pression, than appears, for instance, in the English Version, by the late Dr. Alexander Smith, of his "Mosaic Law."

4. We mention one other powerful cause; the miserable intolerance of the Protestant States of Germany. Had religious freedom existed, or even a liberal and paternal toleration of dissidents, the population of a town or village in which Neologism got possession of the parish pulpit, would most probably have formed a separate congregation with a pastor of their own choice, and the gospel of the Reformation and of Apostolic Christianity would have maintained its ground; yea, it would have flourished and triumphed. But the horror of any approach to popular liberty, united with the inveterate evil of subjecting all public worship to the prescriptive meddlings of the Government, was the characteristic malady of all the German principalities, great and small. In some of them, among whom the Prussian States deserve honourable mention, the evil has been abated in a considerable degree; but in others, particularly those under Austrian dominion or influence, it has awfully increased since their deliverance from Napoleon's iron grasp. Thus, the grand remedy has been shut out, which, otherwise, it is morally certain, would have been applied; and the people, compelled to attend the parish church, or to enjoy no public religion at all, have been brought down, with scattered exceptions, happily now becoming numerous, to the level of their unchristian and antichristian teachers. The same would have been the case in our own country, had not the non-conformists made their self-sacrificing stand against ecclesiastical usurpation, and had not the Revolution under King William secured the liberty of conscientious separation. The cause of the Evangelical Dissenters operated both as a remedy and as an example to the remains of piety in the Establishment. Without it, popery or formalism would, according to appearances, have secured an ascendancy fatal to all the interests of Great Britain. At the present moment, also, the revival of religion in France is setting strongly into the channel of a peaceable but uncompromising separation from the Protestant State Establishment, with its salaried clergy, a royal veto upon the appointment of its ministers, and a royal right of arbitrary dismissal.

On this subject, we shall obtain the approbation and the thanks of our readers, by introducing some paragraphs of a very remarkable document, which appeared, nearly five years ago, in a German periodical work, the Darmstadt Ecclesiastical Gazette. We have not the original, and are therefore obliged to take our passages from the translation which appeared in the Archives du Christianisme, vol. vii. Paris, 1824. pp. 253-260.

• As, in many places, there are Ban-Mills, to which all the inhabitants of the district are obliged to carry their corn to be ground, and are precluded from applying any where else; so, in our days, it appears a determination to set up in different parts, Ban-Churches: and, as the privileged millers have the sole right of supplying flour, so the privileged preachers must alone possess the right of distributing the word of God and the means of edification! A toll and custom-house line is ordered to be drawn round all the Churches; and whatsoever the law does not permit, according to the decrees of the established continental system, is to be regarded as spiritual contraband, and to be confiscated for the benefit of the State! Thus are certain persons pleased to make Christianity an article of privilege, monopoly, and secularization.-In proportion as this privileged Christianity has become, in numerous places, a lifeless form, has theological instruction fallen and degenerated, so as to have become actually antichristian; clergymen have manifestly performed their functions merely as a trade; and public devotion has been deprived of all its nutriment and power. So unreasonable and unjust a thing is this monopoly become, that it cannot but make numerous partizans to separatism: and separatism it must in the end introduce, as inevitably and necessarily as Popery brought on the Reformation. Real Christianity, the Christian Life, is the most free, the most voluntary thing, not indeed of the world, but in the world. It is a spiritual power, given to mortals from on high; and it breaks and dashes to atoms all the chains and fetters which the spirit of the times or the spirit of the world would impose upon it. Triumphant over the ruins of Rome's universal monarchy, which in a struggle of three centuries sought in vain to stifle it, it stands as a glorious monument, that the world shall never keep the ascendency over the Cross of JESUS and the Word of His Cross.

Yet, the fact is, that our age has brought upon itself these melancholy restraints. It has deserved the chastisement, that an infidelity which has abandoned the principles of the Reformation, and an IRRATIONAL reason which sets up its pretensions to be lord over the word of God, twisting and torturing it at its own arbitrary liking, should, in various places, threaten to become an actual Papal domination. Yes; our age, by its lukewarmness and indifference to holy and divine things, has more than merited this awful judgement from God, the plagues of a new spiritual tyranny.-We have seen what may be made of the Christian system under a knife employed in the dissection of all notions, and then taking up Christianity as a mere affair of notions. But, what will at last be made of it by an infidel rationalism or a lifeless_orthodoxy, remains to be seen.Government-edicts and police-officers will not appease the famine of the soul. To thousands of hearts the Lord hath spoken mightily and efficaciously, by the great events and the important experience of our age. It will be felt, that he speaks with an authority which these scribes and pharisees can neither imitate nor resist. Wearied humanity groans for the cure of its wretchedness. Flat and insipid moralists would curb with spider's webs the unbridled violence of

human passions, and deal out their paper recipes for the maladies of the mind: but the patients are groaning for a strength from on high, and are desiring the True Physician of souls. Learned doctors dispense learned words; but the people are hungering for the simple word of the cross, that which the Bible-doctrine of Redemption offers. They, from their lofty pulpits and their professors' chairs, preach the horrid blasphemy, that to adore Him who is "the True God and the Eternal Life," is idolatry: but the wandering souls are collecting together and returning to their Saviour.'

These extracts may give some idea of the spirit and tendency of this interesting paper. Its Author (whom we should be happy to know) proceeds to ask, what is to be done for counteracting the arbitrary and persecuting spirit of the antievangelical party; and he answers, by displaying and urging the resources of DOMESTIC PIETY.

Every head of a family,' he says, 'converted by grace and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life, is called to be the priest, teacher, and pastor of his own household. Let him bear their names, as precious stones, upon his heart. Let him with them draw every day new lessons from the word of God, the great book of instruction for mankind. Let him declare to them the name of the Lord, in the morning and evening worship. Let him be to them, on the small scale, what a good pastor is to an entire church. Every Christian church should be properly a family; and every Christian family, a church of God our Saviour. The more public instruction, devotion, prayer, and discipline sink into degeneracy, the more is it necessary that domestic instruction, devotion, prayer, and discipline should be renovated.'

We cannot but subjoin a part of the remarks of the excellent French Editor of this document.

This paper was republished in a political journal, we believe, at Frankfort. It has not been without effect in Germany, for informing and bringing back to principles of wisdom and moderation, several persons of influence. We shall mention a single instance. Dr. von Valenti, a physician in a small town in the Grand Dutchy of Weimar, who had long lived in complete infidelity, having been brought by the grace of God to know and love the gospel, did not fail, when he visited his patients and gave them all the assistance of his art, to bring them also those consoling instructions which restore health to the soul, and which may even, by their tranquillizing effect, contribute to recover that of the body. Afterwards, some who had been his patients, as also several other persons, united themselves with him, in holding meetings for reading the Bible and religious books. These meetings soon brought painful consequences upon Dr. von V., partly from some clergymen who possessed considerable influence, and who are well known in Germany for their attachment to the principles of rationalism, and partly from the Government itself. He

was thrown into prison for a fortnight, and then ordered to quit the country. He went to Dresden. But, in a short time, he was recalled by his own Government, and allowed perfect liberty to read the Bible and what hooks he liked, with the friends who might choose to join him. Some persons attributed this change to friendly remonstrances from Berlin or St. Petersburg: but it was not so. A man of influence, one of the diplomatic members of the Diet at Frankfort, had read this article. He made a communication of it to Weimar, and the result of the deliberations to which it led, was a return to the just principles of Christian and Protestant toleration. So may all governments be led to shake off pernicious secret influence, to come out of the darkness of persecution, and to return to the light of RELIGIOUS LIBERTY!'

These appear to us to furnish the true reasons of the origination and progress of Neologism; a system which is not confined to Germany, but has been zealously fostered in other countries. The facts which we have thus detailed, possess all the requisites of a just solution, for they are really existing causes, and they are sufficient to account for the effects. That many minor circumstances have modified the results, in particular cases, we have already intimated; and these would of course produce, in some instances an aggravation, in others a mitigation, of the consequence: but that consequence is, in all cases, substantially the same, a denial of the GRAND PRINCIPLE of Revelation, namely, that the Scriptures convey to us the TESTIMONY OF GOD; that this testimony, which we are to ascertain by the fair methods of verbal interpretation, is the ultimate ground of belief, perfect in itself, the highest evidence of truth, admitting of being neither disputed nor corroborated by human argumentation, and demanding, on the peril of Jehovah's righteous judgement, to be implicitly and inflexibly believed.

Mr. Rose gives the following sketch of the radical principles and the character of the Anti-Christian party.

The Rationalizing divines have done this,-they have chosen to suppose a system which they think reasonable, which they think ought to be the Christian system; and they resolved to make it so at any expense of Scripture. I have no hesitation in saying, that their whole system of historical interpretation is built on these notions, and, loudly as its excellency is vaunted, I cannot but consider it most fallacious and dangerous. That a real and sound interpreter of God's word must add, to a critical knowledge and complete familiarity with its language, the widest historical knowledge, the knowledge of the opinions, pursuits, and customs of the Jewish, and indeed of the Greek and Roman nations; that, in examining the words and phrases of Scripture, the peculiar opinions and habits of thought existing at the time of the writer, and likely to influence his style, must be in

vestigated, is most true; but this is not the peculiar merit of the Rationalists: this is the old and sound grammatical interpretation which was used by critics far, very far, superior to any one of them, and long before the existence of their school, and which will be used by future critics when that school, its follies, and its mischief, have passed away and are forgotten. What is peculiar to them is this; that, in interpreting the New Testament, their first business is always, not to examine the words, but to investigate the disposition and character of the writer and his knowledge of religion, the opinions of his age on that subject, and finally, the nature of what he delivers. From these, and not from the words, they seek the sense of Christ's and his followers' discourses: and they examine the words by these previous notions, and not by grammatical methods. They seek for all which Christ said, in the notions held by the Jews in his time; and contend that those are the points first to be studied by an interpreter. They seek thence to explain the history, the dogmatical part of the New Testament, nay, those very discourses of Christ in which he delivers points of faith and morals; and thus to enquire, not what the Founder of our religion and his disciples really thought or said, in each passage and in each sentence, regularly explained on acknowledged rules of interpretation, but what they might have said and ought to have said, according to the opinions of the times and their own knowledge of religion; not what Christ really meant in such or such a discourse, but how the Jews ought to have understood it; not what the apostles wrote, but whether what they wrote is true, according to right reason; not what they actually taught, but what they must have taught from the limits of their own minds and the state of men and things in their days; and lastly, what they would have taught in other times and to other men. This is the Rationalist's style of interpreting scripture; a style which no commentator even on profane writers would ever dream of adopting. The worst specimens of this style are not, I believe, in common use among us; but the student should remember, that there is something of this spirit even in Schleusner, a larger portion in Rosenmüller, and that Kuinöl at least perpetually details the wildest dreams of some of the wildest of this school.' pp. 67–70.

This concise and just statement is (from the words What is peculiar to them, and with the exception of the last sentence) little more than a translation from the venerable Dr. C. C. Tittmann's Preface to his Meletemata Sacra, pp. xiii. xiv., published at Leipzig in 1816. The passage, in that able writer, is followed up by an ample exposure of the preposterous, delusive, and pernicious character of the whole theory. Mr. Rose might have said, that these pretended interpreters do not all set up as the idol to be dominant, that which they think ought to be the Christian system;' for many of them seem to have no system at all in their minds, to be intent only on pulling down, to have no notions of religion, doctrinal or practical