himself in a manner inconsistent with that peace and harmony, which it is another part of his object to promote.'

This other part of his object is to produce a closer union of spirit and affection, among the divided members of the Christian Church. The temper proper to so worthy an attempt, Mr. Cooper unquestionably proves himself, throughout this little volume, to possess. The correspondence is confessedly factitious. The Letters are in number sixteen. The first two are on certain difficulties in the way of a serious inquirer after Divine Truth ; the third, on the distinction between essential and non-essential points in Religion; the five following, on the Calvinistic Controversy; the ninth and tenth, on Regeneration and the Controversy connected with it; the eleventh and twelfth, on Antinomianism; the thirteenth, on the visible and invisible Church of Christ; the last three, on the Bible Society. On this latter subject, Mr. Cooper writes excellently, we may add eloquently: as a warm Churchman he deplores the indifference, or animosity, so generally manifested by the Clergy towards this noble institution, and he reluctantly admits the conclusion, that these unfavourable sentiments can arise from nothing less than a want of concern for the spread of Christianity itself, in the world. He anticipates the worst results to the interests of the English Church, from the continuance, among its Ministers, of this spirit of opposition to a cause, which must, and will proceed, and which, in proceeding, will leave its adversaries, great and small, under the cloud of general obloquy, and final discomfiture.

This volume is adapted, throughout, to meet the views and difficulties of persons who are stumbling at the threshold of Christianity, and whose attention is so distracted by the jarring clamours of the crowd which fills the outer court of the Temple, that they know not how to distinguish the still small voice that invites them to enter. The subjects treated are viewed chiefly in their external bearings, and incidental relations. In placeof further remark, we will present the reader with one or two extracts. In his seventh letter, Mr. Cooper thus apologizes for the Calvinist :

While the practical evils, which Calvinism is charged with producing, are so prominently and studiously exhibited to view by many of its opponents; let us not omit, on the other hand, to do justice to this calumniated sytem, nor forget the abundant good, which it is not only capable of accomplishing, but which it actually does accomplish. I have no doubt, but that some of the sublimest feelings of pure and spiritual delight, which are ever experienced on earth, are those, of which the Calvinist partakes, when in his secret retirement with God, the Spirit beating witness with his spirit, and shining on his own gracious operation on the heart, he meditates on the wonderful and unspeakable privileges, to which through Christ he feels himself entitled; and resolving all the blessings which have been already received, or are pre

pared for him hereafter, into the eternal purpose and electing love of God his Father, and absorbed in a holy contemplation of the Divine counsels and perfections, he lies prostrate before the throne of grace in deep humiliation, and with overwhelming joy. I do not say that others have not their peculiar feelings of spiritual delight; but these are his. And does he rise from such communion with his God without enlarged desires and resolutions of more seriously devoting himself to the Divine favour, of more decidedly overcoming the flesh and the world, and more faithfully of doing the will and advancing the glory of his Lord and Saviour? Facts and experience reply to this enquiry. Among no denomination or description of professing Christians is there to be found a larger proportion of humble, pious, and devoted servants of God; persons of a truly Christian spirit, zealous in good works, and exemplary in every duty and relation of life, than among those who hold the Calvinistic tenets. I am sure that your observation and your candour will fully justify this statement. And therefore, so far as this system is to be judged of by its actual effects, I think that on a candid reconsideration of the subject, you will be induced to abandon your objection, and to admit that it was founded on an erroneous and partial view of the subject.'

In the twelfth Letter he thus dwells on one of the correlative effects of Antinomianism.

From the fear of countenancing, or of being suspected to countenance, the abominable conclusion, which Antinomianism involves, the opposer of this system is strongly tempted to depart from that full exposition of the doctrines of grace, which he has been previously ac customed to maintain. Instead of continuing to exhibit these doctrines in their complete scriptural meaning, and of shewing their uniform and necessary tendency, when thus exhibited, to enforce holiness of heart and life, he is in danger of being induced by degrees to state them less plainly and explicitly; to qualify his former explanations of them; to fence them with guards; and to fetter them with conditions, which are not warranted by the word of God; and thus to pare them down and to fritter them away, till at length they are stripped of all that is vital, essential, and spiritual, and are reduced to little more than a dead letter and a lifeless form of words. In order to show that the scheme of doctrine, which he espouses, is not one which supersedes the necessity of good works, he may be led to speak of good works in such language as to appear, not indeed to lay an undue stress on the necessity of moral obedience, for that he cannot do, but to assign to it a place and an office, which in the Christian system it is neither designed nor qualified to fill: or, to avoid the charge of preaching imputed sanctification, he may almost desist from asserting the necessity of justification by faith only, as if he were become ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, or had forgotten that it is still "the power of God unto salvation.”

Incalculably great must be the evils, which such a deterioration of evangelical truth will obviously produce! And wherever such a deterioration is produced; wherever the waters, which antecedently have flowed clear and salutary, thus become turbid and noxious; wherever

the preachers of the word of God thus suffer themselves to be driven from that purity of doctrine, and to be spoiled of that unction from the Spirit which formerly characterised their ministry; then the triumphs of Antinomianism are complete; then it produces its full measure of mischief, and gratifies to the utmost the malicious designs of its diabolical author. How devoutly is it to be wished that all the ministers of the word of God were duly aware of the peculiar temptation, to which they are exposed from this insidious attack; and by taking special heed to themselves and to their doctrine, would show that they are not ignorant of these devices of Satan! So far as the voice of an humble individual may be capable of reaching, I would endeavour to sound forth the note of alarm, and to awaken my brethren in the ministry to a full sense of their danger and duty in these times of peril and difficulty.'

Mr. Simons's Letter to a respected friend, is highly interesting on several accounts; the living image it presents of the mind and character of the writer, the naïve expression of strong feeling, and the primitive, inartificial continuity of its style. We have seen nothing, in print, that contains so much of fact, relative to the shocking outrages which some pitiable individuals have lately committed against Holy Scripture, and common sense. We must profess to feel a reluctance in becoming instrumental to the repetition and perpetuation of the distressingly offensive assertions, which Mr. Simons has embodied in his Letter. And yet, we cannot but hope that his Letter may be extensively read. Mr. Simons has had the opportunity of knowing more of Antinomianism, than those can know who read only the wary publications of its defenders, and hear only their comparatively cautious preaching; he has read their private correspondence, has heard their private conversations.

It is in the overruled nature of most of the evils that afflict the world, when they proceed beyond a certain extent, to provide for themselves an antidote, or at least a boundary. Such, it may be hoped, will be the case with Antinomianism. The sulphureous eructation of impiety which now blackens the heavens, will, we trust, inspire many with a seasonable terror; especially those, who are foolishly lingering upon the sides of the pit.

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There is, however, one aspect of this gloomy subject which, in the eye of the Christian, beams with chearfulness, and exultation. Is it possible to contemplate the prophetic pictures, drawn with so much force, and particularity, and coincidence by Paul, and Jude, and Peter, without recognising the character of those circumstances which are meeting the eye and ear at every turn "In the last days perilous times shall come." In this day, beyond a comparison, is this scripture fulfilled in our ears. Is there, then, no ground of expectation that ours are indeed " the "Last Days" that the prevalence and triumph of impiety in the World, the indifference, the falseness, the delusions

of professors, the wanderings, the darkness, the fears of Christians, are all drawing to their close that we are touching upon the times of refreshing from above, that yet but a few days of weariness, disgust, distraction, and He that shall come, will come, come to his Temple, thence for ever to expel every thing that" defileth," or "worketh abomination," or "maketh 46 a Lie."

Art- IV. Beppo, a Venetian Story. Fourth Edition 8vo. pp. 51. price 3s 6d. London, 1818.

WHAT does Beppo mean, is the common inquiry? Beppo is the Joe of the Italian Joseph.' The Joe of this story is an Italian Merchant, who having been cast away about where Troy stood once,' and made prisoner by the Mussulmans, becomes first a slave, and then a renegado, grows rich, and at length, after having been long given over as dead, returns to Venice, to the great surprise of his wife and her cavalier servente,

' to reclaim

His wife, religion, house, and Christian name.'

The poem is of the burlesque kind, and were it not that it is licentious in its moral, occasionally vulgar and profane in its expressions, and rather tedious in its narrative, it might serve very well to laugh through after dinner. There is a happy whimsicalness in some of the rhymes, and now and then a stroke of humour and of satire, which will succeed with the good natured reader, who has not adventured to read the poem aloud, nor set himself to read it through. Our readers will, we think, be at no loss to conjecture its character. They may judge of its style from the following extracts.

Of all the places where the Carnival

Was most facetious in the days of yore,
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,
And masque, and mime, and mystery, and more
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,

Venice the bell from every city bore,

And at the moment when I fix my story,

That sea-born city was in all her glory.

They've pretty faces yet, those same Venetians,
Black eyes, arch'd brows, and sweet expressions still,
Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
In ancient arts by moderns mimick'd ill;

And like so many Venuses of Titian's

(The best's at Florence-see it, if ye will)
They look when leaning over the balcony,
Or stepped from out a picture by Giorgione,

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Whose tints are truth and beauty at their best;
And when you to Manfrini's palace go,
That picture (howsoever fine the rest)

Is loveliest to my mind of all the show;
It may perhaps be also to your zest ;

And that's the cause I rhyme upon it so,
'Tis but a portrait of his son, and wife,
And self; but such a woman! love in light!

'Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,
But something better still, so very real,

That the sweet model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg or steal,
Wer't not impossible, besides a shame :

The face recals some face, as 'twere with pain,
You once have seen, but ne'er will see again;

• One of those forms which flit by us, when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face;
And, oh! the loveliness at times we see

In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
The youth, the bloom, the beauty which agree,

In many a nameless being we retrace,

Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know,
Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below.

With all its sinful doings, I must say,
That Italy's a pleasant place to me,

Who love to see the sun shine every day,

And vines (not nail'd to walls) from tree to tree
Festoon'd, much like the back scene of a play,

Or melodrame, which people flock to see,
When the first act is ended by a dance
In vineyards copied from the south of France.

• I like on Autumn evenings to ride out,
Without being forc'd to bid my groom be sure
My cloak is round his middle strapp'd about,
Because the skies are not the most secure ;
I know too that, if stopp'd upon my route,
Where the green alleys windingly allure,
Reeling with grapes red waggons choke the way,-
In England 'twould be dung, dust, or a dray.'

"England; with all thy faults I love thee still,"
I said at Calais, and have not forgot it;

I like to speak and lucrubate my fill;

I like the government (but that is not it);

I like the freedom of the press and quill;
I like the Habeas Corpus (when we've got it);
I like a parliamentary debate,

Particularly when 'tis not too late;