248 And come,ye youths, who in the festive throng, Daughters of grief, who in life's roseate Mark'd sorrow's chilling clouds o'ercast the morn: C With willows fresh your fading brows entwine, Come, come, and to the woodlands we'll away, Sad, with our fragrant sweets, we will repair SELECTED. CANTATA. By Matthew Prior. RECIT. BENEATH a verdant laurel's ample fhade, Ten thousand little Loves around, ARIET. Potent Venus, bid thy fon Sound no more his dire alarms. Graver years come rolling on. Safe and humble let me rett, Sound no more his dire alarms. RECIT. Yet, Venus, why do I each morn prepare Unless the beauteous maid be nigh? RECIT. Thus fung the Bard; and thus the Goddess spoke: Every ftate, and every age, ARIET. Bid thy deftin'd lyre difcover Through her ear her heart obtaist. EULOGY ON LAUGHING. By J. M. Sewall, Delivered at an exbibition, by a young lady. LIKE merry Momus, while the Gods were quaff ing, I come to give an eulogy on laughing! Yet others, quite as fage, with warmth difpute Hail, rofy laughter! thou deferv'ft the bays ! Come, with thy dimples, animate these lays, Whilft univerfal peals atteft thy praife. Daughter of Joy! thro' thee we health attain, When Efculapian recipes are vain. Let fentimentalifts ring in our ears As froward children are appeas'd by baubles; The honeft laugh, unftudied, unacquir'd, By nature prompted, and true wit infpir'd, Such as Quin felt, and Falstaff knew before, When humour fet the table on a roar ; Alone deferves th' applauding mufe's grace ! The reft-is all contortion and grimace. But you exclaim, "Your Eulogy's too dry; "Leave differtation and exemplify! "Prove, by experiment, your maxims true; "And, what you praife fo highly, make us do." In troth hop'd this was already done, And Mirth and Momus had the laurel won! Like honeft Hodge, unhappy fhould I fail, Who to a crowded audience told his tale, And laugh'd and fnigger'd all the while himself To grace the ftory, as he thought, poor elf! But not a fingle foul his fuffrage gaveWhile each long phiz was ferious as the grave! Laugh laugh! cries Hodge, laugh loud! (no halfing) ing! I thought you all, ere this, would die with laugh. INTERR'D beneath this marble ftone SENEC. They walk'd, and eat, goods folks: what then? They paid the church and parish rate, No man's defects fought they to know; They neither added nor confounded; Nor good, nor had, nor fosis, nor wife; Nor with d, nor car'd, nor laugh'd, nor cried 249 FOR MAY, 1806. Librum tuum legi & quam diligentissime potui annotavi, quæ commutanda, quæ eximenda, ar bitrarer. Nam ego dicere verum assuěvi. maxime laudari merentur.Pliny. Neque ulli patientius reprehenduntur quam qui ART. 19. One God in one person only; and Jesus Christ a distinct being from God, maintained and defended. By John Sherman, pas tor of the first church in Mansfield, (Con.) Worcester. I. Thomas, jun. 1805. 8vo. pp.198. and the received doctrine of the trinity in particular. In the following review we shall endeavour to give an impartial account of the work; to correct any palpable errours of fact; occasionally to point out deficiencies; and sometimes to censure and sometimes to commend, without enlisting ourselves under the banners of Mr. Sherman or his antagonists. In the introduction Mr. S., af ter some remarks on the speculative differences among christians, and the necessity of religious catholicism, prepares his reader for his occasional deviations from the received text and translation of the scriptures by vindicating the propriety of such alterations from the constant improvement in biblical criticism, from the history of our present English version, and lastly, from the authority of the Saybrook assembly, which declares, WHEN We saw this book an nounced, we knew not whether its appearance was to be deprecated as a signal of theological warfare, or whether it should be hailed as the harbinger of awakened learning, inquiry, and industry among our clergy. Though the trinita rian controversy has now existed more than sixteen centuries, and was kept up in England during the whole of the last age with little intermission, first with the Arians, and afterwards with the Socinians, yet we believe that the present treatise is one of the first acts of direct hostility against the ortho-"that the originals of the Old and dox, which has ever been committed on these western shores. Coming so late as Mr. S. now must to the scene of action, he can hope to attack or to defend only with weapons stripped from the bodies of the slain, who are heap ed in heavy piles on the field of theological disputation. The present work, we observe, is not written to establish any new opinion respecting the character of Christ, but is confined merely to a denial of his deity in general, Vol. III. No. 5. 2H New Testament are the final resort in all cases of controversy." The occasion of publishing this work and the situation of the author are set forth in the following passage. from thofe believed and avowed at my My fentiments becoming different, ordination, honefty compelled me frankly to declare them, notwithstanding the evils, which the ftate of the times gave me to forefee, would undoubtedly be realized in confequence. I have not been disappointed. gave umbrage to the Original AffociaThe publication of my fentiments tion of Ministers in the county of Windham; and they proceeded to expel me, on this account, not only from their body, as a voluntary Affociation, but from all " miniflerial_connexion.” It was my intention to have published a general statement of the manner in which this affair was brought to its crifis. But for certain reasons which I did not fufficiently confider, it is at present withheld. I would only observe, that, by the decree of the Affociation, or any decrees which, as a body of mere Ecclefiafticks, without appointment from the churches, without their sanction, and without pursuing the regular difcipline pointed out by our Lord, they may affume the authority to make,I confider my good chriftian and minifterial standing not in the leaft degree impaired. Were they an ecclefiaftical court, known in the fcriptures; had they charged me with crime, with a breach of the divine law to man kind; and were there any other kind of iniquity found cleaving to my garment, than that I cannot fee with their eyes, and perceive with their understandings; I might confider myfelf as affected by their decifion. But, as the matter now stands, I feel the authority of the Lord Jesus still refting upon me, and shall not defert my minifterial office. They, and others who shall subscribe to their doings, may treat me according to their pleasure: There is One that judgeth between us. HIM fhall the appeal be made. Το The work is divided into two parts. In the first the author endeavours to shew that the passages and considerations alleged in favour of the supreme and independent deity of Christ do not establish such doctrine concerning him." In the first section, those passages are examined, which represent Christ as the creator of all worlds. These are John i. 1-14. Col. i. 16, 17. Heb. i. The proem to John's gospel has long been the crux antitrinitarianorum. They have agreed in nothing but to wrest it from the hands of the orthodox,but have never been able to convert it into an auxiliary. Though some of the early Polish Socinians thought they could apply all its high and obscure expressions to the entrance of Christ on his publick ministry, L. Crellius wasted an immensity of learning to make it probable that we should read instead of in the first verse ; Clarke and the Arians are contented with affixing to teos without the article a subordinate sense; the more modern Unitarians suppose that the word xoys does not here signify a person, but only an attribute of Deity, and that there is no unequivocal intimation of Christ till the 8th verse; and last of all, a critick, whose familiarity with scriptural phrases and terms is not inferiour to the knowledge of any of his predecessors, Newcome Cappe, has ventured to restore and vindicate the original interpretation of Socinus. Mr. S. adopts the most common explanation of the Unitarians, that by yo is intended the reason, or wisdom of God, which the evangelist eloquently personifies. We find some remarks on the use of the προς prepositions, and the word κήνωσεν, which are not unimportant, and then are called to the famous passage in Col. i. 16, 17. The difficulties, which attend the explanation of these verses,as referring to the new moral creation, or rather organization under the gospel,are not a few; and Mr. S. has in some degree injured the plausibility and compactness of his own interpretation by not sufficiently attending to the propriety of clearly referring all the clauses without exception either to one creation or the other. Hence we think he should have admitted no other interpretation of #pororonas s xr than this, "first-born or most eminent of the whole creation;" in the same sense in which Christ is elsewhere styled "first born among many brethren," Rom. viii. |