صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

Texts and Passages of Scriptare.

Events Denoted. Dan. ii. 41–43. Toes, part of potters clay The ten kingdoms into which the

and part of iron. Western Roman Empire is divided, vii. 24. Ten horns out of this namely, kingdoms of iron, France, kingdom.

Rome, Austria; and kingdoms of clay,
Ravenna, Lombardy, Naples, Tus-

cany, Spain, Portugal and Britain. 34. Stone smiting the image Destruction of the Western Empire, 44, 45, on his feet.

the stone representing the Temporal kingdom of Christ : commencing

1792. vü. 8. A little horn coming up The Papacy as a Spiritual Power, among the horns. called a little horn because of its

small beginnings. Three horns plucked up The taking possession, by the Pope as before him.

a Temporal Prince, of Ravenna, 730 ; Lombardy, 755; and the

Roman Territory, 774.* vii. 25. Speaking great words The Papal Persecutions-shutting up

against the Most High, of the Bible for 1269 years—com&c. until a time and mencing in March A.D. 533, when times and the dividing Justinian acknowledges the Pope as of time.

the head of all the holy churches,

and all the holy Priests of God.t Dan. vii. 9—12. The Ancient of days did The destruction of the Roman Empire, sit.

and commencement of the Reign of Rev. ii. 26, 27. The giving power over Christ and his Saints, 1847.

the nations to him

which overcometh. Dan. vää. 9. A little horn out of one of The Mahometan power. A. D. 632.

the four notable horns.
23. A king of fierce counte- Mahomet, a warrior.

nance. Dan. xi. 2. Yet three Kings in Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius ;-Cyrus Persia.

was then reigning. A.C. 534. The fourth shall be for Xerxes, who made war on Greece riches, &c.

with 5,280,000 soldiers &c. 3, 4. A mighty King, &c. Alexander, who reigned 12 years and

8 months, by whose death bis king,

dom was broken 5. The King of the South. Ptolemy, King of Egypt, to which he

added Cyprus, Phoenicia, Caria, &c. He-that is the King of Seleucus Nicator, King of Macedon,

the North, shall be Thrace, Syria, &c. A.C. 187.

strong above him. A Raiser of Taxes. Louis XVI. deposed Aug. 1792. $

beheaded Jan. 9, 1723. 21. In his estate shall stand Napoleon Buonaparte, a man of low

up a vile person. . birth, appointed First Consul, 1802. With the arms of a Buonaparte's rapid victories in Italy flood.

in 1796. Prince of the Covenant, The Pope, the Prince of the false

Covenant, into whose dominions

Napoleon entered, June, 1796. 23, 24. He shall work deceit- Buonaparte's deceitful conduct in fully.

Italy, the vast contributions he levied, and the strong places which

he acquired. • Mr. Faber considers these horns to be the kingdoms of the Heruli, Ostrogoths, and Lombards, + Messrs. Canninehame, Irving, Fry, Cooper, &c. agree with Mr. Frere in this date. * Whitaker, Faber, Fry, &c. agree in this interpretation.

Bishop Newton, and many others, consider the following verses as referring to Antiochus Fpiphates. Mr. Candinghame very properly asks why we are here to skip over a period of nearly 2000 years--froin the Eastern to the Western Empire-from Antiochus of Syria, to Louis XVI of France.'

20.

22.

31

32.

Texts and Passages of Scripture.

Events Denoted. Dan. xi. 25. The King of the South. The Emperor of Austria, whose armies

were defeated through the treachery

of some of his principal officers. 27. Both these Kings' hearts The confederacy between the Pope

shall be to do mis- and the Emperor of Austria.

chief, &c. 28.

He shall return unto his Buonaparte's triumphant return from

land with great riches, Italy and his hostility to the BRITISH
and his heart shall be Nation.
against the Holy Cove-

nant.
29, 30. He shall return and come Buonaparte's expedition to Egypt.-

toward the South-the Lord Nelson's victory at Aboukir, ships of Chittim shall Aug. 1, 1798. Sir Sydney Smith's come against him, &c. defence of Acre, and Buonaparte's

return to France, Aug. 1799, and entering into negotiations with trai

torous British subjects.*
Arms shall stand on his The military sacrifice of Buonaparte;

part, and they shall the re-establishment of the Papacy;
pollute the sanctuary the French Concordat.
of strength, and take
away the daily sacri--

fice, &c.
And such as do wickedly The northern confederacy of Russia,

against the Covenant, Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia, in
he shall corrupt by 1801.-Lord Nelson's victory at
flatteries, but the peo- Copenhagen.I
ple that do know their
God shall be strong,

and do exploits.
33–35. They that understand The Establishment of Missionary So-

among the peopleshall cieties, Bible Societies, Sunday and
instruct many.

National Schools, &c.
They shall fall they The disastrous war in Germany, in

shall be holpen with 1805, 6, 7. The private subscrip-
a little help.

tions and public grants of the British

nation, for the sufferers.|| 36-39. The King shall do ac- Buonaparte's accession of power.

cording to his will, Victories over Austria, Prussia, the &c.

Russians--the Confederation of the Rhine--possession of Spain-marriage with the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, &c. His infidelity,contempt of Christmidolatry of the god of war—until his army was destroyed in Russia, and himself

compelled to abdicate. 40—45. The time of the End. A new period, when Antichrist will

hear of the march of the Kings of the East (the ten tribes) with the advance of the Russians, &c. when the battle of Armageddon shall take

place.

• Or rather the interference of the Romans with Antiochus Epiphanes: Jerome states, that the Jews understood this passage not of Antiochus but of the Romans. Here, however, is obviously a transition from the Grecian to the Roman Empire.

+ The destruction of Jerusalem by Titus,
I Pagan persecutions of the early Christians.

The establishment of Christianity under Constantine.

Papal persecutions for 1260 years expiring in 1702, and shortly followed by the appearance of Buvnaparte the wilful King.–See Cooper's Crisis.

REVIEW OF BOOKS.

A Charge delivered to the Clergy

of the Diocese of Llandaff, in September 1827, at the Primary Visitation. By Charles Richard, Bishop of Llandaff. Hatchards. Pp. iv. and 28.

We have great pleasure in calling the attention of our readers to this valuable Charge; a Charge every way worthy of serious and attentive perusal, and affording decisive tes. timony to the soundness of that judgment by which his Lordship has very recently been elevated to one of the most valuable and important situations in our Church, the See of WINCHESTER.

His Lordship coinmences his Charge in the most affectionate spirit. Addressing his clergy as brethren, he observes,

My desire is, to adopt the term with reference to that bond of Christian brotherhood, which links us together with one common interest; in pledge of my own willingness to remember your claims upon my regard by virtue of this friendly relation.

Gladly, however, would I believe that, in using these words, I may touch some chord of kindred feeling within your own breasts, and find in your thoughts towards myself, the counterpart of that interest which I entertain for you. The obligations of our relative situations are essentially reciprocal. We owe each other mutual love, mutual confidence, mutual forbearance. As much as lieth in us, we must share each other's burthens, and aim at interchanging such good and friendly offices as are worthy of members of an household of faith which is at unity with itself.

After adverting to the benefits which might result from visitation, and the diminished respect paid in modern times to the clergy, his Lordship proceeds :

Do I complain of those jealous eyes which are ever watching with an Argus-like vigilance to detect in the pastor of the flock the absence of those qualities by which the Chief Shepherd was distinguished? Do I wish to recall those days of almost superstitious re

JAN, 1828,

verence for the priesthood, when the dominion of the clergy over the minds of men deserved less to be considered as the legitimate ascendancy of high talent and exemplary piety, than as the offspring of a monopoly of learning in an age of darkness—the despotism of exclusive knowledge over ignorance and its associate, error? No, my reverend brethren ; happily for ourselves, as well as for the world in general, whatever be the character we enjoy, it cannot be acquired by hereditary charter, or put on at pleasure, as belonging to the habit of our profession. Respect must be deserved before it can be won; and as, generally speaking, it will rarely be long withheld where it is fairly due, so will it seldom be long conferred contrary to desert, however high the office, or sacred the functions of him who challenges it. True it is, that “ with us it is a very small thing that we should be judged ... of man's judgment.... but he that judgeth us is the Lord.” But be it remembered, that he who has furnished us with this liberty of highest appeal, prefaces his declaration with these solemn sentences-sentences which I would earnestly hope are indelibly engraven on the hearts of each one who hears me: Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. And again-Take heed therefore to the ministry which you have received in the Lord, that you fulfil it. Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, (in obedience to canons and constitutions of the church, devised not for an incentive to good works, but in terror to the evil,) but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind.

The following observations are such as we do not recollect having met with in Episcopal Charges ; they are not, however, the less important. His Lordship had just been speaking of repairs of churches, &c.

I cannot dismiss this subject without adverting for a moment to the want of church-accommodation which at present prevails to a lamentable extent in some parts of the diocese. This evil, long experienced so sensibly in other parts of the kingdom, seems to have been

untelt in these counties, until the mineral ings, those Perpetual Endowments wealth of their mountains began, at à which, generally speaking, our ecclesicomparatively late period, to employ a astical forms most wisely require, are in large capital in its acquisition. It is a great measure inapplicable. But is impossible to contemplate, without feel it fitting that the Church should thereings of the deepest compassion, those fore reject them as outcasts from her dense masses of population which since fellowship, or deny them the liberty of that time have been so rapidly collected entering that pale, within which, as her on our hills. In the midst of a Chris- members believe, the purest form of tian country they seem, by a concur- communion is found, and the best exrence of unfortunate causes, to have ternal means are provided for worshipbeen cut off from some of its dearest ping the Father in Spirit and in truth? privileges. Exposed to all the disad Is it consistent with her profession that vantages of temptation attendant on they should be as sheep having no sheppopulous neighbourhoods, they are res herd, or abandoned to every blast of trained by few of those checks which vain doctrine to which, in the absence impose elsewhere a salutary restraint on of other teachers, they may chance to the human passions, and are influenced be exposed ? If it be true, as we have by little of that example which, in the been lately told, that the number of Disabsence of higher motives, is often a senters from the Established Church is good preservative against open vice. If, increased, even to the half of the popuunder these circumstances, instances lation of the kingdom, can we wonder of gross and flagrant crime are, as I am at this accession to their ranks, so long informed, of extremely rare occurrence, as we close the door against our own the credit of this morality, so far as it is friends, and compel them to take refuge founded at all on religious principles, in other asylums? Is it extraordinary can scarcely be imputed to the influence that men should be willing to accept of the doctrine of Christ through the from the policy or zeal of others, what teaching of the Established Church. we are too tardy in giving, or are unable For,“ how shall they believe in him to give ourselves? Something perhaps of whom they have not heard ? and how might be done to remedy this evil, if a shall they hear without a preacher, and fund were created for the support of clergy how shall they preach except they be of our own establishment, who might be sent ?Nor is the shame of this de stationed from time to time, as occasion sertion to be hastily imputed to those required, in places where the excess alone who have a principal interest in of population had arisen from causes this property. That it is incumbent on of a temporary nature, and was not them to make provision for the better likely to be permanent. An expanding instruction of those numerous families and contracting power would thus be who have been brought together by their provided, which, if used discreetly, and means, is as certain as that parents are employed under proper sanction, might required to attend to the religious belief preserve within the bosom of our own of their children, or masters of their communion thousands to whom the servants. But they have a right to ex comforts of religion are now inaccespect that facilities should be afforded sible through the portals of the Establishfor this purpose facilities greatered Church. In parishes where the present perhaps than the constitution of our accommodation is insufficient, and a large church, or the laws of the land at pre- proportion of the population is situated sent offer. The Church of England at a distance from the church, I shall not has apparently never contemplated a decline to license suitable buildings, case analogous to the present. It has under certain provisions, for the tempomade no provision for the religious in. rary performance of divine service, if no struction of a population which ebbs and more unobjectionable means can be deflows, collected suddenly in a given vised for administering to the spiritual spot, to be dispersed as suddenly, after wants of the people. I may also add, a lapse of a few years, or a few centu- for the information of those who are ries, when the hidden riches which first disposed to avail themselves of this pri. caused the influx shall have been ex- vilege, that by an important clause in an hausted. To the wants of a body of Act of Parliament, passed in the last men who, like the inhabitants of a Session, it is enacted, that persons buildmining district, from the very nature ing and permanently endowing churches of their work are so fluctuating in their or chapels, have now the perpetual right number, and so shifting in their dwell- of presentation, without making com

pensation to the minister of the church of a former pastor, or to the distance or parish wherein such new church or of the church from the bulk of the popuchapel be situated; whereas, under the lation; but in the greater number of former act, the right of presentation was answers, it is ascribed either to the conceded for forty years, or the first two activity of the dissenters, or to the inturns only.

difference of the people to all religion,

If it be meant that the dissenters are Some pages after, his Lordship

more active than the established church, adds;

in promoting the cause of religious The returns with which I have been truth, according to their own view of it, furnished, - present, in too many in- it follows, that we have been unmindful stances, painful reports of the smallness of our solemn promise to “be ready of the congregations in this diocese. with all faithful diligence to banish and The examples I am about to give are drive away all erroneous and strange not taken from the mining districts, but doctrines contrary to God's word.” from places where the church accommo - In such case, it behoves us to call dation is confessedly adequate to the to mind the solemn admonition of extent of the population. In three our church-" If it shall happen the parishes, whose united population a same church, or any member thereof, to mounted, at the census in 1821, to nine take any hurt or hindrance by reason hundred and thirty six souls, there are of your negligence, ye know the greatin all only twenty-two communicants, ness of the fault, and also the horrible and fifty attendants at church, or about punishment that will ensue." Nay, if one in twenty of the whole population. it could be indeed believed that the In two other parishes, containing one examples of ministerial activity were to thousand six hundred and forty six souls, be found only in the ranks of dissent, there are only fourteen communicants, the friends of religion might well be and sixty attendants at church, being excused for adopting the words of the about one twenty-seventh of the whole apostle, until a portion of the same population. In five parishes of larger zealous and energetic spicit were infused size, containing together above ten into the ministrations of the members thousand individuals, the deficiency is of our own communion. “What then, still more deplorable; the united num- notwithstanding every way, whether in ber of communicants averaging only pretence or in truth, Christ is preached; eighty two, and of attendants at church and I therein do rejoice, yea and will two hundred and sixty; or about one rejoice." If, on the other hand, the in thirty eight on the whole population. true source of the evil be the indifference In the whole diocese, the gross number of the people to all religion, has their of communicants is stated to amount to apathy led to a corresponding exertion four thousand one hundred and thirty of zeal on our part, that if they perish four, and of attendants at church to for lack of knowledge, their souls be not nineteen thousand one hundred and required of us at last, as unfaithful sixty nine, on a population exceeding,

on a population exceeding, watchmen over the sheep of Christ, in 1821, one hundred and fifty thousand « bought with his death, and for whom individuals of all ages.

he shed his blood ?” Like the apostle, Of the accuracy of the returns on which whose labours in season and out of seathese calculations are founded, the son should be the pattern of our minisclergy who have transmitted them are try, can we protest, as in the presence the best judges; but, on the supposition of God, that we “ have not ceased to that any thing like this statement be a warn every one," whether he would true representation of the condition of hear, or whether he would forbear, the established church in these parts, it « both night and day, with tears," and is indeed a subject calling for serious have taught them “publicly, and from reflection on the causes which have led house to house;" calling them all to to it, for deep humiliation on account witness, that we are“ pure from the of this spiritual desert, and for unceas blood of all men?ing and fervent prayer for a more My reverend brethren-God alone, abundant measure of divine favour on who is the searcher of hearts, is conthe parochial ministry. In reply to the scious of the truth or falsehood, of the circular query respecting the probable integrity or infidelity manifested in our cause of the deficiency, it is attributed, observance of those solemn vows which in some few instances, to the want of a are upon us as ministers and stewards resident clergyman, to the negligence of Christ's mysteries. It may be that

« السابقةمتابعة »