The whole sermon is animated and beautiful, and (if you will allow me a popular expression) truly evangelical. "When this blessed society is met together, and thus united by love, they shall and benefactors; to Him that sitteth upon all join in gratitude to their great patrons the throne, and the Lamb that was slain,— to God, even our Father, and to our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood. And they shall sing everlasting songs of praise to God for all his works of wonder;-for the effects of that infinite goodness, and admirable wisdom, and almighty tion and government of the world, and all power which are clearly seen in the creathe creatures in it;-particularly, for his favours to mankind; for the benefit of their beings, for the comfort of their lives, 2 I |