mon law, and recognized by many acts of parliament."-P. 12.

On this passage Mr. Dodson remarks, "the question touching the legality of pressing mariners for the public service, is a point of the greatest importance; and wise and good men still entertain different sentiments on the subject." I cannot help regretting that so excellent a inan as Mr. Dodson, whom I describe from personal knowledge, should have been content to treat so mildly this moral enormity. One who has been taught to consider himself as a free citizen of a free country, whatever be his outward condition, is yet dragged from his home as a criminal, without the pretence of any crime, because he once pursued an industrious life as a mariner, and instead of having acquired property is still dependant on his personal labour for his own, and probably, a family's support; for a regulating officer will scarcely venture to detain a man of property, should such an one be accidentally kidnapped by a pressgang. Such then is the man convicted only of poverty whose case a benevolent Christian, writing more like a lawyer than a gospeller, can treat as a question of mere legal uncertainty, on each side of which wisdom and virtue might be equally divided. Mr. Dodson had the honour to be a Heretic, and, in the contemplation of law, was liable to punishment. What would he have said to a commentator on penal statutes, who had coolly written that "the question touching the prosecution of those who impugn the established creeds, is a point of the greatest importance, and wise and good men still entertain different sentiments on the subject."

Every one has read Franklin's Notes on Judge Foster's Argument, and most I believe have admired the deserved satire they convey on the "idolaters of forms and precedents." But the unjust principle which supports the practice of impressing, and its frequent melancholy consequences, can scarcely be represented with more truth and propriety than in the following passage from a Reply to Mr. Burke's Invective against Mr. Cooper and Mr. Watt, in the House of Commons, April 30, 1792," by Mr. Cooper, formerly of Manchester, distinguished as an acute metaphy

593

sician, and now for many years a judge in the United States. In this Reply, the war is carried with no small success, into the enemy's country. Mr. Burke's Invective having been utterred in a debate on Parliamentary reform, Mr. Cooper shews, in various instances, "how little the interests of the poor are taken care of, and how necessary it is that the voice of the poor man should be heard with attention and respect in the House of Commons." He then adds, “A still more flagrant instance of cruelty and injustice towards the poor, is the practice of impressing. The labour of the poor man constitutes the whole of his wealth, and his domestic connexions almost the whole of his happiness. But on a sudden, under the dubious authority of a press warrant, he is cut off from his peaceful habita tion and domestic society, and forcibly dragged on board the floating prison of a tender: he is compelled to labour in the dreadful service of murdering his fellow-creatures at the command of his superiors, and paid such scanty wages, not as he can earn or deserves, but as the niggardly system of govern ment finance thinks fit to allow. His family meanwhile, who look up tó him for comfort and subsistence, igno rant of his misfortune, are anxiously expecting his wonted return; perhaps their homely repast for the night depended on his earnings for the day; but his usual hour of return to his family is gone by, each passing footstep, each noise of distant similarity, is eagerly listened to in vain. Hope still draws out the lengthened evening, till a sleepless night of lamentation and despair succeeds the dreary melancholy hours of successive disappoint ment and fruitless expectation."

After reading this description, which must have been often realized, what a sound of unmeaning rant or rather of cruel mockery is the following burst of oratory by Lord Chatham on the equal_liberty enjoyed in England: Every Englishman's house is his castle. Not that it is surrounded by walls and battlements, it may be only a straw built shed. All the winds of heaven may whistle through it, every element of nature may enter it, but the king cannot, the king dare not."

IGNOTUS.

SIR. August 26, 1816. N the Miscellaneous Works of Robert Robinson, edited by Flower, the following passage occurs at page 79, Vol. I. Remarks on Deism. "The learned and pious Dr. Bekker, one of the pastors of Amsterdam, renounced the popular opinion of the power of the devil, and published a book against it. He seemed to doubt also of the eternity of hell torments. He was reputed a Deist, and the consistory, the classes and the synods, proceeded against him, suspended him at first from the communion, and deposed him at last from the office of a

P. S. Perhaps some of the readers of the Monthly Repository who have visited the Netherlands and Germany since the peace, may be able to give an account of Unitarianism in those countries. The Menonite Baptists, a large and increasing sect, are strictly Unitarians, with the addition of (what to British Unitarians would appear) an austere system of church discipline. An account of the present state of the Menonite Baptists could not fail to interest the readers of your Miscellany.

SIR, Clapton, August 28, 1816. I HAVE found unexpectedly the folwhom I have just seen committed to his grave, waiting, I doubt not, the resurrection of the just, after having eminently served his generation, in the vigour of his life, and endured with Christian fortitude the sufferings which were allotted to its decline. I read the letter, as you will suppose, with those sensations, which can be well understood by all who had opportunities of appreciating the character of the late Mr. Vidler.

I am persuaded that I shall bring no discredit on my friend's memory, by requesting you to preserve his letter. Though scarcely more than a written message and little designed by him for the public eye, I cannot allow myself to conceal this truly honourable testi

mony to his continued desire of moral and intellectual improvement, and his just views of the serious purposes to which both should be conscientiously applied.

It may, perhaps, be regretted, with reference to his personal gratification, that Mr. Vidler, in earlier life, had not been introduced to those literary advantages which he could have so well improved. Yet I confess, that, for the sake of the cause, of which he was an able advocate, I feel no such regret. He would probably have been* a profoundly learned divine, and in that character, deservedly esteemed, yet he might never have become the instructive and impressive preacher, such as I have often listened to him. Nor would he then have left to his contemporaries, and, as I trust, to other generations, that valuable bequest, an encouraging example of what may be attained by great good will to man's highest interests, actuating a vigorous mind to an unceasing occupation of common advantages. I remain, Sir, Your's,

sense.

to say that the question is already answered by the Church of England! which anathematizes all who say in the affirmative. The Scriptures, too, they allege positively damn Jews, and Mahometans and also Muggle tonians, who they add are known by nothing but "hating the Bible, some blasphemy and a great deal of nonThey then pronounce sentence on the Quakers, in form following: "For the Quakers:-We are sure that many, or most of 'em have held very dangerous and detestable opinions. They generally speak contemptibly of the Bible, and will by no ineans allow it to be God's word: they have turned it into an odd sort of a jejune allegory, even the highest and most sacred truths therein contained, and have spoken not very honorably of our Saviour, and almost generally deny the Trinity, and many, if not all, embrace the other Socinian dream of the soul's sleeping till the resurrection. Besides, they use neither of the Sacraments, and if our most authentic accounts do not impose upon us, were at their first appearance in England, commonly acted by a worse spirit than what they pretend to. These 'tis hard to hope well of, nor can we see how with any manner of propriety they can be called Christians. But if there be any of 'em who have left their first principles, and are degenerated into Christianity, (we ask pardon for the harshness of the expression) and grown more religious, as well as more mannerly, there may be more hopes of 'em."

This judgment on the Quakers was evidently not prompted by passion merely, for if Socinian had been applied to them as a term of reproach because they were disliked on other accounts, it would also have been branded on the forehead of the "Anabaptists," whom no Church of England oracle ever spared; but there is some sort of candour in the deternination concerning these once fearful heretics: e. g. "For the Anabap tist, it's certain both from Popish and Protestant writers, and even eye-witnesses themselves, that there never was a fiercer or more dangerous enemy to all order both sacred and humane, than he was at his first appearance in Germany: but we hope he's now grown better, and that our soil has a little mended his crab-stock. For we

must own according to their present writings, there are not many articles of common Christianity, if any, which our English Anabaptists disown, besides that of infant baptism, wherein some great men of the Church of God have erred together with them." The Athenians may probably refer to Bp. Jere. Taylor, whose Liberty_ of Prophesying wears an Anabaptist" face. Other parts of their work will scarcely allow us to suppose that in

66

great men of the Church of God," they include John Milton, who was tainted with the heresy of the "Anabaptists."

The Athenian Mercury is very amusing, as an exhibition of the inquiries, the doubts, the wit and the mirth of our great grandfathers, who in spite of their broad brimmed hats, their doublets and hose, were much the sort of folks that we now are. The greatest difference between them and us consists in the bolder and more dignified spirit of civil and religions liberty that, through their exertions, we have acquired. We may smile at their questions, but they led to ques tions of more moment. A Correspondent in the Mercury gravely asks, What was the sex of Balaam's ass? and is solemnly answered by proofs from the history that it was a she-au. Another inquires, how infants, and aged and deformed persons shall arise at the day of judgment? and the unhesitating answer is that all shall arise of the age of thirty or thirty three, our Saviour's age at his resurrection!

No. CCLXXX.

Alcoran.

It has long been a question agitated among the Mahometans, and with great heat, whether the Alcoran was created or increated? Those who said it was created, seemed to others to diminish and lessen its authority : but they defended themselves many ways; among which one is, that 'tis the express saying of God, We have put the Alcoran; now that which is put is created. Others took the opposite side of the question. They took the safest side who adhering to the words of the Alcoran, said, that it was put, or sent down, and were silent about its creation.

Reeland, of the Mahometan Religion, in Four Treatises, &c. 8vo. 1712. 24.

P:

ART. I.-A Course of Lectures, contain ing a Description and Systematic Arrangement of the several Branches of Divinity: accompanied with an Account both of the principal Authors, and of the Progress, which has been made, at different Periods, In Theological Learning. By Herbert Marsh, D.D. F. R. S. Margaret Professor of Divinity. Part IV. On the Interpretation of Prophecy. Cambridge, Printed, Sold there by Deightons, &c. and in London by Rivingtons. 1816. 8vo. pp. 86.

TH

HE subject here discussed by the Margaret Professor, is so important, curious and difficult, and his reputation, as a theological scholar, so deservedly high, that we opened this pamphlet with more than common eagerness: an examination of it's contents, will shew in what degree our expectations have been gratified.

At the conclusion of the third part of his Lectures, he treated of typical interpretation, "with which," says he, the interpretation of prophecy is so far connected, as types are prophetic of their antitypes." In our review of that publication, we hinted our doubts with respect to the correctness of his definition of a type, and, at the same time, expressed a hope that the matter would be more largely and satisfactorily considered in some of" Dr. Marsh's "succeeding Lectures." It is resumed, accordingly, in No. XIX. the second paragraph of which begins with the following sentences:

"To constitute a type, something more is requisite, than a mere resemblance of that, which is called it's antitype. For one thing may resemble another, when the things themselves are totally unconnected. But it is the very essence of a type, to have a necessary connexion with it's antitype. It must have been designed, and designed from the very beginning, to prefigure it's antitype; or it partakes not of that character which belongs to a real type; a character, which implies, not an accidental parity of circumstances, but a pre-ordained and inherent connexion between the things

*A Course of Lectures, &c. p. 117. (Part III).

+ M. Repos. VIII. 677.

VOL, XI.

4 H

themselves.

Where this character is

wanting, there is wanting that relation of type to antitype, which subsists between the things of the Old Testament, and the things of the New." (Pp. 1, 2).

The Margaret Professor's representation of "the very essence of a type," is perfectly agreeable to certain systems of theology: we are convinced however that it receives no countenance from the Scriptures. If our readers will look into their English Bibles, they will find only a singl passage which speaks of types: this is 1 Cor. x. 11.; and even this is nothing more than the marginal reading in the larger copies-the word examples being preferred in the text and adopted by Newcome. On examining, too, the places in which the corresponding Greek substantive occurs, we can discover no support to the doctrine that a type is a designed resemblance. Dr. M. indeed says (ib:),

the only mode of distinguishing the cases, where this relation [of type to antitype] actually exists, from the cases. where it is only supposed to exist, is to examine what things in the Old Testament have been represented by Christ and his apostles as relating to things in the New. For then we have authority for such relation: then we know, that one thing was designed to prefigure the other."

To this authority we implicitly subscribe: but we shall soon perceive that it does not warrant the conclusion at

which the Lecturer arrives.

Before he considers (3) the prophetic character of a type, he ought to shew indubitably that a type, such as he de-` scribes it, has an existence in the volume of Revelation. Here, we think, his reasoning and his illustrations fail:

"Whether a future event is indicated by words, or indicated by other tokens, the connexion of that event with the words in one case, or the tokens in the other, will be equally a fulfilling of prophecy."

True if the connexion be in both instances designed; which is exactly the point to be proved, instead of being assumed. On this proof the Professor enters in the course of his third paragraph. According to Dr. M.,

"We cannot have a more remarkable, or a more important example, than that of