tinued upright he did not do so; and why may not the renewed man, in some instances, make a similar ill use of the talent of grace? Lazarus was dead; all vital functions of his body had wholly ceased: when, therefore, he was raised to life again, all the powers of life which he then enjoyed, and not a part only, were restored. Yet was it not at the option of Lazarus to make what use he would of the powers restored to him? Was he under an invincible obligation to eat, to drink, to walk, or to do any one action in the power of doing which life consists ? So they who are delivered from the bondage of total corruption need not be irresistibly impelled to make a right use of the liberty wherewith the grace of Christ hath made them free. If that grace were not capable of being abused, if the Spirit might not be quenched finally and effectually, God's working in us would exclude all cause for fear and trembling, (Philip. ii. 12, 13.) If there were no real saving operation of the Spirit, despite could not be done unto him. For where he does not strive he cannot be resisted. And if the doing despite unto him could be only for a time, and must finally end in genuine repentance, no despite done unto the Spirit of Grace could be threatened with any, much less with the sorer punishment, (Heb. x. 29.) I cannot discern error or uncertainty in the argument: despite done to the Spirit of Grace implies his strivings within us; if this despite were only for a time, and previous to death must give place to repentance unto salvation, it would end in eternal glory. But it may end in sorer punishment, therefore grace may be given and not be indefectible. With all possible respect for Divines of such eminence, permit me, Sir, to add, that the Bishop of Winchester, in his Refutation of Calvi. nism, and the Bishop of Peterborough, appear to me to have given an advantage to their opponents in this matter. When the Bishop of Winchester produces unquestiona ble instances of righteous men under the Jewish dispensation, surely he does not establish the point for which he contends; viz. that man is not totally corrupt. Might not the corruption have been total, and the righteousness instanced in Noah, Abraham, &c. have been the fruit of the same Spirit working in them both to will and to do of God's good pleasure, which now worketh effectually in all true Christians, and even then strove with man? Nor if man be totally corrupt, need we say with the Bishop of Peterborough, that encouragement is afforded to sin. For may not the bondage of corruption be so far done away by the grace of Christ in every man, heathens as well as others, as to enable man to work out his salvation according to the law under which he is placed, and to make him fully responsible for not working? Nor need we contend, because without Christ man can do nothing, that therefore by the aid of Christ he must necessarily do all things that are required of him. For the spirit of Christ is given to man by measure, and only of God's good pleasure. Wherefore it is a gift adjusted to our necessities, suited only to our wants, and always certain to be at last withdrawn from the unprofitable and slothful servant. If man be not totally corrupt, if he can do a little by his own natural strength, surely he may go on to do more by the same power; and, (I say not the usefulness, but) the absolute necessity of the assistance of the Spirit in any part of our Christian progress may admit of question. For the difficulty lies in the first step to be taken. The first sinful temper to be overcome, the first evil propensity to be subdued, must be the most difficult to be dealt with. For as one sin naturally leads to another, so the overcoming one evil inclination weakens the whole power of the body of sin, and makes future victory more cer. tain. If therefore we are not so totally corrupt as to be incapable of making any effort of our own, previous to the grace of Christ; if the assistance of the Holy Spirit is not necessary towards our making a first advance, a fortiori, it will be less necessary in a second, and in every subsequent step towards perfection. Pray, Sir, do not your correspondent's remarks, in pages 130 and 131, savour a little of the Methodist doctrine of sinless perfection? I am, Sir, March 7, 1821. W BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. “And king Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep: so the king, and all the people dedicated the house of God," 2 Chron. vii. 5. "The Carthaginians, and with some probability, assert, that during the contest of the Greeks and barbarians in Sicily, which, as is reported, continued from morning till the approach of night, Amilcar remained in his camp: here he offered sacrifice to the gods, consuming upon one large pile the entire bodies of numerons victims." Herodot. Polymnia, p. 167. “And king Solomon offered a sacrifice of twenty and two thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep."2 Chron, vii. 5. "Croesus, after these things, determined to conciliate the divinity of Delphi, by a great and magnificent sacrifice. He offered up three thousand chosen victims; he collected a great number of couches, decorated with gold and silver, many goblets of gold, and vests of purple: all these he consumed together upon one immense pile, thinking by these means to render the deity more auspicious to his hopes. He persuaded his subjects to offer in like manner the proper objects of sacrifice they respectively possessed. As at the conclusion of the above ceremony, a considerable quantity of gold had run.together, he formed of it a number of tiles: the larger of these were six palms long, the smaller three, but none of them was less than a palm in thickness, and they were one hundred and seventeen in number: four were of the purest gold, weighing each one talent and a half; the rest were of inferior quality, but of the weight of two talents. He constructed also a lion of pure gold, which weighed ten talents. It was originally placed at the Delphian temple, on the above gold tiles; but when this edifice was burned, it fell from its place, and now stands in the Corinthian treasury: it lost, however, by the fire, three talents and a half of its former weight." Herodot. Clio, p. 50. "Because thou didst humble thyself and weep before me; I have even heard before God, and didst rend thy clothes, thee also, saith the Lord." 2 Chron. xxxiv. 27. "Queen Esther also being in fear of death, resorted unto the Lord, and laid away her glorious apparel, and put on the garments of anguish and mourning.... and all the places of her joy she filled with her torn hair." Esther xiv. 1, 2. "And as soon as I had heard these things, I rent my clothes, and the holy garment, and pulled off the hair from off my head and beard, and sat me down sad and very heavy." 1 Esdras viii. 71. Lucian thus describes the grief expressed for the dead: "After the previous ceremonies of washing and anointing the corpse, he adds, to this succeeds the weeping of the women, tears and lamentations on every side, beatings of the breasts, tearings of the hair, and bloody cheeks; sometimes the garments are rent in pieces, dust sprinkled on the head, and the living, in short, in a worse condition than the dead; for they roll themselves on the earth, and beat their heads against the ground." Lucian on Mourning for the Dead. Vol. II. p. 297. The death of a man causes in Palestine the most violent demonstrations of excessive grief. His family send forth loud cries, tear their hair, and rend their garments, and the lower class of people who have tears at command are paid to come and weep over the body of the deceased. Friends, acquaintance, and neighbours, all partake in the affliction of the family, and they sing together songs in his praise. His funeral oration is pronounced in the church, and when the priest repeats the last prayers, their cries and lamentations are redoubled. "They took a fat land.” Neh. ix. 25. "Abel also brought of the fat of his flock." Gen. iv. 4. 66 "The Jews called that which was the most excellent of every thing, the fat, and the Indians in like manmer say, Oosto Neche, the fat of the pompion," Tranche Neche, "the fat of the corn." Neeha is the adjective, signifying fat, from which the word Necta, 66 a bear," is derived." Adair's American Indians, p. 45. "After these things did king Ahasuerus promote Haman, the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes that were with him." Esther iii. 1. "When thou art bid of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him. And he that bade thee and retired: I soon understood from my interpreter, that I had ignorantly affronted him, by going higher up the room than he was seated, though I was on the opposite side. I could hardly avoid laughing at so ridicu lous a ceremony, especially as I was his guest; but whether it was at his option, his father being present, to go as high up the room as he pleased, it seemed as little consistent with my own health as common regard to my own dignity, to sit near the door. The Persians treat their superiors in rank in the most awful manner, hardly having any voice, or opinion, or thinking themselves obliged, while in their presence, to acts of civility, even in their houses." Mr. Craufurd, in his Sketches of the Hindoos, when describing a 66 The bride and wedding, says, bridegroom are seated at one end of a great temporary hall, under a kind of canopy, with their faces to the east. The bride is on the left hand of the bridegroom, and a certain number of Brahmans stand on each side of them. The relations and guests sit round the room on the floor, which is spread with new mats, covered with carpets, and these generally likewise covered with white linen-chairs being unEuropeans; and to have a seat cleknown, but in the possessions of vated above the level of the floor, is a mark of distinction and superiority." Sketches of the Hindoos, Vol. II. p. 6. "At Lebadea, in Greece, the master of the house took his seat, and him come and say to thee, give this his wife sitting by his side at the man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room." Luke xiv. 8, 9. What degree of respect were attached to higher seats and places, may be learnt from the following anecdote, mentioned by Hanway in his Travels through Persia, Vol. I. p. 218. "The next day in a visit I made this khan, his son, the governor, arose hastily from his seat, circular tray; and stripping his arms quite bare, by turning up the sleeves of his tunic towards his shoulders, he serves out the soup and the meat. Only one dish is placed upon the table at the same time. If it contains butcher's meat, or poultry, he tears it into pieces with his fingers. During meals the meat is always torn with the fingers. The room all this while is filled with 3 girls belonging to the house, and other menial attendants, all appearing with naked feet, also mixed with a company of priests, physicians, and strangers, visiting the family. I All these are admitted upon the S raised part of the floor, or divan; below are collected meaner dependants, peasants, old women, and slaves, who are allowed to sit there upon the floor, and converse together. When the meal is over, a girl sweeps the carpet; and the t guests are then marshalled, with the utmost attention to the laws of precedence, in regular order upon the divan; the master and mistress of the house being seated at the upper end of the couch, and the rest of the party forming two lines, one on either side, and each person being stationed according to his rank. The couches upon the divans of all apartments in the Levant being universally placed in the form of a Greek II, the manner in which a company is seated is invariably the same in every house. It does not vary, from the interior of the apartments in the Sultan's seraglio, to those of the meanest subjects in his dominions; the difference consisting only in the covering for the couches, and the decorations of the floors, walls, or windows." Clarke's Travels in Greece. Part II. Sect. 3. p. 120. more ready than I am to repel, pro virili, the calumnies of our open enemies, and the insinuations of our false friends. At the same time, I must contend, that it is not the part of a true friend to defend indiscriminately every point, whether tenable or not; nor is it the mark of Christian sincerity angrily to repel those just reproofs, which, however sometimes harshly urged, and indecently expressed, may always be rendered salutary, if received with meekness and humility. It is often urged, against the character for zeal and piety to which the ministry of our Church has an unrivalled claim, that, although perhaps a majority of the magistracy are clergy, the laws which tend to enforce the duties of piety and morality are much less vigilantly administered than those which protect our property and our game; and that complaints brought before a justice of sabbath-Breaking, drunkenness, swearing, and bawdry, are generally dismissed as being frivolous, if not treated with ridicule. Sir, there never has been, since the days of Samuel, any system at all to be compared with the unpaid magistracy of this country, either in the political wisdom with which it is constituted, or in the zeal, and ability, and public spirit, with which it is exercised: it is, perhaps, the noblest column of our glorious fabric; but he is a sycophant rather than a friend to this admirable domestic po To the Editor of the Remembrancer. lity, who will not allow that it has Sir, ALTHOUGH in the course of the letters which I have occasionally addressed to you, I have been accused of a querulous disposition to point out the miscarriages of those powers which I most heartily reverence, I feel assured that you have no correspondent more devotedly attached to the sacred cause of 66 Church and King" than myself; nor is there any man living REMEMBRANCER, No. 29. its peculiar failings, and even its abuses, and admit there is some colourable foundation for the exaggerated accusations which, whether or not they have reached the ears of 66 a country Rector," must often have grieved the feelings of those who mix in the world, and who frequent various companies, and join with different congregations within the pale of the establishment. When we see the canals, and the high roads, on Sundays occupied by M m barges, and stage.coaches, and stage waggons, exactly as much, and in some cases more than on any other day of the week; when the most solemn parts of the Church service are interrupted by the rattling of wheels, the trampling of horses, and the blowing of horns, which indicate the arrivals of the numerous coaches which now pass through every considerable village; and when we know that all this is not only a profanation of the laws of God, but also a defiance of the statutes of the realm-how can we deny that Justice suffers those weapons to rust which the constitution has placed within her reach? I know it is argued, that if magistrates were to stop the canals, and the highways, as they are empowered to do, on the Lord's Day, the consequence would be, that a vast number of idle, dissolute, lawless hands, would be turned loose to pillage the property, and disturb the peace of those who are engaged in serving their Maker, In the first place, this argument of expediency would induce us to consult the temporal interests of those who go to Church, at the expence of the spiritual welfare of those who are forced to be absent by the present system of keeping a vagt multitude of bargemen, horse-keepers, drivers, &c. &c. in a state of absolute heathenism, from which they have no means, no possibility of emerging. You perpetuate the evil in order to keep it under. But, Sir, I do not believe that the consequences would be such as are anticipated. I have had frequent conversations with coachmen and waggoners and other persons similarly situated, on this subject, and it has never once occurred to me to find one individual who did pot declare that he should be truly happy to hallow the Sabbath as a day of rest and of worship, if his master would adnit of it. And of the masters and owners of public conveyauces, the majority, I am satisfied, would gladly obey the laws, if the minority could be compelled to do I remain, Sir, To the Editor of the Remembrancer. SIR, THE zealous Protestant attentive to the striking corruptions of the erring church, from which his ancestors found themselves bound in conscience to separate, usually recog nizes enough of actual perversion of the true religion to place him ou his guard against ill-judged concessions to the mistaken adherents of Papacy. Among other indications of an evil leaven pervading the faith of the Romanists, he is well aware, how generally Heathen superstitions have been transferred into the Roman Catholic ritual; that much of Paganism was suffered to remain under a slight disguise; that the common people are permitted to persist in the belief and veneration of idle fables; while attempts are seldom made by the Priesthood to enlighten their ignorance, or cast away the corruption from among them. These recollections strongly suggested themselves to me on read |