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after all, shall tell us what is this principal sense of Revelation? It is easy enough to merge the peculiar doctrines of Christianity in some lax generalities to suit the many-coloured champions of the diverse heresies which deform the religious Babels of modern architecture; but the result of the amalgam would be as remote from the simplicity of christian truth, as "the poisoned entrails" of the charmed cauldron, around which the Weird Sisters danced with mystic song, from the pure water of the cup of life.

We, in all honesty of heart, entreat our eloquent essayist to believe that we do not mean to involve him in the mischief thus likely to result from his seeming principles. In his hands, doubtless, Christianity would be safe. Enlarged and orthodox, and charitable are his general views of religion, abhorrent at once from the gloomy dogmas of Calvin, the rigid sanctimoniousness of the Puritan, and the rabid rancour of the Fanatic. That he is equally free from prejudice and error upon topics connected with ecclesiastical discipline and Church communion, we have discovered, we think, abundant reasons to doubt. The brilliant energy of his imagination has sometimes superseded, we apprehend, the sober exercise of his judgment; and his universal love for all sorts and conditions of men has led him, we are sure, to open the doors of salvation to many, against whom the law of Christ has seemed to shut them; and, in his easy process of ascertaining the main scope of divine revelation, he has forgotten the difficulty of framing a christian creed which shall embody the great doctrines of Christianity, and yet be acceptable to the world! He speaks, we must add, of rites and ceremonies,—of the Church and her ministers,—with disparaging comments, and undeserved slight; as if Christianity could exist without forms, or the judgment of illiterate peasants, honestly seeking the truth, needed no pastoral help to guide it to the path of life! Yet these faults, "rari nantes in gurgite vasto," are redeemed by so much excellent matter, by so much fervid eloquence, by so much poetical beauty of style, and by so much cogent reasoning, and by so much charity withal of heart, that we willingly afford him no ordinary share of commendation. We wish him all prosperity in the future volumes, to which he has taught us to look forward with pleasing anticipation: and we assure our readers that we have omitted to analyse his two last Sections, only because we have already much exceeded the usual space allotted in our miscellany to volumes like this, to which we are compelled at length to address a reluctant "farewell."

LITERARY REPORT.

An Address to the Inhabitants of Loughborough and the Vicinity, on the Erection of a Roman Catholic Chapel in that Town. By ARISTOGEITON. London: Rivingtons. Loughborough: Cartwright. 12mo. Pp. 12.

A VERY useful little tract, and well adapted for distribution in any district under like unfortunate circumstances. The writer is decidedly a clever man, and a perfect master of his subject; and has written with a simplicity that is delightful. Of the papistical errors, four only are here specifically refuted; most of the others falling with the demolition of those condemned.

Sacred Poetry, for the Use of Young Persons. Selected by A MEMBER OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. London: Roake & Varty. 1833. Pp. 268.

WITH a very few exceptions this selection is good; and to those who have a taste for poetry, and a heart for religion, likely to afford no small delight in their progress to the heavenly Canaan. Did not Dr. Watts indite the clxxxviith?

Conversation on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, between a Minister of the Church of England and some of his Parishioners. By C. W. STOCKER, D.D. late Fellow of St. John's, Oxford. London: Rivingtons. 1834. 12mo. Pp. 76.

A PLAIN, full, and explicit account of the nature of the Lord's Supper, and the duty of attending it. The arguments are affectionately and powerfully urged and we doubt not that the little book will be found extremely useful to the Clergy for the purpose of lending to their undecided flock.

A Proposed Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the United Church of England and Ireland; together with an Outline of Ecclesiastical Canons, Articles, Convocation, &c. &c. By M. R. MONTAGUE, Esq. London: Roake & Varty.

ALTHOUGH this pamphlet professes to be the most comprehensive plan of Church Reform hitherto offered to the public, yet it is evident the writer is a devoted member of the Establishment. He has certainly read much, and deeply considered his subject; and were the revision of the Liturgy about to be undertaken, there is no doubt that many hints might be borrowed from his work; but until we have competent authority (the Convocation) to execute all the proposed alterations, revisions, amendments, improvements, &c. &c. we fear works like these will not have the effect so devoutly wished by their authors.

The Characters of the True Church, and the Duties of True Churchmen; a Sermon. By the Rev. T. NUNNS, M.A. Birmingham: Langbridge. London: Hammond; Rivingtons. 1834. 12mo. Pp. 32. THIS very sensible, sound, and practical discourse, will well repay the perusal.

A Discourse upon the Resurrection, in Connexion with the Atonement. By the Rev. W. W. ELLIS, M. A. Curate of Gravesend. London: Rivingtons. ELOQUENT, clear, and instructive.

Modern Church Reform: a Poem.

London: Rivingtons. 12mo. Pp. 23. In this amusing and argumentative poem, the views of Dissenters concerning Church Reform are ably exposed.

Report from his Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws. London: Fellowes. 1834. 8vo. Pp. 490. THE Commissioners of the Poor Laws have made their report, which is now in the course of publication. The whole evidence occupies five large volumes, and in a sixth the Commissioners suggest certain alterations, which they think will effect a reform. The following is a brief outline of the suggestions, which consist of twentytwo distinct propositions, in recommendation of which very elaborate arguments are employed.

1. No work to be given out of the workhouse after a certain day, to be hereafter named.

2. The regulation of workhouses to be under one uniform and responsible authority.

3. A Central Board to be established in the metropolis, consisting of three Commissioners, with assistant Commissioners or Inspectors.

4. The Central Board to have the power of incorporating small parishes, for workhouse purposes, as they may deem expedient.

5. The Central Board to have the power of incorporating parishes, with a view to the appointment of permanent officers, and of regulating rates, &c.

6. The Board to have the power of recommending fit persons for parochial offices to different parishes, and also power of dismissing unfit persons, upon complaint being made to them.

7. The Board, in order to prevent jobbing in articles of parochial consumption, to have power to direct that the supply be by tender and contract, the competition to be perfectly free.

8. In cases of embezzlement, Board to act as public prosecutor.

9. Relief to able-bodied labourers, in particular seasons, when work cannot easily be obtained, to be treated as a loan.

10. Relief to be afforded by apprenticing, at expense of parishes, under direction of Central Board.

11. Vagrants to be denied all relief, but such as the really destitute will not refuse to accept.

12. Central Board to report their proceedings, &c. annually, to the Secretary of State; and the members to be removable at his Majesty's pleasure.

13. Board to have the power of appointing and removing their own officers.

14. Settlement by hiring and service, apprenticeship, purchasing or renting a tenement or estate, paying rates, or serving an office, to be abolished.

15. Parentage, birth, and marriage, to remain. Child to take the father's settlement; or, on the death of the father, its mother's till the age of 16; after that age, the settlement to be only birth.

16. Birth-settlement to be proved by registry of baptism.

17. The Commissioners recommend the total abolition of the bastardy laws, which they consider operate to produce extortion and perjury. An illegitimate child to take its mother's settlement till the age of 16.

18. The mother of an illegitimate child to be required to support it.

19. The same liability to be extended to a man who marries a woman having previously given birth to an illegitimate child.

20. Recommends the repeal of those statutes which authorize the removal of an unmarried pregnant woman, and also the committal to the house of correction of the mother of a chargeable illegitimate child.

21. The Commissioners consider that all attempts at restraining licentiousness by punishment of the father are worse than useless. They, therefore, recommend that all acts which punish or charge the putative father of an illegitimate child shall, as to all such children born after the passing of the intended act, be repealed. The woman may still bring her action for breach of promise of marriage, and the parents theirs for the loss of their daughter's services.

22. With a view to equalize the supply of labour to the demand occasioned by increased population, they recommend that parish vestries be empowered to order payment out of the poor-rates for the expenses of

persons who choose to emigrate, provided that the expense of each emigration be paid within a period to be mentioned in the act. The Commissioners think that, for effecting an improvement in the composition and conduct of vestries, and for securing the more full and punctual payment of the rates, it is desirable that the owner of every dwelling or apartment let to the occupier at any annual rent not exceeding 15l. for any less term than seven years, should be rated, instead of the occupier.

A Few Words of Instruction to his Parishioners, on an Error in Doctrine prevalent most especially in Country Parishes; with Advice on some Points of Religious Practice. By JAMES DUKE COLERIDGE, LL.B. Rector of Lawhilton, Cornwall. Exeter: Trewman. Pp. 24.

THIS is a plain and familiar exposition of the unscriptural error that a moral life, especially if accompanied by bodily privation or suffering, is in itself meritorious, and as such, certain of a recompense at the hand of God. This ground of confidence is too frequently avowed, and men are apt to look to it for comfort and security rather than to the only anchor of safety held out in the gospel,-the all-prevailing merits of Jesus Christ. From the dialogue before us a village pastor might select many useful hints on which to discourse, when he perceives such fatal errors sapping the foundation of true religion in the minds of his flock.

Sermons, and Sketches of Sermons, by the late Rev. H. GIPPS, LL.B. Vicar of St. Peter's, &c., Hereford. Revised, &c. by the Rev. J. A. LATrobe, M.A. London: Seeley. 1833. 8vo. Pp. 468.

EVEN after the lima labor of his fellowlabourer and editor, these sermons of Mr. Gipps have no very striking pretensions to public notice. Indeed, Mr. Latrobe himself states, that "few compositions were so little suited to meet the public eye in the state in which they were written;" and he has

therefore felt it his duty to "give them the requisite correction, to remodel occasionally a sentence, supply that which is deficient, or curtail that which is redundant." We allow all this to be very friendly, and perhaps very judicious. Our objection, however, against their publication, does not rest so much upon the crude and ill-digested composition of the discourses themselves, as upon the unhappy tendency of the doctrines exhibited in them. In a long and eulogistic introduction respecting the substance and manner of Mr. Gipps' ministration, his editor commences a sketch of his doctrinal peculiarities, and from which it is clear that he was a follower of Calvin, however he might object to the term Calvinistic; so that we do not exactly see the force of the application of the Horatian verse. To be sure, it seems, that his doctrines were not founded upon those of Calvin, but received from actual inspiration; for we are told that "he might say with the Apostle, I certify you, brethren, that the Gospel which was preached of me, was not after mun. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." In this text (Gal. i. 11, 12.), St. Paul expressly alludes to those supernatural revelations which followed his miraculous conversion; and we cannot admire the Christian humility of that preacher, which would suppose them applicable either to himself or another, in these days when the Spirit no longer worketh by an extraordinary afflatus.

Old Dissenters and New Dissenters; or the Independents of 1834. London: Seeley. Pp. 16.

A DEFENCE of the Church, containing some home truths in familiar language.

Antiquitates Apostolica: or the Lives, Acts, and Martyrdoms of the Holy Apostles of our Saviour. To which are added Lives of the two Evangelists, St. Mark and St. Luke. As also, a brief Enumeration and Account of the Apostles and their Successors for the first three hundred years, in

the five great Apostolical Churches. By WILLIAM CAVE, D.D. Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles the Second. With an Introductory Essay by the Rev. HENRY STEBBING, M. A. London: Hatchard. 1834. 2 vols. 12mo. Pp. xliv. 294. [Sacred Classics, No. II. III.]

FROM the concluding verses of St.John's Gospel, it is clear that the inspired histories of himself and the other Evangelists are merely an epitome of the principal occurrences of the lives and actions of our Lord and his Apostles; and it is natural to suppose that during the period of their lives, and for some time afterwards, many particulars respecting them, which do not appear in the Gospel and the Acts, were retained in the memory, and formed a frequent subject of conversation among Christians. In addition to these authentic traditions, however, a variety of accounts were in circulation, even before the close of the first century, containing a detail of events for which there was not the slightest authority whatsoever. Every sect had its own Gospel, compiled under the forged name of one or other of the Apostles, with a view of supporting their peculiar creed by some reputed act or discourse of the founder and first preacher of the gospel. In the Introductory Essay prefixed to this edition of the Lives of the Apostles, the editor has laid down, in the most able and judicious manner, the proper use to be made of the traditional information which has come down to modern times; and to no compilation does the estimate which he has formed of the true value and appropriate tendency of such information, better apply, than to the instructive interesting work which suggested it. Cave was among the most sagacious and honest divines of the times in which he lived. tracting with the most diligent research all that was worthy of credit from the writings of the immediate successors of the Apostles, marking

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what is doubtful with the true proportion of credit or discredit to which it was entitled, and rejecting without hesitation the apocryphal invention of impostors or heretics, he has produced a history of the first establishment of the Christian Church, as exhibited in the lives of its inspired teachers, which ought to be in the hands of every sincere disciple of Jesus Christ. As such, it has been well selected as one of the early portions of the series to which it belongs; a series, which, if we augur rightly, is set for the production of incalculable good; and which, with due caution in the selection, or rather perhaps in the editing, of the successive treatises, must meet with the encouragement it deserves.

The Uses of a Standing Ministry and an Established Church. Two Sermons preached at the Consecration of Churches. By CHARLES JAMES BLOMFIELD, D.D. Bishop of London. London: Fellowes. 1834. 8vo. Pp. 63.

"RELIGION," says Hooker," without the help of a spiritual ministry, is unable to plant itself: the fruits thereof are not possible to grow of their own accord." To the same effect argues the Bishop of London, in the former of these Sermons; shewing that the Scriptures, if left to themselves, would have been limited in their operation to the country and times in which they were first promulgated. In the second Discourse he states and enforces the argument for an Established Church. A remark which he has made respecting the state of religion in America has led the learned Prelate into a correspondence with a native of that country. We do not think that his observations have diminished the weight of his Lordship's argument, if indeed they have not rather tended to illustrate and enforce it.

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