gured in his day, and whose move ments came within his own knowledge, or were of unquestioned public notoriety.

His benevolence was best known to his more intimate friends; and nothing but his death releases the hand which writes this short memoir from the restriction of private confidence on this particular subject. It was in the course of our unreserved correspondence, immediately after the failure of a bank, at Bury, in 1797, which involved his father and himself in no inconsiderable loss, that he wrote, in reply to what I had proposed to him on that occasion... "But it will not be in my power to accept the very friendly invitation, till after the next dividend. Upon the bankruptcy taking place, I determined, if possible, not to fail in any one of the little douceurs I was in the habit of bestowing in the eleemosynary way, to a few persons with whose necessities I am acquainted; and as it is impossible to lose the best part of a year's income, with ⚫ out making retrenchments somewhere, I was prompt in deciding that the abridgment should be in personal gratifications; of which the greatest I certainly esteem that of presenting myself before my London friends." -See Monthly Magazine, Vol. xiv. pp. 89, 193.

CATALOGUE OF HIS WRITINGS. No. 1. Examination of Mr. Harrison's Sermon, preached in the cathedral church of St. Paul, London, before the Lord Mayor, on May 25th, 1788---1789.

2. Letter to the Right Rev. the Bishop of Norwich, (Dr. Bagot) requesting him to name the Prelate to whom he referred as "contending strenuously for the general excellence of our present authorised translation of the Bible," 1789.

3. Letter to the Right Rev. the Bishop of Chester, (Dr. Cleaver) on the subject of two Sermons addressed

4. Review of Dr. Hay's Sermon, intitled "Thoughts on the Athana sian Creed," preached April 19th, 1790, at the visitation of the Archdeacon of Bucks, 1790.

5. Outline of a Commentary on Revelations xi, 1---14. 1794.

6. A Sermon preached in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, on Thursday, Dec. 19th, 1793, the day appointed for the commemoration of the benefactors to that society, 1794.

66

PAPERS IN COMMENTARIES AND

ESSAYS," SIGNED SYNERGUS. 1. Vol. I. 1786. Art. V. p. 94--111. A Paraphrase and Notes on Romans v. 8---18. 2. Art. XI. p. 467---509. Observations on part of the 8th, 11th, and 12th chapters of Daniel.

9. Vol. II. 1801. Art. XIII. P. 1. 8. An Illustration of 1 Cor. x. 14--24. 4. Art. XIX. p. 123---252. A Summary View of the Prophecies relating to Antichrist, contained in the writings of Daniel, Paul, Peter, Jude, and John. 5. Art. XX. p. 253--267. On the Forensic Metaphors adopted in the New Testament. 6. Art. XXI. p. 268---278. On the terms Redemp. tion, Ransom, Purchase, &c. adopted in the New Testament. 7. Art. XXII. p. 279---311. On the Sacrificial Phrases adopted in the New Testament.

PAPERS IN THE "THEOLOGICAL RE

POSITORY."

1. Vol. V. 1786. p. 38---56, signed Ereunetes. Observations on Isaiah vii. 10---23. viii. 5---19. 2, p. 273--288. Observations on various Texts of Scripture, signed Ereunetes.

9. Vol. VI. 1788, p. 60---78. signed Ereunetes. On the Oblation of Isaac, as figurative of the Death of Christ. 4. p. 135---174, signed Idiota. On the Elijah foretold by Malachi. 5. p. 244---284, signed Idiota. An Inquiry into the Time at which the Kingdom of Heaven will commence. J. D.

solemn and imposing lights, in which their nearness to the rising sun of Christianity places them; yet, that the time of their authority over conscience and opinion was gone by; that they were no longer to be regarded as guides either in faith or in morals; and that we should be quite within the pale of orthodoxy in saying that, though admirable martyrs and saints, they were, after all, but indifferent Christians. In point of style, too, we had supposed that criticism was no longer dazzled by their sanctity; that few would now agree with the learned jesuit, Garasse, that a chapter of St. Augustine on the Trinity is worth all the Odes of Pindar; that, in short, they had taken their due rank among those affected and rhetorical writers, who flourished in the decline of ancient literature, and were now, like many worthy authors we could mention, very much respected and never read.

We had supposed all this; but we find we were mistaken. An eminent dignitary of the Church of England has lately shewn that in his opinion at least, these veterans are by no means invalided in the warfare of theology; for he has brought more than seventy volumes of them into the field against the Calvinists. And here is Mr. Boyd, a gentleman of much Greek, who assures us that the Homilies of St. Chrysostom, the Orations of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and -proh pudor!-the Amours of Daphnis and Chloe are models of eloquence, atticism, and fine writing.

Mr. Boyd has certainly chosen the safer, as well as pleasanter path, through the neglected field of learning; for, tasteless as the metaphors of the fathers are in general, they are much more innocent and digestible than their arguments; as the learned bishop we have just alluded to may, perhaps, by this time acknowledge; having found, we suspect, that his seventy folios are, like elephants in battle, not only ponderous, but dangerous auxiliaries, which, when once let loose, may be at least as formidable to friends as to foes. This, indeed, has always been a characteristic of the writings of the fathers. This ambidextrous faculty-this sort of Swiss versatility in fighting equally well on both sides of the question, has dis

tinguished them through the whole history of theological controversy :--the same authors, the same passages have been quoted with equal confidence, by Arians and Athanasians, Jesuits and Jansenists, Transubstantiators and Typifiers. Nor is it only the dull and bigoted who have had recourse to these self-refuted authorities for their purpose; we often find the same anxiety for their support, the same disposition to account them, as Chillingworth says, 'Fathers when for, and children when against,' in quarters where a greater degree of good sense and fairness might be expected. Even Middleton himself, who makes so light of the opinions of the fathers, in his learned and manly inquiry into miracles, yet courts their sanction with much assiduity for his favourite system of allegorizing the Mosaic history of the creation; a point on which, of all others, their alliance is most dangerous, as there is no subject upon which their Pagan imaginations have rioted more ungovernably.

The errors of the primitive doctors of the church; their Christian heathenism and heathen Christianity, which led them to look for the Trinity among those shadowy forms that peopled the twilight groves of the academy, and to array the meek, self-humbling Christian in the proud and iron armour of the Portico; their bigoted rejection of the most obvious truths in natural science; the bewildering vibration of their moral doctrines, never resting between the extremes of laxity and rigour; their credulity, their inconsistencies of conduct and opinion, and worst of all, their forgeries and falsehoods, have already been so often and so ably exposed by divines of all countries, religions and sects; the Dupins, Mosheims, Middletons, Clarkes, Jortins, &c. that it seems superfluous to add another line upon the subject: though we are not quite sure that, in the present state of Europe, a discussion of the merits of the fathers is not as seasonable and even fashionable a topic as we could select. At a time when the Inquisition is re-established by our beloved Ferdinand; when the Pope again brandishes the keys of St. Peter with an air worthy of a successor of the Hildebrands and

Perettis; when canonization is about to be inflicted on another Louis, and little silver models of embryo princes are gravely vowed at the shrine of the virgin in times like these it is not too much to expect that such enlightened authors as St. Jerome and Tertullian may soon become the classics of most of the continental courts. We shall therefore make no further apology, for prefacing our remarks upon Mr. Boyd's translation with a few brief and desultory notices of some of the most distinguished fathers and their works.

St. Justin, the martyr, is usually considered as the well-spring of most of those strange errors which flowed so abundantly through the early ages of the Church, and spread around them in their course such luxuriance of absurdity. The most amiable, and therefore the least contagious of his heterodoxies, was that which led him to patronize the souls of Socrates and other Pagans, in consideration of those glimmerings of the divine Logos which his fancy discovered through the dark night of heathenism. The absurd part of this opinion remained, while its tolerant spirit evaporated. And while these Pagans were still allowed to have known something of the Trinity, they were yet damned for not knowing more, with most unrelenting orthodoxy.

The belief of an intercourse between angels and women, founded upon a false versiou of a text in Genesis, and of an abundant progeny of demons in consequence, is one of those monstrous notions of St. Justin, and other fathers, which show how little they had yet purged off the grossness of heathen mythology, and in how many respects their heaven was but Olympus with other names :--Yet we can hardly be angry with them for this error, when we recollect, that possibly to their enamoured angels we owe the beautiful world of

▾ Still more benevolent was Origen's never-to-be-forgiven dissent from the doctrine of eternal damnation. To this amiable weakness, more than any thing else, this father seems to have owed the forfeiture

of his rank in the Calendar; and in return for his anxiety to rescue the human race from hell, he has been sent thither himself by more than one Catholic theolo

VOL. X:

Sylphs and Gnomes, and that, perhaps, at this moment, we might have wanted Pope's most excellent Poem, if the Septuagint Version had translated the book of Genesis correctly. This doctrine, as far as it concerned angelic natures, was at length indig nantly disavowed by St. Chrysostom. But dæmons were much too useful a race to be so easily surrendered to reasoning or ridicule; there was no getting up a decent miracle without them, exorcists would have been out of employ, and saints at a loss for temptation ---Accordingly, the writings of these holy doctors abound with such stories of dæmoniacal possession, as make us alternately smile at their weakness, and blush for their dishonesty. Nor are they chargeable only with the impostures of their own times; the sanction they gave to this petty diabolism has made them responsible for whole centuries of juggling. Indeed, whoever is anxious to contemplate a picture of human folly and human knavery, at the same time ludicrous and melancholy, may find it in a history of the exploits of dæmons, from the days of the Fathers down to modern times; from about the date of that theatrical little devil of Tertullian, (so triumphantly referred to by Jeremy Collier), who claimed a right to take possession of a woman in the theatre (because he there found her on his own ground'), to the gallant dæmons commemorated by Bodin and Remigius, and such tragical farces as the possession of the Nuns of Loudon. The same features of craft and dupery are discoverable through the whole from beginning to end; and when we have read of that miraculous person, Gregory Thaumaturgus, writing a familiar epistle to Satan, and then turn to the story of the young Nun, in Bodin, in whose box was found a love-lettera son cher dæmon,' we need not ask more perfect specimens of the two wretched extremes of imposture and credulity, than these two very different letterwriters afford.

The only class of dæmons whose loss would gladly have restored to us, are we regret, and whose visitations we those seducing sprites, who,' Theophilus of Antioch tells us, confessed themselves to be the same that had inspired the heathen poets.' The

as

learned Father has not favoured us with any particulars of these interesting spirits; has said nothing of the ample wings of fire, which, we doubt not, the dæmons of Homer and Pindar spread out, nor described the laughing eyes of Horace's Familiar, nor even the pointed tail of the short devil of Martial; but we own we should like to see such cases of possession in our days; and though we Reviewers are a kind of exorcists, employed to cast out the eivil dæmon of scribbling, and even pride ourselves upon having performed some notable cures; from such dæmoniacs we would refrain with reverence; nay, so anxiously dread the escape of the spirit, that, for fear of accidents, we would not suffer a saint to come near them.

The belief of a millenium or temporal reign of Christ, during which the faithful were to be indulged in all sorts of sensual gratifications, may be reckoned among those gross errors, for which neither the porch nor the academy are accountable, but which grew up in the rank soil of oriental fanaticism, and were nursed into doctrines of Christianity by the Fathers. Though the world's best religion comes from the East, its very worst superstitions have sprung thence also; as in the same quarter of the heavens arises the sun-beam that gives life to the flower, and the withering gale that blasts it. There is scarcely one of these fantastic opinions of the Fathers that may not be traced among the fables of the antient Persians and Arabians. The voluptuous Jerusalem of St. Justin and Irenæus may be found in those glorious gardens of Iram, which were afterwards converted into the Paradise of the Faithful by Mahomet; and their enamoured Sons of God' may be paralleled in the angels Harut and Marut of Eastern story, who, bewildered by the influence of wine and beauty, forfeited their high celestial rank, and were degraded into teachers of magic upon earth. The mischievous absurdity of some of the moral doctrines of the Fathers; the state of apathy to which they would reduce their Gnostic or perfect Christian; their condemnation of marriage and their Monkish fancies about celibacy; the extreme to which they carried their notions of patience, even to the prohibition of all resistance to aggression, though the aggressor

aimed at life itself; the strange doctrine of St. Augustine, that the Saints are the only lawful proprietors of the things of this world, and that the wicked have no right whatever to their possessions, however human laws may decree to the contrary; the indecencies in which too many of them have indulged in their writings; the profane frivolity of Tertullian, in making God himself prescribe the length and measure of women's veils, in a special revelation to some ecstatic spinster; and the moral indignation with which Clemens Alexandrinus inveighs against white bread, periwigs, coloured stuffs and lap-dogs! all these, and many more such puerile and pernicious absurdities open a wide field of weedy fancies, for ridicule to skim, and good sense to trample upon:

But we must content ourselves with referring to the works that have been written upon this subject; particu larly to the treatise de la Morale des Pères' of Barbeyrae; which, though as dull and tiresome as could reasonably be expected from the joint efforts of the Fathers of the Church and a Law professor of Groningen, abun dantly proves that the moral tenets of these holy men are for the most part unnatural, fanatical and dangerous; founded upon false interpretations of holy writ, and the most gross and anile ignorance of human nature; and that a community of Christians, formed upon their plan, is the very Utopia of monkery, idleness and fanaticism.

Luckily, the impracticability of these wretched doctrines was in general a sufficient antidote to their mischief: But there were two maxims, adopted and enforced by many of the Fathers, which deserve to be branded with particular reprobation, not only because they acted upon them continually themselves, to the disgrace of the holy cause in which they were engaged, but because they have transmitted their contamination to posterity, and left the features of Christianity to this day disfigured by their taint. The first of these maxims-we give it in the words of Mosheim-was,

that it is an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of the church may be promoted. To this profligate principle the world owes, not only the fables and forgeries of these primitive times, but

many of those evasions, those compromises between conscience and expediency, which are still thought necessary and justifiable for the support of religious establishments. So industrious were the churchmen of the early ages in the inculcation of this monstrous doctrine, that we find the Bishop Heliodorus insinuating it, as a general principle of conduct, through the seductive medium of his Romance Theagenes and Chariclea. The second maxim, equally horrible,' says Mosheim, though in a different point of view, was, that errors in religion, when maintained and adhered to after proper admonition, are punishable with civil penalties and corporeal tortures.' St. Augustine has the credit of originating this detestable doctrine; to him, it seems, we are indebted for first conjuring up that penal spirit, which has now, for so many hundred years, walked the earth, and whose votaries, from the highest to the meanest, from St. Augustine down to Doctor Duigenan, from the persecutors of the African Donatists to the calumniators and oppressors of the Irish Catholics, are all equally dis graceful to that mild religion, in whose name they have dared to torment and subjugate mankind.

With respect to the literary merits of the Fathers, it will hardly be denied, that to the sanctity of their subjects they owe much of that imposing effect which they have produced upon the minds of their admirers. We have no doubt that the incoherent rhapsodies of the Pythia (whom, Strabo tells us, the ministers of the temple now and then helped to a verse) found many an orthodox critic among their hearers who preferred them to the sublimest strains of Homer or Pindar, Indeed, the very last of the Fathers, St. Gre gory the Great, has at once settled the point for all critics of theological writings, by declaring that the words of Divine Wisdom are not amenable to the laws of the vulgar grammar of this world; non debent verba cœlestis originis subesse regulis Donati.' It must surely be according to some such code of criticism that Lactantius has been ranked above icero, and that Erasmus himself has ventured to prefer St. Basil to Demosthenes. Even the harsh, muddy and unintelligible Tertullian, whom Salmasius gave up in despair, has found a warm admirer

in Balzac, who professes himself enchanted with the black lustre' of his style, and compares his obsurity to the rich and glossy darkness of ebony. The three Greek Fathers, whom the writer before us has selected, are in general considered the most able and eloquent of any; and of their merits our readers shall presently have an opportunity of judging, as far as a few specimens from Mr. Byod's translations can enable them:-But, for our own parts, we confess, instead of wondering with this gentleman that his massy favourites should be doomed to a temporary oblivion,' we are only surprised that such affected declaimers should ever have enjoyed a better fate; or that even the gas of holiness with which they are inflated, could ever have enabled its coarse and gaudy vehicles to soar so high into the upper regions of reputation. It is South, we believe, who has said that in order to be pious, it is not necessary to be dull;' but, even dullness itself is far more decorous than the puerile conceits, the flaunting metaphors, and all that false finery of rhetorical declamation, in which these writers have tricked out their most solemn and important subjects. At the time, indeed, when they studied and wrote, the glories of ancient literature had faded; sophists and rhetoricians had taken the place of philosophers and orators; nor is it wonderful that from such instructors as Libanius they should learn to reason ill and write affectedly. But the same florid effeminacies of style, which in a love-letter of Philostratus, or an ecphrasis of Libanius, are harmless at least, if not amusing, become altogether disgusting, when applied to sacred topics; and are little less offensive to piety and good taste, than those rude exhibitions of the old moralities, in which Christ and his apostles appeared dressed out in trinkets, tinsel, and embroidery. The chief advantage that a scholar can now derive from a perusal of these voluminous doctors, is the light they throw upon the rites and tenets of the Pagaus; in the exposure and refutation of which they are, as is usually the case, much more successful than in the defence and illustration of their own. In this respect Clemens Alexandrinus is one of the most valuable; being chiefly a compiler of the dogmas of ancient learning, and abounding with