towards dissidents, or panic terror and defiance of Rome, or vast and complicated demonstrations of apparent zeal for the good of men and the glory of God;-the prodigious strides recently made by human science, involving the more accurate determina tion of the limits and method of scientific inquiry ;-the rise, about sixty years ago, of a new philosophy, which taught that there was knowledge that could not be received by the hearing of the ear or the sight of the eye, nor grasped by the strongest efforts of the best trained understanding; which taught that man had been provided with a special and peculiar faculty for acquiring this knowledge, and making it his own, named (after the example of the great writers of the golden age of English literature) Reason, and its exercise, Faith; and which has slowly but surely won its way, till now the old philosophy, invented by Hobbes and systematized by Locke, is threatened with expulsion from its chair; the agitation of society ever since the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, with its necessary consequences the attainment, by whole classes of men, of recog nised social existence; and the awakening here and there in man the consciousness of power, which had else, through the overbearing influence of circumstances, been unable to struggle into life; these phenomena might well call forth the desire, and kindle it into hope and expectation-nay, even seem to herald the speedy appearance of such a new and better age for the world.

But apart from these things this anticipation might have arisen. The Great Reformation' asserted two truths-that man is justified before God by faith alone, and not by ritual or moral performances; and that no man can claim the right to exercise authority over the consciences of his fellows;-and these seem to have constituted its great message. Now it is evident, that the first is a part only of the gospel; for whilst it speaks positively of the mode of entrance upon the enjoyment of its blessings, it describes those blessings merely negatively, as the reversal of a sentence merited by foregone sin. The second was actually denied by the very men who proclaimed it; for all who revolted from the Papacy constructed creeds of their own, and required unconditional acceptance of them ;-and had it been ever so faith fully realized it could have served simply to individualize men in their relations to God, and would have appeared to oppose hope of their being united in those relations. But in the New Testament, the blessings of the gospel are described with suff cient clearness, and the union of men in filial subjection to God is spoken of as the expression and display of the consummation of those blessings in the present world; so that some further advance, which it is not unreasonable to expect will be made in

a manner resembling that by which those preparatory truths were established amongst men, must needs be looked for, so soon as, by the general reception of those truths, men shall be fitted to receive new lessons.

The same conclusion would be reached if the character of all our popular theologies were considered; and how much soever they differ amongst themselves on various points of doctrine, they have certain features in common, which makes them affect those who hold them in precisely the same way. Necessary as such systems are for men (however rudely) spontaneously methodize all their knowledge, and it hardly is knowledge until it is methodized-and valuable as these particular systems have proved to those whose knowledge has not gone beyond their boundaries, they have been constructed upon too narrow a basis, and by too unscientific a method, and they have had given them by the labours of successive theologians too great compactness and consistency, to allow them to expand with the growth of mind, or to qualify them for aiding men in their inquiry after God's truth. Whilst not one of them contains more than a portion of that truth, scarcely, indeed, does one contain more than a portion of what is already known;-and God has boundless stores, from which he enriches men, age after age, as they are able to receive it, and which he seems then to pour forth most abundantly, when men, as in the present day, look upon their systems as having exhausted, or as being commensurate with his unfathomable and inexhaustible treasures; making their doctrines the limits of religious inquiry, and the tests of religious character, and stigmatizing any deviation from them, even in expression, as heresy.

Were teachers but more far-sighted, or less timid, such an advance as that we anticipate would be effected as silently, and be accepted as thankfully, as the change of seasons with us is. But there has always been too little trust in the imperishable life of truth, and too much love for the forms in which it has been enshrined; and so convulsions must of need go before, just as in warmer climates the new seasons are ushered in by tempests and hurricanes. Too often it is necessary that the old fabric beneath which the faith of past generations has sheltered, should be broken down before it is felt or acknowledged that a new one is wanted for the expanse and progress of the faith of the generations present and to come. Men are like the disciples, whose hearts were filled with sorrow to think that their Master was going to leave them; and who knew not that it was expedient for them that he should go away, that the Paraclete might come to them.

From this resistance to change it inevitably happens, that in these hurricane seasons' of the faith, much is brought into

question that cannot reasonably be doubted; and much denied. that ought not to be questioned; and canons of criticism and interpretation are set up, which if established would leave nothing credible but what is based upon mathematical proof, or scientific experiment, or personal observation; and even these would be insufficient to produce general conviction. The duty of those who are set for the defence of the gospel,' in such times, becomes most clear. Avoiding peevish complaint and impotent denunciation, as men 'knowing the times,' they should earnestly, and by truthful means, maintain the TRUTH; for by so doing, the allegiance of the wavering will be confirmed, and some even amongst them that had revolted recovered to loyalty and obedience.

It is with this object in view that we call attention to the books whose titles stand at the head of this article. Following, as they do, so many reprints and translations of foreign works, and several productions of the new school of Socinians, all directed against the popular theologics, they seem to betoken the beginning of a period of unsettlement and perplexity amongst us. We should else have been disposed to pass them by with slight notice; as it would ill become us to magnify every two or three privateers which appear in the distance, into the approach of a hostile armada. We have no doubt, moreover, that they have been, and will yet be, largely read; and by no class so eagerly as by that which most lacks the skill to estimate them aright; while the reports concerning them already spread abroad, are fully as injurious as the books themselves. Our purpose is, therefore, to show that whatever the coming change may be, the sweeping devastation proposed in the conclusions of these writers is not justified by the arguments they have employed to enforce it; or else that the arguments are in them-selves false, because they would lead to the rejection of that which it would be a mere absurdity to renounce. The space that can be devoted to this subject being necessarily limited, we shall be compelled to furnish hints which may enable our readers to detect the errors and untruths of these books, rather than by a complete examination to expose them ourselves. We premise, by way of caution, that to conclude that these remarks are wholly false because of the manifest untruth of the things most strenuously insisted upon in them, would be a mistake almost as fatal as to agree with all that is advanced as true, because of the manifest truth of much that they contain. Of this we are thoroughly persuaded, that such writings are no more than the rude implements by which our spiritual wastes and fallows may be prepared for that gentle tillage which will turn them into the garden of the Lord,' when the thorn and the briar shall be

replaced by the myrtle and the rose, which shall be unto Jehovah for a memorial; for a perpetual sign, that shall not be abolished.'

One other remark we must make in this place, reserving some other general observations for the conclusion of the article. Although the volumes have this common scope, and are, moreover, united by being the writings of men trained at Oxford, during the growth and progress of the revival of Anglican Church principles, for the ministry of the Established Church, they differ widely from each other on points of great moment. Mr. Foxton, albeit he disavows it in the first sentence of his Preface, is a Rationalist, and would receive the Bible as authentic history, &c., if every narrative of supernatural interference were omitted; he also belongs to the school of modern Pantheists, who maintain not the divinity of everything, but the possible deity of every man. Mr. Newman criticises the Scriptures much in the way that Strauss and the mythical school have done, which leaves us little more than the names of the different persons mentioned in them; and he deplores the desolating Pantheism which is abroad,' and hopes to save his readers from it. Mr. Froude is certainly a Theist; but he approaches at times to the very verge of Atheism ;-and against the Scriptures he urges not only the objections of the rationalist and the mythical schools of interpretation, but those also by which the infidels of former days, were used to attempt to set aside their claims to be regarded as a Divine Revelation. It is of some importance to mark these differences, both because they give us assurance (from an unexpected source), that this opposition to the gospel truth must be transitory; and because we might otherwise suppose that one kind of reply would meet the objections of all these writers; which would be as great a delusion as to imagine that they can be disposed of by appealing to the Apologies of by-gone ages, when no such subtle and learned doubts had been invented, and when sceptics were as a matter of course irreligious

men.

Mr. Foxton's Popular Christianity' has the least originality and power of the works under review; and appears to be in substance little more than an adaptation of the theology of a well-known transatlantic writer to the circumstances of a dissident from the Oxford school. We can only cite his reference to Dacier and Rees's Cyclopædia for a synopsis of Platonism, for the purpose of showing that the gospel is not original (pp. 53, &c.); his vindication of the Vestiges of Creation,' as if only orthodox pedantry and fanatical cant had attacked it, and its theory of law were scientifically true (p. 65); his reference of the Demon of Socrates to ecstasy'

(p. 91); his test of miracles, which is simply ridiculous (p. 101); his supposition that Columbus expected to find out a new continent, whereas after he had found it he believed it to be Asia (p. 118); and his most extraordinary discovery, that neither the Jewish nor the Christian Scriptures contain, even by implication, the slightest condemnation of the system of slavery (p. 52); as illustrations of the character of this book.

The proposition of the work is thus stated:

To bring the spiritual government of the world into sounder and more consistent relations with the existing intelligence of the age, it will be necessary, at least, to modify so much of the doctrinal teaching and external government of all Christian Churches as is involved in the assertion of the following dogmas of the popular theology; viz.—

1. Of the vague and indefinite doctrine of the " inspiration of the Scriptures."

2. Of the doctrine of miracles and prophecy.

3. Of the really pagan doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, as now taught.

4. Of the futile and fallacious idea of teaching Christianity by dogmatical creeds and articles.

'Such must be the basis of any really spiritual Reformation, and the foundation of any truly catholic Christianity.'-P. 40.

We cannot stay to investigate the discussion of these dogmas; but we must observe that Mr. Foxton does not limit it to the modification of them by any means: and, happily, he has made it unnecessary for us to reply to his proposition. We may safely, and with a good conscience, give up the fourth, which was never one of our favourites; and we refer to p. 144 of Mr. Foxton's own book for the reason for our positive refusal to modify,' in the direction of explaining away, the other three. Our author says:

The existence of false prophets is not a presumption against the reality of the true, or Christians might argue against the probability of a Messiah from the delusions of Joanna Southcote. It would be far more just to argue, from the abundance of false prophets in the world, that it is the everlasting purpose of God to instruct and to regenerate it by analogous means.'

We never met with a satisfactory answer to this argument; and as in place of false prophets,' in the last sentence, 'false miracles,' pretended inspiration,' and 'pretended incarnations of the Deity,' may be inserted with equal correctness and force, we shall leave the refutation in Mr. Foxton's own hands; merely adding to our observations upon his book, that he has much more to apologize to the Bishop of Hereford for, than the offence of repeating the silly newspaper story of his having derived the profound views which characterise his Thomas Aquinas,' and