legislature, acting for the general good," do not "make a new disposition;" (as W. has it)-no one should be prevented from giving such perpetuity to his opinions as he can give them, upon the mere ground that property may be lost to a certain congregation if he do so. Truth is of more value than monies, lands, or buildings. I trust, Sir, those who have property to bequeath, and those who have trust-deeds to prepare, will not be misled by the reasonings which I have opposed. Let us not be moved from our "old ways" as to principle. If we can avoid what has proved evil in former trustdeeds, let us do so: but let us not, under the notion of trusting Providence, express by our acts want of confidence in the truth of our creed; or if we have a creed, indifference to the faith for which we are enjoined earnestly to contend. If clauses permitting modification are introduced, let us take care that they are not permissions to destroy. My candid opinion is, that the censors of our trust-deeds,-I say it pleasantly, and not wishing to offend,—have done little more than to find "a mare's nest." The Eclectic Reviewer is not subject to this remark, since he expressly disavowed censure, and only inquired whether our practice, as Congregational Dissenters, corresponded with our professions. I think it does as to principle; and I am wholly unable to see how trust-deeds are opposed, in their principle, to christian unity. While any persons honestly hold the opinions of those who conditionally gave the property, the intentions of the giver should be respected; and it would be a bad unity that resulted from any procedure frustrating those intentions, for such a procedure would be a treachery to the dead, and a discouragement to the living. I am, Sir, your's respectfully, October 5, 1839. E. S. N.B. It would be well if those who think chapel trust-deeds might be better constructed, would distinctly, and by example, point out the better way. Let them submit an improved draught for the consideration of our body, that their views may be clearly understood. ON THE PRESENT TACTICS OF HIGH CHURCH WRITERS. THE leaders in the ecclesiastical warfare of the present day, avail themselves of a tactique of which, upon every ground, I must disapprove. The person of the arguer, rather than the point of his argument, is the object of attack; and the drapery of his style, the curtain-work of his batteries, (if the play of figure be allowed,) is demolished with relentless ridicule, while his actual defences, redoubt, and bastion of fact and inference, are left unassailed. Any foible of any writer, any trait of his character or incident of his life, which may come to the knowledge of a reviewer or a journalist, is dragged in, head and shoulders, upon the stage of notoriety, made the subject of impertinent and unfriendly remark, and mixed up with the merits of a question to which such purely personal matters are altogether foreign. Against this literary eaves-dropping I beg leave to enter my protest, and to deplore, while I condemn it. It is, I fear, but the natural offspring of that truculent spirit of party which is riding rampant through our social world, and proclaiming "war to the knife" against all who "follow not with us;" a sign too, I appre hend, that we are fallen upon those last degenerate days, one of whose predicted features is, that "the love of many shall wax cold." The immediate occasion of these remarks will be found in one of the monthly publications, whose high church propensities are notorious, and in the August number of which, under the pretence of literary criticism, is poured forth a farrago of abuse against some persons whose principal fault, in the eyes of the reviewer, evidently was, that they were dissenting ministers. With the decision of the reviewer upon their respective merits I will not meddle. One of the castigated may write prefaces "which would immortalize a pig," and tag verses that "would drive the muses mad;" he may neither possess the astrum nor the knack of poesy. The other person who has fallen under the lash, may be consigned to the asylum of the incurables, who "quo magis senescunt, eo magis stultescunt;" but "what on earth," we ask, have these "or any such like sovereign buffoons, to do with the transactions of" the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Animals, or the questions now at issue between Churchmen and Dissenters? I would offer no observation in bar of conviction or in mitigation of sentence of these literary culprits, if the writ and the finding be based upon literary grounds. We trust we have too much self-respect to advance at the pas de charge in a career of literary Quixotism, the avowed defenders of the drivellings of idiotey or the aberrations of eccentricity, against the dummies or the doughties of periodical criticism, because these vagaries may have been perpetrated under the very comprehensive name of dissent. No. We leave the parties reflected on to their fate-the unfledged or the oftplucked litterateurs of voluntaryism, if so it please "the cunnynge man" of the review to dub them-but must deprecate this unhandsome trick of fence, whereby fair play is outraged, the craft critic degraded, and the malice of party gratified at the expense of the interests of truth. The object, however, of these "modern instances," and of a thousand others of which these are only a sample, is clearly this-to prejudice the cause of nonconformity in the public mind, by leaving the impression that all its ministers are ignorant, silly enough to blazon their ignorance on letter-press, and excessively imprudent in the conduct of life. Against such an impression we must reclaim; and against the ungenerous, unjust, and illogical process by which it is sought to be made: Illogical; for we have not yet forgetten the rule of our college compendium, " Non valere argumentum a particulari ad universale." Unjust, because there are persons before the world, though we name them not, as historians, mathematicians, classics, legislators, and divines, belonging to the various denominations of Dissenters, of whom, in sooth, any religions body might be proud. And lastly, it is Ungenerous, to taunt us with our ignorance, even if the conclusion insinuated in the articles referred to were true of all, as it is confessedly of some. Have not the portals of our national seminaries been closed against the admission of Dissenters with the pertinacity of intolerance and the rancour of hate? And is it not the boast of some, certainly not the most enlightened of their party, that nonconformists have "neither part nor lot" in the universities of the land? Excluded then as we are from any corporate share in the great commonwealth of learning, and constrained to pick up our literary nutriment when and where we may, sensibly feeling, moreover, and candidly confessing our disadvantages in this respect, we think it ungenerous in the extreme in those who appropriate" the feast of fat things" to themselves, to point the finger of scorn at the victims of an unwilling famine, and raise the cry, "Your leanness, your leanness!" D. O. T. A. ORIGINAL LETTER OF THE REV. DR. DODDRIDGE, ADDRESSED TO THE REV. MR. JACOB CHAPMAN, STAPLEHURST, KENT. Northampton, Dec. 24, 1747. MY DEAR AND WORTHY FRIEND, YOUR last letter was very welcome to me, though it threw me into a little confusion that I had not answered your former. Accept my thanks for both, and my faithful assurances of the most respectful and affectionate friendship; I am greatly concerned to hear of your late dangerous illness, and heartily join with you in acknowledging the divine goodness in your recovery. I can truly say I know few like minded, few by whose intimate conversation and daily example I should improve more. The affectionate zeal you express for spreading "The Rise and Progress of Religion," cannot but very sensibly oblige me. I desire to commit the success of the kind scheme you have formed, and every thing else relating to my reputation and usefulness, to the divine direction, truly sensible how little anything of mine deserves the care and regard of the world as such; but I bless God this treatise has been made useful, and I have lately received intelligence of one instance in which there is reason to hope it has been owned for the conversion of a gentleman of very good sense, who had quite outgrown the influences of a good education, and was standing on the verge of infidelity, if not actually plunged into it, but is now become a cordial believer of the gospel, in consequence of what he felt in the perusal of this treatise; a remarkable proof that the irregularity of the heart, rather than of the head, lies at the root of infidelity. I am glad the Colonel's memoirs are so acceptable to you; I have been severely fallen upon in Scotland for some passages in it, which I am sure were very well meant, and a scandalous libel has been written on that occasion, but I really think it below my notice, any further than to pray for the unhappy man who was capable of showing such a spirit on such an occasion. I am glad to hear there is another edition of "The Call and Directions" demanded. I do not exactly know what I am indebted to you for those I had last, and the five upon "Infant Bap tism" which came with them, and which I hope have been of service, but I beg the favour of you to call upon Mr. Jackson when you are in town, and let him know the amount of the whole, and he will pay you on the credit of this letter, if he does not know you, and if he does, I am sure you need no credentials. I shall undoubtedly want some more of these excellent books, which I hope God has signally blest in some places. You are entirely welcome to make any extracts from any of my writings that you please, and indeed, I have not the shadow of an objection against it, unless it be the undeserved honour that such extracts do me. I hope, my dear friend, that God succeeds your ministry; I hope he has made the late visitation comfortable to your soul. I do indeed remember you when God gives me any particular degree of nearness to himself, and you are among the number of those friends whom I most particularly mention before the throne of grace. It always gives me pleasure to hear from you, and I trust they are everlasting bonds, in which I am, dear Sir, Your affectionate Brother and faithful Friend and Servant, I have just received a most comfortable account of the success of the gospel among the Indians in New Jersey and thereabouts. It is now in MS. but will, I hope, soon be printed. A HARVEST HYMN, IN A WET SEASON. WE lift our eyes, our hearts to Thee; The appointed weeks of harvest send. Summer and winter, day and night, Seed-time and harvest, Thou hast will'd; Look on Thy bow,-'tis on the cloud. We fall adoring at Thy feet; Our prayer is heard, the veil is riven; The bread that cometh down from heaven. Sheffield, Sept. 1, 1839. REVIEW. CIVIL ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION. 1. Lectures on the Establishment and Extension of National Churches. By Thomas Chalmers, D.D. 1838. 8vo. ton and Adams. Hamil II. National Church Establishments examined. By Ralph Wardlan, D.D. 1839. 8vo. Jackson and Walford. III. The Voluntary System; a Prize Essay in answer to the Lectures of Dr. Chalmers on Church Establishments. By Joseph Angus, M.A. 1839. Royal 12mo. Jackson and Walford. IV. The British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review, No. 51. July, 1839. Article, "Dr. Chalmers' Lectures on Establishments. 8vo. Rivington and Co. V. Series of Tracts on the Intrusion of Ministers on reclaiming Congregations. 1839. 8vo. Johnstone, Edinburgh. We believe the emancipation of religion from its alliance with the world to be a work of God. Under this conviction, we not only have a firm confidence that God will bless his own work, but looking to the analogy of his dealings with mankind from the creation, down to the present moment, we fully expect that the result will be brought about by untought of instrumentalities. The fall of the first national establishment of religion, without the substitution of another in its place, will, to our mind, and in the estimation of all voluntary churchmen, be the greatest event that has occurred in the church of Christ since the last apostle died, and the age of miracles and of inspiration ceased. Now all great events bearing upon the interests of the people of God, have ever been produced in the manner we have anticipated. Who would have expected a great and mighty nation to be established in Canaan, by means of one family going down into Egypt, and remaining there as slaves till God brought them, a numerous people, into their promised inheritance? Who would have expected, who did expect, that the Saviour of the world should be born of humble parents, and die au ignominious death? Who would have anticipated that the way would be paved for bringing in the Gentiles, by the rejection of the original people of God? And why were these things so? Because God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, or his ways as our ways. We are, therefore, fully prepared to witness the consummation of his gracious purposes in the purification of his kingdom, by means such as man would never have devised, but the conduciveness of which, to their appointed end, will be seen immediately on their employment. It is in this view of the subject that it strikes us as exceedingly remarkable, that a man of great abilities, of deserved popularity, and of unquestioned integrity, N. S. VOL. III. - 5 A |