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ART VII.—A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Gloucester, on the Subject of the British and Foreign Bible Society. By THOMAS GISBORNE, M. A. 8vo. pp. 35. Cadell.

THE existence of the British and Foreign Bible Society has given rise to much controversy. Without touching on many of the disputed points, we yet wish to express a few, and only a few, sentiments on the subject.

To Bibles without notes, and to the simple distribution of such Bibles, we can have no sort of objection.

With respect to the first position, that Bibles were to speak for themselves, unassisted by a note or a comment, it was the very ground on which Christians, and no Christians, subscribed for the purchase of them. It could not be expected that the churchman and the sectarist could join in subscribing on any other ground. But has the sectarist kept his wordnever to permit a comment (either printed or oral) to accompany the poor man's Bible? Has he not rather been industrious in attaching his annotations to his Bibles, or in sending them after those Bibles, with silent celerity, through the very channel which the churchman had co-operated with him in opening? If so, the churchman has been unwittingly employed in opening a channel for doctrines hostile to the church. With a view to perspicuity, we vary, as little as possible, our expression.

As to the second position, the simple distribution, do the people associated meet to transact important business, or to make hyperbolic speeches about Pagan darkness, and (if not openly to censure those who choose not to consort with them,) to sneer at supposed indifference, or affect to shudder' at infidelity, in terms which leave no room for misapplication? In the mixt multitude of Independents, Baptists, Quakers, Jumpers, Trumpeters, and Clerical Professors, are the last-to whom the Gospel is in a more eminent manner given in charge-are they who are the accredited ministers of Jesus Christ in any instance honourably distinguished above the rest? The converse is perhaps true! Has not the sectarist, practised in declamatory ignorance from his youth upwards, has he not often enjoyed an

* A new sect in the west of England, of which some description shall be given on a future occasion.

ascendancy over the clergy in assemblies the greater part of the illiterate members of which measure a man's respectability by the length and loudness of his harangue, whilst they judge of his religiousness by his sanctified demeanor? And do not churchmen, finding themselves outnumbered, and obliged to listen to such orators, sometimes experience a sort of degradation? Of all this the dissenters are so sensible, that they are unable, on many occasions, to suppress their satisfaction, and insult us with anticipa tions of the day of victory, while they congratulate each other on the prospect of a fallen church, which we ourselves now help them in demolishing. In the mean-time, they endeavour to bring down our churches to a level with their conventicles, or with a common hall; and, though consecrated to the sole worship of God, to convert them into debating rooms, or mere offices of accounts; thus lowering, in the public estimation, places which we have learnt to approach and enter with devotion and with awe.

Having said this much, we think it time to entertain our readers with some specimens of Mr. Gisborne's eloquence. We shall make two extracts from the pamphlet before us the first passage is, in reasoning, fallacious; the second, as an illustration, indecorous.

"The British and Foreign Bible Society has been accused of associating churchmen and dissenters in the distribution of the Word of God. At one time more obscurely; at another time, with a nearer approach to distinctness; at another, with scarcely an attempt at disguise, or palliation. This union has been indicated as the characteristic iniquity, the blackest of the black, the deadliest of the deadly, among the sins of the institution. And, little as I am disposed to yield credence to reported prodigies, I am informed, on authority which I know not how I am absolutely to gainsay, that a voice, articulately speaking to that import, has recently been audible, amidst a succession of low thunders, which have rolled from the Humber to the Thames."- "This accusation is true. It forms one of the most honourable distinctions of the Society. The averment then is allowed, is allowed with satisfaction and joy. The British and Foreign Bible Society associates churchmen and dissenters in the distribution of the Word of God. Wherein consists the guilt of that association? Shall we again hear of the danger, that the dissenter may diffuse his own errors by distributing Bibles or by circulating tracts: Bibles, which he is equally able to procure, whe ther he belong to the Bible Society or not; tracts, which the Bible Society never furnishes, which he could procure with equal ease, were the Bible Society annihilated? Is it desired that the churchman and the dissenter shall unceasingly regard themselves as bound by religious obligation, bound in every place, and under every circumstance, to inveterate alienation, to active and implacable hostility?"-" The guilt of the association, I ap prehend, if a guilt there be, must necessarily consist in one, or in both of these particulars; that the object for which the parties are associated, iş

not a good work; or that, for whatever reason, the parties ought not to be united in performing it. Is the distribution of the Word of God a good work? Among modern English Protestants, I have heard of only one person who has returned a plain answer in the negative. The guilt then, if guilt be assumed, consists in uniting in the performance of this good work, parties who ought not to be united in it. But why may not churchmen and dissenters be united in distributing the Bible? Is it because it is unfit that they should be united in the performance of any good work? Is it against reason; is it against religion; is it against the settled usages of British society; is it against the radical principles of the British constitution; is it against the judgment of the opposers of the British and Foreign Bible Society; that churchmen and dissenters should co-operate in any good work? It may be my ignorance, but I know not an instance, if a sufferer by fire was to be relieved, or a soup-shop to be established, or a dispensary to be instituted, or an infirmary to be erected; I know not an instance, from the obscurest hamlet to the metropolis, when, to accept the donations of dissenters equally with those of churchmen, to associate dissenters equally with churchmen in committees, and in offices of trust, was ever denounced, even by the enemies of the British and Foreign Bible Society, as contrary to their own judgment, or to reason, or to religion, or to British society, or to the British constitution. I am not aware that when, for the welfare of Great Britain, Lord Duncan formed the line before Camperdown, or Earl St. Vincent on the Coast of Spain, or Lord Nelson at Aboukir, or at Copenhagen, or at Trafalgar; an order was issued previously to drive down into the hold the unhallowed cutlasses of dissenting seamen, and the heretical hands by which they were wielded. Nor have I met with any record, public or private, which intimates, that for default of having issued and enforced such an order, the displeasure of the executive government had, in any of the cases, been notified to the commandér; or that any motion of censure had been carried, or brought forward in the House of Commons, by any member of Parliament; or in the House of Lords, by any peer, temporal or spiritual. Neither have I seen grounds for supposing that, in preparation for the decisive day of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington purified his ranks from the pollution of unorthodox bayonets; or that, if his grace had thought fit to expel from his army every dissenter, every person suspected of being a dissenter, nay, every one who, in the phrase of French revolutionary vigilance, was 'soupçonné d'être suspect,' the gratitude and the admiration of his country would have been doubled. When I look to our houses of legislature, I see Protestants of every denomination, as alike men of talent and intelligence, lovers of their native land, and hostile to the interference of any foreign jurisdiction, sitting side by side, and united on an equal footing in framing our laws."_ Pp. 9-12.

This is inconclusive reasoning; or rather, it is an evasion of the question. It does not obviate a single objection to the association of churchmen with dissenters. Let Mr. Gisborne ask himself, whether he thinks, that because some of us refuse to unite with dissenters in this one instance, we should all necessarily be disposed to decline all connexion with them in other good works? Some of us object to meet them on this ground; how can he be assured, that on every other ground we should object to meet them?

Does he not know, that we have daily intercourse with methodists and sectarists of every denomination? To break off such communication, would be, we fear, to renounce society tantamount to going out of the world.

As Mr. Gisborne is so fond of analogies, perhaps the association of regular physicians and quacks may be recommended, as a parallel case, to his attention. In dispensing the most salutary medicines, few respectable physicians would choose, we presume, to consult with mountebanks and merry-andrews. There are few who would not blush, if brought into such a situation; or if they perceived the gravity of the medical character sunk into insignificance amidst the frothiness of pretended wit, the grimaces of ignorance, and the ebullitions of vanity.

The other passage in the Letter, which we have marked for quotation, is objectionable chiefly on account of its levity. We confess our surprise at such a passage in a Letter from Yoxall Lodge; and we cannot but consider so ludicrous a portrait of a right reverend personage, as a species of caricature little creditable to Mr. Gisborne's pencil. For wit and satire, it may with propriety be ranked with Miss Edgeworth's Bishop Clay.

"Were we to represent to ourselves the object of the enemies of the British and Foreign Bible Society accomplished, their feelings on the event would form a curious subject of contemplation. What if we suppose the case, and contemplate an individual under it? What if, by way of adding a little dignity to our fiction, we imagine the individual a bishop? See him entering his library, with looks of astonishment at the wide and Jofty pile of letters on his table. He opens them in rapid succession, and reads them with an increasing glow on his countenance. The first announces that the Archbishop of Georgia, and the Heads of the Greek, Catholic, and Armenian Churches, who lately united in the Russian Bible Society, having each become convinced of the sinfulness of joining his heretical and schismatical associates; have published an anathema against the impious parent of the evil, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and have seceded; and that the Emperor has abolished the institution, and sent its president, Prince Gallitzin, into Siberia. The next brings intelligence from Berlin, that with similar anathemas against our British Society, and In consequence of a similar conviction, that the iniquity of orthodox and heterodox association is the same with that of joining in a political union, and furnishing with money and arms, men known to be exciters of sedition, abettors of privy conspiracy, and promoters of rebellion; the Bible Society in Prussia is dissolved. Another bears tidings, in every point corresponding, from Wurtemburg; another from Sweden; another from Copenhagen; another from Poland; another from Bavaria; another from Switzerland; another from Saxony; another from Hanover. Another imparts the extinction, from the same identical cause, and with the same anathemas, of every Bible Society in North America. Others prove the declaration of

the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, and the letter of the Shah of Persia to Sir Gore Ousely, to be forgeries. The final packet, stretching the parent on the slaughtered children, conveys a joint resolution of the two Houses of Parliament in favour of a bill for the immediate abolition of the British and Foreign Bible Society; and for the resumption and the conflagration of all copies of the Scriptures issued from that contaminated and contaminating source. O joyful hour for the expectants of the mitre! For, on finishing that concluding letter, the good bishop inevitably drops from his chair, suffocated by transports of pious exultation!"-Pp. 29, 30, 31.

Mr. Gisborne, on a cool revision of his Letter, must have condemned this instance of improper meddling with the episcopal dignity. He must have regretted it, as a hasty effusion that flowed, in a moment of remissness, from the gaiety of his heart. For Mr. Gisborne, notwithstanding his biblical opinions, is a character highly respectable, and much respected; a man whom Providence has blessed with an affluent fortune for the welfare of all within the sphere of his benevolence; and with talents which (as his other works evince) have been turned to the best account-the instruction of his fellow-creatures. And, whilst his moral and religious lessons are calculated for the information of every understanding, and the improvement of every heart, his taste has polished them into an elegance capable of gratifying those who boast the highest mental cultivation.

ART. VIII.-The Works of FRANCIS GREGOR, of Trewarthennick, Esq. Exeter. 1816. 8vo. pp. 307. 10s. 6d.

THESE Works consist of "An Historical Account of the expenses incurred under the heads of Civil List, Pensions, and Public Offices;"-" Remarks on the Meeting held 5th November, 1809, to celebrate the acquittal of Messrs. Hardy, Tooke, &c. ;"-" A short comparative Sketch of our Practical Constitution in ancient times and the present;""Observations on the resolutions of certain friends of Parliamentary Reform, 8th July, 1811;"-" Remarks on the proceedings of the Lords and Commons, &c., respecting the Catholics;"" Letters on the National Debt, Sinking-fund, Property-tax," &c. &c.

Few men were perhaps better qualified than our author for such political discussions as are here presented to the public. Born to affluence and rank, he yet did not, like too