the necessity of atonement, or the redemption of the world by Christ: the necessity of a thorough change of heart and disposition, in order to a sincere repentance and right conver sion to the faith of Christ; together with a belief and trust that divine assistance will be vouchsafed to us, and that, through our sincere prayers and supplications to God, the influence of his holy Spirit will be imparted to us, to excite and assist our hearty endeavours to effect this change. Unless these important articles are attended to there will be but little difference discoverable between paganism and christianity: for although it is certain, that the gospel precepts are highly moral, so are likewise many of the precepts of Seneca, Plato, and other Heathen philosophers; and if the former are only regarded in the same light as the latter, without any respect to their peculiar and superior excellence, on account of the motives by which they are enforced, and the extraordinary promises annexed to the observance of them, the coming of our blessed Saviour, to establish a new religion amongst us, has been in vain, and mankind must still be supposed to remain in their original dark and lost state, In order to correct my former erroneous principles with respect to the fundamental doctrines of the christian religion, it is necessary that I should trace my way back to the first origin of my species; and by consulting the holy scripture concerning the creation of man, and man's conduct after his creation, with God's method of dealing with him in consequence of such conduct, endeavour, by the divine grace, to find out the nature and use of those peculiar doctrines and precepts discoverable in almost every page of holy writ, the knowledge and observation of which, I am now convinced, are absolutely necessary to my eternal salvation. If I turn to my Bible." Here begins the history I have mentioned above, from which, if I meet with any encouragement from you, I will, at a future period, send you some interesting extracts. I only add, that I have reason to think that. the right turn of thought, so evident in the above reflections, was produced in the author's mind by an attentive reading of that excellent work, "Wilberforce's practical View of Christianity," F. H. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. AMONG the sad proofs of the decay of piety in the present age, there is hardly any one more universally acknowledged, or more deeply lamented, by good men, than the neglect of the Lord's Supper. In most of our churches the communicants bear a very small proportion to the whole congregation; and the clergy, toofrequently, have the mortification to see the far greater part of their hearers depart, as soon as the sermon is over, as if they were not invited to the gospel feast. The excuses which are alleged for such conduct vary almost infinitely, according to men's disposition and character: but there is one which I have reason to think is not uncommon, even among thoughtful and religious persons. I freely acknowledge that not many years ago I was under such a delusion, and I am willing to hope that the same arguments which convinced me of my error, may be no less profitable to some of your readers. They are contained in the following letter which I received from the minister of the parish, to whom, according to the direction of the rubric, I had applied for comfort and counsel. DEAR SIR, J. AFTER the explanation which you have given me of the motives of your conduct, I shall certainly not accuse you of absenting yourself from the Lord's table through negligence or indifference. You assure me that you earnestly desire to partake of that ordinance, but that you have scruples of conscience which you cannot overcome. You think that persons who live in open sin are in the number of the communicants at the parish church, and that with such you are forbidden to communicate, by the word of God. 1 Cor. v. 11. "I have written to you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such an one no not to eat." I have diligently considered this objection, and am satisfied that your conclusion is not warranted by the injunction of the apostle to which you refer. You take it for granted, that the expression no not to cut, relates to the Lord's Supper. But the phrase frequently means nothing more than familiar intercourse. Thus it was said to our Lord, why doth your master eat with publicans and sinners? which has no relation to sacramental eating. It is true that we are required, by all lawful methods, to shun and avoid disorderly brethren, lest we should seem to countenance their transgression, or should be infected by their example. But it cannot be allowed, as one of these lawful methods, to withdraw yourself from the means of grace; for that is to disobey the express command of Christ. But suppose the phrase to relate, not only to common meals, but to the Lord's Supper; to whom is it addressed? To them who have rule in the church, whose duty it is to exclude such disorderly persons from an ordinance which they profane, v. 13. "Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person." The duty of private christians is to aim at the reformation of such persons, by admonishing them in the spirit of love, and if that does not avail, to desist from keeping company with them, but by no means to separate from the communion of the church. In the Corinthian Church there were many corrupt members, guilty of fornication, incest, eating at the idol's table, 1 Cor. viii. 10. and drinking to excess at the table of the Lord, 1 Cor. xi. 21. Does the apostle exhort the Corinthian christians, on this account, to desert the holy communion? No, Just the contrary. "Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup." 1Cor. xi. 28. i. e. Let private christians, when they see abuses and disorderly behaviour in any of their brethren, take care not to fall into the same practices, but redouble their self-examination, and so partake of the Lord's Supper. If the attendance of some offenders were a good reason why persons properly qualified should withdraw, it is actly similar to that which you offer, to excuse your non-attendance at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. I actually knew a very ingenious and learned man, and once highly esteemed for his piety, who acted upon this principle, and would associate with no congregation of worshippers, because he could find none sufficiently pure. This man is now become a most pernicious character, employing all his talents in corrupting the princi ples of his readers. An argument should be well weigh ed, and strongly suspected, which leads to this awful consequence, that a man may lawfully withdraw himself from any of the means of grace, es specially that which was appointed by the authority of our dying Redeemer. He said to all his disciples, take ye and eat, take and drink ye all of this; do this in remembrance of me. Let me, then, intreat you, my dear friend, not to depart from the Lord's table, from your brethren, from your heavenly food, though some false brethren may partake with you. Our blessed Lord well knew that Peter would presently deny him, and that Judas was actually deliberating how he might betray him, yet he did not refuse to admit them to the first and most solemn celebration of this ordimance. I have thus sent you my thoughts in writing, that you may, at your lei sure, and with earnest prayer, consider and meditate upon a subject of so much importance to your comfort, your growth in grace, and your hopes of final happiness. I am sensible that the example of your present misconduct has a great tendency to mislead others, and therefore, for their sakes as well as your own, I earnestly exhort you, as you love your own salvation, and desire the spiritual welfare of your brethren, to be a partaker of the Holy Communion. ON SATIRE AND RIDICULE. not easy to say to what lengths the To the Editor of the Christian Observer, argument might be extended. We are forbidden to keep company with formicators, 1 Cor. v. 9. Now one way of doing so is by joining with them in public worship: does it follow then, that we are to forsake the public worship because some of the pretended worshippers are profane or sensual? Yet this argument is ex CHRIST. OBSERY. No. 36. Qui bene distinguit, bene docet. Ir is with the utmost deference that I presume to offer any strictures on 2 communication made by your correspondent B. T., to whom your readers are indebted for several valuable pa 5 B pers. But if the following remarks may tend to promote the cause of truth, I am persuaded that he himself could not wish them to be withheld. You will readily grant, Sir, that a good cause may be much prejudiced, by the want of due discrimination, in the way of asserting and maintaining it; and into this fault B. T. appears to me to have fallen, in his Essay on Ridicule and Satire. (Christian Observer, 1803, p. 655.) I perfectly ap prove the object of that paper, so far as it goes to discourage, and shew the criminality of wantonly indulging, what is commonly called a satirical spirit. Such a spirit, I believe, is almost universally both the consequence and the cause of very serious evils. I was sorry, therefore, to observe any thing in B. T.'s management of his subject, which might be likely to counteract his design, of warning us against the temper and practice in question. B. T. condemns the use of ridicule and satire in toto. In so doing he cannot, I think, be right; for a reason, which, if I succeed in establishing it, he himself will allow to be conclusive. It is this:-That ridicule, or satire, or what clearly partakes of their nature, is (contrary to what B. T. supposes,) employed in the scriptures. What else was the address of Elijah to the prophets of Baal, 2 Kings xviii. 27. Elijah MOCKED them, and said, Cry aloud! for he is a God; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or, peradventure, he sleepeth, und must be awaked! But not only do the Scriptures relate language of this kind to have been used by good and inspired men: they adopt it, as a part of their own composition. Witness, what I shall venture to call, the sutirical exposure of the folly of idolatry, in the forty-fourth chapter of Isaiah, (ver. 9, &c.) Instances may, I think, be found also in the New Testament. St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians would, perhaps, furnish several in those parts where he is employed in counteracting the false teachers, and endeavouring to reclaim the Corinthians from their fascinations. Take, for an example, the following irony: Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us! And I would to God ye did reign, &c. 1Cor. iv. 8. See also 2 Cor. xi. 19. I suspect that even the discourses of our Lord occasionally exhibit somewhat of the same kind. Is there nothing of the sort in the following interrogatories, which so pointedly expose the levity and idle curiosity, with which the Jews had gone to hear the preaching of John the Baptist? What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? &c. Nothing, again, in the following compa rison, by which the perverseness of the same persons is described? Whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying. "We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented!" If any of these passages (and they are only such as occur to me at the moment) shew that the use of satire, on some occasions, is allowed, and even sanctioned by the practice of scrip ture: it will then appear, that the sweeping sentence of B. T. is not just; and that it will be more proper to enquire by what limitations satire and ridicule should be restricted, than to attempt wholly to explode their use, and, by consequence at least, to censure all who have used them. If the argument proposed has been made good, I am not bound to answer, in detail, what has been advanced on the contrary side by B. T. I will, however, subjoin a brief remark or two upon his principal observations. His opinion that satire is utterly incompatible with the law of love, seems to proceed upon the supposi tion, that it has for its object, the gratification of its author, rather than the correction of the evil against which it is levelled. Certainly such is a very unlawful motive to the use of satire: as it is also to the infliction of punishment. But punishment is not to be discarded, because it sometimes degenerates into revenge. And why should we not argue in the same manner with respect to satire? Again.-Grave admonition, it is suggested, is a preferable means of correction. Granted, wherever it can be applied with the hope of success. I should assign a different reason than B. T. does, why ridicule and satire are not very commonly employ- many wise and good men, but even ed towards our wives or children, the sacred scriptures themselves; namely, that these relations are not and, finally, because I wished to see to be supposed placed out of the every subject fairly treated, and placreach of " grave admonition." Could ed in a just light. we laugh them out of that which expostulation or authority had in vain attempted to correct, who would say that it was inconsistent with the wisest and most tender affection to do so? That the most which satire can be expected to effect, is a partial reformation rather than a radical conversion, may be true, and yet prove nothing against its use. Particular external evils are those against which it must generally be levelled: and the correction of them may be no contemptible achievement. I have known the argument, now opposed, urged against the establishment of a society for the suppression of vice; and, with equal force, it might be urged against the use of all human laws. But, in fact, prevention rather than reformation; the preservation of those who are not yet tainted with some particular vice or folly, rather than the recovery of those who are, is the chief benefit to be hoped for from satire. And has not this benefit been sometimes produced? Have no evils or follies, once prevalent, now ceased to be so, through their having been rendered so ridiculous that men became ashamed of them*? It is not, however, for the benefit which Lexpect from it, (for, with an author who has made much, and able, though sometimes, perhaps, too severe use of it, I expect but little); nor is it, I trust, from a propensity to it in myself, (for few have less talent of the kind), that I have thus seemed to stand up as the advocate of satire; but because I thought that by manifestly overdoing, your correspondent was likely to defeat his own attempt to check a spirit of wanton severity; because I could not but look with a jealous eye upon censures which seemed to me to implicate, not only * Some of the fathers, and even the profane Lucian, are supposed to have considerably served the cause of christianity, by a happy application of their wit against the follies of paganisin: and Erasmus is known to have furthered the reformation in the same way. No one doubts, I beljeve, that the wit of Cervantes rendered real service to his country. Cowper. Sue Task, Book II, J. S. C. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. As the essay, in your Number for September, p. 536, on the subject of Preaching, is written with much moderation, I presume that its author will not object to an examination of some things which he has advanced. What I shall say will be chiefly concerning his first and fourth arguments in favour of extemporary preaching. And first, says he, "by an extempore address, a minister may speak more plainly and familiarly to his audience." If this writer has expressed himself correctly, (and I imagine he has), I cannot assent to his opinion. Had he declared, that, in general, extemporary preachers in the church express themselves more plainly and familiarly than clergymen who write their sermons, I should have been obliged to admit the fact. But though this point be unquestionable, if, in our comparison, we compre bend all the clergy; yet it appears to me doubtful to which class of preach ers we can give the claim to greater plainness of composition, if our comparison is made between clergymen of similar religious principles and views. I have frequently heard with attention many both written and extemporary sermons; and I cannot venture to decide upon the subject. There are sermons of both kinds which are too familiar, that is, more familiar than plain and impressive, Perhaps extemporary preachers err more frequently in this way than they who write their sermons. On the other hand, I have heard both extemporary and written discourses which were not sufficiently familiar; and, perhaps, persons who preach written sermons are more chargeable with this fault than extemporary preachers. when all things are considered: when the compositions of many religious clergymen, who preach in the two different ways, are impartially compared together, I do not know which description of sermons is plainer, and more intelligible to the congregation. But But the author of the essay does not consider so much what is, as what may be : " a minister may speak more plainly, &c." And here i dif fer from him widely. In the first argument there appears to me a small degree of confusion; or, if you please, a difficulty, which opposes the argument, is proposed, and is not satisfactorily answered. For the writer ad mits that this " plainness of speech" maybe consulted as well in written as in extemporary discourses:" and afterwards he adds, "but, perhaps, the chief difficulty of ministers, either in writing or speaking, is to be intelligible." This author admits that the composition of intelligible ser mons is difficult in a greater or less degree. I ask then what are the usual means of surmounting difficulties? Is it not necessary to bestow labour and thought? Is it not requisite to speak and act with caution, to examine each step we take? Now I think it evident that a writer of sermons will proceed with greater caution, and will examine more particularly what he says than an extemporary preach er; for this man has well digested only the method and principal heads" of his discourse; and enlarges on them in such words as present themselves at the time." But the writer of a sermon has well considered the whole of his discourse. Judging by my own knowledge and experience, I am obliged to differ from some persons who think that the principal difficulty of composing a sermon, consists in inventing and arranging the method and principal heads. If by the expression," method and principal heads," be comprehended as much as is contained in the Skeletons, published by Mr. Simeon of Cambridge; which, on account of the quantity of vessels and muscles with which the bones are covered, deserve the name of complete men rather than of skeletons; I answer that the person who writes so much of his discourse cannot be called an extemporary preacher. The labour of composing so many particulars is very nearly as great as of writing a whole sermon; and each skeleton, when enlarged by the passages of scripture to which it refers, and by the connecting sentence which must unite the detached particulars, will occupy more than one half of a modern sermon. But as the arguments of the writer of the essay would lose their force, if the extem porary preacher, of whom he speaks, uses such skeletons; I apprehend that we must understand the expression, "method and principal heads," in a much more limited acceptation. In this case I consider the extemporary part of the sermon to be more difficult to compose than what is previously written. This point can be decided only by a reference to facts and experience. Most clergymen, of moderate abilities, who have been in the regular habit of composing sermons for four or five years, are able, on common subjects of theology, to write down the method and principal heads of their discourses with very little diffi culty; with less difficulty, in my opinion, than they can enlarge upon those heads. I know several clergy. men who write their sermons, and several extemporary preachers also, all of whom generally divide and subdivide their discourses with great ease, propriety, and clearness; and yet their compositions are rarely or never of a superior kind. But in or der to prove that a written sermon may be plainer than an extemporary discourse, let us attend to those parti culars which are necessary, in order to render such compositions plain and intelligible. Is clearness of conception necessary? Then the writer of his sermons has the advantage: for clear, ness of conception is generally attained by labour; by a comparison of different ideas; by investigating things which resemble each other, and by separating those parts in which they agree, and those in which they differ. And this may be done more fully by those clergymen who write their discourses, because they previously con sider all the particulars they intend to advance. Again, in order to preach plainly, is it necessary that you adhere to your subject und divisions? Here also written sermons have the advantage for their author has sufficient opportunity to examine the relation of inferior points to the text and to the general divisions; and when he finds that he has gone astray, he may recur to the place from which he began to wander; he may correct, expunge, and transpose whatever he pleases. In the third place, is it necessary to avoid long sentences, difficult expressions, and an intricate arrangement? In these respects also the clergyman, who writes his ser |