tianity, it is sufficient that the practice is condemned by the positive command of the Almighty-"Thou shalt do no murder," and that it is opposed not only by the letter, but by the whole spirit of our holy religion, the essence of which is love to God and man. These are the principles upon which I have acted, and to which, by God's assistance, I am determined ever to adhere, through honour and dishonour, through evil report and good report. Eternity is of too serious importance to be staked against the opinion of the world; and professing to fear him who can destroy both body and soul forever, I dare not offend him by the deliberate commission of a crime, which may send me or a fellow-creature uncalled into his presence, with the dreadful consciousness of wilful sin, which cannot be repented of."

This address, of which I am enabled only to give you an imperfect sketch, was heard with great surprise, but with an effect much to the credit of those to whom it was offered. It was well known, that at no very distant period, Theophilus would not have declined a challenge, and those who were disposed to attribute his new principles to a methodistical bias, could not refuse their applause to his manly avowal of them, whilst all concurred in approving that conduct which had exposed him to the insult of an unprincipled libertine. Some of the company did not hesitate to express an unqualified approbation of his behaviour, and an old and respectable divine spoke with enthusiasm in favour of it, as affording an example which, under similar circum

stances, all were bound to imi tate, at the hazard of their im mortal souls.

I now revert to myself. The period of my residence with Theophilus is nearly expired, and in a few days I must leave my invaluable friend and benefactor, and return once more to the mixed society of the world. I am too well acquainted with the power of long established habit not to feel some apprehension of danger from the temptations to which I may be expos ed, on revisiting the scenes of my former dissipation. Of all my life, I can only reckon the last six months as in any degree devoted to God, and to the care of my own soul, and I feel there. fore my want of constant aid from the society, encouragement, and example of those, who live by the rules of the gospel. This aid I am not to expect from my old friends and associates. My newly acquired principles are, I trust, too firmly fixed, to be shaken by ridicule or sarcasm; on this account I have no alarms; but what I most dread is the contagious influence of the sociéty of those, who though not professed infidels, and even nominal Christians, live without God in the world. of such a society is the greater because it is not as much suspected as it ought to be, and there is a natural tendency to accommodate ourselves to the dispositions and conversations of those with whom we associate, particularly when we are not disgusted by open profaneness, immorality, or indelicacy. Our principles are thus gradually undermined, for want of due care to invigorate and confirm them,

The danger

for the daily recurrence of frivolous and worldly conversation naturally tends to produce idle habits of thinking, and in time, if not counteracted, to annihilate the very power of serious reflection and meditation.

I have explained my apprehensions to Theophilus, who is pleased to find that I entertain them; he tells me to be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, for the support of divine grace. He has promised to write to me frequently, and to introduce me to the acquaintance of a most respectable clergyman in London, as well as of another friend of his, with an assurance that I may depend on their assistance and advice, in whatever relates to my spiritual concerns. I shall leave him with unfeigned regret, but with this consolatory hope, that a few months will enable me to finish the business which calls me to the metropolis, and that I may then return to his society; for the benefit I have already derived from which I most devoutly return thanks to God.

EDWARD ASIATICUS.

PAPIAS AND IRENEUS VINDICATED, RESPECTING THE MILLENARIAN TENET.

[Selected from a work of the Rev. Thomas Hartley, entitled, Paradise Restor'd; or a Testimony to the Doctrine of the blessed Millennium.]

In the Panoplist for August, page 92, in the Life of St. Irenæus, given from the Christian Observer, we find the following

paragraph; "Irenæus is also said to have been for some time the scholar of Papias, the Bishop of Hieropolis, a man of unquestionable piety, but of a weak judgment and narrow understanding, which, leading him to misunderstand some of the more abstruse parts of scripture, proved the occasion of great errors in many who followed him, and revered his memory; errors, the contagion of which, Irenæus himself did not wholly escape."

It would be doing justice to the memory of those pious and ancient fathers, to notice what has been said and published, on the other hand, by those who have made it much the business of a long life, to search into antiquity, and to inquire what was accounted orthodox doctrine in the early ages of the church.

To answer such a purpose, the following extract from the above mentioned venerable author, is submitted to the judgment of the editors of the Panoplist.

Mr. Hartley, in citing the testimony of the primitive fathers for a future triumphant state of the church, under a visible reign of Christ on earth; after introducing the plain testimony of Justin Martyr, which is to be found in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, proceeds as follows.

"Irenæus, Bishop of Lions, was another father of chief note in the early days of the church, having been a disciple of Polycarp, as Polycarp was of St. John. Very honourable mention is made of him, by the fathers of the following ages, and by those who rejected the doctrine of the Millennium, as Eusebius, Theodoret, and St. Austin, styling him an apostolical man, admirables

and the light of the western churches. Jerome in his commentaries on Isaiah and Ezekiel, and Eusebius in the third book of his ecclesiastical history, affirm, that he believed in the thousand years reign of Christ on earth, according to the letter of the Revelations; which, by the way, is one very probable reason, why all his writings, in which he professedly treats that subject, have been suppressed, and that only one of his many volumes (that on heresy) is come down to us, recovered and published by Erasmus, in which, though the matter of the work leads not to this point of doctrine, yet there is enough to confirm what Eusebius and Jerome have affirmed of him as to this matter. In particular, he delivers it as an article in the symbol or creed of the churches in his time, that Christ should come to restore all things: And in Book v. chap. 28. and 30. that at the end of six thousand years, would be the Sabbath of rest, when the Lord will destroy the reign of anti-christ, put the just in possession of the kingdom, and restore the promised inheritance to Abraham. Eusebius, who was no friend to this doctrine (nor yet to one of still greater importance) makes Papias to be the first author of it, and endeavours to discredit his authority, by calling him a plain, illiterate man; and yet asserts that he led Irenæus into this error. But if Irenæus was a man of such ability and learning, as he is represented, and does appear by what we have left of his, works, how came he to suffer himself to be imposed upon in a matter of such consequence, by

a weak man, when he had no less advantage than that of conversing with those, who had con versed with the apostles, and was himself a disciple of Polycarp, who was instructed by St. John the divine? Besides, it appears from the confession of Jerome himself (who had taken up as strong prejudices against this doctrine as Eusebius) that Papias was also a disciple of St. John; and Eusebius owns that Irenæus called him so,§ and the companion of Polycarp; and surely these connexions well qualified him for a witness to their doctrine. If Papias was a plain man, he was the less likely to impose upon others; nor could it require much learning to know whether his master, StJohn, explained his prophecy of the Millennium in a literal sense or not. Whether Papias was a man of learning or not, is nothing to the purpose; he was an honest man, charged by no author of credit with holding heretical notions, and so great a veneration had he for the apostles, that he was a diligent collector of all remarkable particulars concerning them, and even of their sayings. What his credit in the church was, appears by his being made Bishop of Hieropolis by the immediate successors of the apostles; and the dignity of his office in those days of the church, may be allowed a good presumptive argument of the sufficiency of his qualifications for the discharge of it, or else we must say, that all things went wrong apace in the church, even in the first cen

Hieronym. Ep. 29.

§ Euseb. Eccl. Hist. Lib. 3.

tury; and then there is an end of all ecclesiastical authority. But the truth of the matter lies here; the tide of prejudice and opposition ran so strong against the millennial doctrine, after the second century downwards, that no arts of calumny and misrep resentation were spared in or der to sink it, insomuch that even good men were, by education and the authority of the learned, prepossessed against it, and this has been so much the case in general for now more than four teen centuries, joined to the wicked practice of corrupting, curtailing, and suppressing the works of the first fathers on this subject, that it is next to a won der that we have any of their testimonies to it left.

"It is likewise to be observed, that together with the opposition to the doctrine of the Millennium, sprang up in the church a fondness for that critical and contentious kind of theology, which teaches men to doubt of every thing, and dispute against every thing; insomuch that there are few of the canonical books of scripture, which did not meet with some oppugners to their divine authority, about that time. But the God of truth hath set his seal upon the Sacred Writings, and his providence hath preserve ed them to us; and so long as we are possessed of this blessing, so long will this doctrine be supported by an authority, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail; and fully assured we may be, that the time when the knowledge of the scriptures, both as to the mysteries of our holy faith, and the interpretation of prophecy, will be given Vol. I. No. 8.

in greater clearness, and fuller measure than has been hitherto, and that not in the way of hu man learning and criticism, but by larger communications of the Spirit of Wisdom from the Father of Lights in the hearts of the simple and unlearned, both men and women; and that as well to humble the pride of men on account of their natural and acquired endowments, as to make manifest that the excellency of wisdom is not of man, but of God. That the full understand. ing of the scriptures has not yet been given, will readily be grant ed; and that they shall be understood in perfection cannot be denied, since to that end they were given. Now, we know that it is according to the pur pose of God, to conceal his se crets from the great and wise of the earth, and to reveal them unto babes, persons of an humble mind, and of a resigned and simplified understanding; and that thus it shall be in the last days, when he will pour out his Spirit upon the servants and upon the handmaids,§ and all his children shall be taught of the Lord."¶

The worthy author, from whose work the preceding ex tract is taken, was Rector of Winwick in Northamptonshire; a clergyman much esteemed by men of learning and piety for his warm attachment to the truths and duties of our holy religion, aiming in all his discourses, to promote the spirit and power of religion in its professors, and to win souls to Christ. He was a true follower of the Lamb; and

in imitation of his divine Master, made it his delight to work the works of him that sent him 'while it was day," and when the night of death came, though it

was sudden, we trust it did not find him unprepared: He died, in an advanced age, of an apoplexy, December 11, 1784. FIDELIS:

f

(Continued from p. 203.) THE propensity to commit sin, is not more universal, or powerful, than the propensity to palliate and excuse it. Indeed, this last is one of the capital exhibitions and proofs of human depravity. Insensibility to the objects of religion has seized the whole species. Of course, it becomes a common interest and wish, to justify, or at least, to extenuate it. To this point human ingenuity has directed its utmost strength, and its unwearied efforts. The result has been an infinitude of apologies, plausible in appearance, but in reality, frivolous and absurd.

One of the most imposing of these apologies is this: that from the very constitution of our nature, we are principally attracted and impressed by things visible; and that God being spiritual and invisible, all emotions which have him for their object, must necessarily be indistinct and languid. This suggestion, though it assumes the garb of philosophy, is in fact one of the most irrational and preposterous that can be conceived. If it proves any thing, it proves far too much. It presumptuously arraigns and blasphemes the God of heaven for it declares, that

:

in bidding us love him with all the heart, and with the utmost fervour of our affections, he is either ignorant, not knowing our frame; or unjust, demanding that which he knows to be impossible. Beside, who sees not that on this principle, Abraham, David, Paul, and in short, the whole host of worthies whose character and exercises the scripture records, were a set of vissionaries and enthusiasts. Their religion was not a cold and languid thing. It was vigorous, active and ardent. Love to God was their ruling passion. It triumphed over every rival affection, and every opposing interést. Devotion to the divine honour was their grand principle of action. Here they sought and found their happiness. This they esteemed the life of life. They conversed less with their fellow-creatures around them, than with an UNSEEN Deity. In communion with him, they found the sorrows of life soothed, its burdens lightened, and a new sweetness mingling itself with every joy. In short, their sentiments and feelings, their plans and pursuits, were precisely what the generality of men are prone to consider as the height of enthusiasm.

But let us take a nearer view of this boasted theory, that none but