There is (proceeds Mr. Le Bas) but too much reason to believe that these views and apprehensions of Professor Lee are well founded. But, notwithstanding all these obstacles, every one must agree with Mr. Penrose, that it is of the last importance to have the whole question of Miracles, in all its bearings, accurately settled. The argument respecting them is a weapon which should be brought to its highest perfection of keenness and brightness. It must be kept in readiness to assail the monster, if ever it should be stripped of the scaly epidermis, which now seems to render it invulnerable. The skill and labour of Mr. Penrose have been eminently serviceable in giving to the implement its proper temper and it is no fault of his, if its edge is still resisted by belluine toughness and insensibility.-P. 109.

We certainly are disposed to treat with great deference and respect any opinion deliberately advanced by Professor Lee, and deliberately sanctioned by Mr. Le Bas; but, when we observe what deeply-rooted prejudices have, in parts of the world apparently very hopeless, yielded to the force of truth, we should be disinclined to give up altogether the argument of miracles, even with "the learned Doctor Hagi Elharamein Mohammed Ruza, or with Mirza Ibrahim himself, Preceptor of all the Moolas." These venerable Doctors may have, for any thing that we know, a very scaly epidermis: but perhaps it is not impenetrable; Ahab was pierced through the joints of his harness; other divines of the same fraternity probably have less of this belluine toughness; and some of these may feel the sharpness of the weapon, of which their better protected superiors would be utterly insensible. At any rate, the experiment has scarcely at this moment been sufficiently tried. With every allowance for the force of Mussulman education, it is difficult to conceive that all the arguments contained in this volume would produce no impression upon a single Mahometan; and while approving very highly the use of the evidence from prophecy with these eastern disputants, we would not at present abandon in absolute despair the ground of miracles.

The latter part of this volume is occupied with matters bearing upon the main body of Mr. Penrose's disquisitions, which that gentleman conducts to the following method:

He, first, shows that those acts which are related in Scripture as miraculous, fully deserve that title, being acts of a power unequivocally superhuman. He, secondly, proves that we have full evidence of their real performance. And, lastly, he shows that there is, in the doctrines which these miracles attest, nothing to shake our confidence in the authority which they indicate. The conclusion is obvious. The miracles must have proceeded from God; and the authority of Revelation must be divine. P. 110.

In pursuing these inquiries, Mr. Le Bas introduces quotations of some length. As we cannot conveniently compress the arguments, and have not room for copious extracts, we shall do little more than express our concurrence in the very favourable opinion here pronounced upon the manner in which Mr. Penrose prosecutes the discussion.

In speaking of the first of these propositions, Mr. Le Bas takes occasion to bestow a few severe but very just animadversions upon the

rationalizing divines of the German school; they are certainly well entitled to the representation which he gives of them, as persons who have been ploughing with an ox and an ass* together; as having "yoked their industry to such preposterous and obstinate folly, that they can look for no blessing upon their labours." (p. 115.) We need no other beacon than that which these marvellously absurd theologues furnish of the danger which results from neglecting the principles of sound and philosophical criticism. If any person can persuade himself to believe, after reading Mr. Penrose's observations, as here cited from p. 116 to 123, that the resources of man can ever " make any approach to the achievement of such wonders as the Bible ascribes to Moses, and to Christ, and to many of the ministers of their respective dispensations," he may congratulate himself upon having a talent for credulity which will not easily be exceeded.

In stating the direct evidence which we possess of the actual performance of miracles, Mr. Penrose selects four examples, in order to exhibit, broadly and distinctly, the foundation of our assent to the fact, that such things were really and truly accomplished: viz. (1.) The pillar of fire and cloud which accompanied the Israelites. (2.) The restoration of the blind man to sight, as recorded in the 9th chapter of St. John. (3.) The resurrection of Lazarus. And (4.) Our Saviour's own resurrection. In the third section of this chapter are some very judicious observations on the love of the marvellous :-a charge from which he most satisfactorily vindicates the character of the apostles; proving that the natural temper of these witnesses was that of men, in whom, if we can confide in any man, we may confide as being accurate judges of fact, as persons not likely to be carried away by credulity; and shewing, from the circumstances of the whole history, that their adherence to Christ, and their zeal in his cause, did not and could not arise from their love of the marvellous. We add some observations by Mr. Le Bas connected with the subject.

We all know that the love of the marvellous is a most valuable and convenient topic in the hands of the freethinkers. It saves them a world of thought and research. Into this quality they resolve all the histories of preternatural agency. Mankind, they tell us, are by nature voraciously credulous; and superstition is intensely contagious; and, as for enthusiasm, its operation is absolutely electrical: it is propagated with the force and rapidity exhibited by the galvanic battery. Accordingly, the demand for wonders has,, in every age, been so universal, and so insatiable, that wise men have thought it necessary to provide a vast limbo, amply stored with every imaginable variety of prodigies, in which the public mind might at all times expatiate and take its pastime. That this is the right solution of all questions relative to miracles is obvious: for has not Dr. Johnson himself told us, that he would make half London believe that they had seen a man walk across the Thames dry-shod? and why, then, should not Moses make the Israelites believe that they had themselves walked dry

Deut. xxii. 10.

shod over an arm of the Red Sea? There is no portent in the annals of the marvellous that was ever more greedily swallowed, than this notable account of all wonders is received, from the mouths of their professors, by the scholars of the freethinking school-falsely so called!-the school, rather, whose disciples would more willingly endure a month at the Brixton tread-wheel, than encounter, for half an hour, the toil of really thinking for themselves. The masters and pupils of this ludus impudentiæ could endure no worse a penance, than to lay aside their nonsensical and lying vanities, and to pass a little time under the tuition of Mr. Penrose. It would be weariness to their very flesh to come to close quarters with an honest and steady thinker. Pp. 125–127.

We would gladly, if we were not afraid of exceeding reasonable limits, state the views entertained by Mr. Penrose, and confirmed by his reviewer, concerning the probability of the Christian system as an element of the credibility of the miracles appealed to in attestation of it. This probability is not the proof; it is introduced only to shew of the doctrine that it is in itself highly capable of being sustained by the miracles. Yet to those who are capable of appreciating the argument, the doctrines must carry with them great authority; when rightly understood, they indicate such a knowledge of the principles of our nature, and the moral character of the mind, as to leave no doubt, under the circumstances, of their divine original. Hence, says Mr. Penrose,

"Though miracles may, on the promulgation of a religion, be the evidence best fitted to rouse attention, and though they afford the most obvious and most demonstrative proof of it; yet among all persons able justly to estimate the real nature and true merits of Christianity, the character of its doctrines, and their adaptation to the human mind, to its wants, its weaknesses, and its whole moral constitution, are commonly what constitute their most efficient conviction. Nor does this rest on any less rational principle, than that on which, in all sciences, the proficient is always allowed to establish for himself principles not wholly comprehensible by those who are acquainted with only the ruder outline, or the grosser elements, of the subject which he undertakes to examine." P. 148.

Mr. Le Bas follows his author with occasional remarks, illustrative or confirmatory of his positions, through several chapters, which have for their object to prove that imposture never was supported by such evidence as that by which the Scripture miracles are established: to expose the unreasonableness of the demand which scepticism sometimes makes for more full and cogent miraculous evidence, showing that consequences by no means favourable on the whole, might probably have resulted from a more general conviction among the Jews of our Saviour's resurrection and Messiahship; and that the evidence of the Christian miracles is of a nature which leaves full scope for the exercise of our moral faculties:-to establish the position, that in proving the truth of the Scripture miracles, it is unnecessary to draw a strict line of distinction between true and false miracles: " for the Scripture miracles occupy a position of their own, they do not stand near the border territory;" and lastly, to point out the sort of claim upon our attention belonging to alleged miracles, not recorded in Scripture,

We have been much gratified with the observations introduced under each of these heads. We meet with nothing which does not appear to us to be strictly just, and there is much which well deserves the serious attention of the student. Were we to select in this part of the volume, one discussion as more particularly interesting and attractive than another, we should probably fix upon that part of the fourth chapter, which is employed in showing that the evidence of the Christian miracles is of a nature which leaves full scope for the exercise of our moral faculties: the discussion occupies about twelve pages, and no abridgment, as Mr. Le Bas has truly stated, can do it justice. We shall therefore merely remark upon it, that those who have never turned their attention to this kind of inquiry, will, on reading these pages, probably be surprised to find in how great a degree the miracles of the New Testament tended to exercise the moral faculties even of the spectators themselves, and how much a similar effect is answered at this day, although in a somewhat different manner, by the evidence of them. The moral ends of religion do not allow it to be armed with irresistible evidence; much is intended to be left to the disposition of the person to whom it is addressed: and there is a far closer approximation, as to the respective advantages of witnessing the miracles on the one hand, and possessing the record of them on the other, between the conditions of the men of that day and of the present, than at first sight would generally be supposed.

Toward the conclusion of the volume, Mr. Le Bas cites some extracts from Archdeacon Goddard's Bampton Lectures, tending powerfully to confirm the views which it had been his object in these pages to illustrate and enforce. We subjoin a part of his own concluding remarks, which immediately follow these quotations.

Reflections on the subject of the Scripture miracles cannot be better closed than with the above passages. They exhibit the theory of our submission to this sort of evidence in all its force and symmetry. If we are asked, why we have a tendency to implicit acquiescence in preternatural attestations, the answer is, that we are so constituted, that such is our nature, that our disposition to rest in such testimony is just as much one of the phenomena of Creation, as any of the physical properties of matter, that it is an ultimate quality from which there can be no rational appeal. Again, if it be inquired, why (in the absence of superhuman testimony) do we feel inclined to give our confidence to human attestations, the answer must be of the same kind; that we cannot withhold such confidence without violence to our intellectual and moral powers, and that to meet such impulses by argument, is about as reasonable as it would be to array syllogisms against our instincts and our affections. Circumstances may, possibly, be imagined without end, by which our reliance either on supernatural, or on merely human evidence, may be qualified, or limited, or even overpowered. But no circumstances can be conceived sufficient to annihilate in us the tendency towards such reliance. Instances there doubtless have been, and are, of absolute and universal scepticism. But this, after all, is an unnatural state of mind: a condition brought on by a course of perverse and

injurious discipline; and it is proved to be so by the uneasiness it is sure to inflict. It may promise to place its victim on a couch of repose, but it actually stretches him on the rack of incessant torture. When a man forcibly suppresses all his kindliest affections, he becomes a misanthrope. When he distorts all his moral and intellectual faculties, he becomes a pyrrhonist. In either case, he becomes one of the most pitiable of human beings. And of all the symptoms of his wretchedness there is none, perhaps, more striking, than his miserable and treacherous consolation,-namely, that his misanthropy secures him from all delusion of the heart, and his pyrrhonism from all errors of the understanding!-Pp. 83-85.

It has been our wish to give, so far as our limits would permit, a general idea of the objects embraced in this work, and of the kind of reasoning by which the several positions are proved or supported. Should we have succeeded in the design, the reader cannot fail to perceive the importance of the discussion; and the passages which we have cited must sufficiently attest the ability with which the argument is conducted. We apply this remark both to the reviewer and the reviewed.

Their style is somewhat different, and Mr. Le Bas is the more playful of the two, more in the habit of enlivening a close and severe discussion by expressions of a cheerful or amusing character: these are evidently introduced from the natural impulse of the moment, but they are not without their use; they may seem, by provoking a smile, to relieve the exhausted attention even of the closest thinker : and they will induce many a young reader, to his own great advantage, to proceed through the whole volume, when, from the logical strictness of the reasoning, he might otherwise be disposed to stop half-way.

ART. V.-1. Archbishop Cranmer's Defence of the Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament, with a Vindication of his Character. By the Rev. H. J. TODD. Rivington.

2. A Vindication of certain Passages in the 4th and 5th Vols. of the History of England. By J. LINGARD, D. D. Mawman.

3. A Reply to Dr. Lingard's Vindication. By the Rev. H. J. TODD. Rivington.

WHEN Dr. Lingard commenced his History of England, all those with whom party is the ruling passion concluded that no truth was to be expected from a Catholic Priest upon the subject of the Reformation; and accordingly many watchful pamphleteers sat, pen in hand, to pounce upon an easy prey. If we may judge, however, from the merits of the little controversy now before us, the "Romish Historian" has not dealt less fairly by the Reformers than they are accustomed to do by the adherents of the old religion. It was natural that Dr. Lingard, as a Catholic, should be desirous to shew his party in the best