in the falling off of Peter's chains, and the opening of the prison door; but it is not sufficient that this miraculous fact should be recorded; the Holy Ghost takes especial care to inform us also that the miracle took place BECAUSE prayer was constantly made for Peter's deliverance. When the Holy Ghost enumerates all the characteristics of the infidel faction which opposes the church of God in every age, that which recapitulates and sums them up under one head, and as involving all others, is, that they do not pray and this special and concluding characteristic is invariably given in Scripture, whether when speaking of some one individual man as a sample of the rest, or when speaking of the party as a whole body.

We do not "despise Paley as a second-rate secular theologian. "Despise" is not a word which expresses any feeling we can ever entertain for a fellow-creature who is in error, provided we believe him to be sincere, and such we believe Paley to have been in an eminent degree. But, to be plain with the Reviewer, and honest for the truth, we do not believe that Paley was any thing more than a "first-rate secular theologian" at the time he wrote the work from which the passage is quoted: we do not think that he was at that time "born again; " begotten of the Holy Ghost; regenerated; "a child of God, and an inberitor of the kingdom of heaven." His reasoning, therefore, is mere reasoning; that is, the result of his natural powers uninformed by Divine illumination: it is worth as much as the reasoning of Plato or Tully, but no more. His views of "the influence of the Spirit" is a pure intellectual exercise. The admissions of such a writer in a case supposed by him to be wrong, but which we contend to be right, are invaluable as arguments to be retorted upon such an opponent as the Reviewer, since they are like the result of cross-examinations of a witness brought into court upon the opposite side. "What would be the effect of the influence of the Divine Spirit being always or generally accompanied with a distinct notice, it is difficult even to conjecture. One thing may be said of it, that it would be putting us under a quite different dispensation: it would be putting us under a miraculous dispensation; for the agency of the Spirit in our souls distinctly perceived, is, properly speaking, a miracle." Now we doubt if a single systematic divine of any eminence, that holds clearly the distinguishing doctrines of the Reformation, can be found, who does not explicitly assert that the agency of the Spirit is to be distinctly perceived in every soul in which he resides, and that unless He is distinctly perceived that soul is not under His immediate agency. If this be so-if the doctrines of the great Protestant divines upon this subject are correct-then, says Paley, that perception is miraculous, and we are under a miraculous dispensation. This is

precisely the point which we also maintain; and "it is much to be lamented, for the sake of religion, that" the Reviewer "should be so ignorant of his case" as to suppose that "the theology of Paley on this point is superseded by the sceptical sophism of Hume, that whoever believes the Christian religion is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person:" for it is abundantly clear that" on this point" Paley, Hume, and all true Christians are agreed.

The Church of England expressly teaches us to expect and pray for the gifts of the Spirit. The whole Liturgy is full of proof that such an expectation was continually present in the minds of those who set it forth. Almost every prayer expresses it: as that for the King, "Endue him plenteously with heavenly gifts:" that for the Royal Family, " Endue them with thy Holy Spirit; enrich them with thy heavenly grace:" that_for_the People and Clergy, "Almighty and Everlasting God, who alone workest great marvels, send down upon our bishops and curates, and all congregations committed to their charge, the healthful Spirit of thy grace." And that our forefathers made no distinction between the gifts we are instructed to pray for, and those bestowed on the Apostles at Pentecost, is manifest from the Collect for Whitsunday: "God, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit, grant us, by the same Spirit, to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his Holy comfort;" -and in the Collect for St. Barnabas's day: "O Lord God Almighty, who didst endue thy holy Apostle Barnabas with singular gifts of the Holy Ghost, leave us not, we beseech thee, destitute of thy manifold gifts, nor yet of grace to use them alway to thy honour and glory." And, lest it should be supposed that the gifts thus expected and prayed for were in any respect different from those bestowed upon the church at the day of Pentecost, we subjoin a passage from the Homily for Whitsunday, "on the Gifts of the Holy Ghost," one of those homilies sanctioned by the Thirty-fifth Article of the Church of England, and, as "godly and wholesome," enjoined to be "read in churches by the ministers diligently and distinctly, that they may be understood of the people.'

"Here is now that glass, wherein thou must behold thyself, and discern whether thou have the Holy Ghost within thee, or the spirit of the flesh. If thou see that thy works be virtuous and good, consonant to the prescript rule of God's word, savouring and tasting, not of the flesh, but of the Spirit, then assure thyself that thou art endued with the Holy Ghost: otherwise, in thinking well of thyself, thou dost nothing else but deceive thyself. The Holy Ghost doth always declare himself by his fruitful and gracious gifts, namely, by the word of

wisdom; by the word of knowledge, which is the understanding of the Scriptures; by faith; in doing of miracles; by healing them that are diseased; by prophecy, which is the declaration of God's mysteries; by discerning of spirits; diversities of tongues; inter-pretation of tongues; and so forth. All which gifts, as they proceed from one Spirit, and are severally given to man according to the measurable distribution of the Holy Ghost, even so do they bring men, and not without good cause, into a wonderful admiration of God's divine power.

Again, in the Second Part of the same Homily, it is said, "Our Saviour Christ, departing out of the world unto his Father, promised his disciples to send down another Comforter, that should continue with them for ever, and direct them into all truth. Which thing to be faithfully and truly performed the Scriptures do sufficiently bear witness. Neither must we think that this Comforter was either promised, or else given, only to the Apostles, but also to the universal church of Christ, dispersed through the whole world. For, unless the Holy Ghost had been always present, governing and preserving the church from the beginning, it could never have sustained so many and great brunts of affliction and persecution with so little damage and harm as it hath. And the words of Christ are most plain in this behalf, saying, that the Spirit of truth should abide with them for ever; that he would be with them always (he meaneth by grace, virtue, and power) even to the world's end."

...

And so, in the Third Part of the Homily for Rogation Week: "I promised to you to declare, that all spiritual gifts and graces come specially from God. ... God, the Father of all mercy, wrought this high benefit unto us, not by his own person, but by a mean, by no less a mean than his only beloved Son. It is he by whom the Father of heaven doth bless us with all spiritual and heavenly gifts. To this, our Saviour and Mediator, hath God the Father given the power of heaven and earth, and the whole jurisdiction and authority to distribute his goods and gifts committed to him: for so writeth the Apostle, (Eph. iv.) To every one of us is grace given, according to the measure of Christ's giving. And thereupon, to execute his authority committed, after that he had brought sin and the devil to captivity, to be no more hurtful to his members, he ascended up to his Father again, and from thence sent liberal gifts to his well-beloved servants; and hath still the power, to the world's end, to distribute his Father's gifts continually in his church, to the establishment and comfort thereof."

Our argument was doubly good as an argumentum ad hominem against the Christian Observer, because the writers in that Journal acknowledge that the essential of the terms "regenerated," and "converted child of God," consists in the

indwelling of the person of the Holy Ghost. This the Edinburgh Reviewer denies; or admits, if it be true, to be a continual miracle. Hence we perceive the propriety of an apology to our readers for wasting so many pages on a work like the Edinburgh Review, with which we are not agreed upon the A B C of Christian doctrine. Religious Journals stand upon altogether a different ground from those which are devoted to mere philosophy, and which are either openly infidel, or utterly ignorant of all those principles which can alone make a discussion with them profitable to the body of our readers. Men in the state of the Reviewer require to have the Gospel preached unto them: "Unless ye be born again, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

It is scarcely worth noticing for the value of the argument, but we do so as a mark of flagrant dishonesty, that the statement of Mr. Erskine, in the Brazen Serpent, that the gift of tongues, now revived in the church, is her re-endowment with that power which she had in her youth, is charged as an inconsistency against the Morning Watch, in saying that God had always answered the prayers of His believing people, in every age, by curing their diseases, &c. It would be a strange ground of charge against the consistency of the Edinburgh Review, that Mr. Dugald Stewart, or Mr. Payne Knight, has said in one of their works something different from an article in that journal. Yet, notwithstanding the charge is futile, it is also untrue that there is any contradiction between the two statements: both are true answers to prayer have been given in all times, but the gift of tongues has been in abeyance: now, however, it also has been given, in answer to the prayers of some who have earnestly sought for it; aye, and the gifts of healing and of prophecy also.

If an apology is necessary for noticing this Journal at all, a double pardon must be craved while we transcribe the following tissue of blasphemous sneers, and which can have been dictated only by the same spirit that urged Voltaire, in his Candide, to ridicule in the manner he did the doctrine that whatever is is best. "A pretty world we should have of it, indeed, if the general laws of nature were interrupted at every moment, and broken up into specialities and gifts; if, according to the division of labour in secular arts and occupations, every Christian had a miraculous power of some sort or other appropriated to himself, either for his personal satisfaction or in trust officially for the wants of the community; or if the self-same gift were communicated to us all, and we were to pass our time, like the inspired brethren of Port-Glasgow, in holding religious conversazionés in languages which nobody understood!" A much more pretty world, indeed, should we have, if all its parts did not consist of specialties, and a division of labour. What a pretty body would the Reviewer have, if it were all belly, and no head,

all feet, but no hands. The division of labour, as existing in the various members of the natural body, is chosen by the inspired Apostle as an illustration of the same division among all the members of the mystical body of Christ; each of which "has a miraculous power of some sort or other in trust officially for the wants of the community." "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.... for the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body?" &c. The whole argument lying in this, that as the several offices of the hand, foot, ear, eye, &c., were for the wants of the community of the body, and not exclusively for the individual organ alone; so are the several gifts of the Spirit for the wants of the community of Christ, and not exclusively for the individual member alone: whereby "the general laws of nature were to be interrupted," by "the gifts of healing" being given to one, the "working of miracles" to another; "divers kinds of tongues," for the purpose of " holding religious conversazionés," to another; and, because these tongues were what "nobody understood," "the interpretation of tongues was given to another: all the power of Omnipotence, in short, being broken up into specialties and gifts, according to a division of labour, for the purpose of interrupting the general laws of nature for the benefit of the church of Christ. The Apostle Paul, who was present at "the religious conversazionés of the inspired brethren" at Corinth, gives an account precisely similar to that of those who were present at the conversazionés at Port-Glasgow; namely, that they were held in languages which nobody understood: "He that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God, for no man understandeth (aкsɛ heareth) him.” Surely never was infidel more luckless in his sneer.

This

The Reviewer, with that dogmatism which is the usual concomitant of scepticism, although refusing to submit to any authority itself, rebukes us for not yielding at once, and without further examination, to the authority of Warburton, who asserts that the gifts of healing, speaking with tongues, prophecy, &c., were not to last during the whole of this dispensation. point having been fully treated in former parts of this Journal, we notice it no further now than to refuse submission to the dicta of Warburton, on two grounds: 1st, Because that learned writer is unsound upon almost every point of divinity on which he at any time wrote; and, 2d, Because his argument on this passage, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, is as palpably bad as a specimen of logic, as it is radically erroneous in point of doctrine.

It is a great object with all sceptics, and with some half