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occasionally rebuked the vices of the higher classes of society. He once addressed a horde of sinners in humble life, in the following strong emphatic remonstrance :"Calculate the folly, the gross stupidity, the brutal senselessness, nay, the utter insanity and madness, of those who barter away their precious immortal souls, capable of such happiness, liable to such misery; who barter them away for the petty, wretched, low, grovelling plea

you,

sures of this world. Pleasures indeed will they call them? Pleasures of the ale-house, of the skittle-yard, of the brothel? I ask you, Bennetts, and you, Warren, and the rest of you, whose faces I know, but not your names, I ask all, are these the things, smoking, and drinking, and gambling, and singing lewd songs, and following loose women, are these the things which make your happiness? Are these the things, for which you are content to give up heaven, and to be cast into hell? For of these things hell is the sure consequence. Answer me, you who can; you who understand me. Have you made up your minds to this?" p. 303.

We admire the faithfulness of his remonstrances; but might not all this also have been virtually addressed to the slaves of elegant dissipation; shunning though they did the ale-house, and the skittleyard, but making themselves ample amends in the luxuries of the table, the deliriums of public amusements, and perhaps some of them in the stimulating powers of gaming; in short, by living a worldly life, either as acknowledged men of pleasure; or as intent on money and fame; and therefore finding no leisure for sensuality, and the grossness of vice? We may ask also, in this place, whether such victims, either of decorous or indecorous sin, had been "prepared" by their attendance, at Dr. Warton's church, for the reception of Christianity! If they were Christians already, then they did not "barter away their souls for the petty, wretched, low, grovelling pleasures of this world; " for they retained their own class of delights, while they calculated upon reversionary happiness in heaven. Into what perplexities will a divine be impelled, who does not see, that no greater peril to men's

souls lurks in the vicious haunts of low life, than among the embellished wickednesses of a higher grade; and that the ale-house and the skittle-ground are stations quite as secure as the race-course, the theatre, the masquerade, or the saloons of a gaming house!

We bring together, on this occasion, the various divisions of society, because many persons appear to confine the practice, and the effects, of evil to the poorer classes; as though their sordid and open transgressions formed exclusively the mass of national guilt, and bore no analogy to the sins of their voted one of his chapters to the superiors. If Dr. Warton had deprofligate manners of the domestics in his parish, he might doubtless have constructed a death-bed scene, which would have developed the descent of iniquity from the drawingroom to the servants' hall, and the regular transfer of the master's immoralities to his attendants. But this is a subject as extensive as distressing; and we must for the present leave the heads of families to pursue the reflection which it too painfully awakens.

As a favourable specimen of Dr. Warton's pastoral_remonstrances, we may select the following

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better than those who are bad. I proceeded, it is of no use to you to be You must be careful to perform all the duties which belong to your own station, whatever may be done by others; and it is by those duties, that your great Judge will try you. Suppose therefore he should question you, whether you have been re

gular in your attendance at his holy church; would you excuse yourself by saying that Mr. Sambrook never went there, and that he had been guilty of many wicked things from which you were perfectly clear? If you did, would not the Judge stop you, and say, I do not ask you what Mr. Sambrook did, or what

Mr. Sambrook was, or whether you are better than him; but I ask you this simple question, whether you have been regular at my church. Answer to that, and that alone. What would you do?" pp. 317, 318.

This is good, but only to a certain extent. No mention is made of faith and repentance; and there creeps in the writer's too frequent reference to himself and the mere opus operatum of attending church. I ask you this simple question, whether you have been regular at my church, Answer to that, and that alone."

The whole performance is indeed fertile in inconsistency. It is a garden, where the flowers grow among weeds; and these latter are, in many of the parterres, so exuberant, that in plucking a rose we at the same time are sure to grasp a nettle. Such a remark may appear ungracious and austere but Dr. Warton's book is only one among many of those works which merit precisely the same character; and the founders of village and markettown libraries can best tell the difficulties they meet with, when selecting instruction for our reading population. They open many a volume, read with pleasure a few pages-sometimes only a few pa ragraphs-and then come to a dead stop. The superstructure betrays the unsoundness of the foundation. After having so freely animadverted upon the performance before us, it is but reasonable that we should answer the just demand, How should Dr. Warton's errors have been corrected? We are fully aware, as has been often said, that a man who can demolish a palace might not be able to erect a hovel. In the present case, however, the building which, it is presumed, we have sapped, has little

pretension to the dignity of a royal residence. It is an edifice of a secondary order; a kind of subur ban villa, decorated with pilasters, cornices, and busts, imperfectly copied from the prototypes in the Vatican. We aspire to raise no palace in its place, nothing like Windsor or Blenheim; but profess a style of architecture merely plain and substantial, and adapted to finish a residence tolerably fit for the occupation of a large establishment.

In the first place, with regard to Dr. Warton's self-complacency and reliance upon his own powers of argumentation, we think that no minister of religion, acquainted with the secrets of his own bosom, and therefore familiar with the devices and desires of a human heart-for he joins in the confession with his fellow-sinners in the congregation -will ever be ensnared into feelings, and still less into expressions, of self-complacency; unless under such circumstances of temptation as unfit him, during their influence, for the due discharge of his office. On the contrary, the more usual emotions of a faithful instructor, are those of self-dissatisfaction, and of inward lamentation over the im perfections of his ministry. He ha bitually asks, Who is sufficient for these things? He urges the question with an application to his own performances, and with a solemnity, and sense of humiliation, only to be known by persons of his own spirit. His estimate of the pastoral character is so high, that he seems to himself rather to be grovelling in the dust, than to be soaring towards heaven. There is no assumption of superiority; as though he were exempt from any single seduction to evil, common to the rest of mankind. He is a physician sick, by nature, of precisely the same diseases he labours to heal in others. The progress of his own cure has, probably, been slow and uncertain. He may have had alarming relapses. He is compelled to adopt the same regimen with the

meanest of his patients; to take perseveringly the remedies he prescribes for them; and, altogether, never expects perfect sanity, till the day when he shall have bidden a final farewell to a distempered and dying world. Can he then indulge in feelings of self-complacency?

In respect to a reliance on his powers of argumentation,—he who teaches others, will declaim to no effect, unless he remembers that it is one of the melancholy characteristics of our fallen nature, to be proof against all reasoning, unless blessed by the influences of the Holy Ghost. He will also be conscious of the difficulty of arguing with men, between whom and himself exists no community of principle, nor scarcely of speculative opinion. He is in the situation of a scholar, who harangues his pupils on the beauties of the classics before they have begun the grammar. We should loudly deride the man who should make so fruitless an experiment, and especially if he were so extravagant as to assume that his declamation had been understood. The inference is obvious; and, did subjects of eternal moment justify the excitement of mirth, we might laugh at that theological logician who should fondly calculate upon the efficiency of his art on an assembly of practical atheists.

But why do we complain of Dr. Warton's credulity; and what shall we offer as a substitute? A resolution of this inquiry is closely connected with what has been already advanced. Credulity, in matters of religion for we are fully aware of the distinction between the genuine charity of the Gospel, even when mingled with much human weak ness, and its counterfeits-is the offspring of self-ignorance, and of want of due observation of the surrounding world. The divine most intimately acquainted with the interior of his own mind, and who has also narrowly watched the manners of -mankind, with the Scriptures in his CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 312.

hand, comparing the inspired description of his fellows with what he actually sees and hears among them not as a spy lurking in an ambush, and treacherously peering into human actions, but as surveying what Dr. Young calls earth's melancholy mass, will not easily be deluded by novices and sudden conversions. He will pause to see, whether the blossom will be followed by fruit; and, after this, whether the fruit will reach maturity. Therefore patience and caution will be the substitute for credulity. How many persons of promising character have disappointed the hopes of their pastors! The early progress of a convert awakens, in considerate minds, alternate emotions of pleasure and anxiety. The parable of the Sower is exemplified, from day to day, in the secession of numbers, who began what appeared to be a religious life; but, after a time, fall away.

"Demas hath forsaken me. having loved this present world." Yet, we might have supposed, that if any human instrument could have prevented such a dereliction, it would have appeared in the person of St. Paul. The Apostle designates this deserter with peculiar emphasis, as having abandoned him. He felt himself, as it were, personally wounded, and might seem to infer, that the guilt of Demas was enhanced by the circumstance of his having wandered back to the world with so bright an example of constancy before his eyes. In the present times we have no St. Paul under whose tutelage we can place a novice. But the "slumbering virgin," the mere doctrinalist, the relapse, and possibly the apostate, may be detected in every congregation of the militant church. Can a minister then be accused of untimely severity, if he refuses rashly to accredit the pretensions of such as have "heard the word with joy;" and are thence regarded, by a superficial and partial judge, as having made out a claim to the privileges of the new covenant?

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The mention of spiritual privileges naturally introduces another count in our indictment against the writer of Death-bed Scenes; namely, his temerity in administering the eucharist. The Gospel has been justly called "the religion of sinners." But the term must not be used indiscriminately. It is, properly, the religion of penitent sinners; because, to such alone is it really efficacious. By analogy, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is designed for communicants of the same class; and all others eat and drink to their own condemnation. Could Dr. Warton have ascertained the penitence of the parties upon whom he seemed almost to impose the communion, all would have been well; or, if he had cautiously admitted dubious characters on their own importunities, warning them distinctly of the perils they might incur, and disclaiming all responsibility on his own part, he might have anticipated what we should propose as a substitute for his actual practice. As it was, he did little better, on most occasions, than desecrate the symbols of grace into what became virtually the extreme unction of the Romanist.

Dr.

Warton had doubtless read many frightful accounts of the Antinomian heresy; had shuddered at certain views of the doctrine of imputed righteousness; and was a strenuous opponent of any position which appeared to favour justification without works. Yet we can assure the supporters of his sacramentarian system, that it is essentially Antinomian. Bad men cling to a deathbed sacrament, as to the last twig within reach, as they are struggling on the billows dividing time from eternity. None of our clerical readers, familiar with the dark sceneries of sickness and death, and who have also mourned over the deplorable ignorance, and mental blindness of many clamorous candidates for the sacrament in their last days, will deny this assertion. They are fully aware that numbers regard the physical

reception of the elements, as not so much the means of salvation, as salvation itself. They talk of it as of the great duty, indispensible and efficient; and disconnect it from the abandonment of a single sin, and from the exercise of a single virtue. We have, ourselves, heard such aspirants insist upon the absolute necessity of the eucharist, because Jesus Christ said, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." It was in vain to reply to such pleaders, that these words were delivered before the institution of the sacrament; and, as we remember, far more in vain to urge, that the Son of God also said, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish: he that believeth not, shall be damned:" since it had either been previously assumed, that repentance and faith were already in their possession; or, more frequently, the very terms seemed to startle them, as perfectly novel and strange. Persons thus taken by surprise at the mention of the very elements of Christianity, would, of consequence, affix no idea even to the name of that "holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." This seems incredible. But if such a practical denial of the Gospel be not one of the most fearful forms of Antinomianism, we have yet to learn whether the ordinances of the Christian church are capable of being perverted by the wickedness of its faithless members; and are at a loss to understand why our own articles and ritual denounce the wrath of God upon unworthy communicants.

As a further illustration of the pernicious errors and inconsistencies attached to the gregarious administration of the eucharist, we will relate a circumstance which came to our knowledge a few years since, through a channel of equal authenticity with the volume under examination.-A doctor of divinity, who held a living, whether in the north or the south of England we say not, adopted, point by point, the sacra

mentarian practice of Dr. Warton. On the death of his tithe agent, and while he was perplexed by the difficulty of supplying, what he considered to be an all but irreparable loss, he was one evening called to the sick bed of an infidel and libertine attorney, resident in the parish, and an active opponent of every scheme of good bearing the impress of Christianity. The rector found him apparently in great danger and pain; but left him, at the end of a long interview, in a state ostensibly approaching to remorse for his wicked life, and not indisposed to discuss, with his pastor, the evi dences of Revelation. The doctor returned home with feelings of opening satisfaction; and, in the course of the week, unveiled in various domestic circles throughout the parish, as well as at home, the prospects of his coming triumph. This was done with unusual self-complacency for, as he every where declared, the bird was well worth all his powder and shot. To the attorney, therefore, he repeated his visits daily for a fortnight; during which period, the patient seemed to make rapid progress towards conversion. At the termination of the second fortnight, the rector considered his transformation to be complete; and, as the invalid was yet confined to his chamber, his spiritual adviser recommended, or rather enjoined, an immediate reception of the sacrament. The sick man hinted at unfitness; but his pastor replied, "Away, my good sir, with all scruples: I have had every proof of your sincerity, which I could possibly wish or expect; and I have no doubt, but that on your recovery and you are now rapidly convalescent-you will be an example to the whole parish, in consistent piety and virtue, as well as a regular communicant, and constant attendant at church; and that your first business in your library will be, to weed out the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, and commit all such rubbish to the flames." Ac

cordingly, the sacrament was administered; and "a thousand tokens of devotion" were visible in the new communicant. Ten days afterwards, the attorney returned to his office; and wrote his first letter, in the form of an application to the rector, for the vacant situation of the late tithe-agent; and for which no one could deny his fitness, as he was an excellent man of business, and perfectly conversant with the localities of the parish. In fact, his pastor had said, three months before, that he was the very man for his purpose, except that no dependance could be placed upon his principles. The application was not only rejected, but rejected in terms evidently implying surprise; and when the circumstance was mentioned by the rector, the same day, to a large party of his friends after dinner, there was a simultaneous burst of astonishment at what was then termed the assurance of the man, who dared to propose himself as a confidential solicitor; when it was notorious, that six months had not elapsed, since he had swindled his own brother out of a legacy; though protected, by the letter of the law, from any subsequent prosecution. The doctor, at the head of the table, joined in the outcry of his friends; and, in the hilarity of the moment, proposed an ironical toast, intended to satirise the honest attorney.-But observe the sequel. The rector had formally pronounced the integrity of this very man, and almost compelled him to set his eucharistic seal to a covenant between himself and his Redeemer as a convert recently and triumphantly added to the church of Christ. Yet, this same authenticated believer was now discovered to be utterly unfit to be trusted with the management of his accreditor's affairs! The lawyer quickly marked the rector's anomalous conduct; and exercised but a small portion of the shrewdness he really possessed, when, in the course of an after-correspondence, he asked his

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