- Suppose it to be urged, and urged it has been, against Christianity, that this religion cannot proceed from God, because it is not communicated to the whole human race. This objection, if expressed in its proper form, amounts to the following proposition, that God will not bestow an important blessing on some of his offspring which he withholds from others. And this proposition, which seems specious enough in itself, can only be refuted by the evidence of fact. Here, then, analogy not only may but must be employed, or the objection remains unanswered and unanswerable. But, happily for the cause of revelation, it is a characteristic of the Divine government that privileges are allotted in different measures to different individuals, and that which is granted to some is denied to others. This holds true, even of blessings which are most important to the true enjoyment of life, as health, knowledge, and the means of intellectual and moral cultivation. Analogy, then, furnishes a reply to the objection, which is satisfactory and complete.

Again, it has been objected to Christianity that it produces but little effect on the conduct of its professors, and that it has even been the cause of evils of no ordinary magnitude. This objection, when reduced to its principle, affirms, that what God bestows cannot be abused. But this proposition analogy most fully and clearly refutes. Reason is allowed to be the gift of God, and man, as such, is complimented with the appellation of a rational creature. But in how few does reason discharge its proper office! How few really live that life which reason dictates! And how often is this faculty employed to gain the most unworthy ends, and to effect the basest purposes! Indeed, every thing which God gives may be and is more or less misapplied. And were Christianity incapable of being abused or neglected, this peculiarity might induce a suspicion that nature and revelation had not the same author.

But it is time to pass on to one or two examples of the misapplication of analogical reasoning.

Were it urged in behalf of that decree which is supposed to have destined, or to have left, the greater part of the human race to suffer eternally for the sin of Adam, that children do, in fact, suffer in this world for the folly or the vices of their parents, it could not be denied that there is an analogy between the two cases. But the analogy is imperfect and defective. Between these two appointments there are important circumstances of difference which are more than sufficient to counterbalance their general resemblance. By the former, interminable misery is entailed as a punishment upon those who had no share in the guilt contracted. By the latter, temporal inconveniences are sustained by the child in consequence of his parent's misconduct. By the extravagance of a father his son may be reduced to poverty. But thousands live in poverty whose fathers were never extravagant. In consequence of the excesses of a father a child may be born with a feeble frame and delicate constitution. But there are many whose frame is feeble and constitution delicate, whose fathers were chargeable with no excesses. And whoever shall be able to vindicate the appointment of Providence in the latter case, will not be at a loss how to vindicate it in the former. Indeed, from that arrangement, which has provided that the consequences of a man's conduct should extend to those with whom he is closely connected, mankind may learn, and do learn, lessons of prudence and virtue. But what useful lesson is to be learned from the decretum horrendum of Calvin, it would puzzle the ablest theologian to explain.

Again, analogy has been called in to illustrate the doctrine of the Atone

ment and the mediation of Jesus Christ. A schoolmaster, it is said, may grant his scholars some indulgence, or remit the punishment due to an offender, if one of his pupils will consent to write an extraordinary exercise. But to make the case parallel, this said exercise should furnish the ground upon which favours should be granted, or punishment remitted, in every case in which indulgence is shewn or an offence forgiven. The remission of punishment, for instance, whenever it is remitted, must be referred, as to its procuring cause, to the exercise of A B, which was composed for this kind and generous purpose.

Bishop Butler, in his Analogy, furnishes another instance of false reasoning applied to this subject. In defence of what he terms the satisfaction of Christ, he says, that "when in the daily course of Providence it is appointed that innocent people should suffer for the faults of the guilty, this is liable to the very same objection as the instance we are now considering." He also remarks, that "vicarious punishment is a providential appointment of every day's experience." If the expression vicarious punishment is to be understood according to its proper and obvious meaning, vicarious punishment is a thing altogether unknown in the plan of Providence and the economy of human life. And if nothing more be meant by the expression than that the innocent are liable to suffer in consequence of the faults of others, it may be replied, that this appointment, of which a very satisfactory explanation may be given, bears no resemblance to a judicial decree by which an innocent person should suffer that the guilty might escape.

But analogy has no where been more egregiously misapplied than in defence of what have been termed mysteries in religion. We are compelled to believe certain truths in relation to things, of which we know not the nature or mode of operation. And this fact has been urged in behalf of propositions which are either absolutely unintelligible or demonstrably false. It has been said, that as we are obliged to believe what we cannot comprehend, we shall be guilty of temerity if we reject those sacred mysteries which from their very sublimity must ever be incomprehensible to man. In this reasoning, incomprehensibility is made a generic term, which includes two distinct cases, that of conclusions which reason is compelled to admit on subjects which, considered in their full extent, lie beyond its grasp; and that of propositions, the terms of which are either obscure or contradict each other. To confound these cases may suit the purpose of the theological disputant, but the judicious inquirer after truth will take good care to separate them. He will believe that there is a God, though he knows not how this great Being exists; but he will not on this account be a whit more disposed to believe that the Father is God, and that the Son is God, and that the Holy Ghost is God, and yet that there are not three Gods but one God.*

When it is said that there are three persons in one God, the charge of verbal contradiction is avoided. But when the terms of the proposition come to be explained, if it do not resolve itself into mere Unitarianism, it presents us with three Gods in one God. That this should not have been perceived by men of understanding and reflection, affords a striking proof of a truth which has not yet received the consideration that it deserves—I mean, the power of words to blind the understanding.

THE DISSENTERS' PLEA.

"Call no man master upon earth, for one is your Master, even Christ."

If there be those who ask, "Why stand ye thus
Apart from other men, apart from us?
Why ever thus, diverging from our side,
Betray our weakness and our force divide?"
We pray for strength, for meekness from on high,
And, thus prepar'd, we humbly answer WHY.

It is not that our spirits love you less,
Though less than some, perhaps, our lips profess;
'Tis not that, steel'd in mail, our bosoms rise,
Impervious to religious sympathies;

Nor yet that, rais'd above or sunk below
The common lot, your joys we disavow;

We feel them all-with cheerful crowds to meet
And breathe united praise, indeed is sweet;
The harmonious chime, the solemn Organ's call,
The voice of multitudes-we hear it all!
And, if we dar'd approach forbidden ground,
There, there, delighted, would our feet be found;
With you our hearts would burn ; with you to pray
For half the selfishness of life would

pay.

Yet pardon :-louder still a voice within
To humbler courts our feet hath pow'r to win,
Because we feel that, humble though they be,
There and there only can our souls be free.
No feeble being, prone, like us, to err,
Assumes the tone of God's Interpreter,
Bids all beside be impotent, be blind,
Degrades our reason, and dethrones the mind;
This-and because we will not stoop to bear
A yoke our Master never bade us wear,
Nor make the Scriptures bow before a Creed,
Nor force all human eyes alike to read,
Nor give a bounty to the souls that make
Shipwreck of conscience for promotion's sake,
Nor yield to man that "glorious liberty"
Which Christ, our Master, gave us—this is why!

More though there be, yet this alone we name,
Freedom of thought, the Christian's dearest claim;
Freedom to judge, compare to use the power
Which Heav'n bestows, and humbly seek for more.
Here, though we err, 'tis comfort still to know
We bind on none that heritage of woe;
We feel our weakness: and that feeling stays,
Even in its birth, the wish a church to raise,

Where our frail thoughts and weak attempts to read
Heaven's book aright, transferr'd into a creed,
Might give the law to other times,-and be
Our children's children's ground of Heresy.

But grant us this-but give, for Conscience' sake,
The boon which else religion bids us take:
Then when we bow before a Father's throne
Your prayers may blend harmonious with our own.
Though reasoning spirits wander far apart,
All may be borne, while Love is at the heart;
While God is fear'd and worship'd, Christ receiv'd,
And his own word of faithfulness believ'd.

E.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONTROVERSY AS TO THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

THIS Controversy has lately been revived in a book which bears the ponderous title of "Palæoromaica; or Historical and Philological Disquisitions; inquiring whether the Hellenistic Style is not Latin-Greek; whether the many new Words in the Elzevir Greek Testament are not formed from the Latin; and whether the Hypothesis that the Greek Text of many MSS. of the New Testament is a Translation or Retranslation from the Latin seems not to elucidate numerous Passages; to account for the different Recensions and to explain many Phænomena hitherto inexplicable to Biblical Critics." This book is in point of date out of the reasonable limits of the Review department of the Monthly Repository, but we may be allowed a retrospective view of the history and general outline of the questions at issue, which have been again brought into notice by Dr. Maltby's Visitation Sermon, entitled "The Original Greek of the New Testament asserted and vindicated." That Sermon will call for one or two preliminary general observations, and we shall then give as brief an account as we can of the controversy, in an historical rather than a critical form, noticing last of all the position which Dr. Maltby's arguments occupy as bearing on the main question. This mode of treating the subject, we should have liked to have seen Dr. Maltby himself, to a certain extent, pursue, in preference to that of taking up the propositions of the Palæoromaica as something quite new, and going over afresh what is in a great degree beaten ground. In this bookmaking age, old controversies have every now and then new dresses put upon them, and the best service that can be rendered to the public is to give it the benefit of past experience, and to help it to start where a former age left off. A sermon is not the most convenient channel for discussions of the sort here announced; but it is pleasant to be relieved from the din of doctrinal and ecclesiastical polemics, and to be able to join a learned scholar and divine like Dr. Maltby in what he seems, indeed, to treat as a duty second to that of "guarding against errors in doctrine," but which we should hail as a far more gratifying and catholic part of the obligations of a faithful minister of the word of God, namely, in the discussion of points important to the illustration and defence of our common faith. Dr. Maltby, however, enters on the consideration of a most interesting subject in a candid and liberal tone, which we are sorry to see at all departed from, when he gives way, even momentarily, to the common cant (for we can call it by no better name, and in Dr. Maltby's mouth we cannot and will not call it by a worse) of lamenting that his opponent should even have "given publicity to doubts upon points long since admitted by the general consent of wise and good men." The preacher of course adopts the usual plea for stopping the

mouth of the gainsayer, that "such indulgence of an over curious and restless spirit of research may have a tendency to unsettle the minds of the young and unexperienced, and to furnish the scoffer with fresh topics of profane raillery or idle declamation;" and yet he admits in the same page, by a happy stultification of this ecclesiastical denunciation against agitating points decided by "the general consent of wise and good men," (by which, as he well knows, each and every abuse has been sanctioned, till some one found out that these "wise and good men" occasionally possess a very doubtful title to one or other of the epithets,) that "on the whole, the discussion to which it has already given rise will be productive of good." Surely, Dr. Maltby has been brought up in too good a school to put much faith in this nostrum for strengthening weak minds, by keeping from them the means of exercise and invigoration. He must know by experience what is meant when a man is very eager to stop an inquisitive reasoner by a zeal for "the cause of God and the church." The one, he may rest assured, is not very likely to be hurt by any thing of the sort, though the other may very well be at times in danger, and never more so than when it sets its face against the exercise of reason in examining propositions by whatever "consent" they are established. The author of the work which he examines so successfully in the greater portion of his Sermon, has happily anticipated this kind of timid policy by an appropriate passage from Dr. Middleton, which Porson was accustomed to repeat in conversation with enthusiasm, and which we cannot do better than record: "To speak my mind freely on the subject of consequences;-I persuade myself that the life and faculties of man, at the best but short and limited, cannot be employed more rationally or laudably than in the search of knowledge, and especially of that sort which relates to our duty and conduces to our happiness. In these inquiries, therefore, wherever I perceive any glimmering of truth before me, I readily pursue and endeavour to trace it to its source, without any reserve or caution of pursuing that discovery too far, or of opening too great a glare of it upon the public. I look upon the discovery of any thing which is true as a valuable acquisition to society, which cannot possibly hurt or obstruct the good effect of any other truth whatsoever; for they all partake of one common essence, and necessarily coincide with each other; and, like the drops of rain which fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the stream, and strengthen the general current."

The father of the Hypothesis, which, under some modifications, has been revived by the learned author of the Palæoromaica, was the Jesuit Hardouin, who, as Voltaire observed, "n'était pas absolument fou, mais dont la raison était très particulière." He was, nevertheless, a learned and acuté scholar. His speculations on this point did not appear till after his death, and some have looked at that fact as evidence of secret scepticism, while perhaps others might be inclined to suspect from it that the Hypothesis was never very seriously maintained by the author, and that he had followed it up more as a mere speculation than as a matter with which he was either satisfied himself or expected any one else would be so.

Hardouin's theory is in substance, that the present Greek text, in whatever MSS. existing, is only a translation; and that what we call the Latin version, (by which he seems to understand the present Vulgate,) is really the original. When, however, we ascribe the invention of this theory to Hardouin, we ought to give the credit of somewhat of a foreshadowing of it to the Complutensian Editors, who paid the Vulgate the compliment (at the expense both of the Greek and Syriac) of likening it to our Saviour between the two