no longer conferred on them who are of the household of faith-when every depart ment of the legislature, ever post of honour and authority, of trust and profit, should be equally within the attainment of every sect and persuasion, religious or irreligiens, to which of all those minor, but certainly most prevailing motives, should we look for retaining the aid in question? Could we depend on fashion, whose caprice might shortly enlist her in the service of every one of the more plausible here. gies, when the Church had lost all that pearance of superior consequence, which could attract her? Could we rely on ambition, whose views would be alike unobstructed in the conventicle as in the church? Could we hope to engage selfinterest in our behalf, without one single advantage to offer to her acceptance? or rather, could we have any reasonable expectations of retaining her even in a state of nentrality, when the prospect of sharing in our spoils must inevitably turn the scale against us?

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"Of all the motives of attachment, not strictly religions, one only could be, in any degree, relied on, and that but for a season. The prejudices of education, and the impressions of early life, would no doubt retain some advocates for the church, as the establishment of their fathers, and the object of their habitual veneration. It does, indeed, appear possible, that this principle might for some few years preserve from total ruin the falling fortunes of the Church. But the source from whence it flowed would, from obvious causes, be daily becoming less and less copious; and long before it should be finally exhausted, it would have ceased to oppose any effectual resistance to that sweeping tide of more prevailing motives, whose continually augmented current would set directly against it.

In a word, if there be any truth in what has here been advanced, one most powerful argument for rejecting the claims In question lies within this short and simple compass-whilst we maintain those exclusive privileges which tempt indifference to join our party, those who are not against us, will be for us; but if ever, in compliance with the headstrong temper of the times, we consent to relin quish these privileges, indifference must infallibly operate as schism, and those who are not for us, will be against us.'" P. 348-353,

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inconsistent with justice, and in conclusion, with his I usual energy, to expose the evil of that religious indifference, which is unconcerned for the dangers of the Establishment, and which, if we look to the true motive from which it proceeds, is to be attributed in the majority of cases, to a carelessness for the interests of religion itself.

To this imperfect sketch of the subjects of these sermons, we can now only add our earnest recommendation of them to all persons, and we would still hope there are many, who approach the subject with that powerful interest which we ourselves sufficiently feel. We understand that the work has met with a favourable reception from the public, and we cannot but congratulate the Church and its friends upof the increasing popularity of those on the proof which is thus furnished sentiments upon Church government, which have long ago been advocated in the incomparable letters of Law to Bishop Hoadley, and in Mr. Sikes's valuable work upon Parochial Communion. Mr. Fausset is evi

dently much indebted to both these writers, and we rejoice in any event which gives additional circulation to these principles.

An Inquiry, chiefly on Principles of Religion, into the Nature and Discipline of Human Motives. By John Penrose, M.A. formerly of C.C.C. Oxford; and Author of the Bampton Lecture Sermons for 1808. 420 pp. 8vo. 10s. 6d. Baldwin. 1820.

A SURVEY of the various systems by which philosophers undertake to make men good and happy, has frequently been recommended as a short and easy method of establishing the importance of revelation. And this mode of arguing becomes more conclusive from day to day. Since, in spite of all the assistance that philosophers have derived from

Christianity, they are neither more convincing nor more unanimous at present than they were two thousand years ago. In fact, for all purposes of practical utility, the ancient heathens are decidedly superior to the modern. The former, if they knew less, made a better use of their knowledge; the latter, if they have the advantage of a greater degree of light, have yet so obstinately closed their eyes against its sun and centre, that they are afflicted with what nearly resembles a judicial blindness. The altered circumstances of their hearers subject the latter to another difficulty. The most illiterate Christian may have accurate notions of duty, obligation, and virtue; and until these notions are obliterated, or at least perplexed and disarranged, the labours of a modern philosopher can produce no material effect. Hence he entertains a hearty dislike to common sense; paradox is his favourite pastime, and his safest retreat. And if he misleads the Christian moralist by his subtlety and speciousness, he disgusts the admirers of natural religion by his folly. "The privilege of reason," says Hobbes, "is allayed by another, and that is by the privilege of absurdity, to which no living creature is subject but man only; and of men those are of all most subject to it that profess philosophy. For it is most true, that Cicero saith of them, somewhere, That there can be nothing so absurd, but may be found in the books of philosophers." Hobbes never made a truer observation; and his commentators may fairly add, that of all the absurd philosophers whom the world has seen, none is more conspicuous than Hobbes himself: who by a gross abuse of great natural ingenuity, and great natural eloquence, reared the fabric of despotic power upon the basis of an original contract, and rested the cause of immorality, and of materialism, upon the Scriptures. But his talents, and his free use of his peculiar privilege, have influenced

most subsequent writers upon morals and metaphysics, and some of the principal defects in the volume before us may be traced to the opinions which Hobbes or his answerers introduced.

Before his time, the English imported their ethics almost entirely from the Continent; and the state of the continental ethics, as it is described in the preface to the Ductor Dubitantium, leaves no room for wondering at the ready admission which Hobbes and his followers obtained. The Schoolmen had busied themselves in perplexing what God had made plain. "Of the excellent and easy rule, Spoliatum ante omnia restituendum, Gabrielius brings no less than threescore and ten limitations; and to make all questions of that sort, and of the rule of conscience indeterminable, Menochius hath seven hundred ninety and eight questions concerning Possession; and who is sufficient for these things?" The writers on Canon Law were no better; the title of the law itself was Concordantia discordantiarum, and one of the interpreters of the Decretum, which is the best part of the canon, sets out by informing us that the word Decretum hath five and twenty significations. "So that there is a wood before your doors, and a labyrinth within the wood; and locks and bars to every door within that labyrinth, and after all, we are like to meet with unskilful guides.” These circumstances may help to shew why Hobbes became popular; and the following remarks of Skelton (Deism Revealed, Dial. vrir.) explain the manner in which that popularity has influenced later times. "Hobbes's system at length yielded to an opposite one set up by Bishop Cumberland: this great divine represented human nature in a more amiable light, and spoke of mankind as benevolent beings, governed by a law of nature' clearly pointing out their duty to them, and enforcing the observance of it, not only by pleasing self-approbations on doing

good, and by painful self-convic tions and remorses upon doing evil, but also by a natural sense of reli gion....On this foundation, laid by the Bishop, all the moralists, whe ther divines or others, have since that planned their writings; but not without carrying their principles to a much greater length than he did, One who peruses their books, can hardly help thinking they looked on man as a being who stood in no need of assistance, either to make him an able divine or a good man. They have told us that the religion and law of nature are clearly revealed in the breast of every man; are of great, if not of sufficient force, are eternal, indispensable, and bind the Deity himself....These opinions have shewn themselves almost in every pulpit, and produced a set of moralizing sermons, in most of which it seems to have been for gotten that there is still extant a book called the word of God."

These assertions are exaggerated even as they apply to the times for which they were written; and many noble exceptions to the practice condemned by Skelton, have subsequently appeared, But still his leading sentiment is far from incorrect; and it happens, remarkably enough, that of the two writers who are most frequently quoted by Mr. Penrose, in the volume upon which we are about to comment, the more distinguished, viz. Bishop Butler, directed his leading sermons espe cially against Hobbes, and has had the merit of refuting him by arguments not justly liable to the exceptions which Skelton takes to Cumberland; while the other, Mr. Dugald Stewart, by uniting Butler and Cumberland, and pushing the doctrines of both to excess, has furnished us with the outline of a system of moral philosophy which stands in no need of revelation, and is obviously intended to supersede it But t we shall revert to this topic before the conclusion of our res

marks.ro fort

Another mischievous effect, which may be traced to the same source, is the dearth of valuable morah writings which this country has experienced. rienced. Attention has been dis rected in morals, as well as in theol logy, to separate and controversial dissertations, instead of to compact and complete systems; and the country which, during more than two centuries, has produced such a series of eminent writers, the country of Locke, and Clarke, and Batler, is not yet possessed of a standard work upon ethics. Nay more, so unsatisfactorily has moral philo sophy been treated, that the very name has fallen into disrepute; and we find a learned and pious prelate, about sixty years ago, condemning the whole study as fruitless, and even pernicious. "That such kind of learning," says Bishop Horne,

as that book (King's Origin of Evil) is filled with, and the present age is much given to admire, has done no service to the cause of truth; but, on the contrary, that it has done infinite disservice, and almost reduced us from the unity of Christian faith to the wrangling of philosophic scepticism, is the opinion of many besides ourselves, and too surely founded on fatal experience." The Bishop's incomparable biographer quotes and applauds this declaration; but while we admit with them both, that our ethical writers have often been in error, we cannot see why the whole science should therefore be condemned; and we suspect that very serious evils have been the consequence of its unqualified condemnation, coming, as in the present instance, from persons of such high authority in the Church, as Bishop Horne and Jones of Nayland. The great business of a Christian teacher is to apply the principles of Christianity to the improvement of his flock; and unless he carefully studies both the dispensation that is committed to him; and the nature of those for whose instruction and benefit it is

designed, we know not how he can apply the one to the other with accuracy or effect. It is certain that the erroneous views and doctrines of enthusiasts are attributable chiefly to their ignorance of moral science; it is probable that the lessons of the regular Clergy would be more efficacious, if the nature, and appetites, and affections of men, had been studied by them with greater regularity and perseverance; and the sceptic would be deprived of a principal source of his influence, if we were no longer obliged to study natural religion in his school; but could find the science of ethics as briefly and perspicuously unfolded, and as firmly established in Christian as in heathen writers. We believe that the argument may be carried much farther. For the more systematically we study the theory of natural religion, the more clearly shall we perceive the necessity and value of revelation; and in an age in which atheism at least is out of fashion, and the advocates for licentiousness are either few or silent, Christianity cannot better be promoted among reflecting men, than by shewing that it rises fairly and naturally out of the soundest philosophy; and that every theory of moral obligation, of virtue, of prudence, and of self-controul, is either consistent with Christianity, and is strengthened and confirmed by the Gospel, or is sophistical, self-contradictory, inconclusive, ineffectual, and false.

On these grounds, we were highly gratified upon taking up Mr. Penrose's work, to find that his "intention was no less than to apply to the whole science of morals the principles of religion," and to shew that the two sciences of religion and morals are in fact one;" and whatever opinion we may be compelled by impartial criticism to pronounce respecting the success with which his endeavours have been crowned, we have no hesitation in speaking in high terms of the nature

of his task, and of his qualificatious for a satisfactory accomplishment of it. He appears to be warmly attached to the science which he cultivates, and to have ransacked all that is most valuable in ancient and modern literature, in the course of his ardent and wellregulated pursuit. His religious sentiments are those of a pious unsophisticated clergyman; and he decides upon the moral questions that present themselves to his notice, in a tone which is, at once, amiable, judicious, and correct.

The first remark that we have to make may be thought rather unreasonable, because it applies to what the volume does not contain. And the only defence which we have to offer on the occasion, is that the title page led us to anticipate more than we have found. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Discipline of Human Motives," appears to call for a more precise investigation of what we include under the term motive, than can be found in the volume before us. Mr. Penrose assumes that our affections, our desires, and our appetites are the motives, and properly speaking the only motives, by which we are influenced: and he divides these into moral and immoral, and into general and specific ; but his reasons for the first assumption, are at best merely intimated, and we have no investigation of its merits or defects. We are aware that Mr. Penrose wishes to steer clear of metaphysics; and it is probably upon this ground that he made the omission of which we complain. But as the nature of motives is a metaphysical subject, the ground is obviously untenable; and when he denies that habit has properly speaking any motive power, (p. 29.) and when he intimates that conscience is the regulator of motives, and not a motive itself, his assertions if true at all, are metaphysically true; and must be proved so by a subtle mode of reasoning. Locke, in one of the least satisfac

tory chapters in his Essay, viz. the chapter on Power, makes uneasiness the great spring of human action, the moving force which actuates the desires and the will. And one of his most judicious and partial commentators, Tucker, substitutes satisfaction in the place of uneasiness, and represents the former as the prime mover of the human mind. The alteration however, though an amendment is rather verbal than real; for the uneasiness which arises from the want of any thing, and the satisfaction that is anticipated from its possession, must always be coexistent, and of equal force and effect. But Tucker talks much more to the purpose when he says that "a motive is the prospect of some end actually in view of the mind at the time of action, and urging to attain it." And he adds a little farther on, that as Hermogenes was a singer even when he did not sing; and the cobler retains his name after he has shut up his stall, and sits among his fellow topers at the twopenny club; so motives still preserve their character with us while they lie dormant in the box, and do not operate in the scale, The introduction of motives by one another, is thus happily illustrated, "Your coachman entered into your service for a livelihood; this led him to obey your orders, which directed him to take care of your horses; this put him on providing hay for them, and that induced him to inquire where the best was to be had. While on his way to the market he thinks of nothing but the shortest road to get thither; this therefore is the sole motive he has now in view, bat if the prior motives had not operated, none of the subsequent would have had any influence on him." In another part of his work having subdivided motives into four classes, viz. motives of pleasure, use, honour and necessity; he produces the following instance where they are all four in view at once. "A man on bespeaking a suit of clothes REMEMBRANCER, No. 27.

may do it because his old ones are worn out, and he must have something to put upon his back; he may choose his piece of cloth from the closeness and strength that may render it most serviceable, he directs the cut and make so as to appear fashionable, and perhaps orders a dab of gold and silver lace to please his own fancy." Similar illustrations might be produced in much greater abundance; and though they do not shew, nor are we by any means confident that it can be shewn that Mr. Penrose is in the wrong when he uses the term motive as synonymous with the affections, desires, and appetites, yet they do prove that in common parlance the word has a wider acceptation; of which the incorrectness should not be merely assumed but demonstrated. The remark is more important because we are confident that the difficulty which most readers will experience on the first perusal of Mr. Penrose's book, is mainly, if not entirely, to be attributed to the use of the word motive as synonymous with affection and desire; and we apprehend that the greater part of the obscurity might be removed by an introductory chapter, upon his own and upon the ordinary signification of the term,

But we proceed to what the volume does contain. The preface gives a general outline of the whole; and informs us that the first part describes that character of mind at which all men should aim who embark wisely in the pursuit of true happiness, the desire of happiness being both the greatest of motives and that motive which is most appealed to by religion. The next point is to make an estimate of the means by which we may be enabled to pursue and obtain the moral object which has been laid down. But the reader will be better able to understand Mr. Penrose's design, as well as the remarks which we have to offer both upon the plan and upon the execution of it, after he has read the following analysis of the conY