June 27. At Thornton House, Anna, eldest daughter of Colonel Cunningham. At Haddington, Mr Wm. Shiells, late brewer there, in the 67th year of his age. -At Milton Cottage, Capt. George Macpherson, R. N. 28. At Prestonpans, Ann Comb, daughter of the late James Comb, Esq. -In James's Square, Edinburgh, Mrs Mary Hardy, relict of Mr James Gilchrist, navy agent London. 29. At Bandirran, aged seven years, William, only son of J. M. Nairn, Esq. of Dunsinane. -At Burghead, the Rev. Lewis Gordon, D. D. one of the ministers of Elgin, in the 76th year of his age, and the 55th of his ministry. 30. At Burnside of Dalbeattie, David Copland, Esq. late of Gregory. -At Burrowmuirhead, Mrs Janet Spottiswood, spouse of Mr John Robertson of Lawhead. -At Paddington, William Ellice, Esq. in the 41st year of his age. July 1. At Kielburn, parish of Laurencekirk, after ten years confinement by rheumatism, which she bore with exemplary fortitude and resignation, Elizabeth, wife of Lieut. Scott, half-pay 624 regiment. 2. Mrs Grizel Smart, relict of Mr William Cunningham, Haddington. 3. At her house in Berkeley Square, London, the Dowager Countess of Albemarle, in the 82d year of her age. - At Clifton, at the advanced age of 93 years, William Compton, Esq. LL.D. Chancellor of the diocese of Ely. 4. In Cavendish Square, London, after a sudden relapse of illness, the Countess of Brownlow. - At Glasgow, Adam Graham, Esq. of Craigallian. - At Edinburgh, Mr Charles Moodie, of the Auditor's Office, Exchequer. 5. At Abbey St Bathan's, Mr Andrew Wallace, teacher of mathematics in Edinburgh. -At the manse of Liff, William Scott, second son of the Rev. George Addison. 7. At London, in his 81st year, Sir George Wood, Knt. late one of the Barons of the Court of Exchequer. 8. At her house in Brighton, Amelia Charlotte, second daughter of the late Archibald Grant, of Pittencrieff, Esq. -At Greenock, Thomas Ramsay, Esq. in the 85th year of his age. -At Wakefield, Janet, wife of Daniel Maude, Esq. and second daughter of the late Geo. Munro, Esq. of Calderbank. From inflammation, after an illness of two days, George Earl of Tyrone, eldest son of the Marquis of Waterford. 9. At Mortimer Cottage, Berkshire, Elizabeth, relict of the late David Murray, Esq. brother of Lord Elibank, and daughter of the late Right Hon. Thomas Harley. -At Fort William, Mr Thomas Gillespie, tenant at Ardachy, one of the most extensive storefarmers in the north of Scotland. -At Wellington Place, Leith, Mr James Marr, corn merchant. - At Dalkeith, Mrs Ann Aitken, wife of Mr John Grey, merchant there. -At sea, on his passage home from Jamaica, Colin Stewart Bruce, Esq. of Seaforth. - At Balfron manse, the Rev. James Jeffrey, in the 75th year of his age, and 37th of his ministry. 11. At Newck, Mrs James Haig. -After a long and painful illness, Wm. Henderson, Esq. of Nunholm. --At Inverary, Major General Dugald Camp. bell. July 11. At Glasgow, Mr John Thomson, merchant, aged 71. At Calder Hall, near Carlisle, Isabella Anne, eldest daughter of General Sir R. Æmilius Irving, Bart. late of Woodhouse. 13. At Ironside House, Abbeyhill, Edinburgh, Ann Somerville, aged 73, relict of the late Mr David Gray, merchant, Edinburgh. At Freeland, Penelope Leslie, daughter of Major Walker. At Leith, William Henderson, Esq. of Bar dister, Shetland, in the 69th year of his age. 14. At Edinburgh, Mrs Margaret Macdonald, wife of Captain John Macdonald, barrack-master, Edinburgh, and youngest sister of Sir William Bulkeley Hughes of Plascoch, county of Anglesea, North Wales. 15. At Edinburgh, Gilbert Hutcheson, Esq. Depute Judge Advocate for Scotland. At the Cottage of Rockhall, Mary Anne, third daughter of Alex. Grierson, Esq. younger of Lag. - At Brunstain, Mrs Brown, wife of Mr John Brown, farmer there. 17. At Meadow Place, Edinburgh, Mrs Catharine Webster, widow of the Rev. John Webster. - At Ploughlands, near Edinburgh, Mary, daughter of Alexander Fraser, Esq. accountant. At Walker-Street, Edinburgh, George Sandilands, Esq. 19. Charles Louis Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, of Bridge-Hill House, in Kent, and of the Chateau de Labrede, near Bourdeaux, South of France. He was formerly a distinguished officer in the French service, of an ancient and noble family of Guienne, and descended of the illustri ous Montesquieu, one of the greatest ornaments of French literature. The Baron settled in Kent, after the revolution of France. -At Gogar Lodge, Mrs Dr Stewart. - At Edinburgh, the Rev. Dr Thomas Fleming, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, in the 70th year of his age, and 45th of his ministry. 20. At Ruthwell Cottage, Mrs Ann M.Murdo, relict of the Rev. George Duncan, minister of Lochrutton, in the 79th year of her age. 21. At the Priory, Stanmore, Lady Jane Gordon, eldest daughter of the Earl of Aberdeen. - At Aberdeen, Mrs Ann Garioch, widow of the late Dr Walker of Laurence kirk. 22. At Falmouth, in the 58th year of his age, George Munro, Esq. of the colony of Berbice. 23. In Charlotte-Street, Ayr, Andrew Belch, Esq. writer in Ayr. 24. At Sansonate, Mexico, George Cochran, Esq. of the house of Robert Cochran and Sons, Paisley. 25. At Edinburgh, Major James Ballantyne, of Holylee. 27. Her Grace the Duchess of Gordon, after a most severe illness of above twelve months, which she bore with the greatest fortitude and resignation. Lately. At Drayten, near Abingdon, Berks, aged 85, William Hayward, Esq. In his life. time, Mr H. had distributed many thousands among his relatives, nevertheless, he died worth £400,000, the greater part of which he has left among them, many of whom are in indigent cir cumstances. -On his passage to Europe, for the recovery of health, Ensign George Huntly Gordon, of the Hon. East-India Company's service, youngest son of Lieutenant-General Gordon Cumming Skene, of Pitlurg and Dyce. -Off Algiers, suddenly, Mr Wm. Rogers, Master of his Majesty's ship Glasgow. - At his house in Duke-Street, St James's London, Major-General Macquarrie, late Governor of New South Wales. J. Ruthven & Son, Printers. THE EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, AND LITERARY MISCELLANY. SEPTEMBER 1824. A DEFENCE OF THE LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, ON MIRACLES. "The scoffers who have laughed at the miracles are unacquainted with this faith of ours; the unction of the spirit which teaches us does not render them docile, and hence all things must be natural to men unacquainted with what is supernatural. They will descend with Spinoza to the vis medicatrix naturæ, and search for the attributes of the Divinity in the inertness or volubility of matter,-or, with Hobbes or Hume, they will disarm the Deity of his power, cast down with human liberty the essential land-marks of right and wrong, and, with Rousseau, doubt, or, with the sage of Ferney, laugh at all that is sacred in the Gospel dispensation. They will do this, and, with a profaneness and insolence peculiar to infidelity, affix names of reproach to characters the most blameless, filling their reviews, or pamphlets, with a silly bombast, which a man of letters, or a Christian, can scarcely peruse, but which gratifies the appetite of the unlettered and profane; as Lactantius has it,' omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernunt.'” J. K. L. To the Editor of the Edinburgh Magazine. SIR, Audi alteram partem is a maxim which those who conduct the periodical press will, I trust, always keep in view; and presuming that your respectable Miscellany is open to those who may consider themselves aggrieved in its columns, I mean to offer some observations, by way of vindication, on the article entitled "Irish Miracles," inserted in your Numbers for March and April last, professing to be a critique on my hasty literary trifle in the shape of a letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. Had the reviewer confined his remarks to my proposition, that miraculous powers had never ceased, and would probably always continue in the Christian church, I would have been contented to have passed him over in silence; but as he has been pleased to make an unfair attack upon Catholics, and their religion, it becomes necessary to endeavour to counteract the baneful effects which his misrepresentations may produce in the minds of such of your readers as may be unfortunately prepossessed against both, by exposing them in their true colours. The reviewer, no doubt, occasionally displays some sound sense, and a little good feeling, but his imagination seems to be so bewildered at the very idea of miracles happening in any Christian country, that he frequently lays aside both, and thus involves himself in the greatest contradictions. He shews, for instance, his good sense in ridiculing the "worse than trifling" plan of those Protestants who "deny the fact of the cures," who " grasp at the certificates of the physicians," and who "try the said cures by the tests of what they deem true miracles;" and he indicates his good feeling, when VOL. XV. I i he says, that "the absurdity of the Protestants consists in attempting to invalidate the fact, (of the cures,) by imputing to the patients, the witnesses, and the DIGNITARIES of the Roman Catholic Church, a duplicity, hypocrisy, and fraud, which charity scorns and liberality rejects.” Yet, a little before, he had designated the miracles, as barefaced imposture ;" and towards the end of his article, as if forgetting what he had previously written, he gravely talks of the "manner in which the whole affair was got up and carried on at Ranelagh !" In the reviewer's apprehension, the "ground" which both Catholics and Protestants have taken up is "unsatisfactory;" for the Catholics are said, "as usual," to mix " a little bit of sophistry" in their argument, by maintaining, what appears to the reviewer a very extraordinary proposition, that an incurable disease cannot be cured by natural means; and the Protestants, instead of denying this conclusion," which the reviewer wisely says "is unwarranted, on the principles of fair reasoning, analogy, and experience,” are guilty of the "absurdity" of calling the fact of the cures, and the evidence on which they are founded, in question-of trying the miracles by tests,—and of having recourse to the most uncharitable insinuations! He therefore laments that "the Protestants have not entrenched themselves within those principles from which they could not be driven by all the learning, subtilty, and force of the enemy ;" and, of course, like a skilful general, he proposes to erect an impregnable fortress of principles, out of which neither learning, power, nor stratagem, shall be able to drive him. He disclaims all unfair dealing; and, " casting away from his mind," with the candour, magnanimity, and charity of a Christian hero, the unworthy insinuations of Protestants, "which charity scorns and liberality rejects," and "admitting the cures as told by the patients themselves, and their witnesses," he proceeds "to shew, that these cures, to all their supposed extent, however wonderful, are not supernatural." But before entering upon his mighty task, the reviewer, as if afraid of the solidity of the structure he is about to raise, has the singular precaution to intimate, that, although the "cures were sequences of the Prince's prayers, and the sacrifice of the mass, AS MUCH SO AS EFFECTS ARE OF CAUSES, yet it would not necessarily follow that these have been brought about by the interposition of Heaven, through the instrumentality of the Prince, or his power with God!!" To establish his position, that the cures in question are not supernatural, the reviewer first considers the "infallible tests of true miracles,"-secondly, the objects for which the cures were wrought; and, by the application of certain" principles deduced from these, to the cures before us," he concludes, "that there was nothing supernatural in them whatever;" a method, he observes, which rids us at once of all the obstacles " about the efficacy of prayer, the efficacy of the mass, the power of working miracles being continued in the Church of Rome, conspiracy and fraud, and natural causes, and brings the question to a short and satisfactory issue!" The main object of the reviewer's plan, which he endeavours to support by a strange misapplication of Scripture, seems to be, not so much to controvert my proposition, (which indeed were impossible,) as to shew that miraculous powers cannot now exist in the Catholic Church, on account of certain alleged additions to, and subtractions from Scripture, which the reviewer fancies to exist. Yet he does not pretend that any of the reformed churches either had, have, or will have these powers conferred on them, and therefore the truth of their doctrines is to be ascertained by an absolute negation of miracles, contrary to the opinion of Grotius, Paley, and the other learned advocates of revelation, who consider miracles as the criterion of truth! In his borrowed enumeration of the tests of true miracles, the reviewer is undoubtedly correct; for as, under the old law, the workers of false miracles were to be known by their attempt to withdraw God's chosen people from his worship, and to induce them to " go after other gods,"-so, under the New Testament dispensation, the false Christs and false prophets, who are to shew great signs and wonders, will be recognised by their open hostility to Christ, and by their denying that he has come in the flesh. But as the tests given to the Jews did not supersede the exercise of those miraculous powers with which the Saints of the old law were invested, (the whole history of the Jewish people being a series of miracles,)-so neither do the tests for distinguishing false from true miracles, given to Christians, set aside those miraculous powers which our Saviour promised, without any limitation of time, to his followers. To argue, therefore, against the possibility of miracles, merely because there have been, or may be, false miracles, is not only to deny the truth of all history, but to call in question revelation itself1. "He that believeth in me, the works that I do he also shall do, and greater than these shall he do.' To disbelieve this promise requires, on our part, an apostacy from the faith; to limit its operation, depends not on us, but on God! The disciples of Christ who were sent to preach the gospel to every creature, preparatory to the consummation, have been followed by the signs which he described or foretold. They might take up serpents, or drink poison, without being injured, and the imposition of their hands could cure diseases. Who will disprove the miracles wrought in the Church according to his promise? Who can deny their existence, without rejecting the evidence which human testimony and public records exhibit in every age 2?" But not contented with the tests borrowed from Dr Doyle, of whom, on that account at least, he ought to have spoken more respectfully, the reviewer thinks the test "given by St. John in the Revelations is the security of the Church in every age," (as well, of course, before as after the reformation),that "it points out, as with a sunbeam, the Church which is of God, which is approved of him, and which is his own." Most assuredly the Church which should add unto, or take away from the words of St. John's prophecy, would not be the Church which is of God; but the reviewer surely knows that the Catholic Church, which ALONE has existed" in every age," never did so. He, however, with a reviewer's licence, adds to, or enlarges the text, by applying it to all Scripture generally, to enable himself the more readily to answer a question he puts, whether the Church of Rome has added to, or taken away from Scripture?-a question which, it may be supposed, he solves very satisfactorily, by saying that "it has done both," and adducing a few instances in support of his assertion. That the same denunciations which St. John records against those who add to or take from the words of his prophecy, await those who use the same liberties with other Scripture, is abundantly obvious; but before we can arrive at any fair conclusion on charges of such a serious nature as those made by the reviewer, we must previously ascertain what Scripture is, and under what authority it is defined and explained. Passing over, however, such inquiry à present, I shall now proceed to dispose of the reviewer's charges against the Catholic Church, of having added to, and taken from Scripture, in the instances adduced by him. 1st, We are accused of having "taken away the second commandment, as to images." This charge is false, and the reviewer in reiterating it, (for he is only a repeater of the calumny,) must have known it to be untrue, or believed it credulously, without inquiry. He is, to use his own expression, welcome to either limb of the alternative, but charity warns me to adopt the latter, though at the expense of his understanding. Allow me, Sir, to ask this theologian, in whose custody Protestants found their second commandment at the time of their pretended reformation? If he cannot answer this 1 St. Mark xvi. 17, 18. St John xiv. 12. 1 Cor. xii. 28. 2 Defence by J. K. L., p. 13. 3 It may be useful to the reviewer to be informed, that the book of Revelations was rejected by some of the ancients as spurious, (vid. Eusebius L. 3, chap. 28,) and St. Jerom (Epist. ad Dardanum) says, that the greater part of the Greek Churches in his time did not receive it. The early fathers, however, generally attributed the book to St. John the Evangelist, and though not found in the catalogue of the Council of Laodicea, or of St Cyril, it was afterwards admitted by the Greek and Latin Churches, was reckoned amongst the Canonical books by the third Council of Carthage in 397, and latterly by the Council of Trent. Father Luther, notwithstanding, rejected it, along with the Epistle to the Hebrews, and those of St. James and St. Jude! easy question, let him mention by what notable discovery this concealed commandment was found out. But is it really possible to conceive that a writer, who boasts of " the blaze of philosophical and religious light which illuminates Britain," and who, of course, considers himself enlightened by its rays, could be so grossly ignorant as not to know that every word of the ten commandments stands in the Catholic Bible as fully and explicitly as in that of Protestants? If he was really so ignorant, it was his duty to have examined the version of the Scriptures used by the Catholic Church and Catholics (for we too have our Bibles in our houses, though we do not make them school-books,) to have ascertained the fact; nay, farther, he should have perused our books of instruction and catechisms, and even in these he would have found his second commandment inserted at full length. Should his liberality and charity prompt him to doubt my veracity, and make him suppose I am committing a pious fraud, I am ready to produce, on demand, a variety of doctrinal works and catechisms approved of by our Church, to establish my statement. As the standard of these, I may, in the meantime, refer to the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in which the reviewer will find the commandment in question 1. It is true, Catholics divide the commandment differently from Protestants, by making what Protestants call the first and second, the first, and dividing the tenth of Protestants into two; into the merits of which division I do not mean to enter. But it may be observed, that, although mention be made in the Bible of the ten words of the law, the mode of dividing the commandments is not pointed out, and our Saviour comprehensively reduced them to two. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, in the plan referred to, observes thus on the second commandment of Protestants: "Some thinking this to be another commandment, will have the two last to have the force of one commandment only; but St. Austin, dividing those last, will have these words to belong to the first commandment; which opinion, because it is most celebrated in the Church, we willingly follow." But instead of disputing about the division of the commandments, let us emulate one another in their observance; and whether the precept, "thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour," be the eighth or ninth commandment, let the reviewer, in future, bear it in mind when he comes to speak of his Catholic brethren. 66 2dly, "Though the cup is given to all in the Scriptures, our Lord saying, Drink ye all of it, yet the Church of Rome has taken it away, and given them only the bread, or wafer, in the communion." But where is the precept that the people must communicate under both kinds? Certainly not in the words of the institution, for the comandment, " Drink ye all of it," was addressed only to the Apostles, who alone were present at the Last Supper, and who were on that occasion appointed Priests, to perform the same act of sacrifice and communion, in remembrance of HIM who had offered up his body and blood, under the appearance of bread and wine, in fulfilment of that prophecy which denominated him a priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec." As Priests, therefore, the Apostles, and their successors in the ministry, were to receive under both kinds, which was indispensable in the discharge of their priestly functions; and "hence (says Dr Milner) it is seen that the command of Christ, on which our opponents lay so much stress, Drink ye all of this, regards the Apostles as Priests, and not the Laity as communicants 2." The institution of the Eucharist regarded the whole Church; as a sacrifice and sacrament it regarded the Apostles and their successors, and the people, merely as a sacrament; but the institution does not determine whether the people are to receive it in one or both kinds. We find, however, from St. Luke's Gospel, that our Saviour himself, on the day of his resurrection, administered the sacrament, under the form of bread alone, to Cleophas and the other disciple 3; and that the Apostles did the same, is equally clear, from the second chapter of Acts, in which mention is made of the baptized converts joining in the breaking of bread, and from 1 Part Third, Sect 32. 2 End of Relig. Controv., Letter 39. 3 |
