Coleridge, and it cannot be supposed that he attempted to conceal his sentiments on religious subjects. Indeed what remains of the correspondence between them, shows that there was no concealment of view. In a letter, written shortly after their first acquaintance in 1825, Coleridge says to Blanco White:

"It is indeed delightful to me on so many points, to find myself head, heart, and spirit, in sympathy with such an intellect and such a spirit as yours. But, my dear sir, much, very much I have to say to you, for which not worldly but Christian discretion requires a fit auditor and competent. First, I thank you for the manliness with which you have opposed that current illiberal dogma, that infidelity always arises from vice or corrupt affections. Secondly, I venture to confess my persuasion, that the pernicious idol of delegated infallibility has its base on a yet deeper error, common to Romish and Reformed; and I would fain show you a series of letters, which have for more than a year lain in my publisher's hands, on the right and superstitious use and veneration of the sacred Scriptures. God knows! if all the books in the world were in one scale, and the Bible in the other, the former would strike the beam, in my serious judgment. But still an infallibility wholly objective, and without any correspondent subjective (call it grace, spiritual experience, or what you will), is an absurdity-a substanceless idol -to which sensations may be attached, but which cannot be the subject of distinct conception, much less of a clear idea.”—p. 419.

Such apparently were the speculations which this "sovereign of modern English thought" was in the habit of indulging amidst the circle of his "disciples," of whom Mr. Hare acknowledges himself to be one. It is therefore with no unfounded distrust that we hear the latter speaking of "ignorant, uncritical, baseless assumptions concerning literal inspiration," and the pressing want of "an intelligent theory of inspiration."

To those who have perused Blanco White's Life, the sympathy existing between Coleridge and him will not seem in the least surprising. They differed in details doubtless, because Blanco White rejected almost all the doctrines of Christianity in particular, which was by no means the case with Coleridge. But they were agreed in doubting or denying the inspiration of the word of God; and their studies were directed to the same sources. The German philosophers and writers on religious subjects (we cannot bear to call them theologians), such as Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Strauss, Nitsch, Neander, Paulus, &c., were especial objects of admiration to Blanco White, just as they were to Coleridge and to his "disciples," Mr. Hare and Mr. Sterling. Neander, one of the best of these German writers on religious subjects,-one of the least heretical in his views, in reply to a communication from

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B. White stating "his separation from the Church of England, his declaration of Unitarian principles," his belief that "the crime of intellectual heresy is imaginary, and that Christianity is not orthodoxy" (Vol. ii. pp. 145, 146), sends "to his dear friend, the Rev. Blanco White, a token of his undisturbed friendship, love, and spiritual communion (p. 236). It was in the same spirit that Dr. Hampden, about the same time, published the opinion, in his pamphlet on the admission of Dissenters into the Universities; that Socinians were to be placed on precisely the same level with other Christians,—a sentiment which awakened the keenest sympathies of his friend Blanco White, who felt his own principles involved in the controversy on Dr. Hampden's writings; while Lord Holland, B. White's patron, who consoled him by the quiet assurance that the Christian religion was not intended to convey a proposition so revolting to one's understanding, and such a solecism in language, as that one is three, and three are one," and that Unitarianism is preferable to "any shape that Judaism, Paganism, Hindooism, Mahometanism, or Christianity has hitherto assumed" (pp. 129, 130), was equally indignant at the "impudence of the intolerants of Oxford;" and while wishing success to Hampden's cause, referred his correspondent to works where he would" find matter wherewith to expose the folly of exacting particular explications, as well as subscriptions to creeds, and arguments against the injustice of denying the name of Christians to Socinians" (p. 194). It is a fact not undeserving of notice also, that in the late controversy on Dr. Hampden's appointment to the see of Hereford, Mr. Hare was amongst his warmest supporters, while Dr. Samuel Wilberforce, on a full examination of a work, the spirit of which is subversive of our creed and articles, pronounced it free from doctrinal error. Mr. Maurice, one of Sterling's "two great friends," was also ranged on Dr. Hampden's side, as Blanco White and Arnold were in 1836. We deem such facts as these illustrative of the affinity, at first sight so little perceptible, which seems to exist between persons of different views. Mr. Hare and Mr. Maurice are certainly not Socinians, nor do they agree with Blanco White on other points, and yet they and others of the Coleridge school, are drawn by some influence into the same course of action on an occasion when the cause of Christian truth in general is involved. In the hour of difficulty they are found combating on the same side as Arnold, Bunsen, or Hampden, though in a somewhat different tone.

In the perusal of Blanco White's Life, it is curious to trace the similarity of his views to those of Sterling. In both there is the same thirst for absolute freedom of thought, contempt for creeds and articles of faith, denial of the inspiration of Scripture, with

longings for its subversion, rejection of the notion of any Christian ministry as of Divine appointinent, professed sympathy with German writers.

To the readers of Hampden's Bampton Lectures, the following remarks of Blanco White on the baptismal service will be familiar: :

"The whole theory of original sin, according to Augustine and the school view of the sacraments, as CHARMS operating by means of invisible powers, attached to certain things or words, is conveyed in a string of assertions delivered with all the dogmatism of a professor of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries."—Vol. i. p. 269.

At one period, while externally in communion with the Church of England, he tells us, that "he was convinced of the uncertainty of all dogmatic conclusions on the subjects disputed among Christians, that the Scriptures do not afford the means even of high probability for settling these questions," that he was "on the verge of absolute disbelief in Christ ;" that, however, he "was a practical disciple of Christ, but had no definite creed" (Vol. i. p. 367). He informs us that he at length perceived "that neither Christ, nor the writers whose productions make up the New Testament, had conceived the plan of making a creed the foundation of the religion which they preached to the world; that Christianity has no letter;" that Christianity "was published more as destructive of Judaism or idolatry, than [as] a constructive system of doctrines and ceremonies;" that the "gross rejection of Christ which prevails every day more and more, is a necessary consequence of the theory of dogmas and Scripture inspiration" (Vol. i. p. 405). Blanco White tells us that

"Every church establishment is a mighty joint-stock company of error and deception, which invites subscriptions to the common fund, from the largest amount of hypocrisy to the lowest penny and farthing contribution of acquiescence in what the conscience does not entirely approve."-Vol. ii. p. 193.

"What insuperable difficulties," he says, "fall away upon dismissing the monstrous supposition of the divinity of Christ, and of the infallibility of the writers in the Bible! Dr. Whately has endeavoured to gloss over the false political economy of the Gospels, and indeed of the New Testament altogether, in regard to almsgiving: but the thing cannot fairly be done. Christ and his Apostles thought, that to give away every thing a man possessed was one of the highest acts of virtue.". Vol. ii. p. 200.

We shudder in transcribing this passage.

Like Sterling, Blanco White was an admirer of Strauss' Leben Jesu (Vol. ii. p. 270). His view of Scripture history was this:

"Whoever believes in prophecy is under a religious duty of finding it realized as history at some time or other. Reports about Jesus would circulate, and if they agreed with the supposed prophecies, no Messianite would hesitate a moment to receive them as facts. In this manner were the Gospels compiled. They contain an original moral and intellectual sketch of the individual Jesus, which the right moral feeling of every man may recognize and fill up. This is the only historical element of Christianity."-Vol. ii. p. 271.

We are reluctant to pollute our pages with passages like the foregoing; but the interests of Christian truth forbid us to shrink from exposing the issue of tendencies which are elsewhere more cautiously and timidly developed, but which are increasing amongst men-tendencies which are, we are persuaded, in connexion with the spirit of anti-Christ, which seeks to dethrone Jesus Christ on earth, and to establish a chaos of blasphemy, superstition, and frenzy in place of the Gospel. What else can be the meaning of these open and stealthy attacks upon the Scriptures, which Christians glory in acknowledging to be the inspired Word of God, written under the guidance of the Holy Ghost? What else can be the meaning of these innumerable attacks on those professions of faith which, for fifteen, nay, eighteen hundred years, have enshrined the simplest, though most sublime, elements of the Christian Revelation? Whence these varied efforts to create dissatisfaction with all settled and fixed convictions: whence these appeals to the deep-rooted pride of the human heart to struggle against all authority, human and even divine; to proclaim man's selfsufficiency, and thus virtually to deny the existence of a Creator? And weak, well-meaning, shallow men are carried away by the pompous name of Philosophy, under which incredulity and blasphemy conceal their approaches. They are made tools in the hand of Infidelity to advance its hideous cause. They cry, “Peace, when there is no peace." Misled by a criminal vanity, or a thirst for innovation, or by a miserable party spirit, they will pave the way for doctrines which they themselves do not hold, and which, if they gained the ascendancy, would precipitate into destruction the very persons who had aided to introduce them.

Sophists may weave a thousand webs of disputation around all things human and divine. Philosophy, in its transcendental speculations, can teach us, not merely that there is no God, or that the earth on which we tread is God, or that man himself is God (which means, in other words, that there is no God); but it can teach us to doubt our own existence. We are, therefore, compelled, in all matters of practical importance, to descend from our philosophical reveries, and to be guided by the common and unphilosophical powers of the human understanding. It is to such

plain and ordinary powers of the human mind that the Christian religion, in its evidences and its doctrines, is addressed. The most unlearned person is as capable of receiving the great truths revealed by God as the philosopher can be. He can, perhaps, comprehend them more fully and deeply, because his mind is less clouded by preconceived ideas. This was to be anticipated from the design of God in revealing a religion-not merely for a few wise men, but for "all nations." Its universality of design accounts for the unphilosophical form which it necessarily possesses. A philosophy could never have become the religion of the world.

Philosophy can devise some arguments in favour of Creeds: it can certainly advance at least as many against them. Doubtless, if we assume the supremacy of human reason, we can easily show that Creeds are inconsistent with such a notion. It may be easy to argue that they are an impediment to freedom of thought, intellectual progress, &c. Odium may be raised against them as containing language derived from the schools, from false philosophy, and so forth. This is all very fine and very learned, without doubt; but we put aside all this cant of Infidelity by asking whether the Creeds do not contain statements of doctrine simply and definitely put? Do not those Creeds, for instance, distinctly assert the divinity of the Son of God-the divinity of the Holy Ghost the forgiveness of sins-and other similar dogmatical statements? Every one knows that they do. The fact of their containing distinct and binding statements of doctrine furnishes the grand cause of objection to them. If so, then the objector must either point out the particular doctrine contained in the Creeds which he believes erroneous, in which case he proves himself to be a heretic; or he must confess that he objects to the Creeds, not because their language is scholastic, or because they present obstacles to freedom of thought, but because he denies the existence of any doctrines in Christianity, in which case he must be regarded as AN INFIDEL. In this day we have nothing to fear from either Heresy or Infidelity if they will only show themselves. It is when they lurk under the guise of Christianity, and are sapping and undermining the edifice of faith without disclosing their ultimate objects; or when they are able to tempt vain coxcombs by the inducements of distinction and worldly favour, to do their work,-it is then we say, that real danger is to be apprehended. An avowed heretic or an avowed infidel in the present day is shorn of his power.

We admire fair and open dealing. Let those who object to our Creeds, point out in what particular doctrines or statements they err. Let them produce better Creeds if they can; let them