touches; of England, very shortly; of Italy, shortly too; and, with great fulness, that of the Netherlands, concluding with portraits of the most eminent men in the struggle that took place in that country, such as the Duke of Alva, Granville, Viglius, the Princes of Orange, &c., &c.

To conclude, we exceedingly value these Prolegomena, although, should we ever have an opportunity of reviewing them by themselves, we may give reasons for not agreeing with the author in all his views. As for the whole work, we consider it one of the most admirable contributions of the kind, if not the most admirable, that history has ever had to acknowledge, and are more and more amazed at its being the work of one man, and one too who has mingled so much with the world and in the public affairs of his country.

ART. II-1. Assemblée Générale de la Société Evangélique de Genève. Douzième Anniversaire. Genève, 1843.

2. Third Annual Report of the Foreign Aid Society. London, 1843.

The love of Christ to his church was from eternity. The names of those the Father had given him were engraven upon his heart. All their guilt and debasement before conversion, while as yet the wretched bond-slaves of sin and of Satan,—all their wanderings and provocations, from the moment of conversion down to the hour of their death,-were full before his view. He loved them notwithstanding all; and whatever other ends he designed to secure by his incarnation and death, he resolved to save them from everlasting destruction, restore them to the image of God, and finally take them to himself, that living at the fountainhead of living waters, they might drink fresh draughts of blessedness for ever. Among these objects of the Redeemer's love were all true believers, to whatever age, or nation, or rank of society, or church, they might belong,— whether they should sit on thrones, or dwell in the meanest hovels, -whether they should be known to their fellow-Christians and the world, or, living in the deepest obscurity, be known only to God,all who should live in the world from the announcement of the first promise to Adam, till the appearance of the Son of God on the great white throne to summon all mankind to his bar.

When on earth, and incarnate, he exhibited in his doctrine, his labours, and his sufferings, that love which had dwelt in the bosom of the Godhead from eternity. After commencing his public ministry, he exhibited the utmost compassion to all, did every thing that was calculated to win their hearts, and dispose them to apply

to God for mercy. But there were some whom he regarded with an especial love. Irrespective of any superiority in them to others; nay, while in many instances they exceeded all ordinary sinners in depravity, he called them, by the power of his grace, from the fisherman's net, or from the busy receipt of custom, or even from the haunt of profligacy, and disposed them to love him and follow him. All of these were extremely defective in their religious views; most of them deplorably selfish and worldly in their aims; and some of them possessed those constitutional defects which rendered them most unamiable; and they were all continually provoking him by the weakness of their faith, and the hardness of their hearts. Yet he loved them with a disinterested, a profound, a never-wavering attachment, testifying, indeed, faithfully against their sins, yet never ceasing to cherish the warmest affection, and to labour for their highest good. Thus having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them to the end. In his last conversation, before he went forth to the garden, where he was to endure the bloody sweat, he sought to console his beloved followers, and left this as his dying charge," That they should love one another, even as he had loved them;" in other words, he taught them that the love which he had borne to them should furnish an example of the nature and the measure of the love which they were bound to show to one another.

For some time after our Lord's resurrection and ascension, the disciples remembered his dying charge and his holy example. Firmly grasping the great doctrines of salvation by grace, they felt an unquenchable ardour of love towards that Saviour to whom they owed all their joys here, and all their expectation of unutterable bliss hereafter, and according to the strength of their affection for him was their love to all whom they regarded as his followers; they felt that there were ties which bound them together, of the most endearing kind,-ties which not death itself, which dissolves all earthly connections, should destroy,-but which should last for ever; they had one faith, one God and Father, one Lord and Saviour, one baptism; they had one Spirit, dwelling within them all, and making them members of that body of which Christ was the head; they were equally objects of the Saviour's love; they were engaged in the same glorious enterprise, that of advancing his kingdom; they all, more or less, bore a resemblance to him, and expected to dwell with him and each other in glory. How, then, could they fail, while they realised these things, to love one another. Thus, for a time at least, and before human wilful. ness had time to mar its harmony, the church upon earth bore some resemblance to the church that is above. Christians loved the brethren of other churches, even those who, in some respects,

differed from themselves,-thanked God daily for all the holiness they were enabled to display,-and called down blessings from above on their heads. And the world witnessed with wonder the spectacle of harmony; the Saviour's words were fulfilled,- By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.' And even the heathen persecutors were constrained to exclaim, See how these Christians love one another.'

But by degrees the doctrines of the cross, which, when daily fed upon, had kept alive, and nourished every Christian grace, began to be less regarded, to occupy a less prominent place in the thoughts of the followers of Jesus, their love to the Lord began to grow cold, and of consequence, their love to one another. They ceased to feel the strength of that tie that bound them to every fellow-Christian, and to retain that lively interest in the welfare of that church universal, for whose sake Christ governs the world, and on whose behalf he continually pleads in heaven. Hence coldness, and alienation, and conflicts, often turning the servants of the same Lord into the bitterest enemies one of another. Gradually, as century passed away after century, both light and love departed from the visible church, and grosser and yet grosser evils arose, obliterating every remnant of its former likeness, until at length there was presented to the view of the world a vast religious society, extending over a large portion of the earth, which retained in its bosom all the worst abominations of heathenism, and under a powerful head, who blasphemously arrogated to himself the prerogatives of deity, carried on a warfare of unrelenting cruelty against the servants of God, whom it sought to exterminate from the earth.

At length, when the church of the living God seemed about to disappear, God came forth in his power and majesty, as he had done in the early ages of Christianity. His word, which had been imprisoned for centuries, was unbound. The great doctrine of justification by faith was revived, and preached first by Luther, then by others, in all its glory, as it had seldom been proclaimed since the days of the apostles. The Spirit was marvellously poured forth. The church, the bride of the Lamb, rose from the dust, put on her beautiful garments, and shone with the glory the Lord had put upon her. At this time the grand features of the followers of Christ, and of all the churches, which rose in different lands upon the ruins of Popish superstition, were a profound reverence for the living word, from which they received daily nourishment,-a perpetual glorying in the great doctrines of salvation by grace,-an ardent zeal to spread the gospel around them,-and the liveliest interest in all other churches of Christ, which held the Head. Then the church in each land regarded itself as part of the church universal, and letters of

affection were exchanged, and the deepest sympathy was felt, and earnest prayers continually ascended in behalf of the members of Christ in other lands. The scenes of early Christianity were, to a great extent, renewed, and it might be said as of old, See how these Christians love one another.'

But though the dawn of the Reformation was thus bright and promising, lowering clouds soon rose, and overcast the beautiful scene. Human infirmity mingled itself with the work of God; and the man who had been honoured to do more than all for his Master's kingdom, was allowed to inflict the deepest injury on the cause which he loved. The contests between Luther and Calvin, and the Lutherans and the Reformed, concerning the Lord's Supper, were carried on with a degree of heat and animosity, more especially as regards the former, which rent the churches of the reformation into two great parts, and produced division, which, down to this day, has never been healed. The conflict was not between a corrupt worldly church, on the one hand, and a spiritual and devoted one, on the other. The combatants on either side were the most eminent Christians of the day, they equally gloried in the great doctrine of justification, their labours were equally blessed of God, they were equally faithful to their convictions,they equally longed for the advancement of their Saviour's kingdom; but, forgetting all their obligations to love, and all the great truths on which they were agreed, they contended, at least one portion of them, with as much violence as if they had been assailing the greatest enemies of the cross, while their worldly opponents laid down their arms, and looked on, with exultation, at the turbulent scene.

The responsibility of a distinguished religious leader is unspeakably great, as his errors and his faults tell with not less certainty upon his followers, than the glorious doctrines he brought to light, or the eminent virtues he may have displayed. The faults of the man, both as regards doctrine and character, will usually be found stamped upon the religious body to which he gave a name, centuries after himself has been laid in the dust. It was no easy thing for Luther's successors to rival their master's excellencies, but it was by no means difficult to copy his faults. They engaged in incessant wars with the Calvinists and Chryptocalvinists-their whole energies were directed to the illustration and defence of the peculiarities of their own creed, and to the assault of those of their. opponents. They ceased to feed continually upon the living word, and to keep their attention steadily fixed on the great vital truths which were common to themselves and their adversaries-they ceased to labour in active strenuous exertions to carry the glorious gospel to sinners around them, or in other lands. Their religion

consisted in a dry, withered system of opinions, without vitality, and without practical influence. They too much resembled trees, whose trunk and branches and twigs are all accurately defined against a wintry sky, but the sap has all retired-the uxuriant foliage that constituted their glory in summer is departed-and there is no longer the golden fruit on which the sun had impressed his beams. But the whole history of the church of God shows, that where one great error prevails, it will generally lead to other errors of an entirely opposite description. The transition was natural from a religion that consisted of a cold and barren system of doctrine, to one which in a great measure discarded doctrine, at least made it of secondary moment, while it principally aimed to promote religious activity and spiritual feeling. Such was the great religious movement of the pietists, led on by men of real worth, by Spener and by Franke, at the close of the 17th century, which for a time promised to regenerate the Church, but in the end only prepared for the introduction of Rationalism, which repels all doctrine as worthless, and which has since been the curse and bane of Protestant Europe.

Nor were these evils only to be found among the Lutheran Churches. The age which succeeded the Reformation seems to have been to most of the Churches of the Reformation an age of spiritual declension. It had been found indispensable for the Churches to form creeds and confessions both to guard against the errors which were rising on every side, and to enable Christians to unite in a common testimony in favour of what they believed the truths of God. But through the decline of piety, the creed or the confession was too often substituted for the living word; doctrines were received and maintained on the mere authority of men,—not because God had revealed them. The distinction between those vital and fundamental truths by which God has in all ages stamped his image on the souls of his people, and those other doctrines concerning which the most devoted of his followers have differed, and may differ, was overlooked, and hence the bond of unity was broken. Christians lost the vitality, the largeness of heart, the simplicity, the missionary energy by which they had been distinguished in the days of the Reformation. Churches became isolated-almost forgot their connection with the church universalwere almost exclusively concerned for the interests and the success of their own body, as if within its sacred precincts all the followers of the Redeemer were to be found, and God had committed to it alone the great work of evangelizing the world. Numerous contests too arose, some concerning matters of importance, and therefore necessary; others about doctrines, in which, had the combatants with candour only examined each other's sentiments, they

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