And a great King above all gods; In his hands are the deep places of the earth, And the strength of the hills is his also,' The motive for adopting such a structure we easily conceive to have been, that the composition might be adapted to responsive sing ing. But, can we avoid acknowledging a much deeper purpose of infinite wisdom, that that poetry which was to be translated into all languages, should be of such a kind as literal translation could not decompose?" It may easily be conceived what the judgment upon theological subjects is of one who can discover a deep purpose of infinite wisdom in the supposed structure of a psalm! Some lucid passages appear in this portion of the work, for not even antijacobinism and methodism combined have been able wholly to extinguish that light of intellect with which Mrs. More is gifted. But her opinions lamentably predominate over her nature, and the sentences which are favourable to civil and religious liberty are few, in comparison to those of a counteracting tendency. A toleration of erery creed, she tells us, generally ends in an indifference to all, if it does not originally spring from a disbelief of all ; what then is the creed which we are not to tolerate? the Egyptian points of doctrine which are to be slain by the sword of the spirit? The superintendance of Providence manifested in the local circumstances, and in the civil and religious history of England, form the subject of the concluding chap ters, which are tinctured with flattery of the reigning family; the worst sort of flattery, that which is couched in the language of religion. At the close of the whole we find this extraordinary sentence: "Who can say how much we are indebt ed for our safety hitherto to the blessing of a king and queen, who have distin guished themselves above all the sovereigns of this day, by strictness of moral conduct, and by reverence for religion?" After this Mrs. More must not be of fended at the French bishops for flattering their emperor in the words of scripture. It would be superfluous to sum up the merits of this work, which abundantly proves the wisdom and the bigotry of its writer; and that no person could be better fitted to direct the studies of the princess, none more improper to form her religious opinions. ART. III.-The Society of Friends examined. By JOHN BRISTED, of the Society of the Inner Temple. 8vo. pp. 360. HUME hinted to the continental writers the expediency of puffing the quakers. In his dissertation on superstition and enthusiasm, he notices and considers them as subsisting in perfect freedom from priestly bondage, and approaching the only regular body of deists in the uni verse. The French philosophists, hearing of a sect without priests, whose principles aimed at reducing all revealed religion to allegory, presently inferred, that, if such a sect could be held up as a pattern of piety and morality, inutility both of christianity and its clergy would be completely and practically demonstrated. Voltaire, Diderot, Raynal, Mirabeau, Brissot, and the whole tribe of anti-jesuits, accordingly set about extolling the quakers. Their drab dress was Attic simplicity; their theeing and thouing, the pure diction of classical antiquity; their silent meetings, the sublimest worship of contemplative philosophy; and their religious ignorance, a wise disdain of ouring controversy. To their industry and example was especially ascribed the wealth of England, the rise and rapid growth of her colonies, and the extension of her fisheries: to their generous philanthropy, the diminution of privateering, the abrogation of the slavetrade, and the emancipation of the negroes in so many of the christian states. Their cautious spirit, which refused to handle implements of war, was to make of mankind an universal people of bro thers, and was recommended as a model to the French soldiery who yet obeyed a monarch. Thus the old church-and-kingship of France was efficaciously wounded in the form of panegyrics on the quakers. In all this there may be much truth; but it is well that these panegyrics should be reduced to their precise value, by unfolding from authentic documents the real interior structure, discipline, and behaviour, of the Friends. The practical world knows the quakers; but the speculative world has much to learn concerning them. They certainly do not approach a regular body of deists; they expel, or disown, those of their members who deny the holiness of the Scriptures; and they have published Trinitarian manifestoes from their episcopal to their parochial meetings. They are not less under the sway of their 7 elders, or presbyters, than other sects are of their priests: and, by avoiding to hire specific public instructors, they miss the advantage of a literary order of men adapted to educate their youth. Their intellectual culture is from this cause in arrear. They are accused of prevaricatory habits in dialect, which, if applied to little things, are ridiculous, if to great ones deceptious, and which are peculiarly unworthy of a sect, that claims to rank its mere affirmations with the oaths of other men. To their industry, to their hospitality, to their beneficence, to their philanthropy, every praise is due. Still it is strange that a legislature, like the British, not at all tender to conscientious scruples, should have granted exclusive privileges to a sect, which refuses to arm in the common defence, which increases the trouble of collecting several taxes, and which, should its discipline relax, might facilitate equivocal marriages. These privileges, however, are not abused. The quakers do not interpret very strictly the formal directions of St. Paul: he ordains that the priesthood should be paid (1 Cor. ix. 14); that men should be uncovered in the place of prayer (1 Cor. xi. 7); that women be not suffered to speak in the halls of worship (1 Cor. xiv. 34, and 1 Timothy ii. 12); and other similar matters, from which the usages of the quakers in this country depart. The gospels they do interpret strictly; for they found on specific texts, and not on personal revelations of the holy spirit, their objections to military armament, and to judicial oaths. : It is not with the theological so much as with the practical principles of the quakers that this book is occupied the author has indeed, he tells us, (p. 3) looked into Penn's Key and Barclay's Apology, and into the book of extracts from the minutes of the yearly meeting; but his remarks have chiefly resulted from personal observation and habitual intercourse. His first chapter is indeed consecrated to examining the system of Friends as to its conformity with the Scriptures. But the author is himself a very unlearned christian, and talks (p. 24) of the "desperate absurdity" of those who plead a divine right for the establishment of tithes. Tithes certainly originate in scriptural authority: see Leviticus xxvii. v. 30 to 33, and Deuteronomy xxvi. v. 12, from which last passage it appears that the tithe ought to be levied triennially. To deny the divine right of tithe is to deny the inspiration of the Old Tes tament, and the divine authority of the Mosaic dispensation. The quakers, in order to obey the Scriptures, ought to pay their tithes once in three years, and not oftener. The redemption of the tithe is expressly permitted on the condition of adding one-fifth to its value. This triennial character of the tithe apparently resulted from the state of Jewish husbandry, which grew corn only every third year: so that the preparatory crops, such as our clover and turnips, were not liable to tithe. Those are anti-scriptural laws which have made the tithe annual and included the subsidiary crops. Mr. Bristed's point of view deserves notice. "Every one, who is in the least acquainted with the history of the church of England, is well aware of the desperate absurdity of those who endeavour to establish the doctrine of the divine right of tithes. Whether the mantenance of a national church hath a tendency to accelerate or to retard the progress of christianity amongst mankind, and whether or not it be necessary to the promotion of good order, harmony, a wise and an equitable government, are tremendous political problems, which it would be very unbecom ing in me to attempt to solve or to discuss. 66 It is sufficient for me that I find it a part, and a very important part, of our established governmental constitution; it is, indeed, the keystone of the political arch, which if taken away would cause the whole building to tunble into nothing. The great importance, in the hands of government, of a political lever so powerful as that of a body of ecclesiastics, stipendiated and kept in pay by itself, must readily appear, when we reflect that scarcely a single town, or parish, or village, or hamlet, in this kingdom is without one or more clergymen of the established church. These gentlemen are generally men of liberal and of ment what a weight of influence is thrown polished education. Consider then for a mointo the scale of government, by which sucha mighty mass of ecclesiastical intellect, all regularly classed and arranged under fixed, determinate, and appropriate heads, rising in regular gradation, from the village curate up to the empurpled metropolitan and primate of all England. These men, coming into con tinual contact with the minds of by far the majority of the English people, must have a very considerable effect in guiding them to sentiments of loyalty to their king, and of obedience to the constituted authorities of their country. "At a former period of time, the nation, or some individuals who represented the na tion, agreed to allow their chief magistrate, their king, a certain annual revenue, for the purpose of upholding and of maintaining the dignity and the power necessarily attached to the representative and the head of a mighty people, "Ethelwolfe, in the days of the Saxon teptarchy, made a present of the tithe, or enth part of the produce of the land, to the lergy, which tithes are now established and anctioned as the birth-right and the inheriance of our national church, by the same law which empowers the chief magistrate to draw is annual revenue from the people; and, I confess, I see no reason why one tax in suport of government should not be cheerfully nd willingly paid as well as another, nor hy any one should refuse to contribute to he maintenance of the clergy more than to he support of the king, whose very safety nd existence, indeed, are intimately comined with the preservation of the English hurch. "For let us for a moment suppose, that he national clergy were, all at once, deprived f their ecclesiastical emoluments, and turned ut to roam this wilderness of a world in uest of shelter and of food; what, think you, ould be the consequence of the decided ostility of such a formidable body of men, mongst whom floats such a mighty mass of ience and erudition, against the existing goernment? For certainly it is to be expected, at all those men, who had been forcibly nd unjustly deprived of their means of extence for no valid reason;-I say forcibly nd unjustly, because no reason could be of red as a pretext for taking away the proerty of the church, which would not equally pply as an argument in favour of sweeping way the whole British constitution from the ice of the earth-would exert all their ental powers to examine by what right the overnmenthad defalcated them of their inheriince; nay, by what right the government itself xisted. Now, we need no angel from heaven tell us, for every man of common sense will asily foresee, to what awful and serious conseuences such an examination and discussion would lead, when carried on with all the viour of ability, stimulated to revenge, and tung to desperation by the bitterness of op ression and the lash of injustice. This fearful ontest, probably, would too soon be decided etween the ephemeral 'meteors of a court, nd the irresistible blaze of the united intelect of the church of England clergy all conentrated into one burning focus; for intelect is the only steady and intrinsic power exsting in the universe, and always ultimately elms its bark in safety through the waves of ontention, and bounds triumphant over the illows of opposition," This may be a very good deistical ground or the payment of tithes; but it has nothing to do with the conscientious moaves of a scriptural sect, which of course considers the authority of the Bible as superior to that of the magistrate. The second chapter describes the influnce of the tenets of Friends on their chaacter as individuals. It praises the con versation of Friends as decent, and censures it as not expanded. It treats of the apparel, the address, the occupations, the studies, the recreations, the moral and the religious conduct of Friends, and insinuates with urbanity several wholesome criticisms, There is also much digression about edu cation in general. The third chapter discusses the interior government, the laws and ordinances of the society. In criticising the regulations concerning the poor, the author again digresses widely into a consideration of the poor-laws of the country. A curious sally against workhouses deserves transcription. England has authorized parishes to com mit the maintenance of the sinews and strength of our country to an interested, audacious speculator, a hardened jobber in human misery, whose business it is to render the condition of the inmates of a workhouse as wretched and forlorn as possible, that the poor may prefer perishing in their own houses, by the silent and wasting progress of hunger, of cold, of nakedness, of disease, and of anguish, to seeking an abode where they must endure all the agonies which callous cruelty can inflict, and dependant slavery can suffer. dian angel sent down by the Most High to "But Rumford, who appears like a guarwatch over and to promote the interest of humanity, has taught us by his invaluable precepts, and still more by his inestimable example, that, in every instance in which a poor family is driven by distress and depression of circumstances to pass over the threshold of a parish workhouse, an incumbrance has been entailed on the funds of the parish never to be redeemed, even in part, but by an entire change of system, namely, by encouraging that industry and prudence which no act of them with increased means and advantages of parliament can compel; and by assisting life, calculated to enable them to support themselves and their families in comfort and in plenty in their own cottages, without being compelled to have recourse to parochial re lief; and, above all, by blessing them with an carly religious and moral education, that they may be enabled to consult their own real in terest, and, in consequence, the well-being of the community, by habits of industry, of selfdenial, and of virtue." A still more serious and impressive alarm is sounded against manufactories. "The immediate effect of many manufactures in this kingdom is to prejudice the health and the morals of the people, and requires the most strenuous exertions of active bene volence to correct and to remedy. In many of these places every incentive to vice and to immorality is applied; and every avenue to disease and to contagion is laid open by neg ligence and by filth. Boys and girls are huddied together in lots and parcels, by day and by night, deprived of all education, instructed neither in religion nor in morals; so that even in childhood, before the state of infancy be well passed, every species of horrid and of disgusting debauchery is committed. From these pestilential vaults and charnel-houses of all virtue and of all proper knowledge, are continually steaming up thieves and prostitutes of every description, to prey upon and to plunder the community, and to weaken the very sinews of all good government, and of all social order " A warmth of style glows in this whole volume, which resembles, though it does not rival, the diction of Rousseau. A sensibility, irritable alike to the bitter and to the benevolent feelings, vibrates along every page. The ethic observations deserve the attention of those to whom they are addressed, and will contribute to efface peculiarities neither warranted by Scripture nor by reason. Much tendency may be perceived among the quakers, and all the richer sectaries, to join the estab lished worship; but it is felt as an implety to the manes of our forefathers, and as an abandonment of one's houshold gods, to apostatize from an hereditary sectarism, An extensive comprehension would in such circumstances result from any enlargement of the terms of national com munion. ART. IV.-Miscellanies, Antiquarian and Historical. By J. SAYERS, M. D. 8vo. pp. 174. THE poems of Dr. Sayers have passed through three editions; his prose works, though not less meritorious, have not been received with so forward an approbation. They consist of a volume of Disquisitions Metaphysical and Literary, and of these Miscellanies Antiquarian and Historical. The first dissertation respects the term Hebrew, which signifies transfluvial, and was applied to the posterity of Abraham, because they came from beyond the Euphrates. Dr. Sayers thinks that this wordmight with more accuracy (p. 9) have been applied to the Chaldee tongue, as an acknowledged transfluvial one. We sus pect the term Chaldee to be the misapplied word, and that the Hebrew was in fact the language used beyond the Euphrates; but that the Chaldee was used on this side the Euphrates; that the Hebrew was the EastAramic, or Babylonian dialect, and that the Chaldee or Syriac was the West-Aramic, the vernacular dialect of Jerusalem. This question, as we conceive, is not to be determined by the authority of Lightfoot, Parkhurst, Kennicott, and the commentators, but by enquiring where the Hebrew Scriptures were reduced to their present form. This dissertation is more erudite than satisfactory. The second offers remarks tending to prove that the Melita, on which St. Paul was shipwrecked, is the modern Malta: this point is rendered nearly certain. A most original, interesting, curious, and learned paper is the third, which contains an account of St. George of England, partly drawn from the Greek and Latin writers, partly from a Gothic legendary poem, first published by Sandrig, and since re-edited by Suhm. This enquiry corrects in some important particulars the wellknown note of Gibbon, and, from its tum, will be as gratifying to the patriot as to the scholar. We shall borrow some passages. 66 George the Arian, or, as he has been called, from the place of his birth, George of Cappadocia, has by some writers been supposed to be the same person as the saint of whom I have hitherto been speaking; the history of this man may be comprised in a few words: he appears to have been bom of obscure parents, but, by his assiduity and obsequiousness, he obtained a profitable enployment in the army, in which situation be acquired great wealth; having imbibed the opinions of Arius, he contrived, by the assistance of partisans of a similar faith, to force himself into the seat of Athanasius, at Alex andria: the power which he had thus obtained was exercised to the worst of purposes; he not only persecuted with severity the op posers of his theological opinions, but by his voked a general indignation: but the career illiberal conduct in other respects he proof his violence and injustice was at length effectually checked; he was degraded, thrown into prison, and soon after massacred in a popular tumult. He was exalted to the primacy of Alexandria in the reign of Constantine, and perished under Julian. "This narrative cannot I think but cos the Arian was a very different person from vince every unprejudiced reader, that George St. George of the East, for without insisting upon the difficulty of introducing into the Catholic calendar a heterodox army-comtractor, whose title to the honour of martyr. dom was openly disputed by Epiphanius, the particulars of his life, no less than the mode and period of his death, are utterly irrecon the more ancient St. George. cilable, by any ingenuity, with the history of respecting our national saint; rejecting with “Mr. Salmon has started a new hypothesis an indignation not altogether unpardonable in an Englishman, the mean and cruel George of Alexandria: he has introduced to us a new saint, certainly of a much more respectable character than the one whom he discards, but whose pretensions to the honour which is claimed for him are equally ill-grounded. George of Ostia, pope Adrian's legate to England, is the person who has attracted Mr. Salmon's attention, and whom he has endea voured to prove, by a few fanciful arguments, to be the genuine tutelary saint of our country: that George of Ostia was undoubtedly in England, that he was present at a council held at Cealchythe, that he much distinguished himself by establishing, or rather by conrming, the catholic faith among the AngloSaxons, and that he was every where received with the respect and honour due to his character; all this, I say, may be supported by authorities which cannot be reasonably questioned; but of his farther pretensions we have no proofs; it appears by no means certain that he was ever canonized; and the particulars respecting St. George, which are handed down to us in the martyrology of Bede, as well as in the martyrology above-mentioned, appear to me to prove most decisively that in the time of the Saxons (and at no other time would the bishop of Ostia have been so peculiarly celebrated) the St. George of the English calendar was the same as the St. George of the Greeks. "I have now to speak of the fragment of which I propose to give a literal translation; the original of it is written in the FrancoTheotish language, and is annexed to the Vatican manuscript of Otfrid's Francish Gospels: it is printed with a Latin translation and notes (by Sandvig) in the Symbole Literatura Teutonica of Shin; I have omitted some lines which were defective or unintelligible, the rest is as follows: "George went to judgment, With much honour, From the market-place, And with a great inultitude (following him); Which was highly celebrated, He quitted the kingdoms of the earth And he obtained the kingdom of heaven ;` Thus did he do The illustrious Count George; Then hastened all The kings, who wished To see this man entering, (But) who did not wish to hear him. The spirit of George was there honoured, I speak truly from the report of these men, (For) he obtained What he sought from God. The holy George. Then they suddenly adjudged him Into which with him entered Then began the powerful man To be exceedingly enraged; Tatian wished To ridicule these miracles; Placed George in a conspicuous situation. The wheels were broken in pieces; They at length threw him into a well, They took his acknowledgment; George rose and recovered himself, Placed George in a conspicuous place." The fourth sketch respects the rise and progress of English poetry, which is divided into distinct schools, according to the models which were successively imitated. Chaucer and his successors are classed under the denomination of the Norman school; Spenser and his successors under that of the Italian; Dryden and his successors under that of the French; Gray and his cotemporaries under that of the Greek. It is justly observed that the rising race of poets are studiers of German models. Shakspeare is almost the only ex |