spirit and denied in practice by the different chiefs of the Protestant communions; and every man was to be branded as an heretic, treated as an outcast, or exterminated as a criminal, if he dared to venture beyond the narrow pale of their creeds and articles. Hence the TRUE PRINCIPLE Of Protestantism was stifled in its birth by the griping selfishness and narrow-minded bigotry of Protestant churches, and that liberty with which, in matters of religious opinion, Christ has made us free, was exchanged for a state of spiritual thraldom, which, in some instances, has hardly been paralleled even in the annals of the Romish church.

The true Christian liberty, which ought to constitute the boast and the delight of Protestants, has been bartered for a variety of contradictory creeds and articles, under the weight of which, the right of private judgment has been oppressed, and all freedom of opinion has been destroyed. An exhausted receiver is not more unfavourable to animal life than the creeds and articles of modern intolerance are to that freedom of religious investigation, without which, truth cannot be separated from falsehood, and the worship of the great Creator established on the broad basis of reason and of charity.

Neither Christ nor his apostles, nor their immediate successors, cramped the liberty of the mind on theological subjects within the formularies of modern orthodoxy. Those formularies have been subsequent contrivances for the support of private interest at the expence of universal truth. What is emphatically called The Lord's Prayer,' is an everlasting_testimony how little Christ wished the adoration of the Eternal to be circumscribed by the narrow terms of communion which are prescribed by the ignorance or the intolerance not only of Papists but of a great majority of Protestants. In the present state of the public mind, and amidst the general zeal for inquiry and diffusion of knowledge, the narrow, the selfish, and intolerant scheme of religious communion, which is in opposition to the dictates of reason, the sentiment of charity, and the authority of Christ, must finally make way for one, more liberal in its principle, more benevolent in its spirit, and more comprehensive in its form.

It gave us great pleasure to find a gentleman of Mr. Butler's learning and talents supporting the noble cause of Christian liberty under some of its circumstances and modifications. We were particularly glad to find, that this libera and enlightened sermon, in which there is none of the fashionable cant of the times, was preached before the

University of Cambridge, at the installation of the nephew to the king, Cambridge was, at the beginning of the last century, famed for the liberality, of its politicians and divines, and we sincerely hope, that the great body of learned men who are collected in that venerable seminary, will henceforth exert themselves with a becoming zeal to promote the cause of civil and religious liberty, and particu larly to perfect that good work of the Reformation which our forefathers left incomplete.

Mr. Butler explains the advantages of Christian liberty, and cites the example of St. Paul, who so vigorously defended his right as a Christian not to be bound by the nar row restrictions of the Jewish ritual, and as a Roman citizen appealed against the violation of his privileges by an incompetent tribunal. The preacher vindicates the Christian scheme from the irrational restraints and the absurd austerities which some would willingly impose on the liberty of its votaries, whilst they throw a veil of dejection over their spirits, marr their cheerfulness, and make the religion of heaven subservient to the diminution of human bliss.

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Mr. Butler rightly argues, that in explaining the Christian doctrine, we are not to regard particular detached texts, when they are in opposition to the general spirit and tendency of the whole scheme. It is the duty of an enlightened divine not to draw his inferences from partial considerations, from one or two insulated sentences or phrases, or from that confined view of the subject, which, while it encourages ignorance, nurtures bigotry, and not only multiplies the number but infuriates the animosity of sects. A Christian is not to regard any conclusion, to which some particular, obscure, or doubtful passages, might lead him, which are in opposition to the end of the commandment. This end is proved, not only by parti cular inculcations, but by the general drift of scriptural reasoning, enforced by the example of Christ, to be that charity which is the emanation of a sincere and upright heart.

Before we conclude, we will give one or two extracts from this sermon, as specimens of the sentiments and the composition. Dr. Butler remarks the traits of resemblance in the character of Socrates and that of Christ.

Increasing his usefuluess without diminishing his dignity, SOCRATES associated with the lost sheep of the gentile flock; even with courtezans, libertines, and sophists, and by expedients the most gentle he endeavoured to rectify their errors and corCRIT. REV. Vol. 1, January, 1812. F

rect their irregularities; did not our Master, for the same bene volent purpose, mingle in familiar converse with publicans and sinners? SOCRATES, on the most serious topics, drew his images from surrounding scenery and the objects of commou life; have not the most judicious and learned expositors observed the same beauties in the discourses of Christ? SOCRATES condemned the mischievous subtleties of those declaimers who displayed their ingenuity and fondness for paradox, in separating the useful from the honourable; did not our Lord in the same manner combat the doctrinal refinements of those teachers, who not only tore asunder what God had joined together in the religion of Moses, but set the ritual above the weightier matters of the law, and made of little or no effect some express prohibitions in the Decalogue, especially those which are pointed against perjury and adultery? SOCRATES, as CICERO justly remarks, brought down philosophy from the skies to the bosoms and business of men in social life; did not our Lord, in a yet nobler strain of simplicity and sublimity, inculcate the first and second great commandments, and when revealing or enforcing the will of his Father, did he not uniformly appeal to those clear and salutary apprehensions of right and wrong which the hand of God has deeply engraven upon the tablet of the human heart?"

Mr. Butler contrasts the natural influence of the genuine religion of Jesus, as it is accommodated to the nature of man and the circumstances in which he is placed, with that spurious sort which is vended by fanatics in its stead, and which is in unison neither with the unvitiated sentiments and natural sympathies of mankind, nor with those social relations, in which humanity is placed.

'Let us suppose a sensible Heathen were told, that the first man having transgressed a positive command of God, was sub jected thereby to a eurse inflicting death and multiplied sorrows on himself and his posterity. Let him their be told, that by the Christian dispensation this curse was removed in all its fatal consequences, and happiness and immortality restored to man. Would he not immediately perceive and acknowledge the benevolence of this dispensation? Let him, while this natural im pression is fresh and vivid, be farther made acquainted with the precepts of that dispensation. Would he not say, In all that I learn and hear on this subject, I find new confirmations of the benevolence of God. The new law which he has given, contains nothing which does not harmonize with the great act of mercy and goodness from which it originated; nothing that does not suppress terror and encourage confidence, that does not awaken love and soften apprehension, that does not enkindle gratitude and enliven hope. I am indebted, he might say, to God, for life and being, in the midst of a world stored with every

thing adapted to the wants and happiness of my nature, and for a rule of life tending as well to secure that happiness as to exalt my gratification in the enjoyment of all the temporal blessings around me. But what would he say then, if after thus far soothing his benevolence, and thus far kindling his piety, we were also to tell him, that his rational enjoyment of temporal blessings will ruin his eternal happiness? That they are scattered indeed around him with a bounteous hand, but that he must touch not, taste not, handle not. That he may see the birds exulting in their liberty, the beasts bounding over the plains, the fish sporting in the waters, the whole face of nature smiling in grateful testimony of its Creator's love; but that he' alone must grieve for his unworthiness in voluntary and myste rious gloom, that the senses, with which his Creator has framed him, are but the instruments of his ruin in the hand of the tempter, and that his desires, which are the natural and only spurs to action, are to be subdued into supine indifference and Istless insensibility. Tell hin farther, that when he has done and willed to do all that man is capable of doing; when, by a life of mortification and melancholy and entire abstraction from all worldly interest, he has wrought himself into habitual and invincible apathy; when he has accustomed himself to look with sullen and sour disgust upon the pleasures, and with care. lessness, or, it may be, with scorn, upon the employments, and, as I should call them, the duties of social life, his labour, even in the Lord, may yet have been in vain; that as to him, Christ may in vain have shed his blood upon the cross, and that the God, whose mercy is over ALL his works, may have secretly and irrevocably doomed him, even before his birth, to everlasting perdition, from which no contemplations, however serious, upon the attributes and works of the Deity, no belief, however sincere, in his revealed word, no thanksgivings for mercies already received, no prayers for protection and succour, no remorse for sins past, no resolutions or efforts for amendment in time to come CAN rescue, I had almost said the hopeless, helpless, guiltless victim:--and that nothing but certain tumultuous, irresistible, inexplicable intimations, can afford him any safe and well grounded assurance of pardon or reward.

P. 21, Dr. Butler, when shewing the difference between the Mosaic and the Christian codes, truly remarks, that almost every part of the Mosaic code attests the locality of the dispensation.' The Jewish institution, as opposed to the Christian, was not only limited as to place but circumscribed as to time; for the load of ceremonies with which it was oppressed, was an insuperable barrier to its accom modation to the progress of the human mind. For that progress, as it is seen operative in religious concerns, is from external rites to spiritual precepts, and from ceremo

52 Card's Beauford; or, a Picture of High Life.

nial observances to moral obligations, We behold this progress in the succession of the Christian to the Jewish dispensation. The introduction of the one to the other was effected by the agency of the prophets, whose teaching, which abounded more in injunctions to moral obedience than to ritual conformity, was the connecting link between the two. All the best moral notions which the prophets had inculcated, were concentrated in the doctrine of Christ, enforced with superior sanctions and illustrated by a perfect example. The prophets showed but little respect to ceremonial observances, and the founder of Christianity, who regarded mercy more than sacrifice, rested the final acceptance of man at the judgment seat of his Maker," on acts of unaffected beneficence in opposition to an obedience to the showy formalities of the Mosaic code. No part of the ritual machinery of the Mosaic code is retained in the Christian. And whatever Christianity may be, or may be thought to be, it certainly is not a religion of hypocritical mummery or wearisome ceremonies. This is one of its distinguishing excellencies. Christianity is thus far framed for universal diffusion and for perpetual duration. For whilst forms and ceremonies are in their own nature fugitive and evanescent, the moral institutes of the gospel, particularly as they are crowned by the sanction of a future life and a judgment to come, are suited to the wants of allmankind and to the particular circumstances of instability and imperfection, which must for ever be attached to humanity in this probationary scene.

The notes in this sermon bear testimony to Mr. Butler's variety of reading. We were particularly pleased with some of the extracts from Erasmus, which possess that cogency which arises from an appropriate adaptation to times and circumstances.

ART. V.-Beauford; or, a Picture of High Life. By Henry Card, M. A. of Pembroke College, Oxford, 2 Vols. London, Rivington, 1811, price 15s.

THESE volumes are addressed to David Erskine, Esq. In this address, Mr. Card alludes to a conversation with Mr. Erskine, in which, it seems, both gentlemen regretted, that there had not been some title fixed upon by which books of moral fiction might be distinguished, instead of being confounded with the trash and nonsense of which