REVIEW S.

The Progress of Religious Sentiment. The Advancement of the Principles of Civil and Religious Freedom. The Affinity of Romanism, Tractarianism, and Baptismal Regeneration; also Diversities of Creeds, Modes of Christian Communion, and Evangelical Statistics. An Historical Sketch. By JOSEPH ADSHEAD, Manchester. Thirty-two Articles of Christian Faith and Practice, Catechism, &c. London: Houlston and Stoneman. 12mo. pp. ccxviii. and 95.

vantage, as assertors of truth and liberty; as faithful witnesses for Christ; as bold preachers of the gospel in ages when perils and death tracked the way; as true philanthropists, ready to every good word and work; as untiring assailants of every form of error in church and state; and last, though not least, as patriots, loyal to the constitution of their country, and obedient to its laws wherever they were conformed to the laws of God. We cannot regret the publication of a work in which so much is done to place the labours and trials of our forefathers in a true light, and are disposed to recommend the book to our readers with cordiality and approval.

FULL as is Mr. Adshead's title page, it yet presents an inadequate conception of the nature and multifarious contents of his volume. His primary intent appears to have been to reprint, with a brief historical account of baptist sentiments, one of the several confessions If, however, there appears some hesiof faith put forth by baptists in the tation in our approval, it is because we seventeenth century. His introduction feel regret that no history worthy of the has expanded out of all proportion to denomination has yet appeared, and the latter part of the volume, and has such compilations as the present are but been made to include a variety of topics poor substitutes for it. The reiteration connected by a very slender tie with of facts, however true, does not constithe real object of his work. Unity tute a history. The repositories of Crosof purpose there is none. The entire by, Taylor, and Ivimey are open to all, narrative is discursive, yet embodying and the incessant reproduction of the a large amount of interesting matter, same incidents, with scraps from imparmore or less denominational. If dis- tial writers, who, after all, are but posed to find fault with this want of imperfectly informed on the subject, plan and object, we could scarcely give tends only to weariness and disgust. expression to complaint, since the price No one who has read attentively the of the whole compilation is so extremely works referred to will for a moment low as not to reach the value of the re-think them sufficient,-much less, abprinted Confession with its accompany-stracts or brief compendiums of them. ing Catechism. This portion of the volume alone is pecuniarily worth the price charged for the entire volume of

313 pages.

The work is professedly a compilation. Our author has with much and commendable diligence availed himself of the admitted facts of baptist history. He has formed a rosary of incidents in which baptists appear to no little ad

Crosby professedly made it his object to collect only materials; and most precious they are. Multitudes of his facts would have been irretrievably lost had he not just at that time gathered them into his net. The fathers were passing away. The men who had been, or who knew the actors in the stirring scenes of Cromwell's time were rapidly entering on their rest, when Crosby

stood forth to rescue their names from oblivion and their deeds from forgetfulness. All honour to the simple-hearted schoolmaster for his untiring patience, his indefatigable research, and his generally accurate pen. To him our succeeding historians have chiefly been indebted for their leading facts.

Ivimey in particular, in his first two volumes, has drawn largely on this source, and not always with care. His work, extending to four volumes, appeared at various intervals from 1811 to 1830, and embraces not only an historical survey of the whole period of English baptist history till the close of last century, but also a valuable collection of documents, many of them original, on the origin and the continuance of many baptist churches throughout the country, with slight memoirs of the various ministers that have exercised the pastorate over them. With a warm attachment to the principles of his denomination, Ivimey united a vigorous zeal for their extension, and great energy in the collection of historical materials that would illustrate them. The chief deficiency of his work is in the little use he has made of the printed productions of the old writers, a large number of which he had never seen, and perhaps knew not where to find. For the most part he confines his attention to that part of the denomination in whose views he had the deepest sympathy, the particular baptists: it was left to others to give in more detail and with greater impartiality, the story of the rise and fall of the General Baptist body; with its revival into evangelic life under the modern designation of the New Connexion.

ton and Warboys churches in Huntingdonshire. He sought out also with much diligence the printed works of the earlier writers, and has thereby thrown much. light on their sentiments and history. His narrative is clear and his researches judicious, and, as a history, is in most respects superior to that of his contemporary, Mr. Ivimey.

Passing by the numerous smaller compilations, few of which have drawn their materials from original sources (the interesting work of the late Mr. Douglas on the Northern Baptists is, however, a noteworthy exception to this remark), we may observe that all our writers refer more or less at length to the traces of baptist sentiments in the early and mediæval ages of the church. On this point the want of original research is most evident. One after the other, baptist authors have been content to cull such scattered flowers as ecclesiastical writers have permitted to crop out amid the multitudinous details of every extensive work on church history. There has been very little, if any, attempt to investigate the original sources of information. Quotations from the fathers have been taken second-hand. The candid or forced admissions of partisans of Rome, or of other ecclesiastical but unscriptural systems, have been seized with avidity. No calm, philosophic view of the progress of sentiment from age to age has been taken, the statement of which from its impartiality and accuracy should force assent from reluctant adversaries. To the present moment it is a debateable question whether the Albigenses and the Waldenses were baptists, although the materials for The General Baptists have for their decision are abundant in Reinerius historian, Mr. Adam Taylor, an excellent Saccho, in Limborch's work on the minister of the New Connexion. In Inquisition, especially in the appendix, his work he has made much use of containing the sentences of some six manuscript documents, and especially hundred persons belonging to their of the valuable records of the Fenstan- sect. What baptist has diligently

ADSHEAD'S PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

155

explored the writings of Ebrard of | but few are the men among us in this
Bethune, St. Bernard, and Ermengard, country to whom leisure and opportu-
or the important work of Moneta, with nity is at command for so important
the productions of Luke bishop of Tuy, a work. We would fain hope that some
of Pilichdorf, or the spirited sermons of one of our American brethren, whose
Eckbert of Cologne against the Cathari? attention has of late been much drawn
Neither Robinson, with all his extensive to the subject, will be found ready
researches and acquirements, nor W. and sufficiently disengaged to enter on
Jones in his work on the Waldenses, the extensive researches it will demand.
has made the use that might be made of The eminent abilities of Dr. Williams
these and other sources of information peculiarly fit him for the task; and we
which occur to us as we write. Bap- cannot but anticipate, with some confi-
tists indeed may be satisfied with the dence, that he will enter upon it in
testimonies which ooze out from time to generous consent to the oft-repeated
time in the course of some grave dis- wishes of his friends.
cussion on other matters, or that start
forth from the page of some book-worm,
whose love for antiquity has caused him
to turn over the ponderous tomes of the
Bibliotheca Maxima, or the more ma-
nageable collections of D'Achery, Gretser,
and De la Bigne, and to jot down some
noticeable and neglected trait of the
past; but the true tale of the past has
yet to be written, as baptists alone can
write it.*

Yes, the history of the church and of its sects, of the heresies that sprung up during the centuries of its rise, its triumph, its corruption, and its decline, has yet to be written from that ground which takes for its starting point and its test the pure gospel, and judges events not by the erring standards of creeds, or hierarchies, or ecclesiastical politics, but by the only true criterion, the word of the living God. A history that shall weigh the actions of churches and men, of bishops and priests, of kings and subjects, of heretics and sects, with the balance of the sanctuary, will present the past in an aspect very different to that it wears in the pages of a Mosheim or a Milner. Perhaps

If more progress has been made in original research into the history of English baptists, there is nevertheless wanting that breadth of view which gives value to the separate facts of history, and binds them into a bright chain of luminous thought and harmonious design. Facts are treated as isolated events. Those fine threads of thought or feeling which link the incidents of life together are not traced out, indicating the overruling power of some necessary law, or the constant working of Him who ruleth all things for the good of his people. We look in vain for a statement of those fundamental principles which have made the baptists in every age what they have been and are, which have governed their church polity, their relations to other churches and to states. Why in this place rather than in that baptist sentiments have prevailed, our writers have not thought it worth while to inquire. It would seem as if by chance that here and there a few sorrowful and persecuted men ventured to speak for Christ and his word. Protests are made only where some evil has to be resisted. Truth is often uttered only when some falsehood challenges its

* The bibliography of the Waldenses may be right.

found in the fourth volume of Muston's recent work, and of the Cathari or Albigenses in Schmidt's second volume.

Much light is also thrown on single events by the circumstances of the time, by ascertaining the predominant

1

ideas of the age, by looking backwards | Adshead speaks as if it were first and forwards on the evolutions of published in 1689, and from a paragraph Providential design. If these landon p. 9 we should gather that he has marks are overlooked, then do the facts copied it from Dr. Rippon's Register, of history appear without their moral, where it was reprinted in 1801 or 1802. or that lesson of wisdom they ought to But if so, he has given 1689 for 1688. teach. We have yet to learn those in which latter year Dr. Rippon says it occult, or perhaps patent causes which was first printed. But in fact both the gave the baptists such wide-spread influ- Doctor and Mr. Adshead are wrong. The ence in the days of the Commonwealth, first edition appeared in 1677, the second which led to the gradual decay of piety in 1688; the third in 1699; the fourth subsequent to the Toleration Act of in 1719. and the fifth in 1720; copies of William III., and rendered the labours all of which now lie before us. To the of a Whitefield and a Wesley as necessary first and second editions is added an to the revival of pure religion and "Appendix concerning Baptism," omitevangelic zeal in baptist churches as to ted in the subsequent editions, and also the recovery of the nation from its in the reprints of Dr. Rippon and Mr. ungodliness and sin. Adshead. We should like to have seen this appendix reproduced. The edition of 1688 was simply adopted and recommended by the Assembly of 1689, as may be seen by their own words, which probably gave rise to the idea that it was then for the first time prepared. The recommendation prefixed to the edition of 1688, with the names of thirty-seven members of the Assembly attached thereto, must have been given after the book was printed, and the leaf containing it pasted into the copies. And indeed one of the two copies beiore us is without the recommendation, as if issued previous to its being approved by the Assembly. We are unable to determine the authorship of the Confession. It purports to be

We express a conviction that has been forced upon us by much inquiry, and after matured observation, that a history of the baptists has yet to be written that shall be worthy of them and of those great principles of truth and liberty which they have been raised up in the providence of God to propagate and maintain. Some fields of investigation are yet unvisited. The story of their sufferings and wrongs during the era of the Reformation has yet to be told, and the abuse and calumnies of papists and protestants alike to be thrown aside. If we mistake not it will be found that of all the parties which then struggled for ascendency, there was not one of purer morals, of sublimer faith, of more heroic endurance, or of more manly exhibition of the great truths of revelation. "But the Lord knoweth them that are His."

To return to what is perhaps the most valuable portion of our author's labours, the reprint of the Baptist Confession of Faith, we ould have been glad had Mr. Adshead given us some more precise information as to its origin, and the edition from which his reprint is taken. In his Preface Mr.

put forth by the elders and brethren of many congregations of Christians (baptized upon profession of their faith) in London and the country; " but who they were is at present unknown. It seems, however, to have received its final revision from the hands of Dr. Nehemiah Cox and Mr. William Collins, and was most probably their production in the first instance. The reprint of

* Crosby gives the Appendix in his text, vol. ii. p. 317; but omits it in his own Appendix, where he reprints the Confession.