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text of Scripture is expressly forbidden. Both these violations have been coinmitted in support of the Unitarian notions, and have been repeatedly exposed and confuted. Even Hume has admitted that there can exist no contradiction, philosophically, to the doctrine of the Trinity. We are taught, too, that all Scripture was written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, because it should be deemed infallible.

REVIEW.-Divarication of the New Testament.

But the Unitarians say, that they will admit nothing which is not cognizable by their own human reason? Are the laws of Providence cognizable by any human reason whatever? Does not the very principle of a revealed religion imply matters to which human reason cannot reach? Is the character of revealed religion to be tried by that of natural religion?

In short, from this excellent confutation, which we warmly recommend to all Christians (properly so called), we hesitate not to affirm that the tenets of the Unitarians tend to alienate the people from belief in the sacred Scriptures (see p. 295), and that

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tician. We shall therefore extract his Vindication of the Trinity, because it will tend to give our readers a complete notion of the mode of argumentation proper to the Transcendental school.

"their principles only serve to shelter and cover Deists and others, who arraying themselves under the guise of Unitarianism, screen from public view and public odium the indecencies of a more odious infidelity. There is nothing, indeed, in the system to captivate the affections of the soul; all is cold and comfortless-composed of unsatisfactory quibbles, gross distortions, and crooked criticism, which, though the coin of an ingenious mint, is base and worthless; a system it is, that only flatters a false pride of sophism, at the expense of all that is pious, all that is good iu philosophy."— P. 293.

Divarication of the New Testament into Doctrine and History. By Thomas Wirgman, Esq. Author of Principles of Transcendental Philosophy, and the articles Kant, Logic, Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, and Philosophy, in the Encyclopædia Londinensis. Part I. The Four Gospels. 12mo, pp. 100.

THE Unitarian body has lately (to "been use a phrase of Shakspeare) punched full of deadly holes," by the

Trial of the Unitarians," and other works among them. This Cant with a C, certainly does not imply skill in logic or metaphysics, but Kant with a K, denotes the founder of a German school of abstruse philosophy, whose hierophant in this country is Mr. Wirginan, a very masterly and subtle dialec

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It is absolutely impossible for man to think of oneness-it is a complete nonentity, consisting neither of matter, form, nor connexion of these two elements. Hence, when the human mind cogitates, it must think of something. But a thing which is composed neither of matter nor form, is positively nothing. Consequently, the word thing always implies a compound of three elements in one-a triad of principles, or, in fact, a TRINITY IN UNITY. Secondly, if we think of a material object, it is quite evident that it must consist of matter, or parts, which fill up space, and occupy time, that is to say, the thing must be an object of experience, and can only be known by its addressing the senses; for instance, a house, a horse, a tree, and so on. The materials of which the thing consists, as the bricks which compose the house, are the matter; the arrangement of these parts of matter constitutes its shape, as round, square, or oval, and is the form of the house. But this form could not be given to nothing; hence the necessity of the matter; and neither of these can be annulled without totally annihilating the thing, with this inseparable condition-that these particular bricks constitute this identical house with this determinate form. So that these two elements necessarily imply connexion a third; and the three together, constitute the thing called a house. This reasoning applies to the whole of nature, and quite exhausts the entire mundane system, which is composed of au endless series of triads. Now, as matter is divisible ad infinitum, it must consist of an infinite number of parts; and no one part, strictly speaking, can exist by itself, otherwise the division would not be infinite the least number of parts that can be connected is two; but if these two parts were not connected, there would not be a thing. The elements here are two parts, and their union; making three necessary elements, none of which can be annulled. It is quite obvious, that every object of nature which fills up time and space, conforms to this law of a Trinity in Unity. Let us carry this parity of reasoning to mental things, which exist in time only. Thus all mathematical figures equally conform to this law: take a line for instance; it consists of parts in connexion, and is, in fact, a series of triads; for the smallest possible part of a mental line must consist of two mathemati

cal points and their union-a triangle must consist of three lines, united at three points, yet forming only one conception. A circle consists of a centre, periphery, and radius

1831.] REVIEW.-Bp. of Chester's Practical Exposition, &c.

three necessary elements, none of which can be annulled. This law holds with all mental operations, as substance and properties in connection constitute a thing; cause, effect, and the necessary dependence of the one on the other; for that is no cause which has not produced an effect, and there can be no effect without a cause: so that all mental things obey this law. We have only to ascend one step higher in the scale of reasoning, and carry this notion of a trinity in unity to the infinite, and the Christian doctrine will be fully displayed."

"Infiuite nothingness is a nonentity. Therefore, if the mind of man is to be occupied with a rational thought, it must think of an infinite something; but this must consist of some infinite parts, or it would be an infinite nothing. Now the least possible number of infinite parts that can be united is tico, but unless these two are connected by a third, they could not constitute an infinite something. Hence, even in the infinite, the same process of reasoning is required to constitute a thing, namely, three elements united in one, or a Trinity in Unity.”—pp. xxii.-xxv.

The plan of this work, from which the term "Divarication" is used, is to show, that

"by disencumbering the principles of the Christian religion from historical facts, their universal adoption is facilitated;"

For the author says, by way of axiom,

that

"Historical facts may be doubted, but that true religion being of a spiritual nature, must be independent of historical facts."p. xl.

Practical Exposition of the Gospels of St.
Matthew and St. Mark, in the form of
Lectures, intended to assist the practice of
Domestic Instruction and Devotion. By
John-Bird Sumner, D.D. Lord Bishop of
Chester. 8vo, pp. 622.

IF things are hard to be understood, illustrations are indispensable; and this is sufficient to show the utility of comments. Indeed, no man who has not an interest in concealinent of the real meaning, will object to them, unless it be some conscientious person who dreads the comment, lest it should be more regarded than the text. Human error may thus, he thinks, supersede Divine authority. This is however only a matter which may, but does not necessarily mislead; and it does not appear from Coke upon Littleton, and similar works, that the Law of the land has ever been seriously perverted; and what blunders would

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professional men make, without such aids?

the title; and it would be below its The purport of this work is given in merits to say that it is not as well executed as intended. We shall take our extract from a difficult text, that regarding submission to injury, and returning evil for good. It shows the imperious necessity of judicious com

ments.

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"Public justice, public duty, and in many cases, important private interests, must of course make exceptions to the latter of those rules. Christ himself appealed to the law against the injustice with which he was smitten. One of the officers which hand, saying, stood by, struck Jesus with the palm of the Answerest thou the High Priest so? Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but, if well, why smitest thou me (John inconsistent with his Christian patience to xviii. 22)?' And St. Paul thought it not ask, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned (Acts xxii. 25)?' So likewise with respect to alms giving, the same Apostle proves to us that this duty is intended to have limits, and to be practised with such discretion, as not to injure the morals of individuals, or the welfare of the community; when he lays should eat his own bread;' and that if down a general maxim, that every man any will not work, neither should he eat.""

Still it is certain, that impressions strong like these: resist not evil; let thy cloak be taken from thee: yield to those who compel you unjustly: give to him that asketh thee:-expressions like these would not be used, if the danger were not the other tient, when suffering wrongfully, too eager way, namely, that we should be too impato seek compensation, too tenacious in maintaining supposed rights, and too apt to look about for reasons why we should not give to him that asketh."

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REVIEW.-Godwin's Thoughts on Man.

his own thoughts; and the conduct he pursues has in general far less reference to his real situation, than to some imaginary one in which he conceives himself placed in consequence of which, while he appears to himself to be acting with the most perfect wisdom and consistency, he may frequently exhibit to others all the appearances of folly."

Thus Stuart, who here clearly illustrates the moral causes of most of those particularities of character which Theophrastus describes as obtaining in Greece in his day, and which mutatis mutandis may be substantially found in our own. The valuable part of this work is however the light which it throws upon Greek manners and customs, and modes of thinking. If the notes of Casaubon are much valued by us, who use his edition, those of the present translation are better suited to an English public.

The book is embellished with curious caricatures; and all the matter is novel and curious.

Thoughts on Man, his Nature, Productions, and Discoveries, interspersed with some particulars respecting the Author. William Godwin. 8vo, pp. 471.

us,

By

MR. GODWIN is unquestionably a man of genius, and as such, an idiosyncratic. In the works of such men, we expect both real light and mere phosphorescence, both reason and paradox. There are all the characteristics of these in the work before but the most sleepy reader cannot peruse it without desiring at least to keep awake; for he will be sure in the end to see far better into the nature of man, than he did before. Upon certain subtle metaphysical points, we do not how ever think that Mr. Godwin has been successful. These points are Liberty and Necessity, and the existence of Evil.

Mr. Godwin is a necessarian, because he says (p. 226), that as every event requires a cause, the human will is guided by motives, and therefore is not free. Now the question is not whether the acts are free, only whether the motives are so; but it is certain that one motive may be made to supersede another, as e. g. a man does not commit a robbery, because he is afraid of being hanged for it. Wherever there are passions, there must be impulses; wherever there is reason, there must be choice. It is utterly inconsistent with the existence of an animal

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like man, that there should not be both impulses and motives, and neither Liberty or Necessity, properly speaking, apply to the case. Suppose, as in that before us, a man inclined to commit a robbery, but not doing it from fear, it is plain that there exists a collision of motives; and that there must be a power of choosing between these motives is also plain, from one man committing theft, and another avoiding it. Admitting then, that there must be a motive, it is not a necessary one, because necessity admits of no choice whatever; if it did, it is no longer necessity, and the dispute, in our judgment is, as to man, a mere inapplicable logomachy. Besides, we doubt, with Dr. Wheeler,* whether a rational being can be otherwise than so constituted as to have a will to choose right or wrong; and if he does so by one motive superseding another, that is a question merely implying a mode of agency.

Another passage (by the way without acknowledgment from Voltaire) is

this:

"Either God, according to our ideas of benevolence, would remove evil out of the world, and cannot; or he can, and will not. If he has the will, and not the power, this argues weakness; if he has the power and not the will, this seems to be malevolence." -p. 417.

That God can, if he will, is a postulate not to be disputed; but arguments drawn from power, can never be conclusive, because there may be reasons why that power is not thought fit to be exercised. Matter, as matter, can have only communicated properties. According to Scripture, and analogous testimony, man had originally the utmost moral perfectibility of which his conformation was susceptible, was a guileless adult infant, and if there be particular conformations, the communicated properties must be adapted to them, a rule which nature seems to have observed in regard to all beings whatever. And can malevolence exist in God? Certainly not, because there is no such thing as evil; and the blunder of Voltaire originated in his ignorance that evil is merely a privative of good, and that privatives have only a nominal being. The inattention to a like distinction, that life may undergo different material exhibitions, but can

* Theologic. Lectures, i. 126.

1831.]

REVIEW.-Godwin's Thoughts on Man.

not be extinguished, and that death is only the privative, seems to have led Mr. Godwin into a manifest error in p. 419, viz that the immortality of the soul, and the doctrine of future retribution, is mere assumption.

To relieve these unpleasant differences of opinion, we extract the following philosophical and beautiful illustration of the effects of "Chivalry;" as the best known to us.

"Its principle was built upon a theory of the sexes giving to each a relative inportance, and assigning to both functions full of honour and grace. The Knights (and every gentleman during that period in due time became a Knight) were taught, as the main features of their vocation, the 'love of God and the ladies.' The ladies, in return, were regarded as the genuine censors of the deeds of Knighthood. From these principles arose a thousand lessons of humanity. The ladies regarded it as their glory to assist their champions to arm and to disarm, to perform for them even menial services, to attend them in sickness, and to dress their wounds. They bestowed on them their colours, and sent them forth to the field hallowed with their benedictions. The Knights, on the other hand, considered any slight towards the fair sex as an indelible stain to their order; they contemplated the graceful patronesses of their valour with a feeling that partook of religious homage and veneration, and esteemed it as perhaps the first duty of their profession, to relieve the wrongs and avenge the injuries of the less powerful sex.

"This simple outline, as to the relative position of the one sex and the other, gave a new face to the whole scheme and arrangements of civil society. It is like those admirable principles in the order of the material universe, or those grand discoveries brought to light from time to time by supe rior genius, so obvious and simple, that we wonder the most common understanding could have missed them, yet so pregnant with results, that they seem at once to put a new life, and inspire a new character into every part of a mighty and all-comprehen

sive mass.

"The passion between the sexes, in its grosser sense, is a momentary impulse inerely; and there was danger that, when the fit and violence of the passion was over, the whole would subside into inconstancy and a roving disposition, or at least into indifference and almost brutal neglect. But the institutions of chivalry immediately gave a new face to this. Either sex conceived a deep and permanent interest in the other. In the unsettled state of society, which characterized the period when these institutions arose, the defenceless were liable to assaults of multiplied kinds, and the fair perpetually

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stood in need of a protector and champion. The Knights, on the other hand, were taught to derive their fame and their honour from the suffrages of the ladies. Each sex stood in need of the other, and the basis of their union was mutual esteem.

"The effect of this was to give a tone of imagination to all their intercourse. A man was no longer merely a man, nor a woman deference. The woman regarded her promerely a woman. They were taught mutual tector as something illustrious and admirable; and the man considered the smiles and approbation of beauty as the adequate reward of his toils and his dangers. These modes of thinking introduced a nameless grace into all the commerce of society. It was the poetry of life. Hence originated the delightful narratives and fictions of romance; and human existence was no longer the bare naked train of vulgar incidents, which for so many ages of the world it had been accustomed to be. It was clothed in resplendent hues, and wore all the tints of the rainbow. Equality fled and was no more; and love, almighty, and perdurable Love, came to supply its place.

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It

By means of this state of things, the vulgar impulse of the sexes towards each other, which alone was known to the former ages of the world, was transformed into somewhat of a totally different nature. became a kind of worship. The fair sex looked upon their protectors, their fathers, their husbands, and the whole train of their chivalry, as something more than human. There was a grace in their motions, a gallantry in their bearing, and a generosity in their spirit of enterprise, that the softness of the female heart found irresistible. less, on the other hand, did the Knights regard the sex, to whose service and defence they were sworn as the objects of their perpetual deference. They approached them with a sort of gallant timidity, listened to their behests with submission, and thought the longest courtship and devotion nobly recompensed by the final acceptance of the fair.

Nor

"The romance and exaggeration characteristic of these modes of thinking, have gradually worn away in modern times; but much of what was most valuable in them has remained. Love has in later ages never been divested of the tenderness and consideration which were thus rendered some of its most estimable features. A certain desire in each party to exalt the other, and regard it as worthy of admiration, became inextricably interwoven with the simple passion. A sense of the honour that was borne by the one to the other, had the happiest effect in qualifying the familiarity and unreserve in the communion of feelings and sentiments, without which the attachment of the sexes cannot subsist. It is something like what the mystic divines describe of the

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REVIEW.-State Papers, Vol. I.

beatific visions, where entire wonder and adoration are not judged to be incompatible with the most ardent affection, and all meaner and selfish regards are annihilated."

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THIS is the first publication of the Commissioners appointed in 1825 to edit such of the documents deposited in the State Paper Office, as they should consider " may be fitly printed and published, with advantage to the Public, and without prejudice to the Royal service." It is very evident that the latter condition can only apply to papers of recent date; the sole requisites therefore with regard to early periods of our history, are judgment in the selection, accuracy in the transcription, and skill in the arrangement. The professional merits of Mr. Lemon, the Deputy Keeper of State Papers, and editor of the present volume, are perfectly well known; and we have only to regret that State-paper work, like Church work, moves on so slowly.

In the preface the history of the State Paper Office is concisely detailed, including that of the post of Secretary of State, to whose control it has naturally devolved. The Secretaryship was formerly not a patent office, but conferred by the mere delivery of the King's signet; the names of the persons who filled it are therefore only to be incidentally gleaned among our ancient records. There was only one Secretary of State until the disgrace of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex; when Henry the Eighth, whose royal power had been almost merged in the influence of that minister and his great predecessor Wolsey, appears to have considered that he should ensure more independence for the future, by appointing two Secretaries. In 1708 a third was established for the affairs of Scotland; but was discontinued in 1746. In 1768 a third was again appointed as Secretary for the Colonies; but was suppressed by Mr. Burke's Act in 1782. In 1794 the Duke of Portland becane a third Secretary; and the arrangement then established has since been undisturbed. From an early period to 1782, the two departments were denominated the Northern and Southern; and subsequently to that year the Home and Foreign; but the powers of each Se

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cretary are co-ordinate, and the division of duty is merely matter of arrange ment, for the more convenient despatch of business.

"It will be readily conceived how rapidly mulated in the office of the Secretary of the mass of correspondence must have accuState, after the revival of letters in the sixteenth century; yet no provision was, for some time, made, for its being received into any certain depository. Each succeeding Secretary had it in his own custody; the apartments provided for him were extremely confined; and the future destination of his official papers depended, in great measure, upon accident, upon the care or the negli gence of the individual, or his clerks, and, above all, upon the good or evil fate which awaited the Secretary when he resigned his cil (the office, in which, in those days, and seals. Even in the office of the Privy Coununtil the Revolution, all the affairs of the realm were debated and resolved on), no written record of the proceedings was preserved until 1540, when it was ordered that a regular register should be kept, and two clerks (Paget and Petre) were appointed to keep it. This register commences on the 18th of August in that year. The necessity of a repository for State Papers, began soon afterwards to be felt; and, in 1578, an office for keeping papers and records concerning matters of state and council, was established, and Dr. Thomas Wilson (who

was then master of requests, and afterwards became one of the Secretaries of State), was appointed the keeper and register of those papers. Before this establishment was formed, it is not surprising that numerous papers of great importance should have been entirely lost, and others have fallen into the possession of private persons. Sir Robert Cotton, in the reign of James the First, and Sir Joseph Williamson, in that of Charles the Second, were most assidnous and successful collectors of those scattered papers. The collections of the former now form a portion of the library of the British Museum. Sir Joseph Williamson placed his collections in the State Paper Office, where they still remain. Another mass of papers, consisting principally of letters addressed to Cardinal Wolsey, and to Cromwell Earl of Essex, remained in the custody of the Crown; but, instead of being deposited in the proper place, found its way into the Chapter House at Westminster, and is there preserved. The three great receptacles, therefore, of State Papers, antecedent to the year 1540, and partially down to the year 1578, are the State Paper Office, the Chapter House, and the Cottonian Library. And so entirely accidental seems to have been the preservation of many of the papers, that, of a series relative to the same subject, a part will frequently be found in each of these three libraries. Nay, of two

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