such absurdities be tolerated in the West?

And further, if Clerical Corporate Officers be an evil which the law, never contemplating, provided not against, I would ask these Reverend and excellent men, with many of whom I have the honour to be acquainted, whether, as a staunch friend to the Church of England as by law established, I should be justified in making an application, under present circumstances, for the assistance of a respectable Dissenting minister, where spiritual aid, divested of magisterial authority, may be deemed necessary-of a minister, though of a different communion, "who frames his manners according to the rule of the holy Scriptures; who forsakes and sets aside all worldly cares and studies, who gives himself wholly to his sacred office, whereunto it hath pleased God to call him; who applies himself to this one thing (the holy functions of his calling), and one who draws all his cares and studies this way?"I am, sir, your obedient servant,

er. ORTHODOX.

P. S.-I had almost omitted to mention, that our Reverend Mayor is also Keeper of all the Prisons. within our town and parish. Can this be deemed a calling worthy an ambassador of Christ, a minister of the Gospel of peace? I have searched, the Scriptures, but I can find nothing therein to justify this deviation from, doing the work of an Evangelist alone,

ladies em

as to object to young ploying their leisure hours, and making use of the accomplishments so lavishly bestowed upon them in the present day, for the aid of any charity or society which can benefit the human race. On the contrary, I consider the dedication of their time and talents to such objects as highly laudable, where the motive is pure." "But," adds the writer,

it is the mode sometimes adopted for the sale of these articles that I regard as highly exceptionable."

Now, the grounds of her objection are, that the fair venders may attract attention to themselves as well as to their articles; or be hurt and pained, if they see others receiving more attention than themselves. But, I beg leave to ask, can they even go into company at all, and not be subjected to these temptations? And I must deny that there is any resemblance whatever between those scenes and ballrooms. In ball-rooms, all are dressed out in order to attract attention and to captivate; but in bazaars, all are as modestly attired as if no one were to see them. Again, in ballrooms, young people of both sexes have much and familiar conversation with each other, and abundant opportunities to express their mutual regards, without attracting the observation of any one: but to bazaars few, very few, young men go; and those who do have no opportunity whatever of the kind I have alluded to. There are on every side matrons, whose presence would, in an instant, check the least approach to undue familiarity being either admitted or offered.

And what resemblance is there between such places and Bunyan's description of "Vanity Fair?" Your "aged observer" has surely forgotten Mr. Bunyan's representation. I beg leave to give it to your readers, that they may judge of the fairness of your correspondent's comparison." At this fair the following pieces of merchandize are set out: houses, lands, trades, places, 5 F

}

honours, preferments, titles, countries, and kingdoms; silver, gold, pearls, and precious stones; together with other inferior wares, not fit to be mentioned." Pray, what Charity Bazaar has Rusticia ever seen that resembles this?

But let us proceed a little farther with Bunyan's description: "In this place are to be seen, at all times, cheats, fools, asses, knaves, and rogues of all kinds; among whom every species of profaneness and villany is either' openly exhibited or secretly practised, such as jugglings, games, plays, hatred, wrath, strife, thefts, adulteries, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like."

Where Rusticia has been to find these things I know not; but when she "supposes the shade of Bunyan surveying one of these highly decorated rooms," (which are furnished for about two days in the year, for vending articles in aid of charitable and religious societies,) and makes him regard them as "an admirable mimic representation of his own Vanity Fair," I think indeed" his spirit would be deeply grieved:" abe not, however, as the writer sup

"

poses, with the sight of the rooms, but with the sad perversion of his meaning, adopted for the purpose of casting a shade upon such works of piety and benevolence as these. Nor would the Duchess de Broglie be less grieved at seeing her words brought forth in support of such an exaggerated and unfounded statement as that of your correspondent: "Shame be to those who wish to promote any object by bad actions or bad instruments." Is there any person who helps forward the charitable institutions alluded to that is obnoxious to this censure? If not, is it right for your "retired and aged" correspondent to cast such reflections upon all engaged in them?

I am no approver of obtrusive or ostentatious piety, but I do rejoice in seeing the talents of females rendered productive for the support of religious institutions: nor can I doubt, but that, whilst they are endeavouring to improve their leisure hours for God, they often implore the blessing of God upon the institutions they support; and that they do, and will, receive the blessing of God upon their own souls.

Biddulph, in the opening of his treatise, most justly observes, "the whole texture of Divine revelation would become a tissue of absurdity, uninteresting and useless, and unworthy of the all-wise Author who claims the Scriptures as a revelation from and of himself,"- was yet as incapable of being a mere human invention, as it has proved of human refinement or limitation. That the Apostles should have been able to go forth and make good their ground upon positions so entirely new and estranged from the common modes of human sense and experience; that they should have boldly averred the Divine essence of a Third Person in the unity of the Godhead; should have laid down the fact and the effects of his spiritual influences on the hearts of men; and should have confirmed their sayings by a bold and unflinching appeal during many years to the actual, visible, and miraculous effects and operations of his power; enabling them to speak with tongues, to heal diseases, and govern the church by inspired doctrines, and inspired measures of foreseen and infallible success in the event, is, when viewed together, so marvellous, so novel, so unparalleled a phenomenon in the history of the world, that the believer is fully warranted in giving his assent to the system which it corro borates as a revelation from God. Submission in a case like this is the only wisdom; and the disbelief of a revelation so sanctioned and so accredited, or the attempt to disprove its truth, can only proceed from such a perversion of judgment, and such a determination to act contrary to our own most acknowledged moral principles on all other subjects, as go to establish the existence of another spiritual and counter agency at work in the children of disobedience, and leading them forward to final darkness and abandonment. And this most clearly appears in the various results which arise either from the absence or the rejection of

the sacred records. Their absence at once gives birth to the multiform and horrible varieties of pagan idolatry, vice, and infamy; and their rejection, in greater or lesser measures, has led to an equally irrational atheism, and, in some instances, to a zeal, in its intensity at least, resembling that of the Apostles, for the dissemination of every moral disorder, and the multiplication of every human misery,

The object of our present review is not to deal with the denial of those evidences which establish the Divine origin, while they exhibit the essence, of Christianity. We have it in our present contemplation to animadvert upon a very different, yet scarcely less injurious, mode of handling revelation; we mean, the error of those who, admitting its great truths, as contained in the sacred volume, scruple not, at the same time, to tamper with those truths, and either to add to them or to take from m them, according to the dictates of human judg ment, or the impressions of human feeling. Hence, indeed, again incidentally results another proof of the Divine origin of Christianity; for every such attempt is sure, sooner or later, to lead by its fruits to exposure and defeat, and so to recoil with shame on its conductors. The two great and leading apostacies, under the head of Divine influences, the abettors of which still acknowledge in name (and we pronounce no further) the authority of the sacred record, have been Popery and Socinianism. The one has claimed infallibility and miraculous powers, upon a supposed ground of the continuance in the church of the direct interpositions and visible agency of the Divine Spirit; the other, while it entirely rejects such an opinion, rejects also the notion of any interposition at all in modern times, and has proceeded to the length of denying the personal agency, and even the personal/existence, of the Holy Spirit. And

what has been the consequence of these exaggerations on the one hand, or extenuations on the other, of the plain and simple word of God? We need not go very far into the answer to that question. Suffice it to say, that the one, the Papist, has found it necessary to add lavishly, and almost without limit, to the actual records of inspiration, by placing the traditions of the church, whatever may be meant by those traditions, upon a level with the sanctity of Divine revelation; while the other, the Socinian, has found it equally necessary to dispense with a portion of the inspired records themselves, and to explain away all the strength and vital energy of what he allows to remain, by comments which it is only necessary to understand in order to refute.

But it is not with the wide and fatal aberrations of Popery or Socinianism that we are at present concerned; for the works at the head of our article, we are willing to believe, take their ground of authority and doctrine, simply and solely from the Scriptures, the whole Scriptures, and nothing but the Scriptures. They present, on their front, a wish to be examined by that test; and profess to derive their entire system from the "words of eternal life," well understood, rightly divided, and properly applied.

The doctrine of Divine influences, thus deduced, is treated briefly but systematically by the writer at the head of our article; mare historically, and much more at length, by Mr. Biddulph; experimentally and practically in the series of Lectures by Mr. Mortimer; and apologetically and discursively by that eminent member of the Society of Friends, Mr. Gurney of Norwich. It will be the business of our present article to consider the view to be taken of the agency and work of the Holy Spirit, as confined within the precise and scriptural limits

assigned by each of these writers to the discussion *. And, in doing this, it will be our duty to examine, with all the accuracy in our power, their several claims to the praise of sound doctrine; 1st, With respect to the peculiar person and office of the Divine Spirit; and next, with respect to his mode of operation, and the general results to be expected from his agency.

Before entering, however, upon these several points, we cannot properly withhold our motive for including Mr. Gurney's work in the discussion; which is to peruse with a fair and impartial eye the alleged points of difference between the body of Christians to which he belongs, and that part of the Christian community commonly entitled Orthodox. This we conceive to be rendered the more necessary, by the circumstance of his having prefaced the discussion of those points of spiritual doctrine in which he conceives this difference to exist, by a specification of several other points in which he is equally confident that all true Christians, all who really love and serve their Redeemer, are religiously united. The agency of the Divine Spirit indeed, he regards as co-extensive with the existence and rationality of the human race; and we think he has gone very far indeed in symbolising heathens and Christians together, when he cites the case of the Eastern sect of the Saadhs, as being manifestly under the influence of a Divine morality, not wholly dissimilar, in many of its external fruits, from those produced in the upper

Such we presume to be the limits assigned by Mr. Gurney, in common with the others, from the following passage in p. 34. "No religious views or practices can be salutary in the long run, or truly promote the spiritual progress of the militant church, which are the mere ereaand which do not arise directly or indi tures of human reason and imagination, rectly out of the essential and unalterable principles of the law of God."

most boughs of genuine Quaker ism. p. 11.

In the outset of his work, Mr. Gurney has undertaken to select from Scripture such principles and dogmas as it may be rationally presumed that all who read its pages must at once concede. It will doubt less be remarked, that, amongst these points of universal concession respecting the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of his distinct personal existence is not specified. On this point, namely, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the first three authors on our list are perfectly agreed. It seems to them to be a plain and undeniable doctrine of Scripture, assumed in many of its expressions, and easily deducible from many more. Mr. Mortimer alone appears to consider the line of his discussion as requiring any thing beyond the mere authori tative enunciation of the doctrine; and from his second lecture we extract the following summary of pas sages, which is much after his usual plain and scriptural manner, in illustration of the personality of the Divine Spirit.

"In the Old Testament, in addition to the passages already mentioned, he is described as, Striving with man: Gen. vi. 3 -Testifying in the Prophets: Neh. ix. 30 -Garnishing the heavens: Job xxvi. 13 -Upholding the children of God: Psal. li. 12-Leading to the land of uprightness: Psal. cxliii. 10—Anointing and appointing Christ to his work and ministry: Isai. lxi. 1.

"In the New Testament, His Person

ality is discovered to us in his Leading Christ into the wilderness: Mat. iv. 1Descending, in the similitude of a dove, and lighting on Him: Mark i. 10-F vouring Simeon with a remarkable revelation: Luke ii. 26—Being the Comforter, sent by Christ, who was to come, and to reprove the world of sin, and of righ

* We use this term not invidiously, but for the sake of brevity, and with the same feelings of respect with which we' should refer to any other denomination of Christians; and we are sanctioned in our. use of it by Clarkson's Portraiture of Quakerism, and occasionally by Mr. Gurney himself.

teousness, and of judgment: who, as

the Spirit of Truth, was to guide into all truth; was to hear, and to speak, and to shew things to come; John xvi. 7-14 Giving utterance to the Apostles: Acts himself to the chariot of ii. 4-Directing Philip to go near and join Eunuch, in order to instruct him in the the Ethiopian Christian faith, and to administer Christian baptism; and, these being accomplished,miraculously removing Philip away, so that the Eunuch saw him no more; Acts viii. 2939Apprising Peter of the arrival of the messengers from Cornelius, ter: Acts x. 19-Declaring the Divinity of and directing him how to act in that matour Blessed Redeemer, by raising Him from the dead: Rom. i. 4-Searching all things, yea, the deep things of God: 1 Cor. ii. 10-Dwelling in the hearts of the saints: 1 Cor. iii. 16-Giving liberty where He dwells 2 Cor. iii. 17-Being sent forth by God into the hearts of the children of God, leading them to cry, Abba, Father: Gal. iv. 6-Enabling these, perGal. v. 5-Strengthening them with might, sons to wait for the hope of righteousness; or mightily, in their inner man: Eph. iii. 16-Justifying by his miraculous working, the claims of Christ as the Saviour of the world and the Son of God: 1 Tim. iii. 16

Bearing witness in heaven, jointly with

the Father and the Son: John v. 7 Addressing the Churches: Rev.ii. 29And lastly, in his declaration of the hap piness of those departed in the faith of Christ our Saviour: Blessed are the dead, which die in the Lord, from henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.'"-Mortimer, pp. 31-33.

Mr. Gurney, as we have already intimated, gives no explicit or dogmatical statement of his views on this point. He rather leaves them to be inferred from such passages as the following.

"From the secret illumination of the Lord's Holy Spirit, and by the instrumentality of the outward revelation of Divine truth, true Christians are enabled to form a comparatively just view of themselves, of their Creator, of virtue and vice, of the world and eternity, of heaven and hell, and more particularly of Jesus Christ as their Mediator with the Father, as their Divine and all-powerful Redeemer.” p. 24,

They are in a pre-eminent manner baptized by one Spirit, into one body.". p. 26. May they be enabled more per