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Bishop Horsley's Sermon.

England and Ireland, as friends and brothers, if they both approve the diseipline of the Church, and both are willing to submit to it. Her discipline has been approved: it has been submitted to: it has been in former times most ably and zealously defended by the highest Supralapsarian Calvinists. Such was the great Usher! Such was Whitgift! Such were niany more burning and shining lights of our Church in her early days, when first she shook off the Papal Tyranny, long since gone to the resting-place of the spirits of the Just!

• Any one may hold all the theological opinions of Calvin, hard and extravagant as some of them may seem, and yet be a sound member of the Church of England and Ireland; certainly a much sounder member than one, who loudly declaiming against those opinions, which, if they be erroneous, are not errors that affect the essence of our common faith, runs into all the nonsense, the impiety, the abominations, of the Arian, the Unitarian, and the Pelagian Heresies, denying in effect "the Lord who bought him.' pp. 22. 23.

The learned prelate, in a subsequent part of his charge, laments the want of learning and discrimination, which has been betrayed in some late controversial writings, and warns his clergy against pouring acrimonious and illiberal abuse on Calvin and his opinions, or reviling, under the name of Calvinism, the fundamental principles of Christianity, and of the English Church. His remarks disclose a perfect acquaintance with the difficulties of the subject; and his instructions for reconciling the separatists to the establishment, manifest not only the prudence, but the moderation, and Christian spirit, which should animate every dignitary of our national Church. If the same advice, in the same spirit, were universally given and followed, every real friend of our political and ecclesiastical constitution would have abundant cause for exultation. After exhorting his clerical hearers to preach the pure unmutilated doctrine of the Gospel, a doctrine which shall reach the heart of their flock, and be enforced by their own exemplary conduct, his Lordshipgives the following directions, with which we concludę

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From controversy in your sermons, upon what are called the Calvinistic points, 1 would by all means advise you to abstain. Believe me, they are not the proper subjects for the village pulpit. Mistake me not; it is not my meaning, that you are never to preach upon the subjects of Faith and Repentance, Christ's Atonement, Justification, Grace, the New Birth, Good Works, as the necessary fruits of that Faith which justifies, and the symptoms of the Believer's Sanctification, of the Merit of Christ's Obedience, and the want of merit in our own. Upon these subjects you cannot preach too often. But handle them not controversially, but dogmatically. Lay down the doc. trine categorically without disputing about it; taking care to stick close to the Bible, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Homilies. Let your proofs be texts of Scripture applying immediately to the point in their first and obvious meaning, without the aid either of critical inference, or metaphysical argument. By this method and way of preaching you will never bewilder either yourselves or your hearers and you will effectually secure the

people against the errors of the Antinomians on the one hand, and of the Pelagians on the other. The Calvinistic doctrine is too apt to degenerate into the one; and the Arminian into the other: but true Calvinism and true Arminianism are guiltless of both.' pp. 25. 26.

Art. XV. First Impressions; or Sketches from Art and Nature, Animate and Inanimate. By J. P. Malcolm, F. S. A. Author of Londinium Redivivum, 8vo. pp. 285. Price 18s. Longman and Co. 1807,

TH

HIS title is of arbitrary adoption, and its signification is not perfectly clear. We cannot ascertain whether the word first is in contradistinction to a second time of seeing an object, or to the second thoughts that might arise in a prolonged attention to it even at the first time, The short introduction, apparently intended to illustrate the meaning of the title, makes it still more uncertain. But whatever indistinctness there may be in the title, the nature of the book is sufficiently obvious. It is a series of descriptions of what the author found most worthy of his attention, in three recent excursions through several parts of England; the first from London to Dover, the next through Gloucester and Herefordshire, and the third to Bristol and its environs. Occasional narration and conversa.. tion are interspersed, and the descriptions are illustrated by twenty beautiful engravings executed by the Author. Respecting the conversations now and then introduced, he says,

Lest the critic should commit an unpardonable error, by condemning the scenes delineated from animated nature, the author warns him, that they are from absolute facts, with the conversations literally and faithfully reported, as the interlocutors must acknowledge, should they peruse this work. On this head he is perfectly safe. The only point in which he acknowledges himself vulnerable is his style: that is his own; yet, he hopes, if some condemn it, others will approve." (Advertisement, p. iii.)

As the author appears to be a man of very friendly disposi. tion, very inquisitive research, very accurate observation, and very little parade in his pretensions, we hope he will not experience from any quarter the harshness of criticism, or that if he should, he will be soothed by the consciousness that he has not much deserved it, We have been pleased by many of his descriptions of natural scenes, and elemental phænomena, in which we have observed his perception of various circumstances, which not one man in five thousand, in the same situations, would have had attention enough to notice, or imagination enough to combine. And we have not been disposed to censure with any great severity, a certain over-wrought cast of language, which we have had occasion to know it is difficult to avoid, in a hasty delineation of the transient aspects and operations of nature,

We will own, at the same time, that we have been less satis fied, on the whole, with his selection of objects, than with his manner of description. We were soon tired of the very minute and often-repeated details of Gothic and Saxon architecture, furnished by a succession of churches and cathedrals. These are immeasurably too long, unless he had professed to write exclusively for antiquaries, and antiquaries too of one particular class; whose ideas never extend to that venerable and remote antiquity, of which the remains are interesting to every man of taste and reflection, though he may not care a straw about the peculiarities of the structure or decorations of cathedrals and steeples.

If these long details appeared to us tiresome and useless, the case was worse in that part where the author descended so low as to an enumeration of armorial bearings. Could he find no other nuisance in the city of Hereford to soil five or six of his leaves? We turn with loathing from pages dirtied with such jargon as-gules-fess-bendy-bezantee-maunchsaltire-party per pale-galthrope-verry-breos, &c. &c. It is however in this very part, that we are most inclined to suspect our author of a little vanity. It was too much for mortal man, to have acquired the noble science of heraldry, and not seize a fair occasion of shewing it.

As we admire Mr. Malcolm more in his capacity of artist than of author, we should have been glad if the passion for old churches could have been confined within the letter-press, and the exquisite engravings had been all devoted to subjects of equal beauty and interest, with the scenes of Dover and St. Vincents' rocks, with an allowance indeed for one or two of the ecclesiastical edifices. Why was not a view of the romantic Skyrrid given, instead of such an objectas Leominster church, or sides of the west door of Leominster church, or sections of windows in Hereford cathedral, or sections of doors in Redcliff church, or the articles in the miscellaneous plate at page 25?

More than half the engravings, however, are equally pleasing by their execution and their subjects. The thorough ecclesiastical antiquary is welcome to prefer, as he probably will, the remaining ones, which we could have spared, that is to say, could willingly have exchanged for different ones, which we dare say the author's drawings of beautiful scenes could as well have supplied. We will now insert a few short ex

tracts.

He mentions a circumstance relating to the perspective of the streets of London, in the morning, in summer, which we are afraid but few of its worthy inhabitants will ever rise early enough to verify.

Nine tenths of the visitors and inhabitants of this metropolis, are ignorant of its advantages and excellences in summer indeed I confess myself to have been one of the uninformed till the month of August, 1802. That month shewed me London as it is when cleared of fog and smoke. Long before the house-maid commenced the labours of the morning, or a fire was lighted, I entered the streets, with the first rays of the sun. These lightened the perspective, and enabled the eye to penetrate depths unfathomable at eight o'clock, and shewed retiring houses at distances at which I had never seen them before. The fanciful decorations of shopwindows, doors, and the fresh painted fronts, had each their relief; and the brazen appearance of the gilt names had vanished with the smoke, and now darted with due lustre. I even regretted my rapid passage, and lin gered in vision upon the public buildings, tinted with the splendour of a morning sun.' pp. 7, 8.

A far more interesting and magnificent scene was presented to him, on another early morning, at Dover, and is well described in pp. 48, 49.

The sudden indisposition of a near relation hurried me from this romantic town at four o'clock in the morning. The air was inconceivably clear, the breeze from the sea incredibly exhilarating and sweet; the moon suspended in the midst of the vault above, shone with perfect lustre, and the east glowed with the golden tints of the approaching sun; the sea gently broke upon the beach in soft murmurs, that swelled and became faint as the air wafted on; the green surface caught the saffron gleam; and France lay beyond it as a purple summer cloud. The double glow of the east and the moon, the blended tints of gold and silver, relieved every crag from the chasm behind it, and polished the white chalk that overhung the houses; every thing around me slept, the birds only interrupted the si lence of nature. Such was Dover on the morning of August 16, 1802, when peace had disarmed the man-of-war, and discharged the soldier. Has such another morning beamed on its inhabitants and the stranger since? No; the bustle of preparation, and the din of arms have murdered repose like that.'

When signifying his reasons for taking so many architectural subjects for his plates, he predicts one of the most melancholy events that can ever happen in Christendom, "the ruin of all our cathedrals in due course of time, from an uncontroulable cause, a cause that the whole bench of bishops, and the deans and chapters of each respective fane, cannot resist or remove; four words explain my meaning-indifference in the public." (p. 59.) A calculation which he makes of the expense of repairing, really seems to give too much probability to the mournful prediction; happily however for the arts and for religion, but especially for the latter, this irresistible operation of time will be slow, and its final completion distant.

In spite of our veneration for these edifices, we will acknowledge we were almost tempted to wish that the money and labour necessary for keeping them in repair, might be alienated

to another kind of building, when we read the following account. After describing the sublimity of a landscape near Dore, he says,

But the fore-ground of the picture is the labour of misery, and the fruit of the industry of the wretched peasant. "What, are these huts," I exclaimed, "on each side of the road? Can it be possible that those cases of wood, which emit smoke, are chimnies? What must be the fire that moulders in them and consumes them not?" "You will perceive presently," said my friend. I had now a more perfect view, and found that they were constructed with fragments of branches, stripped from thickets, interwoven something in the manner of baskets, and imperfectly filled or coated by sods and clay, which fell into dust when dried by the sun and shaken by the wind, and poured in a dark stream when the summer shower fell. Through the cracks might be observed broken stools, crazy tables, and straw mattrasses. Each cell contained an aperture for a door; but a grenadier of the Guards, attempting to enter it erect, would almost overturn the habitation. They were situated in those wastes which sometimes border a wide road, little angles, generally sacred to the cottager's sheep, ass, or cow. A few feet at either extremity of the hut were planted with vegetables for the use of man.' (p. 113, 114.)

An ample portion of the volume is occupied by the city and diversified vicinity of Bristol; and we have only to complain, as before, that the old buildings, are too conspicuous in the description. If Mr. Malcolm should again be disposed to make an excursion, with a similar view, we would entreat him to describe it in a book of one character, either directly adapted to the sole gratification of what we should deem a very humble class of antiquaries, or illustrative of such beautiful scenes, and really picturesque and venerable antiquities, as are well known to please men of taste in general.

-Art XVI. The Utility of Academical Institutions to the Church of Christ: A Sermon preached at Hoxton Chapel, June 26, 1806, before the Supporters of Hoxton College, at their Anniversary. By Benjamin Cracknell, A. M. Minister of Weymouth Chapel. pp. 37. Price 1s. Wil. liams and Smith, and Burditt. 1806.

THE application of the term College, to a Dissenting Aca

demy, we conceive to be improper, and certainly it is inju dicious. Some will resist it as an encroachment upon established prerogatives; others will despise it as an affectation of conse quence and dignity. In fact, the unauthorized adoption of sounding titles, instead of adding to the fame of an institution, will often go far, with strangers at least, toward discrediting its best-founded pretensions. There is no property which obtains more respect than that unassuming good sense, which, occupying itself in securing substantial advantages, prefers no questionable claims, and asks not to be pompously designated.

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