his works,"*"Christ died for all,"† &c.-how is he to discover that these passages really mean "The Lord is good to a few," and "Christ died for a few?" Calvinism is not only contradictory to reason and Scripture, but it makes Scripture contradict itself; and the infidel, as his disposition may be, either exults in the triumph which this view of Christianity affords him, or stumbles into the snare which it sets in his path. It may be thought that, as Byron was himself a fatalist, Christianity, in the sombre garb of Calvinism, would have appealed with especial energy to his moody mind. But such reasoning would be erroneous. Byron was miserable in his fatalism, as all men must be, save only those who see in themselves the chosen favourites of a capricious Deity. Little as Christianity adapted itself to his habits, he felt that he was wretched without it, though he was slow to admit, if not to feel, the cause of his wretchedness. Liberation from the dreadful control of fatality, would have more than half recommended to Byron the self-denying tenets of the Gospel. "I am very desirous," says he, "of believing; for I have no happiness in my present unsettled notions of religion." But unfortunately, in the present instance, the heavenly doctrine revealed by the universal Saviour was represented as coinciding in one important particular with the dark theory which overclouded his own mind. No wonder that at such a view of religion he shuddered. What was a terrible opinion, must have been a distracting conviction. We will hear his remarks to Dr. K.

On predestination, however, I do not think as S. and M.; for it appears to me, just from my own reflections and experiences, that I am influenced in a way which is incomprehensible, and am led to do things which I never intended; and if there is, as we all admit, a Supreme Ruler of the universe, and if, as you say, he has the actions of the devils, as well as of his own angels, completely at his command, then those influences, or those arrangements of circumstances, which lead us to do things against our will, or with ill-will, must be also under his direction. But I have never entered into the depths of the subject, but contented myself with believing that there is a predestination of events, and that that predestination depends on the will of God." "YOU HAVE PLACED IT," I SAID, 66 ON ITS PROPER FOUNDATION!!!"-P. 189.

An ordinary Christian would here naturally have referred to Rom. vii., and enlarged on the pathetic and eloquent description which the inspired Apostle has given of the condition of man in his fallen state, striving against his own reason and the Spirit of God; he would have distinguished between "actions" which God forcibly controls, and "influences," which he does not control after a compulsory manner; he would have shewn that because God restrained Satan from taking the life only of Job, it is no sequitur that the devil acted in the rest of his persecution by a divine impulse. He would have shewn that if we "do things against our will, or with ill-will," those things, provided they be evil, are the fruit of our corrupt hearts, and the "will" against

*Ps. cxlv. 9.

2 Cor. v. 14.

↑ P. 134.

which we do them is conscience, or the Holy Spirit himself. But this, although Christianity, is not Calvinism. The reveries of the Greek philosophical schools, superinduced upon the impious rubbish of modern infidelity, are no sooner uttered in the hearing of our pious Calvinist, than he exclaims, "You have placed it on its proper foundation!"

Now Dr. Kennedy appears to have been an exceedingly amiable man; and therefore we speak not in depreciation of him, but with the view of shewing what the Calvinistic doctrines are likely to be, even when they find a subject of milder temperament than the adversary of Servetus. These doctrines indeed appear, as we have said, with Dr. Kennedy, as with most Calvinists, to have been considered as the substance of Christianity itself. Thus, in an early period of the discussion, the Doctor had recourse to "a MS. which was, in a great degree an abridgment of part of the works of John Newton, and chiefly of his letters to Mr. Scott." This he calls " a summary of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity," "the first truths of religion," and "essentials."* How can we wonder that an infidel audience should take alarm at such a correspondence? The doctrines of Scripture, such, we mean, as are proved incontestibly to be there, are no demonstration that the Scriptures are inspired; we are not surprised, therefore, that Lord Byron should say, "What we want is to be convinced that the Bible is true; because, if we can believe this, it will follow, as a matter of course, that we must believe all the doctrines it contains." Here was indeed a rational challenge; but this lay wholly out of the line of Dr. Kennedy. It might have been expected that a disputant who did not wholly choose to rely on his own powers, would have appealed to Horne's inimitable first volume of the "Introduction." But no! Scott's Preface to his Commentary on the Bible, was the book selected; and with the effect which might have been anticipated. The following anecdote is forcible and characteristic:

I suppose I must have said something about the sovereignty of God, and alluded to the similitude used in Scripture of the potter and his clay; for I distinctly remember his lordship having said, that he would certainly say to the potter, if he were broken in pieces, "Why do you treat me thus ?"-P. 27.

It is singular that the recorder of this anecdote did not see the consequences of his doctrines, both legitimate, and such as they would produce in the mind of an intellectual unbeliever.

Lord Byron appears to have treated Dr. Kennedy with uniform politeness and kindness; he seems to have listened with much attention and with little impression; a fact at which we are very little surprised. We have great doubts, however, whether an abler disputant than Dr. Kennedy would have fared much better. Lord

Pp. 40, 41.

Byron was "desirous of believing," but it was a desire rather negative than positive; it was rather the hope of escaping suspense and unbelief, than that of correcting his religious ideas, or of heroically adopting some intrinsically unwelcome truth. Yet he was no scorner, at least in his more serious moments; and whether the "lines written by Lord Byron in his Bible," be genuine or not, they are not a bad indication of the true sentiments of the reputed author. And, therefore, with all our misgivings, we cannot but regret that Byron was not introduced to Christianity in the cheerful, but logical and influential, system of a Heber, instead of a dark, irrational, and unscriptural disguise, in which she was habited by the mild and excellent, but weak and inconsecutive Dr. Kennedy.

The objections of Lord Byron are some of the stalest, least ingenious, and most ignorant we have ever read. At this, as may be concluded from our preceding remarks, we were not at all surprised. Lord Byron's mind was by no means analytical; he generalized in every thing; his studies were conformable to his character; of surprisingly extensive surface, but of little profundity. He was as far removed from the insidious subtleties of Hume, as from the graceless and irrational scoffing of Voltaire. In the unhappy and partially amiable Rousseau, he finds a much nearer resemblance. Hence the necessity of prayer is disputed on the ground of the Deity's omniscience, it never once occurring that this was admitted by all Christians, who could not be unaware of the incongruity, if any existed. The answer to his objection appears to have been unknown to Byron; and the same is the case with many other points, which prove him to have been an infant on the question of Christian evidence. On the whole, we think the present volume may do good, by shewing, on the one hand, how little Christianity has to apprehend from the authority of Lord Byron as an adversary, and how far it is probable that Scott, and commentators of his school, are likely to urge with any power, the arguments for the truth of that religion, to the evidence of which they have attached such ponderous impediments.

ART. II.-An Essay on the supposed Existence of a Quadripartite and Tripartite Division of Tithes in England, for maintaining the Clergy, the Poor, and the Fabric of the Church. By the Rev. WILLIAM HALE HALE, M. A. Prebendary of St. Paul's, Preacher of the Charter-House, and Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of London. 8vo. Pp. 52. London: Rivingtons; and Fellowes. 1832.

ASSUREDLY there is no subject which has been more perversely and perseveringly misrepresented than that of tithes. Prejudice, and

misconception, and malignity, have conspired in hostile array against these legitimate revenues of the Established Church; and no efforts have been wanting, to involve in the most unmerited odium this species of property, to which the owners have as just a claim as any other proprietor to his estate. The Clergy are described as a class of men, paid for certain duties by an enormous tax levied upon the people;-questions are raised against the right of compelling one portion of the community to pay a set of teachers whose doctrines and discipline they disapprove and condemn;-and tithes are regarded as an inordinate proportion of wealth belonging to the public, and which, therefore, the public may resume at pleasure. To these general asseverations an answer is readily supplied by a reference to the origin of tithes, and the records of ecclesiastical history.

Upon the broad principle that "the labourer is worthy of his hire," the primitive Christians acknowledged the claims of their spiritual teachers to some recompense for their labours; and they were led by the divinely appointed practice of the Jews, to affix a tenth part of their agricultural produce as the standard of this recompense. What was at first a voluntary provision grew by custom into an acknowledged right; and was at length, in the eighth century, imperatively established by law. At this period, however, before the limits of parishes were known, the tithes of an entire diocese were received into a common treasury, and distributed, at the discretion of the Bishop, among the Chaplains of the several districts, who were congregated with himself within the precincts of the cathedral. But it soon became evident to the large landed proprietors, that a more efficient worship, by means of a Chaplain resident among them, would be far more desirable for his tenants than the periodical and uncertain visitations of an individual from a distance. Hence they built churches on their estates, and endowed them with a tenth of the produce; the diocesan consenting to relinquish his claim in favour of an arrangement which secured the more effectual discharge of the duties of the parish. That such erections and endowments, which form the best means of accounting for the disproportionate size of different parishes, were not only common in England in the beginning of the thirteenth century, but sanctioned by the canon law, is a fact which cannot be questioned. In a decretal of Pope Innocent III., written in the reign of King John, this custom of church-building is thus distinctly acknowledged:-" Quod enim de consuetudine regni Anglorum regia serenitas per suas literas intimavit, ut liceat tam episcopis, quam comitibus et baronibus, ecclesias in feudo suo fundare; laicis quidem principibus id licere nullatenus denegamus, dummodo diocesani episcopi eis suffragetur assensus, et per novam structuram veterum ecclesiarum justitia non lædatur. With respect to

the right of granting tithes in perpetuity, the following, among numberless documents of a similar nature, is decisive :-"Sciant tam presentes quam futuri quod ego, Henricus de Malemeino, concedo et confirmo monachis ecclesiæ Sancti Andreæ Apostoli Rovecestriæ decimam meam totam de dominico meo, et eam vehendam quocunque voluerint et transferendam ; cum ante hanc concessionem solummodo granum habuerint. Preterea dono eis et concedo decimam meam de vitulis et porcellis. Has concessiones confirmo illis pro amore Dei, et salute animæ meæ, et uxoris, et antecessorum meorum, libere et quiete possidendas, assensu hæredis mei et voluntate uxoris et amicorum meorum."

Such, then, being the origin of tithes, it would clearly be a subversion, not only of every principle of equity, but of the very basis of the English constitution, to alienate them from those purposes for which they were designed. So evident is this conclusion, that no one, with the slightest pretensions to common honesty, would now venture to impugn its justice. But a new argument in favour of the abolition of tithes has lately been started, in an Essay published by a "Society for promoting Ecclesiastical Knowledge," founded upon the assumption, that, whatever may be their claims to a portion of the tithes, the Clergy have grasped more than their due ;-in short," that, instead of a tenth of the produce, a fortieth (or at most a thirtieth) was all that was intended for the incumbent." It is the object of the pamphlet before us, to expose the sophistry of this statement, which is built upon an undue extension of a decree attributed to Pope Gelasius, A. D. 492: and, without stopping to notice the malignant calumnies which this Society of "Evangelical Dissenters," as they term themselves, have deemed it consistent with expedience and charity to vent against the "Tithe-paid Clergy" of the Established Church, we shall proceed at once to Mr. Hale's complete and masterly refutation of this particular item.

True it is, that the decree in question directs the division of ecclesiastical revenues and oblations into four parts, for the use, 1. of the Bishop; 2. of the Clergy; 3. of the Church; 4. of the poor: and it is equally true, that, in some foreign countries, this division formed a portion of the canon law. But where is the evidence that the tithes given to the Anglo-Saxon Church were ever subjected to the rule of this decree? Whatever authority the Papal See may have claimed over this Church, by virtue of Augustine's mission, she has always been regarded as totally independent of foreign national councils; and, indeed, the only ancient document which is alleged in proof of the quadripartite, and (the bishops having relinquished their portion) of the tripartite division of tithes in England, is a letter addressed by Gregory the Great to Augustine, immediately after his consecration to the archbishopric of Canterbury. Some