is one independent of positive law, and which any tutor, so far as he is concerned, can remedy, and if he can, he ought. Mr. Bickersteth's eleventh chapter contains what he modestly calls an outline of the "History of Divinity," extending from the first preaching of Christianity to the present time; and, outline as it is, we cannot but recommend it most strongly, for its candid, liberal, and Christian spirit, as well as for the information it contains. Both in this, and in the succeeding chapter of observations upon the outline, we see a mind disciplined to moderation by a sense of its own weakness, yet never losing sight of the grand essential character of the Gospel, humbling all human power before the paramount authority of Scripture, and finding the history of the Church, as well as the history of man, to be but an additional development of God's providential character. The most remarkable circumstance in modern theological history is, perhaps the history of the doctrine of justification by faith, of which Bishop Barlow says, "Sure I am that no Reformed Church in Christendom, nor any learned divine of our own Church that I have met with, before the year 1640, ever admitted that sense of St. James's words, which Popish or Socinian writers put upon them, or conceived them to be any proof of justification, coram Deo, by our own works and inherent righteousness.' -p. 273. Soon after the period alluded to, the modern school of justification arose, of which the head, as incomparably the ablest, is Bishop Bull, whose Harmonia Apostolica, published in 1669, led the way to those views of that doctrine, "articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiæ," to which so many cling even in our own day.* Our sentiments on this difficult but important subject are in unison with Mr. Bickersteth's; and we rejoice that this great and distinguishing doctrine of Christianity, which it was not given to the genius of a Taylor, or the sweet-spirited piety of a Horne, to see clearly, disengaged from human additions, is now being sounded in many, very many, pulpits of our Established Church. When we look to the changes of opinion regarding this great truth-when we see the variations and fluctuations of sentiment and conduct-how rapidly the piety of the parent is lost in the liberalism or indifference of the child-how extremes generate extremes-we are finally struck by the necessity of an overruling hand to preserve the external fabric of the church, and join in praises to its great head for his controlling providence, and in prayers that our weakness and our unworthiness may not remove his presiding influence from among us. The succeeding chapters contain useful suggestions as to courses of study, religious libraries for individuals in different circumstances, a minister's library at large, and a missionary's library. The books • We regret the republication of this tract by one whom we have long looked upon as an ornament to our church, both by h scholarship and bis orthodoxy; but the able and just animadversions on the system, in Archdeacon Brown's two charges of 1826 and 1828 fully reconcile us to its appearance. We would recommend most strongly Bishop Barlow's letters, republished by the Rev. E, Bickersteth, to the Christian Student. in the minister's library are arranged according to the mode of the catalogue* of the Queen's College, Oxford, edited by that competent bibliographer, Hartwell Horne; but Mr. Bickersteth has annexed a short and usually very discriminating criticism on each book. We can assure our readers, that they will find themselves introduced to many most valuable writers of the Puritan and Non-conformist stamp, with whom Mr. Bickersteth seems to be very familiar. He then gives some hints for the advancement of theology, and shortly observes upon the manner in which the deficiencies remarked by Bacon have been supplied since his time. He observes "Men of the world are wise in calling forth talents and learning, and preparing by a combination of effort, Reviews, Magazines, Encyclopedias, &c. Religion might be equally benefited by a similar union of men possessing knowledge and piety, for promoting its far higher, its infinitely more important objects.”—p. 560. We think so too, and are surprised that a theological academy, on the plan of the various learned societies, has never been devised. Learning is now an article so much in demand, that the man who professes it is usually too much engaged to do all that learned men could do some centuries ago; and a combination of pious, evangelical, and learned men is necessary for the execution of any great design. We may add, too, that theology is now so combined with the different mundane sciences, that it would be too much to expect the divine to be an accomplished geographer, chronologer, anatomist, and critic, while in each of these branches, piety calculated to elucidate and co-operate might be found. Union is the most powerful of instruments; and when that union is directed by piety, great advantages to the Christian cause might justly be anticipated. Mr. Bickersteth's two last chapters are among the most beautiful and useful in the volume; in the former of these he has many judicious and experienced remarks on the right application of theology, and the evils that arise from its mis-' direction; and in the latter he expatiates on the best and truest teacher-the great Prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is pleasing to see our excellent author commence and terminate his labours with Him who is the Alpha and the Omega-the beginning and the end; and to mark the eloquence of piety with which he contrasts the teaching of the Redeemer with the dryness of human systems, the self-called infallibility of Popery, the heartlessness of Socinianism, and the awful profligacy of Mohammed. We regret that we have room for no extracts; we recommend these two chapters to the consideration of all Christian students, and we confess that we should not think very highly of the individual who Why has not the public access to the knowledge of the stores of information contained in the library of our University? An arranged catalogue would soon pay itself, and be a valuable acquisition to the reading public. We know the value of the library, and wish that value was generally estimated. + Shall we be excused for asking what progress Trinity College is making in its edition of the collected works of Ussher, and expressing our hope, that the care of collecting, collating, and illustrating the works of such a divine, chronologer, and orientalist, has been committed to competent individuals? could rise up from their perusal unimproved or unedified. Nor can we close our remarks on this most timely and interesting publication, better than in the eloquent words of the learned Stillingfleet, as quoted by Mr. Bickersteth, "Christ crucified is the library which triumphant souls will be studying to all eternity. This is the only library which is the true IarpELOV vxns that which cures the soul of all its maladies and distempers: other knowledge makes men's minds giddy and flatulent; this settles and composes them: other knowledge is apt to swel' men into high conceits and opinions of themselves, this brings them to the truest view of themselves, and thereby to humility and sobriety: other knowledge leaves men's minds as it found them: this alters them and makes them better. So transcendent an excellency is there in the knowledge of Christ crucified, above the sublimest speculations in the world.” ”—pp. 393, 394. If any one should think we have been too extended in our remarks on this work, we can only say that the importance of the subject would justify observations much more protracted; that the modest, pious, judicious, affectionate, and most scriptural work we have been recommending, has high claims upon all Christian Examiners- -so high, that we could have quoted from almost every page, and that while we, perhaps, could find opinions in which we might not altogether concur, or criticisms we might deem unsound, we yet recommend the "Christian Student," as fit to be placed beside the same author's most useful, because most seriptural, works, on Prayer, on the Sacrament, the Scripture Help, and the Christian Hearer, for its unpretending and deeply practical character. Christian education is a subject in which all who live in nominally Christian society are concerned; and the education of the ministry is more especially important, as it has been more especially neglected. Up to the period at which the theological student commences his professional studies, every thing is applied to make him a general, not a scriptural scholar-and Mr. Bickersteth's observation is in too many instances well founded, that there are many who would do well to study Watts's Catechism before they commence a more extended course of reading. Subsequent to that period, how little is done by the schools and universities to make the divine-not a word-critic nor a distinction-hunter, not one who brings mere human learning, however exalted, to the study of the book of God, and thence carries away, not the living body of divinity, but the dry anatomy of system-but one, in the energetic language of Witsius, "qui solidâ Dei, et rerum divinarum cognitione ipso Deo magistro, imbutus, non verbis duntaxat, sed et universo vitæ suæ instituto admirandas Dei virtutes celebrat, totusque adeo ad ipsius gloriam est."* And until it be the object to make The remainder of the passage is worth extracting,-"Tales enim sancti patriarchæ erant, tales divinitus inspirati prophetæ, tales universi orbis Doctores Apostoli, 1ales aliquot eorum quos Patres nominamus, late splendentia priscæ Ecclesiæ lumina; quorum scientia, non in acuminatis curiosarum quæstionum subtilitatibus, sed in devota Dei Christique ejus contemplatione, consistebat; quorum docendi ratio simplex et casta, non prurientes aures demulcebat, sed menti rerum sacrarum VOL. IX. 2 R divines learned, but not alone learned, our Universities, our Church, our common Christianity, will not hold their due station of usefulness, nor have their proper influence, and proper assistances. We shall now pursue the Christian Student through his ministry, in our review of the other works at the head of this article, recognizing that it is in the ministry the value of Christian education is seen, and that the Christian student studies to teach and to live. "Nemo bene docet, nisi qui prius bene didicerit. Nemo bene discit, nisi qui discit ut doceat. Utrumque vanum et cassum est, si praxi destituatur."* (To be continued.) NOTICES OF BOOKS. Dr. Drummond writes, we suppose, for the members of his own congregation, and without either hope or expectation that any other persons will peruse his lucubrations. At least it is on such an bypothesis only that we can account for his appearance again in a controversial character; for assuredly the members of every other denomination of Christians, except his own, must have considered his last as too complete a failure to have expected a repetition of the attempt. There are, however, some polemics, and Dr. Drummond is among the number, who partake in the quality ascribed by Napoleon to our British soldiers, that 16 they never know when they are beaten," a quality of great use in military movements, but one not a little vexatious to reviewers in theology. To have to read statements as gravely reiterated as if they bad never been confuted; to reply for the hundredth time to arguments that have been overturned ninety-nine times before, and will certainly be exhibited as indisputable for the hundred and first time, is no agreeable task; and we can assure our readers that he who wishes to understand its full spirit need only dip into the Popish and Socinian controversies Rome and Racovia have been convicted of symbolizing together more closely than might have been expected, and the manner in which they maintain their respective opinions partakes, too, of the common character of pertinacity. On a former occasion we took the liberty of hinting to Dr. Drummond that the person who first manifests ill temper is usually esteemed to have had the worst of the discussion, and if our criterion be true, Mr. Hardy has obtained a decided victory, not only over the Doctor's equanimity, but his principles; for we cannot but feel some surprise that any circumstance should have driven a person of so much general good taste, and high social respectability, to exhibit such evident marks of irritated feelings, which bis friends may regret as being somewhat connected with irritated vanity, and his enemies rejoice at, as proving the justice of the statements that produced it, Our readers may remember that about two years since, Mr. P. D. Hardy published a pamphlet in reply to Dr. Drummond's bold and unmeasured defiance to all Trinitarians, and that in the pamphlet characterem imprimens, earundem amore animum inflammebat quorum inculpata ipsisque hostibus laudata morum innocentia, professioni respondens, irrefragabili doctrinam testimonio muniebat, et familiaris cum sanctissimo numine commercii evidens signum erat."The whole oration is well deserving of perusul; it is to be found in the second volume of Witsius Miscellanea Sacra. • Witsius de vero Theologo. be ventured to question the Doctor's consistency no less than his orthodoxy. A copy of the little work was sent, as is usually the case, to his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, and received his Grace's approbation, as a "manly and able exposure of that feeble and conceited heresy" it professed to combat. This high tribute from such a quarter to this layman's pamphlet, naturally pleased the author and his publisher, and it occasionally appeared among the "Testimonials" appended to Mr. Curry's advertisements We suppose Dr. Drummond to be a very cool person, or at least to require a long time to be heated up to the explosive point; or that he writes with great hesitation; or, in short we can scarcely account for it, though, according to his own statement, in the years 1827 and 1828 his eyes must have been frequently* saluted by this very unequivocal expression of his Grace's opinions, he repressed his wrath until the year 1829, when he poured it forth in two letters to the Archbishop, with as much freshness as if the offence had been just given; or that Dr. Drummond had for the first time beard his sect had been called a feeble and conceited heresy." The Doctor seems at a loss for the meaning attached to these words by the Archbishop, and we will venture to hint to him, that probably his Grace called it an heresy because it is so characterized since the days of the Council of Nice, since the days of Tertullian, since the days of St. John, who identifies with the spirit of Antichrist the denial of Jesus Christ having come in the flesh. He may have called it "feeble," on account of the inherent weakness of its constitution, unsupported by Scripture, by antiquity, or by sound criticism; and conceited," because devoid as it is of all stability in itself, and all adventitious aid, it yet assumes to itself the name of Unitarian, convicts the whole world beside of Tritheism and idolatry, with inimitable self-complacency identifies philosophy, and devotion, and piety, with its own cheerless creed, which in robbing God of his justice, implicitly denies his mercy, and leaving man to the hope of acceptance with God when he 66 can keep his commandments," consigns him to the unredeemed terrors of conscience, and the still more awful carelessness of self-delusion. In his valuable work on the Atonement, as in his note to Mr. Hardy, the Archbishop has spoken out with energy the convictions that are forced upon the impartial mind on becoming acquainted with the controversy; too strongly, perhaps, for the affected liberalism of the present day, which, with Dr. Drummond's consistency, exults over the disgraceful persecution that in the Pays de Vaud have disgraced Protestantism, and excited the horror of civilized Europe, and at the same moment, censures the prelates of the National Church, for "obtruding into the presence of majesty," in the full exercise of their stations and privileges, "to rivet more fast the fetters of their country." The Archbishop's language and opinions are certainly at variance with the sickly sentimentality that pervades the style of Dr. Drummond, but commends itself to every bosom that knows the artifice of Unitarian criticism, and feels for the most important doctrine ever revealed from God to man. The Doctor's letters to the Archbishop is but a rant of the usual misrepresentation, connected with a more than usual quantity of virulence. Indeed we think Mr. Hardy's suggestion not improbable, that the first letter had been prepared from its miscellaneous nature, for some other occasion, and but just feebly charged with the additional indignation of the bye-gone insult and exploded. The recoil will, we think, be felt by the adventurous Doctor. We shall not meddle with the language in which the Archbishop is attacked, or the accusation more than insinuated against him and the clergy of the Established Church. have no inclination to justify the Archbishop from the charge of "bad logic," or ignorance," or to prove against the Doctor that he believes "the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures." who are fond of tinsel may admire the Doctor's style, and think the Archbishop "a fool;" and such, too, may reverence the profound criticism of the Rev. Gen We Those On this subject Mr. Hardy makes the following observation, page 6.—" The fact is this, however, as may readily be ascertained, that that letter never appeared in any Dublin Newspaper but the Warder, and in that but once; nor did it appear more than once in any Belfast paper-and that, after the Belfast bookseller who sells works in unison with Dr. Drummond's sentiments, had refused to expose my Reply for sale in his shop. Thus Dr. Drummond stands convicted of having, in the second page of his pamphlet, stated a glaring untruth!!" |