PRACTICAL REASONING VERSUS IMPRACTICABLE THEORIES ... ROBYN HODE AND KYNGE RICHARDE; OR, A PLEASANT RELATION HOW ROBYN HODE AND HIS MERRYE MEN MET KYNG RICHARDE IN SHER- WOOD FOREST; HOW THEY BROUGHT THE KYNGE HOMEWARD TO THE Price 4d., or 3s. 6d. per dozen, or 25s. per hundred, SIR GEORGE SINCLAIR, BART., M.P. Delivered in the House of Commons, Friday, April 19, 1839, on Lord John Russell's GREAT BRITAIN AND THE COLONIES. Illustrated with a MAP, shewing the situation of each Roman Catholic Chapel, JAMES FRASER, Regent Street, London. No. CIX. FOR TOWN AND COUNTRY. JANUARY, 1839. VOL. XIX. DR. HOOK'S " CALL TO UNION THERE are different degrees and varieties of dishonesty, as well as of all other offences against the moral law. And it is very necessary to keep these distinctions in mind; else we might be understood to charge a man with one sort of misdemeanour, when, in fact, we had charged him with a very different one. There is the dishonesty, for instance, which wilfully misrepresents, and puts forward a false view of facts, intending to deceive. This we should be very loath to attribute to a Christian minister, save on the strongest evidence. We therefore wholly disclaim all idea of imputing such a transgression to Dr. Hook. But there is a lower degree of the same offence; and this is found when a man first contrives to deceive himself; and then, under the influence of that self-deception, sits down and fabricates a view of a certain question, so at variance with truth, so opposed to notorious fact, that it requires the exercise of a full portion of Christian charity to take him out of the first class just referred to, and to admit the possibility of his sincere belief in his own statements. This, however, is still dishonesty, though of a less culpable order. To frame, to write, to revise, to print, to put forth, statements not only not true, but the very reverse of the truth, cannot be entirely justified by the plea, that the author had first wrought his own mind up to a belief in them. He is morally bound, not merely to say what he believes, but to ANSWERED. say what is true; at least so far as the sources of truth lie within his reach. In this point of view, then, and as transgressing this second canon, we are compelled to accuse Dr. Hook of downright and positive DISHONESTY. For what is the drift and object of his sermon? What is the impression it produces, and is meant to produce, on the minds of the susceptible and credulous among those who read it? Unquestionably this,-that there is a schism springing up in the church,— that the seeds of disunion are being spread, that this schism and disunion is attributable to certain noisy and quarrelsome persons, who persist in writing and preaching against the Tracts for the Times and their authors; and that, consequently, the preacher's most urgent duty was to rebuke these factious and schismatic spirits; and to urge them to cease from their brawlings, and to "UNITE on the principles of the English Reformation." His text is, "Sirs, ye are brethren, -why do ye wrong one to another?" (Acts, vii. 26.) Here is at once an implied assertion, that some of those to whom he spoke (and it was a visitation sermon) were "wronging their brethren." And, in following his argument closely, we perceive not the least trace of a wish to moderate-to admit error on both sides-to suggest a middle course. All is approval to the one side, and reproof and even contumely to the other. The sermon closes with this passage: A Call to Union on the Principles of the English Reformation. By W. F. Hook, D.D. 8vo. London, 1838. Rivingtons. VOL. XIX. NO. CIX. B |