a more happy than faithful view of the evangelical spirit, and apostolical feeling with which the whole work is pervaded. It is long, but we are confident it will, by those of our readers who are attached to faithfulness in exhibiting the truth, be perused with interest and satisfaction. "Reader, is it under this broken covenant that thou art? Examine and see. Art thou still under the reigning power or dominion of sin in thy heart? Is there any depraved inclination or desire in thy soul, from which thou art unwilling to be presently and entirely delivered? Hast thou never yet believed with the heart in the last Adam, as JEHOVAH thy rightcousness? It is not till thou be united to Christ by faith, that thou art delivered from a state of subjection to the law as a covenant. Hast thou never been led by the Spirit? Hast thou never been under the guidance and influence of the Spirit according to the word, so as to be led off from the ways of sin into the paths of evangelical holiness? Is it the fear of hell merely that deters thee from sins, and that drives thee to duties? If it be, thou art of a slavish spirit, and art a child of the bondwoman. In a few words, art thou a le galist? Art thou one who works for eternal life; who serves God that God may mave him, and that he may thereby serve himself? Dost thou still continue to cleave to the law for protection, provision, and comfort? Hast thou never yet parted with the law, upon a divorce obtained, and after counting to it, the perfect obedience, and infinite satisfaction of the second Adam, thy surety, as the payment of thy boundless debt? If so, thou art yet under the dominion of the broken covenant of works. "And, ah! how inexpressibly dreadful is thy condition? Thou hast seen what power the broken law has over them who are under it. Such, O siuner, is the power, the dominion, that it has over thee. It has power to command thee to yield perfect obedience to it, on pain of damnation; and power to condemn thee to eternal death, for the smallest act of disobedience. As a transgressor thou art already under its condemning sentence, bound over to everlasting punishment. This condemning sentence has power to hold thee fast under the dominion of spiritual death; to shut thee up, to chain thee down, to retain thee as in a strong, a dark prison-house. Besides, it has power to shut out from happiness, and from the well-grounded hope of ever attaining happiness. Thou canst not enter into heaven, nor have the remotest access to life, so long as thou remainest perform its arduous condition, it cannot admit of thy entering into eternal life. But this is not all; it has power so to irritate, to provoke, to enrage the reigning corruption of thy nature, as to occasion a kind of hell in thy bosom; and a dreadful increase of the hardness and enmity of thy heart against the infinite holiness and justice of JEHOVAH. The law as a cove nant continues, as to both precept and penalty, in its full force upon thee, till re deeming grace, reigning through the rightcousness of the second Adam, set thee free. Nothing of its original force is abated; nothing of the original claim, which it made of perfect obedience, on pain of eternal death, is in the smallest degree dimi nished. This, sinner, is thy dreadful, thy dismal condition, under the broken law. And yet so great is thy ignorance, thy pride, thy enmity against free grace, thy self-righteous spirit, that thou, alas! de sirest to be under the law. Hear, I beseech thee, what the law says to thee, • The soul that sinneth it shall die.' Come, O come then, without delay, to the Almighty Redeemer, whom the Eternal Father of fereth in the Gospel to thee. Come to him, and by his spotless righteousness imputed, he will deliver thee from thy direful subjection to the covenant of works; and will put his law as a rule of life in thy mind, and write it in thy heart."-Pp. 209, 210, 211. under that covenant. Since thou canst not There are people of high pretensions to rationality in religious matters, who are continually on the alert to find out and expose what they deem enthusiasm and fanaticism, in every treatise that bears upon it the stamp of orthodoxy; and particularly if it contains what is known by the name of experimental religion. They are, in general, very superficially acquainted with Bible divinity, and confound the nature with the end of the Gospel. They, accordingly, without hesitation, de nounce those who faithfully discharge the ministry of reconciliation, "be ye reconciled unto God," as criminally inattentive to the impor tant doctrine of good works; not considering that there can be no good works till the sinner be recon ciled to God. We have not a few, there is reason to apprehend, among our fashionable divines, who may be ranked in this class, whose well composed harangues on moral duties make them acceptable to ears polite. Such persons, we doubt not, will be disposed to say, that the Treatise before us is mere doctrinal dry discussion; and is too unconnected with practice to be useful. The quotations, which we have now given, disprove any insinuation of that kind. And every one who has imbibed the pure spirit of the Bible, must see at once, not only that our author's continual uniform aim is universal holiness of heart and character, but that his aim is prosecuted, in that only way, which revelation authorizes, and which, therefore, can be rationally expected to have the divine countenance and blessing. We have much pleasure in adding to these remarks, the following passage, with which our truly excellent friend concludes his Treatise, and with which we shall close our observations. Sacramental Addresses and Meditations; with a few Sermons interspersed. By the Rev. HENRY BELFRAGE, Minister of the Gospel in Falkirk, Vol. ii. Pp. $87. Edinburgh: 1822. "Be as careful, in the faith of the promise, to maintain good works, as if they were to entitle thee to heaven; and depend as little on them, for a title to eternal life, as if thou hadst never so much as performed one of them. Trust with unshaken confidence in the last Adam, thy blessed covenant-head, for increasing supplies of his Spirit; and, through the Spirit, morti. fy the remains of the legal temper that dwells in thee. The more thou diest, in thy inclination, and thy exercise, to the law as a covenant, the more wilt thou live, and be lively in spiritual and evangelical obedience to it as a rule. The death of thy legal hope, thou wilt find to be the life of thy evangelical obedience. «To the Lord Jesus I commend thee, in whom thou believest, and upon whose righteousness and fulness thou livest. May he strengthen thy faith, establish thy heart in his love and fear, and enable thee daily, on new-covenant-ground, to walk with him in newness of life. To whom, with the Father, and the Eternal Spint, three persons in one Jehovah, be everlasting praise, honour, and glory, Amen. THE man who appears as an author sists himself before the bar of the public; and, by the verdict which the public is pleased to return, he must ultimately abide. To this some disappointed authors have objected. But we are sure it will not be objected to by the highly respectable writer of the volume before us. He has now published, at least, three volumes, besides two pamphlets. And we are much mistaken, if the success of all of them, has not equalled his most sanguine expectations. His Discourses to the Young may be read with pleasure and advantage, both by the young and the old. And we do think that he must be either a very wise, or a very stupid man, who can rise from the perusal of them, without having learned something which deserves to be deeply impressed on the mind, To the volume now mentioned, his Catechism may be considered as a very suitable introduction. youth who understands the one will be well prepared to relish the other; nor will he fail, in the end, to recognize his obligations to the author for both. The The first volume of his Sacramental Addresses has now been so it unnecessary to say any thing farlong before the public, that we deem ther respecting it, than that, in less than seven years, it has reached a third edition. ation, will not, we presume, be by The volume now under examinany one pronounced inferior to its precursor. Neither, so far as we can judge, will it be thought to have any advantage over it. As was to be expected, there will, in each, be found particular Addresses of greater value than the majority in both. But the whole are good, while some are stamped with peculiar and superior excellence. That one hundred Sacramental Addresses should be all very appropriate, is hardly to be supposed. Yet we think every intelligent reader must be not a little surprised to find, that even those of them which are least distinguished for the quality referred to, are still so remarkably adapted to the specific and very interesting service for which they were designed. We could not point to one of them which is not fitted to produce a happy effect on the minds of communicants. They are all, less or more calculated, as we are sure they were, with out exception, designed, alike to inform the judgment, and to impress the heart. Devoid of every thing like fanatical rant, they are yet the effusions of fervent piety; proceeding from a mind, which, under the guidance of unerring truth, is moved onward by the impulse of experimental godliness. They all, in short, so obviously come from a heart filled, in no ordinary degree with love to God and benevolence to men, that those must have been either grossly ignorant, or greatly hardened persons who would have listened to them when at a communion table, with out feeling something of those emotions which delighted and overpowered the hearts of the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. Yet admitting, as we most cheer fully do, that all the Addresses are wonderfully appropriate, we are, nevertheless, inclined to believe, that the author's grand object would have been more completely gained, had he sent them into the world VOL. XXII, NO. L. somewhat changed in their structure, and with a totally different title. He has certainly so far, agreeably to his own wish, "framed them in such a way as to fit them for the general edification of Christians, as well as to direct and im press them (Christians) in the observance of the Lord's supper." But, had he given to the volume some title expressive of his purpose, we should suppose it would have been more generally read, and, of course, have been more generally useful. The Addresses, considered merely as brief illustrations of the different passages of Scripture selected, might have been read with much interest by Christians of every class, and at all times, as well as at or near a communion season. In this view they would have been regarded, by judicious readers, as among the best short discourses of the day. The doctrinal remarks, and especially the practical reflections, are sometimes new and uniformly pleasing, often striking, and always useful. It is not very easy to analyze Discourses of this kind. Perhaps the best way for enabling our readers to form a proper idea of them generally would have been to have quoted one of them entire. For this purpose we had selected the twelfth in the series. But we find that our limits will not allow the insertion of so long a quotation. We must, therefore, refer to the volume itself; the perusal of which will fully convince any intelligent reader that our author possesses a peculiar happy talent for addressing Christians at a communion table. After having said thus much, we will not be suspected of insincerity, when we assure our readers that we do violence to our own feelings in saying any thing that would seem to detract from the worth of these interesting Addresses. Yet truth and impartiality require us to H state, that we by no means deem them faultless. Of the faults which we have no ticed, one is a want of Scripture quotation. We have always been of opinion that well selected quotations from holy writ are the greatest ornaments of every theological discourse. The words of God go directly to the heart, and produce effects, not to be expected from the best connected, and most elegantly turned sentences that man can frame. "These words of eternal life," (to quote Mr. Belfrage's own remark on the subject,)" must have a sweetness and power to the heart of the man that utters them, and of those that hear them, which none of the expressions of human wisdom or genius can possess," p. 344. All addresses at a communion table especially should abound in the language of Scripture. It will accord with the experience of every Christian, that no other language can be so suitable, whether for the confirmation of faith, the excitement of heavenly affections, or the strengthening of holy resolutions after new obedience. Sometimes Mr. Belfrage gives the sense of particular passages of Scripture, when the passages themselves would have been quoted with much better effect. For instance, "The Prophet could rejoice in the God of his salvation though every cluster was gone from the vineyard, every stalk from the field, and every sheep from the pastures," p. 30. Now; not to mention that Mr. Belfrage should have spoken, in the conditional mood, like the Prophet, how much more striking, after a suitable introduction to them, would have been the prophet's own words: "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom," &c. Hab. iii. 17 and 18. Sacramental addresses should be particularly distinguished for their simplicity. The want of this, we think, a defect in the Addresses of Mr. Belfrage. Both in their structure and in their style, they are often too much wrought, or at any rate have too much the appearance of art. Sometimes there are assertions made which would require proof. We deprecate every thing like argument in a table service. But we would likewise wish the speaker to avoid making round assertions with which an inquisitive and intelligent mind might be dissatisfied without the proof. The six sermons contained in the volume are very much in the spirit and style of the Addresses. The first is on "the exceeding great and precious promise" made to man in Paradise, after he had fallen by his iniquity. Gen, iii. 15. In this Sermon, after a very suitable, and rather a striking introduction, Mr. Belfrage proposes to illustrate his text, by considering four topics, viz. the combatants-the enmity which produced the contest-its effects on both parties as here stated-and the peculiar claims which this promise has on our most serious regard. This method is happy so far as it goes. To have made it complete, he should also have called our attention to the Judge, and to his immediate agency in the execution of the sentence. « I will put enmity," &c. There is a hint on this subject at the end of the second division of the Discourses. But it deserved a distinct place in the method, and might have given rise to discussions of a very interesting, though rather of a difficult nature. Room might have been left for this by the total omission of the fourth head. Of the excellencies of the promise condescended on, some are indeed peculiar; but others are common to it and all the other promises of God. The doctrines taught in this sermon are surely such as required Scripture proof. And yet it is remarkable, that throughout the doctrinal part, there is only one quotation given with this view. Yet, with this abate ment, we find, on all the branches of the method, concise, but lumincus illustration. The second Sermon is on Mat. xxvii. 46. In this Discourse, too, we meet with much to approve, and comparatively little to blame. The introduction is truly excellent. We object, however, to one sentence in it, as making a gratuitous, and what we think, a false assumption. Speaking of a martyr on the scaf. fold, Mr. Belfrage says, Every feature of his countenance is marked, every expression which he utters is remembered; and, if they display the meekness, fortitude, and charity, which were apparent in his life, the conclusion is felt to be irresistible, that his heart is sincere, and that his religion is divine.” We admit the one part of the conclusion, but hesitate about the other. The fortitude of a martyr certainly proves the sincerity of his heart, but it does not necessarily prove the divinity of his religion. Some have suffered in a bad cause with great magnanimity. Mr. Belfrage's remark will apply, without limitation, only to such cases as those recorded in Scripture. The martyrdom of the Apostles proved their sincerity, and then their sincerity proved their religion to be divine. Their sufferings demonstrated that they were sincere in attesting facts which were the consequence of divine and miraculous interposition, and facts about which, as they came under the examina tion of their own senses, they could not possibly be mistaken. The method of this Discourse is to consider the important circumstances connected with our Lord's complaint—its import-and the reasons why our Lord expressed it. On these different topics, we are presented with much pleasing and excellent illustration. We only regret, that Mr. Belfrage had not substituted another term for the word complaint. Our Lord never complained, in the sense in which the word is commonly employed. We, of course, take it for granted, that Mr. Belfrage does not use it in the sense of murmuring, as ap plied to our Lord. But perhaps some of his audience might be puzzled, when they heard him in one sentence speaking of the complaint of our Lord, and almost in the next telling that "the Jews heard from the lips of the crucified, complaints of the severity of their sentence, of the cruelty of men," &c. In the third sermon, as in the two which precede it, the author introduces himself to his subject in a very ingenious manner. His text is Luke ii. 10, 11. and he proposes for the illustration of it to call our attention "to the messenger to the message-to its characterand to the persons to whom it was addressed, and for whom it was intended." The last of these topics is not expressed with the author's usual precision. His language might have been the same as it is if the persons to whom the message was delivered had been the only persons for whom it was intended. The messenger was the Angel of the Lord. After remarking that "it was an honour to the highest angel to bear this message," the preacher adverts to the compassion and benevolence displayed in delivering it, and marks the solicitude shown that it should be attended to. Mr. Belfrage considers "the promptitude" of the angel in delivering his message as "surprising." This remark might well have been spared; for was it at all surprising that any angel should promptly obey the command of God, or that he should with alacrity deliver a message which "it was an honour |