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the English pulpit, that a clergyman is to recommend himself, not by his eloquence, but by the purity of his life, and the soundness of his doctrine; an objection good enough, if any connection could be pointed out between eloquence, heresy, and dissipation; but if it is possible for a man to live well, preach well, and teach well, at the same time, such objections, resting only upon a supposed incompatibility of these good qualities, are duller than the dulness they defend.

The clergy are apt to shelter themselves under the plea, that subjects so exhausted are utterly incapable of novelty; and, in the very strictest sense of the word novelty, meaning that which was never said before, at any time, or in any place, this may be true enough, of the first principles of morals; but the modes of expanding, illustrating, and enforcing a particular theme are capable of infinite variety; and, if they were not, this might be a very good reason for preaching commonplace sermons, but is a very bad one for publishing them.

and activity can supply, we must look upon pretences to honesty as a most shameless aggravation of their crimes. Even if it were possible that, in his own practices, a man might be a FAIR GAMESTER, yet, for the result of the extended frauds committed by his fellows, he stands deeply accountable to God, his country, and his conscience. To a system necessarily implicated with fraud; to associations of men, a large majority of whom subsist by fraud; to habits calculated to poison the source and principle of all integrity, he gives efficacy, countenance, and concurrence. Even his virtucs he suffers to be subsidiary to the cause of vice. He sees with calmness, depredation committed daily and hourly in his company, perhaps under his very roof. Yet men of this description declaim (so desperately deceitful is the heart of man) against the very knaves they cherish and protect, and whom, perhaps, with some poor sophistical refuge for a worn-out conscience, they even imitate. To such, let the Scripture speak with emphatical decision -When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him."

The reader will easily observe, in this quotation, a command of language, and a power of style, very superior to what is met with in the great mass of sermons. We shall make one

We had great hopes, that Dr. Rennel's Sermons would have proved an exception to the character we have given of sermons in general; and we have read through his present volume with a conviction rather that he has misapplied, than that he wants, talents for pulpit eloquence. The subjects of his sermons, four-more extract. teen in number, are, 1. The consequences of the vice of gaming: 2. On old age: 3. Benevolence exclusively an evangelical virtue: 4. The services rendered to the English nation by the Church of England, a motive for liberality to the orphan children of indigent ministers: 5. On the grounds and regulation of national joy: 6. On the connection of the duties of loving the brotherhood, fearing God, and honouring the King: 7. On the guilt of blood-thirstiness: 8. On atonement: 9. A visitation sermon: 10. Great Britain's naval strength, and insular situation, a cause of gratitude to Almighty God: 11. Ignorance productive of atheism, anarchy, and superstition 12, 13, 14. On the sting of death, the strength of sin, and the victory over them both by Jesus Christ.

"But in addition to fraud, and all its train of crimes, propensities and habits of a very different complexion enter into the composition of a gamester: a most ungovernable FEROCITY OF DISPOSITION, however for a time disguised and latent, is invariably the result of his system of conduct. Jealousy, rage, and revenge, exist among gamesters in their worst and most frantic excesses, and end frequently in consequences of the most atrocious violence and outrage. By perpetual agitation the malignant passions spurn and overwhelm every boundary which discretion and conscience can oppose. From what source are we to trace a very large number of those murders, sanctioned or palliated indeed by custom, but which stand at the tribunal of God precisely upon the same Dr. Rennel's first sermon, upon the conse-grounds with every other species of murder?quences of gaming, is admirable for its strength of language, its sound good sense, and the vigour with which it combats that detestable vice. From this sermon, we shall, with great pleasure, make an extract of some length.

From the gaming-table, from the nocturnal receptacles of distraction and frenzy, the duellist rushes with his hand lifted up against his brother's life!-Those who are as yet on the threshold of these habits should be warned, that however calm their natural temperament, however meek and placable their disposition, yet that, by the events which every moment arise, they stand exposed to the ungovernable fury of themselves and others. In the midst of fraud, protected by menace on the one hand, and on the other, of despair; irritated by a recollection of the meanness of the artifices and the base

"Farther to this sordid habit the gamester joins a disposition to FRAUD, and that of the meanest cast. To those who soberly and fairly appreciate the real nature of human actions, nothing appears more inconsistent than that societies of men, who have incorporated themselves for the express purpose of gaming, should disclaim fraud or indirection, or affect to drive from their assemblies those among their asso-ness of the hands by which utter and remediless ciates whose crimes would reflect disgrace on them. Surely this, to a considerate mind, is as solemn and refined a banter as can well be exhibited for when we take into view the vast latitude allowed by the most upright gamesters, when we reflect that, according to their precious casuistry, every advantage may be legitimately taken of the young, the unwary, and the inebriated, which superior coolness, skill, address,

ruin has been inflicted; in the midst of these feelings of horror and distraction it is, that the voice of brethren's blood 'crieth unto God from the ground—and now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. Not only THOU who actually sheddest that blood, but THOU who art the artificer of death-thou who adminis terest incentives to these habits-who dissemi

B

natest the practice of them-improvest the | Mr. Malthus took the trouble of refuting him; skill in them-sharpenest the propensity to and we hear no more of Mr. Godwin. We them-at THY hands will it be required, surely, recommend this example to the consideration at the tribunal of God in the next world, and of Dr. Rennel, who seems to think it more useperhaps, in most instances, in his distributive ful, and more pleasant, to rail than to fight. and awful dispensations towards thee and thine here on earth."

Having paid this tribute of praise to Dr. Rennel's first sermon, we are sorry so soon to change our eulogium into censure, and to blame him for having selected for publication so many sermons touching directly and indirectly upon the French Revolution. We confess ourselves long since wearied with this kind of discourses, bespattered with blood and brains, and ringing eternal changes upon atheism, cannibalism, and apostasy. Upon the enormities of the French Revolution there can be but one opinion; but the subject is not fit for the pulpit. The public are disgusted with it to satiety; and we can never help remembering, that this politicoorthodox rage in the mouth of a preacher may be profitable as well as sincere. Upon such subjects as the murder of the Queen of France, and the great events of these days, it is not possible to endure the draggling and the daubing of such a ponderous limner as Dr. Rennel, after the ethereal touches of Mr. Burke. In events so truly horrid in themselves, the field is so easy for a declaimer, that we set little value upon the declamation; and the mind, on such occasions, so easily outruns ordinary description, that we are apt to feel more, before a mediocre oration begins, than it even aims at inspiring.

We are surprised that Dr. Rennel, from among the great number of subjects which he must have discussed in the pulpit (the interest in which must be permanent and universal), should have published such an empty and frivolous sermon as that upon the victory of Lord Nelson; a sermon good enough for the garrulity of joy, when the phrases, and the exultation of the Porcupine, or the True Briton, may pass for eloquence or sense; but utterly unworthy of the works of a man who aims at a place among the great teachers of morality and religion.

After the world has returned to its sober senses upon the merits of the ancient philosophy, it is amusing enough to see a few bad heads bawling for the restoration of exploded errors and past infatuation. We have some dozen of plethoric phrases about Aristotle, who is, in the estimation of the Doctor, et rex et sutor bonus, and every thing else; and to the neglect of whose works he seems to attribute every moral and physical evil under which the world has groaned for the last century. Dr. Rennel's admiration of the ancients is so great, that he considers the works of Homer to be the region and depository of natural law, and natural religion. Now, if, by natural religion, is meant the will of God collected from his works, and the necessity man is under of obeying it; it is rather extraordinary that Homer should be so good a natural theologian, when the divinities he has painted are certainly a more drunken, quarrelsome, adulterous, intriguing, lascivious set of beings, than are to be met with in the most profligate court in Europe. There is, every now and then, some plain coarse morality in Homer; but the most bloody revenge, and the most savage cruelty in warfare, the ravishing of women, and the sale of men, &c. &c. &c. are circumstances which the old bard seems to relate as the ordinary events of his times, without ever dreaming that there could be much harm in them; and if it be urged that Homer took his ideas of right and wrong from a barbarous age, that is just saying, in other words, that Homer had very imperfect ideas of natural law.

Having exhausted all his powers of eulogium upon the times that are gone, Dr. Rennel indemnifies himself by the very novel practice of declaiming against the present age. It is an evil age-an adulterous age-an ignorant agean apostate age-and a foppish age. Of the propriety of the last epithet, our readers may perhaps be more convinced, by calling to mind a class of fops not usually designated by that epithet-men clothed in profound black, with large canes, and strange amorphous hats-of big speech, and imperative presence-talkers about Plato-great affecters of senility-despisers of women, and all the graces of lifefierce foes to common sense-abusive of the living, and approving no one who has not been dead for at least a century. Such fops, as vain and as shallow as their fraternity in Bond street, differ from these only as Gorgonius dif fered from Rufillus.

Dr. Rennel is apt to put on the appearance of a holy bully, an evangelic swaggerer, as if he could carry his point against infidelity by big words and strong abuse, and kick and cuff men into Christians. It is a very easy thing to talk about the shallow impostures, and the silly ignorant sophisms of Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, D'Alembert, and Volney, and to say that Hume is not worth answering. This af fectation of contempt will not do. While these pernicious writers have power to allure from the church great numbers of proselytes, it is better to study them diligently, and to reply to In the ninth Discourse (p. 226), we read of them satisfactorily, than to veil insolence, want St. Paul, that he had "an heroic zeal, directed, of power, or want of industry, by a pretended rather than bounded, by the nicest discretioncontempt; which may leave infidels and a conscious and commanding dignity, softened wavering Christians to suppose that such by the meekest and most profound humility." writers are abused, because they are feared; and not answered, because they are unanswer- 1 cannot read the name of Malthus without adding able. While every body was abusing and despising Mr. Godwin, and while Mr. Godwin was, among a certain description of understandings, increasing every day in popularity,

my tribute of affection for the memory of one of the best
men that ever lived. He loved philosophical truth more
than any man I ever knew, was full of practical wis-
dom, and never indulged in contemptuous feelings
against his inferiors in understanding.
Page 318

This is intended for a fine piece of writing; | land has any thing to apprehend from the but it is without meaning: for, if words have machinations of Catholics. To such a scheme any limits, it is a contradiction in terms to say of the same person, at the same time, that he is nicely discreet, and heroically zealous; or that he is profoundly humble, and imperatively dignified and if Dr. Rennel means, that St. Paul displayed these qualities at different times, then could not any one of them direct or soften the other.

Sermons are so seldom examined with any considerable degree of critical vigilance, that we are apt to discover in them sometimes a great laxity of assertion: such as the following:"Labour to be undergone, afflictions to be borne, contradictions to be endured, danger to be braved, interest to be despised in the best and most flourishing ages of the church, are the perpetual badges of far the greater part of those who take up their cross and follow Christ."

This passage, at first, struck us to be untrue; and we could not immediately recollect the afflictions Dr. Rennel alluded to, till it occurred to us, that he must undoubtedly mean the eight hundred and fifty actions which, in the course of eighteen months, have been brought against the clergy for non-residence.

Upon the danger to be apprehended from Roman Catholics in this country, Dr. Rennel is laughable. We should as soon dream that the wars of York and Lancaster would break out afresh, as that the Protestant religion in Eng-|

as that of Catholic emancipation, which has for its object to restore their natural rights to three or four millions of men, and to allay the fury of religious hatred, Dr. Rennel is, as might be expected, a very strenuous antagonist. Time, which lifts up the veil of political mystery, will inform us if the Doctor has taken that side of the question which may be as lucrative to himself as it is inimical to human happiness, and repugnant to enlightened policy.

Of Dr. Rennel's talents as a reasoner, we certainly have formed no very high opinion. Unless dogmatical assertion, and the practice (but too common among theological writers) of taking the thing to be proved, for part of the proof, can be considered as evidence of a logical understanding, the specimens of argument Dr. Rennel has afforded us are very insignificant. For putting obvious truths into vehement language; for expanding and adorning moral instruction; this gentleman certainly possesses considerable talents: and if he will moderate his insolence, steer clear of theological metaphysics, and consider rather those great laws of Christian practice, which must interest mankind through all ages, than the petty questions which are important to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being, he may live beyond his own days, and become a star of the third or fourth magnitude in the English Church.

JOHN BOWLES.*
[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1802.]

The truth is, if Mr. Bowles had begun his literary career at a period when superior discrimination, and profound thought, not vulgar violence, and the eternal repetition of rabblerousing words, were necessary to literary reputation, he would never have emerged from that obscurity to which he will soon turn. The intemperate passions of the public, not his own talents, have given him some temporary reputation; and now, when men hope and fear with less eagerness than they have been lately accustomed to do, Mr. Bowles will be compelled to descend from that moderate eminence, where no man of real genius would ever have condescended to remain.

If this piece be, as Mr. Bowles asserts,† the death-warrant of the liberty and power of Great Britain, we will venture to assert, that it is also the death-warrant of Mr. Bowles's literary reputation; and that the people of this island, if they verify his predictions, and cease to read his books, whatever they may lose in political greatness, will evince no small improvement in critical acumen. There is a political, as well as a bodily hypochondriasis; and there are empirics always on the watch to make their prey, either of the one or of the other. Dr. Solomon, Dr. Brodum, and Mr. Bowles, have all commanded their share of the public attention: but the two former gentlemen continue to flourish with undiminished splendour; The pamphlet is written in the genuine spiwhile the patients of the latter are fast dwin-rit of the Windham and Burke School; though dling away, and his drugs falling into disuse and contempt.

Reflections at the Conclusion of the War: Being a Sequel to Reflections on the Political and Moral State of Society at the Close of the Eighteenth Century. The

Third Edition, with Additions. By JOHN BOWLES,

Esq.

Mr. Bowles cannot be called a servile copyist of either of these gentlemen, as he has rejected the logic of the one, and the eloquence of the other, and imitated them only in their head strong violence, and exaggerated abuse. There are some men who continue to astonish and

please the world, even in the support of a bad It is impossible to conceive the mischievous power of cause. They are mighty in their fallacies, and the corrupt alarmists of those days, and the despotic beautiful in their errors. Mr. Bowles sees

manner in which they exercised their authority. They

were fair objects for the Edinburgh Review.

only one half of the precedent; and thinks, in

order to be famous, that he has nothing to do but to be in the wrong.

War, eternal war, till the wrongs of Europe are avenged, and the Bourbons restored, is the master-principle of Mr. Bowles's political opinions, and the object for which he declaims through the whole of the present pamphlet.

The first apprehensions which Mr. Bowles seems to entertain, are of the boundless ambition and perfidious character of the First Consul, and of that military despotism he has established, which is not only impelled by the love of conquest, but interested, for its own preservation, to desire the overthrow of other states. Yet the author informs us, immediately after, that the life of Buonaparte is exposed to more dangers than that of any other individual in Europe who is not actually in the last stage of an incurable disease; and that his death, whenever it happens, must involve the dissolution of that machine of government, of which he must be considered not only as the sole director, but the main spring. Confusion of thought, we are told, is one of the truest indications of terror; and the panic of this alarmist is so very great, that he cannot listen to the consolation which he himself affords for it appears, upon summing up these perils, that we are in the utmost danger of being destroyed by a despot, whose system of government, as dreadful as himself, cannot survive him, and who, in all human probability, will be shot or hanged before he can execute any one of his projects against us.

We have a good deal of flourishing in the beginning of the pamphlet, about the effect of the moral sense upon the stability of governments; that is, as Mr. Bowles explains it, the power which all old governments derive from the opinion entertained by the people of the justice of their rights. If this sense of ancient right be (as is here confidently asserted) strong enough ultimately to restore the Bourbons, why are we to fight for that which will be done without any fighting at all? And if it be strong enough to restore, why was it weak enough to render restoration necessary?

To notice every singular train of reasoning into which Mr. Bowles falls, is not possible; and, in the copious choice of evils, we shall, from feelings of mercy, take the least.

It must not be forgotten, he observes, that "those rights of government, which, because they are ancient, are recognised by the moral sense as lawful, are the only ones which are compatible with civil liberty." So that all questions of right and wrong, between the governors and the governed, are determinable by chronology alone. Every political institution is favourable to liberty, not according to its spirit, but in proportion to the antiquity of its date; and the slaves of Great Britain are groaning under the trial by jury, while the free men of Asia exult in the bold privilege transmitted to them by their fathers, of being trampled to death by elephants.

In the 8th page, Mr. Bowles thinks that France, if she remains without a king, will conquer all Europe; and, in the 19th page, that she will be an object of Divine vengeance till she takes one. In the same page, all the

miseries of France are stated to be a judgment of Heaven for their cruelty to the king; and, in the 33d page, they are discovered to proceed from the perfidy of the same king to this country in the American contest. So that certain misfortunes proceed from the maltreatment of a person, who had himself occasioned these identical misfortunes before he was maltreated; and while Providence is compelling the French, by every species of affliction, to resume the monarchical government, they are to acquire such extraordinary vigour, from not acting as Providence would wish, that they are to trample on every nation which co-ope rates with the Divine intention.

In the 60th page, Mr. Bowles explains what is meant by Jacobinism; and, as a concluding proof of the justice with which the character is drawn, triumphantly quotes the case of a certain R. Mountain, who was tried for damning all kings and all governments upon earth; for, adds R. Mountain, “I am a Jacobin." Nobody can more thoroughly detest and despise that restless spirit of political innovation, which, we suppose, is meant by the name of Jacobinism, than we ourselves do; but we were highly amused with this proof, ab ebriis sutoribus, of the prostration of Europe, the last hour of human felicity, the perdition of man, discovered in the crapulous eructations of a drunken cobler.

This species of evidence might certainly have escaped a common observer: But this is not all; there are other proofs of treason and sedition, equally remote, sagacious, and profound. Many good subjects are not very much pleased with the idea of the Whig Club dining together; but Mr. Bowles has the merit of first calling the public attention to the alarming practice of singing after dinner at these political meetings. He speaks with a proper horror of tavern dinners,

to disaffection-where wine serves only to in"-where conviviality is made a stimulus flame disloyalty-where toasts are converted into a vehicle of sedition-and where the cause of Discord by those hireling singers, powers of harmony are called forth in the who are equally ready to invoke the Divine favour on the head of their King, or to strain their venal throats in chanting the triumphs of his bitterest enemies."

All complaint is futile, which is not followed up by appropriate remedies. If Parliament, or Catarrh, do not save us, Dignum and Sedgwick will quaver away the King, shake down the House of Lords, and warble us into all the horrors of republican government. When, in addition to these dangers, we reflect also upon those with which our national happiness is menaced, by the present thinness of ladies' petticoats (p. 78), temerity may hope our salvation, but how can reason promise it?

One solitary gleam of comfort, indeed, beams upon us in reading the solemn devotion of this modern Curtius to the cause of his King and country

My attachment to the British monarchy, and to the reigning family, is rooted in my 'heart's core.'-My anxiety for the British

throne, pending the dangers to which, in com- | origin. We seriously commend in Mr. Bowles mon with every other throne, it has lately been this future dedication of his life to the service exposed, has imbittered my choicest comforts. of his King and country; and consider it as a And I must solemnly vow, before Almighty virtual promise that he will write no more in God, to devote myself, to the end of my days, their defence. No wise or good man has ever to the maintenance of that throne." thought of either, but with admiration and respect. That they should be exposed to that ridicule, by the forward imbecility of friendship, from which they appear to be protected by intrinsic worth, is so painful a considera|tion, that the very thought of it, we are persuaded, will induce Mr. Bowles to desist from writing on political subjects.

Whether this patriotism be original, or whether it be copied from the Upholsterer in Foote's Farces, who sits up whole nights watching over the British constitution, we shall not stop to inquire; because, when the practical effect of sentiments is good, we would not diminish their merits by investigating their

DR. LANGFORD.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1802.]

AN accident which happened to the gentleman engaged in reviewing this Sermon proves, in the most striking manner, the importance of this charity for restoring to life persons in whom the vital power is suspended. He was discovered, with Dr. Langford'st discourse lying open before him, in a state of the most profound sleep; from which he could not, by any means, be awakened for a great length of time. By attending, however, to the rules prescribed by the Humane Society, flinging in the smoke of tobacco, applying hot flannels, and carefully removing the discourse itself to a great distance, the critic was restored to his disconsolate brothers.

The only account he could give of himself was, that he remembers reading on, regularly, till he came to the following pathetic description of a drowned tradesman; beyond which he recollects nothing.

let

"But to the individual himself, as a man,
us add the interruption to all the temporal
business in which his interest was engaged..
To him indeed, now apparently lost, the world
is as nothing: but it seldom happens, that man
can live for himself alone: society parcels out
its concerns in various connections; and from
one head issue waters which run down in
many channels.-The spring being suddenly
cut off, what confusion must follow in the
streams which have flowed from its source?
It may be, that all the expectations reasonably
raised of approaching prosperity, to those who
have embarked in the same occupation, may
at once disappear; and the important inter
change of commercial faith be broken off,
before it could be brought to any advantageous
conclusion."

This extract will suffice for the style of the
The charity itself is above all praise..

sermon.

ARCHDEACON NARES.+

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1802.]

For the swarm of ephemeral sermons which issue from the press, we are principally in- | debted to the vanity of popular preachers, who are puffed up by female praises into a belief, that what may be delivered, with great propriety, in a chapel full of visitors and friends, is fit for the deliberate attention of the public,

* Anniversary Sermon of the Royal Humane Society. By W. LANGFORD, D. D. Printed for F. and C. Rivington.

To this exceedingly foolish man, the first years of Etonian Education were intrusted. How is it possible to inflict a greater misfortune on a country, than to fill up such an office with such an officer?

A Thanksgiving for Plenty, and Warning against Avarice. A Sermon. By the Reverend ROBERT NARES, Archdeacon of Stafford, and Canon Residentiary of Litchfield. London: Printed for the author, and sold by

Rivingtons, St. Paul's Churchyard.

This was another gentleman of the alarmist tribe.

who cannot be influenced by the aecency of a clergyman's private life, flattered by the sedulous politeness of his manners, or misled by the fallacious circumstances of voice and action. A clergyman cannot be always considered as reprehensible for preaching an indifferent sermon; because, to the active piety, and correct life, which the profession requires, many an excellent man may not unite talents for that species of composition; but every man who prints, imagines he gives to the world something which they had not before, either in matter or style; that he has brought forth new truths, or adorned old ones; and when, in lieu of novelty and ornament, we can discover nothing but trite imbecility, the law must take its course, and the delinquent suffer

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