The Gift of Prayer. By Thomas Mann. Third Edition.

A Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art. Edited by W. T. Brande, F.R.S.L. and E. Part I.

Notes on the Epistle to the Corinthians. By Albert Barnes. (Ward's Library.)

The Rise and Progress of Dissent in Bristol, chiefly in relation to Broadmead Church. By J. G. Fuller.

The Centurion, or Scripture Portraits of Roman Officers.

Letters to an Aged Mother. By a Clergyman.

A Visit to the Indians on the Frontiers of Chili. By Captain A. F. Gardiner, R.N.

The Life and Times of Rev. Robert Housman, of Leicester. By R. F. Housman.

Egypt and Mohammed Ali. By R. R. Madden, M.D.

Pictorial Edition of Shakspere. Measure for Measure.

The Reconciler, or an Attempt to Exhibit in a new light the Harmony and Glory of the Divine Government and the Divine Sovereignty. By a Quadragenarian in the Ministry.

An Address on laying the Foundation Stone of the Lancashire Independent College. By George Hadfield.

Vivia Perpetua, a Dramatic Poem in Five Acts. By Sarah Flower Adams. Family Secrets. Part I. By Mrs. Ellis.

The Scottish Congregational Magazine. New Series.

Reflections on the Fiftieth Anniversary of his Ordination, delivered at Argyle Chapel, Bath. By Rev. William Jay.

The Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys, Esq., including a Narrative of his Voyage to Tangier. 2 vols.

Pulpit Recollections, or Miscellaneous Sermons Preached in the Parish Church of Stoke-upon-Trent. By the Rev. Sir William Dunbar.

Memoir of C. T. E. Rhenius, with Extracts from his Journal and Correspondence, with detail of Missionary proceedings in South India. By his Son.

Anti-Popery, or Popery Unreasonable, Unscriptural, and Novel. By John

Rogers.

The Work of the Holy Spirit in Conversion. By John Howard Hinton, A.M. Third Edition.

Individual Effort and the Active Christian. By J. H. Hinton, A.M. New Edition.

A Cry from the Tombs, or Facts and Observations on the Impropriety of burying the Dead among the Living. By James Peggs.

Part II.

The Wine Question Settled. By Rev. B. Parsons.
Philosophic Nuts. By E. Johnson, Esq.
The Present State of East Indian Slavery.
ary in Orissa.

By James Peggs, late Mission

Difficulties of Elementary Geometry. By Francis W. Newman, formerly Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford.

Biblical Cabinet. No. 30. Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians. By John Calvin. Translated from the original by the Rev. William Pringle, Auchterarder.

Fox's Book of Martyrs. Part I. Edited by Rev. John Cumming, M.A. The Works of Josephus. Translated by W. Whiston, A.M. Part 9, The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland, Illustrated from Drawings by W. H. Bartlett. The literary department by N. P. Willis, Esq. Part I. Canadian Scenery Illustrated, from Drawings by W. H. Bartlett. The literary department by N. P. Willis, Esq. Part 10.

THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

FOR APRIL, 1841.

Art. I. Church Principles Considered in their Results. By W. E. GLADSTONE, Esq., late Student of Christchurch and M.P. for Newark. London: Murray. 1840.

THIS is a curious book. It is an attempt to establish and illustrate the most prominent and dangerous of the high Church doctrines maintained by the Oxford Tract writers, not so much by historic evidence, the only evidence in favor of such extravagancies that would be worth a farthing, but principally by-what does the reader think? — their antecedent probability! their adaptation to the nature and the necessities of man and their harmony with the principles of the divine government! So that, as Bishop Butler's celebrated work was entitled 'The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Re'vealed, to the Constitution and the Course of Nature,' Mr. Gladstone's ambitious volume might be entitled 'The Analogy 'of the Oxford Tract Doctrines of Church Authority, the Apos'tolical Succession, Sacramental Efficacy, &c., to the Constitu'tion and the Course of Human Nature and of Divine Providence.' But alas! here all resemblance ceases. Wide, indeed, is the difference between the speculative and argumentative powers of the Bishop of Gloucester and those of the member for Newark; a difference as wide as that between the sublime truths established by the one and the miserably contracted and uncharitable doctrines propounded by the other. Of all the publications of the Pusey school which have come under our notice, this is one of the weakest, and yet, strange to say, may be (to a certain class of readers) one of the most dangerous:

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we mean to those who are not accustomed to think for themselves, or to ask the proper and sufficient evidence of whatever propositions are submitted to them. And this assuredly is no small class in a school which professedly defers rather to authority than reason, which makes many of its most peculiar and improbable mysteries dependent in no wise on logic, but simply on faith; and which, generally, errs rather on the side. of believing too much than of believing too little.

To such men as those above adverted to, the present work will be dangerous on several grounds; first and chiefly, because it abounds in that well-known fallacy, humorously described by Whately, of stating something which is true, but which is really nothing to the purpose, as if it were decisive of the controversy; of stating with much pomp certain general principles which every body admits, leaving the incautious reader to take for granted that the particular point under discussion is involved in them, and to infer that because there is very little to which he objects, that therefore the author has proved his proposition. To illustrate by a single example. In a long, and in many parts affectedly metaphysical chapter, at the commencement of the work, entitled Rationalism,' there is really very little, till quite towards the close, to which any reader who admits the Scriptures to be true will take the slightest objection. It abounds with such truisms as these:-that there is a tendency in the human mind to reject mysteries which transcend the human understanding-that this reluctance is no sufficient reason for their rejection-that there is need of preternatural influences to correct the bias of our depraved affections-that the understanding alone will not suffice for this task-that the exhibition of doctrine, however true, is equally insufficient for it and so forth; all which we suppose few persons would be disposed to deny. But the question still returns, even when we have admitted that there is a reluctance in the human understanding to receive mysteries which are above its comprehension,-what is the proper evidence, notwithstanding intrinsic difficulty or apparent incomprehensibleness, on which any particular mystery is worthy of being received in spite of the acknowledged tendency of human nature to reject it? When we argue with the Socinian, for example, we admit that the doctrine of the Trinity is indeed a most profound and incomprehensible mystery; but we receive it upon what we deem the sufficient evidence of revelation,-upon revelation based upon appropriate and sufficient proofs. We should never think it much to the purpose to adduce in support of the doctrine of the Trinity, the general reluctance to receive mysteries, except to remove a very faint presumption against it. After the general principle has been established, that it does not become us to

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reject mysteries as such, the question as to what particular mysteries are worthy of belief is to be decided on entirely other grounds. To a reader of moderate sagacity, therefore, Mr. Gladstone's elaborately argued truisms will just go for nothing, until the principles on behalf of which they are adduced are established by appropriate evidence. Yet all such evidence Mr. Gladstone modestly disclaims all intention of adducing. He tells us the first, the most appropriate, and the highest "mode of discussing the subject is the scientific process whereby these principles are deduced and proved from holy Scripture; but let no one suppose in opening this volume that 'it pretends to repeat the process of demonstration upon these 'topics; for it, the reader must refer to other and easily acces'sible sources.' We must acknowledge that 'the process of ' demonstration,' as he calls it, and the scientific process by which these principles are deduced and proved from holy Scripture,' have never, in our opinion, been so satisfactorily performed as to exempt an advocate from the attempt to perform them with better success; and in particular we should much wish that Mr. Gladstone had tried his hand at the task, if only for the sake of neutralizing those dangerous plausibilities by which we fear unwary readers are liable to be misled; imagining, easy men! that they are put into possession of solid arguments for the particular doctrines contended for, while in fact they are merely put in possession of specious generalities which no one ever thought of denying. Thus there is many a weak man who, upon its being proved to him that it is no sufficient argument for the rejection of a mystery that it transcends the powers of the human understanding, would immediately suppose that there was no reason why he should not believe the mystery of the apostolical succession; and as many more who, upon its being shown that there was a need of preternatural influences to effect the great work of man's renovation, would straightway conclude that they had got hold of a very excellent reason why they should admit the terrible delusion of baptismal regeneration. Mr. Gladstone must know very well that amongst those who are willing to receive such a mystery as the Trinity, the grand objection to the doctrines of apostolical succession and baptismal regeneration, is not that they are mysteries, but that the proper and independent evidence of them is demanded, and is not forthcoming. As 'to the other and easily accessible sources,' to which Mr. Gladstone refers us, all we can say is, that we do not know where they are to be found; but we readily acknowledge that the method which Mr. Gladstone has adopted does great credit to his discretion; it is far more easy and far more plausible.

Secondly; we fear that with many readers of the Pusey

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school (with whom a thing's being a mystery often seems to be not merely no objection, but a singular recommendation, and an antecedent ground of probability), the very appearance of metaphysical profundity and superfluous subtlety, which our author knows so well how to put on, will seem very imposing and conclusive. If they cannot understand, they can take for granted, and will be ready to believe that where there is so much smoke, there must be a great deal of fire; that such sentences as the following (and they will find whole pages of them), however unintelligible, involve some mystery or other-which though in reality very innocent, and as little connected with Church Principles as with good writing, it behoves them devoutly to believe. This power of confidence, then, has a ground in the several departments of the mind; and the question, in which of the two it operates with the 'greater force, depends upon a larger one-that, namely, 'whether in general, or in the given case, or in both, the affections supply the subject matter and the movements of the 'individual character in a greater or less degree than the other 'faculties of his nature, his passions, his particular propensions, 'his lower desires. It is enough here to have shown that the 'work is a joint one; that confidence is operative on practice by substitution; and operative alike through the single action of mind, and through the double action of mind and heart: we might perhaps add, that third case, in which the heart prompts instinctive action without the perceptible intervention of the understanding in its instrumental capacity.' Surely the spirit of Plato's Protagoras must have transmigrated into the honorable member for Newark, or he must be inspired by those divinities in Aristophanes ;

Who pour down on us gifts of fluent speech,

Sense most sententious, wonderful for fine effect,
And how to talk about it and about it.'

Without pretending to give an analysis of the whole contents of Mr. Gladstone's book, with a great part of which, indeed, being perfectly true and nothing to the purpose, we have no manner of quarrel, we shall proceed to specify a few of the instances of his remarkable logic when he ventures to apply his indeterminate generalities to the establishment of his peculiar Church principles. The first shall be from that chapter on Rationalism on which we have already made some remarks. He has rightly argued in that chapter for the necessity of some spiritual influence above and beyond human nature to secure the renovation of man. Now there is an obvious sense in which every Christian would be perfectly willing to subscribe to this