deserve interminable punishment. But leaving these axioms to their fate, I proceed to observe that as sin, according to the Calvinistic hypothesis, is the necessary result of a nature totally corrupt, with which corrupt nature, we certainly did not endow ourselves, it does not deserve interminable misery; and were interminable misery to follow it, it must be by an arbitrary appointment, the injustice and cruelty of which would be commensurate to the suffering inflicted, Nor would the wretch who should be doomed to sustain this eternity of woe, be disposed to think his sentence a whit more equitable, when reminded, that he "sinned in Adam and fell with him in his first transgression." But we are told that "if God in any instance remit the punishment he acts as a munificent Sovereign; if he decline so to interpose he acts in equity, he does no wrong to any." No wrong? Does he sustain no wrong who is brought into existence with a nature radically depraved, and then made eternally miserable for being such? It may not be out of place to state here, that according to Dr. Williams's system, as represented by the reviewer, all the divine dispensations are the results of two great moral faculties in the Supreme Governor, equity and sorereignty. With what propriety sovereignty can be represented as a moral faculty I am altogether unable to comprehend. Goodness I can understand, and unless my memory fails me, the Assembly's Catechism taught me when a child that God possesses this attribute in an infinite degree. Premising that I mean no reflection either on the understanding or the sincerity of Dr. Williams, I must be permitted to remark, that infinite goodness will be wisely kept out of sight by those who contend that the greater part of mankind will suffer eternally for that which they could not help, and over which they possess no controul. For it might unfortunately be asked, How comes it to pass that equity should so triumph over benevolence, how comes it to pass that a Being who is acknowledged to be infinitely good should treat the majority of his human offspring as he would do were he infinitely malevolent, and doom them to as much misery as the grand enemy of the human race is supposed to wish them?

When I had read the paragraph on which I have been animadverting, I thought the Dr. had proceeded far enough, but the Reviewer wishes that he had proceeded still farther, and stated "the scriptural doctrine of the punishment of sin as not merely negative, but as including also positive infliction on the score of retributive justice." The reviewer, it seems, is not satisfied with interminable misery as the consequence of sin. What farther his imagination has destined for mankind I am not able to divine nor anxious to be informed. But that retributive justice should demand the infliction alluded to is a paradox which the human intellect must ever despair of being able to solve. Strange that system should so blind the understanding of men in other respects intelligent that the very terms which they employ to express their dogmas should carry their refutation with them! It is certainly as impolitic to name justice in this matter as it is wise not to to say too much of the attribute of goodness. What must be

the definition of justice by which it can be shewn to be just, that a creature, who, born with a corrupt nature must inevitably fall into sin, should be rendered eternally miserable by the Being who made him what he is; or by what definition of justice can it be proved, that God would have been unjust either to us or to himself, had the infinite satisfaction of Jesus Christ been accepted in behalf of all mankind? I know it has been said that the torments of the damned are to be an eternal monument of the immaculate holiness of the Divine Nature. This is changing the ground, but not to my mind, changing it for the better. The Deity is thus represented as giving birth to a race of impure beings, that their eternal sufferings may be a demonstration of his purity. And a matchless demonstration it undoubtedly is. Who would have thought that infinite holiness should not be distinguishable in its operation from infinite malevolence, or that the moral perfection of God should be the grand source of misery to his creatures!

If I have committed an error in wandering from verbal criticism to controversial theology, I will endeavour to make some amends by returning to my proper department. I am not aware that the following passages

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ubsequent number. Its design is to correct a statement in the Ninth Volume, p. 266. There your very respectable Correspondent, who transmitted the "Account," speaking of Dr. John Prior Estlin, says, That on Mr. Wright's resignation, i. e. of the pastoral office at Lewin's Mead, Bristol, and his being called to the pastoral office in 1778, he was ordained." This, I must be allowed to say, is inaccurate; Mr. Wright never did resign that office, but was the colleague of Dr. Estlin till his death: as will appear from the following passage in the Doctor's Funeral Sermon for Mr. Wright, from Heb. xiii. 7., on May

14, 1797:

"It has pleased the sovereign Dis poser of all events, in whose hands our breath is, and whose are all our ways, to deprive me of my revered colleague and friend, with whom I have spent SIX AND TWENTY YEARS, in the service of this congregation, with uninterrupted harmony: and the painful task now devolves upon me of addressing this society as a family of

mourners."

YOUR

I remain, Sir,

Your's respectfully, JOSHUA TOULMIN.

SIR, Hackney, Feb. 5, 1815. OUR correspondents Chiron and Thomas, whose letters appear in the last number of your Repository, (p. 25.) are, in my opinion, justly chargeable with the misconduct which they have unjustly charged upon every one who glories in the Cross of Christ, and who is thoroughly persuaded that to revealed religion we owe our best enjoyments in this life, and the only rational and clear prospect of the noblest enjoyments in eternity. Nei. ther of your correspondents " fights fairly," and I submit it to your read ers, whether misrepresenting almost every man who writes in favour of Christianity, holding him up to the world as a coward" continuing to provoke fettered antagonists," is not, if not arrant cowardice, something worse-gross misrepresentation.

This is the first time I have ever heard that modern "Infidels had their hands bound behind their backs, or were threatened with fine, tortures, imprisonment, perhaps death, if they uttered a syllable;" that a great gag was put into their mouths, followed

with the exclamation of the gagger, "Now let us hear what you have to say." What, Sir! have our Bolingbrokes, Humes, Gibbons, Voltaires, Volneys, or, to descend to living writers, our Godwins, Burdons, &c. &c.* been "bound, threatened with death, imprisoned, fined, tortured, gagged!” or has any one of this description, so far from suffering death, had a hair of his head injured in consequence of his attacks on Christianity, or I allude to Mr Hume) on the being of a God? No, Sir; the whole of the matter, and which has occasioned all this lamentable wailing is, in the course of half a century some two or three miserable individuals, whose ignorance or wi ful misrepresentation, whose abuse and ribaldry, when attacking Christianity and its Author, might have been very safely consigned to that contempt they most justly merited, have hcen iniprudently, unjustly, and most contrary to the letter and spirit of genuine Christianity, persecuted by fine and imprisonment. These two or three individuals ought, however, in fairness, to be cited, rather as exceptions to the general practice, than as proofs that all Infidels were so" 'bound, gagged, fettered," &c. &c.

But Chiron exclaims, "Don't tell us that this conduct is contrary to the precepts and spirit of Christianity: what! my Lord Ellenborough, Lord Erskine, Sir Vicary Gibbs, and Sir W. Garrow are undoubtedly Christians! You cannot deny it, or if you should, you will not be believed, for we know them by their fruits."t

The infidel writings of Voltaire and Volney have been translated and very li berally circulated in this country. Mr. Burdon appears to glory in his disbelief and contempt of Christianity, and has expressed himself very freely on the subject of the being of a God, in his own writings, and in various periodical publications; and yet, I will venture to predict, he may proceed, without any fear of interruption from the civil power, till he is heartily tired of his hopeless task.

Whether Lord Erskine ought to rank with the Christian state-persecutors abovenamed, may admit of doubt. It is true, that in the hurry of his professional engage cepted of a brief as counsel against the pub. ments, and in one unhappy moment, he aclisher of the Second Part of "Paine's Age of Reason;" but, as if not perfectly easy when reflecting on his own conduct, he, shortly after the conviction of the offending

Grey who have not quoted the interesting description of her talents and occupations by Ascham, in his ScholeMaster, 8vo. 1748 (p. 37). I lately read another tribute to her memory, which I have never seen quoted, though well-worthy of accompanying her affecting story, especially as offered by one who was an enemy to her Protestant faith. The writer to whom I refer is the learned jesuit, Father Orleans. In his Histoire des Revolutions D' Angleterre, Lib. 8. 4to. ii. 450, describing the political intrigues of Northumberland, he adds, "La plus grande opposition qu'il y trouva, fut de la part de sa belle-fille. Jeanne Gray, qui servit d'actrice à la nouvelle scene que l'Angleterre douna à 1 Europe en cette occasion, refusa long-temps le personage que son beau-pere la pressa de representer. Toute jeune qu'elle etoit elle etoit solide, et voyoit bien le ridicule du role qu'elle alloit jouer. D'ailleurs elle avoit l'esprit philosophique, et naturellement moderé, aimant mieux etre particuliere in repos, que Reine dans le tumulte. A la religion prés, c'etoit une femme accomplie, ayant meme, au dessus du sexe, assez de connoissance des bonnes lettres pour faire un honnette homme sçavant. Elle se défendit autant qu'elle pût du mauvais pas qu'on lui fit faire. Sa famille l'y obligea. Elle se laissa proclamer Reine dans la Capitale et aux environs, et en receut les honneurs de si bonne grace, que l'on ne pouvoit s'empecher de souhaiter qu'elle y eut plus de droit." Now I am quoting the language of our neighbours, I hope not soon again to become our enemies, give me leave to close this paper with a short character, by one of their critics, of an English poetess, who has long adorned, and I trust may yet much longer adorn, that private station, the nurse of talent and the guard of virtue, which the transient Queen Jane wisely preferred to royalty. The author of Des Romans, et des Femmes Anglaises qui cultivent les Lettres, says, "Parmi les femmes poëtes Anglaises qui sont nos contemporaines, la première place est due, sans doute, à Mistriss Bd, qui joint une connoissance approfondie de l'art et une tendance tres morale à une veritable talent. Ses ouvrages, où l'on

peut désirer plus de chaleur et d'imagination, en offriroient peut-être da

pays." Archives Litteraires de l'Europe. Paris, No. 30. June 1806.

Most of your readers will, I am persuaded, disapprove the historian's assumption of male superiority in his au dessus du sexe, and demur to the critic's exceptions, at the expence of our country. R. B.

On two Natures in the Person of Christ.
SIR,
Jan. 23, 1815.

T was gravely said by some of the

prelates at the Council of Trent, "That the schoolmen were the astronomers which did feign eccentricities and epicycles and such engines of orbs, to save the phenomena, though they knew there were no such things: and in like manner, that the schoolmen had framed a number of subtile and intricate axioms and theorems to save the practice of the church." The distinction of two natures in the person of Christ was invented to save the doctrine of his deity, being one of those subtleties, by means of which the same propositions may be affirmed and denied at pleasure. It will be always found, however, that such subtle distinctions rest on equivocal terms, and that we have only to detect the equivocation of the terms, to prove the absurdity of the meaning, or the absence of all meaning.

The terms Nature and Person are employed equivocally by Trinitarians: at one time they argue that there are three persons in one nature; at another that there are two natures in one person. In the one instance, the nature is the whole that comprehends the parts called persons. Each of the termis is made to extend and contract, so as to be both the greater and the lesser; both that which comprehends and that which is comprehended; or in other words, both contents and container, the whole and parts of the whole. There are three persons (it is said) in the divine nature, or in the oue God; and again, there are two natures in the one person of Christ. Now as a whole must be greater than any one of its parts, the person of Jesus must be not only greater than that part called the human nature, but also that part called the divine, for it is supposed to comprehend both, or to cousist of both.