from all earthly and temporal hopes. As such, it is of a pure Evangelical character. The conclusion of Habbakuk is in fact a beginning of Christ's proper doctrine, and whoever will read it, and then pass to the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, will see in both, the sanctions of Canaan recede, and the vision of the better kingdom opened.'

On the whole, then, in the earlier and larger portion of his volume, it has been Mr. Davison's object to shew, that Prophecy is of a complex character, as well as variable in its light. Its principal age includes the period from Samuel to its last glorious emanation in the predictions of Malachi. Previously to the call of Abraham, the intimations of the great Deliverer, though emphatic, had been few. In the age of the Patriarchs, the outpouring of the prophetic spirit was more abundant. During the Egyptian exile, it was suspended, but, under the dispensation of the Law, was renewed. A silence of four hundred years follows the Law, and a pause of the like duration precedes the Gospel.'

The subjects of Prophecy varied. Whilst it was all directed to one general design, in the evidence and support of religion, there was a diversity in the administration of the Spirit in respect of that design. In Paradise, it gave the first hope of a Redeemer. After the Deluge, it established the peace of the Natural world. In Abraham, it founded the double covenant of Canaan and the Gospel. In the age of the Law, it spoke of the Second Prophet, and fore-shadowed, in Types, the Christian doctrine, but foretold most largely the future fate of the selected People, who were placed under that preparatory dispensation. In the time of David, it revealed the Gospel Kingdom, with the promise of the Temporal. In the days of the later Prophets, it pre-signified the changes of the Mosaic Covenant, embraced the history of the chief Pagan kingdoms, and completed the annunciation of the Messiah and his work of Redemption. After the Captivity, it gave a last and more urgent information of the approaching Advent of the Gospel.

Thus, ancient Prophecy ended as it had begun. The first discovery of it in Paradise, and the conclusion of it in the book of Malachi, are directed to one point. In its course it had multiplied its disclosures, and furnished various succours to religion, and created an authentic record of God's Providence and Moral Government to be committed to the world. But its earliest, and its latest use, was in the preparatory revelation of Christianity. It remains, as the general inference to be deduced from the whole, that the Holy Jesus and his religion, are the one principal object of Prophecy, the beginning and end of the elder revelation of God.'

As a preliminary step to the consideration of prophetic inspiration, Mr. Davison devotes an entire discourse to the grand question concerning the reconcilableness of the continVOL. XXV. N.S.

D

gency of human actions with the Divine fore-knowledge and pre-ordination. He has taken a clear and common-sense view of this knotty point, but we cannot congratulate him on having facilitated our progress through its intricacies and obscurities. For any thing he has said on the subject, its difficulties remain as they were; and we believe that this may be, without much hazard, affirmed of almost every writer who has taken up the thesis. He does not, however, appear to have avoided the great error which has been mixed up with the speculations of so many among those who have assailed the theological question-the confounding of free-will with free-agency. Whenever Calvinism is referred to, the distinction ought never to be lost sight of, since while, on the broad ground of Scripture and of fact, it denies the first, it does not impeach the second. On the general inquiry, whether the Divine Prescience be compatible with the freedom of human action, many and most fantastical have been the vagaries of man's intellect. One bright scheme, while it admits the attribute of foreknowledge, puts it to sleep, only to be awakened on special occasions. A Dr. Pearson has recently gone more decisively to work, and, unappalled by the startling consequences of his hypothesis, affirms at once the inability of the Divine Prescience to command cognizance of the free actious of men. This is laying the axe to the root; it is, unquestionably, thorough-going theology. All the metaphysical difficulties connected with the question are, to be sure, very completely got rid of; but it may be worth consideration, whether, to say nothing of the unhallowed infringement on the Divine attributes, the point is worth gaining at the expense of one entire and most important branch of Christian evidence, the proof from Prophecy. In fact, the Doctor rests his hypothesis, in part, on the absolute nullification of a large portion of the Scripture prophecies, since he assumes that they contain no distinct predictions of free and responsible agencies. This is not worth answering; we cannot, however, but express our admiration at the way in which some men read their Bibles. If it were necessary to make choice between the two difficulties, we would rather side with Hobbes and Bayle, and, maintaining the Divine prescience, argue from it against man's freedom, than question, with Dr. Pearson and the earlier • writers of the Socinian school,' the possibility of God's absolute fore-knowledge in the case of contingent things.

Lord Bacon, in one of his Meditationes Sacræ, had some very acute but, withal, very singular observations on the sources of Heresy, part of which bear very strongly on the question just referred to. That great man expresses himself

in a way which would lead us to place him among ultra-Calvinists; but he extricates himself from the difficulties of the inquiry rather by violence than by skill. He censures those who, in order to free and deliver the will of God from all imputa'tion and aspersion of evil,' affirm that all those human actions which partake of sin, depend, substantively and originally, and without any sequel or subordination of causes, upon the will. These,' he asserts, make and set down and appoint larger limits of the knowledge of God than of his power, or rather of that part of God's power (for knowledge itself is a power) whereby he knoweth, than of that by which he moveth ' and worketh, making him foreknow some things, idle and as a looker on, which he doth not predestinate nor ordain: .... but whatsoever depends not of God as author and principle by inferior links and degrees, that must needs be in place of • God, and a new principle, and a certain usurping God; wherefore, worthily is that opinion refused as an indignity and derogation to the majesty and power of God, and yet, it is most truly affirmed, that God is not the author of evil, not because he is not author, but because not as of evil.*

6

We do not think that Mr. Davison combats this opinion with his usual acuteness. He takes a distinction between 'causation' and moral government,' which may be very good as a position from which to argue, but is, most assuredly, itself no argument. He goes on to make comments in a decided tone, and talks of a delegated power,' which is, in his own phrase, altogether beside the question.' He comes more to the point, when he affirms that the distinction between the knowledge and the pre-ordination of God, is asserted in the 'whole scheme of the prophetic volume;' but he takes the matter very much for granted, and his illustrations of New Testament doctrine are singularly tranchant and infelicitous.

6

This distinction, so intelligible and so important, is in perfect conformity with that great text of the New Testament which has cost Christianity so many painful disputes. "Whom he did foreknow, them he did predestinate;" a separation here expressed in the exercise of the Divine attributes, which, if candidly considered, and strictly kept in view, might have prevented many rash decisions, which now remain upon record, to admonish and instruct by their inconsistency with, and opposition to, Scripture. The same distinction stands in équal conformity with that other memorable text: "Of a truth against thy Holy Child Jesus-both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel appointed to be done." deed, we see, is imputed to the human agents. The effect of it, and the effect alone, to the hand and counsel of God. He, ordaining an

The

* Lord Bacon's Works, edited by Basil Montague, Vol. I. pp. 219-20.

effect from an evil act foreseen, appoints the suffering by his predestination, and permits the act foreknown to the doer's will."

This is strange mystification, and compels us also to take a distinction between the ingenuity and the ingenuousness of Mr. Davison. These agents of evil were " gathered together, to do what the hand and counsel of God had appointed to be done;" and these awful and emphatic words,' affirms Mr. D., ' ascribe the deed to the criminals, and its effects to the Divine predestination. To our eye, and ear, and understanding, they speak only of the deed, and do not advert to the effects: they state, that Herod, Pilate, and the Jews were assembled to carry into execution the appointment of God's hand and counsel. Mr. Davison tells us, in a note, that it is not said, whatsoever thy counsel appointed them to do.' This is miserable trifling. We are as averse as Mr. D. can be, from the opinion which ascribes the origination, or the predetermination, of evil to Infinite Holiness and Beneficence; but we had rather turn, in the humility of conscious ignorance, from a Scripture difficulty, than encounter it either in a presumptuous or a prejudiced spirit. We dare not dictate to Divine wisdom the terms in which it is to speak, nor fence with its recorded language in compliment to our own shrewdness.

The gloss on Rom. viii. 29, pleases us no better. It amounts to nothing more than is assumed by the old theological quibble, as unphilosophical as it is unscriptural, predestination on works foreseen. It would, we apprehend, go further towards the illustration of this great text,' to consider both the prescience and the preordination there spoken of, as having reference to the Divine benignity towards the objects of his election.

The remainder of the volume is occupied with an able though somewhat compressed discussion of the question of Inspiration, in reference to which Mr. Davison lays down three conditions, as forming, in their combination, a sufficient criterion by which the claims of prophecy may be tried.

First, the known promulgation of the prophecy prior to the event. Secondly, the clear and palpable fulfilment of it. Lastly, the nature of the event itself, if, when the prediction of it was given, it lay remote from human view, and was such as could not be foreseen by any supposeable effort of reason, or be deduced upon principles of calculation derived from probability or experience.

The Scripture prophecies are brought to the test of the criterion thus established:-1. In their application to the Establishment of the Christian religion. 2. In their reference to the degraded and exiled state of the Jewish people.-3. In their prediction of the great Apostacy.-4. In their announcement

of the vicissitudes of Pagan kingdoms. In all these particulars,. the examination is fairly and closely urged, and satisfactory proof is given of the coincidence between the prediction and the event.

Such is the general outline of the contents of a volume which will be received as a valuable contribution to our theological literature. Mr. Davison is an acute and fearless inves-· tigator, an able and, when he pleases, a clear reasoner, a powerful, and sometimes an eloquent writer. He is a man with whom even to differ, is to ensure instruction; and we hope that, although he has served his time' as Warburtonian Lecturer, he may yet be induced to complete his subject by giving a 'view of the Prophecies of the New Testament.'

Art. IV. A Short History of the Church of Christ, from the close of the Sacred Narrative to our own Times. By the Rev. John Fry. 8vo. pp. 614. Price 12s.

London. 1825.

THE Author of the work before us is already known to our readers as a Biblical Translator and Expositor, by his Version of the Psalms, and his Expository Lectures on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. He now presents himself to our attention as an Ecclesiastical Historian, in which character he has taken for his model the work of the late Mr. Milner, who professedly deviates from the course generally pursued by the writers of Church History, for the purpose of investigating and detailing the progress of the genuine religion of Christ. The voluminous extent of Mr. Milner's work, as partly executed by himself, and afterwards continued by his brother, the late Dean of Carlisle, and the imperfect state in which it is left, appear to have suggested to Mr. Fry the publication of this Short History,' which, in addition to its value as a comprehensive register of facts, is entitled to notice for the original observations which it occasionally comprises.

6

Mr. Fry has correctly remarked in his preface, in reference to his primary purpose in this sketch of Ecclesiastical History, that our object should be, to learn what have been the progress and effects of the Truth as contained in the oracles of God; a standard which, in the spirit of consistent Protestantism, he maintains, we must not bend to the tradition of churches, or to the religious sentiments of the fathers and uninspired teachers. This caution, it will be found most necessary for inexperienced readers to carry with them in their progress through many pages of ecclesiastical history, from which they will become acquainted with the controversies of religious