CONTENTS I. THE Works of William Paley, D.D., with additional Ser- mons, &c. &c.; and a corrected Account of the Life and Writings of the Author. By the Rev. Edmund Paley, II.—Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1825-26-27. By John Franklin, Capt. R.N., F.R.S., &c., and Commander of the Expedition. Including an Account of the Progress of a Detachment to III.-Georgica Publii, Virgilii Maronis, in quinque linguas con- versa:-Hispanicam a Joanne de Guzman; Germanicam -Johanne Henrico Voss; Anglicam--Gulielmo Sotheby; Italicam-Francisco Soave; Gallicam-Jacobo Delille - 358 IV.—Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, engraved from authentic Pictures in the Galleries of the Nobility and the Public Collections of the Country: with Biographical and Historical Memoirs of their Lives and Actions. By V.-1. Observations on the Cultivation of Poor Soils, as exem- plified in the Colonies, for the Indigent, and for Orphans in Holland. By William Jacob, Esq. 2. An Account of the Poor Colonies of Holland. By a Mem- VIII.-1. An Appeal to England against the New Indian Stamp Act; with some Observations on the condition of British Subjects in Calcutta, under the Government of the East 2. A View of the Present State and Future Prospects of the Free Trade and Colonization of India IX.—Salmonia, or Days of Fly-Fishing. By an Angler X.-1. A Letter to an English Layman on the Coronation Oath, &c., and the Present Claims of the Roman Ca- tholics in Ireland. By the Rev. Henry Phillpotts, D.D., 2. The Coronation Oath, considered with reference to the Principles of the Revolution of 1688. By Charles Thos. Lane, Esq., of the Inner Temple. 3. The History of the Policy of the Church of Rome in Ire- 4. Substance of Two Speeches, delivered in the House of Commons on May 10th, 1825, and May 9th, 1828. By Sir Robert Harry Inglis, Bart. 5. Letters to a Friend on the State of Ireland, the Roman Catholic Question, and the Merits of Constitutional Re- ligious Distinctions. By E. A. Kendall, Esq., F.S.A. 6. Letters to His Majesty King George the Fourth. By 535 QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-The Works of William Paley, D.D., with additional Sermons, &c. &c.; and a corrected account of the Life and Writings of the Author. By the Rev. Edmund Paley, A.M. Vicar of Easingwold. 7 vols. 8vo. 1825. THE state of religion in this country, in the early and middle part of the last century, was very far from satisfactory, but the nischief arose out of the events of the century before. Great ational convulsions do not pass away at once, perhaps never pass way altogether, and the numberless consequences they involve hould be taken more into account than they often are, by those vho contribute to them as expedients for some temporary end. The immediate effect of the reign of the Puritans was to bring all eligion for a season into contempt-to let loose a mob of rerobates, whose pride it was to be thought no hypocrites; and ruly they were none. This frenzy soon worked itself out, but the evil did not end here. In physical diseases there is often a secondary fever, more dangerous than the first; and so there is in moral. Happy, indeed, would it have been for the nation if it could have been content to set up its religious rest in the tenets of the great divines of our church who lived at that period, or who had recently ceased to live, but their voices could not make themselves heard in the storm. If learning unbounded -if a fancy the most vivid-if devotion, and earnestness, and faith unfeigned, would have sufficed for that generation, Bishop Taylor might have supplied its wants. If the time demanded a sagacity able to exhaust every question on which it was employed; a heart to conceive, and a head to discriminate, and a tongue to deliver itself in language, if not impassioned, yet nervous, and sustained, and wonderfully copious, there was a Barrow. If a keen and caustic application of reason and scripture to the faults and follies of the times, mixed, indeed, with too much politics and jestings not convenient,-there was a South. If the appetite was for controversy, where could be found one more qualified to enter into the deep things of our creed, by a critical knowledge of scripture and the primitive opinions of the church (the latter in a degree almost cumbersome to wield) than Bishop Bull? If a sober, temperate, practical, discriminative preacher, fit to teach the people how to handle the word of God aright, without partiality, without hypocrisy, what VOL. XXXVIII. NO. 76.-Q.R. 39 need need to have gone further than to Dr. Sanderson. If the spirit of a saint, who could strew some holy text upon every trivial event of life, and find' sermons in stones, and good in every thing,' was there not the glowing, the tender, the pathetic eloquence of a Hall? It is true that these men (how many more might we add) differed from one another in many subordinate points, compatible with that liberty of opinion which our church allows to her members; yet did they one and all take their stand upon the great leading doctrines of Christianity which had been established at the reformation, making no divorce amongst them, as had been recently done, but delivering, after the manner of the apostle before them, 'the whole counsel of God.' But this was not to be; theology could not be content to abide at this point; one extreme was destined to beget its opposite, and when the age of buffoonery was gone by, which (as we have said) laughed religion for awhile out of countenance, another spirit succeeded, the re-action, like the former, of the puritan extravagance, the age of reason: for reason having been put to silence for a time by a tempest of ungoverned zeal, was now in her turn to be exalted into the sole goddess of this nether world, (the case was literally so, a few years later, in another kingdom,) and accordingly a new order of things arose. The total corruption of human nature, and the utter helplessness of man, had long been subjects of vehement declamation; and now it was found out that this weakness and inability were all a mistake; that he had native powers capable of nearly universal obedience-and that so far from being the passive recipient of God's grace (as had been taught), let him have but his own prudence for his deity, and he scarcely wanted any other. As human perfection was thus exalted, the nature and office of a Redeemer were brought low. The frantic voices of the generation that was gone, had sung hosannas for his second and immediate coming to reign with his saints upon earth and bind the great dragon; and now, on the other hand, it began to be discovered that Arius might not be wrong in his less elevated views of the Messiah's person; nay, that even they were to be heard who maintained him to be a great and good man after all, who testified the truth of his mission and sincerity of his doctrine by the sacrifice of his life. In compliance with the spirit of an age thus rational, Christianity was gravely preached as a mere republication of natural religion, because in the one (which no doubt is the case) the rudiments of the other subsist, as it is equally true that in the head of every peasant are the principles of the highest philosophy, though the philosopher and peasant are far enough asunder. And now its most solemn rite was reasoned out, 1 |