of truth and wisdom, to conduct intelligent creatures to knowledge, holiness, and bliss? That religion is a "reasonable service." When a man, then, sacrifices his reason, he renders himself incapable of true and Christian piety: his religion has nothing in it moral or excellent: it is on a par with the submission of brutes: or with the passive qualities of unthinking matter." pp. 25, 26. Addressing an assembly collected from numerous congregations of Protestant Dissenters, it was to be expected that one of their most intelligent preachers, attached to the genuine principles of religious liberty, would not fail to point out to his auditors the justification which their non-conformity to the Established Church received from the reasons on which our protest against the Church of Rome is founded; nor omit shewing to what extent in their genuine tendency and full and proper meaning, those reasons will impel all who submit to their sway. • The fundamental PRINCIPLES of our DISSENT are the very same as those of our PROTEST against the Church of Rome. Those principles are, the sole supremacy and legislative authority of Christ over the faith and the consciences of men;-the unrestricted use of the Bible, and its sufficiency as the rule of religious belief and obedience;-and the unlawfulness and impiety of human dictation in matters purely belonging to religion. The sober and consistent application of these principles appears to our most serious judgment, to require a conscientious separation from the religious establishment of our country. To the civil government of our country we pay the cheerful obedience, not of mere duty, but of choice and affection, in all civil matters; but " to God we must render the things that are God's." We pay respect and honour to the pious and upright members of the Church of England; and are their ready coadjutors, so far as we are able, in the numerous works of patriotic' and Christian philanthropy. But it is even a part of the respect and honour due to them to tell our brethren why we are constrained to differ from them. We rejoice that their church is purified from the grosser errors of the Romish community: but we lament that she still retains an unscriptural conformity in many points of doctrine, constitution, and worship. We especially lament that her constitution involves a denial, virtually at least, of the three GREAT principles of Protestantism; and that she is tied and bound with the iron fetters of a merciless Uniformity, imposed by the most profligate prince of the arbitrary house of Stuart, so tied and bound with those heavy chains, that Improvement and Melioration are doleful and forbidden sounds to her! We cannot, moreover, be insensible to the strong fact, that the Church of England rejects communion with every Protestant Church upon earth, but owns and exercises it with the Church of Rome. Does she not, by this her own act and deed, incontestably stamp and proclaim herself, the daughter of the spiritual Babylon?-Our being Dissenters, then, is nothing but the result of our consistency as Protestants-Dr. Smith's Discourse, pp. 55, 58. - Joanna Southcot and her wretched reveries, are adduced by Mr. Ryan, in his Consecration Sermon, in illustration of what he calls the mischiefs of Protestantism. And what can Mr. Carlyle say to this? He shall speak for himself, and for us too. I would ask, have there never been any Joanna Southcots in the Church of Rome? For my part, I have heard of nothing so absurd or atrocious from Joanna Southcot, as doctrines that have been promulgated by Roman Catholics. Joanna never taught any thing so ridiculous, as that there is an immense fire burning in some part of the universe. into which the immaterial souls of the faithful, must go to be purified, before they can be admitted into heaven, and that an individual in his world has power to commute any part of this purification for money' Joanna Southcot, in her worst moods, never sent out her followers to cut the throats of all who refused to obey her, and when they brought her back intelligence of the massacre of thousands, illuminate her windows, and with uplifted eyes and hands return thanks to God for his mercy to her, and then instigate them to the practice of the same barbarities, till they had thoroughly purged the kingdom from all unbelievers; yet Pope Gregory XIII. did all this: Poor Joanna was harmless and rational, when compared with this sanctimonious blood-thirsty villain." pp. 90, 99 Mr Carlyle has favoured us, in the concluding part of this pamphlet, with the copy of a most singular document which has been circulated among the Roman Catholics of Dublin. We have penny-a-week Bible Associations, and penny-a-week Missionary Societies; but who could have anticipated the formation of a penny-a-week" Purgatorian Society,," the members of which are to extend their charitable views beyond the grave, by relieving, as far as in them lies, the suffering souls in Purgatory.' The plan and rules of such a Society are copied verbatim by Mr. Carlyle from an authentic paper. Let his appeal be sounded in the ears of every reflecting being. In what a light does this place the priesthood? They believe, or at least they teach, that the friends of their flock are lying weltering in a lake of fire, from which they could deliver them, by saying masses for them, and recommending them to the prayers of the Congregation, and yet they will not say these masses, nor so recommend them, unless they be regularly paid for it. How can a man represent himself as such a monster, and yet hold up his head in civilized society! What! shall I believe that a single soul is suffering torments so dreadful-that it may continue to suffer them for agesthat I have the means in my power of relieving it—and yet that I shall coolly wait till I be paid, before I use these means! By what process of reasoning can men be brought to believe, that this is the religion given to us for our salvation, by our kind and merciful Father in Heaven?' Oh! Awful delusion! that men with the light of the gospel shining on their eye-balls, should persuade themselves, that the God of heaven would actually sell to them, for money, relief from some necessary purgation, or some merited punishment!' We owe an apology to both the Authors whose performances we have just noticed, for the delay which has occurred in introducing them to the readers of our work. We cannot at all times consult either our own inclinations, or the wishes of others in affairs of this kind. We recommend, not only with cordial approbation, but with an urgency which a sense of important duty suggests, the "Examination," and "The Reasons of the "Protestant Religion." Claude's "Defence of the Reformation," first published at Rouen, in 1673, in reply to a work entitled "Prejugez legitimes "contre les Calvinistes," supposed to have been written by Nicolle, a Catholic Divine of the Jansenist party, is republished by Mr. Townsend, as a measure of self-defence on the part of the Protestant Churches; for which service he is entitled to their thanks. Like a vigilant and faithful watchman, he announces the danger which he sees approaching; and apprehensive that our religious liberties are in jeopardy, he summons every Protestant to their aid. Many circumstances are adduced by him, in the Memoirs and Preface which he has added to the work, in support of his opinion, that the proselyting spirit of popery is exerting itself very diligently and with much success in these lands. He recommends the study of those principles, in the application of which the first Reformers separated themselves from the Church of Rome, and formed distinct religious communities, as the best means of. strengthening the minds of our Protestant youth against the dangers of the times; and as calculated to oppose a growing resistance to the spirit of popery. The "Defence of the Reformation," largely describes the corruptions of the Church of Rome prior to the period of Luther's protest against them. The alleged proofs of the authority of that Church, are minutely investigated. The right of our 'fathers' to examine the state of religion for themselves, to correct its abuses, to purify and restore its institutions; the sufficiency of those causes on which the reformation was founded d; and the validity of the ministry as exercised by the reformed; together with various points directly or remotely implicated in these leading particulars; are discussed in these important volumes; and more interesting topics cannot in our opinion solicit the attention of readers. The work itself does not need our recommendation on its own account, though we may possibly not be performing an unnecessary act in making it known to the public. In Bayle's estimation it is one of the best books ever published by a Protestant Minister. The late Mr. Robinson of Cambridge, pronounced it to be one of the best written books that he ever had the pleasure of reading. To these testimonies we shall add the following eulogy from Budder Isagoge Hist. Theol. p. 1150. Nihil in hoc genere elegantius aut solidius, ab ullo reformatæ ' ecclesiæ theologo litteris consignatum.' A book so applauded, cannot require our imprimatur to give it acceptance. Though we shall not pledge ourselves to the approbation of every sentiment which it contains, and though we feel ourselves obliged to except against some passages in which Claude sanctions and pleads for the interposition of the civil magistrate in the affairs of religion, we give it our warin recommendation as a standard work of great worth, and particularly seasonable at the present moment. Art. II. Travels in the Caucasus and Georgia; performed in the Years 1807 and 1808, by Command of the Russian Government, by Julius Von Klaproth, Aulic Counsellor to His Majesty the Emperor of Russia, Member of the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburgh, &c. Translated from the German by F. Shober]. 4to. pp. 421. Price 21. 2s. Colburn. 1814. A GREAT military empire, with boundaries imperfectly, or on some sides not at all defined, may be compared to a monstrous animal, of fearful power and ferocity, ranging loose in a country, no chain, no high and massive wall, no kind of fence but what he will easily dash through in the wantonness of enraged strength. No one can say what is the appropriate domain of this monster at large. No one is surprised to hear of his attack and ravage at any point in the widest sweep of country. No one dares indulge in self-felicitation that his own vicinity is beyond the probable excursions of the formidable belligerent. No confidence is felt by the inhabitants of one quarter, that the people of any other will be able to despatch or disable him; and each person has the impression that there is no manner of certainty he shall not, at one time or other, be one of the victims. This would seem to be a true, though rather feeble image, of what the condition has been, and continues to be, as respecting the Russian power, of the nations occupying the northern regions of two of the grand divisions of the globe. Perhaps, at the time of the earlier encroachments of this power on adjacent territories and subjugation of their inhabitants, the remoter tribes might scorn the pusillanimity of the conquered, exulting in their own independence and security. But, in the lapse of one or two score of years, they found themselves brought into an equivocal and formidable kind of neighbourhood to this still advancing and never-receding domination. In spite of their pride, they felt themselves beginning to hesitate in naming as their territory, or even as their boundary, the eminences or the river-courses on every side of which they had formerly dwelt or encamped or roved, without ever dreaming of interference. But they were not doomed to remain long in uncertainty; Russian standards and Russian forts were soon to instruct them to whom they and their country belonged. In proportion to the rapidity of the course of acquisition by which a great number of territories and states had been thus put in doubt, and thus brought to certainty, the condition of the surrounding regions, to an undefinable distance, was becoming dubious; and the people might well begin to feel as if the Russian boundary line were already hovering in the air over the land of their fathers, just ready to attach upon and appropriate it. This irresistible extension has been going on without cessation, till at length this power is, upon a line of many thousands of miles, in formidable contiguity, and with a boundary quite as impatiently moveable as ever, to divers tracts, kingdoms, and empires, the people of which, a few generations back, heard of Russia as a distant obscure state, striving in a rude and inartificial manner, to raise itself into some importance. No prognosticator of the. fortunes of States dares draw on the map in advance beyond the present certain or unsettled confine of this empire, the line which shall not be lost within the confine twenty years hence. In the mean time, it is perfectly proper and laudable, that while this vast process of acquisition is advancing unintermittingly, there should be in as constant operation a system of exploring and describing, by divisions, the almost immeasurable territory comprehended in the empire, of which far more than a million of square miles is ground nearly as little known by the grand Proprietary, as that at the centre of Africa. This circumstance, of so much of his enormous estate being terra incognita, plainly dictates the first object for the investigators, as geographical, in the simplest sense. There is required a description of the surface of the countries, in the most obvious natural features, with a moderately accurate account of the extent of the respective tracts as limited by natural or artificial divisions. The geographical missionaries may be required to bring some general account of the people; (where there are any;) of their probable number; of what is most prominent in their polity and habits; and of the most palpable differences in the several tribes. But surely they are loaded with too much duty, if they are required also to perform the functions of naturalists, and antiquaries, and philologists. We therefore could not help feeling some degree of commiseration for the Author of the present volume, on looking at the most onerous, the encyclopædic extent of his commission, as laid down in a tremendous roll of instructions. It would really seem that he was required to learn every thing that was knowable; and, in order not to VOL, V. N. S. Dd |