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vidious. They invade, with the weapons of an unholy warfare, the most sacred sanctuary of religion; where, if ever we meet, we desire to meet as friends, and least of all to disturb that holy place with the uproar of conflict. Upon such ground we are taken by surprise; and, when we least expect it, we find the spirit of Antinomianism lurking to assail, and, we may say, to stab, our principles. In appearance, its preachers offer "the grace of God which bringeth salvation." We expect them to proceed with their instructions," to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." Our ears are opened, and our hearts warmed towards that Saviour," who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." But what, after all, do we hear? Of a Saviour, indeed, "who gave Himself for us," but it would seem only that He might purchase us an entire impunity for all iniquity; and that he might sanctify to himself a people by no means zealous of any good work.

The advantage of all this, or rather its disadvantage, for pastoral edification, needs scarcely to be discussed, after so much has been said already to prove it unscriptural and generally injurious. The only adThe only admissible palliation of the alleged extravagancies, is, that these teachers seem desirous, for the benefit of their own flocks in particular, to overstate that which they deem had been understated before. The Go

spel had been sacrificed to morality; and now, forsooth, they must sacrifice morality to the Gospel! The worldly Antinomian had so stated and adapted his code of morals to his own worldly heart, as to make it in fact a licence for sin. In consequence, the Christian Antinomian (our readers must forgive the misnomer) discards. a morality preached, in some at least of its external features, almost alike "by

saint, by savage, and by sage ;" and, instead of adopting it into his code, and ripening it, as Jesus Christ and his Apostle Paul had done before him, into the purities of Christian holiness, he throws that very holiness away on the neck of a spurious morality. This, it may be, he deems the path of edification. He may consider, that by this course he disarms the self-righteous, unmasks the formalist, strips absolutely bare the self-justiciary, and renders a service to that Saviour, who “will not give his glory to another, neither his praise to graven images." Nay, he does, as he imagines, still more. He binds up the broken in heart. He soothes the awakened, the penitent, the afflicted, "tossed with waves, and not comforted;" a task, indeed, to which we must allow that the pen, and still more perhaps the eloquence, of Dr. Hawker, are admirably suited. But what, after all, does even this palliation, if such it can be called, of false doctrines amount to? It amounts just to this; an admission. on the part of those who urge it, of the ignorance of those for whom it is urged; an entire ignorance of human nature, and of those very persons whom it is intended to instruct, to console, and to edify.

Human nature is never to be governed, nor ultimately benefited by paradoxes*, distortions, or

In Dr. Crisp's Sermons, though far superior in many respects to the divinity we are considering, we find the following specimens: "To be called a libertine, is the most glorious title under heaven; take it for one that is truly free by Christ. I do not say to be made a libertine in the corrupt sense of it; but in the true and proper sense of it." This is merely a foolish pun on the word libertine in the sense of "Christ's freed-man ;" but nothing can exceed the mischievous tendency of the following passage from the same sermon: "Beloved, let me tell you, this (curse) concerns not only the persons that live in all manner of licentiousness

in drunkenness, the profanation of the Sabbath in the grossest manner; but, that I may speak plainly, this extends in a

over-statements of the truth. Very blunt and very dense understandings may, it is true, require to be goaded occasionally by strong and stimulant expressions, conveying a pure and undoubted verity. Such were often the expressions of our Lord himself, and of his Apostles; who, besides the immeasurable advantage of inspiration, had also the peculiar office of promulgating a new code both to the Jew and the Gentile, and therefore had a double occasion for making use of positions, which it is our duty not so much to imitate and surpass, as to digest and apply. But there was, in the strongest expressions both of our Lord and his Apostles, a just proportion, and a tone of moderation. They used whatever

parallel line with them to the exactest, strictest, precisest person in their conversation.......nay though thou seem to be spiritual in all thy performances, yet, if thou be under the law, in thy transgression, thou shalt bear from it as many curses pronounced against thee as all the profane wretches under heaven: the greatness of thy honesty and uprightness, whether in religion or in matters of commerce and dealings with men, thy honest conversation I say, hath the loud peals of curses sounding in thine ears. Suppose thou art a man, diligently attend in the house of God, given much to prayer, fasting, mourning, and weeping; yea to great liberality, giving all thy goods to the poor, &c." Dr. Crisp meant by all this nothing more, we presume, in substance than that a man cannot be justified before God by his own imperfect works or righteousness; but is not this a most dangerous and un

scriptural way of stating the matter, and all for the purpose of saying something strong and striking. Paradoxes are bad guides; and a "libertine" might be apt to construe such passages in a way which Dr. Crisp certainly would not have approved.

We are aware of the systematic ridicule which these preachers cast upon the term "moderation." A teacher of this genus was accustomed to say, "Moderation forsooth! Give me all or nothing! A moderate Calvinist! Pretty expression! Would you say of your friend, that he was moderately honest, or wish your wife to be moderately virtuous?" This, we presume, was meant for logic as well as for wit.

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 263.

language or illustration would most accurately and clearly express the mercies of the Gospel; but neither did they shrink from a conveyance, as strong and forcible, of its purities and perfections; and the same Divine lips which pronounced to the adulteress, in the crisis of her guilt, "Neither do I condemn thee;" added, in the same sentence, "Go, AND SIN NO MORE." When could any preacher of the class we are mentioning look boldly in the face the Sermon on the Mount, or fairly treat in any "Poor Man's Commentary" that single text, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect?" No: it is not within the reach or span of Antinomianism, of whatever school, the low or the high, the moral Antinomian or the immoral Antinomian, to "rise to the height of that great argument" which breathes in every page of the sacred Scripture, or "to vindicate," on their just grounds, "the ways of

God to man." It is Scripture itself, as a whole, seen and understood, and faithfully preached in all its parts and proportions, which can alone answer the effects graciously intended in its promulgation. The dejected sinner may, it is true, be raised to intoxication by one distortion of Scripture: the proud man may be disgusted and dismissed from the audience by another. Some one or other particular accident of nature may arise from the vagrancies of fanciful and irregular statement; an accident, perhaps, very different from that anticipated by the preacher. The heart of the righteous, whom God hath not made sad, may chance to be made sad by the preacher. The afflicted penitent may even be driven to despair because he finds he cannot coveries of his corruption which he all at once rejoice at those dismay be told will magnify the grace of God, but for which higher authority tells him to be "afflicted, and mourn, and weep."

But what will, in all human pro5 C

bability, be at length the ultimate effect; and that alike upon the preacher himself and upon by far the greater part of his audience? Will it not, in the end, be this; that both will come to admire the distortions, and the distortions only, so systematically held forth to view? They will most irreverently, not to say profanely, speak of God as the author of sin*, till at length they will really come to think, that He, "The High and Lofty One, that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is HOLY," is such an one as themselves. They will frame mysterious converse (we fear to write it) between the Sacred Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, till they will fancy themselves at last " as God, sitting in the temple of God, and shewing themselves that they are God." They will believe themselves to be so perfectly right, that they will speedily learn to think and to call every one wrong besides. They will deal censure about in this life, till they will come at length to deal condemnation in the next. Nay, they may arrive at granting actual immunity for crime, as now they do in rash and intemperate speculation. And what, in the end, might there be to choose between the statements or the creed of such persons, and the very spirit, if not the statements, of Popery itself?

There may be something still worse. There may come to be an utter subversion, both in the mind of the preacher and the hearer, of all principles of common morality. Mankind are susceptible, indeed are greedy of this extreme, which is the ultimate bearing of all Antinomianism. Antinomianism, far more than even Pharisaism, or le

"The Mr. S. E. Pierce, so admired

by Dr. Hawker, once said, from a Plymouth pulpit, Some of our old divines used to write in their books, at the top of their pages, God the author of sin! and,' he subjoined, they were able to cope with their subject!' This is speaking out." Cottle, p. 82.

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gality, is the crime of human nature. The progress from ungoverned speculations to ungoverned practice is not very difficult. The pride of understanding is nearly akin to the pride of heart. The indulgence of one passion may readily lead to the indulgence of all. The ardent preacher will himself be forsaken for one of more ardent spirit still; the Antinomian for one still more Antinomian; till at last a principle, very different, indeed, from that of pure and undefiled religion, may require to be called in to conceal, or to controul excesses, which first began in the sacrifice of Christian truth, and common sense.

We have reserved to ourselves little space or time for that which we nevertheless deem a part of the subject of great importance; namely, the remedies to be proposed for this unhappy error, but too prevalent, we fear, in its various forms, both among high and low. Not willing to return to the subject again, as respects "the Plymouth Antinomians," we shall now only briefly hint at a few practical suggestions, which our readers may work out at their leisure.

First, we should recommend that the real nature of the Gospel should be ever considered in its just light, as having for its main and ultimate design, as it respects man, his restoration to that state of innocence and perfection from which he had fallen in Adam. For this it was first necessary that we should, by a stupendous act of mercy and grace, be restored to the favour of God: then, being reconciled by the death of his Son, we are saved from sin by His life: and that which is begun in time, we are assured, will receive a glorious consummation in eternity. Thus in the very chapter so frequently appealed to (Ephes. i.) we

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........unto obedience, AND sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." And, if no other text existed in the whole Bible than the one ordinarily quoted from the great Apostle of the Gentiles, it were quite sufficient: "This is the will of God, even your sanctification;" followed up as it is by a plain and undeniable illustration of the meaning of sanctification, "that ye should abstain from" every unholiness of heart or life; one gross vice, in particular, to which the heathen were peculiarly addicted, being specified as a sample of the general purport of the prohibition. Reduce sanctification to this plain, practical, Scriptural meaning of it, and then all will be well. We shall hear no more, then, of mystical interpretations and Antinomian speculations, whether or not to cover Antinomian practices. Every thing will be called by its own name. And those who, like Dr. Hawker and other, as we trust, good men, go about by night with their bread and meat under their cloke, to feed the hungry with far more wholesome food for the body than they had before given them in church for their soul, will clearly stand out, in all their deserved prominence of moral excellence, above those who make the same doctrines a cover for indolence, a cloke of covetousness, and an occasion of sin. In such acts of Christian charity, the professed Antinomian is as much a legalist, if he knows himself, as the man who openly takes his divinity (dreadful crime!) from the 25th chapter of St. Matthew: and both may hope for His notice "who seeth in secret, and will REWARD them openly."

The next point we should wish earnestly to press, even on those who are slow to accept the reward of grace promised them of God for their really good works, done in Christ's name, is, at least to watch the practical consequences of these doc trines: "BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM." It is morally impossible that doctrines so evidently tending to licentiousness as

these, should not be attended somewhere with more than usual obliquity of conduct. An open return to "the things that are in the world," a secret practice of known and acknowledged vice, are things not beyond the apprehension of those who watch with an observant eye the course of these mischievous doctrines. Inconceivable pride and self-sufficiency, an utter want of the meekness and gentleness which are in Christ, a bitterness of spirit, and (must we add?) by no means a tender regard to that most precious of all moral virtues, truth, particularly in pursuit of party purposes, will be found among their very frequent accompaniments. Such abuses, whereever existing, and in whatever high places, should be fearlessly dragged to light, and held up to their merited reprehension.

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We' should only recommend further, and in conclusion, an increased attention to that which at least we have all a right to claim; namely, the due understanding and interpretation of the Sacred Records. The source of the mischief in question, and of much other mischief, is the adoption of false principles and uncertain canons in Scriptural interpre tation. We are wholly disinclined to do Dr. Hawker the disservice of examining his "Poor's Man's Commentary by any rules whatever, whether of good divinity, good churchmanship, good morals, or good sense. But how valuable might it have been made, as a poor man's manual of faith and devotion; and how might the Christian world have had to hail such an addition even to modern stores of instruction; had the soundness of its author's judgment kept pace with the warmth and fertility of his genius, and the general good intention of his heart! Is the time as yet too late for such alterations, omissions, and additions as might make it what we wish and want? Is it too late to hope that remonstrance may be attended with salutary effect in many quarters which they intimately concern? Mr.

Cottle (to whom we, in common with the whole Christian world, cannot but feel ourselves deeply indebted) speaks, we are well assured, the sentiments of many to whom Dr. Hawker and his adherents would not demean themselves by listening. And might not some small measure of benefit, at least of warning, be derived to a fallible, uninspired mortal,

from the judgment of men, whose praise, living and dead, is deeply graven in the church of Christ; and whose memory will flourish fresh and green in the blessings of mankind, long after the wildness of enthusiasm, the pomp of dogmatism, and the shifts of party, shall have been consigned to their merited oblivion?

LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE, &c. &c.

GREAT BRITAIN. PREPARING for publication:-The Ancestors of the Guelphic Dynasty, by Sir A. Halliday;-Specimens of the Dutch Poets, by J. Bowring, and H. Van Dyk;-The Republics of Mexico, Columbia, Peru, Chili, and Buenos Ayres, by J. Henderson; -The Children's Friend, edited by the Rev. W. C. Wilson, price one penny, to be continued monthly, from January 1, 1824; -Sermons by Subscription, by the Rev. J. Coates.

In the press :-The Origin and Progress of the Greek Revolution, by Mr. Blaquiere ;-The Albigenses, by the Rev. C. R. Marturin ;-Sturm's “Morning Communings with God, for every Day in the Year," translated from the German ;-A System of Short-hand, from the MSS. of the late W. Blair.

A complete edition of the Statutes is being printed under the sanction of Parliament. To render it as nearly complete as possible, the Royal Commissioners on Public Records caused extensive examinations to be made of charters, and authentic copies of charters, in every place where it appeared likely that such documents might be found, and, among other places, in our cathedral churches and universities. Among their discoveries, besides the rare Chartularies, found in Rochester, Exeter, Canterbury, and other cathedrals, they found in Lincoln cathedral an original of the Great Charter of Liberties granted by King John, in the 16th year of his reign, in a perfect state. This charter is stated to be of superior authority to either of the two charters preserved in the British Museum. From the indorsements on two folds of the Charter, it is presumed to be the Charter transmitted by the hands of the then Bishop of Lincoln, who is one

of the bishops named in the introductory clause. Several words and sentences are inserted in the body of this charter, which, in both the Charters preserved in the British Museum, are added, by way of notes for amendment, at the bottom of the instruments. In Durham cathedral, several Charters of the Liberties of England are preserved with great care; and among others, the Carta de Foresta, 2 Hen. III., the original and all authentic records of which were supposed by Blackstone to be lost.

A Society has been formed, called "the Meteorological Society of London." Scientific men throughout the world are soli cited to co-operate with this Society. No other qualification is required to constitute eligibility to this Society than a desire to promote the science of Meteorology.There are now in the metropolis, among other scientific societies, the Society of Arts, the Linnean Society, the ́ Horticultural Society, the Medical Society, the Mathematical Society, the Geological Society, the Astronomical Society, and the Meteorological Society.

The inhabitants of Leeds have availed themselves of a munificent proposal of Mr. Fountaine Wilson, to pay one-half of the sum (from 14,000l. to 15,000.) requisite to effect the extinction of certain vicarial tithes and Easter offerings, the payment of which it seems has proved a fruitful source of dissentions. At a recent public meeting of the inhabitants, the Mayor in the chair, it was resolved that the other moiety should be raised by voluntary donations.

Blank tables have been printed by Darton and Harvey, for the purpose of promoting the practice of keeping domestic registers of births, narriages, and deaths. They are intended to be bound up with Family Bibles.

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