TRANSCENDANT BETTY,

IN the inexhaustible infinitude of thy beatifick perfections, fuffer thy mot paffionate adorer one celeftial file on thy nectareous lips. Pardon him, moft enchanting of thy fex, if in the tranfporting paroxisms of feraphick admiration he dares one day hope for one electrick kifs on thofe cherubick corals to lull his foul into a fweet delirium of

agonifing ecftaly. O, moft egregiously benignant angel, to affix a value to the fmalleft hair of thy tranflucent head would be to estimate a world of diamonds; but to delineate thy beauty would be to paint a heaven which we never faw, and talk a language that we never knew.

Would that the fun to view thy eyes could meet !

His rav'nous envy would confume his heat,

And waste his carcafe to a lump of peat. Would that the fpheres thy tuneful voice could hear!

Such fweet confufion would their bodies

On thy fair bofom let it hence remain, Until in death you give it me again. And when far hence, beyond the grave you fly,

To rove the fields of yonder glitt'ring sky,

Inform each angel, as they flock to thee, That once, on earth, you thought of love and me ;

Then shall each cherub, as I enter there, Doufe his congée and give me welcome cheer.

O, maid feraphick! foothe my aching heart,

"Tis death alone us turtle-doves can part.

Or, are ye Offian's paffing ghoft

That thus the midnight cheers, And to the fair Malvina tunes The tale of other years?

V.

Sweet founds! that melt the foul to love,
My fenfes captive take,

Soft as the cygnet's dying voice,
That's wafted from the lake.

VI.

Oh! ceafe not to my lift'ning ear;

Still tune your heav'nly lay; And by your ftrains my raptur'd foul To Paradife convey.

ARTICLE 56.

A theoretick explanation of the science of sanctity, according to reason, scripture, common sense, and the analogy of things: containing an idea of God: of his creations, and kingdoms: of the holy scriptures of the christian trinity, and of the gospel system. By Thomas Fessenden, A. M. pastor of the church in Walpole, N. H. Printed by Wm. Fessenden, for the author. Brattleboro', Vermont. 1804. 8vo. pp. 308.

IT has been the misfortune of theology on this side the Atlantick to have received little illustration from the learning, while it has suffered much embarrassment, and false refinement from the ingenuity and subtilty of its professors. The catalogue of American divines is not crowded with philologers and criticks, with scholars versed in the sacred idiom, and provided with the furniture of sacred science; but we discover in the villages and hamlets of New-England scholastick theologues, hair splitting metaphysicians, long-breathed controversialists, pamphleteers, and publishers of single sermons,

Thick as autumnal ieaves which strew the brooks

In Vallombrosa. In American literary history it would perhaps be in vain to search

for one omnis Minerva homo; and in the learning peculiar to theology, no divine, since the days of our puritan ancestors, has attained an eminence,which has attracted the notice of Europe; but in the metaphysicks of theology we can boast of Edwards, Witherspoon, Hopkins, Emmons, West, Dickinson, and a long et cætera of names, of some of which the sound has gone forth unto the ends of the earth, while others are destined to remain the temporary pride and wonder of a county only, or a village.

To the class of system-makers another is now added; and we are here presented with "a theoretick explanation of the science of sanctity, according to reason, scripture, common sense, and the analogy of things." This production is an absolute non-descript; and one half its readers, after having gone through the book, will not probably know much more about it, than they have now found out from the title. If it were fairly written in any living or dead language we should venture to speak more decidedly of the merit of its novelties, because, by the help of a grammar and dictionary, we might hope in time to reach its meaning. But ever since we took up this book, which is really not without the merit of ingenuity, we have been gaping after the

sense of passages, which it would puzzle Edipus to unravel, and guessing at the signification of terms, which we might hope to find only in a Thesaurus of the languages at Babel. Here may the curious reader cull some of the newest words which have enriched Columbian dictionaries, many of the choicest phrases of cis-atlantick writers, not a few grammatical solecisms, and a plentiful variety of compound and de⚫ compound epithets, and polysyllabick terms of every description, now for the first, and, as we hope, last time set in types and impressed on paper. Of the style in which this book is written we propose now to give our readers a foretaste, which we think will sufficiently excuse us, if in the short sketch we shall give of its contents, we should be found to have misapprehended the meaning of

the author.

First. As to the titles of Lord and King as belonging to the divine majesty, and the prerogatives of his sovereignty or imperial estate.

Lord and God are of near affinity, and are often joined in scripture. In a civil law sense, a Lord is a superior proprietor of things and persons. Math. xx. 8. Gen. xxxi. 35. As possessor, God is Lord of heaven and earth and all things in them. Governing powers of the natural and legal kind are Lords who have a kind of propriety in those to whom they stand in this relation. I. Pet. iii. 6.

But an authoritative Lord is one that beareth rule, and is so far unsubject. To the civil sovereignty, whether lodged in one or more persons, the law attributes a public lordship, consisting in the great and supreme rights of government. The subjects of a legal lord are his lieges, and between him and them there subsists a mutual obligation even

This is of great note in the bible, though it is disregarded by many divines, and not accounted of in most systems, but considered as a metaphor when it comes in their way. But, He is no otherwise God, than he is King. 1. Tim. i. 17.p.22.

The kingship of God imports a reigning condition or estate; to this agree the titles of the most High, the supreme Potentate, Power, &c. Goodness, greatness, glory, belong to him as a person of the sublimity of the godhead, the summity regal dignity. The reigning estate, is of the divine supremacy, the dignity of the peerless supereminency, and transcendency of God-p. 23.

The imperial Father is the head of 2 vital empire, and must possess that life which is constituitive of his person, and that life which is communicative, which is the essence of the Holy Spirit, who was the Father's agent in creation, and in the Son's generation, and in the communication of vital sanctity to the whole empire. And the imperial Son is mediate Head of a vital empire: and there is in his essence the vitality which is constituitive of his person, and the vitality which is communicative. Therefore the one divine essence must be considered as it is the constituitive personal essence of the Father as the primitive, and the constituitive personal essence of the Son, as the derivative, confronted to the divine essence the communicative, which is the con stituitive essence of the Holy Ghost. That vitality which the Father's essence is. as the primitive, must be confronted to the Son's as the derivative, and as it is the constituitive, it is confronted to the communicative, which is the Holy Ghost's. And in like manner the vitality of the Son as the derivative, must be confronted to the vitality the primitive; and as it is merely the constituitive of his person, it must be confronted to the ma nicative.- p. 212, 213.

The preface, which is rather better written than the rest of the book, is occupied in stating the author's belief,that much improvement may be made in the science of theclogy, and that much of the present corruption of christian doctrine has originated in the Platonism of the early fathers, whose piety he professes to venerate, but whose infallibility he resolutely denics. He offers an apology for the compound words which he has fabricated, "because no others," he says, "would express his idea ;" declaring with St. Augustin, mallem reprehendent grammatici, quam non intelligant populi. But, with St. Augustin's leave, this is a most absurd sentiment; for never was a writing the more intelligible because it violated syntax, purity, or precision.

The first chapter of this anomalous production is entitled, "an idea of God." His definition is, "God is definitively the Divine Majesty, actually reigning, and exercising imperial sway over the universe of creatures." Much in the same style is the whole of this chapter; where old maxims are wrapped up in curious phraseck ogy, common notions presented in odd attitudes, and for new purposes, and distinctions and definitions, some of which are valuable in themselves, and others important only to the author, multiplied without mercy and without end. His remarks on the meaning of the word nature, particularly as applied to God, we shall now quote; because much use is made of them in other parts of the book.

By a nature and life the same thing is to be understood, and it is the specif. ick property of a thing, the vital sub

stance of a being, which constitutes and denominates it, and distinguisheth one It is not therefore a being, person, or abeing from all others of another kind. gent of itself, nor hath it any existence but in relation to the subject to which it belongs. To ascribe personal acts to a nature, or to speak of worshipping the divine nature, however common, is a real impropriety, and manifest absurdity.

-Saints, as saints, are one with God

and Christ, by a participation of the divine nature. John xvii. 21, 22. It is an essential oneness, if nature and essence are the same; but if essence signifies something different from nature, as it is no scripture word, Thomas Aquinas, or any one else may have it. One person or being may have more than one nature, but one personal agent, or being,

cannot have more than one intellect without destroying his individuality. In men there are two natures, an animal na ture of flesh and blood, common to them and beasts, and a rational soul with its vital substance, wherein humanity properly consists; and in regenerate christians the divine nature is added to these and yet there is but one individual personality, as there is but one intellect. By a nature as applied to God is not intended his metaphyfical entity as the first being, nor his mere intellectuality. but only what is gradual, between him These constitute no specifick difference, and other beings or intellectualists. Being or existence in any degree is no more the divine nature, than Behemoth partakes of the divine nature because he is great. Creatures may exist, be invisimortal in a degree and not partake of ible, incorruptible, intelligent, and im the divine nature. pp. 16, 18.

the divine nature is not; You see, gentle reader, what we do

not promise you, that you shall understand what it is. "The is God. It is his life and constidivine nature is that whereby God tution; it is vital, que sanctity, holiness, spirit, light, love, and eternal life.Unbounded sanctity is the vital substance in which the infinite intellect of God exists.” P. 18. This indistinct notion

however of essence or nature is the key to his language on the subject of the Trinity, a subject which occupies more than half of the work.

In the second chapter, which treats" of the original creation and kingdom of God," we have an incomparable mixture of truth and falsehood, good sense and absurdity, credulity and scepticism, rational theology and the most vague and ridiculous conjectures. He combats the chimeras of others, however, with such fearless honesty, that he may sometimes be pardoned for suggesting his own. By the original creation and kingdom of God, he intends a society of holy "rationals," or intelligent spirits, existing with God before the formation of our world. These subjects of God's original kingdom were angels, and pre-existent human spirits, created holy, under a law which required "unsinning" obedience. They inhabited the place called heaven, about the locality of which he offers a conjecture. He supposes the peculiar brightness of the milky way is occasioned by the vicinity of this celestial world. Notwithstanding the holiness and happiness of this society, yet as they were left to the freedom of their own wills, a number of the angelick rank with Satan at their head, and the whole order of human spirits, revolted from their lawful sovereign. Having thus lost the original righteousness in which they were all created, they are incapacitated for heaven; and while the rebel angels are hopelessly confined in chains of darkness, the human spirits are successively sent into this world,

where, by being united to flesh and blood, they suffer all the inconveniences of our present state, not for the sin of Adam in paradise, but for their own sins in a pre-existent state. All that in his opinion we suffer by Adam is the loss of animal life. To tl.is, indeed, he confesses we should have been naturally exposed, but on account of the transgression of our progenitor it was rendered positive and penal. We expected some new and ingenious reasoning in favour of the exploded doctrine of pre-existence; but we can find only the following argument,....No man can be restored to what he has not lost. We are restored to something by Christ; but we lost nothing by Adam; therefore we must have possessed in some former state that to which we are restored, viz. a portion of the divine nature, i.e. vital sanctity, i. e. original righteousness. Q. E. D.....Truly this is a proof of which "Trismegistus, Pythagoras, Plato, the Egyptian Gymnosophists, and Indian Bramins," could never have dreamt. From this visionary region, however, he frequently descends into the old and beaten paths of rational theology and common sense. He reasons ingeniously in favour of the opinion, that the Mosaick account of the Hexäemeron, does not require us to suppose a creation out of nothing; he exposes the absurdity of the dogmas of imputed righteousness and imputed guilt; and throws occasional gleams of light on the obscurities of the earliest dispensations. But the reader will look in vain for any long continued series of sensible remarks, and le