desired by all meanes to conceale them; where they remaine as a monument to the judgement of the world of their everlasting reproach and ignominie. These purging indices are of divers sorts; some worke not above eight hundred yeers upwards: other venture much higher, even to the prime of the church. The effect is, that for as much as there were so many passages in the fathers, and other auncient ecclesiasticall writers, which theyr adversaries producing in averment of their opinions, they were not able but by nicks and shifts of wit to reply to some assemblies of their divines, with consent no doubt of their redoubted superiours and sovereignes, have delivered expresse order, that in the impressions of those authours which hereafter should be made, the scandalous places there named should be cleane left out," and thus "the mouth of antiquity should be throughly shut up from uttering any syllable or sound against them. Then lastly by adding words where opportunity and pretence might serve, and by drawing in the marginall notes and glosses of their friers into the text of the fathers, as in some of them they have very handsomely begun, the mouth of antiquity should be also opened

for them. There remained then only the rectifying of St. Paul, and other places of Scripture," &c.

Such alterations as your correspondent J. N. C. has pointed out, in works distributed by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, are a plain confession that the original authors did not speak in conformity with the present received doctrines of their distributors. Indeed, the alterations must be carried to a considerable extent, before our old writers can be reduced to the wished-for conformity with modernized Christianity; as may be evinced, to name no other proofs, by a simple reference to the index of Jeremy Taylor's Treatise on Repentance, an author whom I mention because he has been much quoted in an existing controversy. I have marked about one hundred instances, in one chapter, in which he uses the terms regenerate and unregenerate; and in no one of them, I believe, with any reference to baptism. He, like Bishop Wilson, makes " VICTORY" Over sin "the only certain criterion of REGENERATION." "A regenerate person," and " a Christian RENEWED by the Spirit of grace," are, in his vocabulary, and, I presume, in yours also, synonymous terms. J. S—, H.

For the Christian Observer. ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE LI

TERATURE OF FICTION.

(Concluded from p. 375.) WERE it proposed to those professedly religious families who allow themselves the perusal of what are considered harmless novels, and that species of modern poetry which usually accompanies them, to draw up a catalogue of the books admitted into the domestic circle, and to compare it with the corresponding

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 187.

list of avowedly worldly families, how would the balance stand? Not so much, I fear, as might be wished, to the credit of the former as devoted and self-denying followers of their acknowledged Lord. If it be said, that the grosser poems and novels are not admitted into the families in question; it may be rejoined, neither are they read in the more regular circles of worldly society. Therefore, no visible difference as yet exists. It is true, a few works may gain admittance to the one which are not

3 K

allowed in the other; but the distinction between the lighter reading of the two divisions of the public should surely be positive and evident, and not made up of a few sickly comparatives.

Putting out of the question, for the present, higher considerations, the members of religious families are losing intellectual ground by the system now in Vogue. Standard works of history and biography, of critical and ethical disquisitions, the earlier poets, treatises on general taste, with many other departments of established literature, are not and cannot be studied and wrought into the texture of the mind during the reign of ephemeral publications. Have the readers, I mean the younger readers of the works in question, gained any familiarity with the Rambler and Adventurer, or grappled with Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric? I almost blush to ask next, which are their favourite stanzas in Beattie's Minstrel; and then, what parts of Cowper come full upon their memories in a solitary walk. To the last-named poet I refer as to a genuine moral classic and his writings may be adduced as the criterion of a mind unsophisticated and well acquainted with itself.

Among the readers interested in these widely-extending subjects, let me particularize such as are placed in situations where they may command their time, select their associates, and consequently model their own characters. Possessed of this envied but insecure independence, our juniors, and especially when not settled in the world, will be powerfully tempted to abuse the high privileges of their leisure; and, unless they are conscious of the responsibility attached to it, will fly to light reading as a refuge from themselves. Among the inmates of the Castle of Indolence, slumbered a class which the manners-painting historian of that fortress might perhaps have identified with cer tain graceful triflers on the Grecian couches of a succeeding age. "Oh

the

According to the fantastic mythology of the era when Thomson composed his matchless poem, god of vapours or of spleen led on the host of imaginative diseases. On the expiration of his power— for the very deities of fashionable life are deposed with the reigning shape of a sandal, or the tint of a vesture arose the dynasty of nerves: and that has since resigned the throne to the demon of ennui, now wielding an iron mace over his subject world of passion, idleness, or unproductive activity.

In contemplating the aspect of the religious world, I am somewhat confounded by feeling as though even the reproofs uttered by such secondary divines and moralists as Blair, Soame Jenyns, Lord Lyttelton, Johnson, Hawkesworth, and Paley, (for instructors of this order are secondary in the estimate of the spiritually-minded Christian,) against what they call the foibles of persons, whom they nevertheless designate as still reputable and exemplary members of society, were in

many instances as fully applicable to the allowed habits of religious families as to those of the unthinking world. This is a portentous phenomenon. It seems to indicate that, enlightened as we are, we are retrograding to the deserted or despised schools of worldly or halfchristianized philosophers, there to be chastised for our aberrations. It is really mortifying to the feel ings of deep veneration entertained by your correspondent for Dr. Johnson, to find him among the secondaries of the moral school: thinking, as he does, that this great man's writings, taken altogether, impart "ardour to virtue and confidence to truth." But, at the same time, consistency requires me to separate myself from the eulogist of Richardson, and to rejoin his cherished society only when he emerges from the loose element of flattery, and moves with his wonted firmness of step on the high ground of purity and truth. To the extract produced in an earlier paragraph from Johnson, when himself again, let me add what will farther expunge the stain which partially discolours his renown. These books (novels) are written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle; to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introductions into life. They are the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account. In the romances formerly written, every transaction and sentiment was so remote from all that passes among men, that the reader was in very little danger of making any application to himself; the virtues and crimes were equally beyond bis sphere of activity; and he amused himself with heroes and with traitors, deliverers and persecutors as with beings of another species. But when an adventurer

is levelled with the rest of the world, and acts in such scenes of the universal drama as may be the lot of any other man; young spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer attention, and hope, by observing his behaviour and success, to regulate their own practices. If the world be (by novelists) promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account: or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately on mankind as upon a mirror which shows all that presents itself without discrimination. It is not a sufficient vindication of a narrative, that the train of events is agreeable to observation and experience; for that observation which is called knowledge of the world, will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good. Many writers so mingle good and bad qualities in their principal personages, that they are both equally conspicuous: and as we accompany them through their adventures with delight, and are led by degrees to interest ourselves in their favour, we lose the abhorrence of their faults, because they do not hinder our pleasure, or perhaps regard them with some kindness for being united with so much merit."*

No dexterity of mine is able to reconcile these golden periods with the adulation offered to the inventor of Lovelace. Most auspiciously the Rambler is an antidote to himself. He may be compared to a plant noxious only in a very small part; an infusion of its flowers being capable of healing the lacerations inflicted by its envenomed thorns.

*In a note appended to the Fourth Number of the Rambler, (whence the above is cited.) in Chalmer's edition of Johnson's works, the editor says; that this excellent paper was occasioned by the popularity of two works which appeared about this time, and have been the models of that species of romance, now known by the more common name of novel. The Fourth Number was pub lished March 31, 1750; and the Ninetyseventh, containing the eulogy on Rich ardson, Feb. 19, 1751.

Johnson's description of the superannuated romances may be applied to those still lingering among us, such as the Arabian Nights, and indeed to all fables of oriental construction; and it so happens, (he states the true reason,) that these heavy stories are discarded by modern novel readers as unutterably and incurably insipid. They do not come home to their business and bosoms; and if they read Rasselas itself, they sit down to it as to a grave lecture in ethics; and Thalaba is tolerated only because inspired by the muse of Roderic.

To this place I have reserved the mention of the popular productions of Miss Edgeworth and the author of Waverley. The merits and demerits of the first of these writers have been estimated, as I think, with measured correctness, in your volume for 1809, (pp. 781-792.) Of the second it is enough for my hostile pen to say, that powers so great might have developed themselves with effect in the demonstrations of philosophy; when, alas! we find them idly playing in novels. Of the performances of this lady and gentleman it is alleged, that they do not exhibit the defilements of Fielding, the polished wickedness of Lovelace, the witchery of Mrs. Radcliffe, or the voluptuous tenderness and delicacy which "with soft perdition please," in some other writers. On the contrary, they give us a faithful insight into the ways of men; and instead of misleading by feigned characters and incidents, describe such as actually exist. Indeed they do! I fully assent to the allegation; and, if we could gaze on those vivid panoramas of the world without seeing more than will do us good and not evil, and without wishing to come closer to the objects which we have dimly seen in the camera obscura of books; if the world's gayety, wit, decoration, policy, and plausible courses of stratagem can be surveyed without exciting in the ardent minds of our juniors one impulsive desire

to join the masquerade itself, without kindling a kind of resolution, (which they scarcely venture to own even to themselves, while they faintly endeavour to smother the glowing spark by a reverence for conscience,) that at a future day they too will play their part in the grand exhibition, no matter whether disappointed or not,-for, after all, some, they are told, succeed and are happy; if such immature speculators can be restrained from practising the arts of real men and women, on a small scale, first in the school-rooms and parlours of their petty world at home, and afterwards in the wider range of the family's connexions, and in general society; if, in short, there be in human nature an inherent, active power of selecting what may be beneficial from what is, at any rate, a mixed mass;—then, sir, I would urge, that no "Practical Views of Christian Education" may hereafter be published to disturb the safe repose of novel reading families. Dissolve all the standing committees of the religious world meeting year after year, and especially banish your work from the numerous circles in which, with exemplary regularity, it has made its appearance for one hundred and eighty-six months, embracing more than the long succession of fifteen years, in order to reform, and to perpetuate by reformation, the moral constitution of this empire. Let the spiritual legislator retire to the solitude, darkness, and mystic visions of the mountain; while the wanderers of the peopled and more inviting wilderness restore the rites and festive pleasures of Egypt, and amidst their sacrifices cry, These be thy gods, O Israel!"

То escape, in the concluding paragraph, from a levity too contagious to be safe when the subject imposes seriousness, permit me to repeat the intimation, that there is an indulgence, and almost a plenary indulgence, at this day allowed in many religious families, both in retirement and in town life, with

So

regard to secular literature. far the Christian public has deserted the higher stations occupied by a preceding generation. By what measures the position may be regained I am not formally prepared to detail. It is, however, in the power of the rulers of families either to expel altogether the works immediately connected with this remonstrance, or to glean out such of them as they judge will not injure those select and disciplined members of their families who can and will separate the useful parts of fiction from its dross. It is also in the power of those who rule themselves to make a virtuous effort; and in self-defence, to confine their reading to books which amuse the mind without disturbing the sobriety of creatures responsible for their time and talents; and who, by confessing their responsibility, furnish an irresistible argument for their own consistency.

P. 10. This doc- P. 10. The words trine,however,is vir-in Italics left out, tually at least,if not and instead of them actually denied by a reference to some ministers of our Whitefield's Eighchurch; and it is de-teen Sermons quotnied in terms, which led below, p. 23, charge the main-inserted at the end tainers of it with,' of the sentence. &c. P. 11. But that P. 11. But that those also are so rethose also are so re-generated who regenerated, to whom ceive baptism rightly baptism is rightly or, what in the case administered,' of infants,at least in aChristian country, amounts to the same thing,to whom baptism is rightly administered.'

EDITION 1815.

fain fasten heresy upon church.'

P. 20. I will now

EDITION 1817. P. 15. 'Would P. 15. • Would their fain fasten their own our private opinion upon the church." P. 20. I will now venture to say, that venture to express I do not think it posny opinion, that a sible that a doubt doubt can hardly can exist upon theexist upon the mind mind of any fair in-of any reasonable quirer, with respect inquirer, with reto the opinion en-spect to the opinion tertained by our entertained by our church,' &c. church,' &c.

Pp.22,23.[White- P. 22. The words field] 'declared with in italics left out. inconceivable effrontery.... and pronounced with a spirit of uncharitableness equal to his effrontery,' &c.

P. 23. Nor will P. 23. The whole it be heard without passage expunged, surprise, mingled, and what follows of perhaps, with some regeneration, being tion, that not only banners, as a watchdegree of indigna- inscribed on the

among the deluded word,'made to refer partisans of schis-only to the foundmatical enthusiasm ers of Methodism," but in the very bo-&c. by the insertion som of the church, of the words, 'Of there are men, who persons such as have pledged them-these.' selves most solemnly to the support of her doctrines, and who arrogate to themselves the distinction of being her only faithful sons; whose preaching, nevertheless, is

ia irreconcileable opposition to her unequivocal and numerous declarations on this important article of her creed.'

P. 24. By being P. 24. The word born again something is deabsolutely omitted. signed absolutely necessary to be attained by those, who would enter," &c.

We con

P. 27. We con- P. 27. ceive this union ofceive this union of water, as the in-water, as the instrument, and of the strument, with the Spirit, as the effi-Spirit, as the efficient principle, to cient principle, to be absolutely neces-be necessary, where sary, it may be had.",