communes afresh with the soul of every age; and sheds, from the living Fount of truth, a guidance ever new."- pp. 43, 44.

cism.

Then comes the Lecture of Mr. Byrth, which was to prove "The Unitarian interpretation of the New Testament based upon defective scholarship, or on dishonest or uncandid critiHe explicitly asserts his intention of taking the "Improved Version" as the standard of Unitarian Theology in England. This being the case, our readers may not care to see how he pursues the matter; our opinion is that he is right in most of his assertions respecting that version. Though it is not in nature to suppose, that, differing from us so widely as he does, he would seek for the kindest construction of our sentiments, we most cheerfully allow the praise of appearing an upright, amiable, and Christian opponent. We should judge him to be an estimable and devoted man.

The preceding Lecture was replied to by Mr. Thom, in another, entitled, "Christianity not the property of critics and scholars, but the gift of God to all men." He begins by drawing a "distinction between a Revelation by words of doctrines, and a Revelation by a living being," and pursuing the subject, shows the infinitely superior power of the latter mode to influence all hearts, while the former would raise doubts and disputes. There seems to have been a vexatious, but still a mutual, misunderstanding between the authors of these two last Discourses. Mr. Byrth had expressed his surprise that his " opponents should appear to complain of the introduction of critical and scholastic considerations into this discussion." Mr. Thom replies, “We make no such complaint. We complain that the essence of Christianity should be derived from the criticism and interpretation of controverted passages. Will any reverend opponent state a single argument for Trinitarianism, or adduce a single Scriptural evidence, not fairly open to hostile criticism or interpretation?" Mr. Thom implies that Mr. Byrth has not printed his Lecture as he delivered it, and that there was something insulting in his tone and manner. This drew forth a letter independent of the Lectures, from Mr. Byrth, in which he explains the charges against himself, and makes new ones upon Mr. Thom. Several hard words are used on both sides.

On the part of the Church, Rev. John Jones next delivered a Discourse on "The proper Humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ." He insists, as the Unitarians do, on all those texts

which prove the proper and complete manhood of the Savior, and then distinguishes him in three respects above all other men: first, in his moral perfection; second, in his miraculous conception; third, in his preexistence. Next he superadds the doctrine of his supreme and complete Deity. The Discourse is as able and thorough as any we remember ever to have seen on the subject. The author speaks and reasons like one who believes it, and in a kind and respectful tone to his opponents.

The answer to this Discourse is by the Rev. Henry Giles. His subject, as well as his text, is, "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The Discourse combines such strong reasons with such glowing eloquence, that we must copy some of its paragraphs. After insisting upon the doctrines of the absolute Unity of God, and the simple Humanity of Christ, he reflects upon the manner in which Priestley has often been lightly spoken of in the controversy, and demands respect for him, at least, on the ground of his sincerity, which bound him to a life of unrewarded labor, of severe persecution, of devoted toil, and gave him only a humble though a cherished grave among strangers, when he might have filled the highest post of honor in the kingdom. One of the Lecturers had censured him for asserting that, if he found a passage in the New Testament which implied the preexistence of the Savior, he should have supposed it a mistake of the Apostle, or an error of a scribe. Mr. Giles thus repels the

censure:

"The conviction of his reason, it is true, was so strong against the preexistence of Christ, that he would suppose the apostle misunderstood the Savior's words, or the amanuensis mistranscribed the apostle's language. This was urged as a mighty accusation, as a most blasphemous transgression. There are here an opinion and an alternative. The opinion is the belief in Christ's simple humanity; the alternative is merely to suppose the want of memory in an evangelist, or the want of accuracy in a copyist. Place in contrast to this Coleridge as quoted by our opponents. He has also an opinion and an alternative - his opinion is, that Christ was God, and his alternative is, that if not God he was a deceiver. If Dr. Priestley was wrong, he left not only Christ but his apostles morally blameless - if Coleridge mistook, he attributed directly and without compromise the want of even common honesty to the Author of our religion: I leave you to judge between the two cases. I do not wish to disparage

erring and departed genius; but when the name of Coleridge is called up in my mind in connexion with that of Priestley, it is not in human nature to avoid comparison. The one steeped the best part of his life in opium, the other spent it in honorable toil ; the one squandered his brilliant and most beautiful genius in discursive efforts and magical conversations, the other with heroic self-denial shut himself up in dry and laborious studies for the physical good, and the moral wants of mankind; the one wrote sweet and wild and polished poesy for their pleasure, the other has left discoveries for their endless improvement. Yet Orthodoxy builds for one the shrine of a saint, but like those who in other days dug up the bones of Wickliff to be burned, drags forth the memory of the other from the peaceful and forgiving past, to inflict an execution of which we might have supposed his lifetime had a sufficient endurance. Tranquil in the far-off 'and quiet grave be the ashes of the Saint and Sage; his soul is beyond the turmoils and battles of this fighting world. When these who are now in strife shall be at last in union, his will not be the spirit to whom that blessed consummation will give least enjoyment." - pp. 18, 19.

Again:

"The preacher, in speaking to Unitarians specially, commenced his address to us in a tone of exhortation, and closed it in that of rebuke. And what was the ground and subject of rebuke? Why, the smallness of our numbers. He exhorted us on our want of humility, of modesty, in opposing the whole Christian world. I wondered, if I were in a place of Protestant worship, or if I heard an advocate for the right of private judg ment. My mind, as by a spell, was thrown back upon the early and infant history of Christianity; I saw the disciples going forth on that opposing world, of which their masters had given them no enticing picture; I saw Peter at Antioch, and Paul harassed and toil-worn at Rome and Athens; I heard the cry of the vulgar, and the sarcasms of the philosophical, going forth in prolonged utterance in condemnation of the strange doctrine; I visioned before me the little knots of Christians, bound to each other in love, holding their own faith, despite of multitudes and despite of antiquity, fronting the world's scorn and the world's persecution. I thought of Luther, standing, as he confessed, against the world, an admission which was made one of the strongest arguments against him, -an argument that there are piles of divinity to maintain on the one side, and to repel on the other. I thought on the persecution of the Waldenses and the Albigenses; I saw them, few, and scattered, and shivering, and

dying, in their Alpine solitudes: for persecution, like the sun, enters into every nook. I thought of the early struggle of Protestantism in this country, of Latimer, of Cranmer, and of Ridley; I thought of these honest and right-noble beings given, by a barbarous bigotry, to a death of infamy; délivered over to the fires of Smithfield; perishing amidst vulgar yells; not only abandoned, but condemned, by episcopal domination. I remembered having read, in the Life of Saint Francis Xavier, precisely similar objections made against him by the bonzas of Japan. I also considered how many societies at present send missionaries to the Heathen. I considered that, amidst the populousness of India, the Brahmins might make a similar ohjection with much greater force. Our fathers, they might say, never heard these things; our people repudiate them.". pp. 21, 22.

ART. III. THE WRITINGS OF HENRY MORE, D. D.

It is the design of this paper to give some account of the most remarkable English writings of this scholar. Only a few of the most prominent features, however, of each work, can be noticed in our narrow limits. It may be remarked, in general, that most of his writings grew out of the occasions of the age, but this value does not pass away with the occasions which gave rise to them. Succeeding scholars, like Coleridge, have drunk deeply at this spring. The works of Dr. More partake largely of the errors of his day. He delighted to dwell in that twilight land, which lies beyond the region of man's observation, where no eye can see clearly. Here he built castles, on the airiest hypotheses. Here he sometimes mistook a cloud for a goddess; and often stumbled and fell in the dark. But he was not without catching occasional glimpses of most celestial truths.

The first work he published was a collection of philosophical poems, containing a sort of biography of the soul. We had sought for this work in the libraries of our public institutions, the collections of amateurs, and the shops of "the curious in such matters," but without success. But recently a copy of it

has fallen into our hands.* It is dedicated "to his dear father, Alexander More, Esq.," to whom he says, "I could wish myself a stranger to your blood, that I might with the better decorum set out the noblenesse of your spirit. You deserve the patronage of better poems than these, though you may lay a more proper claim to these than to any. You having, from my childhood, tuned mine ear to Spenser's rhymes, entertaining us, on winter's nights, with that incomparable piece of his, the Faery Queen, a poem as richly fraught with divine morality as phansy. Your early encomiums also of learning and philosophy did so fire my credulous youth with the desire of the knowledge of things, that your after advertisements, how contemptible learning would appear without riches, and what a piece of unmanlinesse and incivility it would be held to seem wiser than them that are more wealthy and powerfull, could never yet restrain my mind from her first pursuit.'

The preface to the second edition of these poems is a curious production. He says "I have taken pains to peruse these Poems of the Soul, and to lick them into some more tolerable form and smoothnesse, for I must confesse such was the present haste and heat that I was then hurried in, that it could not but send them out in so uneven and rude a dress. Nor yet can I ever hope to find leisure or patience so exquisitely to polish them as fully to answer my own curiosity." He congratulates himself, however, for having added a canto on the infinity of worlds, and another on the preexistency of the soul, where he has set out the nature of spirits, and given an account of apparitions and witchcraft, very answerable to experience and story. He was led to this by the frequent discoveries of the age. He added curious notes to these poems, but says of them, "contemplations concerning the dry essence of the Deity are very consuming and unsatisfactory. 'Tis better to drink of the blood of the grape, than bite the root of the vine; to smell of the rose, than chew the stalk."

* It has several title pages. The first is inscribed "Philosophical Poems, by Henry More, Master of Arts, and Fellow of Christ's Colledge, in Cambridge; " the next, " A Platonick Song of the Soul, treating of the Life of the Soul; her Immortalitie; the Sleep of the Soul; the Unitie of Souls; and Memorie after Death. Cambridge, 1647." Each of these subjects, also has a separate title page. The book is 12mo., and contains 436 pages. This is the second edition.

VOL. XXVII. 3D s. VOL. IX. NO. I.

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