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nification of terms,' which have evidently been introduced since that period, must be decided from the extracts which he has collected, not from the glosses that he has attached to them.

Of the political farrago with which the author has contaminated his work, little needs to be said, at a period when the English nation has learned to judge from facts, rather than from theories; and from practices, rather than from professions. We shall, therefore, only take a brief notice of an attempt, at the commencement of his last volume, to found the rights of man,' on what he calls the LAWS of human nature,' p. 14. What those LAWS are, or who is to interpret them, he does not inform us. We have heard them explained, by an adept in the Francotheotisc Neology, as the dictates of every man's conscience, however corrupt or obdurate; and we have heard it maintained (with the most evident sincerity and seriousness) on this principle, that any man who thinks it right, on whatever ground, to rob, or murder, is right in doing so.

Happily for us, as a nation, we have the laws of GoD, recorded in the Sacred Scriptures, for the 'obedience of Faith;' and the laws of England, to restrain the frantic advocates of such laws of Nature. To the former, we thankfully resort, as the only, and all-sufficient rule of conscience: to the latter, we commit the decision, whether the wild ravings of Mr. H. T. have been effectually reduced, by the numerous chasms which the publisher has discreetly left in them, from a corrupt mass of sedition to the caput mortuum of stark nonsense.

Art. VI. ΑΙΡΕΣΕΩΝ ΑΝΑΣΤΑΣΙΣ; or, a new Way of deciding old Controversies. By Basanistes. 8vo. pp. 194. Price 2s. 6d. Johnson.

1805.

T O enumerate the various trials incident to men in their dif ferent employments, is a common and useful exercise from the pulpit. But there is one trial, and a heavy one too, which we do not recollect either to have heard in sermons, or to have met with in treatises of instruction; and that falls to the lot of Reviewers, who are obliged to read books which are not worth the reading; and to toil through volumes where, in every page, they find nothing but matter of unmingled disgust. Hercules himself would have shrunk from such a labour. He would never have got to the end of Aireseon Anastasis: but we have; thanks to the perseverance of the reader of our corps, and to our own unconquerable patience.

If we do not mistake, we had, in the course of the last year, a publication of the same author, on the present miserable state of Christianity, and the reviviscence of Socinianism, which is to regenerate the world.

The

The design of the present volume is to confute the doctrine of the Trinity, and the divinity of Jesus Christ, and what may be called the distinguishing principles of the Gospel. In order to effect this, B. sets himself to prove the divinity of Moses, and thus to establish what he calls a quaternity in the Godhead. In this way he imagines, no doubt, that he shall make the orthodox doctrine appear ridiculous, and serve the cause of his own creed. This is that species of Socinianism, which rejects a part of the Sacred Scriptures; which allows inspiration to a small portion of the rest, and in a very low degree; and which, in its tenets, scarcely differs from the Deism of the school of Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke.

Perhaps our author imagines, that in his mode of attack, he bears away the palm of novelty: but he is mistaken. Cicero, in his book De Natura Deorum, informs us, that Empedocles maintained that there was a quaternity in the Deity. This Empe docles, from vain glory, it is supposed, (whether for having made such a discovery we do not know,) afterwards threw himself headlong into the crater of Mount Etna. There is no necessity that in this too, his disciple should imitate him. If, however, he should be resolute, and should set our opinion at defiance, divine truth will have no cause to weep for the loss she has sustained. Mr. then changes his armour, and fights with different weapons. By some of those who have held the great truths of Christianity, many hasty, unwise, and improper expressions and arguments have been used. These, Mr. has been at great pains to collect, and to retail in his work. But what do they prove? Not the falsehood of the doctrines, but the haste, the heat, the misapprehension, or the mistake of individuals.

Through the whole, there is an attempt to be witty; and part of it consists in wearing the cloak of a violent orthodox bigot. But wit is a weapon which few are qualified to handle with effect; and our author as little as any that ever attempted it. In Voltaire, while he combats the truth, we meet with the delicacy of wit, the charms of language, and the beauties of composition: but none of these is to be found in this performance. The author is virulent as that aged infidel, but he resembles him in nothing else. From beginning to end he is so "hot and heavy," that we have been continually reminded of a certain adage, in which a tailor's GOOSE makes a conspicuous figure. He appears to be merry while he writes: but we are confident he will be grave when he comes to settle with his bookseller; for, if there be fifty people in England who will read this work to the end, there is more patience in the country than we could have conceived.

We have not treated this writer with undue severity. When, instead of reasoning fairly and candidly, a Polemic endeavours to turn the most important principles of religion into ridicule, and

at

at the same time shrouds himself beneath a fictitious appellation, we feel it our duty to remember, that the same Sage who extols "a soft answer," has also recommended "a rod for a fool's back!"

Art. VII. A Dissertation on the best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of diffusing the Light of the Christian Religion throughout the Eastern World. By the Rev. Francis Wrangham, M. A. F. R. S. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 4to. pp. 46 Price 3s. Mawman. 1805.

Art. VIII. An Essay on the best Means of Civilizing, &c. to which the University of Glasgow adjudged Dr. Buchanan's Prize, By John Mitchell, A. M. Minister of the Gospel, Anderston. 4to. pp. 242. 15s. Cadell and Davies. 1805.

THE subjects of these publications are so interesting to humanity, to religion, and to the welfare of the British empire, that their respective merits, as compositions, are of com paratively small importance. The same topics, necessarily, occur in both; and the variety which they must be expected to afford, is rather that of form than of substance, and of style than of ideas. On this account, we should willingly have deferred our review of Mr. Cockburn's Dissertation, (vol. i. p. 668,) to have included the present pieces in the same article, had they come to hand in time: and for this reason alone, we have postponed till now, our remarks on Mr. Wrangham's performance, which reached us soon after the former was gone to press. Between his tract and Mr. Mitchell's volume, there is hardly a greater contrast in magnitude, than in manner. The first is an elegant composition, founded on considerable appropriate information, but defective in method; and, in a comprehensive view of the subject, the latter, so far as it relates to the civilization of India, is laboured, distinct, and minute. It enters into the inquiry more fully than any other treatise that we have seen. The au thor is, notwithstanding, unfortunately mistaken in some of his positions, which tend not only to weaken certain points of his argument, but to diminish the general interest which it might properly have claimed. The religious department of his work displays clear theological knowledge, and fervent evangelical zeal; but he is inferior to Mr. Wrangham in that kind of information, which peculiarly affects their common object. This part of his essay betrays, also, marks of haste; probably in consequence of the laborious attention which he had given to the former division of it, and of the time to which he was limited. That the same effect should likewise be apparent in Mr. W.'s dissertation, is not surprising; as he was a competitor for the poetical prize, on the same occasion. His exertions in both instances, although not fortunate, were highly respectable; and

We

we should regret an intimation which he has given, of declining future competition on the academical arena, if it did not suggest a hope that his sphere of literary usefulness may be rendered thereby the more extensive.

Of the justice of the general remarks which we have suggested, our readers will be enabled to judge, by the references which we shall have occasion of making to each of these publications, while we attempt a more distinct discussion of the momentous subjects of which they treat. On the preliminary question, whether civilization or conversion should be first promoted, Mr. Mitchell observes, that

'Some have contended that, to those who have made no progress in the arts and sciences, many of the allusions used in scripture must be unintelligible that their language, scanty in terms, and low in its range of ideas, must want expressions corresponding to the sublime and various truths of Christianity-and that a missionary, who has been educated in a refined state of society, will find it extremely difficult to bring down his thoughts and terms to the degraded level of their understanding and speech. pp. 185, 186.

The truth of these remarks is indisputable; but it does not follow, that, because a high state of civilization presents advantages for the introduction of Christianity, it may not be attended with disadvantages which over-balance them. The obstacles stated by our author, exist in a great degree among the poor in England; yet here, and every where, the success of the Gospel is, and always has been, greater among the lower and the middling classes of society, than among the rich, noble, and wise. On the same topic Mr. Wrangham observes,

That the Gospel was the last of a series of dispensations, each adapted to the increased civilization of its respective period; and was itself revealed amidst the high lustre of the Augustan age, when Rome had comprehended within the pale of her dominion the whole of the polished world and that, even subsequently to its first disclosure, various measures of instruction were studiously accommodated to the varying degrees of ignorance, which prevailed amongst the objects of its author's divine mission. But these are investigations, more strictly applicable to the sluggards of Greenland, or to the sensualists of the South Sea, than to the partially-refined subjects of our Indian empire. To the latter, if we impart the great and uncontroverted doctrines of our faith, in luminous ar rangement and perspicuous language, the communication will assist our temporal efforts in diffusing amongst them the blessings of science and civilization; while these, in return, will prepare their minds for the reception of the deeper and more mysterious truths of Christianity.' pp. 6, 7.

On the latter part of this paragraph, the author grounds the division of his subject; but we confess, that his manner of dis. cussing it, has not enabled us satisfactorily to discriminate be

tween

66

tween "the more mysterious truths of Christianity," and its great and uncontroverted doctrines." We wave, however, the investigation of this difficulty, that we may attend to the leading subjects, in the order in which they stand proposed, and in which they are treated by Mr. Mitchell. He expresses a doubt, we think with reason, of the extraordinary refinement which some writers have ascribed to Ancient India, (p. 23.): yet, with them, he regards "the light of science as all along shining from east to west," (p. 2.) We apprehend that it pursued, not "the path of the sun," but the track of population; and, therefore, that it was diffused both eastward and westward, from the plains of Shinar. We think, also, that the following extract is not a fair statement of the progress of our countrymen in India.

، Their first object was traffic, not conquest : but circumstances, in the natural course of things, soon arose to embroil them with the natives; and the successful issue of these contests opened their minds to new views of aggrandisement.' p. 5.

Their only object was traffic. The overweening and restless ambition of the French East India company, seconded by their government, compelled the English company to interfere in contentions which had been excited by French intrigue. The latter nation pursued the same conduct then in India, which it is now exhibiting in Europe; and, for a time, with similar success. Selfpreservation constrained us, in both instances, to counteract its measures. This was ultimately accomplished in INDIA, and will be, we hope, in EUROPE.

Mr. M. thus describes the extent of our possessions in Hin

dostan.

'It contains a surface of vast extent; stretching, according to the latest accounts, with the addition of our recent conquests, from Delhi to Cuttach, a thousand miles south; westward, as far as Agra; and, upon the east, to Silhet, only twelve days journey from the borders of Yunan in China. Augmenting still, in the career of victory; embracing, in alliance or subjection, the greater part of the peninsula.' p. 35.

Here are some unaccountable errors. Agra is about one hundred, Cuttach nine hundred miles, south-eastward of Deihi; Bombay, nearly the same distance south-westward; and the peninsula, which stretches to an equal extent, southward of Bombay and Cuttach, may now be regarded as comprising the larger part of our Indian territory.

While in these, and in some other instances, we object to Mr. M.'s introductory account of the present state of India, we concur in the inferences which he deduces from it, that the Hindoos might rise, under a wise administration, to a higher state of improvement-that our present empire in India stands on a

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