tongue, led the way to the excesses which he regrets. The beauty of the original would evaporate in a translation.

66 Citoyen, sans avoir l'avantage d'être connu de vous, je vous invite de m' envoyer un livre de votre culte Philantrope, pour etablir ce culte dans cette ville, qui est sans contredit preferable au Romain, qui est rempli de paroles que le peuple n'entend pas, et qui' il ne se soucie guère d'entendre, attendu que c'est une langue qu'on n'entend pas; car

tout le monde ne sait pas le Latin!" Tom.

ii. p. 135.

There would be something irresistibly ludicrous, were not the subject too awful for ridicule, in seeing a fraternity of this kind composed of knaves and fools sending out missionaries to inoculate, as they expressed it, the innocent Swiss and other nations with the doctrines of Confucius and Socrates, Rousseau and Voltaire. What had Confucius and Socrates done, to be thus handed down to posterity with two of the greatest scourges that ever disgraced a civilized race? It was their unhappiness never to have heard of a purer code of religion than that which they themselves professed: it was the crime of the others to have "known the will of their Lord, but to have despised and rejected it. The former spent their life in benefiting their countrymen; the latter, in poisoning their principles and paving the way for all the horrors that ensued. Had Confucius and Socrates lived in the nineteenth century, they would probably have been among the most strenuous advocates for that system which Voltaire and Rousseau so impiously abjured.

No historian will ever be able to state correctly what was the religious code of the French Revolutionists and their immediate successors. In fact, every man made his own god; by many persons, fire, air, earth, and water were actually worshipped under the exploded and unphilosophical name of elements; so that had the contrivers made but one advance more

in science, these four deities must have yielded their places as often as a newly-discovered chemical base gave rise to a fresh apotheosis. In order to be religious in those days, it was not absolutely necessary to believe in a Supreme Being; indeed, some of the ringleaders defended themselves from the unkind and uncandid charge of having excluded Atheism from a place on the flags that adorned their proCessions, by maintaining that they included Atheism under the general term morality! It is not wonderful that the Atheists did not recognize their own system under this name.

Theophilanthropism had, however, the merit of being a cheap religion: a few tawdry standards, with a bunch of flowers, were no great object; though, in truth, the "materiel du culte" was not always " aussi soigné," as might have been wished-a tub covered with a coarse cloth frequently serving both for pulpit and altar. Yet even these trivial expenses could not in every case be borne by the patriotic religionists themselves; so that we find the "citizen minister" of police occasionally applied to for a few livres to defray the expenses of "the joiners' bill, the pictures, and a large basket," which he was doubtless very ready to do, in consideration of the important ends to which this public bounty was to be applied.

The results, however, of revolutionary French Theophilanthropism have negatively afforded to Revelation even a higher triumph than all the splendours arising from the blood of her martyrs, and the suffrages of her disciples. We have now fairly seen, on a large scale, what men could do without the Gospel; so that princes themselves have at length discovered that Christian treaties are far more efficient supporters of order and happiness than all the schemes which have been devised, by visionary philosophers, for the perfectibility of mankind. The French sages are happily no more. The

temple of Jerusalem has not been rebuilt, notwithstanding all the wishes and efforts of the modern Julian for that purpose. Infidelity has sunk in ruins; and the Divine Record of our faith is beginning, we trust, once more to supersede those impious and demoralizing productions which a few years since inundated every country in Europe. Surely, then, we may devoutly hope that the grave of Theophilanthropism and its kindred absurdities will ultimately prove the cradle of a far more pure and holy form of Christianity than the greater part of Europe has ever yet enjoyed.

We now proceed to the worthy Abbe's chapter on Protestantism, which, we are sorry to say, is neither very conciliatory nor very correct. He had, indeed, given some une quivocal proofs of either bis ignorance of the Reformed system or his hatred to it, or both, in the former volumes in which he plainly tells us, that "Protestantism gives the hand to Deism and Indifference, and opens heaven to all sects," with much more to the same purpose. We might not, however, have thought it necessary to inquire particularly into his strictures in the chapter before us, though the longest in the work, had he not announced his intention of presenting the world, at some future period, with an entire work upon the subject. He trusts, that "although placed at a great distance from Bossuet, in point of talent," he is animated with the same zeal, and with motives equally pure, and that, therefore, he may be allowed to continue that author's historical view of sects up to the present day. We do not wish to impeach the Abbè's zeal, or talents, or purity of intention; but if, with all these prerequisites, he is greatly misinformed, or rather strangely ignorant, as we honestly think him to be, on the subject which he undertakes to discuss, not all his integrity or talents will prevent his portrait of Protestantism degenerating into a

caricature. Let us examine the short specimen before us, with a view to see how far he is qualified to carry on the work of Bossuet.

Under the general name of Protestants our author includes both Lutherans and Calvinists, together with many varieties which belong to neither, and some of which are more worthy of being recorded in the annals of Bethlem Hospital, or the Comte de Gabalis, than in the records of the Christian or Protestant Church. The Abbè having chosen to cover so large a space of ground with a single name, it would be impossible to refute all his mistakes, without following him to the full length of his details: we shall, therefore, confine ourselves chiefly to such of his remarks as bear more or less directly upon the state of sects in our own country, leaving Germany, and America, and other Protestant states, to defend themselves. In general, the ex Bishop gives Eng. land great credit for its anti-deistical writers; and he even remarks, in his chapter upon Theophilan thropism, that" of all the countries of Europe, England is that in which most religion is found, taking the term religion in its extended sense, irrespectively of any particular modification of religious worship." Vol. ii. p. 68.

One of his first charges against our country is, her alleged intolerance towards the Roman Catholics, under which censure he includes both Churchmeu and Dissenters. To this charge we have already adverted, when it was made in a former part of the work.

The next charge against the Reformed Churches is, their alleged propension towards the peculiar dogmas of Socinus. To this, as well as to the former charge we have already in some measure adverted. We do not, however, imagine that our author's error on this subject arises so much, if at all, from ill-will, as from want of information. Educated himself in the

bosom of a church, supposed to be infallible and having witnessed the awful effects which resulted in his own country from discarding the prejudices of education, he naturally views every propensity to freedom of judgment in matters of religion as having a necessary tendency to heterodoxy snd scepticism;-a consequence which by no means follows, where a system, as is the case with unsophisticated Christianity, will bear the closest inspection of the most acute understanding. Perhaps also he may have studied Protestantism too much through the medium of certain cold-hearted, semi-deistical, German writers, to whom even the frigidity of "Kantism" itself would be oftentimes more congenial than that fervent, though rational, piety which is, or ought to be, the characteristic of every orthodox Protestant Church.

If we may judge of the general correctness of the Abbe's statements of the tendency of Protestants to Socinianism by the correctness of those remaks which apply more immediately to England, nothing can be more evident than his total want of information on the subject. He mentions, for instance, the case of the Rector of Cold-Norton; but he should have added, that, far from meeting with encouragement in the Anglican Church, he incurred, notwithstand ing various mitigating circumstances, the severest ecclesiastical punishment which could be inAlicted for such an offence: he was deprived of his preferment. The allusion to the Blagdonian controversy is nothing more to the purpose; and our author should bave known, that the respected individual whose name he introduces never sullied her pen in that malignant controversy. We think we may equally undertake to say, that he falsely charges the Bishop of Lincoln, when he narrates, that that prelate has banished the Athanasian Creed from his chapel. In

deed, this and some other of his pretended facts come only under the shape of a report, -a mere "on-dit," and therefore merit no very serious refutation.

He may, we allow, find in this country a considerable number of Socinians; but this number is very small indeed, when contrasted with the aggregate of other sects. English Protestants are no more, as a body, Socinians in religion, than they are Spenceans in politics; though, were we to judge in the latter case, as our author does in the former, by a few noisy and arrogant publications, we might assume that almost the whole of the community are democrats and revolutionists. The simple fact is, that the British press keeps no secrets; and as an invading sect is usually more clamorous than the invaded, a foreigner may easily be misled by the undigested perusal of our journals, and other periodical publications, into a belief, that where there is so much noise, there must be corresponding numbers. We, who are at home, when we hear it roundly asserted that most thinking men are inclined to Socinianism, know the remark tó be absolutely false, and a mere party trick to seduce the unwary and keep the wavering in countenance; but a person at a distance, and especially a foreigner, can scarcely fail of being deceived, if he vouchsafe the least credence to the ex-parte statements that issue from our free and unrestricted press. The Monthly Review and Monthly Magazine, be it remembered, are among our author's authorities.

Supposing, however, that it be true that Socinianism is upon the increase amongst Protestants, the circumstance may be ascribed, among other reasons, to its having recruited its numbers from the almost disbanded ranks of Deism. The latter has lost its honours at least in England, where, to be of the same faith as the incendiaries of the last century is a merited stigma and

disgrace. The result is, that those who had no religious principles whatever, who were scarcely Theists, in the largest sense of the term, have thought good, for the sake of convenience, to "profess and call themselves Christians;" and to persons of this description Socinianism has furnished a half-wayhouse exactly suited to their wishes. Far, however, from allowing Scepticism and Infidelity to have sprung from the principles of the Protestant faith, we think we are fairly entitled to retort the charge, and to assert, that the superstitions and mummeries of our author's own church have been the chief source of this unhappy revolt. Men who could not brook absurdity, fled to irreligion as a refuge; that is, laid down a few absurdities to embrace many. Who constituted the Atheists, Deists, and Theophilanthro pists of France, but persons nurtured in the Romish communion; and who, disgusted with the faults of that individual church, threw aside the whole system to which those faults were injuriously appended? The apostle of infidelity, Voltaire himself, was born in the Gallican Church, and received his education from the Jesuits of Clermont. Surely, then, our author has no just reason for accusing the Protestants exclusively, or even chiefly, of the perversions to which he alludes.

Among other authorities on this subject, he mentions Mosheim. We cannot turn to the passage with certainty, as we do not happen to have at hand the same edition of Mo. sheim's Ecclesiastical History as that from which our author selects his argument. We conclude, how ever, that he refers to a remark in which Mosheim speaks of the indif-, ference of the members of the Reformed Church to the peculiar doctrines of their creed, provided they maintain the fundamental truths of Christianity, and take care to avoid too great intimacy with Popery and Socinianism. If this be the referCHRIST, OBSERV, No. 184.

ence intended, as we suppose it is, the calumny has been refuted long ago in the following note to the English translation of that work:

Nimiam consuetudinem! This expression is remarkable and malignant; and it would make the ignorant and unwary apt to believe that the Reformed Church allows its members certain approaches towards Popery and Socinianism, provided they do not carry these approaches too far, even to an intimate connection with them. This representation is too glaringly false to proceed from ignorance; and Dr. M.'s extensive knowledge places him beyond the suspicion of an involuntary mistake in this matter. It is true, this reflection bears hard upon his candour; and we are extremely sorry that we cannot in this place do justice to the knowledge of that great man without arraigning his equity."-Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. 1811, vol. VI. p. 28.

The Abbè, in pursuance of his remarks against the Protestants, goes on with an attempt to prove that they banish Christian doctrines, and content themselves with a few ethical instructions. They rarely," he asserts, "speak of grace. Their discourses would greatly resemble those of the Theophilanthropists, if they did not now and then tack in the name of Christ; for it seems as if they disdained to pronounce the entire name of Jesus Christ." (Vol. II. p. 203.) Now, as a general charge-and it is only on the supposed ground of its being general that it ought to have been mentioned at all-nothing can be more untrue or unhandsome than this assertion: and if we wished to retaliate, we might fairly ask, whether even this defective and unscriptural mode of preaching, supposing it generally to exist, is not to the full as good as descanting on musty legends, and holy wells? But as we prefer deriving a lesson to retorting a charge, we would most seriously advise those whom it may coucern to beware

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