Chinese character, appear to be invocations to the Deity for protection and success.

Two narrow strips of paper, with characters inscribed on them, which by consent of the natives were taken from a pillar in the temple, and which have since been translated, prove to be invocations, one to the Supreme Deity, and the other to the evil spirit. The first is on a slip of paper, two feet long, by two inches wide, and contains a supplication for pardon. The latter invocation begins by seven rows of the character symbolical of the Devil. In the upper line there are seven, and in the last one, so that a triangular page is formed of twenty-eight characters, each signifying the Devil; and the prayer itself is written in a narrow perpendicular line underneath; the whole inscription resembling in form a kite with a long tail attached to it.'

Polygamy is not tolerated, and the King alone is permitted to keep concubines. The women were secluded with the greatest jealousy from the view of our countrymen; they seem in general to be somewhat harshly treated, and the lower orders are employed in the severest labours. The literature of Loo-choo is extremely scanty, and the little they possess, is chiefly derived from the Chinese. It did not appear that they were apprized of the use of money, although some of their junks visit China; neither were arms of any kind seen among them. The authority of the chiefs was rather paternal than political: a kind and gentle feeling pervaded the whole hehaviour of the higher classes, and it was repaid by the people with respectful attention and ready obedience. The children were remarkably well bred; though full of life and spirits, they never proceeded to actual mischief.

John the Chinaman afforded them much amusement: he was a great coxcomb, and therefore fair game for the boys; they used to surround him, and attempt to pull his long tail; but they never actually pulled it, but merely teazed him a little and then run away.'

One of the most remarkable qualities of this engaging people, is their honesty, while the Chinese and Malays are proverbially the greatest knaves in existence. Their agriculture resembled that of the Chinese, and was carefully attended to in all its details. Captain Hall concludes his account by remarking, that they are of a timid character, and naturally suspicious of foreigners,' and by recommending the utmost gentleness and forbearance on the part of those who may hereafter touch on their shores. Their best security against the dangerous visits of European navigators, lies in their poverty, and in their sequestered situation; their island lies quite out of the usual tract of trade, and holds forth no temptation to the enterprise of the merchant, or the cupidity of the pirate.

A valuable series of papers, explanatory of the charts, and containing a considerable collection of materials, important to the

scientific inquirer, is appended to the main narrative, and the work is closed by a vocabulary which reflects great credit on the skill and diligence of Mr. Clifford, the compiler.

The charts are, of course, extremely interesting, but we regret the smallness of their scale, and the absence of a general chart which should exhibit, in one connected view, at least the cruise of the squadron in the Yellow Sea. The plates are not so well executed as they might have been. They are coloured, a fashion which we are very sorry to observe gaining ground, since it is injurious to the interests both of the arts and of the artist. It little matters how a plate is got up, when its defects are to be covered by a glare of colour. This part of the process which is generally consigned, at so much per dozen, to persons utterly ignorant of the principles and practice of art, and who are satisfied when they have made their trees green or yellow, their clouds purple, and their skies blue. Genuine artists will not, unless starving, stoop to the miserable drudgery of print colouring, and it is consequently committed to mere mechanics, perhaps to women and children, who, as they are incapable of realizing, in any measure, the spirit of their original, can never give an adequate transcript of its character and effect. We can only qualify this opinion in its application to scientific objects, and to those picturesque publications which, like those of Messrs. Daniel, are under the immediate superintendence of the artist himself. It should however be remarked, that the larger portion of the plates to the present work, are representations of costume, in which colour is admissible with advantage, when it is as skilfully applied as in the earliest numbers of Mr. Alexander's Costume of China. The views of Sulphur Island, and of Napakiang, in the copy before us at least, are coarsely coloured, and indifferently engraved.

Art. III. Pamphlets relating to the Antinomian Secession from the Established Church. (Continued from p. 419.) THROUGHOUT our remarks upon the subject of Antinomianism, we have presumed upon the reader's knowledge of facts, it being our design to direct his attention to the inferences which those facts seem to us to contain. We should be grieved if, through ignorance, or hastiness, our allegations should be chargeable, in any particular, with misrepresentation; but, in truth, we are not conscious, on the present occasion, of that sort of aggravation of spirit, which would be likely to hurry us into exaggerated statements. There are topics connected with the state of religious profession in this country, in handling which, we should feel in much danger of

losing the entire possession of our cool judgement. Antinomianism is a bad thing; a lukewarm profession, however, is at least as bad a thing as mere doctrinal Antinomianism: and a thoroughly worldly-minded profession, cloaked with a great deal of cant and zeal, is, if possible, a much worse thing.

But we hasten on.-Are we in danger of offending against truth, in stating the following particulars, as peculiarly characteristic of the teaching, the talking, and the conduct of Antinomians?-namely, an extreme jealousy of venturing over the boundaries of one or two topics; an equally scrupulous confinement within a very narrow circle of phrases, and those for the most part, oddly coined, between figure and emphasis, and a consequent want of ease, simplicity, and naturalness of manner; an angry impatience of argument conducted upon the principles of common sense, together with a propensity to evade the force of reasoning that cannot be answered, by a sweeping contempt of those who urge it, on the ground of their being unenlightened persons, incompetent, of course, to the subject; a perpetual shifting of the ground, when argument is entered upon; a solicitude on the part of the teachers, to shelter their disciples from the influence of sober Christians, by the very senseless reiteration of the warning "to beware of men"*; and lastly, the unrestrained practice of allegorizing the Scriptures, a method obviously essential to a system which is at variance with the plain sense of Revelation. The Socinian and the Antinomian are agreed in this prefatory canon of interpretation, namely, that the Bible is a tissue of figures and enigmas. Who can fail to perceive, how exactly accordant with the design of a system which seeks only the gratification of an inane luxurious speculation, is this conversion of the Holy Oracles into a collection of endless and inexhaustible riddles; how well it is adapted gradually to cheat the mind into a state of habitual forgetfulness and insensibility towards every thing that is real? If these things then are so, whence are they? Of what are they the symptoms? To us they plainly indicate the consciousness of an entire want of harmony and mutual dependence in the parts of the system; this want of harmony necessarily arising from the attempt to construct an artificial system having a determinate object, in the immediate presence of an acknowledged standard of Truth. In such cases it will always happen, that the more the harmony of design is perfected, the more argumentative consistency will be violated.

We might ask, Are not these teachers men also? but we recommend the reader on this subject to turn to the following passages in the book of Proverbs. Chap. x, ver. 17. xII, 1. xv, 10, 32. VOL. IX. N.S.

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The contrivers of systems amid the darkness of Paganism, as well as those among our modern philosophists who reject the authority of Revelation, have possessed this special advantage over the perverters of Christianity; that inasmuch as they were unembarrassed by the necessity of having reference to any acknowledged standard of truth, they have been free to give to their inventions the attractions of internal consistency. However grossly untrue or extravagant, therefore, may have been the assumptions upon which these systems have been made to rest, they have commonly exhibited a pleasing symmetry and compactness in themselves. But Antinomianism, in spite of its audacious contempt of the plainest language of Inspiration, can never give even the semblance of consistency to its dogmas as a whole; they must still constitute a grotesque assemblage, which nothing but ignorance or impudence can hold in conjunction.

Another point to which we wish to direct the reader's particular attention, because it sets the true character of Antinomianism, as a scheme of Intellectua Quietism, in a striking light, is this: the obvious discrepancy of this system of doctrine, with the visible conduct of God towards men in general, but more especially towards his people, in the dispensations of his providence.

Even true Christians are inadequately impressed with the direct agency of God in the ways of his providence; too little attentive to the voice and significance of these his works. As neither the real occasional causes, nor the ultimate results of the dispensations of Providence, fall within the sphere of our knowledge, the permanent law of the moral world, or that uniformity of connexion between the end and the means, the cause and the effect, which, in the structure of the material world, impresses us so irresistibly with the idea of design, is never obtruded upon our observation. Hence, although we may have a firm belief in the doctrine of a particular Providence, we are apt to be surprised, by remarkable occurrences, into a recollection of our convictions on the subject, rather than habitually impressed with the indisputable fact, that the whole machinery, down to its last and minutest particle,--all that constitutes what may be termed the circumstance of each individual, is as truly the result of Divine design, as are the members and functions of the animal body*. None of the works and ways of the All Wise are futile, inconsequential, or insignificant. Neither, we may rest assured, is there a single instance in which

*We shall not surely be misunderstood: all that which is morally evil in any effect, has its proper cause in the deficient holiness of the creature; but having a known and proper cause, it is capable of being perfectly related to an infallible system.

the works of His baud, or the methods of His providence, are out of harmony with the word of His Truth. What then, we I wish our readers under the impression of these sentiments to consider, is the apparent scope, what are the present results, (as respects those who are the subjects of special grace,) of that amazingly complicated and ever revolving machinery with which we are severally surrounded?

If the Antinomian view of Christianity be the true one, and it comprehends nothing beyond an extrinsic and relative salvation, begun and ended in a reference of the mind, it will be impossible to trace any agreement between such a plan, and the faet that God does actually detain his people in a state, the whole constitution and operation of which bear upon the exercise of the will, the affections, and the active principles. Why, if Antinomianism be true, is the strong propensity of the mind to withdraw itself from realities, exposed to perpetual counteraction, in the conduct and by the essential construction of the present economy?

We feel that we must not follow up this subject: we entreat the reader to pursue it for himself. In our deliberate convic-: tion, it contains within itself an adequate refutation of this wholesystem of delusion. Let him reflect upon the constitution of human nature, as affording the platform of a moral exercise. Let him refer to the mass of facts, illustrative of the conduct of Providence, with which his observation and personal expe-: rience have furnished him; and, dismissing unnatural glosses, let him compare the tendencies and the results of these dispensations, with the exactly suitable provision made in the Scrip-: tures to meet and to improve them. We are not now, be it remembered, speaking of frumes and feelings, which may be alleged to originate in imperfect views of the Christian scheme; we are resting the argument upon the acts of Him who planted the heavens and the earth by his power, who guides the foot-> steps of man by his counsel, and who has given us the revelation of his grace; and we ask, Is not the voice of God, in the conduct of his providence, clearly and loudly pronounced against this unreal, artificial system? Does it not call man from dreams and dotings, and fond conceits, to converse with realities? Is not this voice directly and exclusively addressed to those very powers and principles of his nature, which Antinomianism would cut off from all concernment with religion?

What is the designed end of those protracted bodily sufferings, and the consequent mental languor, which wear out the illusive power of the imagination, and which, in impairing the elasticity of the mind, leave to crumble into dust the fantastic structures of a factitious happiness? of those utter overwhelmings of the soul, proceeding from external causes, which drive