not, and feels not, the important uses of this reflex operation of the mind, upon what has been done? In what manner the conscience acquires the power, and vindicates to itself the right, of approbation and condemnation, needs not, for the present purpose, to be decided. The fact is sufficient; and every one becomes, in consequence, a moral agent, an accountable being. Now, consider man apart from conscience, and there is nothing to restrain him from the exercise of his mental and corporeal faculties to the injury of others consider him under the control of conscience, and he becomes a law unto himself. It is scarcely too much to assert that there is not, throughout the whole of external nature, a more striking instance of Divine adaptation, and Divine will, than is here presented. But this is not all. If God designed that man should thus become a moral agent, an accountable being, then has God intimated that HE IS HIMSELF A MORAL GOVERNOR of his intelligent creatures."

Dr. Turton has here indicated what we have all along insisted on, that it is only from our own constitution that we judge of the universe--that we judge of its maker. He has, in fact, been careful to set down so much at the very outset. He shews how, in infancy, the senses being repeatedly impressed with external objects, observation is awakened; and with it a fondness for things new and strange. Soon after, another kind of feeling shews itself:- a new curiosity about things-an eagerness to know what they are what they contain -- what is their construction- what they are intended for. Meanwhile, this lesson is thoroughly learned, that things are made-that they are contrived - that there are those by whom they are contrived and made. But Dr. Turton leaves not the matter here: he is solicitous to testify that there has been going on, at the same time, a process of thinking, and willing, and actingof which the individual becomes more and more conscious to himself; and those faculties of thinking, willing, and acting-of which he is himself conscious, he is unavoidably led to attribute also to others. They are ultimately perceived to be the regular means by which effects are produced. In this manner arises a conviction,

manifests arrangement for a purpose must have originated in thought, understanding, mind. These are Dr. Turton's sentiments, and ours, having been expressed by us a hundred times; and thus, as we should contend, we prove the absolute interdependence of natural theology, or religion, on revelation -the revelation of mind in these, its self-conscious attributes and operations. Suppose a mind capable only of being conscious of other objects than itself, and the evidence of design would not only be wanting, but never thought of. See, then, how necessary is "metaphysical aid" to all your physical proofs of religion-without such aid, in fact, the items capable of becoming proofs might be accumulated, but the religion would not be found - that dimidium scientia would be wanting, which is implied in the prudens quæstio. Religion is a moral power, and its true evidences are all of a moral order; other testimonies to its truths are at best but corroborations- vague approximations.

It is in the facts just stated that we may discover the inevitable necessity of some reference to "mind and its operations" being found in books of natural theology. Lord Brougham's assertion, therefore, that all writers on the subject had omitted such reference, was not a little startling. Dr. Turton has distinctly proved the contrary; and felt that there was all the more reason for investigating the subject, in the circumstance of Dr. Wallace having made use of the assertion as adverse to the doctrine of the immateriality of the soul.

"Did it not occur to the noble lord," inquires the author alluded to, "that the writers on natural theology who had preceded him, and, as he admits, omitted to discuss or entertain this metaphysical and vexatious doctrine, did so with design, and because they were of opinion that it was neither necessary nor useful to introduce doubtful doctrines, in the hope of extending certain knowledge; and that, therefore, the negative precedent was one which ought to be followed?"

To this Dr. Turton answers:

"Now, there is one maxim in philosophy, which is on all sides allowed to be most excellent: it is this,-First be sure of the fact, and then endeavour to account for it. Now, the fact stated

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would only further observe, that there seems to be this difference between Socinus and the modern Unitarians alluded to,-Socinus denied that the being of God, as well as all its important consequences, could be deduced by the power of reason; the Unitarians rather restrict their denial to the consequences of that great fact."

We are glad to have Dr. Turton's authority for relieving orthodox writers from the charge of having originated the broad distinction long instituted between natural and revealed religion - as if any religion could be that was not revealed. In our sense, as we have frequently said, the term, revealed religion, is a gross pleonasm. Until this be clearly seen and fully acknowledged, the whole subject must remain involved in inextricable confusion. With whom originated, however, the distinction, it has been continued by a class of theologians very remote, in their sentiments, from Socinus and his modern disciples, as Dr. Turton proceeds to shew; and, according to him, certain high doctrines having been preached indiscreetly, some divines, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, made it their business to impress upon the conscience a serious sense of moral obligation, and dwelt, accordingly, much upon the duties of life. Some of them, he writes, unfortunately called Christianity a republication of the law of nature,- not intending, most assuredly, that Christianity is a mere republication, but designing to hold it forth as a religion abounding in new motives to the observance of all that is required of men in their present state of being. The adversaries of the gospel affected to understand what was said, of the "republication of the law of nature," in its strictly literal sense; and availed themselves of the opportunity to shew that Christianity is, on that principle, as old as the creation ;" and some of its advocates, on the other hand, denied the existence of such an anomaly as natural religion at all. At last arose Mr. Hutchinson, who thought that, by the light afforded him by the records of revelation, compared with his own observations, he saw further into the constitution of the universe, and the operations carried on in it, than Newton had done. Deriving, says Bishop Horne, the principles of the constitution of the universe, and the ope

--tione carried on in it from

Hutchinson would scarcely allow that any thing appertaining to religion could be collected from other sources. He looked upon natural religion as deism in disguise-an engine of the devil, in these latter days, for the overthrow of the gospel; and, therefore, boldly called it the Religion of Satan, or Antichrist. Horne, Parkhurst, and Jones, with others, were followers of Hutchinson. Dr. Ellis, the author of a treatise, entitled, The Knowledge of Divine Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature, undertook to prove that neither the being of a God, nor any other principle of religion, could possibly be deduced from the study of the phenomena of the universe. Thus he writes: "A mind that has no knowledge but of sensibles, sees and hears no other objects-can abstract no ideas from matter but what are material; and had he mountains of them, his attempt would be as fruitless as the giants invading Jupiter. Heap matter upon matter, it will never amount to immateriality, nor open to his view the new scene of insensibles and invisibles. Without an instructor to open his eyes, it would not be possible to conceive an angelic being, because it can have no resemblance, nor idea of a substance purely spiritual; yet vastly remoter from matter is an omnipotent Being, comprehending in itself all the possibilities of things." Of Dr. Ellis, our regius professor observes, that he appears to have been educated at Oxford, and established in Dublin; and that the late Archbishop Magee was a follower of his in his sentiments respecting natural religion. The numerous class of churchmen who have long locked up to the late Dr. Milner, and his brother, the Rev. Joseph Milner, with respect, in matters of religion, are also supposed to have generally adopted the views of Dr. Ellis. This surmise seems, however, not to be true to the full extent, as Dr. Milner himself, in several conversations with Dr. Turton, condemned, in the strongest terms, Dr. Ellis's scheme of rejecting the operations of the human mind, as one of the primary sources of knowledge. In this condemnation he was undoubtedly right; as we are bold to say, that in rejecting these, to be consistent throughout, Dr. Ellis should have rejected the record of revelation itself

be susceptible of an intelligible and scientific meaning, and true religion be something distinct from unreasoning superstition. The Rev. Joseph Milner, in his answer to Gibbon, dwells in particular on the testimony of conscience. "Let any man," he writes, "coolly attend to what passes within himself, and ask what account can be given of that principle within him which we call conscience. However it has been derided, it is not derided out of the world; and any person may, if he pleases, convince himself of its power, by attending to the energy of its rebukes, in spite of the most subtle reasonings which he may have made use of to drown its voice. Still it speaks; and speaks not like other principles and instincts of human nature, but with an authority steady and strong, yet ever upright and equitable, commanding the whole man-and commanding no less the esteem than the fear of the whole human race. All render themselves more or less obnoxious to its rebukes; but to bribe it into silence, or rather to stupefy and intoxicate it, would ask a long and enormous course of confirmed flagitiousness; and if it be ever effected at all, it leaves a man in a state too monstrous and unnatural to excite any other ideas than those of horror and detestation. If any man might be conceived to have conquered in himself this awful principle, so as to have lost all idea of its influence, one is tempted to think it was Mr. Hume: yet hear how eloquently, as well as emphatically, he describes it. Speaking of Somerset, the murderous favourite of James I., he says, The favourite had hitherto escaped the inquiry of justice; but he had not escaped that still voice which can make itself be heard amidst all the hurry and flattery of a court, and astonishes the criminal with a just representation of his most secret enormities.' And a little after, 'The grace of his youth gradually disappeared; the gaiety of his manners was obscured; his politeness and obliging behaviour were changed into sullenness and silence.''

These are important historical memoranda: they disclose, nevertheless, a perplexing contrariety of opinion in the different authors on the topic;

when we have detected the common error which produces the confusion, namely, that of enlarging the claims of natural religion, so as to take in the spiritual modes of our moral being, in which is the revelation of the moral law-and of contracting the field of revealed religion, so as to confine it to the times and countries recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, instead of esteeming it as the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the sys which is in the midst of each of us, and is "the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

Dr. Turton deserves great praise for the manner in which he has rescued Dr. Clarke from Lord Brougham's censures. He also establishes the position that Dr. Clarke's argument is erroneously styled an à priori one, being of a mixed nature. The section on the à priori argument is altogether of great excellence. Dr. Turton mentions that he has the materials for a historical and critical account of the modern (so called) argument à priori, with remarks upon its proper use; but considering that there are probably not above half a score persons in the kingdom who would care to peruse a work of that kind, Dr. Turton thinks that the propriety of devoting to the composition so much time as it would unavoidably require, is very questionable. For our part, we have no question about the propriety. Such a work is wanted; and though we doubt whether, after all, notwithstanding the excellence of the production now under review, the requisite faculty be developed in Dr. Turton, and the full and true percep tions attained which are necessary for the higher and deeper parts of the argument, we are certain that the historical detail will be given with great accuracy and effect. We are very desirous that he should immediately set about the task; and with the illustrations that he could pour upon the subject, he could even make out of it and them a popular book.

In conclusion, we would wish to drive home, in relation to this great argument, some remarks of the venerable penman whom we lately quoted. "Many," he says, “talk of the truth, which never sounded the depth from springeth; and, therefore,