Mr. Editor, though you may do very well without mine. The matter is this; I have not had the honours or advantages of a university education, and I am therefore often grievously puzzled at the contradictory statements of divines to whose works I apply to enlighten my ignorance. In the present instance, I wish to know what I ought to conclude respecting a book in which I happen to be much interested: I mean Elisha Cole on the Sovereignty of God. Now, what am I to think when I meet with the two following opposite opinions by two good and great men? Mr. Romaine tells me as follows: "The doctrines of grace, of which this book treats, are the truths of God. Our author, Elisha Cole, has defended them in a masterly manner. He has not only proved them to be plainly revealed in the Scriptures, but that, without the stedfast belief of them, we cannot go on our way rejoicing. It is from these doctrines only that settled peace can rule in the conscience, the love of God can be maintained in the heart, and a conversation kept up as becometh the Gospel."-The other divine I have alluded to, Dr. Adam Clarke, tells me, as follows: "That horrible caricature of the Sovereignty of God by Elisha Cole;

-a work which has made several Socinians and Deists, but never yet one genuine Christian. Such a work can draw no man to God, but may well affright many from him."-Now, good Mr. Editor, have patience with me: what am I, a poor simple man, to think, to do, to say? Speak we of the errors and mistakes of unlearned men, what opinion must I form of these two learned men, these Hebrew and Greek scholars? Dear sir, tell me, and let me know which is right.

CASAPHIA *.

* Lest our correspondent should think us will retail to him a conversational remark of uncourteous in not replying to his query,we Mrs. Hannah More's, on our once asking her whether she read the works of, what are read them with discretion. I do not approve called "The High Calvinistic Divines." "I of all their doctrines, and I shudder at some of their rash assertions; but I admire the piety, the devotedness to God, the unction, the intimate acquaintance with the mysteries of the Christian life, the joy and peace in the Holy Ghost, which I find in many writings of this school. I like the lean of their fat meat." We would rather, however, urge our spiritual edification, writers who are not correspondent, generally, to select, for his carried away to extremes of doctrine on any side; to avoid equally the miserable leanness of some writers of the Arminian school, and the unwholesome pinguidity of others of the Calvinistic. Let him "read with discretion."

words as conscience and conviction, is frequently dignified by the name of CONVERSION. Ceremonies, opinions, connexions, localities,-all things may be changed, except the heart and the life; and these remain as they were. The changeling was once a Protestant, and he is now a Romanist; or, two years since, he wrote in defence of the Council of Trent; but, yesterday, appeared his apology for Cranmer, in reply to Mr. Hallam, or the Edinburgh Reviewer; or, if he occupied a pleG

those whom he loved, by whom he was beloved his understanding was too clear for him to persevere either in inadequate notions of the Divine goodness, or in false judgments respecting duty.

"Scruples are, by no means, of the nature of religious melancholy; they are not inconsistent with the Christian grace of hope: they suppose innocence; for the sinner may be hardened, may be penitent, may be wavering, but cannot properly be said to be scrupulous: scruples not only preserve from sin, but have also the good effect (the gift of Divine mercy), of purging the heart from all affection to sin, as was manifested in the future life

of Kenelm.

"Yet this fear, the beginning of wisdom,' acting on an ill-informed conscience, is hurtful, as it indisposes to a cheerful energetic performance of duty. I said to Kenelm, If there are beings (and we are told that such there are), who are interested that man should do

ill, they could by no other means so effectually obtain their purpose as by fixas by fixing our attention on that by which we may offend.' A priest, whom I had known in England during his emigration, and whom I had the advantage of meet. ing again at Paris; a man whose sanctity inspired Kenelm with respect and confidence, said to him, • Unless you shall be as sure that you have offended God in the way in which you apprehend, as you would be sure of having comtitted murder, I forbid you to mention it even to me in confession.' I will own

that the vigour and prudence united in this counsel struck me with awe. The saints are men of great minds: philosophers are mistaken in thinking them fools." pp. 281-284.

It cannot, surely, be necessary to bring further evidence of what we have termed the poverty and hollowness of the convert's adopted scheme of Revelation. Here is a young man oppressed by a certain solemnity of feeling, so burden some as to make him solitary in a crowd of joyous companions; neg. lected by his director, and evidently suspecting that there was more in religion than usually developed itself among mankind; the child also of a parent who professed to have so narrowly examined the pretensions of two Christian communions, as to have made a deliberate election between them, and yet, by that same parent, discouraged from a closer investigation of his spiritual state; and soothed into self-compla

cency, by a metaphysical assurance about the will! Had the subsequent part of the narrative informed us, that Kenelm had afterwards wandered into all the frivolities of the world, his early seriousness might have been regarded as nothing better than a scruple, in its lowest and most unspiritual sense. But this was not the case. He was always sedate and sober-minded; and the inference is, that his melancholy hours at Stoneyhurst might partake of what the church which our author deserted calls the "sighings of a contrite heart, and the desires of such as be sorrowful." But observe our convert's doctrine on the powers of the human understanding; the indication of innocence by scruples; and the purifying efficacy of these scruples, in releasing "the heart from all affection to sin." Then, beyond this deep of ignorance, we are called to stand on the brink of a lower abyss. A priest, of eminent "sanctity," forbids Kenelm to go beyond a certain limit in confession; and this treacherous counsellor is venerated by his father as a saint of a great mind, one who soared beyond the highest range of philosophy. We should have calculated, that had this young man become acquainted, at such a crisis of his spiritual life, with a really enlightened Christian, his instructor would have hailed the appearance of what was, possibly and probably, the remembrance of his Creator in the days of youth, the apprehension of a soul, awakening to eternal realities, oppressed by a sense of human guilt and misery, and conscious of its liability to wrath and final condemnation; unless delivered from the dread of a hereafter, by a process of safety quite distinct from its own energy and merits. There was enough, even in the devotional formalities at Stoneyhurst, to excite, in the bosom of inexperience itself, a suspicion of its own deficiencies. We cannot avoid feeling what a contrast to the repulse given to this interesting youth, would be the compas

sionate and gentle sympathy shewn, in similar circumstances, by a wise and faithful director. But Kenelm was repelled; and if, as we humbly trust, he ultimately obtained a place in heaven, he was not, alas! assisted in his journey thither, by these admonitions of an ecclesiastic and a parent.

The course of the convert's narrative brings us, at length, to the deathbed side of this amiable and conscientious young man who was "sore let and hindered," in his early aspirations after holiness, by the delusions of the church in which he was educated. In the twenty-first year of his age he sickened of a typhus fever; and, as it supervened, the melancholy feelings of a former period again oppressed him. His father thus describes the circum

stance:

"He said his scruples, such as he had combated and surmounted three years before, had returned and had distressed him of late, beginning from a time to which he referred; since which time, and, as he believed, from the efforts he had made, he had suffered from a head-ache and pains in his chest and limbs. Not aware that an illness was at hand which would account for the sensations of which he complained without reference to any mental uneasiness, I endeavoured by reproaches and praises to restore his tranquillity. You are indebted for your head-ache and other pains to allowing your mind to dwell on useless and groundless apprehensions. Cheerfulness, hope, and gaiety are the best things in the world to make the blood circulate and

distribute equally the animal heat. Enough has been said to you on the subject of scruples, and you have admitted the reasonableness of what has been said: I had hoped they were gone for ever. You are a great comfort and blessing to me : be satisfied with yourself. You were at confession and communion five days ago: has any thing occurred since, on which you would consult your director?' He replied, No, nothing.' This we afterwards remembered with great comfort." pp. 341, 342.

The reader has already seen by what means the painful emotions which pressed upon this interesting young man at Stoneyhurst were removed. The wound had been healed slightly; and there were those, not himself, who frowned

upon every serious effort to scrutinize a mind disturbed by a consciousness of sin. His parent immediately finds a solution of the mysterious re-visitation in natural causes, and seems to bid him fly at once to the world for a cure; and argues, at the same time, that a recent act of confession and communion might remove all fear of guilt. We have, therefore, before us, the painful spectacle of a tender parent, led away by the false system which he had embraced, persevering in diverting the thoughts of his child from one of the most important duties of religion, self-examination. A psychologist from a German university would have pursued exactly the same plan, and prescribed a similar remedy-the expulsion of gloomy thoughts, by the gaieties and pastimes of the world. If our convert had accurately distinguished between scruples founded on false estimates of duty, and such as were the fruits of a really tender conscience; if he had defined the several dimensions of the gnat and the camel, and thence shewn the inconsistencies of men who select their own vices and virtues, as taste or constitutional temperament may direct; we might have given the casuist some credit for a wise management of his patient's case. But there runs through the whole story an anxiety, on the part of the convert, to explain away the purity and strictness of the Gospel. He is an advocate, for example, for theatrical entertainments; and even, in this very instance, as opposed to his son, who stedfastly shunned, and to his dying day, every allurement to the play-house. Of the convert's sophistry on this subject the following is a specimen :

In Italy I was instructed, that there the universal church, but only by the exists no excommunication of actors by decrees of some particular dioceses, in remote ages, when the scenic art was reputed infamous on account of the representations, then almost always contrary to good fession of actors are guilty of great sin, if morals: that they who exercise the prothey exhibit on the stage any thing shame

ful or obscene, but not otherwise: that there exist indeed sentences of the holy see and of general councils against scenic representations, but that they refer always to such as may be indecent and contrary to sound morality: that the Fathers con

demn the theatres of their time, not only because of the indecencies there represented, but also because, as the Pagans acted plays in honour of their false gods, the Christians could not assist at them without the stain of idolatry: that a decent play cannot be called absolutely a proximate occasion of sin, but may become such relatively to certain individuals on account of their personal fragility; and that such, admonished by their own experience, are bound to fly a danger which, though it may be remote to others, is to them proximate: finally, that there cannot be any positive judgment nor any fixed or constant rule respecting theatres; since the lawfulness or unlawfulness of

them may vary at every moment, according as scenic representations are agreeable or repugnant to good morals.

"Priests go to plays in Italy, generally retiring before the ballet. I have seen a cardinal at a private theatre: that it was a private theatre, was a circumstance of some importance in point of decorum, but of none in point of morality, concerning which it is fair to presume that his eminence entertained no doubt or scruple."pp. 313, 314.

The subject of the stage affords standing matter of debate to such moralists as square their opinions by their passions; but it could not have been previously supposed that any one, so deeply versed in theological casuistry as the convert, could have considered the inquiry as an open question. The thing is either right or wrong; and a conscientious man ought, at least, to walk on the safe side. But among the strange involutions of the paragraphs last cited, there is an evident attempt to settle the controversy by chronology and geography; we are also informed, that purity and impurity have their alternations; while the author deludes himself, and might delude many, by playing upon the terms absolute and relative, remote and proximate; leaving the attendant at a theatre to measure its temptations by the make of his own character. All this is wretched reasoning, and might obviously be applied to any species of evil, so as to justify a man for approaching the vilest

sources of contamination, on the plea that his peril was not absolute, but barely relative; that the mischief would be remote, and by no means proximate. We are not speaking of the accuracy of the logic which a libertine might thus employ; but of the facility with which he would apply a flexible rule to purposes of licentiousness. If the rule in question needed an. illustration, the conduct of the Italian clergy is in point; they rehave a cardinal, who is presumed to tire before the ballet; and then, we attend private theatricals without any offence to his conscience: and of course he is doing right. The convert's manner of defending the stage sinks him deeper in the mire of the system, than if he had been quite silent. He writes like a per

son who wishes to defend himself against a foreseen attack, and is also well aware of the feebleness of his defensive of his new faith might reasonably weapons. This protector say of a certain physician, who deceived him, "I did not place more reliance on him on account of his devotion; knowing that devotion is but too often another mode of selfdeceit."

But the day of poor Kenelm's dissolution arrived. He expired with apparent tranquillity, although surrounded by the usual pageantries of the Latin church; and certainly under circumstances extremely unfavourable to the development of religious feeling. He appears to have maintained to the end of his life, a seriousness of character, occasionally shewing itself in devotional expressions; and far superior, we incline to suppose, to any thing related of him in the narrative. How bitter is the reflection forced upon us, as in imagination we contemplate his dying hours, that his aspirations after immortal life were discouraged by those who ought to have been his guides to immortality; by his nearest relatives, and his spiritual advisers! that his real foes, however kind their intention, were