and its end was not the glory of the writer, but the salvation of the hearer. The same method is pursued in this as in the former parts, and with the same success; the laws of Scripture are clearly demonstrated to be in perfect consonance with the law of nature, they are distinguished only from the latter, as they propose those motives for benevolence,which the reason or the philosophy of man could never disclose, and as they inculcate their exhortations by examples, which our unassisted nature could never have extended. The following recapitulation, though sufficiently plain and simple, will nevertheless have its full weight with every Christian mind. "Seeming injuries which we are inclined to punish, may be no injuries. Let us not deserve to have it said of us, Behold he findeth occasions against me; he counteth me for his enemy.' Job. xxxiii. 10. let us rather take the advice of Solomon, Strive not with a man without a cause, if he have done thee no harm.' Prov. iii. 30. And suppose harm done, yet if not meant, let us accept the same kind of Apology which St. Paul offered; I wist not, Brethren, that he was the High Priest.' For it is written, Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.' Acts xxiii. 5. He who will cite authorities against himself, merits our indulgence. If we are convinced that we suffer, yet if there is room for doubt whether we suffer wrongfully let us remember the Householder who hired labourers into his vineyard; Friend, I do thee no wrong.' Matt. xx. 13. This plea was in all reason sufficient to secure peace; though we are too apt to imagine, that we are injured if we receive less from free bounty than other men: and to look upon that as an injury, which is only a deprivation of a benefit that we had been long accustomed to enjoy. “Should a man have injured us beyond dispute, and should he shew strong marks of sincere contrition; let us remember the Servant-Debtor: let us by all means avoid that cutting reproach of the Lord, to whom the debt was owing; O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desirest me; shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?' Matt. xviii. 32, 33, Let this excellent parable make us cautious of over-rating any injury offered to us, and earnest, when we think it necessary to punish, in chusing the punishment most likely to do good. And after all our caution, let us be aware, that the best punishment we can chuse may not answer the good purpose intended; such is the hardness and im penitent heart. Rom. ii. 5. of some men:-nay, that a punishment strictly just, may be cruel, according to the passage of the Parable now quoted, and therefore unbecoming when inflicted by frail and fallible beings. And not only cruelty may prompt us to punish, but, what seems less obvious, cowardice; that the merciful may be brave, cannot be doubted by those who contemplate our blessed 1 blessed Lord and his first Martyr St. Stephen in their dying mos ments. And let us not forget, that we are not only bound to regard ourselves, but the general good of the world: if you bite and devour one another,' says St. Paul, 'take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.' Gal. v. 15. A wrathful man stirreth १ up strife;' and we have seen, that the beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water.' Prov. xv. 18. and xvii. 14. "Let the examples which we meet with in holy writ; convince us, that any disgrace which attaches to submission and condescen sion in the injured, is only in the eyes of the low and vulgar; that it is only a temporary stain, soon evaporates, and leaves pure and genuine brightness behind it, for ever. "Lastly. If notwithstanding all that has been said, offenders should presume to claim that indulgence which we have been studying the means of providing for them, the Parable of the Labourers in the vineyard may again be called to our aid: there the just and generous Housholder insists upon being the judge of his own beneficence; by whatever rules he may be guided in the sight of God, and before his own conscience. If then we are, at any time, in the situation of those who have reason to desire forgiveness, let not our eye be evil; let us not take wrong and confused views of the case before us; Matt. vi. 22, 23. and xx. 15. lest we begin dissentions which we can never justify, and which will never have an end; and so involve ourselves in perplexity and guilt, which even death itself may be unable to expiate." P. 156. These are lessons which all the theories which the ingenuity and the pride of self-sufficient man ever wove together, have never, been able to enforce. This train of thought is carried ou to a still further extent in the concluding portion of this admirable volume, in which our author considers those precepts which are peculiar to the Holy Scriptures, so that we find nothing analogous to them in natural law. Such, for instance, is the precept, Matt. v. 39. I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him thy other also. The comment of Dr. Hey upon this passage, which is not without its difficulties, is so admirable both for its acuteness and for its judgment, that we shall present it to our readers. "When Christ says that his disciples must yield to a blow, or to oppression, is it to be understood that they are to do it repeatedly, or only at the time when the first insult is offered? We are to forgive an indefinite number of times; Matt. xviii. 22. or there is no stated number of times beyond which forgiveness is wholly wrong, or needless but it may be doubted whether forgiveness properly belongs to the passage now before us. We are now. concerned with right conduct at the time of an attack; forgiveness has a retrospective. view. It is possible to forgive an offender when you look back upon his injuries, and yet to repel force by force on any particular particular occasion. Perhaps each man must judge for himself how often yielding to evil will answer its proper ends. That man who does not in the first instance try to overcome evil by somè yielding to it, has no pretension to be honoured with the title of a good Christian. "In fact, it is probable, the difficulty before mentioned, has the greatest weight in hindering men from yielding to evil; I mean the dread of the imputation of cowardice. On this difficulty a good deal has been already said; but with relation to the passage before us it may be added, that he who voluntarily exposes himself to a second insult after receiving a first, cannot do it from cowardice; it is not required of him by the aggressor; he has nothing to fear from him if he does not do it, and something if he does. If our Lord had commanded his disciples, on receiving a blow, to run away from the striker, obedience to his commands might then have been construed into cowardice; but surely not, when the Christian is to bear one blow firmly, keep his station, and offer, for the sake of public peace, to bear anotlier. Many a man will return blows at random in the moment of provocation, even through fear; but no man through fear will present his cheek to the smiter unnecessarily. "And the Christian is the less to be suspected of cowardice, when he yields to evil in this manner, yielding properly will have the effect of courage upon his adversary; it is plain enough, that the person who receives the stroke, may, in this case, be as brave as he who gave it. And if bravery is known to exist, it will be expected to appear at the proper time, and will therefore have its proper effects. In a popular tumult the peasant attacks with fury the steady veteran; the veteran bears his intemperate and ill-directed rage, and firmly maintains his station; is he therefore a coward? What man returns every blow of drunkenness, or of childish anger? no brave man; and why should more notice be taken of the paroxyms of passion, which occasion the blow when it proceeds from vice? In short, to associate the conduct of the true Christian with cowardice, when he is insulted, can only be the dictate of fashionable prejudice, prevailing in some particular time and place; it cannot be the effect of solid and perpetual fitness and reason." P. 176. After a similar comment upon various passages of this nature, Dr. Hey considers shortly the motives which Christianity so exclusively holds forth for the forgiveness of injuries, The very circumstance of our "being bought with a price," is justly con sidered as possessing a strong tendency to mortify that self importance, by which resentment is so generally supported. His observations upon that exquisitely beautiful precept of the Apostle, "Be ye kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you," are so simple and yet so just, that although our extracts have been ne cessarily long, we cannot forbear from transcribing. " No "No motive could be offered to the human mind more powerful than this last, and it is wholly Christian. It is equally calculated to silence the cavils of the captious sceptic, to work conviction on the mind of the man of thought and reflection, and to rouse the affections of the man of sensibility. Moreover, Christian motives make the unchangeable Deity the primary object of our attention, even when that Duty is directed to variable man. Nothing can tend more to our being steadfast and immoveable in our duty, in spite of human folly and ingratitude. And if you say, that this the nature of all religious motives, we need only observe in reply, that Christianity has greatly improved religion, that it has greatly strengthened our hopes of future happiness, by bringing life and immortality to light, and that, inasmuch as it has made such improvements, it has added to our motives for practising the Duty of forgiveness considered as a religious Duty." P. 211. Our readers will now be enabled to form a tolerable estimate of the system pursued in the volume before us. It is the design of our author to establish this position; that all our passions, even those generally considered malevolent, are implanted in our breasts by a wise and a good Creator, to answer the best purposes, and to serve the most beneficial ends. It has pleased the Almighty to place his creatures here in a state of trial; to constitute the very notion of which, the existence and the prevalence of evil must be supposed. Now whatever averts evil in any particular state of things, is a good to that state; and though that which averts evil be itself an evil, yet if it averts a greater evil, ît may still be considered as a good. Now to this system no objection can be raised from the notion that we encourage the practice of " doing evil that good may come," as this can only arise from the abuse of it. Anger, if duly applied, is productive only of good, and he that is, thus angry does no evil, to produce this good. Yet anger is of itself an evil to its possessor, it is an evil in itself, though not in its use: like a poison, if administered in due proportions and at proper times, it is of eminent service, though even thus it is nauseous to the taste, and disagreeable to him who is driven to its use. The rock upon which moral philosophers have split in their theories of the passions, is the fancied perfection of man; which but ill accords with the existence much less with the necessity of those passions, which so easily and so generally degenerate into malevolence. Revelation declares him in a state of imperfection, not only from the contagion of example, but from a natural tendency to evil; those passions therefore are given him, which though in themselves evil, are if administered with caution, productive of general good. We consider this volume as no ordinary nor common production, for Dr. Hey was the possessor of no ordinary nor common thind. It is evidently the result of a calm and Christian meditation, enriched by much observation of human nature in all its va. rious workings, and aided by all the precision of mathematical reasoning. Upon so intricate a subject we must expect to find some occasional subtilties in the decisions, and refinements in the classification of the passions. But when the author descends to practical remarks, his casuistry comes recommended by all the simplicity of a Christian: and in this point of view we earnestly recommend the study of this volume to all those, who are desirous of subjecting their unruly passions to the dominion of reason and the authority of Scripture. The further the reader advances into the volume before us, the better will he be pleased, and the more will he be interested in its contents; and he will rise from its study not only the wiser philosopher, but the sounder Christian and the better man. It will be an additional incitement to his attention, to be assured that all the laws which its learned and venerable author has laid down to regulate and discipline these sterner portions of our moral frame, were such as resulted from a long and successful experience of their effect upon himself and his own mind: ἀληθεύειν ἐν ἀγάπη was not more the characteristic of his wri tings, than the rule of his life. ART. II. Historical Memoirs of my own Time. By Sir N. William Wraxall, Bart. 2 vols. 8vo. Cadell and Davies. 1815. FROM different parts of his works we have culled and put together the following short notices of the life of Sir N. W. Wraxall, He was born in 1751. In 1769 he went out to India in a civil capacity, and in 1771, at the age of twenty, was made judge advocate and paymaster of our army sent into the Guzerat. Returning from the East in 1772, he went to Portugal; and in 1773, 4, travelled through the Northern countries of Europe. In 1775, 6, he made a tour through the interior of France, and passed the three years 1777, 8, 9, in visiting the capital cities of Germany and the Low Countries. In 1780, he was brought in Member for Ludgershall: and that Parliament being dissolved in 1784, was elected to sit in the ensuing one for the Borough of Hindon. He appears, by his own account, to have given a constant attendance in his place, and to have been present at all the remarkable debates during those stormy and unsettled times. He usually divided with Lord North and the Coalition Ministry, except on the occasion of the celebrated India Bill, when he sided VOL. IV. JULY, 1815. |