ples of the church to which they feel a sort of hereditary attachment; but can assign no better reason for belonging to it, than its being the religion which their fathers professed. The author has, therefore, taken a brief view of the lawfulness, expediency, doctrines, spirit, and utility of the Established Church,

for the instruction of those who cannot consult more learned treatises on these different subjects. In doing which he has steered as widely as possible of controversy, and flatters himself that he has uniformly given his own opinions with a just regard to the right of private judg

ment in others.

"He begs to assure the reader, that he has stated no facts but what rest on the authority of Burnett, Hume, Milner, Gisborne, or other writers of equal credit." pp. 3-5.

To this account given by Mr. C. of his own work, we think it right to add, that it is written in a plain and unambitious style-that a calm and moderate spirit pervades its pages-that the work is not rendered unfit for the age for which it is chiefly designed by any perplexing or remote disquisitionsand that it is calculated, as it ought, to leave on the mind a very favourable impression of the authors of the Reformation, and of the church built by their labours and cemented by their blood in our own country. Indeed, by carefully ascertaining and developing the real spirit and doctrines of our Establishment, and by displaying the catholic temper, the mild wisdom, the calm energy, and the spirit of cautious discrimination by which its first fathers and the authors of its formularies were animated, it is likely to prepossess the young mind with the deepest veneration for it. If the Establish ment be, as we unfeignedly think it is, worth retaining, it is desirable that it should be exhibited not merely through the cold and distorting medium of modern divinity, but surrounded by the glory of its earlier years. In comparing it, at the present moment, with other religious institutions, men are apt to make the comparison between these

institutions in their infant state, or administered by a few simple, zea. lous men, and the Establishment in her maturer years, and as become the religion of the multitude, and soiled by all the accessions and deposits of time, and circumstance, and human interest, and corruption. Now this comparison is obviously unfair. The rule may not be true, in its full extent, that "whatever is best administered is best;"-because some systems may be so radically corrupt that good admi

nistration may merely call into action the most mischievous energies-energies which were harmless only while inactive. It may merely rouse the sleeping lion. But this is certainly true, that the careful administration of a very imperfect system of manners and morals, by a few hands peculiarly interested in its preservation and integrity, may invest it with an undue preeminence over a nobler and purer system. A small congregation of separatists may be purer, for instance, than a whole community of churchmen, and yet the system of the latter be, on the whole, preferable for the support of national morals and the extension of national religion. The little pond in a man's own garden is usually kept neater in its banks, and clearer from weeds, than the mighty river which rolls through the adjoining meadows. And then also, as to the influence of time upon institutions : "Time (says Lord Bacon) is the greatest of all innovators." And certain it is, that the best human system, unless carefully inspected and diligently cleansed, gradually throws out many warts and excrescencies on its surface. Whoever, therefore, compares any thing that is new with any thing that is old, is tempted, upon a hasty survey, to prefer the former. But the more accurate examiner will often discover, that the splendour of the first is a mere Birmingham polish, and the dulness of the last the mere dust of neglect, veiling the

most intrinsic riches, and remov able by the slightest care. It is on grounds such as these, and we have rather hinted at the subject than examined it, that we conceive it to be highly important to carry the young backwards in their examination of the religious system of our country to lead them to the source, instead of fixing them on the wide and somewhat neglected banks of the descending stream. And such is the tendency of this production of Mr. Custance. The great work of Bishop Burnet, whose name and whose labours will always be precious to the lovers of candour, independence, and truth, is too bulky for the busy, the indolent, and the young. Not, indeed, that we would fall into the modern error of substituting abridgments for original and more copious works: because we be

lieve that both our habits of labour and our progress in truth are endangered by the exchange. But many will have to do with nothing but essences. They will read nothing, if they do not read abridgments. And such persons will read with pleasure and benefit the work before us. We have certainly risen from it more grateful to Providence for the Reformation in general; and for that church in particular, which the Reformers have, as it were, hewn out of our native rocks, and have established on pillars, we trust, never to be shaken, amidst the mountains and valleys of our beloved country. We seem to ourselves to discover some flaws in the spirit and genius of the Reformers, and of the Reformation. We discover also some defects in that particular church which they have planted among ourselves. But, on the whole, we are disposed rather to admire than to complain; rather to thank the great Author of our blessings for what we have, than to allow ourselves in a restless, querulous, and ungrateful pursuit of unattainable good.

We shall now give our readers a single extract, taken at random, from the work of Mr. Custance; but sufficient, although but a part of his argument on the subject, to afford a specimen of his general style and temper. He asks, "What are the temporal advantages for which we are indebted to the establish ment of the Christian religion?"

From his reply to this question we select two particulars.

"Civil liberty is, doubtless, one, which Englishmen enjoy above all other nations, and which they have derived from their national religion. Whilst Popery enslaved the minds, it fettered also the bodies of men; and no one who is competent to take an enlarged survey of the subject, can deny that civil li berty has gradually increased in proportion as pure Protestant Christianity has been diffused. Previously to the

Reformation, the royal prerogative was

a principle so vague and undefined as to be a most dangerous weapon in the hands of a violent and capricious monarch; whilst the liberties of the subject were so circumscribed and obscurely ascertained, as to produce, during the reigns of many of our sovereigns, a collision between the prince and the the nation the horrors of a civil war. But people, which at length brought upon as the Scriptures became more generally understood, the unreasonable pretensions of rulers were discovered, and the naturai rights of subjects more clearly perceived. The undisguised efforts, therefore, of James II. to re-establish a superstitious religion and a tyrannical government were soon found, by that ruinous to his authority. And the memisguided and arbitrary prince, to be mory of the seven bishops, who, with such zeal, integrity, and firmness, refused to be the instruments of his insidious policy, ought to be had in grateful remembrance by every Protestant in the land. At the Revolution, principles were asserted and sanctioned by the whole Protestant Legislature, which placed our civil and religious liberties upon a basis which we trust, with the Divine blessing, will never be removed. And the same benevolent sentiments

which obtained for ourselves the civil privileges we enjoy, have at length triumphed over all the works' of the

flesh,' and constrained the British Parliament to proclaim liberty' to our poor African brethren." pp. 527, 528. "Again, the national religion raises the tone of public opinion. Wherever the Romans carried their victorious arms, they left the religion of the conquered

pagan nations undisturbed, and contented themselves with making their enemies tributary to them. But whence this apparently tolerant forbearance? It arose entirely from this circumstance; that the idolatry of those whom they had subdued did not interfere with their own. It mattered not who were the gods of the countries they vanquished, provided they did not molest the Roman deities and worship. But very different was the conduct of these restless and ambitious people, when they became masters of Jerusalem. There the inhabitants were treated with every possible cruelty; there the temple was profaned, and laid in ruins; there the God of the Jews was insulted and blasphemed. Why? Because the worship of Jehovah allowed of no homage to any other deity; because an acknowledgment of the God of the Jews must have overthrown all the altars of the empire

of the world.-Now this is precisely the case with Christianity. It strikes at the pride of man, and lays him in the dust. All the natural powers of his mind, therefore, are opposed to it. So that the establishment of it by law gives it a countenance, which at least obtains for it a hearing by thousands, who would

otherwise think it an insult to their understandings to be entreated to listen to its melodious accents. Thus the rich and noble, thinking it no disgrace to attend on the worship of the state, are thereby brought under the sound of the Gospel, and made acquainted with those important truths of which they might otherwise never have heard." pp. 531, 632.

Having thus endeavoured to do justice to the respectable work of Mr. Custance, we trust we shall be pardoned if we touch upon a few topics connected with the Reformation, in general of great interest to ourselves, and to which the late aggressions of a pretty large class of writers have particularly directed our attention.

It might have been expected that the numeasurable benefits en

tailed upon society by the Reformation would have, in some measure, disposed every member of a Protestant community to judge with kindness the character and proceedings of the Reformers. It might have been thought that no man could survey the rapid progress of liberty, literature, and freedom of opinion, during the three last centuries, without doing homage to the individuals who, under God, imparted to all of them this new and mighty impulse. But the fact has been otherwise. The religious zeal of the Reformers has cancelled in some eyes all their other excellencies. And those who would have been canonized by some of these high priests of literature, as the reformers of letters and of national and political law, are depreciated or slandered as the credulous and bigoted constructors of formularies and creeds. the foremost in this host of as Among sailants, is a certain celebrated Northern Journal. Its last Number contains an article of this kind, which it is not, however, our intention to examine. Happily the eyes of the public are now, generally speaking, opened on the religious character of that work. We shall, therefore, prefer noting down a few capital errors, or rather vices, in treating on the subject of the Reformation which appear to prevail in modern writers, and espècially among the soi-disant philosophical school on both sides of the Tweed,

In the first place, then, we ob serve a most unmanly desire to depreciate the motives of Luther, and to underrate his services to the great cause of the Reformation. Some of our readers, who are not extensivelyread in this controversy, may not be unwilling to inspect a brief collection of the imputations which have, at various times, been brought against the father of the Reformation. We give it as drawn up by a most accurate and impartial hand. Luther, then, has been

charged with having struggled for ten years with his conscience, and at last become an Atheist with having frequently declared, that he would surrender his share in Paradise, if only he might live a hundred years delightfully in the world -with denying the immortality of the soul-with entertaining mean and carnal ideas about heavenwith having composed hymns in favour of drunkenness, to which vice he was greatly addicted-with having caused Amadis to be put into elegant French, in hopes of giving the people a distaste to the holy Scriptures-with not believing a word of what he preached-with having at his death desired to have Divine honours paid to his body. And that the scenes of his death might harmonize with those of his life, it is added, that when his grave was examined a few days after his decease, the body had vanished, and there issued from the tomb a sulphurous stench fatal to the bye standers. Now we have inserted this catalogue to shew the modern traducers of this great and good man, that if they need the raw material for slander, there exist, as yet, unwrought masses of it which may be wrought up into a vesture as black and flaming as those of the Inquisition itself. Let them only dig deep enough, and they will find poisons as deadly as they can wish, without the trouble of any original combinations. The only possible means by which it is attempted to justify any of these, or indeed most of the modern imputations upon Luther,is by extracts from a little work published by one of his extravagant admirers, called the "Colloquia Mensalia," or "Table Talk." Now, even if some of those best informed on the subject had not denied the authenticity of this work, ought the idle report of some absurd guest at a dinner table to be set against the deliberate statements, the principles, and life of the author himself? There is a single quotation, to which, if

"Im

indeed it is unknown to him, we should have been glad to call the attention of Professor Stewart, when deciding on the authority of the Colloquia Mensalia. pegit Luthero quod Jobi etiam libro Divinam authoritatem detraxerit, argumento è convivalibus ejus sermonibus deprompto, at ludicro plane et calumnioso; cum neque libri illius autor unquam fuerit Lutherus, neque eo vivente vel approbante editus sit." (Selden in Otiis. Theolog. p. 489.) But to pass, from the source of these charges, to the charges themselves: one of the most frequent imputations against Luther is that of intoleance-and intolerance not merely of temper (for there we should not feel disposed to enter the lists in defence of some of our Reformers) but of principle. The charge is, that he denied to all others that liberty of opinion which he claimed for himself. Now, if a foundation for this charge is sought in his conduct to the Anabaptists, let it be remembered, that he was, perhaps, the mildest of the more eminent Reformers towards that body; and, moreover, that in this particular case, religious and political opinions were so intimately blended that the blow aimed at the spirit of anarchy and bloodshed may be easily mistaken for an assault upon the freedom of religious belief. The Anabaptists were, in the strongest sense, revolutionists and anarchists: and neither church nor state, neither religion nor government, could have survived their final triumph. This, perhaps, is the strongest ground of attack upon the tolerance of Luther. And if nothing more decisive can be alleged against his conduct, surely it is but fair to take into consideration bis sentiments, on these points as expressed in his familiar letters. "I am backward," said he, to Lincus, who had questioned him on this point (heresy), "to pass a sentence of death, let the demerits be ever so apparent." On this