Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

ciple of veracity is daily and hourly weakened in conformity to his own command.

"Let us bring home the case to ourselves; the only fair way of determining in all cases of conscience. Suppose that we established it into a system to allow ourselves regularly to lie on one certain given subject every day and every hour in the day; while we continued to value ourselves on the most undeviating adherence to truth on every other point. Who shall say, that at the end of one year's tolerated and systematic lying on this individual subject, we should continue to look upon falsehood in general with the same abhorrence we did when we first entered on this partial exercise of it?"

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. SHOULD you not have met with Dr. Hurdis's Poems, the following lines by him on the subject of duelling, may perhaps merit insertion in your valuable work. C. W.

No publie good Can flow from private vengeance. Tis our part,

As Christians, to forget the wrongs we feel,
To pardon trespasses, our very foes
To love and cherish, to do good to all,
Live peaceably, and not avenge ourselves:
And he who, spite of duty, fights and falls,
Runs on the sword, and is his own assassin.
Who sheds another's blood is guilty murder:
No matter what the cauze, for hear the law;
Who sheds man's blood, by man his blood
be shed *.

* Gen. ix. 5.

E'en of the beast will I require man's life.
Who kills his neighbour, be it with design,
Whether they strive or not, he surely dies.
Strike with a stone, with iron, or with wood f,
Or only with the hand, if life be lost,
'Tis death. The land defil'd by blood is
cleans'd
But by his blood who shed it.

True magnanimity, is so to live
As never to infringe the laws of God,
or break the public peace. Let the shri

tongue

of defamation prate, and her loud rout
Decree a coward's name to him who hears
The lie antnov'd, and will not dare to fight
E'en for a blow. 'Tis fortitude to bear:
And he who cannot bear, but stakes his life
To win the praises of a herd like this;
Who hardly knows a virtue from a vice,
His country, and a conscience free from guilt;
And leaves the approbation of his God,

What is he but a coward?

Only he Is great and honourable, who fears the breach Een reputation rather than infringe Of laws divine or human, and foregoes The Christian duty. 'Tis the devil's art To varnish folly, and give vice a mask To make her look like virtue. Thus, to fight, To murder and be murdered, tho' the cause Would hardly justify a moment's wrath, Is honour, glorious honour! Vulgar eyes Mistake the semblance, and the specious vice Passes for sterling virtue.

'Tis nobler far

To bear the lash of slander, and be styl'd Scoundrel and coward, with a mind at ease, Sure to be honour'd by the Great above, Though slighted by the little here.

+ Exod. xxi.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Sermons, by SAMUEL HORSLEY, LL.D. F.R.S. F.A.S. late Lord Bishop of St. Asaph. 2 vols. 8vo. Price 11. 13. Hatchard. 1810.

THE same cause which has prostrated Europe at the feet of the Corsi

can, will, in part, account for the banishment of learning from the highest seats of ecclesiastical dignity in her various commonwealths. As governments grow old, or splendid; as the functionaries of the crown multiply; as the supreme power

strengthens itself against the people, by borrowing the arm of the nobles; as the caprice of the monarch issues in a more extended system of favouritism; just in the proportion in which these events arise, and these dispositions have full play, merit ceases to be a title to dignity, and the powerful and the specious occupy the places of the wise and the good. In many of the countries of Europe, the highest places in church and state were all thus appropriated; and there needed little other qualification for a general or a bishop, than a specific number of acres, or a definite length of pedigree. No arrangement could be more convenient to both those persons, whom divines and politicians respectively denominate the " great enemy of man."

In casting our eyes upon our own bench, and contrasting its state with that of the different foreign consistories, we have certainly much cause of thankfulness to God. There have been, at all periods, individuals seated upon it, who advanced better titles to that distinguished place, than those of blood and name. Indeed, we ourselves do not view, with quite the same jealousy with some of our brethren, the distinction conferred, even in the church, upon men of high worldly connections. At the same time, we must not conceal our opinion, that the church of England has for some time languished, in some degree, under the disease which has proved fatal to her continental sisters. Political connections in too many instances confer ecclesiastical dignities; and borough influence is rewarded with that mitre which real piety alone should wear.

A country, however, does not at once consign itself to the mere influence of political considerations in the distribution of ecclesiastical honours. The next stage to that in which it crowns the good, is that in which it places the learned upon its seats of honour. And this stage is far preferable to that where the church is made the mere tool of the

governing party in the state. The outworks of Christianity must be defended- the contest with philological enemies maintained-and if our crosiers are not stretched out to guide the sheep, they may, at least, be employed to beat off the wolves.

Every one will at once perceive how naturally this last reflection will suggest itself to the critic who approaches any volumes of the late Bishop of St. Asaph. We are not sure that the name of Horsley would have been found among those of the primitive bishops; but, in our degenerate days, he will be quoted as a triumphant evidence that great talents and professional industry will sometimes force their way even to the most elevated seats of ecclesiastical power.-On a former occasion, we attempted something of an analysis of the character of Dr. Horsley. Before this article is concluded, we anticipate an opportunity of illustrating, and, perhaps, enlarging those remarks. We shail, first, however, enter into a pretty extended critique of the sermons before us. Our space, indeed, will not admit of our doing them justice. The curious, and in various degrees important, questions which they suggest, or discuss, are really without end. Much we think profound— much original-much devout and evangelical; but there is no discourse in which we are not compelled to stop and to assert the rights of common sense in its controversy with learning, speculation, critical acumen, and the most extensive acquaintance with Scripture. But let us, first, indulge the curiosity of our readers with some facts with which the Preface to these sermons supplies us.

At the death of this prelate, every one at all acquainted with his restless energy, his inquisitorial powers, and his successful labours in the field of controversial and critical divinity, inquired with impatience into the extent of the literary legacy he had left to posterity. His posthumous works appear to be these-a

"Translation of the Psalms, with notes; a treatise, with notes, on the Pentateuch and the historical books of the Old Testament; a treatise on the Prophets, containing notes on Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, (already published), Joel, Amos, and Obadial;" and, in a different depart ment of literature, the Life of Sir Isaac Newton. These are not left in a crude and unfinished state, but are ready for publication; and the editor of the present volumes, his son, is desirous of publishing the last mentioned work, and the Translation of the Psalms, as soon as he shall meet with any encouragement from the public. We should be shocked to hear that at any period, but particularly in an age of much superfluous expenditure, such encouragement were wanting. It will be seen, that the bishop is not less terrible in his death than in his life to the enemies of orthodox divinity; and that, like Old John Ziska, his very remains continue the ancient warfare, and achieve the accustomed victories. We now proceed to the detailed examination of these volumes.

The sermons are twenty-nine in number. The first volume opens with three upon the phrase so frequently recurring in the New Testament," the coming of the Lord." The object of these sermons is to prove, that the figurative use of this phrase to denote the destruction of Jerusalem is very rare, if not altogether unexampled in the Scriptures of the New Testament, except, perhaps, in some passages of the Revelation; that, on the other hand, the literal sense is frequent, warning the Christian world of an event to be wished by the faithful, and dreaded by the impenitent;-the coming of our Lord, in all the majesty of the godhead, to judge the quick and the dead, to receive his servants into glory, and send the wicked into outer darkness." The argument, as might be expected, is conducted with great ability; but the position we conceive to be still liable to considerable question, if not as it re

spects the Epistles, yet as it respects the Gospels. A brief account of that character of mind, and order of feelings, which has induced this great divine to maintain so strongly the view he has taken of this and other passages of Scripture, may serve as a key to many of the controversies carried on in these volumes.

Dr. Horsley is the farthest possible from that order of theologians who, by an abuse of the term, delight to appropriate to themselves the title of rational. In other words, he does not consider Christianity merely as a more authoritative promulgation of the law of nature, as a system of moral precepts, as a code of philosophical maxims, as a set of notions which must be measured by their apparent expediency, and squared with the dictates of reason, as a schedule of laws, guarded only by temporal sanctions. He receives the laws of the Scriptures, not merely because they are reasonable, but above all because they are the will of God. He views religion chiefly as a system of reconciliation between God and a guilty world through the sacrifice of Christ. He reveres and inculcates the doctrines which, in general, are termed evangelical, that is to say, which are essentially and inseparably connected with this sacrifice of Christ; or, in other words, with the fall and the recovery of man. He reads the Bible, spiritualizing and evangelizing every passage which seems to admit of it. Every type with him is referred to its antetype, and Christ and eternal judgment are discerned in a multitude of expressions, in which ordinary readers discover merely a worldly monarch, or a temporal punishment. Now, to such a mind, many of the most celebrated commentators of our own country present an affecting spectacle. They are subjecting the Scriptures to an alarming process. They are substituting philosophy for religion; reason for faith; temporal objects and interests for such as are eternal. Doctrines are discredited in the defence of precepts; every thing of

mystery and sublimity in religion is lowered down, or explained away; and Christ himself spoiled of the honour of that "salvation" of which he is the "author and the finisher." Having, in his former controversies with Priestley, triumphantly refuted the errors of Socinianism, Dr. Horsley has next devoted himself to combat with that large class of biblical critics to whom we have just alluded; and both in his charges, and in many parts of his Exposition of Hosea, as well as in these sermons, has done, as we conceive, essential service to the cause of evangelical religion. Warburton, Whitby, and others of the same class, may be read with less danger, and at least equal profit, by those whose minds are imbued, and whose principles are guarded, by the views and the arguments of Horsley. But precipitancy is often the companion of zeal and genius; and Dr. Horsley is certainly not characterized by moderation. He sometimes quits the ranks in his heroic pursuit of the enemy; and when he has done all that security requires, goes on to establish himself in some untenable position. Nothing can be more complete than the defeat given in the first three sermons, to those who, after their narrow and cold rule of interpretation, would appropriate the expression of the "coming of the Lord" exclusively to the destruction of Jerusalem; but, it appears to us, as has been already intimated, that his reasoning requires to be qualified when he goes on to maintain, that, not only in the epistolary writings of the apostles, but in the Gospels, the phrase in question is never to be applied to that event. The whole of the argument, however (into which our liinits will not now permit us to enter), is well worthy of the attention of the biblical student. We give one extract from the first sermon, as a specimen of the author's manner :

"That they (the apostles) are to be thus understood, may be collected from our Lord's own parable of the fig-tree, and the applicaon which he teaches us to make of it. After

a minute prediction of the distresses of the Jewish war, and the destruction of Jerusalem, and a very general mention of his second coming, as a thing to follow in its appointed season, he adds,' Now learn a parable of the fig-tree: When its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, ye know that summer is high. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at

the doors.' That it is near-so we read in our English Bibles; and expositors render the word it, by the ruin foretold, or the desolation spoken of. But what was the ruin foretold, or desolation spoken of? The ruin

of the Jewish nation-the desolation of Je-
rusalem. What were all these things, which,
when they should see, they might know it to
be near? All the particulars of our Saviour's
detail; that is to say, the destruction of Je-
rusalem, with all the circumstances of con-

fusion and distress with which it was to
be accompanied. This exposition, therefore,
makes, as I conceive, the desolation of Jeru
salem the prognostic of itself,—the sign and
the thing signified the same.
dering of the original I take to be, ‘So like-
wise ye, when ye shall see all these things,
know that He is near at the doors. He,---

The true ren

that is, the Son of Man, spoken of in the verses immediately preceding, as coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The approach of summer, says our Lord, is not more surely indicated by the first appearances of spring, than the final destruction of the wicked by the beginnings of vengeance on this impenitent people," Vol. i. pp. 17-19.

The reader will find in these three discourses, some very able conjectures as to the meaning of ambiguous texts; and if he finds it difficult to yield his assent to some solutions proposed by the bishop, will yet find it more difficult to defend other solutions by arguments of equal power. Much of our author's reasoning is here pointed at Whitby, who certainly seems to err in too generally securalizing the phrase in question. We cannot, however, acquit the bishop of some degree of harshness, when he characterizes Whitby, and other such critics, as "blind leaders of the blind." But a little may be forgiven to a man, who conceives another to be veiling, behind the refinements of verbal criticism, the solemn scene which he himself so awfully describes.

"God hath warned us that the inquiry into every man's conduct will be public, Christ himself the Judge,-the whole race of man, and the whole angelic host, spectators of the awful scene. Before that assembly, every man's good deeds will be declared,

and his most secret sins disclosed. As no

elevation of rank will then give a title to respect, no obscurity of condition shall exclude the just from public honour, or screen the guilty from public shame. Opulence will find itself no longer powerful, poverty will be no longer weak; birth will no longer be distinguished, meanness will no longer pass unnoticed. The rich and poor will indeed strangely meet together; when all the inequalities of the present life shall disappear, and the conqueror and his captive the monarch and his subject-the lord and his vassal--the statesman and the peasant-the philosopher and the unlettered hind-shall

find their distinctions to have been mere

illusions." "To heighten the solemnity and terror of the business, the Judge will visibly descend from heaven,-the shout of the archangels and the trumpet of the Lord will thunder through the deep,-the dead will awake,-the glorified saints will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; while the wicked will in vain call upon the mountains and the rocks to cover them. Of the day and hour when these things shall be, know eth no man; but the day and hour for these things are fixed in the eternal Father's coun. sels. Our Lord will come, he will come unlooked for, and may come sooner than we

[blocks in formation]

being usually represented under the image of a marriage, assign to it a much higher destination; and induce us to lay these trophies at the feet of Him on whom the eye of the Psalmist is ever intent-the Saviour of the world. This reference of the psalm to Christ, is warranted by the concurrent judgment of antiquity; and though rejected, probably upon the authority of Calvin, in the title prefixed to the psalm in Queen Elizabeth's version of the Bible, was adopted in the days of James the First, by the framers of our present authorized version. And, indeed, such a reference appears to be just. There are some features of the bridegroom in the psalm which might indeed apply to Solomon, whose praises are thought, by some, to be here celebrated; but there are others, some of which are wholly inapplicable to him as an individual, and others as inapplicable to any earthly monarch. For example, the Bridegroom is celebrated as a warrior, whereas Solomon never fought; he is characterized as emiBently righteous, whereas Solomon had a crowd of wives and concubines, at whose solicitation he abandoned the worship of the true God; he is, lastly, addressed as God, in a manner which absolutely excludes every human candidate.

The appropriation of the psalm being settled, the bishop enters upof it. We should have much pleaon a new translation and exposition sure in following him through every part of his examination, for even in his vagrancies he is worthy to be listened to. But the nature of the discussions in these volumes, and the length of them, absolutely refuse the necessary degree of compression: and he who would know the book, must not be content with our meagre analysis. We shall give some extracts of his translation and exposition of the second verse.

"Thou art fairer than the children of men; Grace is poured upon thy lips; Therefore God hath blessed thee for ever." 4 B

« ПредишнаНапред »