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remark which every reader, who knows any thing of the time, must allow to be true; and may be fully admitted by those who deprecate most decidedly both the principles and conduct of Atterbury.

After this exhibition, our readers would not thank us for disturbing the grammatical cavils of the blunderer. Some are founded in the grossest ignorance; but even had he succeeded in pointing out a flaw, we envy little the creature who could read this great, laborious, and most delightful work, with a view to pick out the faults without which no composition would be human. Such there may be :

Verum opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum.

With our youthful predilections for the style of architecture in which Trinity College is built, we cannot sympathize with the Bishop's commendations of Bentley's handsome and expensive, but Corinthian stalls and organ gallery of the gothic chapel of Trinity; there may be other points, too, which the Bishop himself might, in a future edition, think fit to revise; but the work is a valuable storehouse of literary, political, and academical information; a monument which will remain eternal as the genius of him to whose commemoration it is worthily consecrated.

ART. II.—The Insecurity of Salvation in the Church of Rome. A Sermon, preached in St. Martin's Church, Leicester, before the Venerable the Archdeacon and Clergy, on Tuesday, May 18, 1830. By the Rev. W. L. FANCOURT, D.D. Vicar of St. Mary's and AU Saints, Leicester. Leicester: T. Combe and Son. London: Rivingtons. 1830. Pp. 58. Price 2s. 6d.

THE situation in which we place Dr. Fancourt's Sermon, as an article for review, will manifest the place which it justly occupies in our estimation, for it is very rarely that we feel ourselves called upon to assign any thing more than a notice to the occasional discourses which are submitted to our perusal. But the excellent Vicar of St. Mary's challenges our especial regard, whether we weigh the admirable matter of his eloquent sermon, or consider its suitableness to the times in which we live. No longer protected by the law from the machinations of her inveterate foes, who are admitted to the privilege of framing statutory regulations for our spiritual Zion and her disciples, whom they execrate as damnable heretics, and whom to pillage, to exterminate, and to murder, they would hold to be doing God service, the Church of England needs such honest and intrepid supporters as Dr. Fancourt, to blow the trumpet of alarm, and to rouse men from their bed of sleep and indifference. The Papist has, indeed, made a fearful inroad upon our establishment; and, no longer satisfied

with toleration, "Etiam in Senatum venit; fit publici consilii particeps; notat, et designat oculis ad cædem unumquemque nostrum.”* We would not speak with unnecessary harshness of him, who has thrown down the walls, by which our Church has been so long protected; "Sed ex plurimis malis, quæ ab illo reipublica sunt inusta, hoc tamen boni est, quod didicit jam populus,-quantum cuique crederet, quibus se committeret, a quibus caveret." And, therefore, it is that we hail the appearance of such Protestant champions as Dr. Fancourt with peculiar satisfaction, at the present alarming crisis, and thank him cordially for the orthodox sermon, which we thus introduce to the favourable regard of our readers.

The preacher takes for his text, Psalm cxxxvii. 5, 6; and, from the example of the captive Israelites, inculcates upon his hearers the necessity of attachment to the service of God. After a suitable exordium, he adduces a variety of motives for our adherence to a Church, "that alone deserves the name of Apostolic."

These motives divide themselves into several branches. The rise and progress of our Church under its reformed state; the insidious machinations of its enemies; the bounden duty of its ministers under existing circumstances; the antiquity of its origin; the purity of its creed and ritual, and the consequent safety of salvation in its communion, compared with that of the Church of Rome. These are the several topics, intermixed with historical events, illustrative of the subject, which, with all deference, I offer to your serious consideration.Pp. 3, 4.

Having sketched the rise and progress of our Church through various vicissitudes of fortune, and multifold opposition, in its separation from that of Rome, and detailed the miserable schisms which were inflicted upon her at her very birth, by the jealousy, the pride, and the fanaticism of those Protestants, who fled to Frankfort during the reign of Mary, of bloody memory, Dr. Fancourt adds the remark

That in all the shifting scenes of politics, from the day that our Church separated from that of Rome; that in all the troubles which, from the reign of Elizabeth to the present period, have convulsed this Protestant country; one and the same evil spirit rode in the whirlwind and guided the storm. The crafty Jesuit, Tavroins áñáτns μiμvýokwv,-well versed in human nature, its foibles, its vanities, and its interests, was ever active in political commotions; an agent, indeed, invisible, but always sensibly present. With the clue of history in our hand, we trace the wily serpent in all his windings of intrigue, under all his Protean forms, and well-chosen masks of character; at one time wrapt in the sombre cloak of a stern republican, at another gliding under the protection of despotic power, and now assuming, like an angel of light, all the amiable and insinuating qualities of gentleness and urbanity, liberality and conciliation. The objects of all the changes and movements of this grand agent of Rome has been, and is, invariably one and the same-THE DOWNFALL OF OUR PROTESTANT CHURCH. With whatever fair speech, with whatever plausible words, it may suit his purpose to soothe the ear of mawkish liberality, and beguile the unwary

*Cicero in Catilin. 1.

+ Cicero, Philip. 2. § 46.

and unstable, war is in his heart against every sound Churchman and uncompromising Protestant, whom he designates as "obstinate heretics."

Deprecating the "perilous amnesty" into which Protestants have insensibly fallen, and reprobating the "dangerous slumber" which has stolen upon our Church, our preacher thus calls upon us to awake, in strains of eloquent and powerful oratory :

The enemy is within the gates of the citadel; "the Philistines are upon thee, Samson." If thy strength be departed from thee, they will put out thine eyes, bind thee with fetters of brass, and make thee grind in the prison-house. God, in order to try and prove what was in the hearts of his ancient people, permitted the Canaanite to remain amongst them. Thus, as a test of our obedience, and "love of truth," has he left the Papists amongst us, as pricks in our eyes, and thorns in our sides, to vex us in the land wherein we dwell. Oft, in happier days, has our Church, by the word of God and the force of truth, driven from the field the Papal Antichrist. But, to use a figure, Antæus-like, he rises from the ground of his past defeats, refreshed and cherished by the powers of his mother earth, and the god of this world. Collecting all his might, he now dilated stands, with his stature aspiring to the sky, anticipating fresh conquests over a foe, weak, wavering, and divided. It is no longer safe for our own interests, nor faithful to the sacred trust committed to our charge, to rest upon our arms in supposed security. We must change the peaceful toga of our sacred office for the martial sagum of polemic theology..... The venerable Clergy of our Establishment, like their ancestors of old, must be found in the first lines of the hottest battle, contending for that pure and reformed religion, which has been for ages the glory of England, the pride of our Church, and a blessing to the whole Christian world.-Pp. 8-10.

Whether our impassioned orator consider the various devices of our inveterate foe to overturn the Protestant Church, her impudent "fictions," her childish "fables," her "lying wonders;" the motly crew of "mercenaries marching in the train of her political camp;" "the demagogues of turbulence, the demons of falsehood, the fiends of delusion," who distort the facts of history, and libel the Reformation, and calumniate our Establishment "by idle stories, raked up from the sink of old Romish calumnies;" or, whether he dwell upon the sanguinary edicts by which Mary endeavoured to extirpate "the Protestant faith, by the excision of the Protestant name;" or, whether he paint the character of the present era, in which "the votaries of Rome have greatly increased," " to the astonishment and deep concern of every true Protestant:" his language is energetic, his statements are impressive, and his arguments convincing.

Having said that he entertains a persuasion that "God is sending our people a strong delusion to believe a lie," and that "Satan is going forth to deceive the nations," the Vicar of St. Mary's points his finger at the "irreligious indifference, and infidel principles," which have so long been the bane of the Christian world, and deplores the credulity, the superstition, and the fanaticism, which the crafty Romanist too successfully bends to the interests of his proselyting communion. In their plan of operations against the Protestant Church, the wily members of the Church of Rome employ different kinds of

by men of eminent talents, have been dragged into obscurity by the weight of the name to which they were attached. The genius of Bentley, however, triumphed over this disadvantage; his "Remarks on Freethinking," of "Phileleutherus Lipsiensis," are known to all our readers, and admired as extensively as they are known. He exposed their fallacy; and while he vindicated with rude but effective energy a genuine freedom of thought, he showed that this freedom only led to the establishment of Christianity on the surest evidence; while the shallowness, the bad faith, the defective learning, and the false positions of his antagonist were displayed in a strain of the keenest and most mortifying ridicule. For this work Bentley received the thanks of the bench of Bishops. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to say that this valuable treatise is incomplete, and that what we possess was published at different periods, although in the same year. A grace passed in the Senate of Cambridge, desiring Bentley to finish the work; and he was specially requested by the Princess of Wales to execute this desire. He had actually begun to print another part of the "Remarks," when the discouragement given by government and the University to his claim of fees for creating Doctors in Divinity, caused him to relinquish his task in disgust in the middle of a page. Enough, however, had been done for Collins.

The specimens of sacred criticism which Bentley had introduced in his "Remarks," induced Dr. Hare, in his " Clergyman's Thanks to Phileleutherus," to suggest this field to his friend's occupation. About three years afterwards, Wetstein, when in England, offered the Doctor the use of all his collations. Bentley immediately decided on undertaking the work, and propounded immediately his intentions on the subject to Archbishop Wake. His scheme, from which he promised himself a degree of accuracy that should not differ " twenty words or even particles" from " the best exemplars at the time of the Council of Nice," was undoubtedly calculated to produce a text eminently correct. He intended to collate the oldest MSS. of the New Testament, and "of the Latin too of St. Jerome, of which there are several in England, a full thousand years old." St. Jerome declares that his version was made "ad Græcam veritatem, ad exemplaria Græca, sed vetera. Bentley had partially examined very ancient copies of this version, and collated them with the Alexandrian MS.; and he had found in the two a wonderful coincidence, not only in the words, but even in the order of them. The rest we give in his own words: :

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To conclude,-in a word, I find that by taking 2000 errors out of the Pope's Vulgate, and as many out of the Protestant Pope Stephens', I can set out an edition of each in columns, without using any book under 900 years old, that shall so exactly agree, word for word, and, what at first amazed me, order for

order, that no two tallies, nor two indentures can agree better. I affirm that these so placed will prove each other to a demonstration: for I alter not a letter of my own head without the authority of these old witnesses.-P. 313.

The latter assertion was intended to obviate an apprehension very generally entertained, and too sufficiently grounded, that the New Testament would be sacrificed to the gratification of the great editor's "slashing" propensities. Indeed, in the very section of Phileleutherus's letter which had suggested to Dr. Hare the peculiar fitness of Bentley for theological criticism, there are some conjectures which, however happy, are certainly bold, considering the field on which they are exercised. Had Bentley indulged his genius on this occasion, perfect as was his adaptation for the work, and brilliant as was the character of his conjectures, every sober Christian would have deprecated intrusting the title-deeds of his heavenly inheritance to one who was thus disqualified. But when we consider the pledge which is here exhibited, it is impossible not to regret that a scheme of such transcendant utility should have been abandoned for objects every way inferior, and some derogatory both to the literary and moral reputation of the projector. That the work would have been conducted with a stoical indifference to conjecture, we may conclude from Bentley's reply to a well intended writer, who solicited him not to omit the disputed verse, 1 John v. 7. He says,

Now in this work I indulge nothing to any conjecture, not even in a letter, but proceed solely upon authority of copies and Fathers of that age. And what will be the event about the said verse of John, I myself know not yet; having not used all the old copies that I have information of.

But by this you see, that in my proposed work, the fate of that verse will be a mere question of fact. You endeavour to prove (and that's all you aspire to) that it may have been writ by the Apostle, being consonant to his other doctrine. This I concede to you: and if the fourth century knew that text, let it come in, in God's name: but if that age did not know it, then Arianism in its height was beat down, without the help of that verse: and let the fact prove as it will, the doctrine is unshaken.-P. 349.

Finding the public mind interested in the question, Bentley chose the litigated verse for the subject of his prælection, or probationary lecture, previous to his admission to the Regius Professorship of Divinity in 1717. Of this Bishop Monk says,

The composition excited great sensation at the time and long afterwards: it was preserved in manuscript, and perused by some scholars little more than forty years ago. I hope and believe that it is still in existence, and may ere long be brought to light: but all my endeavours to trace it have hitherto been ineffectual. It has, however, been in my power to collect such testimony respecting its contents, as must put an end to all the doubts which have been started relative to Bentley's judgment upon the controverted text.-P. 348.

The substance of this testimony is that Bentley rejected the text. The controversy has been enlarged since, but generally with the same result. We may suggest, however, that we ought to await the collation of many more MSS. before pronouncing a decided opinion.

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