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The Archdeacon of Maidstone's Popery Exposed and Refuted. By a KENTISH CLERGYMAN. London: Painter.

THERE are many things for which we glory in the Church and a few for which we grieve. We grieve to find within it a clergyman querulous, vituperative, and uncharitable-judging and condemning his superiors-sneering at his diocesan-nicknaming his chaplains and ridiculing and accusing his archdeacon of teaching the devil's doctrine, and worse even than that.

We feel, indeed, both grief and shame to find in the letter of A Kentish Clergyman such passages as these :-" The prince of darkness is a much sounder divine than a Tractarian....... The greatest heretic of the day at this moment desecrates the episcopal bench...... Five-sixths of the young men now at Oxford, as well as their tutors, are Tractarians; and yet, out of these three or four thousand popish candidates for the ministry, not one probably will be rejected." To the archdeacon, the Kentish Clergyman says-"Öh, that you and your deluded cosays—“Oh, papists-you and your brother Tractarians, the bond-slaves of the devil who are fighting the battles of the Pope, had eyes to discern spiritual things!"

Now, the motive which actuates men to write and print such letters as these is a precautionary one: they see what they account as damnable errors and heresies cherished in high places, and therefore, acting upon the advice which is given, "Come out from among them and be ye separate, lest ye also perish," they lift up their voice loudly, or bear, as they call it, their written testimony to the truth, that they may thereby deliver their own soul; and it is by the bitterness of their reproaches, and the fierceness of their invectives, that they dissipate their fears and secure their safety. Of argument in this letter there is none: of denunciation and accusation and abuse there is more than is useful--more than is seemly; and we would hope for the credit of the county that there is but one clergyman in Kent who would write in this manner: we know but of one who has written hitherto in this style, and we recollect that he on one occasion expressed a most earnest desire to take away divers men's lives; and asserted that he should be doing God good service was he to take all the Tractarians in the kingdom together, and together hurl them into the depths of the sea. Such forms of speech will never convince a Tractarian of his errors, and will either excite his pity or his contempt: sure we are, that the venerable archdeacon of Maidstone, if he ever reads this letter, will not be enlightened by it, and will regret that he cannot think better than he does of the heart and understanding of the writer.

H KAINH AIAOHKH. Griesbach's Text, with the various Readings of Mill and Scholz. Second Edition, revised and corrected. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly. 1850. Small 8vo.

THIS is just the edition of the New Testament which has long been wanted, for the use of biblical students; especially of those who have not time to examine, or the means of purchasing larger and more expensive critical editions. It exhibits a correct text, accompanied by as much criticism as could be brought within the compass of a portable volume. The highly valued critical text of Dr. Griesbach has been adopted, as being that most generally acknowledged by modern scholars. But the text of Dr. Scholz's new edition, published at Leipzig in 1830-36, in two large quarto volumes, has been carefully collated throughout; and the differences between the two are neatly displayed at the end of the volume. The probable readings of Griesbach are given in the foot-notes of each page; and those words of Dr. Mill's edition and of the Received Text, which Griesbach expunged from his edition, are specially indicated. "One satisfactory result" (the editor truly remarks) "of all the labours, which during the last two hundred years have been bestowed on the Sacred Text, is, that although changes almost innumerable occur in the spelling of words and the insertion or omission of particles, a few passages only (not one five-thousandth part of the whole) are altered in the sense; and no fair inquiry hitherto made has had the effect of changing any passage of vital importance to the interests of Christianity, whose foundations have been thus proved, against the cavils of malignant infidelity, to be firm and immovable, based on the testimony of the Apostles of Christ." (Introd. p. xx.)

Further, a valuable collection of really parallel passages is printed in the margin of every page; and a concise preface is given to each book. To the whole is prefixed an Introduction, comprising an epitome of the most material information relative to the criticism of the New Testament. It treats, briefly indeed but very perspicuously, on the formation of the Sacred Canon, and on Various Readings, the history of the Received Text, and the critical labours of Dr. Mill, Bengel, Wetstein, and Griesbach; and it concludes with a notice (illustrated by two ingeniously executed fac-similes) of the chief manuscripts, and of the principal ancient versions of the New Testament. The Introduction is followed by two Chronological Tables:-1, Of the four Gospels, of which it is a Harmony; and 2, Of the Apostolical History. This edition is further recommended by the beauty of its typographical execution, and by the reasonable price at which it may be obtained,

1. The Controversy of Faith. Advice to Candidates for Holy Orders, on the Case of Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter: containing an Analysis and Exposition of the Argument by which the Literal Interpretation of the Baptismal Services is to be Vindicated. By the Rev. C. DODGSON, M.A., Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Ripon. Murray. 1850.

2. The Theory of Baptism. The Regeneration of Infants in Baptism Vindicated on the Testimony of Holy Scripture, Christian Antiquity, and the Church of England. By the Rev. J. CROLY, LL.D. Rivingtons. 1850.

THE above are among the ablest of the Tracts which have appeared impugning the recent judgment of the Privy Council; but, after what we have already written, they need not occupy us long. All the writers of this class commit two mistakes, or rather make two false assumptions, without which their arguments have no foundation. They assume that regeneration, wherever it occurs in the writings of the fathers, was used in the same sense which it now has; and they assume that all infants are in a state of innocence, or oppose no obstacle to the grace of the sacrament. The first fallacy we need not dwell upon; but it is quite obvious that scarcely any two are, in all respects, agreed even in the present use of the word "regeneration," much less in determining the sense it formerly had in the Church. On the second mistake it is almost sufficient to appeal to the plain common sense of all mankind in their experience of the wayward tetchiness and passionate cries and gestures of infants, even of most of those which are brought to the baptismal font. These expressions of passion are sinful: they are in principle the same, and to an observant eye as decidedly expressed as those words and deeds of the adult which all allow to be disqualifications. Besides, it is a very shallow view of the uestion to suppose that the condition of the indiI vidual, whether infant or adult, is all we need enquire into. God says that he will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children; and men are so bound together in families and tribes, and all so implicated in Adam's sin, that original and actual sin cannot be separated; and each one is wholly sinful and requires a whole Saviour. The sacrament was instituted without the most distant hint that it had different effects in the case of infants and adults: this consideration alone is sufficient to convince us that "the theory of baptism," which sets out on the assumption that its effects on adults are of one kind, its effects on infants of another kind, must necessarily be unsound and

erroneous.

VOL XXVIII-I I

If men would fix their attention more constantly on the end, and less on the means, much disputing would be avoided, and they would more frequently co-operate in a common cause. Regeneration, after all our disputing, is not an end-it is only a means to an end in whatever way we understand the word. Salvation is the end-regeneration is but the commencement of a new life which may be forfeited and may terminate in the second death. All persons agree as to the end. Mr. Gorham himself asserts that he believes in the salvation of baptized infants-why, then, quarrel about the means whereby they are saved? Why put a multitude of intricate and perplexing questions to make him seem to criminate himself? Men are also agreed that the baptized who do not die in their infancy are bound to fulfil their baptismal vows, and to obey the commands of God, in order to attain that salvation which is the end of their Christian course. All are required to use diligence and exercise watchfulness; and we have generally found these Christian graces to be most lively in those who are not resting too implicitly or too confidently in what has been done for them by the Church, but who are watching over themselves and cultivating personal holiness, and looking to God and remembering the exhortation, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."

There is, again, another fallacy in the use that is made of the words," Catholic doctrine." Where is Catholic doctrine to be found, and how is it to be ascertained? All that is meant by the phrase is, that the individual has endeavoured to cull it for himself out of the pages of history, and has exercised his own private judgment upon that which he has gathered to determine how much of it he can regard as Catholic; or he may take the only other alternative, and adapt at second hand what others have selected, which will be still further from Catholic truth, being warped and pulluted by the medieval corruptions. A case in point is now before us: for both Mr. Bosanquet and Dr. Croly have appealed to the same passage and the very same words in Justin Martyr, in maintenance of opposite doctrines, which they both call the "Catholic doctrine." And if an appeal was made to such a convocation or council as could now be gathered, to ascertain by this means what we ought to regard as the Catholic doctrine, we feel persuaded that the result would be that every thing which tended to nourish a dry, cold, formal spirit in the priesthood-everything which countenanced an intolerant, or domineeoing, or bigotted spirit in the episcopal exercise of authority, would be repudiated by a large majority of the members of the Church of England.

A Greek and English Lexicon to the New Testament. By Edward ROBINSON, D.D., LL.D. A new Edition, revised and partly re-written. London: Longman and Co. 1850. Pp. xii. 804, 8vo. FEW Trans-Atlantic biblical scholars have contributed to the promotion of sacred literature more than the Rev. Doctor and Professor Robinson, who has long been known by his valuable contributions to the "Biblical Repository" published at Andover and New York, between the years 1831 and 1840, and to the "Bibliotheca Sacra," which commenced in 1843, and is still in course of publication; by his "Biblical Researches in Palestine;" his truly valuable Hebrew and English Lexicon, based on that of Gesenius; and especially by his Greek and English Lexicon to the New Testament. Of this last he has just published the new and greatly improved edition, which we now bring before our readers. Dr. Robinson commenced his lexicographical labours on the New Testament in 1825 in a work which, though modestly announced as a translation of Christopher Abraham Wahl's "Clavis Philologica Novi Testamenti," was, in fact, a new lexicon, composed with great care and accuracy. This work having long been out of print, Dr. Robinson in 1836, published at Boston, Massachusetts, a new and original Greek and English Lexicon to the New Testament, to the preparation of which he had devoted the unremitting labour of several years. How completely this volume supplied a great want in the theological literature of the day our readers will readily judge from the fact, that three rival editions of it were speedily reprinted at Edinburgh and London, besides two subsequent abridgments. The Boston edition having been exhausted, Dr. Robinson during the last three years has concentrated his labours upon the preparation of the present edition of his lexicon; a comparison of which with the first impression enables us to attest the truthful accuracy of the author's statement, that it is indeed a new edition, revised and partly re-written ;" and, we must add, with most valuable additions and improvements.

The following is an outline of the plan adopted by the learned author. First, the etymology of each word is given, so far as appertains to the Greek and Hebrew, and occasionally to the Latin. In the next place, the primary signification is first assigned to each word, whether found in the New Testament or not; and from it are then deduced, in logical (not historical) order, all the significations which occur in the New Testament. The various constructions of verbs and adjectives with their cases and other adjuncts are, in general, fully given; unusual or difficult constructions are noted and explained; and

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