are well acquainted with the whole; and, as it is plain that the whole design of Providence is not yet accomplished, it is no wonder that we cannot at present account for some parts of the Divine dispensations. But when the eternal state of mankind is fixed in another world, every obscure and intricate display of Providence will shine with new splendour, and it will then be known that "The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works." Let us now reflect on what has been said, that the dictates of moral virtue are the invariable rule by which the Supreme Being regulates his conduct towards all his creatures, and that this has been shewn from the natural essential perfections of God, and the moral rectitude of his conduct; from that sense of the beauty and obligation of virtue we find implanted in our nature, and from those marks of rectitude visible in the works of creation. Hence we may perceive upon what sure, firm, and lasting basis the fabric of natural religion is fixed and supported. Hence we may conclude that the Supreme Being justly demands our constant trust in his Providence, and our universal obedience to his will, not from the principle of sovereignty and mere arbitrariness, but from the harmony, beauty, and rectitude of his conduct towards all his creatures. Again, we may justly conclude from the premises that the uniform practice of virtue and benevolence gives the highest, the most exalted finishing to the character of every intelligent agent. The most amiable, the most engaging idea we can form of the Deity is, that he is a Being of perfect moral goodness; and therefore, if we regulate our judgment by this idea, those, whose characters are adorned with virtue and benevolence, must always attract the greatest share of our esteem, friendship, and affection; while those who have nothing else but the glare of riches and the decorations of external grandeur to recommend them, must appear as objects. worthy of our contempt. To conclude; we may observe, from the whole, that the exercise of virtue, righteousness, and true goodness, must be the most acceptable service we can possibly offer to the Deity. For as he makes the laws of virtue and goodness the rules of his government, on account of the excellency and beauty he perceives in them, surely those intelligent agents, who make the same laws the governing principle of their lives, must be, for ever, highly pleasing and acceptable to the Divine mind; agreeable to the beautiful and just sentiments of our countryman 66 If there's a power above us, (And that there is all Nature cries aloud Through all her works) he must delight in virtue, The Editor has been favoured, since the publication of the November number, with a few additional particulars of the author of the foregoing Essay: "Mr. Benjamin Treacher was born in or near the town of Chesham, in Bucks, in the year 1722. He at a very early age commenced preaching in the General Baptist Meeting-house in that town, but soon went to London and engaged in trade, still continuing to preach. He was for some years the pastor of the General Baptist Congregation in Glasshouse Yard, frequently preaching at Chesham, where his services were always acceptable and where he was much esteemed. At his death two respectful elegies were composed to his memory, and printed; one by the Rev. Mr. Biggs or Briggs, the other by a Miss Rolt, a resident at Chesham, who soon after resided in London, and was married to Mr. Bonnycastle, the eminent teacher of mathematics at Woolwich. They were both members of the General Baptist Church in Barbican for some years; this lady was also the composer of a volume of Poems in which Mr. Treacher was frequently mentioned with great respect. Should a copy of either be now in existence, the Editor will thank the possessor for the favour of it, and will pay any expense in procuring it: one of the elegies was framed and hung in the vestry, at Chesham, for many years after Mr. Treacher's decease." CRITICAL NOTICES. Proofs of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, collected from Holy Writ. By a Layman. Reeve, Gray's Inn Gateway. Pp. 14. Two Letters from Mr. B. S. Jones to his Son in the East Indies, on the Unitarian Controversy. London, Smallfield and Son. THESE are two respectable laymen engaged in the endeavour to discover and disseminate the Christian doctrine concerning God and Christ. As far as we can judge, they are equally sincere in their profession of attachment to truth. The respected author of the former short essay is a Barrister of Gray's Inn, who shews his seriousness of mind by this attempt; but we must be allowed to doubt the soundness of his information. There is a confusion in his use of the phrase "divinity of Christ," which he would seem sometimes to employ as the equivalent of divine authority. Thus, p. 5, he regards Martha as confessing her faith in the divinity of Christ in these words: "I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world;" though all our readers will perceive that to this declaration the Unitarian yields his unqualified assent. This is known and admitted by some of our opponents; but there are others so little informed, among whom we must reckon the present writer, as to imagine that Trinitarians alone concur in Martha's acknowledgment of the Messiahship of Jesus. We have other illustrations of our remark in this writer's citation of the declaration of the Samaritan woman, that Jesus was the Christ, and our Lord's reasoning with the Jews, "had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me." Again, p. 7, Simon Peter's declaration, "We believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God," is produced for the same purpose; and the writer's subjoined declaration, "We do not find our Lord reproving that apostle for giving utterance to these words, which would have amounted to blasphemy, had they not embraced the true description of our Lord's nature," proceeds upon the mistaken notion that there is any thing in this declaration which the Unitarian hesitates to admit. In fact, this is the Unitarian's declaration. For insisting on the sufficiency of this declaration, the great Mr. Locke, in his "Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures," was charged with Socinianism by his contemporary Edwards. In his admirable Vindications of that treatise, which ought to be much oftener read than they are, he convincingly shews that his antagonist was not justified in his inference. He nowhere, that we recollect, expressly disavows the Unitarian principle. He could not do this, indeed, consistently with the not obscure evidence which his works contain, that he himself adopted this form of Christianity. But still his argument was irresistible, that the proposition that Jesus is the Christ contains the essential of Christianity; that all who assent to this position are Christians; that all Christians do assent to it; aud, under the cover of this great authority, we assert that they who in the present day so clamorously maintain that a Unitarian is not a Christian, therein manifest their ignorance of the really essential principle of Christianity, or similar unacquaintedness with the opinions which Unitarians adopt. The latter we believe to be a very general case. 66 The tract before us contains the plainest proof of this, and therefore it is that we expose it.-We find, in p. 10, a rash assertion as to the Jewish opinion of the Messiah, thus, "They deemed the Divinity of the promised Messias to be his chief characteristic." Now that the Jews expected that the Messiah would be God in the sense of Trinitarian Christians, we believe to be utterly destitute of evidence, and to be in direct opposition to their ancient and modern literature. The Layman," who is probably no critic, contents himself with a few of the hackneyed quotations from the letter of Holy Writ, by which Isaiah, for instance, is made, in violation of his actual words, to call the Messiah the Mighty God, and the Everlasting Father, inserting the definite articles which do not exist in the original, and confounding Father and Son, which one would think the Trinitarian would particularly guard against. But it is remarkable that the greater part of his scriptural quotations are not those commonly urged, some with apparent force, in proof of the deity of Christ, but such as, as has before been observed, are common to the Unitarian and the Trinitarian, and in which the Unitarian has no need to propose a difference of translation. The "Layman," in short, who represents, we are satisfied, a large class of persons who, on general subjects, may not be deficient in information, confounds divinity with divine authority, or uses the former word, in many instances, in a sense in which the Unitarian, who hesitates not to call Christ his Divine Master, may use the same language. It conduces much to clearness of conception in this controversy, to distinguish between divinity and deity. The Unitarian Christian receives the first in reference to Christ, but, on scriptural grounds, firmly denies the latter. The author of the Two Letters, which we have placed second in order, modestly describes his plan in the following advertisement: "The subject of Unitarianism has been so repeatedly discussed, as, in the opinion of the writer, to supersede the necessity of doing more than to reiterate the arguments which have been already urged by able writers on both sides of the question; he has therefore satisfied himself with the easier task of condensing the arguments adduced on the Unitarian side of the question. He has availed himself of the Discourse recently printed by the Rev. Thomas Madge, and by Professor Norton. On the more general defence of the Unitarian doctrine, he has merely abridged the treatise published by Dr. Drummond, of Dublin." The selection of arguments made in this pamphlet appears to us very good. The authors by whom he is assisted are among the best who have engaged in the controversy. The zealous members of congregations may, we think, be usefully employed in occasionally extracting from our principal works, and laying their arguments in a cheap form before the inhabitants of a particular district in which the question may be agitated. We do not think, however, with regard to the labours of learned theolo gians, that the field has been so thoroughly cultivated that nothing remains to be done by succeeding labourers. Some, even of our principal writers (Belsham, Wakefield, for instance), may have occasionally advanced interpretations which are injurious to the progress of the Unitarian doctrine, and which are required to be cleared away by others of inferior name, perhaps, who may be more successful as to some particular passages; for the ultimate prevalence of the Unitarian form of Christianity as the |