gerate the offences of his brethren. When the numbers, the wealth, and the influence of the professors of Christianity became so great, and their secularity so decided, nothing was wanting but the incorporation of the system with a human government, to facilitate the complete ruin of its heavenly character. This consummation, so desired by the worldly priesthood of the period, and regarded as such a triumph by many still, took place in the time of Constantine. Christianity was then, and subsequently, declared to be a thing of this world, and its laws and principles made "part and parcel" of the laws of the Roman Empire.

Had not the mystery of iniquity made prodigious progress before the time of Constantine, such a thing as an amalgamation of the religion of Jesus with the Roman State and Government could not have been proposed on the one hand, or accepted on the other. Then, however, the iniquity of combining the church and the world, the heavenly and the earthly state, was established by law; then the spouse of Christ was placed formally in the arms of her seducer; and her plighted faith, and sworn affection were publicly alienated from her Lord; and that spiritual adultery completed which brought down upon her and her paramours the heaviest woes of wrath.

From this period we may easily trace that entire change of character which the pure and heavenly religion of the Redeemer underwent, till it became the foulest and most monstrous form of wickedness and oppression under which this wretched world ever groaned. The propagation of the faith became little better than the diffusion of error, superstition, and idolatry; and was carried on,

not for the benefit of the world, but for the aggrandisement of the propagators. Kingdom after kingdom adopted the unholy alliance. Religion prostituted its influence to establish arbitrary power; and that power again lent its aid to perpetuate and extend the worst corruptions of religion. The church corrupted the kings of the earth by her fornication; and they gave their power to the church, as the reward of her favours, and the seal of their degradation. The ruin of the spiritual edifice became complete; and instead of the temple of God, presented a frightful habitation of demons, the hold of every foul spirit, and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird."

The connexion thus formed between the church and the world, deprived the church of its glory, while it answered certain political purposes to the government of the earth. It was placed in subordination to the earth, and shorn of all its spiritual strength. In due time, however, the pretended spiritual part of this unholy alliance claimed the precedence, and actually swallowed up the temporal authority which had contributed to its aggrandisement. In its own name it acquired and held territory; exercised dominion; issued laws and edicts; made peace and war, and finally claimed superiority over all the kings and kingdoms of the earth. The period when the Popedom became an independent temporal power; and the man of sin was brought to complete maturity, it is difficult to fix with absolute precision. It would seem to have been from about the middle to the end of the eighth century, when Pepin first, and Charlemagne afterwards, put the Pope in full possession of the temporal States of Rome.

The grant of Pepin was made

in 756; that of Charlemagne, which confirmed and extended the former, shortly after. Then, says Mosheim, the Pope became a temporal prince.

The Reformation first shook and unsettled the earthly foundations of the mystical Babylon. Much, however, remained to be done before the ruin should be completed, and the spiritual edifice again reared. The man of sin arrived at maturity by slow and almost imperceptible degrees. More than a thousand years were required to perfect his growth; and he continued to exhibit all the appearance of confirmed and vigorous health long after the seeds of dissolution had been planted in his heart. He is doomed to destruction, not by a sudden blow, but by a consumption, or a series of deadly wounds, bringing on a certain, but lingering death. The process has been going on; but it is yet far from completion. The work of ages has yet to be performed; and the faith and patience of the saints must still be tried. In this rapid sketch our readers have some idea of our notions of Antichristianity and of the destruction of Popery, and of all that is allied to it. We cannot enlarge further at present, but our views on this important topic are powerfully supported by no mean name. Dr. Owen, in a sermon preached before the Long Parliament, so long ago as April, 1649, expresses himself as follows, with which we must close this article.

"This is a second reason why the Lord Jesus, by his mighty power, at the bringing in of his immoveable kingdom, will shake the heavens and the earth of the nations; even because in their present constitution they are directly framed to the interest of antichrist, which, by notable adN. S. NO. 51.

vantages at their first moulding, and continued insinuations ever since, hath so rivetted itself into the very fundamentals of them, that no digging, or mining, with an earthquake, will cast up the foundation stones thereof. The Lord Jesus then, having promised the service of the nations to his church, will so far open their whole frame to the roots, as to pluck out all the cursed seeds of the mystery of iniquity, which, by the craft of Satan, and exigencies of State, or methods of advancing the pride and power of some sons of blood, have been sown amongst them.

our

"Every age hath its peculiar work, hath its peculiar light. Now, what is the light which God manifestly gives in days? Surely not new doctrines, (as some pretend,) indeed old errors and long since exploded fancies. Plainly the peculiar light of this generation is that discovery which the Lord hath made to his people of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. The opening, unravelling, and revealing the antichristian interest, interwoven and coupled together in civil and spiritual, into a state opposite to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus, is the great discovery of these days. Who almost is there amongst us now, who doth not evidently see, that for many generations the western nations have been juggled into spiritual and civil slavery, by the legerdemain of the whore, and the potentates of the earth made drunk with the cup of her abominations. How the whole earth hath been rolled in confusion, and the saints hurried out of the world, to give way to their combined interest ? Hath not God unveiled that harlot, made her naked, and discovered her abominable filthiness? Is it not evident to him

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that hath but half an eye, that the whole present constitution of the government of the nations, is so cemented with Christian mortar, from the very top to the bottom, that without a thorough shaking they cannot be cleansed? This, then, plainly discovers, that the work which the Lord is doing, relates to the untwining of this close combination against himself, and the kingdom of his dear Son, and he will not leave until he have done it. To what degree, in the several nations, this shaking shall proceed, I have nothing to determine in particular, the Scripture having not expressed it. This only is certain, it shall not stop, nor receive its period, before the interest of antichristianity be wholly separated from the power of those nations.

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Now, what, I pray, are the works that the Lord is bringing forth upon the earth? What is he doing in our own and the neighbouring nations? Show me the potentate upon the earth that hath a peaceable molehill to build himself a habitation upon. Are not all the controversies, or the most of them, that at this day are disputed in letters of blood among the nations, somewhat of a distinct constitution from those formerly under debate, those tending merely to the power and splendour of single persons, these to the interest of the many? Is not the hand of the Lord in all this? Are not the shaking of these heavens of the nations from him? Is not the voice of Christ in the midst of all this tumult? And is not the genuine tendence of these things open and visible unto all? What speedy issue all this will be driven

to I know not so much is to be done as requires a long space. Though a tower may be pulled down faster than it was set up, yet that which hath been building

a thousand years is not like to go down in a thousand days.

"I am not of counsel to any of the adherents to the man of sin, or any of those who have given their power unto the beast; I have not a key to the bosoms of the enemies of Christ. I am neither their interpreter, nor do they allow me to speak in their behalf; yet, truly, upon very many probable grounds, I am fully persuaded that were the thoughts of their hearts disclosed, notwithstanding all their glittering shows, dreadful words, threatening expressions, you shall see them tremble and dread this very thing, that the whole world, as now established, will be wrapped up in darkness, at least until that cursed interest, which is set up against the Lord Jesus, be fully and wholly shaken out from the heavens and earth of the nations."*

tended to assist the Christian in the private engagements of devotion, by furnishing subjects for religious consideration, for selfinquiry, and for prayer. It may be viewed, therefore, as a fit companion to his volume of prayers for the use of families, which has now reached the ele venth edition. The utility of works like the present is unquestionable. Whatever," says Dr. Johnson, "withdraws us from the power of the senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings:" and all experience testifies, that nothing accomplishes this so effectually as religious retirement. It is in re

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tirement that the faith which converses with the invisible, and overcomes the world, receives its best culture; and as all religion turns in reality upon the moral state and exercises of the mind in secret, a provision for the right employment of our seasons of devout solitude must be of paramount importance. To improve the social hour is of great consequence, but to improve the solitary one is a higher attainment still; and every Christian is anxious to avail himself of every possible assistance in relation to an object on which so much depends.

Mr. Jay has had the rare happiness, in itself a proof of distinguished ability and merit, to command for a long period the attention of the public, in a very eminent degree. In his first considerable publication of two volumes of sermons, issued in the year 1802, he amply sustained from the press the reputation which he had from his very youth acquired from the pulpit; and from that period he has taken and maintained his station in the

Christian world, not only as one of the most distinguished preachers, but also as one of the most attractive and successful religious writers of his time. His Life of Winter, and his Life of Clark, contributed to make him known in the literary world, and proved his power to excel in the difficult task of biography, as well as in that of writing sermons. The former is deservedly popular, among other reasons, from the interesting character it delineates, and also from the notices it furuishes respecting Mr. Whitfield :we are surprised that Dr. Southey, who reads every thing, appears to have overlooked these, as they would have been a great assistance to him in the sketch he furnished of that distinguished character in his Life of Wesley. The Life of Clark deserves to be more generally known than it is; it discovers great power of discriminating character, and abounds in useful criticism and information upon different styles of preaching and writing, and is, in our opinion, one of the author's best publications. Four successive volumes of short discourses for families, proved him to be an able and interesting domestic instructor.

Besides these, his Essay on Marriage, and numerous sermons preached on public occasions, illustrate alike the versatility of his talents, and his indefatigable industry; for they have all been produced amidst the various avocations incident to the oversight of a large and highly respectable congregation. His recent course of lectures on the Christian contemplated, is, without doubt, one of the best works on practical and experimental divinity which the present century has produced, and while it has become a kind of text-book in many religious circles,

we know it has also been read and prized by persons of rank and distinction, and is spoken of with the encomium it merits, by some of the first dignitaries of the Establishment. The preface of that volume, had he written nothing else, would be sufficient to distinguish him as an acute observer of life and manners.

We say, we are gratified that Mr. Jay has directed his attention to a work of this particular character; and we are so, because we entertain a very strong opinion, first of the great utility, and next of the actual paucity of superior productions, upon subjects strictly devotional. To those who know the vast extent and compass of English theological literature, it may seem startling to be told how comparatively few are the books specifically appropriate to the Christian's private reading in his hours of sacred retirement. We have sermons innumerable as the sands of the desert, and some of them nearly as barren and dry; we have huge tomes of controversial divinity, under which our shelves groan; we have writings upon the general topics of Christian faith and practice, sufficient to furnish the libraries of ten new Universities; but in the midst of all this prodigality, as folios and Homilies are not exactly to the taste of the present age, the intelligent inquirer, anxious for some readable helps to closet devotion, would perhaps find more difficulty than he anticipated. We have Jeremy Taylor's Golden Grove, and Holy Living and Dying, very valuable in some respects, and not so much read as they ought to be, but closely framed after the rigid mo. dels of the Catholic writers who preceded him. Our old acquaintance, Francis Quarles, the author of the Emblems, has a strik

ing little work not much known, under the title of Barnabas and Boanerges, or Judgment and Mercy for afflicted Souls; but which, like all the productions of his fine and vigorous mind, is disfigured with pedantry and conceits. There are excellent thoughts upon meditation, in the works of Bishop Hall, and Dr. Bates, and Richard Baxter, and Bishop Beveridge, and Robert Bolton, whose Directions for a comfortable walking with God, and short Meditations on the Life to come, (only too short,) we have now before us, but these are little accessible to general readers. In later times, we might mention Dorney's Divine Breathings, and Matthew Henry and Dr. Watts on Prayer, and Doddridge's Rise and Progress, which, in spite of Mr. Foster's powerful Introductory Essay, is, we fear, too much neglected. Bennett's Christian Oratory, we have heard of as of high repute, but regret to say, that we cannot speak of it from personal examination. Mrs. Rowe's little work is exquisitely beautiful, but not comprehensive enough, nor universally appropriate. Mason's Spiritual Treasury has some good papers; but he is not always judicious, and, with the pious Bogatzky, is justly complained of for paucity of thought, poverty of expression, and the perpetual recurrence of a few favourite topics. One of the best things recently published, is Sheppard's (of Frome) Private Thoughts on Devotion: and Mr. Cunningham has written a pleasing little book on Select Passages of the Gospel of Matthew, adapted to devotional retirement, though his range of subjects is, from the nature of his plan, exceedingly limited. Bishop Horne on the Psalms, is of standard reputation for its elevated piety, though his princi