ties perplex him, let him see to it, that there be in his heart no bitterness, no animosity, no uncharitable, no unfriendly feeling of any sort: this he can help and this he must help, or whatever knowledge he may possess of the person of Christ, it is certain he is destitute of his spirit: let his language, the dictate of his generous feeling be, "We are children of the same Father: we are disciples of the same Master: let us endeavour to enlighten each other: if possible, let us bring each other to the same opinions: but if this cannot be, let us at least agree to love one another and our heavenly Father and our heaven-inspired Master; and await the future light which shall be vouchsafed to us, with unfeigned gratitude for what we have already received, and with that best preparation for farther illumination, a heart the abode of charity, of meekness, of humility, of piety, of glowing affection, of active, unwearied, unbounded benevolence." We must defer our notice of the other works at the head of this article, together with some observations which this controversy has suggested, to a future number. S. S. ART. II.-A Lay Sermon, addressed to the Higher and Middle Classes, on the existing Distresses and Discontents. By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. 8vo. pp. 166. Gale and Fenner. 1817. " TH HE "wandering bards," Coleridge, Southey and Co." whom in 1798 the Anti-Jacobin represented as moving" in sweet accord of harmony and love" and tuning all their "mystic harps to praise Lepaux," the French Theo-philanthropist, are still consentaneous in their movements but their harps are tuned to another theme, the demerits of the Unitarians. These hardheaded Christians have little liking for fiction in the articles of their faith, and none for "mystic" rant, and hence they are singled out by the Lake poets for réprobation. It may be an amusing speculation whether the praise or the censure of these mystics will be accounted honourable half a century hence. Mr. Coleridge laments, with his Holiness of Rome, that "we hear much in the present day of the plainness and simplicity of the Christian religion,” and that hence the necessity of believing in Christ is transformed into a recommendation to believe him." This is we allow a hopeful beginning of the removal of Christian plainness and simplicity. The Lay-Preacher proceeds: " The advocates of the latter scheme grew out of a sect that were called Socinians, but having succeededin disbelieving far beyond the last footmarks of the Socini, have chosen to designate themselves by the name of Unitarians." Is this writer, who lays claim to "all knowledge and all mysteries," really ignorant of the history of the sect which he denounces? Did he read none of their books and learn nothing of their early advocates when he was amongst them? During the time that he officiated as an Unitarian teacher at Shrewsbury and elsewhere, did he never look into the Fratres Poloni or any other of their standard volumes? But perhaps he has not only, like the Poet Laureate, outgrown his opinions," but also, like Mr. Pitt, whom he and the Lanreate cannot now be ashamed to resemble, lost the faculty of memory with regard to all past connections that do not flatter his present humour. Let us then remind this "some time" Unitarian preacher, that the term Unitarian is not of modern' it is as old as the Reformation; that invention, nor a name of choice; that Socinian was always the epithet of an adversary; and that fair and honourable foes have for two centuries and a half spoken of such as believed in and worshipped One God in One Person as Unitarians. It is of no consequence therefore whether the word be etymologically correct; custom has assigned it a definite sense; it serves truly to designate the worshipper of One Divine Person in contradistinction from the Trinitarian who worships Three Divine Persons; and in this signification it will continue to be used when it shall have been forgotten that Mr. Coleridge was a Unitarian preacher, and the inquiry shall have ceased what arguments have transformed him into a Trinitarian layman. "This is a word," says Mr. Coleridge, referring to the name of Unitarian, "which in its proper sense can belong only to their antagonists: for Unity or Unition and indistinguishable Unicity or Oneness, are incompatible terms; while in the exclusive . sense in which they mean the name to be understood, it is a presumptuous boast and an uncharitable calumny." The Trinitarians will not thank the Lay-Preacher for this gloss: according to this exposition of terms, the Polytheist who believes in a number of Divine Persons united in one common nature is a proper Unitarian; and again, the orthodox believer in the Trinity is not a believer in the Oneness of God, though he may hold the Unity of the Deity, or the composition of parts in a whole. Such a comment as this was well preceded by a complaint of the Christian religion being erroneously supposed to be plain and simple. "Their true designation," adds the Lay-Preacher of the Unitarians, amongst whom he is no longer numbered," which simply expresses a fact admitted on all sides, would be that of Psilanthropists, or assertors of the mere humanity of Christ." Many a man has wished to christen the Unitarians anew; the name that our quondam preacher proposes is amongst the oddest that ingenuity or envy or bigotry has suggested, Psilanthropists, that is, if it may be Englished, Mere-Humanists. Passing by the humour of this nickname, we may remark it as rather singular that Mr. Coleridge should denonimate a sect not from what they believe but from a part of that which they do not believe, and in his new cognomen should overlook wholly that which they believe and carry into practice with regard to the great object of worship and which is in truth their only distinction. All Christians believe in the humanity of Christ; and no Christians that we are acquainted with profess to believe in the mere humanity of Christ. How would Mr. Coleridge have named the Apostle Peter, who preached "Jesus of Nazaretha man- -approved of God, by miracles, wonders and signs, which GOD DID by him!" Yet the inventor of the memorable term Psilanthropists charges those that take the antient and universal name of Unitarians, in the sense of the believers in and worship pers of One God in One Person, with a presumptuous boast and an uncharitable calumny." "Wissowatius" and the Fratres Poloni are allowed to have been "undeniably men of learning;" but this candour to divines that have long been dead costs nothing, and it serves for a cover to the insinuation that since their time there have been no "learned Socinian divines." How base is the spirit of party! What stuff will not bigotry feed upon ! Mr. Coleridge has withdrawn his stock of learning from the Unitarian church, and he affects to pity its intellectual poverty. Without him, however, the Unitarians have sufficient learning and vigour of mind to detect sophistry, to unmasque misrepresentation, to expose absurdity, though hidden in the trappings of mystic phrases, and to trace up the odium theologicum to its source in a disordered head or (in language which Mr. Coleridge may understand) an unregenerate heart. The only other point on which we shall remark is the creed which the Lay-Preacher has fabricated for the Unitarians, and which shews his deplorable ignorance of the people whom he sets himself at once to reprove and instruct. His creed contains six articles, of which only three are Unitarian! The Unitarians believe, says their former friend, 1. In One God.-True. 2. In the necessity of human actions and in all remorse for sins being precluded by Christianity.-Not true. On this philosophical question there is as much diversity of opinion amongst the Unitarians as amongst other Christians. 3. In the Gospels and in the resurrec tion of Jesus Christ.-True, and in the Epistles also, and in the "inspiration" of all these books as far as inspiration was necessary to constitute them an authentic revelation of the will of God. 4. In the resurrection of the body. Not true. They differ widely as to what constitutes "the whole man," but they all agree in condemning the substitution of the modern notion of the resurrection of the body for the scriptural doctrine of the resurrection of the man. 5. In the final happiness of the righteous and the corrective punishment of the wicked.-Can this latter article of faith outrage the feelings of one who like our author professes a benign and bland philosophy? 6. In a redemption, but (as they hold that ◆ere is no moral difference in the actions and characters of men, and that men are not responsible beings, and as they merge all the attri butes of Deity in Power, Intelligence and Benevolence, making nothing of the Holiness of God and representing his anger as a mere metaphor addressed to a barbarous people) not by the cross of Christ. Not true. The premises, including all the Unitarians, are absolutely false; the conclusion is false applied to any Unitarians. It is the peculiar doctrine of Unitarianism, because it is the peculiar doctrine of the New Testament, that Christ is the way, the truth and the life, that he is the Saviour of the world, and that the cross was the instrument and is the symbol of salvation. "These," says Mr. Coleridge, with great faith in his reader," are all the positives of the modern Socinian creed," and half of these are his own dreams. We might enlarge the number of Unitarian "positives," but the LayPreacher has succeeded so ill in creedinaking that we are not tempted to follow his example. In this apocryphal creed appear two marked features of the author's mind; first, an incapacity of conceiving that a body of Christians should not be disciplined under the faith of a leader but should each think and judge for himself; and secondly, a secret persuasion that a creed like an ingot is valuable according to its bulk, so that the Apostles' Creed would be greatly improved if it could be extended to the length of the Athanasian, and on the same principle the Lord's Prayer, which is a creed in another form, would be indefinitely more excellent if it were spread out into the size of the Book of Common Prayer. ART. III-A Letter to William Smith, Esq. M. P. from Robert Southey, Esq. 8vo. pp. 48. Murray. HE author of "Wat Tyler" seems To think that no one is entitled to call ill-names but himself. He finds that he is generally censured and ridiculed, and he flies into a rage, and while the fit is on him raves about his consistency and virtue and superiority to other folks and his immortality. Mr. Smith, the Member of Parliament for Norwich, took occasion in a debate concerning the political consistency of certain persons, to refer to two compositions which were generally ascribed to the same writer; one, Wat Tyler, which preaches equality and rebellion, and the other an article in the Quarterly Review, which holds out that the advocates of reform in Parliament design nothing less than a sanguinary revolution: comparing the two pieces, Mr. Smith pronounced the man who could have written both a RENEGADE. The word was never more justly or naturally applied. Whatever baseness it implies is chargeable in all its odiousness upon the public writer who first avows republicanism and then accuses his neighbour of being a revolutionist, merely because he seeks by peaceable means a constitutional reform. The Poet Laureate, for such the author of Wat Tyler has become, could have vindicated himself only by denying his being the writer referred to in the Quarterly Review, or by shewing that the passage in that publication had been mistaken. He does neither, but proceeds to laud himself and to curse all that do not admire at one and the same time Wat Tyler and the Quarterly Review. Mr. Southey's unparalleled self-sufficiency provokes the inquiry, Who is he? And in spite of all his vapouring, he himself must confess that he is best known as author of Wat Tyler and Poet Laureate. Although he has written more epics than Milton and probably as much history as Hume, we are not fully convinced of the equity of his title to immortality, which he holds up in Mr. Smith's face with a plain intimation that this gentleman has no chance of being known to posterity except in the character of " certain Mr. William Smith" who "insulted" him, the author of Wat Tyler. Yet we predict that the Jourfor thirty years have recorded the name nals of the House of Commons, which' of Mr. William Smith in connection' with every plan for the abolition of the slave-traffic, the relief of conscience, the preservation and extension of civil rights and the removal or mitigation of the crimes and horrors of war, will last as long as Joan of Arc, to which the Poet Laureate with so much prudent consistency refers us, or The Spaniard's Letters, or the Quarterly Review, or. Wat Tyler, or even the sonnet in praise of Harry Martin, the regicide. Not only Mr. Smith, but Mr. Brougham also and the reformers generally are assailed by the Poet Lau reate with every virulent and scurrilous epithet which the language supplies. They have thought, and some of them" have spoken, ill of Mr. Southey, since he shouted "Glory to God! Deliverance for mankind!" on the return of the Bourbons, the revival of Papal power, the restoration of the Inquisition and the spoliation of the liberties of Europe by the Vienna Congress, and therefore they are "miscreants who live by calumny and sedition," "libellers and liars by trade," "panders of malice and pioneers of rebellion." He says that the biographical dictionaries" will hereafter say of him "that in an age of personality, he abstained from satire;" probably they may, though Mr. Southey may as probably err in foretelling that "it will not be supposed that the ability for satire was wanting:" but will they say that he abstained under a sense of injury from that outrageous abuse which makes even him that is in the right seem in the wrong, and takes away at once the character of gentleman, scho lar and Christian? In the conclusion of the Letter, the author of Wat Tyler draws out his political creed, some of the articles of which certainly prove that, as he expresses himself, "his intellect has not been stationary," he has "outgrown his opinions." He believes that the laws lately enacted for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and preventing the meetings of the people were necessary. He believes that "the cry for retrenchment" is "senseless," that there has been too much retrenchment on the part of government, and that the national expenditure is, in proportion to its magnitude, the sign and measure of national prosperity. He believes that education is a good thing, but that the people "must be instructed according to the Established Religion," "must be fed with the milk of sound doctrine," that " parochial education" must be " so connected with the Church as to form part of the Establishment." Moreover, the author of Wat Tyler believes that "the government must curl the seditious press and keep it curbed. For this purpose" (adds the said author of Wat Tyler,) "if the laws are not at present effectual they should be made so; nor will they then avail unless they are vigorously executed." than one bookseller to publish Wat Tyler soon after it was written ? 2. Failing in this, did he not give the manuscript of Wat Tyler to a political friend, with express permission to do with it what he pleased? 3. In the last number but one of the Quarterly Review, of which Mr. Southey is well known to be one of the writers, was there not an article which rumour assigned to his pen aud which bears internal evidence of being his, in which the most criminal designs were attributed, not to the Luddites or to the Spenceans merely, but to the great body of the active pleaders and petitioners for Parliamentary Reform? ART. IV-Six Letters addressed to a THE" London Merchant" is what this title imports. He is a respectable layman, whose attention has been directed to theology, and whose inquiries led him from the Established Church to the "Independent Dissen ters" and, in the end, from them to the Unitarians. These "Letters" are designed to explain and vindicate his present faith, and are addressed to his late religious connections, "the members of the church statedly worshipping at Tonbridge Chapel, in the New Road, Somer's Town." The writer is well-read in the Trinitarian and Calvinistic controversy and familiar with the Scriptures. He states his arguments with clearness, and maintains them with ability. In exposing the weakness and absurdity of the system which he has renounced, he displays much acuteness of understanding. A very few quotations will shew that the " London Merchant" is no mean reasoner or common writer. Urging the consequences of allowing Three equal Divine Persons in the Deity, he says, "If we admit that the Three Persons of But we leave Mr. Southey and his political creed, which even the BeJoved Ferdinand" would acknowledge to be orthodox and willingly reward with the laurel, putting only two or the Trinity are independent each of the three questions on the answer to other, we are yet to be informed by what which the merit of this Letter must means it happens that they do not will, or intend, diversely from each other, having of course the power to do so. Has a com Test: 1. Did not Mr. Southey tempt more pact been entered into from all eternity, which it has not been judged proper to make the subject of revelation, that they shall neither will nor execute any thing contrary to each other, for fear of disturbing the harmony of Heaven? Or must we cail in mystery to our aid, and feign to be lieve that the Three Persons, being independent and almighty, are yet unable to will contrary to the mind one of the other? Or that they are so absorbed in the contemplation of their hypostatic union, as to be unconscious to themselves of being distinct Persons?"—Pp. 25, 26. The following remarks on the contradictory doctrine of the Athanasian Trinity, that the Second Person was begotten by the First and that the Third proceeded from the First and Second, and yet that "in this Trinity none is afore or after the other," appear to us unanswerable: "Admitting for a moment, that the Three Persous in the Godhead are equal in power, and all endued alike with every faculty and attribute of perfect God, each must be able to generate, and each ought to have generated, if any one has, a person or persons equal to himself, in the same manner as the Father produced or generated the Son. But we hear of no such person produced by the Son alone; and it was evidently an unnecessary concurrence of the Father and the Son that produced the person called the Holy Ghost, when either the Father or Son, being almighty, was capable of it. Nor is an unfair question to ask, why the Holy Ghost should not have given birth to a divine, equal, and coeternal person? and what is the law that limits the persons of the Godhead to three, since millions upon millions might have been produced with as much ease as the two already acknowledged? These tion be to prove knowledge useless, or worse than useless; if the lamp of wisdom is to be extinguished, only that we may call the midnight darkness that succeeds it light; if men are to be persuaded that their earnest and well-directed efforts to promote their present and future happiness by a diligent investigation of whatsoever is true in principle, or by a steady adherence to whatsoever is virtuous in practice, cannot advance them a single step on their way, what incitement is there to a virtuous conduct, what recompense for those who make a sacrifice of their present ease for a good couscience or through a noble desire to promote the welfare of their neighbour and their species? It cannot but excite emotions of the most painful kind in the breast of every friend of rational and true religion, to observe whole classes of religious teachers zealously employed in undermining the foundations of morality and virtue, by inculcating the incompetency of such principles to obtain for the good, any thing more than some partial convenience, or some deceitful reputation."-Pp. 60, 61. The author manifests great zeal for the benevolent character of the Father of the Universe, which he shews to be strangely and frightfully distorted and. discoloured by the Calvinists, and, with, much felicity of illustration, thus coucludes his Letter on this subject: "The church and meeting-house resound alike with these abuses of truth and Scrip ture; in maintaining which, Christiaus seem a great deal more bent upon displaying their own ingenuity and hardihood in: supporting a favourite hypothesis, than in exalting the character of their Maker, or setting forth his dealings toward mankind. in such colours, as to engage them by feelings of gratitude and affection on the side of obedience. In this respect, a wholeare points of which the truth and mysteri- some lesson may be learned from the wisousness are alike maintained by an appeal dom of a celebrated philosopher of antiquity, to Scripture; and there we ought to find Socrates, who, being accused of having them fully proved. But, if not stated there turned aside the youth from the religion of with the fulness and clearness that such their country, and encouraged them by his doctrines demand, from the tone of high own example, admitted, in his defence, pretension with which they are urged, we that he had inveighed against the superhave a clear right to reject them, and in stitions that had been introduced into re- : place of them to adopt such views of the ligion, because he could not endure that nature and existence of the Deity, as may hatred and other shameful passions should be more reconcileable with reason, and at be ascribed to the gods." If for such the same time more consistent with the gods: as, in compliance with the custom of plain and intelligible language of sacred his country, this celebrated man ignorantly writ."-Pp. 27, 28. worshipped, he consented to lay down his One of the first doctrines of the soi-life, what sacrifice would he not bave made disant Evangelical sect which alarmed our author was the inefficacy of good works, and upon this subject he says, with becoming solemnity, 5.If the whole end of religious instruc- for the honour of that God, if he had been so fortunate as to know him, who hates nothing that he has made, and whose mercy endureth for ever."-P. 63. Anacharsis' Travels, chap. Ixvii. |