Montpellier, a city fo much celebrated in England, but where our author found every thing exceffively dear. This impofition is owing to the concourfe of English who come hither, and, like fimple birds of paffage, allow themselves to be pluck ed by the people of the country, who know their weak fide, and make their attacks accordingly, They affect to believe, that all the travellers of our country are grand feigneurs, im mensely rich and incredibly generous; and we are filly enough to encourage this opinion, by fubmitting quietly to the most ridiculous extortion, as well as by committing acts of the moft abfurd extravagance, This folly of the English, together with a concourfe of people from different quarters, who come hither for the re-establishment of their health, has rendered Montpellier one of the dearest places in the fouth of France. The city, which is but finall, ftands upon a rifing ground fronting the Mediterranean, which is about three leagues to the fouthward: on the other fide is an agreeable plain, extending about the fame distance towards the mountains of the Cevennes. The town is reckoned well built, and what the French call bien percée; yet the streets are in general narrow, and the houses dark. The air is counted falutary in catarrhous confumptions, from its dryness and elafticity; but too fharp in cafes of pulmonary impofthumes.

It was at Montpellier that we faw for the first time any figns of that gaiety and mirth for which the people of this country are celebrated. In all other places through which we paffed fince our departure from Lyons, we faw nothing but marks of poverty and chagrin. We entered Montpellier on a Sunday, when the people were all dreffed in their best apparel. The ftreets were crowded; and a great number of the better fort of both fexes fat upon ftone feats at their doors, converfing with great mirth and familiarity. Thefe converfations lafted the greatest part of the night; and many of them were improved with mufic both vocal and inftrumental: next day we were vifited by the English refiding in the place, who always pay this mark of respect to new-comers. They consist of four or five families, among whom I could pass the winter very agreeably, if the state of my health and other reafons did not call me away.'

The correspondence our author kept up in very elegant Latin, with a famous French physician of this place, whom he confulted upon his own health, and the ignorant anfwers the former returned him in French, gives us a ridiculous and at the fame time melancholy fpecimen of what we have fo often bewailed, the growing paffion of our country for even French aburdities and infufficiency.

In the twelfth letter the Doctor makes fome animadverfions upon the ingratitude of the French to the memory of Colbert, who was the father and founder of their marine, manufactures, and commerce, and the great patron of the liberal arts. In the fame letter he is with juftice fevere on the character of Lewis the Fourteenth, who, he fays, had the glory to efpouse Mrs. Maintenon in her old age, the widow of the buffoon Scarron.'

Though we agree with our author in all he fays of Colbert, yet we think the ingratitude of the French to his memory may be eafily accounted for, as it is from his administration that we may date the decadence of the French greatness. What was faid of Anguftus Cæfar is applicable to Colbert. It had been happy for his country had he never exifted, unless every one of his fucceffors has been equal to himself. Colbert endeavoured to give the French a commercial turn, to introduce a spirit of colonization, and to ftrike out new channels of trade. His fucceffors left unexecuted, or executed but partially, what he had begun; and indeed we are inclined to believe the genius of the French lies more towards war than commerce. When we compare the prodigious armies and fleets brought to the field and fent to fea by Lewis the Fourteenth, before his people affumed a commercial character, with their marine and military estab lifhments for fifty years paft, we cannot think that France will ever make a figure equal to the English by fea, or in any branchof maritime bufinefs.

No painter ever drew a more lively or a more just groupe of figures, or introduced them under a better landscape, than what our author's twelfth letter contains. The Jerious and the laughable are fo juftly blended that we tafte both, and both have their full and genuine relish.-At the time of writing the thirteenth letter we find the Doctor fettled at Nice, of which we have a moft entertaining account both in its antient and present state. The fourteenth letter contains many remarkable observations upon his Sardinian majefty's power and policy; and the fifteenth is a kind of an apology for what our author had faid of the French nation in general in his former letters. We recommend this letter particularly to the perufal of the bloods and bucks of the British army, especially fuch of them as have the misfortune to be tinctured with French ideas of honour. The fixteenth, feventeenth, and eighteenth letters continue the 'Doctor's curious obfervations upon Nice and its neighbourhood, nor do we remember to have met with one of them in any former work of this kind. Here we are ftruck with the real characteristics of painting from the life, which alone gives what we may call a fucculency to literary entertaininent. The nineteenth

teenth letter treats of the pleasures of the table and the economy of living, of which the Doctor appears to be no incompetent judge; and in the twenty-first, in which he speaks of the state of the arts and fciences at Nice, he tells us, that it is almost a 'total blank; and adduces very strong reasons in fupport of his opinion.

[To be continued and concluded in our next.]

II. The Confeffional; or, a Full and Free Inquiry into the Right, Utility, Edification, and Success, of establishing Syftematical Confeffions of Faith and Doctrine in Proteftant Churches. 8vo. Pr. 5s Bladon.

TH

HOUGH Proteftants of the church of England, by the original principles of the Reformation, were left at liberty to fearch the Scriptures for the grounds of their religion, and to build their faith on this foundation;, yet it was thought expedient to declare what particular doctrines they maintained, and in what. points they differed from the church of Rome. Certain articles were therefore compofed by fome of our principal reformers, probably Cranmer and Ridley, and published by regal authority in the year 1552. Thefe articles, commonly called K. Edward's articles, were forty-two in number.

In 1562 they were laid before the convocation by archbishop Parker, received divers alterations in the fynod, were reduced to thirty-nine, and paffed both houses.

When the articles were firft compofed, archbishop Cranmer, though he defigned and defired that all bishops fhould have authority to cause their respective clergy to fubscribe; yet, in his answer to an interrogatory put to him by queen Mary's commiffioners, he declared, that "he compelled none, but exhorted fuch to fubfcribe as were willing to do it.”

From the year 1562 to the year 1571 the subscription of the clergy was not general: for though the high commiffioners enjoined fubfcription, yet they did not extend their injunction to all the clergy of England.

In 1571 the articles were again revised, and confirmed by the convocation, and established by act of parliament in their prefent form. By this act, fubfcription is required of every perfon who fhall be admitted to the order of deacon.

The meaning of fubfcription, as bishop Burnet obferves, is to be taken from the defign of the impofer, and the words of the fubfcription. The title of the articles informs us, that they were agreed upon in convocation, "for the avoiding of diverfities of opinions, and for the stablishing of consent touching

true

true religion." From whence it is evident, that a confent, of opinion is defigned. If we, in the next place, confider the de-. claration that the church has made in the canons, we shall find that though by the fifth canon, which extends to the whole body of the people, he only is declared to be excommunicated ipfe facto, who fhall affirm " any of the articles to be erroneous, or fuch as he may not with a good confcience subscribe to;" yet the thirty-fixth canon, which relates to the clergy, requires them to fubfcribe willingly and ex animo," acknowledging all and every article to be agreeable to the word of God." Thefe words, being part of the ufual form of fubfcribing, evidently denote a man's own opinion, and not a bare confent to an article of peace, or an engagement to filence and submiflion.

The statute of the thirteenth of queen Elizabeth, which gives legal authority to the requiring of fubfcriptions before a man is admitted to a benefice, obliges every clergyman to read the articles of the church, and declare his "unfeigned affent thereunto."

Thefe things make it appear very plain, that the subscription of the clergy must be confidered as a declaration of their own opinion, and not as a bare obligation to filence.

Here then the question arifes, how can a clergyman con+ fcientiously fubfcribe, in this limited fenfe, to the truth of thefearticles? Is it to be fuppofed that they are free from every mixture of error, and perfectly agreeable to the word of God? What shall we fay ?-The compilers were not infallible; they drew them up at a time when the church was juft emerging out of the darknefs of ignorance and fuperftition; they very properly excluded the capital errors of popery, and in that refpect performed an effential fervice to the Proteftant church; but at the fame time they evidently countenanced certain Calviniftical notions which are now generally exploded. The friends of the church have invented a variety of schemes in order to rescue fubfcribers from this embarraffment. But difficulties ftill remain; and the practice of requiring fubfcriptions is confidered by many fenfible writers of different denominations, as an unwarrantable encroachment on Chriftian liberty, or the right of private judgment.

The author of the work now before us argues against all fyftematical impofitions with great acutenefs and fpirit. In the firft chapter he exhibits a fummary view of the rife, progrefs, and fuccefs of established confeffions of faith and doctrine in Proteftant churches.

The Reformers, he obferves, having unhappily adopted certain maxims as felf-evident, namely, that there could be no edifica

tion in religious fociety without uniformity of opinion,”—that the true sense of Scripture could be but one," and the like, presently fell upon the expedient of preventing diversity of opinions, by contracting their original plan in agreement with these maxims. The one fenfe of Scripture was determined to be the fense of the primitive church, that is to fay, the sense of the orthodox fathers for a certain number of centuries. From these they took their interpretations of Scripture, and upon these they formed their rule of faith and doctrine, and fo reduced their respective churches within the bounds of a theological fyftem. The confequence of which was, that every opinion deviating from this fyftem, whatever countenance or fupport it might have from a different fenfe of Scripture, became a declared herefy.

• Hence it came to pass that many Protestants of very different characters and tempers, finding these incroachments on their Christian liberty, and themselves not only excluded from communion with their brethren, but ftigmatized with an invidious name, were provoked to feparate from their leaders, and to fet up for themselves; which many of them did on grounds fufficiently juftifiable: whilft others, whofe pride, paffion, and felf-conceit knew no bounds, and whom probably the most reasonable terms of communion would not have reftrained, under the pretence of afferting their liberty against these dogmatical chiefs, formed themselves into fects, which afterwards made the most infamous use of it.

That fome of thefe fects were fcandals to all religion, and nuifances to all civil fociety, was but too vifible. That they were the offspring of the Reformation, was not to be denied. The doctrines which afterwards diftinguished the fober and serious Proteftant churches, were not yet made public, nor perhaps perfectly fettled. They were yet only to be found in the writings of fome private doctor, whom his brethren were at liberty to disown, or in catechifms for youth, or directories for minifters within their feveral departments.-A concurrence of unhappy circumftances, which afforded the Papifts a most favourable opportunity of calumniating the whole Protestant body as the maintainers of every herefy, and the abettors of every fedition, which Europe had heard of or feen in that generation.

It was to no purpose that these hot-headed irregulars were difowned, and their doctrines reprobated, by fome of thoseeminent doctors on whom the credit and fuccefs of the Reformation feemed chiefly to depend. These might speak their own: fenfe; but it did not appear by what authority they undertook to anfwer for the whole body. The nature of the cafe called

for