a solemn consideration of their actual circumstances. The cities of the plain could not be destroyed till Lot was removed from them; but when he was removed, the tempest of fire descended. And thus the prayers of the penitent and believing ever stand between the infliction of the just anger of God, and a guilty world. Let the church of the Redeemer be complete, and the storm will fall. Is, then, any one halting between two opinions, instead of giving himself, hand and heart, to God? Let him tremble to think of the slight barrier which stands between him and destruction. There is but a step or a breath between the sinner and eternity - and what an eternity! Is this a state, then, in which to trifle or to delay? Ought not the language of such an one to be that of the sinking disciples, "Save, Lord, or we perish?"

But let us pass on to the last stage of this history. The master of the field, when he has checked the well-intended but rash zeal of his servants, in wishing to destroy the tares, immediately adds, "Let both grow together until the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather together, first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn." Our Lord thus explains the passage: "The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels: as therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of Man shall send forth his angels; and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and those which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." These words need no interpretation. But how solemn is the scene which they present to us! Thousands who have sunk to the grave in a state of unpardoned sinfulness, and who, jong spared, not for themselves but

on account of the church of Christ, shall awake to "everlasting shame and contempt." In the great harvest of souls, they shall be cut down and cast into the furnace of fire. And thousands, on the contrary, whom no eye has discovered upon earth, or who have been recognized only as sufferers in the cause of the Gospel, as the objects of worldly contempt and persecution, shall arise from the chambers of the grave, shall be fixed as suns in the firmament of glory, and shine in eternal brightness. What more need we add for the consolation and support of such persons? Already they are adopted into the family of God; now," says the Apostle, are we the sons of God;" and soon they shall be admitted to the kingdom of their Father. That kingdom is their Father's house. Thither has their Redeemer already gone to "prepare a place for them;" and when he

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comes again, he shall receive them unto himself; that, where he is, there they may be also." And will you not wait with patience for such a change? Will you not redouble your holy labours and supplications, for the possession of such an inheritance? Will you not esteem all the evils of life as insignificant, if only you "may win Christ, and be found in him?" Shall it not be seen by your meekness in adversity, your calmness under reproach or injury, your vigorous discharge of every duty, your comparative indifference to the good things of this life, that you have your portion and heart in a better? Will you not, amidst every trial and disappointment, adopt the glowing language of the Prophet: "Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."

of God? Not all the inhabitants of

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

IN reference to the subject which your correspondent Clemens has taken up, "the law as our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ," I venture to offer the following thoughts.

The Apostle's argument, I admit, applies in its fullest sense to the state of a Jew before and after embracing the Gospel, and would appear to such a person, accquainted as he would be with the whole Law of Moses, most convincing and beautiful. But has it, therefore, no meaning to us? Is not our nature prone to fall into the errors of the Galatians; and does it not, therefore, require a strong and standing protest against them, such as the Apostle has furnished in his Epistle to that church?

"Wherefore then serveth the Law?" Before we answer this question we must observe, that the Apostle was not accustomed to our divisions of ceremonial and moral, but spoke of the whole Law, including both codes; and so far from adverting more peculiarly, as Limborch supposes, to the ceremonies, the types of Christ, many passages would imply that he had the Moral Law more especially in view; as, for instance, the following:-"The law is not of faith, but the man that doeth these things shall live in them: it was added because of transgressions, that the offence might abound: it is the strength of sin: by it is the knowledge of sin: for the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster, for ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." Who are not under a schoolmaster? Who are justified by faith? Who are children

disobedient, against these the law may still be used lawfully; and if it justly alarm them and make them earnestly inquire, "What must I do to be saved ?" and bring them to the Saviour, and to the true baptism, the "answer of a good conscience towards God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ," to a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness, whereby they are made children of grace, and children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, it will have been a good schoolmaster; for it will have brought them to Christ, and they are then no longer under a schoolmaster, for the law is not made for a righteous man.

Such is the use of the moral law to persons baptized in infancy, but who have grown up in practical heathenism. Let us now apply it to those who trust in outward observances and a partial obedience to its requisitions, whether Jews, Roman Catholics, or nominal Protestants. All these frame to themselves a law of works ceremonial and moral by which they hope to be justified; these are worldly, often covetous, and opposers of the Gospel of Christ. Such persons we must treat as St. Paul treated the Galatians; we must shew them the inefficacy of outward ordinances, and press the spirituality of the law; and if we can convince them of sin by the law, and if they then cry out with the Apostle, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"—and like him learn to rejoice in God through Jesus Christ; the law is good to them, for they would not have known sin but by the law. Would not the law be to such, a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ, that they might be justified by faith?

St. Paul was addressing the very same description of persons that ministers of the Church of England usually address; not Jews nor Heathens, but nominal Christians, baptized into the name of Christ, but un

enlightened as to the true character of his religion, and practically removed from the faith of the Gospel to a system of works gleaned out of the Jewish law, or elsewhere, and grafted on the profession of Christianity. We cannot be wrong, therefore, in bringing the whole Epistle before those who are under such an error, as Luther did against the Roman Catholics; and a mighty weapon it was in his hands for pulling down their strong holds, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

the interest which it has excited in my own mind, as by a sense of justice to the cause in which his Lordship is so zealously engaged, to request your insertion of the following extracts from it, as containing some of the last results of his Lordship's learned investigation of the subject. Those parts of the treatise which are already out of the press, are distinguished by that extent of learning and calmness of manner, as well as piety of sentiment, which were to be expected from the character of this eminent and devout prelate. His Lordship remarks: "The consistency of the Epistle with the Gospel of St. John is the first general ground of evidence for the verse. In every part of the Epistle, both doctrinal and moral, there is an evident reference to the Gospel in the use of the same principles of faith and charity, the same declaration of the Divinity of Christ as the Word, the Son of God, the same appeal to the threefold testimony of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in proof of that doctrine; and the same three evidences of his death, and therefore of his coming in the flesh."

I will not stay to defend the consistency of a minister of the Church of England addressing many as under the law, and urging them de novo to come to Christ, though I have no doubt that it is consistent: nor do I differ from Clemens in all points, but rather approve highly of the latter part of his paper. I will only offer a plain practical answer to his question, Is the Law our schoolmaster? Many persons may say, "We have experienced a great change in ourselves, and witnessed it with pleasure in others. But how was it effected? By the Law and the Gospel; the Law convincing us of sin, and thus inclining us to look to Christ, who delivered us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. Wherefore the Law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith."

N.

THE BISHOP OF SALISBURY ON 1 JOHN V. 7.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

In your February Number of last year you gave to your readers a brief introduction to a work about to be published by the venerable and learned Bishop of Salisbury, in reply to Crito Cantabrigiensis on the celebrated text, 1 John v. 7. I have lately had an opportunity of perusing a further portion of that work; and I am induced, as well by

The consistency of the passage with the prevailing doctrine of the primitive church is another general ground of evidence. How the primitive church understood the unity of the three Divine persons, is succinctly expressed by Athenagoras, a father of the second century, in his Legatio pro Christianis, p. 38, ed. Dechair.

"The Father and the Son," he says, being one; the Father being in the Son, and the Son in the Father, by the unity and power of the Spirit." There is another remarkable passage of the same learned Father, expressing that the great object of a Christian in his search after truth is to know "what is the union of the Son with the Father, what the communion of the Father with the Son, what the Spirit (what that of the Spirit), what the unity of persons so differing (in

number), and the difference of persons so united in nature."

This latter passage is one of the "Græca antiqua hujus dicti documenta," which Bengelius has collected in his twenty-third section as traces of the verse, and evidences that it was read in the Epistle of St. John from the beginning. He says of it "Mirum ni Johannem respexerit Athenagoras." We may say the same of the language of another writer of that century, Theophil. ad Autolycum, p. 106, ed. Oxon. 1684, by whom The Word is connumerated as the second person of the Trinity.

Whether the prevailing doctrine originated from the passage, or the passage from the prevailing doctrine, and whether the verse was wilfully erased from the copies that want it, or interpolated in those which have it,—are questions, the solution of which may have some influence on the determination of our inquiry. For, if believers in the supreme Divinity of Christ, and consequently in his essential unity with the Father, and therefore in the doctrine of the Trinity, had not the same inducement to insert the passage which unbelievers had to erase it, it will appear so much the more improbable that the verse originated from the prevailing doctrine, than that the prevailing doctrine originated from the verse. And if Tertullian's "Qui tres unum sunt" in the second century, Cyprian's "Cum tres unum sint" in the third, -Phœbadius's "Quia tres unum sunt,"-Marcus Celedensis's " Εt hi tres unum sunt," with Augustin's "Deus itaque summus et verus cum Verbo suo et Spiritu, quæ tria unum sunt," in the fourth,-and Victor Vitensis's "Et hi tres unum sunt" in the fifth century, be considered as derived from the general doctrine of the church concerning the Father, the Son or Word, and the Holy Spirit; where should we seek for the source of such doctrine but in the Scriptures, of which the church was the depository and the

witness; especially as Cyprian expressly says, "De Patre, Filio, et Spiritu Sancto, scriptum est, Et hi tres unum sunt." pp. 6-10, Preface.

To these general reasons against the rejection of the verse, the Bishop adds Mr. Porson's and Crito's concessions in its favour:

I. "Produce two actually existing Greek manuscripts, five hundred years old, containing the verse, and I will acknowledge your opinion of its genuineness to be probable." There are now extant, replies his Lordship, two Greek manuscripts containing the verse (the Dublin manuscript and the Codex Ottobonianus) of the 15th century at the latest, perhaps older. Dr. Clarke assigns the Dublin manuscript to the 13th century. Manuscripts, therefore, which were written before the sixteenth century,—that is, before the first printed editions of the Greek Testament,—and contain the verse, may be considered as giving to the opinion of its genuineness some probability. To which may be added, the certainty of the testimony to Greek manuscripts extant in the ninth century, and the evidence of Jerome's genuine version, castigated to the Greek text in the fourth.

2. Mr. Porson grants, that if the words of Gregory Nazianzen and of Euthymius Zigabenus be from Scripture, they belong to 1 John v. 7. That they are the words of Scripture, the Bishop replies, is evident, from the passages of Maximus and the writer contra Varimadum, before quoted : φασκει Ιωάννης : Και γαρ οι τρεις το εν εισιν, and Cur tres unum sunt legitis Iohannem Evangelistam dixisse Tres unum sunt, si diversas naturas in personis esse accipitis, as well as from Cyprian's scriptum est, Et tres unum sunt.

3. To Mr. Porson's his Lordship adds Crito's concession, that "if the evidence that the verse existed in the 4th century were half as strong, as the evidence that Bentley deemed it spurious, there would be no dispute on the subject." In the following pages the learned Bishop

shews that Dr. Bentley's indecision on the subject in 1717, and his refusal to omit the verse in 1724, make his deeming, that is, condemn ing, the verse to be spurious, much less than half as probable as that the verse existed in the 3d, 4th, and 5th centuries.

4. To the Bishop of Salisbury's remark, that Mr. Porson is undoubtedly mistaken in asserting that Fulgentius confesses that he knew nothing of the verse but from Cyprian, and that he had not seen it himself in the copies of the New Testament, Crito had replied, "There will be wisdom in not applying expressions of that kind to the opinions of Mr. Porson;" to which the Bishop rejoins, that the temerity of supposing Mr. Porson to be mistaken in his opinions of a great theological question, intimately connected, not only with the external, but with the internal evidence of Scripture, will be mitigated by Crito's own acknowledgment, that "at the time of Mr. Porson's writing his letters to Archdeacon Travis, he was a young man, and not a theologian by profession."

"I have then the satisfaction of informing Crito," concludes his Lordship, "on the authority of a learned traveller in search of Biblical manuscripts (M. Scholz *), that there is a manuscript of the fifteenth century now extant in the Vatican library, the Codex Ottobonianus, 298, which contains the disputed verse. But I am not sure that Crito will be better pleased with this information, than with the altered opinion of Bishop Tomline, which Crito wishes had not been shaken by the evidence of the symbolum Antiochenum. Yet the addition of a Vatican manuscript to the Montfort, constituting, as it does, some external evidence from manuscripts, may, perhaps, reconcile him to a re

• Biblische-Critische Reise, i. e. BiblicoCritical Travels, p. 105, Leipzig, 1823, quoted by Mr. Horne in his Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures, vol. iv. p. 465, sixth ed. 1828.

consideration of the internal evidence, as we have now two actually existing manuscripts written before the sixteenth century, before the publication of the Princeps Editio, and before the commencement of the Erasmian controversy about the authenticity of the seventh verse; and, therefore, according to Mr. Porson's concession, affording some ground of probability that the verse is genuine.'

In addition to these extracts I need scarcely remark, that his Lordship lays considerable stress upon the fact, that the disputed verse was frequently brought forward in opposition to the Arian heresy, at an early period in the history of the church, without any objection to its authenticity on the part of the abettors of that system.

The public are greatly indebted to the pious and learned author for his indefatigable zeal in collecting and bringing forward the evidences in favour of this much litigated verse; and he will find his best reward if his arguments shall determine any who doubted, or convince any who disbelieved, its authenticity. It is not, at all events, as some have made it, a subject for flippant and irreverent criticism: for either to reject or to receive a passage professing to be a portion of the word of God, is a matter of awful moment; and after the ample discussion which the present question has now received, no religious instructor at least can feel himself justified if he does not endeavour, so far as his opportunities allow, fairly to consider the evidence which has been collected to guide his determination. D.

ON PROPHECY AND THE MILLENNIUM.

Tothe Editorofthe Christian Observer.

WILL you permit me, sir, through the medium of your pages, to offer a few remarks upon a subject which