"I would observe," says Dr. Priestley, in the very beginning of his Illustrations of the Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity, p. 2, "that I allow to men all the liberty or power that is possible in itself, and to which the ideas of mankind in general ever go, which is the power of doing whatever they will or please, both with respect to the operations of their minds and the motions of their bodies, uncontrolled by any foreign principle or cause. Thus every man is at liberty to turn his thoughts to whatever subject he pleases, to consider the reasons for or against any scheme or proposition, and to reflect upon them as long as he shall think proper, as well as to walk wherever he pleases, and to do whatever his hands and other limbs are capable of doing.-All the liberty or rather power that I say a man has not, is that of doing several things when all the previous circumstances (including the state of his mind, and his views of things,) are precisely the same. What I contend for is, that with the same state of mind, (the same strength of any particular passion, for example) and the same views of things, (as any particular object appearing equally desirable,) he would always, voluntarily, make the same choice and come to the same determination. For instance, if I make any particular choice to-day, I should have done the same yesterday, and shall do the same to-morrow, provided there be no change in the state of my mind respecting the object of the choice. In other words I maintain, that there is some fixed law of nature respecting the will, as well as the other powers of the mind, and every thing else in the constitution of nature; and consequently that it is never determined without some real or apparent cause, foreign to itself; that is, without some motive of choice, or that motives influence is some definite and invariable manner; so that every volition or choice is constantly regulated and determined by what precedes it. And this constant determination of mind, according to the motives presented to it, is all that I mean by its necessary determination." But the fact is, Dr. Brown is himself a believer in this very doctrine, as far as it is possible to judge of his belief on the subject. "What," says he, pp. 298, 299, "do we signify by willing or choosing any thing but that of judging it preferable. The human will is always inclined to prefer good to evil, and among goods to prefer that which appears to afford the greatest sum of happiness, and among evils to avoid that which appears to bring the greatest sum of misery.. This is its constant and invariable determination. But in order to enable it to make this election, the understanding must carefully scrutinize the respective na tures of the objects presented, and decide on their tendencies to happiness or misery. When this decision, just or erroneous, is once made, election or reprobation immediately ensues. The determination of the will towards agrecable and blissful objects, of liberty have directed their principal ef- And this being granted, all is granted for which Dr. Priestley, or any other advocate of the doctrine of Philosophical Necessity, who understood the subject, ever contended: but such is the looseness with which Dr. Brown allows himself to think and write, that he absolutely confounds with this which is his own opinion and the opinion of Dr. Priestley and of all other modern necessarians, the doctrine of fate, or as he terms it absolute necessity, fatal necessity, &c. (p. 304): a doctrine which no one as far as we know has pretended to maintain in modern times. Having discussed in this clear and erudite manner the great question between the necessarians and the libertarians, Dr. Brown applies his doctrine of free agency to the removal of the difficulties which press on the Divine character and administration from the existence of natural and moral evil. He that moral evil is the result argues of free agency; that where the latter exists the permission of the former is unavoidable; that since it is consistent with the Divine wisdom and goodness to create free agents, the permission of moral evil cannot be inconsistent with those perfections, because the one infers the other. P. 316. Should this reasoning be capable of removing from any mind the slightest difficulty which appeared to it to involve the Divine administration, we should despair of being able to benefit it by any thing which we could say; nor should we have much greater hope Review-Brown's Prize Essay. if it could derive any instruction or comfort from the following illustration of this argument: "Who can impute to the Author of the admirable fabric and constitution of nature, that perversion which is most repugnant to his will, but which his wisdom and goodness suggested to him not to prevent? When a ship has been wrecked by the ignorance of the master, can we blame the ship builder who fitted it for all the purposes of navigation, and displayed admirable skill in its construction, because he did not render it incapable of perishing? Can we blame an architect who has planned a most convenient and elegant house, or the mason who has built it, when it has been destroyed by fire, because neither of them secured it against this calamity? Nor can we with more reason lay it to the charge of the great Author of human nature, that the noble faculties with which he has endowed it, and whose tendencies are to improvement and happiness, have been most unnaturally perverted and depraved."Pp. 320, 321. : Dr. Brown asks, whether it were inconsistent with the infinite wisdom and goodness of God to create such an order of beings as men. We answer decidedly, on his scheme, it was. If there be one proposition clear and undeniable, it is that a Being of infinite wisdom and goodness must impart to every creature which he calls into existence a greater sum of happiness than misery, the whole of its existence being considered if this be not the case he is not good, nor is it possible for any ingenuity or sophistry to prove him to be so. Nay Dr. Brown himself affirms `that the goodness of the Deity must be "a constant and immutable disposition to communicate and extend the highest measure of happiness to all his creatures, and that this necessarily implies the communication of all possible happiness to the whole and to every part of his sensitive creation." P. 223. How then is this consistent with his appointment from all eternity of the great majority of mankind to unutterable and unending torment? Why thus: "It has been already shown that the permission of moral evil is inseparable from free agency. The natural and necessary consequences of corruption, proceeding from the abuse of freedom, must also be permitted. Every species, every degree and every extent of depravation however small or short is inconsistent with the Divine perfections and laws, and whatever those require must, in the order of things, in 609 fallibly take place. If free agency, the chief source of happiness to man, and the foundation of all virtue and religion, required the permission of vice and its continuance during a state of trial, its misery TO WHATEVER EXTENT OR DURATION, when it has become habitual to the soul, follows as a necessary consequence." Vol. II. p. 203. "And no person can complain of the severity of the Divine threatenings, if he is fully warned of his danger, furnished with every necessary aid for avoiding it, and as long as life continues has still space left for repentance." P. 207. "The only effectual encouragement to virtue, the only effectual restraint to vice, is the enactment of rewards sufficiently animating and of punishments sufficiently formidable. The greater those are in prospect the more powerful is the check and the more invigorating the encouragement. I grant indeed that the infliction of crucl human punishments in this life, while the course of probation is still unfinished, has rather a tendency to corrupt than to correct a people by inuring them to savage and barbarous spectacles. But the case is different, when all hopes of amendment are gone, and the period of probation is closed. Then every character is completely formed. Vice is rivetted on the soul. Its natural consequences are allowed to take place. It is necessary that its final result should be tremendous and irreversible."-P. 210. And this is the final result of the moral administration of a Being of infinite power, wisdom and goodness, in regard to the great majority of mankind-of that Being "whose constant and immutable disposition it is to communicate and extend the highest measure of happiness to all his creatures to communicate all possible happiness to the whole and to every part of his sensitive creation!" Since endless punishment cannot benefit those who are saved and can of course be of no advantage to those upon whom it is inflicted, it had always been considered somewhat difficult to explain the use of it under the wise and benevolent government of the Deity. But Dr. Brown easily solves this difficulty, and intimates that it may be of great service to the people of the Moon or the inhabitants of Saturn. "As we find that among men, prisons, public examples and places of punishment are useful for impressing vicious minds with terror; so the eternal sufferings of the incorrigibly perverse and wicked of the buman race, as they certainly convey an awful warning to those of our own species whe are still in a state of trial, may also prove salutary to other classes and orders of rational creatures."-Vol. II. p. 211. We do not deem it necessary to follow Dr. Brown through the remaining parts of his work. We shall only add in respect to those that the worthy Principal is a very orthodox and zealous believer in the comfortable doctrine of original sin. His ideas on this subject are at least clear and consistent, if not perfectly satisfactory. "Whether, after the shock of sin was once given to man's nature, it could recover primitive innocence, is at least matter of great doubt, and is a point which I shall in the sequel endeavour to illustrate according to the measure of my abilities. It is certain, if I may be allowed to employ so distant an analogy, that among the inferior animals, whole breeds degenerate; and that all the individuals of a succeeding race are affected by the declension of the antecedent generation. Nay, we see in our own species, diseases both of body and mind daily transmitted. This may lead us in the mean time to conceive the fact, if not the manner of the transmission of moral corruption !"Vol. II. p. 130. Upon the whole, we never recollect to have read a book which so completely disappointed our expectations. For the honour of our age and country we are sorry that it should have been found necessary to award such a prize to such a production. Yet occasionally and for a paragraph or two there occur some faiut approaches to just conception and to good writing. We shall conclude by extracting a passage which affords a favourable specimen of the author's style and manner. Had there been more of this kind, we should have read and commented on his work with much greater pleasure; had there been nothing of it, we should not have deemed it necessary to notice it. "When we consider the deep ignorance in which so many of the human race are planged, the Cirors which have been transmitted from generation to generation; the prejudices which adhere even to those whose improvement has not been entirely neglected; the defects of education both public and private; the false maxims which without dispute or inquiry are established in the world; the power of example, of habit and of temptation; the manner in which the desires and passions are imperceptibly excited and strengthsened, so that they bid defiance to the con troul of reason; the first motives to the most abominable deeds-motives in the mselves sometimes laudable and often innocent: if we consider all this, we shall be led to acknowledge that the greater part of men sin more from imprudence and error, than from deliberate and desperate wickedness, and that even crimes which appear to us invested with the most detestable colours, may to Him who looketh at the heart, and noweth all its springs and modifications, appear more deserving of compassion, than of interminable unmitigated punishment. These reflections have sometimes occurred to me on the recital of some of the most atrocious crimes by which our nature is degraded. Their motives can hardly be conceived by us who have so little knowledge of the internal state of the human frame. The Lord seeth not as man seeth: for man looketh at the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. Though human judgments must be pronounced accord n; to the evidence produced, yet that evidence cannot in many instances exhibit the exact moral complexion of the action which is tried. Men must therefore judge of the same action differently from Him who is Omniscient and to whom certain deeds, characterized by the blackest features of external guilt, may appear less criminal, than even some of those faults, which in human estimation, are hardly deserving censure."-Vol. II. p. 9. TH S. S. ART. IV.-Twenty-one Short Forms of Morning and Evening Prayers, for the Use of Families. By a Member, of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and of the Society for Prouoting Christian Knowledge. 12mo. pp. 144. Hunter. 1816. THESE Forms are distinguished ity to the style of Scripture. They by their simplicity and conform breathe also a fine moral spirit, and in this respect are superior to almost all the prayers that we have read. They remind us of the compositions of the late Rev. Theophilus Lindsey, and are evidently the production of a kindred mind; artless, gentle, placid, heaven. pure, benevolent and aspiring towards The Forms are short, and might have been made shorter by the outs sion, at least in all but the first, of the Lord's Prayer. This useful manual of devotion is introduced and concluded with serious and suitable exhortations and admonitions. Review.-Hyatt's Sermons at the Tabernacle. ART. V-Sermons on Select Subjects: vetus. The " Evangelical" preachers will not, we apprehend, object to Mr. Hyatt's being considered as the representative, as from his station he is the chief, of their order. He is regarded, we are told, as one of the best preach. ers of the sect; and he appears to be a man of thought and to possess a vigorous imagination. "Evangelical" preaching is, we need not say, preaching without book. The preacher believes himself, and is believed by others, to be under the influence of the Holy Ghost; a written discourse would stint the spirit, and, instead of the words of the Holy Ghost, the speaker, degenerated to a reader, would utter the words of man's wisdom. Extempore speaking is winning from its familiarity, and, in Mr. John Hyatt's specimens, is rendered more attractive by certain tender appellations by which the auditory is addressed. Poor sinners! Precious souls! my dear friends! and other similar expressions of endearment go, we imagine, a great way in helping forward the effect of this strain of preaching. Mr. John Hyatt and his brethren are pleased with themselves for lowering their discourses to the rude apprehensions of the lowest vulgar; not once thinking that it is possible, or feeling that it is desirable, to improve their taste and enlarge their understandings. Hence they deal out common-places with great self complacency, and the merest truisms with a pompousness which indicates self-admiration. Their words drop from them with a volubility which makes the multitude stare; for they preach against critics and would think it criminal to stay to sift and select 611 words and phrases and to consult purity and elegance of language. These preachers think it necessary to prove nothing; every thing is taken for granted; but then there is a text for every thing,-though it is seldom, deemed requisite to justify the application of the words of Scripture to the preacher's subject. It seems as if mihister and people considered their creed as matter of absolute certainty, and regarded it as the end of preaching to deliver out the articles of their faith, and to express pity for, or to denounce judgments against, such as cannot understand or will not embrace them. In point of composition, the sermons of Mr. John Hyatt's class of preachers are artless, to a degree that borders on childishness. A whole paragraph will often consist of a selfevident proposition, repeated in several forms, sometimes put in a broad simile, followed by a set of Scripture quotations, unconnected and unex plained, mingled with interjections, and the whole concluded by an anecdote, a dying experience, a stanza from Dr. Watts, or possibly a couplet from Dr. Young, Perhaps, nothing has contributed more to the illusion which "Evange lical" or Tabernacle preaching brings over the mind than its abounding in Scriptural quotations, which seem to invest it with sanctity and solemnity, and to cover its meagreness and folly. In a great mass of citations, some must be appropriate; and we have observed, occasionally, in this volume, a happy use of the sublime and affecting language of Holy Writ. Great wrong, however, is done to the Bible, in the ordinary way of selecting texts for this class of sermons; passages are plainly taken more for sound than sense, and, whether moral, devotional, doctrinal, prophetic or historical, are forced to speak Tabernacle theology. But the principal and most availing part of" Evangelical" preaching is its damnatory style, its denunciation and description of the torments of the damned in hell-this is the heavy artillery of Calvinism, with which the least skilful engineer can beat down the proud heart and storm the stubborn conscience. A great part of the con versions recorded in the Evangelical Magazine have been effected by the sons of thunder; thundering, however, ས as Dr. South remarks, from hell and vourable specimen of the preaching of not from heaven. To thoroughly ig- the Tabernacle school :— norant, vicious men, it is in the nature of things that such preaching should be interesting and affecting: we believe that it rarely produces striking effects on the minds of men of information and good moral habits. But it is proper we should exhibit Mr. John Hyatt himself to our readers: we shall select a few passages from him which explain the style of Tabernacle preaching and illustrate some of our remarks. In nothing is the good sense of a preacher more tried than in the announcement and developement of the plan of his discourse; his division, if he adopt one formally, should be natural, simple and distinct, and the several branches of his subject should be connected together and all appear important. The terms in which the plan of a sermon is laid down should be plain and precise. Ingenuity and eloquence should here be avoided; a painted, ornamented threshold would be a silly device even for the entrance to a palace. We have not to blame Mr. John Hyatt for ingenuity or eloquence in this particular; he is, on the contrary, blunt and quaint. The first sermon, for instance, "On the Importance of Meditation," from Gen. xxiv. 63, And Isaac went out to meditate in the field ut the even-tide, is thus divided : "Let us first notice the nature and im portance of the exercise mentioned in the text; secondly, mention some suitable subjects for the believer's meditation; and thirdly, urge it upon Christians to imitate Isaac in this exercise."-P. 4. Sermon IV. on "The Death of the Righteous," from Numbers xxiii. 10, Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his, is thus divided: "From these words we shall observe, I. Death is the common lot of mankind, both the righteous and the wicked must die. II. It is most desirable to die as the righteous die [dies], and that our end be like his. III. However desirable is [be] the death of the righteous, the wish for it is vain, without a gracious change produced in the mind by the Holy Ghost." -P. 80. The following extract from Sermon II. on "Abundant Grace," is a fa "Grace is one of the most comprehensive and interesting terms, with which any of mankind are acquainted. If its real importance was [were] understood and experienced by every one present, each countenance would brighten, each heart would leap with joy, and all would readily unite in expressing the sentiment of the truly excellent Doddridge 'Grace! 'tis a charming sound, "There is infinitely more in this term, when its meaning is understood and its blessings are realized, to encourage the Ever telling-yet untold.'"-Pp. 28, 29. The conclusion of the same sermon is in the terrific style which we have adverted to: "Is there in this assembly an individual whose desperately wicked mind derives encouragement to sin from the aboundings of grace? Because God is able to make all grace abound towards the chief of sinners, are you resolved to try how far you can proceed in a course of ungodliness? Abo minable wretch! how knowest thou but thy base determination is the effect of thy having been given up by the Almighty to hardness of heart? How knowest thou but God hath said concerning thee, 'Let him alone?' Should this be the case, O! how tremendous will be the end of thy mortal course! Miserable wretch! what wilt thou do when the heavens lower, and the tempest roars, whither in thine extremity wilt thou turn for shelter? Then, no voice of pity will address thine ear, no place of refuge will encourage thy flight, but, without refuge and without hope, |