plications of the Doctrine of the Trinity, &c. In a Letter to H. H." Biographia Brit. iii. 29. Note II. The Unitarian was soon followed by this foe of the Bishop's own house, whom Burnet's biographers have left unnoticed. He thus expresses his disappointment, adding a charge of variations, which requires for its support a better authority than his own. As to the charge of some particular practice so darkly insinuated, it is sufficient to recollect that the Bishop appears to have set his accuser at defiance.

"When I saw the discourse as it came new dressed from the press, I was quite confouded by a complication of passions and amazements at the changes made in it, especially by the unfriendly usage of the Fathers, and gaudy character of the Socinian probity, justice and charity. Being thus disappointed, no wonder if my heart was heated within me. And hereupon I undertook to write to his Lordship my grief at those passages which offended me, and another particular practice of his Lordship not to be mentioned here. This letter his Lordship resented very grievously as too free and daring, and for that cause wrote to me, that he would admit of no discussion of particulars with a man of my ill temper, who seemed made to exercise the patience of better men: But had I come and modestly proposed my exceptions, he could and would have given me satisfaction; but if I would to the press for want of such private satisfaction, (as I had forewarned his lordship) I might take my course, so that this book comes out, even with his Lordship's licence." This vindicator finds "two things to urge against my Lord Bishop of Sarum-that he very defectively (to say no worse) states" the church's "faith and doctrine, in the articles of the Trinity, and Incarnation," and that "he exposes the Fathers." My author goes on to reproach the Bishop because "he foully states the faith of the divinity and incarnation of Christ, and therein, of the holy Trinity." This charge is brought against the discourse for having described the Trinitarian as one of "three opinions," and thus" is an insinuation laid for the communion with Socinians and

* Preface to the Lergy.

Arians, which is a blessed comprehension." And again, he calls it an opinion only like that of the Socinian and Arian." My author, on the contrary, determines that "Catholick Faith," or, in plain language, his own' opinion, was "the Faith of the Universal Church (not the opinion of any party) in the beginning; and therefore the contrary parties and opinions arising since (of what cut or size soever) pertain not to this holy body." Vindic. pp. 1-5.

The Bishop in his discourse appears to have encountered difficulties common to all who are not satisfied with the apostolic belief of one God, even the Father, and yet would avoid the language of Tritheism, or, if that be any thing less, of Sherlock's system of three infinite minds. Thus the Bishop qualifies his creed by the following declaration: "By Person is not meant such a Being as we commonly understand by that word, a complete intelligent Being, but only that every one of that blessed Three has a peculiar distinction in himself, by which he is truly different from the other two." Discourses, p. 81, in Vindic. p. 8. The Vindicator objects to this statement, and remarks, with a levity scarcely to have been expected, that "it being only such a diversity that one is not the other, it will as well agree to two or three tobacco-pipes, for these are truly dif ferent from each other." Id. p. 16. Still further to expose the Bishop's qualified belief in a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, he supposes him to hold the following dialogue with a gentile candidate for Christian baptism.

“CATECHUMEN. My Lord, I am an heathen philosopher, and willing to be instructed in the principles of the Christian faith; I pray what are they? BISH. First our received doc. trine is, that in the single essence of God there are three. CATECH. Three what, my Lord? BISH. Three really distinct from one another, more than three names, modes and œconomies. CATECH. My Lord, you tell me what they are not, but I would fain know, or have some notion what they are; and when you tell me there are three, the rules of logick, grammar and catechism require a substantive to determine the sense; I pray, my Lord,

has your Catholick Church, or your Church of England given them no characteristick name? BISH. Yes, after Patripassianism arose, she called them persons as a test to discover them. CATECH. But why then had you not thus stated the sum of your received doctrine, that in God's unity of essence there are three persons? For, if this were received before or since Patripassianism, 'tis received into your Christian confessions. Perhaps the Catholick Church may not really mean that they really are what she calls them, that is, persons; and hence your Lordship thought fit to omit it; I pray, my Lord, deal openly with me, is it so, or how is it? BISH. Truly, sir, the church only means that one is not the other; that is all that is intended in the term person. CATECH. This looks very catachrestical and inartificial; but do not your Scriptures teach them to be persons? BISH. No, they only call them by the names of Father, Son or Word, and Holy Ghost. CATECH. But do not your Scriptures and your churches teach, that the first of these is really a Father, and the second really his Son? BISH. This is one of the three opinions that the Scriptures do so teach. CATECH. And is this the opinion your Lordship will explain to me? BISH. Yes, sir. CATECH. Are Father and Son then personal titles? BISH. Yes, sir, among men. CATECH. But are they not so in the Deity? BISH. Sir, they are not called persons in Scripture, but only Father, Son or Word, and Holy Ghost; but we mean no more by persons, but that one is not the other; there are three, sir, that you may depend on; but I pray, sir, do not press me against liberty of conscience to call them persons, for I cannot tell what they are, nor what to call them. CATECH. But, I pray, my Lord, why did your Apostle blame the Athenian inscription" to the unknown God," and promise to declare him unto them, if he taught no more notions of him than that there are three I know-not-whats in the God-head? I am in hope I shall find better information from your Fathers; I pray, my Lord, what is your opinion of them herein? BISH. Perhaps, sir, they have gone beyond due bounds, contradicted each other and themselves; they use many impertinent

similes, run out into much length and confusion, while they talk of things to others which they understand not themselves. CATECH. My Lord, if you can teach me nothing of your faith in God, if you will reject the terms of your church, to which you have sworn your unfeigned assent, if you dissolve the sense of your Scripture terms into nothing, and renounce the wisdom of your Primitive Fathers, you force me to retreat from my hopes, and to devote my soul to the society of the philosophers." Id. pp. 19 -22.

It would be very difficult to render interesting a farther examination of this volume. In the second part, besides the defence of the Fathers, there is an occasional attack on Crellius, F. Socinus, (id. p. 136,) and "our countryman Biddle," who "was so convinced of the errors of his Socinian Fathers, that he even scouts them, and roundly falls off to the elder enemies of the Holy Spirit, with whom he passed for a created person." Id. p. 137. There is also a reference to "that impostor Sandius!" Id. p. 168. It is mentioned, not to the Bishop's praise, that he had "exposed for doubted, in his Letter from Zurich, that passage of St. John, 1 Ep. v. 7." Id. p. 52. There is also a passage quoted from "Dr. Burnet's Letter of Remarks upon the two Strong Box Papers," id. p. 170. They were attributed to Charles the Second, and are mentioned in Mon. Repos. X. 226. This Letter, by the Bishop, was not published till 1688. (See Biog. Brit. iii. 36.)

The Vindicator thus solemnly concludes his labour: "And now I am resolved to end, though his divinity affords much more corrigible matter. At the horror whereof I leave him to God's mercy and the Church's prayers; but his writings of this stamp, either to his own ingenuous recantation, or canonical censure." Risum teneatis? A simple priest thus reproving a Bishop, and such an one as Burnet!!

This Vindicator surely knew not what spirit he was of; and it was scarcely worthy of the Bishop to regard such a publication. Yet Wood says that "Bishop Burnet, angry at this book, complains to the Bishop of London [Compton] that his chaplain, R. Altham, late proctor of Oxford,

IN your Repository for April, [p. 209,] your Correspondent Otiosus mentions a publication of 1745, in which the author asserts that at that time it was usual for the poor to go from one village to another begging soulcakes, and asks if any of your readers have witnessed this. His question I answer in the affirmative, and that the custom prevailed in that part of England of which I am a native (Staffordshire), about thirty-seven years ago, but I never knew any other than children go on this errand. Once on the occasion the little supplicants treated me with one of their cakes, which were made of oatmeal and water, in the way in which crumpets are made, and was the kind of whole. some bread chiefly eaten on those days in that part. Mentioning this to a female friend, she told me it was practised there as recently as fourteen or fifteen years ago, and by adults as well as children, and that they were not restricted to the little cakes, but received fruit or any thing that the good folks were pleased to give them.

The supplicative song I have heard them make use of was merrily run over, and is as follows:

Pray you, good dame, a soulcake, a soulcake,

An apple, a pear, a plum, or a cherry,
Or any good thing to make us merry :
One for Peter and two for Paul,
And three for Him that made us all.

Whatever gave rise to the custom I know not, but I understand that the Roman Catholics did, on certain days, invoke their saints on behalf of some of their friends in purgatory, and I suppose on this day (All-Soul's) they besought them for the restoration of

the souls of all their brethren from this place of punishment; and probably a fast, or at least a day of abstinence, might have been instituted on the occasion: but as this is only conjecture, I shall be glad to see a developement by any of your able Correspondents.

SIR,

SEV

ANTI-IMPOSITION.

On the System of Malthus.

EVERAL allusions have been recently made in your Repository to the system of population which Mr. Malthus has laboured to develope and enforce. Some of these have served more strongly to convince me of the fallacy and the unhappy tendencies of that celebrated scheme. It is, I fear, calculated to exert no genial influence on the character of the present age. It sends a chillness into our "heart of hearts." It represses the involuntary risings of our kindest and most charitable emotions. It defends the extravagant luxuries of the rich, while it represents as criminal the most sacred affections of the poor. It gives a ready apology to the selfish, and covers the unfeeling bosom with the additional steel of a philosophic armour.

But, I am well aware that to express repugnance to a theory as a matter of feeling or taste is not to disprove it. To some, indeed, it may seem a sufficient objection to the new doctrine of population, that it contradicts the first of the Almighty's blessings. There is, however, no necessity to stop here. be able to shew not only that the inferences derived from it are absurd, but that the premises on which it rests are unfounded.

I trust I shall

Now, if these propositions are true, it is "passing strange" they should so long have remained a secret. Men are usually rather prompt in discovering the immediate causes of their sorrows. And yet the exuberance of population was never, until the present age, found to be the master-spring of human woes. On the contrary, in ancient times the main strength of a nation was supposed to consist in the number of its citizens. And it is impossible for the most perverted ingenuity to trace any large portion of the ills of life to an excessive population as its source. Even in the severest times the death of a human being by famine, or even by disease arising from want, is a comparatively rare occurrence. The far greater part of the miseries of life have their origin in the artificial desires, the inconsistent hopes, and the guilty passions of man. For the most part, they are altogether independent of the scantiness of the articles absolutely necessary to subsistence. Even the calamities of want which actually arise, may be traced to much more obvious causes than a disproportion between the people to be fed and the means of feeding them, except in years when the usual produce fails. Instances of national distress are occasioned by the stagnation of trade, the pressure of taxation, the fluctuations of credit, or more frequently by the employment of large numbers of active men in foreign wars, who are to be supported from the produce of lands which they do not assist to cultivate. In all the annals of carnage, Mr. Malthus cannot produce an instance in which a king has made war in order to dispose of his superfluous subjects. The evils of bloodshed arise from the ambition of man, not from the deficiency of corn: and they would rage with equal fury though food were ten times as plentiful.

The sentiment expressed by the Chorus in Edipus Tyrannus is in unison with all the ideas of ancient statesmen :

Ως, είπερ ἄρσεις τῆδε γῆς, ὥσπερ κραTεis,

Ξὺν ἀνδράσιν κάλλιον ἢ κενῆς κρα

Ὡς ἐδέν ἐσιν ἔτε πύργος, ἔτε ναῦς,
Έρημος ἀνδρῶν μὴ ευνοικήτων ἔσω.
Soph. Edip. Tyr. 54.

The diseases produced by luxury are far more numerous than those which arise from want. Aud yet, in defiance of these facts, we are called on to give our assent to a system which ascribes the miseries of the world to the perpetual tendency of the species to increase beyond the means which Providence has ordained for its support.

This mode of establishing theories in defiance of experience is strikingly exemplified in the conclusions which your Correspondent Homo has drawn from the system of Malthus. + He states his principles, and then draws as a practical inference from them, that life is for the most part a scene of wretchcdness, and that existence is a curse. Now it is almost too evident to be mentioned, that the question of the happiness or the misery of the species is one to be determined by the examination of facts, and not by the discussion of theories. If, on the whole, it should appear that good is more prevalent than evil, that human beings in general feel existence to be a blessing and cling to it with fondness to the last, no reasoning, however apparently conclusive, can alter a conviction founded on such a basis. And if, on the other hand, an impartial survey of this earthly scene should lead us to the dreary belief that sorrow is more abundant than joy, no developement of the causes of misery could deepen the gloom. It is, indeed, the tendency of the scheme of Malthus to chill all our hopes for the future improvement of man, by representing the springs of his distresses as necessarily coeval with his nature; but it cannot aggravate the actual evils of our condition. If the hope, the love and the joy which surround us are inconsistent with the conse quences which follow from that system, the error must be in the reasonings which lead to an impossible conclusion. The most ingenious argument could not persuade us that the sun does not enlighten the world,

+ See Mon, Repos. p. 151. This writer is certainly eloquent in describing the dark

or human afairs. His views of society are extensive; but he seems to have caught them through a gloomy medium. They are "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thonght,"

We should feel no hesitation in pronouncing the reasoning sophistical, even though we could not discover the precise point of its fallacy. So if a man finds himself surrounded with plenty, Mr. Malthus will fail to convince him that he is in the midst of famine, even though he should seem to prove that the human race increases faster than the means of subsistence, and to shew that men are born to be starved by all the triumphant progress of a geometrical progression.

But to return to the system itself, which is represented as casting so dreary a shadow over all earthly hopes. It seems to me to be founded on the most fallacious principles. Its main defect is, that it sets out with regarding man as a mere animal. It takes his high instincts, his dear affections, his most mysterious emotions, as matter of calculation, to be cast up in the gross, and estimated by the rules of arithmetical series. It applies its mean and wretched standard to the human heart. It is built on the supposition that the love between the sexes is altogether low and sensual. It assumes that man, in the tenderest and most universal of his sympathies, is in no way distinguished from the beasts that perish. Its fundamental principles could be correct only as applied to creatures, animated solely by ferocious instinct, and destitute of reason, sentiment, imagination and hope. To such a level does the first calculation of Malthus reduce his species. It is but consistent that a system which ultimately throws a shade on the goodness of God should begin by debasing the character of

man.

The whole of this withering theory is founded on a comparison between the tendencies of the human race to multiply, and the progress of the means of subsistence, If the principles of these calculations be erroneous, all the consequences deduced from them must fail. This I shall now endeavour to establish.

And first, the mutual affection between the sexes is not subject to the reasoning applied to it by Malthus. Who shall dare assert that it has no relations but to time and sense? It is not of the earth, earthly. It comes over the soul with a sweet and ravishVOL. XII.

ing calm, like a breeze from some happier world. It brings with it glorious hopes from afar, and innumerable thoughts of joy, as airy and bright and unearthly, as the fleecy clouds at sunset. It sheds its gentle influence over all the affections, as spring throws a soft green over the visible creation. It steals upon us at that period of life when the heart is most in need of those cherishing and ennobling joys which it never fails to supply. Too soon we find the pleasures of our early days goue, and their innocence ready to forsake us. The high and noble beatings of the youthful soul are stopped by the chilling influence of the world. The bright visions of romantic virtue and sweet dreams of spiritual excellence, which encircled infancy like a charm, are dissolved as the knowledge of life, with its evils increases. Our perceptions of things which are unseen become dim as we grow conversant with the grosser realities of existence. We descend from the high range of imaginary good to the lower scenes where an engrossing selfishness prevails. Evil thoughts crowd upon the mind hitherto unconscious of gust, which too often leave a stain behind them, even when their immediate temptations are most successfully resisted. We are now in imminent danger of losing that fine polish and exquisite enamel of the soul, which is not only beautiful in itself, but the best safeguard of the loveliest virtues and the best and purest affections. The debasing spirit of commerce, the wretched pursuit of gain, the exclusive ambition of earthly advancement, and the allurements of worldly joy, tend to deaden our feelings and to harden our hearts. At this critical period it is that love comes to our aid with protection as potent as that of a "thousand liveried angels!" It opposes all selfish desires by making another the sharer in our fondest hopes and giving to us an object more dear than our earthly being. It awakens again our perceptions of all that is great and good around us, within us and above us. When its sweet light dawns on the mind," the splendour in the grass, the glory in the flower," almost sparkle in their original lustre. We catch another