*

been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving, careful, lest any man spoil us through philosophy and vain deceit, after the Tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. We will allow no man to judge us in meat or drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath ;† much less will we be guiled into worshipping of angels, and into those things with which men of vain imaginations and worldly minds are puffed up. Persevering in the principles of the Reformation, submissive to the wholesome discipline of our Church, and discarding all rules of faith independent of the Scriptures, we are satisfied to continue in that good old way, in which the word of God has been a light unto our feet, and a lamp unto our path.

General Literature.

The Reformation a Direct Gift of Divine Providence; a Sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, on Monday, October 8, 1838, on the first day of the Visitation of the Right Hon. and Right Rev. Charles James, Lord Bishop of London. By GEORGT CROLY, LL. D., Rector of St. Stephens, Walbrook, London: Duncan. Third Edition. 1838.

THIS Sermon offers many important points to our consideration, and is original in its views. "The argument is, that Judaism and Christianity being confessedly given to the world by the Divine will; the Reformation, given to the world under circumstances closely similar, is, like them, to be regarded as a direct work of Heaven."

Independently of our wish to exhibit prominently to our readers the merits of this composition, we gladly avail ourselves of its subject to enable us to refute an ill-grounded charge, which has been circulated, that our Review is one of the organs of the Oxford Re-modellers of our discipline. If we may accept Mr. Froude's hatred of the Reformation as the sentiments of the two individuals connected with the Tracts, who edited his "Remains," it will be clear that the veneration in which we hold the Reformation, must be inconsistent with the principles of this party. We are perfectly aware that very many of the Theological Reviews are devoted to this school; and we are aware of the endeavours which are employed to prepossess the Press in its favour; but we wish our readers most distinctly to Col. ii. ver. 16.

+ Ibid. ver. 18.

understand, that we are not given to change, and that the principles of the Reformation are those which will be seen in our

pages.

Dr. Croly, considering the removal of the family of Jacob to Egypt as a providential security against the warlike tribes of Palestine, till the time of their possession of the promised land, and the Egyptian tyranny, as a mode of violating their ancient compact with the Israelite, of forcing him from his natural occupation, and of making him a labourer in his fields and cities, of giving him new knowledge, quickening his understanding, making him feel his wants, and teaching him a familiarity with the forms of civilized life, the effects of which reluctant education were afterwards seen, traces through the series of events the guidance of Divine Providence. Christianity was equally preceded by a preparatory discipline. The victories of Alexander, by which the Greek literature became known to the Orientals, the Septuagint Version, which had its influence even on the Jew, and the knowledge of the subtleties of the Greek Philosophy, which the Asiatic had acquired, were among the causes preparatory to its effects; but, during the Augustan age, when intellectual pursuits engrossed intellectual minds at Rome; and when all the acuteness of the Greek sophists was in its highest vigour, Christianity, "the especial religion of evidence, of argument, of learned research, and of intellectual freedom was given to the human understanding, especially awakened, invigorated, and refined."

Still was the third great interposition to come. Christianity had decayed in the long lapse of a thousand years: a distinct and appropriate preparation ushered in its revival at the Reformation. The deep lethargy in which the human mind was sunk from the sixth to the fifteenth century, was dispelled by a sudden burst of intellectual splendour; in the midst of this period Constantinople fell; and that catastrophe, which appeared to bow Christendom beneath the Turk, was the primary cause of European civilization. "By the fall of the Greek Empire, its learning, the old stimulant of the human understanding, was suddenly spread anew through the West ":-new discoveries were opened on the human race, and increased knowledge was poured in far and wide; and the German Reformation was given.

"Still there is an obvious distinction in the three disciplines"-the Jewish Revelation had such a substantial evidence of its divine origin, and so direct an appeal to the testimony of the senses, that there was but little ground for the exercise of the reason; but in Christianity the exercise of

the understanding was demanded, and the reason was singularly subtilized. In the third instance a similar intellectual discipline, by means also of Greek learning, was provided for the revival of Christianity. The three interpositions were distinguished, too, by another characteristic. In each the religion was soon removed from its birth-place to one of security: the Judæism which commenced with the mission of Moses, was shortly removed from Egypt, and established in Palestine, under the protection of God, as the King of Israel Thus Christianity too was speedily removed from Judæa, and fixed in the Christian empire of the East, in a capital expressly constructed for its throne, under the charge of Constantine; thus Protestantism also was soon transferred from the divided and exposed province of Germany to England, under the tutelary care of Elizabeth.

The third great characteristic is, that the kingdom to which each revelation was primarily given, endured exactly until the arrival of a subsequent interposition. Exposed as Judaism was to unexampled vicissitudes, captive, and almost lost Judah again came forward as a kingdom: she saw the Assyrian, Persian, and Macedonian empires decay; yet, whilst her Imperial oppressors arose no more, she continued, in verification of a prophecy, for a period more enduring than had ever before, or has been since conceded to an earthly sovereignty. The limit was reached, and the purpose was complete, when the Messiah came, and Christianity was given to the world. Then passed away the kingdom amidst the out-pouring of Divine judgments, and the soil was abandoned to the successive desolations of the Roman, the Saracen, and the Tátar.

As the Western Empire perished almost immediately after the Imperial recognition of the Gospel, the Eastern, though torn by faction, undergoing the heaviest vicissitudes, and the sport of most frantic heresies, swept by the Mahommedan Simùm, and crushed by the iron masses of the Crusaders, still stood the "fated empire: the throne of the Constantines, continually assailed from the East and the West, and continually on the point of perishing, stood until the very eve of the third interposition." In the sepulchre, as it were, of that corrupted empire, "the solitary lamp of the Gospel had survived to be carried to the West. Constantinople was stormed, and the Greek sovereignty fell; but not until the moment when its successor was prepared: it expired with its hand on the gates of the Reformation. "In the instances of Judaism and Christianity, to signalize the Divine judgment, the places of these religions and sovereignties were filled by those which were the most especially abhorred by them. "The Roman and his hated idolatry

were planted in Jerusalem-the Turk and his scorned Islamism were planted in Constantinople:-a startling lesson to all nations which neglect the great gift of God." From hence

Dr. Croly, alluding, as we imagine, to the vigorous attempt which is unceasingly made, to bring us again under bondage to the yoke of galling ordinances, asks what is there in our condition to make us more contemptuous of change than Judah, the Kingdom of God? "What in our narrow and remote island, so new-born from the errors of superstition, and with a Church forced to a daily struggle against their return, to counteract that law by which Judah and Constantinople have been stripped of their tiaras, and sent naked to the tomb;-the mighty put down from their seat, and the rich sent empty away?" That the fate of the Jew and Greek awaits England, "if like them, she shall dilapidate the mighty treasure of truth entrusted to her hands," the preacher urges, with great reason; and are we not at this time in danger of corruption from the poison which flows from one of our Universities?

The characters of those employed in each interposition of Providence are compared, as another evidence of the connexion. The first commenced with the call of Moses, a shepherd in the wilderness; the second with the Son of Man, who came, as an obscure Israelite, wholly unconnected with the public excitement of the times; the third with Luther, an Augustinian monk the first was transmitted to the temporal guardianship of the God of Israel-the head of the Theocracy; and was finally fixed by the Divine command in the Jewish Hierarchy, the stateliest of all establishments; an irrefragable proof of the Divine appointment of a national religion:-the second was at length transmitted to the care of the first Christian Emperor, aud was embodied in the established church of the Empire, and had kingdoms as its dioceses: the third found its protection in a British sovereign, and devolved its duties on the Church of England, the chief of the Protestant Churches. The chronology is equally striking: Judæism arose nearly fifteen hundred years before Christianity; and the revival of Christianity by the Reformation was nearly fifteen hundred years afterwards: thus Christianity, by Heaven's especial agency, stands in the central point of the three thousand years.

A more masterly Sermon than this has never been written; and its concluding parts, which we shall notice in our Ecclesiastical Report,* deserve the most patient attention. Neither acerbity, nor palliation of political facts; neither a disguise of

the movements against the Church, and the objects of those who direct them; nor a falsely coloured or clumsily varnished pourtraiture of existing affairs disfigure the solemnly exciting lessons which it conveys. It is a sermon which it became an orthodox Clergyman, grounded in the faith, and not tossed about by the blasts of popular opinion, to write; a sermon to which it will become every reader to attend.

Scriptural Studies. By the Rev. WM. HILL TUCKER, M.A., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. London: Smith, Cornhill. 1838.

CONTRARY to our usual practice, we notice this work a second time, not for the purpose of reviewing it, but of vindicating ourselves from the extraordinary charges which this writer has made against us in a letter. The press would indeed be basely managed, if it were applied to the mean task of favoritism, and lauding authors who are justly censureable. If a Reviewer cannot write according to the dictates of his conscience, but must bend before every theory which he meets, those who look to his decisions on works, will be continually led astray, and his review will be nothing better than knavery.

The whole of the first chapter of Genesis cannot, without a most violent misinterpretation, be separated in its several historical parts: it is a continuous account of the creation from its commencement to its completion. It is therefore impossible to reconcile the idea of prior earths, or prior states of this earth, with the Mosaic narration: the term is clear evidence that Moses goes back to the very beginning of the creation. When then we see theory which cannot be reconciled with the plain words of the Scripture, the question naturally arises, are we to give credit to the Scripture, as that which was divinely inspired? or are we to set aside its authority for modern speculations, though they be dignified with the name of facts? For, notwithstanding the utmost ingenuity of sophistry, we must do the one or the other.

As to our charge of proximity to profaneness, we leave the following passage respecting the opponents to the geologists who have attacked the Bible, to the reader's judgment:

"They have taken early impressions and the faith of their forefathers, as the leading principle of their opposition, and imagined with a feverish anxiety-laudable to a certain extent and conscientiousthat aught that is contrary to ancient opinions, is injurious to the truth. But, what is this in its naked reality, than the spirit of the Scribe and the Pharisee in the age of our Saviour?-the spirit that would stifle