who he may, that ever was brought into deep waters, but Christ was brought into deeper: there never was a saint who hath known the sweetness of God's bosom, the light of his countenance, and afterwards, from whatever cause, been put afar off from God, but Christ was put away further. Wherefore? for any sin he had done? Verily, verily, No. Because the Father loved to see his Son suffer, and was satisfied therewith? Oh! verily No. Why then? Because the Father would prove how far down the grace of God can go that there is not an abject, miserable wretch whose condition it will not reach down unto; whose very being it will not embrace; whom he loveth not; whom he doth not very greatly love; so very much, that Godhead in the person of the Son consented to prove the fellowship of it, and the Father to raise him thus abased unto the right hand of the Majesty on high. When Christ took human nature he took it fallen, with all its ills, with all its griefs, with all its darkness, with all its wretchedness, with all its punishments; the complete orb of its action and its passion took he, all-ininclusive, all-continent; of free-will, asking no favour, preferring the worst, that to the worst his Father's grace and love might be manifested: all this he did, and in all this consisteth his humiliation and his suffering.

But a very poor wit have they, and a most barbarous idea of God, who will represent this sublime, stupendous action of Godhead as taking place in order to appease the wrath of Godhead, which verily takes place to manifest the love and grace and mercy of Godhead. Why, what mean they? It is God who doth the thing. And why doth he it, but because it is godly so to do? Love and grace are in him; of his essence, of his ancient, eternal essence, which is unchangeable. If they are of him and in him now, they have been of him and in him for ever. And out of the fountain of his love cometh that stream, hiding its head in darkness for a while, that it may wash the very foundations of the base world, and appear in light and glory unpolluted, the life, the beauty of this redeemed world. But what a system of theology is that which representeth God as in himself implacable to the sinner, until his Son, by bearing the sinner's strokes, doth draw off the revenge of God? Then, God is changed in his being with respect to a few; but with respect to the many his implacable nature worketh on in its natural course. Such a God cannot be the object of love; and upon such a system the object of love he never is. all this they represent as needful for the glory of his holiness and justice! I ask, whether, to illustrate the holiness and justice of a judge, it be necessary that he hate the culprit at the bar, and therefore punish him; or whether it is not more illustrated if it be known that he loves him, and yet punishes him; if it is not most of all illustrated when the culprit is his own son, whom

And

nature teaches he must love? So God, in the first place, by the death of Christ for all men, gives to all men, to all angels, and every intelligent creature, to know how much he loves mankind, and every one of the family. And then indeed the hatefulness of sin is shewn out tremendously, the nature of holiness and justice most awfully, when, notwithstanding this love, he judgeth them to eternal wrath for the guilt of their sins. From this basis of universal love Election also takes its glorious elevation for now indeed, when all have been shewn to be eligible, by all being shewn to be beloved, yet all justly worthy of condemnation, the choice truly appeareth of whom he pleaseth to choose; and God's free will, unhampered by creation, and his glory to save, is also illustrated by the same act of election.

In whatever light these remarks may appear to others, to myself they have brought this solid conviction, That while the present views of atonement continue to be doated on by the church, it is vain to attempt to carry any point of sound doctrine. Atonement and redemption are the names for the bearing of Christ's work upon the sinner; and have no respect to its bearing upon the Godhead, nor upon the Christ, the God-man: and on that account, instead of occupying the first and highest place in theology, they should occupy the third only; being preceded by the glory of God, and the glory of Christ. But, from having come to occupy the first, the only place in theology, God and Christ are postponed to my own personal safety; and a system of sanctified selfishness is the result. This began to appear in the Church of Scotland so early as the beginning of the last century, and was partly the ground of the first process against Professor Simpson, and chiefly of the process against Professor Campbell: and in both cases it was censured by the General Assembly of the Church; but now this selfish view of religion, as it concerns my personal safety, having become triumphant over the glory of God and the glory of Christ, men's minds are blinded to the importance of every question which hath respect to the actings of the Trinity, to the work of Christ, to the constitution and ordinances of the church, which is the body of Christ and as might be expected from putting the last first, and making the conclusion stand both for the premises and the demonstration, that very selfish view of religion is supported upon errors and fictions, of which they should be ashamed. And so this great question, which we have been handling, is looked upon by them as unnecessary, as an idle speculation, or a gross indecency. It is this pure ignorance and entire emptiness of all principles which make so many fall into the snare of the devil: from which, O God! bless this endeavour to set them free.

EDWARD IRVING.

446

A DEFENCE OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED,

IN ANSWER TO THE ATTACK OF THE REV. R. H. CARNE AND OTHERS.

(By THOS. WM. CHEVALIER, Esq.)

MR. Editor,-The stupendous importance of those symbols of the catholic faith with which it pleased God to bless his church in the days of her most devoted testimony; and the unprecedented carelessness with which the men of these modern times presume to assail those only foundations of real unity in our profession of faith, and to deny the truths for which their fathers bled; may apologize for such unknown individuals as myself forsaking for a moment the obscurity which we love, in defence of the truth which we adore.

Two clergymen have deemed it right, Mr. Editor, to publish their denial of one of the articles of that creed which the Church of England ordains to be said by her ministers and people, instead of the Apostles' Creed, on no less than fourteen occasions every year. Speaking of an expression contained in the first Number of your Journal (p. 75), that "Christ is man of the substance of his mother," one of those clergymen says; "I know that this has place in what is called the Creed of St. Athanasius, and I can suppose that it has found its way into the creeds of what are styled orthodox churches; but as there is only one orthodox church, which is the body of Christ, and is built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, so there is but one faith,' or creed;"-and "I THINK," he says (a few lines higher on the same 4th page), “ I think that expression objectionable."

Now, without dwelling on the stupendous importance of an expression which the Church of England, her holy martyrs, and every faithful member of her body, have for nearly three hundred years, on fourteen of the most solemn occasions in the year " declared a part of "the catholic faith, which except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" a part of the Catholic faith," which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved†;' we proceed to inquire

"Upon these feasts, Christmas-day, the Epiphany, St. Matthias, Easter-day, Ascension-day, Whitsunday, St. John Baptist's, St. James's, St. Bartholomew's, St. Matthew's, St. Simon's, St. Jude's, St. Andrew's, and upon Trinity Sunday, shall be said or sung at Morning Prayer, instead of the Apostles' Creed, this Confession of our Christian Faith, commonly called The Creed of St. Athanasius, by the ministers and people standing."-Common Prayer-book.

+ Stat. 1 Eliz. cap. i. "Every minister who speaks any thing in derogation of this book" (the Book of Common Prayer) "shall, if not beneficed, be imprisoned one year for the first offence, and for life for the second: and if he be beneficed, he is liable to six months' imprisonment, and the forfeiture of a

upon what grounds the objection of these gentlemen rests. And, strange as it may seem, the most prominent point of their arguments is built upon their peculiar opinions with respect to a question in PHYSIOLOGY.

Holding it an essential part of my professional duty, sir, to maintain the consistency of those sciences to which (as a medical man) I owe my temporal livelihood with that highest science to which I am indebted for eternal life; and seeing it an essential part of my duty, as a Christian, to defend my mother the church from my brothers' undutiful attack; I cannot consider it unbecoming in me to answer the Reverend Teachers, as a physiologist, and as a member of the Establishment.

After quoting the above, and several other passages to the same effect, from your journal, Mr. Carne exclaims, "Is this, Mr. Editor, common sense? is it matter of fact? is it Scripture? Did you ever hear, or read of a man who owed his substance to his mother?" And again, in another place, " Will any one contend for the substance of the oak being inherent in the ground, and not in the acorn?"

Now all these seemingly triumphant queries arise, Mr. Editor, from the Reverend Gentleman's unfortunate ignorance of the facts, as they are in all nature; of the conviction of the best physiologists of all ages on the subject*; and of what it is that constitutes the essence of the maternal relation.

Probably, sir, you may have observed, in your rambles through the woods in the month of April, when the oak puts forth its vernal splendour, that certain of its minuter branches are tipped with exceedingly small acorns; while others are beautifully adorned with drooping strings of most delicate flowerets, called in botanical language, amenta, or catkins. Now the flowerets of which the catkin of the oak is composed are well known, by all modern botanists, to be MALES: they contain the stamens, and their anthers; and within these last may be discovered that yellow dust, or pollen, which the diligent bee transforms to wax, year's value of his benefice; for the second offence, to deprivation, and one year's imprisonment; and for the third offence, to deprivation, and imprisonment for life. And any person convicted of reviling it in plays, songs, or other open words; or of forcibly preventing its being read; or of causing any other service to be read in its stead; shall forfeit, for the first offence, an hundred marks; four hundred for the second; and for the third offence, all his goods and chattels, and suffer imprisonment for life."

For example: Mr. Knight; Sir James Smith; Sir Everard Home; Cuvier; Blumenbach; Haighton; Cruikshank; Bonnet; John Hunter; Harvey; Malpighi; Spallanzani; De Graâf; Steno; Valisneri; Ruysch; Haller; Linnæus; Galen; Aristotle; Hippocrates, &c., &c. who are all agreed (notwithstanding their differences on other points) in maintaining that the female contributes equally with the male parent towards the production of their common offspring; and that, too, from first to last; in its origination, as well as in its maturation.

but which nature prepares for a more important use, as concerns the economy of the tree*.

Now, sir, before the catkin has yet opened its buds, and long before the pollen can have escaped from them, the little acorns have already appeared on those other sprigs to which I referred. Even then we see the germ of our British pride developed, in all the beauty of its distinctive form, on its maternal branch, before the consort-twig hath yet attained sufficient maturity to aid or to influence its production+. And, lest we should deceive ourselves on this important principle, we are further provided with a whole class of vegetables, elegantly named by Linnæus the dioici, or diacious plants-for, in truth, with them the two sexes are kept apart, as it were inhabiting separate houses; growing upon distinct plants, and dependent on the summer breeze, or on the winged insect, for all communication with each other §. Now, upon a female of this class, although separated by thousands of miles from its destined male, the germs of future plants, in their characteristic form, are annually produced ||.

Introduction to Physiological and Systematical Botany; by Sir J. E. Smith, M.D. F. R. S. London, 1807; chapters xix. and xx. "The real use of the stamens of plants was long a subject of dispute among philosophers, till Linnæus, according to the general opinion at present, explained it beyond a possibility of doubt."-" It would be endless, and altogether superfluous, to bring forward new facts in its support, nor shall I do so

Caroli Linnæi Systemæ Naturæ. Lugd. Bat. 1756, p. 220: "Antheræ sunt organa genitalia MASCULA, quæ, cum farinam suam genitalem, stigmati genitali FEMINEO inspergunt, sit fœcundatio; quam probant observationes, experimenta, analogia, anatomia, antecedentia, consequentia, usus.

This is a fact of which any one may be easily assured, by examining the oak, the cucumber, the gourd, or any other monoecious plant, when it is beginning to flower.

Caroli Linnæi Genera Plantarum. Classis 22, including more than forty distinct genera; and for one, the hop.

§ "Tandis que les palmiers mâles sont en pleine-fleur, ils sont sans cesse environnés d'un nuage de poussieres que les zephirs transportent sur les fleurs des palmiers femelles, et qui les fécondent. Quand les poëtes, d'une touche delicate et gracieuse, nous ont peint les chastes amours de l'aimable Zéphire et de la brillante Flore, soupçonnoient ils que cette charmante fiction fut la Nature ellêmeme?"-Bonnet, ut infra, chap. vii. note 3.

|| "Les fleures du palmier femelle, qui n'ont point été fécondées nouent bien leur fruit; mais ce fruit reste toujours très petit; et le germ" (ou l'embryon) "ne parvient point à s'y developper."-Bonnet. Contempl. de la Nature, chap. vii. note 3.In the Trans. Lin. Soc. vol. vi. p. 312, Sir Jas. E. Smith gives an account of the fruit of the gycas revoluta fully ripened at Farnham Castle, Surrey, on the female plant, when there was probably no male in England. The fruit is an eatable nut, as big as an apricot. However, Sir James observes, that no traces of the embryo were found in it, for want of the impregnation by the male pollen, which is produced on a separate tree. Sir James cannot assert upon his own experience (if I may judge from the tenor of his numerous works) that any embryo exists in an unimpregnated fruit; he no where takes upon himself, however, to deny that it may! The note on p. 452, and note § on p. 449 of this paper, afford satisfactory evidence that unimpregnated female seeds do some