lical enthusiast-as holding systems of doctrine, "no one of which is capable of recommending itself to the favourable opinion of an impartial impartial? To be free from all bias, and to begin his review of sects in that temper, he must begin by being an infidel. Vainly a man endeavours to reserve in a state of neutrality any preconceptions that he may have formed for himself, or prepossessions that he may have inherited from "mamma;" he cannot do it any more than he can dismiss his own shadow. And it is strange to contemplate the weakness of strong minds in fancying that they can. Calvin, whilst amiably engaged in hunting Servetus to death, and writing daily letters to his friends, in which he expresses his hope that the executive power would not think of burning the poor man, since really justice would be quite satisfied by cutting his head off, meets with some correspondents who conceive (idiots that they were!) even that little amputation not indispensable. But Calvin soon settles their scruples. You don't perceive, he tells them, what this man has been about. When a writer inversion of the Protestant plea with Rome is even now valid with many; and, when it becomes universally current, then the principles, or great beginnings of the controversy, will be trans-judge." Impartial! but what Christian can be planted from the locus, or centre, where Phil. places them, to the very locus which he neglects. There is another expression of Phil.'s (I am afraid Phil. is getting angry by this time) to which I object. He describes the doctrines held by all the separate Protestant churches as doctrines of Protestantism. I would not delay either Phil. or myself for the sake of a trifle; but an impossibility is not a trifle. If from orthodox Turkey you pass to heretic Persia, if from the rigour of the Sonnees to the laxity of the Sheeahs, you could not, in explaining those schisms, go on to say, "And these are the doctrines of Islamism;" for they destroy each other. Both are supported by earthly powers; but one only could be supported by central Islamism. So of Calvinism and Arminianism; you cannot call them doctrines of Protestantism, as if growing out of some reconciling Protestant principles; one of the two, though not manifested to human eyes in its falsehood, must secretly be false; and a false-attacks Popery, it's very wrong in the Papists to hood cannot be a doctrine of Protestantism. It is more accurate to say that the separate creeds of Turkey and Persia are within Mahommedanism; such, viz., as that neither excludes a man from the name of Mussulman; and, again, that Calvinism and Arminianism are doctrines within the Protestant Church-as a church of general toleration for all religious doctrines not demonstrably hostile to any cardinal truth of Christianity. Phil., then, we all understand, is not going to traverse the vast field of Protestant opinions as they are distributed through our many sects; that would be endless; and he illustrates the mazy character of the wilderness over which these sects are wandering, ." ubi passim Palantes error recto de tramite pellit," by the four cases of-1, the Calvinist; 2, the Newmanite; 3, the Romanist ;* 4, the Evange cut his head off; and why? Because he has only been attacking error. But here lies the difference in this case; Servetus has been attacking live? I have heard of many who think (and there are cases in which most of us, that medale with philosophy, are apt to think) occasional principles of Protestantisin availible for the defence of certain Roman Catholic mysteries too indiscrimmately assaulted by the Protestant zealot; but, with this exception, I am not aware of any parties professing to derive their Popish learnings from Protestantism; it is in spite of Protestantism, as seeming to them not strong enongh, or through priaci, les om.tted by Protestantism, which therefore seems to them not careful enough or not im, artial enough, that Protestants liave lapsed to Popery. Protestants have certainly been known to become Papists, not througa Popish argu nents, but simply through their own Protestant books; yet never, that I heard of, through an affirmative process, as though any Protestant argument involved the rudiments of Popery, but by a negative process, as fancying the Protestant reasons, though lying in the rght direc tion, not going far enough; or, again, though right partially, yet defective as a whole. Phil., therefore, seems to me absolutely caught in a sort of Furce Caudine, unless he has a dodge in reserve to puzzle us all. In a different point, I, that hold myself a doctor seraphicus, and also inexpugnabi.is upon quillets of logic, justify Phil., whilst also I blame him. He defends himself rightly for ‘The Romanist.”—What, amongst Protestant sects? Ay, even so. It's Phil's mistake, not mine. He will endeavour to doctor the case, by pleading that he was speak-distinguishing between the Romanist and Newmanite on ing universally of Christian error; but the position of the clanse forbids this plea. Not only in relation to what immediately precedes, the passage must be supposed to contemplate Protestant error; but the immediate inference from it, viz., that "the world may well be excused for doubting whether there is, after all, so much to be gained by that liberty of private judgment, which is the essential characteristic of Protestantism; whether it be not, after all, merely a liberty to fall into error," nails Phil. to that construction-argues too strongly that it is an oversight of indolence. Phil. was sleeping for the moment, which is excusable enough towards the end of a book, but hardly in section I. P.S.-I have since observed (which not to have observed is excused, perhaps, by the too complex machinery of hooks and eyes between the text and the notes involving a double reference-1st, to the section, 2d, to the particular clause of the section) that Phil. has not here committed an inadvertency; or, if he has, is determined to fight himself through his inadvertency, rather than break up bis quaternion of cases. In speaking of Romanism as arising from a misapplication of Protestant principles; we refer, not to those who were born, but to those who have become members of the Church of Rome." What is the name of those people? And where do they the one hand, between the Calvinist and the Evangelical the TRUTH. Do you see the distinction, my friends? Consider it, and I am sure you will be sensible that this quite alters the case. It is shocking, it is perfectly ridiculous, that the Bishop of Rome should touch a hair of any man's head for contradicting him; and why? Because, do you see? he is wrong. On the other hand, it is evidently agreeable to philosophy, that I, John Calvin, should shave off the hair, and, indeed, the head itself (as I heartily hope will be done in this present case) of any man presumptuous enough to contradict me; but then, why? For a reason that makes all the difference in the world, and which, one would think, idiocy itself could not overlook, viz., that I, John Calvin, am right— right, through three degrees of comparisonright, righter, or more right, rightest, or most right. Calvin fancied that he could demonstrate his own impartiality. The self-sufficingness of the Bible, and the right of private judgment—here, then, are the two great charters in which Protestantism commences; these are the bulwarks behind which it entrenches itself against Rome. And it is remarkable that these two great preliminary laws, which soon diverge into fields so different, at the first are virtually one and the same law. The refusal of an oracle alien to the Bible, extrinsic to the Bible, and claiming the sole interpretation of the Bible; the refusal of an oracle that reduced the Bible to a hollow masque, underneath which fraudulently introducing itself any earthly voice could mimic a heavenly voice, was in effect to refuse the coercion of this false oracle over each man's conscientious judgment; to make the Bible independent of the Pope, was to make man independent of all religious controllers. The self-sufficingness of Scripture, its independency of any external 46 interpreter, passed in one moment into the other great Protestant doctrine of Toleration. It was but the same triumphal monument under a new angle of sight, the golden and silver faces of the same heraldic shield. The very same act which denies the right of interpretation to á mysterious Papal phoenix, renewed from generation to generation, having the antiquity and the incomprehensible omniscience of the Simorg in Southey, transferred this right of mere necessity to the individuals of the whole human race. For where else could it have been lodged? Any attempt in any other direction was but to restore the Papal power in a new impersonation. Every man, therefore, suddenly obtained the right of interpreting the Bible for himself. But the word "right" obtained a new sense. Every man has the right, under the Queen's Bench, of publishing an unlimited number of metaphysical systems; and, under favour of the same indulgent Bench, we all enjoy the unlimited right of laughing at him. But not the whole race of man has a right to coerce, in the exercise of his intellectual rights, the humblest of individuals. The rights of men are thus unspeakably elevated; for, being now freed from all anxiety, being sacred as merely legal rights, they suddenly rise into a new mode of responsibility as intellectual rights. As a Protestant, every mature man has the same dignified right over his own opinions and profession of faith that he has over his own hearth. But his hearth can rarely be abused; whereas his religious system, being a vast kingdom, opening by immeasurable gates upon worlds of light and worlds of darkness, now brings him within a new amenability-called upon to answer new impeachments, and to seek for new assistances. Formerly another was answerable for his belief; if that were wrong, it was no fault of his. Now he has new rights, but these have burthened him with new obligations. Now he is crowned with the glory and the palms of an intellectual creature, but he is alarmed by the certainty of corresponding struggles. Protestantism it is that has created him into this child and heir of liberty; Protestantism it is that has invested him with these unbounded privileges of private judgment, giving him in one moment the sublime powers of a Pope within his own conscience; but Protestantism it is that has introduced him to the most dreadful of responsibilities. The reader may imagine that, in thus abstracting Calvin's epistolary sentiments, I am a little improving them. Certainly they would bear improvement, but that is not my business. What the reader sees here is but the result of bringing scattered passages into closer juxtaposition whilst, as to the strongest (viz., the most sanguinary) sentiments here ascribed to him, it will be a sufficient evidence of my fidelity to the literal truth, if I cite three separate sentences. Writing to Farrel, he says, Spero capitale saltem fore judicium." Sentence of the court, he hopes, will, at any rate, reach the life of Servetus. Die he must, and die he shall. But why should he die a cruel death? "Pænce vero atrocitatem remitti cupio." To the same purpose, when writing to Sultzer, he expresses his satisfaction in being able to assure him that a principal civic officer of Geneva was, in this case, entirely upI repeat that the twin maxims, the columns of right, and animated by the most virtuous sentiments. Indeed! what an interesting character! and in what way now Hercules through which Protestantism entered might this good man show this beautiful tenderness of the great sea of human activities, were originally conscience? Why, by a fixed resolve that Servetus should but two aspects of one law: to deny the Papal not in any case escape the catastrophe which I, John Calvin, am longing for, ("ut saltem exitum, quem optamus, control over men's conscience being to affirm non fugiat.") Finally, writing to the same Sultzer, he man's self-control, was, therefore, to affirm man's remarks that when we see the Papists such avenging universal right to toleration, which again implied champions of their own superstitious fables as not to falter in shedding innocent blood, "pudeat Christianos ma- a corresponding duty of toleration. Under this gistratus [as if the Roman Catholic magistrates were not bi-fronted law, generated by Protestantism, but Christians] in tuendâ certa veritate nihil prorsus habere in its turn regulating Protestantism, Phil. un animi"-Christian magistrates ought to be ashamed of themselves for manifesting no energy at all in the vindica- dertakes to develope all the principles that belon tion of truth undeniable;" yet really since these magis- to a Protestant church. The seasonableness trates had at that time the full design, which design not such an investigation—its critical application many days after they executed, of maintaining truth by fire and faggot, one does not see the call upon them for an evil now spreading like a fever through Eu blushes so very deep as Calvin requires. Hands so crim--he perceives fully, and in the following son with blood might compensate the absence of crimson cheeks, he expresses this perception ;— de Tha "That we stand on the brink of a great theological crisis, that the problem must soon be solved, how far orthodox Christianity is possible for those who are not behind their age in scholarship and science; this is a solemn fact, which may be ignored by the partisans of short-sighted bigotry, but which is felt by all, and confessed by most of those who are capable of appreciating its reality and importance. The deep Sibylline vaticinations of Coleridge's philosophical mind, the practical working of Arnold's religious sentimentalism, and the open acknowledgment of many divines who are living examples of the spirit of the age, have all, in different ways, foretold the advent of a Church of the Future." This is from the preface, p. ix, where the phrase, Church of the Future, points to the Prussian minister's (Bunsen's) Kirche der Zukunft; but in the body of the work, and not far from its close, (p. 114,) he recurs to this crisis, and more circumstantially. Phil. embarrasses himself and his readers in this development of Protestant principles. His own view of the task before him requires that he should separate himself from the consideration of any particular church, and lay aside all partisanship-plausible or not plausible. It is his own overture that warrants us in expecting this. And yet, before we have travelled three measured inches, he is found entangling himself with Church of Englandism. Let me not be misunderstood, as though, borrowing a Bentham word, I were therefore a Jerry Benthamite: I, that may describe myself generally as Philo-Phil., am not less a son of the "Reformed Anglican Church" than Phil. Consequently, it is not likely that, in any vindication of that church, simply as such, and separately for itself, I should be the man to find grounds of exception. Loving most of what Phil. loves, loving Phil, himself, and hating (I grieve to say), with a theological hatred, whatever Phil, hates, why should I demur at this particular point to a course of argument that travels in the line of my own partialities? And yet I do demur. Having been promised a philosophic defence of the principles concerned in the great European schism of the sixteenth century, suddenly we find ourselves collapsing from that altitude of speculation into a defence of one individual church. Nobody would complain of Phil., if, after having deduced philosophically the principles upon which all Protestant separation from Rome should revolve, he had gone forward to show, that in some one of the Protestant churches, more than in others, these principles had been asserted with peculiar strength, or carried through with special consistency, or associated pre-eminently with the other graces of a Christian church, such as a ritual more impressive to the heart of man, or a polity more symmetrical with the structure of English society. Once having unfolded from philosophic grounds the primary conditions of a pure scriptural church, Phil. might then, without blame, have turned sharp round upon us, saying, such being the conditions under which the great idea of a true Christian church must be constructed, I now go on to show that the Church of England has conformed to those conditions more faithfully than any other. But to entangle the pure outlines of the idealising mind with the practical forms of any militant church, embarrassed (as we know all churches to have been) by pre-occupations of judgment, derived from feuds too local and interests too political, moving too (as we know all churches to have moved) in a spirit of compromise, occasionally from mere necessities of position; this is in the result to injure the object of the writer doubly: 1st, as leaving an impression of partisanship the reader is mistrustful from the first, as against a judge that, in reality, is an advocate; 2d, without reference to the effect upon the reader, directly to Phil. it is injurious, by fettering the freedom of his speculations, or, if leaving their freedom undisturbed, by narrowing their compass. And, if Phil., as to the general movement of his Protestant pleadings, modulates too little in the transcendental key, sometimes he does so too much. For instance, at p. 69, sec. 35, we find him half calling upon Protestantism to account Is this belief for her belief in God; how then? Are Roman Catholics, special to Protestants? are those of the Greek, the Armenian, and other We Christian churches, atheistically given? used to be told that there is no royal road to geometry. I don't know whether there is or not; but I am sure there is no Protestant bye-road, no Reformation short-cut, to the demonstration of Deity. It is true that Phil. exonerates his philosophic scholar, when throwing himself in Protestant freedom upon pure intellectual aids, from the vain labour of such an effort. He consigns him, however philosophic, to the evidence of "inevitable assumptions, upon axiomatic postulates, which the reflecting mind is compelled to accept, and which no more admit of doubt and cavil than of establishment by formal proof." I am not sure whether I understand Phil. in this section. Apparently he is glancing at Kant. Kant was the first person, and perhaps the last, that ever undertook formally to demonstrate the indemonstrability of God. He showed that the three great arguments for the existence of the Deity were virtually one, inasmuch as the two weaker borrowed their value and vis apodeictica from the more rigorous metaphysical argument. The physicotheological argument he forced to back, as it were, into the cosmological, and that into the ontological. After this reluctant regressus of the three into one, shutting up like a spying-glass, which (with the iron hand of Hercules forcing Cerberus up to day-light) the stern man of Koenigsberg resolutely dragged to the front of the arena, nothing remained, now that he had this pet scholastic argument driven up into a corner, than to break its neck-which he did. Kant took the conceit out of all the three arguments; but, if this is what Phil. alludes to, he should have added, that these three, after all, were only the arguments of speculating or theoretic reason. To this faculty Kant peremptorily denied the power of demonstrating the Deity; but then that same apodeiris, which he had thus inexorably torn from reason under one manifestation, Kant himself restored to the reason in another (the praktische vernunft.) God he asserts to be a postulate of the human reason, as speaking through the conscience and will, not proved ostensively, but indirectly proved as being wanted indispensably, and presupposed in other necessities of our human nature. This, probably, is what Phil. means by his short. hand expression of "axiomatic postulates." But then it should not have been said that the case does not "admit of formal proof," since the proof is as "formal" and rigorous by this new method of Kant as by the old obsolete methods of Sam. Clarke and the schoolmen.* But it is not the too high or the too low-the too much or the too little-of what one might call by analogy the transcendental course, which I charge upon Phil. It is, that he is too desultory--too eclectic. And the secret purpose, which seems to me predominant throughout his work, is, not so much the defence of Protestantism, or even of the Anglican Church, as a report of the latest novelties that have found a roosting place in the English Church, amongst the most temperate of those churchmen who keep pace with modern philosophy; in short, it is a selection from the classical doctrines of religion, exhibited under their newest revision; or, generally, it is an attempt to show, from what is going on amongst the most moving orders in the English Church, how far it is possible that strict orthodoxy should bend, on the one side, to new impulses, derived from an advancing philosophy, and yet, on the other side, should reconcile itself, both verbally and in spirit, with ancient standards. But if Phil. is eclectic, then I will be eclectic; if Phil. has a right to be desultory, then I have a right. Phil. is my leader. I can't, in reason, be expected to be better then he is. If I'm wrong, Phil. ought to set me a better example. And here, before this honourable audience of the public, I charge all my errors (whatever they may be, past or coming) upon Phil.'s misconduct. Having thus established my patent of vagrancy, and my license for picking and choosing, I choose out these three articles to toy with 1st, Bibliolatry; 2d, Development applied to the Bible and Christianity; 3d, Philology, as the particular resource against false philosophy, relied on by Phil. wrong, viz., because, as a pun vanishes on being translated into another language, even so would, and must melt away, like ice in a hot-house, a large majority of those conceits which every Christian nation is apt to ground upon the verbal text of the Scriptures in its own separate vernacular version. But once aware that much of their Bibliolatry depends upon ignorance of Hebrew and Greek, and often upon peculiarity of idiom or structures in their mother dialect, cautious people begin to suspect the whole. Here arises a very interesting, startling, and perplexing situation for all who venerate the Bible; one which must always have existed for prying, inquisitive people, but which has been incalculably sharpened for the apprehension of these days by the extraordinary advances made and making in Oriental and Greek philology. It is a situation of public scandal even to the deep reverencers of the Bible; but a situation of much more than scandal, of real grief, to the profound and sincere amongst religious people. On the one hand, viewing the Bible as the word of God, and not merely so in the sense of its containing most salutary counsels, but, in the highest sense, of its containing a revelation of the most awful secrets, they cannot for a moment listen to the pretence that the Bible has benefited by God's inspiration only as other good books may be said to have done, They are confident that, in a much higher sense, and in a sense incommunicable to other books, it is inspired. Yet, on the other hand, as they will not tell lies, or countenance lies, even in what seems the service of religion, they cannot hide from themselves that the materials of this imperishable book are perishable, frail, liable to crumble, and actually have crumbled to some extent, in various instances. There is, therefore, lying broadly before us, something like what Kant called an antinomy-a case where two laws equally binding on the mind are, or seem to be, in collision. Such cases occur in morals-cases which are carried out of the general rule, and the jurisdiction of that rule, by peculiar deflexions; and from the word case we derive the word casuistry, as a general science dealing with such anomalous cases. There is a casuistry, also, for the speculative understanding, as well as for the moral (which is the practical) understanding. And this question as to the inspiration of the Bible, with its apparent conflict of forces, repelling it and yet affirming it, is one of its most perplexing and most momentous problems. Bibliolatry.We Protestants charge upon the Ponteficii, as the more learned of our fathers always called the Roman Catholics, Mariolatry; they pay undue honours, say we, to the Virgin. They in return charge upon us, Bibliolatry, or a superstitious allegiance-an idolatrous homage to the words, syllables, and punctuation of the Bible. They, according to us, deify a woman; and we, according to them, deify an arrangement of printer's types. As to their error, we need not mind that let us attend to our own. And to this extent it is evident at a glance that Bibliolatrists must be The method of Des Cartes was altogether separate and peculiar to himself; it is a mere conjuror's juggle; and yet, what is strange, like some other audacions sophisms, it is capable of being so stated as most of all to bail the subtle dialectician; and Kant himself, though not cheated, was never so much perplexed in his life as in the effort to make its hollowness apparent. My own solution of the problem would recon cile all that is urged against an inspiration with all that the internal necessity of the case would plead in behalf of an inspiration. So would Phil.'s. His distinction, like mine, would substantially come down to this-that the grandeur and extent of religious truth is not of a nature to be affected by verbal changes such as can be made by time, or accident, or without treacherous design. It is like lightning, which could not be mutilated, or truncated, or polluted. But it may be well to rehearse a little more in detail, both Phil's view and my own. Let my principal go first; make way, I desire, for my leader: let Phil. have precedency, as, in all reason, it is my duty to see that he has. ation watching over the coherencies, tendencies, and intertessellations (to use a learned word) of the whole, it happens that, in many instances, typical things are recorded-things ceremonial, that could have no meaning to the person recording-prospective words, that were reported and transmitted in a spirit of confiding faith, but that could have little meaning to the reporting parties for many hundreds of years. Briefly, a great mysterious word is spelt as it were by the whole sum of the scriptural books-every separate book forming a letter or syllable in that secret and that unfinished word, as it was for so many ages. This co-operation of ages, not able to communicate or concert arrangements with each other, is neither more nor less an argument of an overruling inspiratiou, than if the separation of the contributing parties were by space, and not by time. As if, for example, every island at the same moment were to send its contribution, without previous concert, to a sentence or chapter of a book; in which case the result, if full of meaning, much more if full of awful and profound meaning, could not be explained rationally without the assumption of a supernatural over-ruling of these unconscious co-operators to a common result. So far on behalf of inspiration. Yet, on the other hand, as an argument in denial of any blind mechanic inspiration cleaving to words and syllables, Phil. notices this consequence as resulting from such an assumption, viz., that if you adopt any one gospel, St. John's suppose, or any one narrative of a particular transaction, as inspired in this minute and pedantic sense, then for every other report, which, adhering to the spiritual value of the circumstances, and virtually the same, should differ in the least of the details, there would instantly arise a solemn degradation. All parts of Scripture, in fact, would thus be made Whilst rejecting altogether any inspiration as attaching to the separate words and phrases of the Scriptures, Phil. insists (Sect. 25, p. 49) upon such an inspiration as attaching to the spiritual truths and doctrines delivered in these Scriptures. And he places this theory in a striking light, equally for what it affirms and for what it denies, by these two arguments-1st (in affirmation of the real spiritual inspiration), that a series of more than thirty writers, speaking in succession along a vast line of time, and absolutely without means of concert, yet all combine unconsciously to one end-lock like parts of a great machine into one system-conspire to the unity of a very elaborate scheme, without being at all aware of what was to come after. Here, for instance, is one, living nearly 1600 years before the last in the series, who lays a foundation (in reference to man's ruin, to God's promises and plan for human restoration), which is built upon and carried forward by all, without exception, that follow. Here come a multitude that prepare each for his successor that unconsciously integrate each other that, finally, when reviewed, make up a total drama, of which each writer's separate share would have been utterly imperfect without corresponding parts that he could not have foreseen. At length all is finished. A profound piece of music, a vast oratorio, perfect and of elaborate unity, has resulted from a long succession of strains, each for itself fragmentary. On such a final creation resulting from such a distraction of parts, it is indispensable to suppose an over-ruling inspiration, in order at all to account for the final result of a most elaborate harmony. Besides, which would argue some inconceivable magic, if we did not assume a providential inspir- active and operative in degrading each other. (To be concluded in next Number.) THOMAS MACAULAY. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. To attempt a new appraisement of the intellectual character of Thomas Macaulay, we are impelled by various motives. Our former notice of him was short, hurried, and imperfect. Since it was written, too, we have had an opportunity of seeing and hearing the man, which, as often happens in such cases, has given a more distinct and tangible shape to our views, as well as considerably modified them. Above all, the public attention has of late, owing to circumstances, been so strongly turned upon him, that we are tolerably sure of carrying it along with us in our present discussion. The two most popular of British authors are, at present, Charles Dickens and Thomas Macaulay. The supremacy of the former is verily one of the signs of the times. He has no massive or * In a "Gallery of Portraits." profound intellect-no lore superior to a schoolboy's-no vast or creative imagination-little philosophic insight, little power of serious writing, and little sympathy with either the subtler and profounder parts of man, or with the grander features of Nature; (witness his description of Niagara-he would have painted the next pump better!) And yet, through his simplicity and sincerity, his boundless bon hommie, his fantastic humour, his sympathy with every day life, and his absolute and unique dominion over every region of the odd, he has obtained a popularity which Shakspeare nor hardly Scott in their lifetime enjoyed. He is ruling over us like a Fairy King, or Prince Prettyman-strong men as well as weak yielding to the glamour of his tiny rod. Louis the 14th walked so erect, and was so perfect in the management of his person, that people mistook his very size and it was not discovered |