which preceded the battle, in Vienna, and not alone. He appeared on the field without having taken any food, and fought the whole day, The physician said that this triple concurrence of circumstances caused his death: he required a great deal of strength after the wound, to enable him to bear it; and unfortunately nature was almost exhausted before.

"It is generally said," the Emperor observed, "that there are certain wounds, to which death seems preferable; but this is very seldom the case, I assure you. It is at the moment we are going to part with existence, that we cling to it with all our might. Lannes, the most courageous of men, deprived of both his legs, would not hear of death; and was irritated to that degree, that he declared that the two surgeons who attended him, deserved to be hanged for behaving so brutally towards a Marshal. He had unfortunately overheard them whisper to each other, as they thought without being heard, that it was impossible he could escape. Every moment, the unfortunate Lannes called for the Emperor. "He twined himself round me," said Napoleon," with all he had left of life; he would hear of no one but me; he thought but of me it was a kind of instinct! Undoubtedly, he loved his wife and children better than me; yet, he did not speak of them: it was he that protected them, whilst I on the contrary was his protector. I was for him something vague and undefined, a superior being, his providence, which he implored!"' Part IV. pp. 351–353.

We do not deem it necessary to occupy much space in criticising these volumes, having so recently given an estimate of the former livraison, which is equally applicable to this. On the whole, as we have already intimated, we think the third and fourth parts inferior in interest to those which preceded them; and we hope to find in the succeeding publications, rather less of Count Las Cases and his unceasing Atlas.'

Art. III. 1. An Essay on Faith. By Thomas Erskine, Esq. Advocate. &c. 12mo. pp. 142. Price 3s. Edinburgh. 1822.

2. A Series of Sermons on the Nature and Effects of Repentance and Faith. By the Rev. James Carlile, Assistant Minister in the Scots Church, Mary's Abbey, Dublin. 8vo. pp. 320. London. 1821.

THERE is a very general dislike, especially among religious

persons, to the name of metaphysics; and if by metaphysics we understand the art of close thinking, it must be admitted that there is a not less general distaste for the thing. But such persons are little aware how very large a proportion of the matter which they admit into their minds, and mix up with their opinions, under other names, is nothing better than purely metaphysical doctrine. If theological writings were

strained of metaphysics, they would be reduced to at least half of their bulk; and though the abstracting of all that is philo sophical would make sad havoc with our divinity systems, which are half made up of abstract propositions, and definitions, and distinctions, and inferences, still, were the thing possible-but why imagine the case? Men will speculate on these points, and will prefer indolent speculation to practice in religious matters, do what you may. Our very children speculate upon them, and stretch out their little hands after the fruit of the baneful tree of good and evil knowledge, with the same vicious appetite as the first sceptic, though we feed them from the tree of life. Without a figure, they learn to be metaphysicians before they are Christians; to reason before they know. And knowledge is the only cure for the evils which knowledge has introduced. The only antidote to the venomous bite of some reptiles, is said to be their blood. And there is a reptile scepticism and a reptile philosophy still twining round the tree of knowledge, whose bite few can escape, and which must be made to furnish their own antidote. It was not intended to convey a high panegyric upon metaphysics, when a celebrated writer remarked, that their chief use is, to undo the mischief which metaphysics had produced. But this is precisely true, and it is no mean or unimportant service which is assigned to them. Clear ideas and simple feelings, which will always go together, are the only remedy for the misty views, and muddy notions, and indistinct feelings which have been generated by a sophisticated theology and a shallow philosophy.

Every age has had its controversy. The best times for the Church have been, when the controversy has been chiefly maintained with her enemies. But even in the Apostolic days, St. Paul had to combat the Judaizing teacher within, as well as the Sadducee and the philosopher without the Church. In the days of St. John, there were many anti-Christs, answering to both our Socinian and Antinomian false teachers. Afterwards, the Fathers of the Church had to defend their cause against Jew ish and Pagan assailants; but the secular establishment of Christianity was the signal for renewing an intestine warfare. The Homoousian dispute supplied work for councils and controvertists, for pens and swords, during more than three centuries. The Pelagian, if it did not last so long, employed more learning, and has left deeper traces in theology. The disputes of the Schoolmen followed. The Reformation recalled the attention of pious men to the defence of the citadel. But no sooner had the danger subsided, than questions of churchgovernment came up, which have lasted till the present day;

the Calvinistic controversy, so far as it is to be considered as an intestine dispute, being identified with them.

Independently, however, of these broad questions of metaphysical or ecclesiastical strife, there have always been springing up little sectional disputes within the bosom of the several cantons of Christ's visible kingdom. We will not give this appellation to the controversy between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, or to that between the Gomarists and the Remonstrants, for, in both cases, the fundamental truths of Christianity were at stake. But the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were fruitful in a series of brisk theological squabbles, which have filled our dictionaries with the names of almost as many modern isms as swell the fearful catalogue of ancient heretics. To say nothing of the long-standing Baptist controversy, we have had Baxterians, Neonomians, Antinomians, Wesleyans, Sandemanians, with their subdivisions, some of them old heresies under new modifications, till every doctrine of the Christian system has been appropriated by some party or other, as the text of a specific controversy. At last, it has come to this, that the Christian world is called upon to decide this most curious question, What is Faith?

This is a question to which the well known answer, melius sentire quam scire, would properly apply. Or we might say with the philosopher, when asked for a definition of something equally difficult, and as little requiring to be defined, If you

ask me, I do not know; if you do not ask me, I well know.' But this will not do for theologians, or for Reviewers. The controversy respecting the Scripture doctrine of Justification by Faith, dates from the days of the Reformers; the Reformation from Popery, so far as doctrine was concerned, mainly consisting in the revival of that cardinal article. But this grand, essential question must not be confounded with the hair-splitting, scholastic disputes which have been raised about the proper definition and character of faith itself;—whether it be a duty or a privilege; whether it be the duty of all, or only of some; whether it be a voluntary or an involuntary act; whether the mind be active or passive in believing; how many sorts of faith there are, &c. &c. On the slightest glance, these will appear to be questions which could never have been mooted except in a lazy and luxurious interval, and during the absence of those outward dangers which would have provided the Church with more serious employment. Some errors and corruptions are like the plague, which may attack a attack a person in full health; but these over-refinements and inane subtilties are the symptoms of moral hypochondriasis: they shew a morbid predisposition in the subject, arising too often from a full

habit and improper diet. With the enemy at the gates, there would have been no leisure for starting such queries. But it holds good of divines as well as of children, that

• Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do.'

These abstract questions would never occur to a plain Christian intent on his work: they are philosophical problems under a theological guise, and have little to do with practical Christianity.

"Theological writers,' remarks the Author of the admirable Essay on Faith, have distinguished and described different kinds of faith, as speculative and practical,-historical, saving, and realizing faith. It would be of little consequence what names we gave to faith, or to any thing else, provided these names did not interfere with the distinctness of our ideas of the things to which they are attached; but as we must be sensible that they do very much interfere with these ideas, we ought to be on our guard against any false impressions which may be received from an incorrect use of them. Is it not evident that this way of speaking has a natural tendency to draw the attention away from the thing to be believed, and to engage it in a fruitless examination of the mental operation of believing? And yet, is it not true, that we see and hear of more anxiety among religious people about their faith being of the right kind, than about their believing the right things? A sincere man, who has never questioned the Divine authority of the Scripture, and who can converse and reason well on its doctrines, yet finds perhaps that the state of his mind and the tenor of his life do not agree with the Scripture rule. He is very sensible that there is an error somewhere, but, instead of suspecting that there is something in the very essentials of Christian doctrine which he has never yet understood thoroughly, the probability is, that he, and his advisers if he ask advice, come to the conclusion that his faith is of a wrong kind, that it is speculative or historical, and not true saving faith, Of course, this conclusion sends him not to the study of the Bible, but to the investigation of his own feelings, or rather of the laws of his own mind. He leaves that truth which God has revealed and blessed as the medicine of our natures, and bewilders himself in a metaphysical labyrinth.'

6

A popular theological dictionary, after defining faith to be an assent, a judgement, and a persuasion, enumerates seven distinct sorts of faith; to wit, Divine faith,' human faith,' historical faith,' the faith of miracles,' a temporary faith,' faith in respect to futurity, and 'faith in Christ.' This assent, persuasion, and judgement, becomes, in the mean time, that by which we assent,' a moral principle,' and lastly, an act of the understanding.' The Author of a recent system of divinity distinguishes faith into two kinds; the mere operation of the human mind,' and the genuine faith of the Gospel,'

which he characterizes as a Divine gift. This is obviously no definition or explanation of the nature of faith: it only refers us to its origin. Equally philosophical is the distinction be tween faith as a duty, and faith as a privilege. But if some writers have erred by making the subject too complex, and by classifying with a sort of botanical nicety, the imagined varieties of the general principle, others, in the attempt to simplify it, have gone into a more perilous extreme. Mr. Walker of Ireland denies that justifying faith is an act of the mind at all; for thus sagely and logically he reasons. An act is a

work; the man who believes, does something; that is, his mind works; but to him who worketh, the reward is reckoned not of grace, but of debt; and it is of faith that it might be by grace: so then, faith cannot be an act, or else salvation by faith, would be salvation by works' It is difficult to believe, that this almost facetious reasoning was not meant to turn the whole subject of justification by faith to ridicule. It is precisely what we should have expected an acute jesuit to have framed for this purpose, and hardly deserves a serious answer. The reasoner would hardly deny that hearing, listening, is an act of the mind; but "faith cometh by hearing," and justification is by faith and if so, whether believing be an act or not, as listening is, and an act is a work, salvation would still, according to this Hibernian logic, turn upon a work. Again, to speak of the act of receiving would, on this ressoning, be a solecism, since that would imply that receiving is a work done by the party, not a benefit conferred upon him. The question is, as Mr. Carlile justly remarks,

as if we should dispute whether a beggar who comes to our door, and asks an alms, is, in his doing so, working for his bread, and earning what we may give to him by his industry. According to the determination of Mr. Walker, it is impossible to give a beggar a free gift, independently of any work done by him to deserve it, unless he shall lie as still as a stone till we shall put the money into his pocket, or the food into his mouth: for, if he move hand or foot to receive it, or if he ask it, or even think about it, he would entirely vitiate the freeness of the gift, and turn it into wages given to him for his work. He would cease to be a pauper depending upon charity, from the moment he began to beg.'

Such absurdities are scarcely deserving of being encountered with the formalities of serious argument. But, in combating these notions, Mr. Carlile, though his sermons are distinguished by clear, just, and Scriptural views of the great subjects of which he treats, and display considerable ability, yet falls into the opposite fault of embarrassing the subject with scholastic and technical distinctions. In his appendix, he gives