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to our perceptions and modes of speaking must be admitted here as it is in a thousand other passages of Holy Scripture. Our duty cannot be mistaken, whatever interpretation we put upon the disputed words; and it is this duty which it is the main purpose of that volume to declare and to impress upon us.

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We would further ask those who contend for the strict letter of Scripture, and for the mystical correspondence of the several days of the week with the order of the creation, upon what authority they have transferred the character of Sabbath from the seventh to the first day? The reason we do not ask for, for that is wellknown, but the authority. The answer must be, that in this par ticular a constructive and traditional rule has been allowed gradually to supersede a positive command. Nay, it is well known, that within the church itself the practice has varied. For although the Lord's day has from the first been the weekly festival of Christians, yet the transfer of the Sabbatical rest from labour to that day was by no means uniform, nor did it form one of the canonical ordinances of the church in the first three centuries.

Again, let those who tremble for the authority of Scripture, if this point be conceded, recollect, how strict and peremptory the language is in a hundred instances of the Mosaic law, which have been abrogated in practice, without any positive declaration to that effect; and let them consider what a violence must have ap peared to be done to the letter, especially in the apprehension of the early Jewish converts, when these observances were pronounced to be matters of indifference and suffered to die away. The Apostles themselves, we know, did not all agree in practice upon these points, and yet the divine authority of Scripture was universally acknowledged.

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The Sabbath, it is certain, was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Every practical purpose therefore which it was intended to serve is fully answered whether we conform our physical system to the letter of Scripture or not-whether we consider the chapter of Genesis as setting forth the last formation only and the final adjustment of our globe to the occupation of man, (in which case the days may be regarded as portions of time equal to our natural days), or as declaring the whole series of changes the planet has undergone from the beginning of time,

It is by no means necessary to insist upon either of these interpretations as essential to our faith and we repeat that the professor appears to us to have acted wisely in not attempting to determine the matter. Of this, however, we are quite sure; that the Scripture requires of us, both in its letter and in its spirit, to respect even the mistaken scruples of our brethren-to suffer errors of this kind, if they be errors, to die of themselves, not at

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tempt to eradicate them with a violent hand. It teaches us to propose our opinions, when they militate against the consciencious impressions of others, in the most inoffensive form, not to take a malicious pleasure, as is sometimes done, in perplexing the mind or alarming the religious feelings of our neighbouror to be forward in boasting our own superiority, and our freedom from his prejudices.

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From errors such as these Professor Buckland stands wholly free, not only in the volume before us, but in the still more arduous and extensive work of his Academical Lectures. Into these he has largely introduced new and convincing proofs of providential design of that system of final causes, which is deeply impressed on the whole mechanism of nature; the contemplation of which disposes the mind to pious feelings, and to a thirst for that more intimate knowledge of the Creator's will which the revelation of word has conveyed to us. The importance of such services in an age of free inquiry, and among the hundreds of students who now flock to our universities, it is not easy to estimate; for though it be true that divine truth must in the end prevail over all opposition, yet the taint of infidelity may be imparted, by careless or irreligious teachers, to many whose minds will never afterwards possess the strength or the opportunity to expel it. The charge then that is committed even to the professors of physical science is precious and sacred; and happy is that age and country in which it is placed side by side with the interests of religion, in the hands of men whose education is enlightened and liberal, and who unite, as may surely always be done, the character of the scholar and the Christian with that of the philosopher, in their investigations of the frame and constitution of the material world..

ART. VII.—Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time: with the suppressed Passages of the First Volume, and Notes by the Earls of Dartmouth and Hardwicke and Speaker Onslow, hitherto unpublished. To which are added the Cursory Remarks of Swift, and other Observations. 6 vols. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press.

THE Clarendon Press has of late years been well employed in republishing books of sterling value, such as the historical works of Prideaux and Shuckford, the voluminous collections of Strype, to whom, of all men, our ecclesiastical history is most indebted, Hooker, Barrow, Sherlock, Butler, and other worthies of our church. Burnet's History of the Reformation had already been given, and we have now his History of his Own Time from

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the same press, with some singularly curious accompaniments. The passages now restored were struck out by the original editor, because, though the Bishop was too careless whose memory he blackened, or whose feelings he might wound, his son seems to have felt that by expunging what was most injurious to others, he consulted best the reputation of his father. Some trifling alterations he made, to soften or amend the author's language; but the suppressed passages were mostly of an acrimonious or malicious character. One of the most remarkable relates to Charles I., upon the alleged authority of whose letters to the Duke of Hamilton, Burnet declares that he could not admire his judgement, his understanding, or his temper; pronounces that he had little tenderness in his nature, little regard to law, and seemed to think he was not bound to observe any promises or concessions that were extorted from him by the necessity of his affairs. The whole passage is utterly disgraceful to Burnet; he confesses that, in his Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton, he omitted those things in the king's letters from which he drew this conclusion'; and he forgets (which the present editor has most properly re marked) that Hamilton, at his execution, said of Charles, I have had the honour since my childhood to attend and be near him, till now of late, and during all that time I observed in him as many virtues and as little vice as in any man I ever knew.' He forgets also his own declaration that he proposed to himself nothing more in those Memoirs than to let the world see the great piety and strictness of conscience that blessed prince carried along with him in all his affairs.' There is reason to believe that King William was treated by the Bishop with as much malevolence as his predecessors, but the suppressed passages in the latter half of the history have not been recovered; supposing them to be of the same character as those which are now restored, they may be allowed to perish without regret.

Swift's cursory notes are characteristic of their author; they exhibit at once his hatred and his contempt of Burnet, sometimes captious, sometimes dirty, generally shrewd, always short and caustic; never stopping to confute or controvert the passages upon which he comments. Like Warburton, in his excellent remarks upon Neal's History of the Puritans, (the most dishonest book in our language, Dodd's Roman Catholic Church History not excepted,) he contents himself with expressing his opinion in the bitterest terms which occurred, such as, dog! Scotch dog! rogue! vain fop! silly fop! canting puppy! treacherous villain! well said, bishop! false false and scandalous! false and spiteful! and once he says, false as hell! This last indignant contradiction is provoked by a base charge in the text against Archbishop Sancroft, that though

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he seemed zealous against popery in private discourse, he was of such a timorous temper, and so set on the enriching his nephew, that he shewed no sort of courage.' So reprehensible a passage has called forth a censure also from Lord Dartmouth; this reflection,' he says, might well have been spared upon a man who gave sufficient proof at the revolution that he could quit the highest preferment rather than comply with any thing contrary to his conscience; especially from the most interested, confident, busy man that ever his nation produced.' Burnet says that the Earl of Argyle was 'free of all scandalous vices,' upon which Swift remarks, as a man is free of a corporation, he means.' The Bishop speaks of Q. Henrietta Maria as a woman who loved all her life long to be in intrigues of all sorts.' 'Not of love, I hope,' says her commentator. Burnet observed it was an extraordinary thing that a random cannon shot should have killed Turenne. How extraordinary?' says his sarcastic reader; might it not kill him as well as any other man?' In his account of the Rye House Plot, Burnet says that the parties ran into much wicked talk' about the way of killing the king and his brothers, but nothing was ever fixed on, all was but talk.' All plots begin with talk, is the just observation of Swift upon this. Burnet says of Baillie, (who was indeed sacrificed by the foulest injustice,) that his behaviour looked like the reviving of the spirit of the noblest of the Greeks or Romans, or rather of the primitive Christians and first martyrs in those best days of the church.' For he was our cousin, Swift writes in the margin. Burnet affirms that the presbyterians 'loved episcopal ordination and the liturgy, and upon some amendments seemed disposed to come into the church; and they liked the civil government and limited monarchy. A damnable lie,' says the Dean. The year 1688, says Burnet, formed an extraordinary and unheard-of revolution. The Devil's in that, remarks Swift, sure all Europe heard of it.' The Bishop gives lero lero lilibulero as Irish words. Swift says they are not Irish, but better than Scotch. Sometimes he sneers at the style for its carelessness or its poverty; sometimes condemus it as 'dark nonsense,' or 'sad trash.' It is worthy of notice that he objects to the word 'mob,' calling it sarcastically a word of dignity for an historian. Concerning the settlement of the government at the revolution, Swift declares himself to be one of those persons who thought there was an original contract between the King and the people of England; yet he says he would have been for a regency, as much the best expedient; but he admits the force of the argument, that men knew they might act legally, and therefore safely, under a king, but not under a regent created by the Convention; and that James, by flying to the enemy of the nation rather than submit to reasonable

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reasonable terms, had put the people of England to the necessity of securing themselves upon a legal bottom.

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Upon Burnet's bold assertion that the presumptive proofs of imposture on the birth of the Prince of Wales were more convincing than plain and downright evidence,' Swift remarks, well said, Bishop! Burnet's political character, indeed, is far from clear, and this is the worst part of it. He accepted the dirty office of gathering together these proofs, and making out a case in support of one of the most impudent falsehoods that was ever swallowed by gaping credulity. The fact is known by his own avowal of it; for upon further deliberation, the government wisely abstained from producing the case formally before the public. It is worthy of notice that there had been precisely a similar disposition in the case of Queen Mary to believe that a supposititious child would be produced. Probably at both periods it had been instilled into the people; and some colour on both occasions was given to the suspicion by the confident folly with which the Catholics proclaimed their expectation of a male heir. A most impudent and licentious example of this may be seen in the verses composed by an English Jesuit at Loretto; James's queen had offered to the idol of that celebrated shrine an angel of gold, holding a heart covered with diamonds; the priests there affirmed it appeared by sure calculation that she had conceived at the very moment when this offering entered the Santa Casa, and they produced a dialogue. between the guardian angel of the queen and their Lady of Loretto, in which the angel requests that his client may have a son, and the Virgin assures him the request is granted at the moment it is made.

Swift's remarks, brief as they are, were in general well worthy of preservation; right or wrong, (for some of them are certainly to be regretted, and we are sorry to see them inserted here,) whatever comes from him bears the stamp of his original and strong character. Lord Dartmouth's notes are of a very different description; he from his own knowledge sometimes corrects the Bishop's statement, and sometimes adds to the information in the text. His opinion of Burnet, though, he thought him a man of the most extensive knowledge he had ever, met with, is on the whole little more favourable than Swift's, though somewhat less contemptuous. He had read and seen a great deal,' his lordship says, with a prodigious memory, and a very indifferent judgment; he was extremely partial, and readily took every thing for granted that he heard to the prejudice of those that he did not like, which made him pass for a man of less truth than he really was. I do not think he designedly published any thing he believed to be false. Lord Dartmouth, on perusing the second portion of the work, (which was not published till

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