"Whatever might have been the advantages to the Pope, the Church or Buonaparte from this compact, the Protestants completely gained their cause. It was no longer the persecuted or the tolerated sect. They were at once enthroned in rights equal to those of the Catholic church, and became alike the objects of imperial favour." Pp. 37, 38. Such is part of the history of "The Tyrant," the attachment of the Protestants to whom (though scarcely equal to the common measures of decent gratitude) is a crime to be expiated with blood! "The Royal family of France returned. By some oversight in the King's Charter, there was mention of a state religion, and the Protestants consequently were obliged to sink back to Toleration." P. 38. An " oversight"! Miss Williams has surely forgotten the meaning of English words. Such an abuse of language is happily disgusting to English understandings and English hearts. But the Protestants were secure may in the virtues of the monarch," "the protection of a pious and philosophical prince." The philosophy of Louis be determined by the "oversight,' and as to his piety, that may be estimated by processions and persecutions. How the Protestants felt at first is doubtful; but how do they now feel? If we may judge by our own feelings, sitting in the security of laws, they entertain sentiments more intolerable than persecution itself, whilst doomed to hear the slavish and hypocritical cant of Bourbon piety and philosophy! The department of the Gard became convulsed, and such convulsion, by Miss Williams's own shewing, was neither unnatural nor unexpected. It was ascribed to political contests; "But it was at length recognised that when the troubles which had prevailed in other provinces were hushed into peace, the department of the Gard was still the scene of violence and horror. It was found that some evil of a darker hue, and more portentous meaning than the desultory warfare of political parties, hung over the devoted city of Nismes. A fanatical multitude, breathing traditionary hatred, was let loose: -the cry of "Down with the Hugonists" resounded through the streets. Massacre and pillage prevailed; but Protestants alone were the victims. The National Guard of Nismes, composed of its most respectable citizens, had been dissolved, and a new enrolment of six times the number had taken place, and in which many of the fanatics had found admission. Here, and here only, by some cruel fatality, the national guard betrayed its trust, and abandoned its noble functions of protecting its fellow-citizens. In vain the unhappy Protestants invoked its aid; no arm was stretched out to shelter or to save them!-their property was devastated without resistance, and their murderers, were undisturbed. "The government caught the alarm; the complaints of the Protestants assailed its ear, and General La Garde was sent to Nismes to command the military force of the department, and protect the Protes tants. "On his arrival at Nismes, General La Garde ordered the temples to be opened, which was announced to the public at eight o'clock on the Sunday morning. The sunmons was obeyed with alacrity by the Protestants. They had long been deprived of the consolation of assembling together, and they felt with the Psalmist, How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! "The church was crowded, but the congregation was almost entirely composed of the higher order of citizens; who perhaps felt the obligation that their situation inposed on them of shewing an example of courage, and publicly displaying their steadfast and firm adherence to the faith which they professed. It appeared that a hightoned sentiment of duty, an enlightened feeling of what was right and fit towards the community, an abnegation of self, were in this awful conjuncture associated with that piety by which they were no doubt strengthened; that sublime confidence, which looks calmly down on the injustice of earth, making its appeal to heaven. have been the emotions of the auditory, "The holy service began; but what must when in less than half an hour their solennities were interrupted by the horrible vociferations of a frantic populace, and loud and repeated strokes assailed the doors, in order to burst them open. M. Juillera, the minister, continued the service with a firm voice, and the congregation listened with that calm, which is the privilege of those who feel that their witness is in heaven. The uproar increased; the tumult became horrible: the preacher ceased, and his auditors recommended themselves to God. I held my little girl in my hand,' writes Madame Juillera, the wife of the minister, a woman of a superior miad, with whom I am personally acquainted: 'I held my little girl in my hand, and approached the-foot of the pulpit,-my husband rejoined us,-I thought of my nursing boy, whom I had left at hofne, and should embrace no more! I recollected that this day was the anniversary of my marriage. I believed that I was going to die, with my husband and my daughter. It was some consolation that we should die together; Review.-Miss Williams on the French Persecution. and it seemed to me that this was the moment in which we were best prepared to appear in the presence of God-the victims of a religious duty; in the performance of which we had braved the fury of the wicked; we had flown with eager footsteps to our temple; we had clung to the altar of our God, without heeding that the assassin's dagger might cross our path and impede our purpose.' "It was at this moment that General La Garde, who had hastened to the post of danger, received from one of the assassins a ball, which entered near his heart. He covered the blood, gushing from his wound, with his manteau, and protected the retreat of the Protestants from the temple. He was then conveyed to his house, where the bullet was with difficulty extracted. The fary of the populace was not satiated. In the evening of this day the temples of the Protestants were broken open, and every thing contained in them-the registers, psalm-books, the gowns of the ministers, were torn into shreds and burnt." Pp. 45 -51.· After this picture we have a pane gyrical account of the measures of the Duke of Angouleme, also, we suppose, philosophical and pious. Nothing but the remonstrances of the Protestants prevented, and these scarcely prevented, his or 'ering the Protestant churches to be re-opened! He and all the Court and all Catholics abhorred the outrages at Nismes; "the Buonapartists alone exulted," and according to the doctrine of the Bourbon satellites in England these Buonapart ists included all the Protestants ! Eager as it should seem to quit this subject, Miss Williams turns to England, and dwells with enthusiasm upon the bold proceedings of the English on behalf of their persecuted Protestant brethren. But who are the English whom she thus extols? A part of the Protestant Dissenting Ministers of the Three Denominations, and their churches, who, forgetting all doctrinal differences, not lulled into slumber by the promises of Lord Liverpool, not deterred by the coarse calumnies of hireling prints, not kept back by the calculations or prognostics of some of their own body, not shaken by the cowardice and desertion of a sister society which had attempted to outrun them and to get first to the sepulchre, have made all England and all Europe ring with execrations upon the bigotry and insidious policy of the French government and the cruel and criminal neglect of the Allies! 231 "The period was now arrived when, England fixed her steadfast eye on the Protestants of the South of France. The story of their persecution had reached her ear. The feeling of their wrongs had penetrated her heart. Indignation beat high in every British bosom. Public meetings were called together. The various associations, which watch with wakeful jealousy over the civil and religious rights of mankind, expressed in their addresses and declarations all the energy of virtuous resentment, impatient for redress. "Favoured and glorious England! How poor are the trophies of other nations compared with those which encircle her brows! She has ever the pre-eminence in all the counsels of philanthropy: the arbitress of moral action; the guardian of the wronged, whatever region they inhabit, with whatever colour they may be tinged. While England exists, justice will never want a sanctuary, nor the oppressed a refuge. "Her ammals proudly boast her long support of the Protestant cause. We see the court of Elizabeth receiving the apologizing in mourning. We find the sympathies of Ambassador of Charles IX. in silence, and the whole nation aroused by the moans of the Protestant vallies of Piedmont, when they "redoubled to the hills, and they to heaven."* But Englishmen wait not the tardy spur of government to goad them into action when the tidings of religious persecution strike in their ear. They are at their post when danger menaces their brethren. They pause not to inquire against what forin of worship, or mode of faith, religious persecution be directed; it is sufficient for them that this demon exercises its ravages. The followers of Calvin, and the professors of a less difficult faith become the mutual guarantees of their common religius rights. England is the natural guardian of Protestantism, and she will never betray her trust. Unwearied vigilance is the function of a tutelar divinity, England knows, that if the Vatican no longer speaks in thunder, the efforts of that power are not less persevering. In all its variations of shape, this Proteus, whether it be styled, as in the days of yore, the dissolute of heads and horns; or whether, as in latter Babylon, or the Hydra, with numerous times, it resemble the tortoise, retreating within its shell from the storm, sometimes stationary, but never receding-is still the same. What it appears to have forgotten it yet remembers; and when it seems torpid, it does not slumber. Wrapped up in its own infallibility, it sees ages pass away, with their manners and their innovations, like the waves rolling at the foot of a rock, while its own principles and maxims remain unchanged. * See Milton's 18th Sonnet, with Wharton's Notes "The high-tomed and generous resolves, proceeding from the three denominations assembled in London, and which were re-echoed by all other denominations, were not unheard in France. The French Protestants, while they paid a just tribute to the upright intentions of their own government, in declining the proffered intervention, felt all its grandeur; it was rejected, but admired; it was discreetly repulsed, but enthusiastically applauded. This intervention was the calm commanding voice of a great people lifted up against persecutors, and claiming kindred with the persecuted. Its sound in sures we are authorized to pronounce it impotent to good and powerful to evil, weak to protect but strong to per secute. ART. III.-Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, late Pastor of the Baptist Church at Kettering, and Secretary to the Baptist Missionary Society. By J. W. Morris. 8vo. Pp. 504. Hamilton. 12s. 1816. Paris was noble, and persuasive; and it glided THE late Mr. Andrew Fuller was a over the South like that sacred harmony of the heavenly host which spoke to the watch of shep herds of peace and of good-will."' Pp. 55—59. Again Miss Williams is led by inclination or prudence to the nauseating subject of the views of the French government, and in answer to the question, What did it do to crush the persecution? very coolly answers, "It did all its position admitted. It exerted the full extent of its power, but its power was then feebleness; and some secret and evil influence rose between its purpose and its act." Could this sentence have been penned by an English hand, and not rather by some one of the reviving fraternity of Jesuits? Its real and its seeming meaning are at war. It amounts to this, that the verbal purpose of the government was contradicted by its actual measures. It could fill the gaols of France with Buonapartists, but could not apprehend a single murderer of the Protestants. It could deliberately kill the brave and generous Labédoy ère and spill the blood of the heroic Ney, but it had no power to bring a sanguinary ruffian, who headed a small band of Catholic 'banditti, to justice. But it could do something; it could disarm all the Protestants whose property and lives were in danger; it could quarter soldiers upon the plundered impoverished Protestants by way of punishing their enemies; it could dictate letters to Protestant Consistories, full of praise of the government for its singular protection of the Protestants of France, and compel those Consistories to subscribe them on pain of banishment; it could drive into exile the least flexible of the Protestant pastors; it could shut up all the schools of general and cheap education which were in the hands of Protestants all this it could do, for this it has done; and reviewing its mea : man of considerable talents and of well-earned distinction in his denomination. "Memoirs" of him can scarcely fail to be interesting and instructive, and few persons had better opportunities of becoming thoroughly acquainted with him than his present biographer. The character of our miscellany would not justify us in making a large abstract of the memoirs, or in going into minute and circumstantial criticism on the work; but we shall put down some of the leading events of Mr. Fuller's life, and make a few remarks upon Mr. Morris's book. In ANDREW FULLER was born of parents in humble life, at Wicken, a small village in Cambridgeshire, midway between Newmarket and Ely, February 6, 1754. He received only an imperfect English education at the free-school of Soham. His parents were Dissenters of the Calvinistic per suasion. They were engaged in husbandry, which occupation he followed till the twentieth year of his age. his seventeenth year, he entered by public baptism into the church at Soham under the pastoral care of Mr. John Eve; and at the same early period of life began to preach. In 1775, after a probation of more than twelve months, he became pastor of the Baptist Church at Soham, which then and for some time after assembled in a barn. His income from the church being very slender, he engaged in business and set up a school; but not succeeding in his temporal pursuits, and meeting also, amidst much usefulness, with many unpleasantnesses in his pastoral connection, owing chiefly to the extreme ignorance and the meddling disposition of the greater part of his flock, he removed, after many struggles of mind, to Kettering, in Northamptonshire, in October 1782, and undertook the charge of the Baptist congre Review. Morris's Memoirs of the Rev. Andrew Fuller. gation in that place, which he held till the time of his death. At Kettering, Mr. Fuller had, according to his own characteristic expression, "plenty of elbow room." He was brought upon a stage more suited to his talents and to his ambition; an ambition of public usefulness, for which Providence had plainly fitted him. The events of his life were not various or uncommon. His story consists, besides the usual domestic incidents, some of which, peculiarly painful, displayed the strength and good ness of his feelings, of successive publications and controversies and of extraordinary and unwearied efforts in the establishment, superintendence and promotion of the Baptist Mission to the East Indies; undoubtedly, the most important inission that has been undertaken in modern times. Fuller," says Mr. Morris, lived and died a martyr to the mission." He departed this life, after a long and painful illness, May 7, 1815, in the sixty-second year of his age. His death-bed was Christian; but it may read a lesson to those of his own sentiments that estimate the human character by the dying frame of the mind. "The general vigour of his constitution providing a resistance to the violence of disease, rendered his sufferings peculiarly severe; and towards the last, the conflict assumed a most formidable aspect. Placing his hand on the diseased part, the sutterer exclaimed, 'Oh! this deadly wound!' At another time. All misery centres here! Being asked whether he meant bodily misery, he replied, 'Oh yes: I can think of nothing else."" P. 461. Frequently during his affliction, he said, My mind is calm; nó ráptures, no despondency. At other times he said, I am not dismayed. My God, my Saviour, my Refuge, to thee I commit my spirit. Take me to thyself. Bless those leave behind.'" P. 462. This dying experience may not come up to the expectation of enthusiasts; but we apprehend that it will excite the deep sympathy of the more enlightened readers, and even increase the confidence of the public in Mr. Fuller, as a natural Christian Character. We admire the following passage on this subject from a sermon preached on the Sabbath after his decease by Mr. TolJer, the truly respectable pastor of the Independent Church, at Kettering: -in no one point, either from his writings which I have read, or the sermons 233 I have heard from him, or the interviews and conversations I have had with him,in nothing can I so fully join issue with him as in his manner of dying. Had he gone off full of rapture and transport, I might have said, 'Oh! let me die the triumphant death of the righteous! But it would have been far more. than I could have realized, or expected in my own case: but the state of his mind towards the last appears to have been, if I may so express it, after my own heart.' He died as a penitent sinner at the foot of the cross." P. 466. back to one part of Mr. Fuller's history It may be supposed that we look with no pleasant feelings; but we can truly say that all our displeasure is buried in his grave. Such of our readers as wish to know more fully the circumstances to which we allude may consult our Fourth Volume, p. 466, &c. We obtained our end, we believe, in public estimation; and the present biographer, though sufficiently tinctured with party-spirit, does us With a quotation from ample justice. the Memoirs, we shall let this matter Mr. Fuller's want of forbearance, drop. Mr. Morris having described adds "It is extremely painful to advert to par ticular instances of this kind of severity, and if truth, justice, honour, and impartiality did not imperiously demand it, we would not advert to the unhappy transactions in which he was concerned at Soham, in the year 1809, in a dispute between his former friends and a party of Socinians, who claimed a right to their place of worship; and to the incorrect and unsatisfactory statement he was induced to make of those transactions nearly eighteen months afterwards in defence of his own conduct. Under no pretence whatever can we attempt to justify those transactions, nor the part which Mr. Fuller took in them, nor the means which he afterwards employed to exculpate himself from the charge of wishing indirectly at least to avail himself of those disgraceful statutes since repealed by the legislature, to secure, what he considered, the right of the injured party; much less can we agree to consider him as having been influenced by any sinister or dishonourable motive of which he was utterly incapable. The whole was a downright and palpable mistake, founded indeed, as in many other cases, on a large quantity of misinformation, and a wilful design of accomplishing the supposed ends of public justice. There is no need of any farther comment. His "Narrative of Facts" relative to these occurrences, which we have consigned to oblivion, instead of classing it with his other publications, adnits but of one apology. It was written long after the "facts" had taken place, and must be attributed, as his eloquent and judicious friend observed, to a most unhappy lapse of memory, though unfortunately, there are some other facts' which demand a similar apology."* Pp. 492, 493. Mr. Fuller appeared frequently before the public as an author. He was engaged in controversy with the Socinians, as he called them, the Unitarians as they call themselves, the highCalvinists, the Universalists, the Sandemanians and the opposers of the Baptist Mission. His writings display no learning or taste, nor an affectation of either: but they are marked by strong sense, by acuteness and sometimes by bitterness and wrath. He was a man of war, and it is amusing to see how his feelings betray him inio military, or we had almost said pugilistic language. He flattered himself with having obtained a complete triumph over the Unitarians; and although we consider his argument fallacious and his boast ridiculous, and indeed could point out instances of his writings having made, instead of unmaking, Unitarians, yet we cannot but confess our regret that his first book had not been answered at the time more fully, more in his own way and more to the conviction of that class of readers for whom he wrote, and wrote certainly with effect. The diploma of Doctor in Divinity was conferred upon Mr. Fuller by the College of New Jersey, but he declined accepting it, partly from a modest sense of his want of qualification for an academical honour and partly from religious scruples. As a preacher, Mr. Fuller was distinguished by a clear view of his subject, by the coherence of all the parts of his discourse, by the solidity of his remarks, and by the striking cases which he put to explain his meaning. The following reflection is quite in character. This is surely a dangerous piece of information to young preachers. They inay be assured that Mr. Fuller's excellencies in the pulpit, whatever they were, were not owing to this negligence (which perhaps is here overrated) but in spite of it. Few can presume upon the correctness of judgment, the even flow of ideas, and the readiness of language which enabled Mr. Fuller to speak to the purpose without much premeditation. The insertion of this account without qualification or caution is only one out of many instances of Mr. Morris's want of prudence. While, for instance, he sometimes praises the subject of his book without bounds; he indulges, at other times, in insinuations and invectives which betray a soreness of feeling in the recollection of some unexplained difference between himself and Mr. Fuller. In general, too, he treats as personal enemies all the sects with whom Mr. Fuller had any controversy, and particularly the Universalists and the misnamed Socinians.' But inprudent as our author is in his strictures on the systems of these two bo dies of Christians, his ridiculous vaunting and his vulgar slang, suited only to the champions of the fist, quite disarni us of anger. We really forget the antagonist and smile at the critic, when we read of the "insidious attempts" of Unitarians, when we see a Baptist Dissenter appealing or praising an appeal to the friends of orthodoxy," and especially when we are told that “Dr. Toulmin was scarcely a breakfast for his powerful antago nist," and that "Dr. Toulmin and Mr. Kentish received their quietus." Still we agree with Mr. Morris, that "If Rev. Socinianism still lives, it owes its ex In reply to Mr. Fuller, appeared, Correction of the Defects and Mistakes of in Seven Letters to John Christie, Esq. Trea- .. |