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Christian minister, with ability and success, in the service of a congregation in Barbican, London, afterwards removed to Worship-street. He died in April 1797, in the 78th year of his age.

The work which is now presented to the public, was, we are told, a favourite production with the author himself. During his life he was very desirous that it should be published; and for this purpose, about the year 1792, caused proposals to be printed and circulated. "But though," says the editor, «his particular friends generously came for ward to countenance the design, the names amounted only to about half the number which was requisite for putting it to the press." Finding so little encouragement, he relinquished his design, and, towards the close of his life, bequeathed the work to his sister: "hoping that, at least, she would not suffer it utterly to perish, even though it should not be able to go abroad." A bookseller, whose generosity Cowper has celebrated, and others of less name have frequently experienced, having taken upon himself the charge and risk of publishing the work, and the present editor having engaged to conduct it through the press, it is now presented to the public, and will, we doubt not, be esteemed as a valuable addition to English biblical literature.

The character which Dr. Toulmin has drawn of this posthumous publication, is full and accurate. In his own words we shall lay before the reader the remarks in which we are anticipated.

"It does not offer notes on every passage,

or on connected paragraphs, but proposes illustrations of particular verses, drawn from all kinds of writers, in a long course o reading. The quotations, of which it consists, tend to illustrate the portions of scripture, under which they appear, by parallelism of sentiment and language, or by explanations of allusions or customs, or by remarks on grammatical idioms and anomalies, or by hints of other kinds. They are borrowed from a great variety of authors, Heathen, Jewish, and Christian, ancient and modern. In this mode of commenting, Mr. Bulkley has been preceded by Grotius, Raphelius, Westein, and many fearned foreigners: and at home, Doddridge, Chandler, Bishop Pearce, and Wakefield, have furnished specimens of it. But this work, considering the fulness and extent to which the plan of it is pursued, may, I conceive, be considered as an unique in the English language.

"It promises, therefore, to be acceptable to the biblical student, and will supply the

young preacher with many fine passages, from the stores of Greek and Latin erudition, with which to illustrate his representations of devotional and ethical truths derived from the Old and New Testament. It may also be expected, to procure from some fastidious and sceptical critics respect to the scriptures, when they find them abounding with sentiments, language, and modes of expression, similar to those which have been admired in Grecian and Roman classics: but the propriety and beauty of which, because they present themselves in the scriptures, they are apt to overlook. No reader can lay down the work, after inspection of it, without a deep conviction, that the religious and moral truths, which are contained in the scriptures, are congenial to the human mind in its most pure and improved state: and the irreligious and those who are indifferent to divine truth may blush, when they observe how a Plato, a Maximus Tyrius, an Epictetus, a Cicero, and a Seneca, spoke on topics of a religious and moral nature."

As affording a fair specimen of the plan upon which this work is conducted, we select the following passages.

"Proverbs, Ch. xxii. v. 6. Train up a child in the way he should go : and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

In life, says Demophilus, (suppose it to be a drama) youth sustains the first act; to which therefore all are particularly attentive. Te Bie, xalawεp dgaμzтos, πewton Legos y νεοτης· διο παντες αυτῇ προσεχεσιν. Holstein. p. 28.

"So again; It is in youth, as in plants, the first disposition shews that fruits in virtue may be expected. Ον τρόπον ετσι των φύλων, και ετσι των νέων η πρωτη φυη προδεικνυσι τον μέλλοντα καρπον της αρετής. P. 30.

"We have it observed in Plato, that opinions formed in youth are with greatest diffi culty eradicated. A av Theros y (vens scil.) λαβη εν ταις δόξαις, δυσεκνιαία τε και αμεταςατά Pide yiyvɛodzi. De Repub. lib. ii. tom. i. p. 142. Massey

Τα μεν-χαστον- ευθυς εκ παίδων, τοις θεός τε τιμησεσι και γονέας, την τε αλλήλων φιλιαν μη περι σμικρα ποιησομενοις. Ibid. lib. ii. ad init.

"Such are the instructions to be given at the earliest period to children, if we wish to see them honouring the gods and their parents, or cultivating mutual friendship and love.

Τα παιδων μαθηματα θαυμαςον έχει το μνημείον. Platon. Timæ. Op. p. 476.

"The instructions given in earliest age are wonderfully lasting and impressive.

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Nunc adbibe puro
Pectore verba, puer, nunc te melioribus offer,
Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem
Testa diu.
Horat. epist. ii. lib. i. ver. 67-69.
"Now young man, apply your mind to

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"Matthew, Ch. vi. v. 14. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

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Aristotle, Rhetor. lib. i. cap. ix. § 41. lays it down as a rule, that a man then honours his noble birth, when in proportion to the greatness of his extraction, he is so much the more placable (nalaλλxxhxwlę@) in his disposition.

"And ib. cap. xiv. § 21. almost in the very words of this and the following verse, makes it a point of virtue, to exercise forgiveness towards humanity.

"Isocrates, Panegyr. ed. Op. Steph. p. 49. makes it to be one object of the celebrated Grecian games, to abolish enmities. τας έχθρας-διαλυσάμενος

Ωςε

"Cicero, in his Oration pro Ligario, speaks of it to the praise of Cæsar, that he forgot nothing but injuries: Nihil oblivisci soles, nisi injurias. And though we should look upon this to be mere flattery and conpliment, yet it does not at all the less signify, that forgiveness of injuries was held both by Cicero and Cæsar, to be a very commendable and honourable quality.

"Epictetus, lib. ii. cap. x. p. 196. supposing one to ask, May I not hurt him that has injured me? advises him, in the first place, to ask himself, whether he has really received any injury or not, and to remember what the philosophers say upon this head; and then again, to ask the question, Did not this man hurt himself by injuring me? How then am I like to fare by returning it? Εγω εμαύλον μη βλαψω ; And ibid, cap. xxii. he makes it a requisite property in one that would cultivate friendship with mankind, that he should be of a forgiving temper, συγγνωμονικά.

Maximus Tyrius, has a whole dissertation (ii) against the revenging of injuries, and says, that he who does so, is guilty of a greater crime than the first aggressor (re

gouapark admale), and that the allowing injuries to be returned opens a door to endless quarrels and animosities, illustrating the observation by a variety of historical facts.

"In Dion Cassius, lib. lxxi. p. 812. ed. Hanov. the emperor Antoninus, is made to speak of the forgiving injury, and the retaining friendship towards one who had violated the laws of friendship, as a conqueror's greatest reward; and if, says he, this should be thought incredible, let it be known that there are some remains of ancient virtue

(αgxaias apeтns) amongst us.

The

Elian, in his Various History. lib. xii. cap. xlix. relates the story of Phocion, who, after having long served his country, was adjudged to death; and when about to drink off the fatal cup, being asked by his surrounding friends, whether he had any thing to leave in charge to his son, Only this, says he, that he would not revenge upon the Athenians this injury done me. historian adds, by way of remark; He that does not look upon this man with admiration, (osis ex wawe, &c.) appears to me to be a man of no sense or discernment whatsocver; agreeably to the observation of Andronicus Rhodius, in his Paraphrase upon the Ethics of Aristotle, lib. iv. cap. v. p. 165. ed. Cantab, that to forget and overlook injuries, is the mark of a noble and a magnanimous mind, μεγαλοψυχε.

It will appear from these citations, and from every page of the work, that the writings of the ancient heathens were not destitute of excellent moral sentiments: and there is indeed scarcely a precept in the gospel, to which a similar precept may not be found in the philosophical relics of Greece and Rome. But the learned reader well knows that these excellencies occur in the midst of the most striking and lamentable defects, and that these truths, so impressive in their detached state, are almost lost in the error and absurdity by which they are surrounded. The dictates of Christian morality appear in far different circumstances: in the scriptures of the New Testament there is no polluting mixture of erroneous sentiment; every maxim is founded upon reason and truth; no injunction is weakened by some neighbouring inconsistency; the directed to proceed are the most efficaprinciples upon which the conduct is cious that can be formed; and the sanctions by which virtue is encouraged and vice restrained, the most powerful that can be announced.

ART. VI. Observations upon some Passages in Scripture, which the Enemies to Religion have thought most obnoxious, and attended with difficulties not to be surmounted. By JACOB BRYANT. 4to. pp. 256.

"IN the Treatises," observes the venerable author, "which immediately follow, I have taken in hand to consider and explain four particular Histories in the Sacred Writings, which have been esteemed by unbelievers the most exceptionable of any upon record. In consequence of this they have afforded room for much obloquy, and ridieule, which has arisen partly from the ignorance of such persons, in respect to the true purport of these narratives; and partly from their being unhappily disaffected towards the Scriptures in general. The first article, in the explanation of which I shall be engaged, is the account of Balaam, who was

reproved by the animal upon which he rode: and this is said to have been effected by a human voice, and a verbal articulation given to a brute beast. The second article relates to Samson, who is described as defeating a list of Philistines with the jaw-bone of the same animal, an ass: the whole of which history is by many thought to be an idle detail. The third History, of which I shall take notice, is of the sun and moon, which are said to have stood still at the command of Joshua. The fourth, and last, is the History of the Prophet Jonah; and particularly of his being entombed in the body of a large fish, which is supposed to have been a

whale."

The principle upon which Mr. E: yant proceeds in his attempt to explain the two first and the last of these portions of scripture, is that upon which he laboured to illustrate the miracles which Moses performed in Egypt. He considers the miracles recorded in scripture as generally pointed and significant; not only shewing marks of supernatural power, but having a uniform reference to the persons concerned, and to their history and religion; adapted to people who are at any time to suffer, and to those who are to be admonished by their punishment. (p. 3.)

The transaction which is recorded in the Book of Numbers, he does not consider, with Geddes, as a legendary tale; nor with Jortin, as in part visionary: he firmly believes in its perfect reality, and endeavours to shew that it was designed to bring contempt upon an object of idolatrous worship, and to demonstrate the superior power of the God of the Israelites. --Balaam was a priest of Midian, and dwelt at Pether, called by the Grecians Petra, where a city and an oracular temple had been founded, in which he ap

pears to have been chief priest. In this oracular temple, the Onolatria, or worship of the ass, prevailed; a worship, according to ancient testimony, very general both in Egypt and in Asia, and of which both the Jews and the Christians were accused. This respect paid to the wild ass, arose from their sagacity in discovering springs of water in the dry and parched deserts. "They were reverenced for their superior forecast, and admitted as emblems of divination." p. 26. Balaam, the high priest in the oracular temple in which this deity presided, was hired by the king of Moab, to curse the children of Israel. Being of an obdurate heart, of a most obstinate and inflexible disposition, he sets out, determined, notwithstanding the repeated order of God to pronounce nothing but blessings, to vent nothing but curses. In his progress, the ass on which he rides rebukes him, and indicated most plainly that the omens and prodigies to which he had been habituated and devoted, and also his own God, declared against his process. Arrived in Moab, he is compelled by a power which he could not resist, to pronounce a series of wonderful prophecies to the confusion of Balak, and in favour of the people of God. The idolaters were thus taught that the oracles to which they trusted, and the deities on which they relied, were vanity; and the children of Israel were led to worship Him only, before whom those deities were humbled, and to whose power even their priests bore witness.

The same mysterious meaning lurks in the history of Samson, when he defeated the Philistines at Lehi, or Lechi, with the jaw-bone of an ass. The Philistines were holding a festival in honour of their deity, who was delivering their great enemy into their hands. In this festival they had sacrificed an ass, and one of the jaw-bones was lying on the spot, to which Samson was conducted: bursting asunder his bonds, and seizing this bone, he slew with it a thousand men. When this feat was accomplished, he threw away the jaw-bone, not because he had no further use for it, but to signify that the place was an object of hatred and abomination, and to instruct the children of Israel, that they

ought not to apply to the temple or fountain at Lechi, upon any occasion, nor to the deity there worshipped; but to a superior power the God of their fathers. This formidable weapon not only be longed to the animal they had been employing in their sacred rites, but had actually given name to the sacred fountain, which was there dedicated to the wild ass, and near which there was an oracular temple. Nothing, therefore, Mr. Bryant concludes, was more proper to shew the superiority of the God of Israel over the deities of Canaan, and to prevent any undue reverence among the descendants of Abraham, than the miracle performed by the Jewish hero.

It will, however, appear to our readers, as it appeared to us, a very extraordinary and incredible thing, that the Philistines should sacrifice, in honour of their deity, the very animal which, as a symbol of that deity, they reverenced.

Mr. Bryant thinks it idle to object to the account in Scripture of Samson and the Foxes, as there could not be a more effectual method to hurt the enemy; for the foxes, drawing different ways, were undoubtedly impeded in their course, which must have given time for the fire to take effect. The story, in his opinion, is confirmed by the practice which prevailed in Rome, of exhibiting every year foxes and firebrands in the circus.

With respect to the third passage selected from the Xth ch. of the book of Joshua, and relating to the command of Joshua that the sun and moon should stand still, Mr. B. proceeds upon the same general principle of interpretation; but, with more boldness than he usually displays, pronounces a part of the history an interpolation. The 13th and 14th verses, he asserts, were originally a marginal note, and afterwards ignorantly taken into the text. The 12th verse, supported by Aquila and Symmachus, he renders thus, "Then spake Joshua to the Lord, in the day when the Lord delivered пр the Amorites before the children of Israel: sun, upon (the high place of) Gibeon, be silent; and thou moon, in the valley of Ajalon." And he remarks,

"The words of Joshua are undoubtedly uttered in the name of God, and not addressed to the two fictitious luminaries, except in a secondary direction; and were probably a wish, and prayer, rather than a command. They proceeded from an ardent zeal to esta

blish the worship and true religion of the Deity, and from a grateful sense of his goodness in affording such a miraculous victory. The purport and ultimate design of this address, though couched in a small compass, seems to be this: God of all victory, may thy people, from this instance of thy superiority, be confirmed in their duty, and worship thee alone. And may the Gibeonites, and their confederates, by this display of thy power, be weaned from their idolatry, aud see the inferiority of their base deities. May the Sun, whose oracular temple stands upon whose shrine is in the valley of Aia-lon, be Mount Gibeon, be dumb; and the Moon, equally silent. May their oracles eeasc for

ever.

The inhabitants of Gibeon had seen the object of their worship obscured by the miraculous storm of hail that destroyed their enemies, and were therefore prepared, according to the pious wish of the Jewish chief, to renounce their idolatry. The children of Israel received another proof of the supreme power of the true God, and were again warned not to forsake his service. In a note printed at the end of the volume, Mr. Bryant shews, that Gibeon was, in the days of Solomon, devoted to the worship of Jehovah; and he thence concludes, that the inhabitants became proselytes upon the event recorded in the passage he has thus interpreted.

Upon the same principles Mr. Bryant endeavours to account for the prodigy of Jonah's being swallowed by a whale, the account of which we are peremptorily told, (p. 200.) that "whoever is a sincere Christian ought, without any evasion, to believe." Jonah was a native of Galilee, and "one of the number of those who were unsettled in their principles, as Balaam had been before, Gath He and Judas was afterwards." per, the place of his birth, was inhabited by "different people, who were either the remains of the ancient inhabi tants, the Canaanites, or were a mixed race from Tyre, Hamath, and the cities of Syria, who had forced themselves into the country, and had brought their rites and religion with them." To these rites Jonah was devoted; and was even a prophet and a priest among the worshippers of the dove and the Cetus.Hence he derived his name-the term

Jonah, ordove, denoting a priest. Of the nature of the true God he was ignorant : he was his servant, only as being the most proper instrument to display his power. Not choosing to go as he was

directed to Nineveh, he fled to Joppa; and there put himself under the protection of the deities that were worshipped there, amongst which the whale or cetus held the principal rank. From Joppa, under the sanction of this deity, he intended to shelter himself from the eye of Providence, in Tarshish, or Tartessus; but a storm arising, as he was crossing the Mediterranean, he, according to the well-known relation, was thrown overboard, and instantly swallowed by that very fish-which had been the object of his reverence. Three days afterwards "the cetus was stranded, and within view of the temple of Derceto, and in sight of its numerous votaries, disgorged the apostate prophet." The mariners, upon their return, recounted the surprising tale of what had passed on board, and in the ocean. The inhabi

tants could not fail to receive a salutary lesson. The goddess they adored, the supposed empress of the seas, was disgraced her votary had been entombed in the body of the animal that served as a symbol of her divinity; and the God of the Hebrews had displayed his power over their idol deities, and their infatuated worshippers. As a confirmation of this story, Mr. Bryant refers to the bones of a sea animal, which Pomponius Mela says, were preserved at Joppa; which Pliny informs us, were brought as a curiosity to Rome; and which Mr. Bryant concludes could be none else than the bones of the very whale that carried the prophet in its belly.

Of the truth and the importance of these disquisitions, we leave our readers to judge.

ART. VII. The Divine Iuspiration of the Jewish Scriptures, or Old Testament, asserted by St. Paul, 2 Tim. iii. 16.; and Dr. Geddes's Reasons against this Sense of his Words examined. By ROBERT FINDLAY, D. D. Professor of Theology in the University of Glasgow. 8vo. pp. 104.

THERE are some passages of scripture which have exercised the critical skill of learned theologians, from a very early period of the Christian church to the present day, and which we apprehend will continue to divide the sentiments of interpreters till the end of time. The passage which forms the subject of the work before us, is one of this number. Of doubtful meaning as to the terms which are employed, and the collocation of those terms, it will be explained, with greater or less latitude, according to the opinions which have been previously formed respecting the general system of the Christian faith. Let not the unbeliever conclude, that any injurious reflection concerning the authority of scripture, may from such instances be fairly drawn. Were some of the most celebrated works of profane antiquity to be brought into one canonical collection, and profession of faith in the facts or dogmas which this collection would contain, connected with the prejudices, the feelings, and the interests of men, as those of the sacred canon now are, in the place of one difficulty that now arises, thousands would spring up. Controversies without end would occupy the labeurs, and influence the passions of polemics; and the odium theologicum, the constant object of the sceptic's ridicule, and of the real christian's sorrow, would

be mild and harmless in comparison of the infuriate and implacable zeal which would fire the breasts of embattled controversialists. Of no such degrading spirit does the work before us afford the faintest specimen, or encouragement. As a critic, and as a christian, Dr. Findlay claims our reverence and our applause.

Dr. Geddes, in the preface to the 2d Vol. of his Translations of the Bible, with great honesty, but with little cau tion or prudence, avowed his disbelief of the inspiration of the books of the Old Testament, in terms that could not fail of proving highly offensive to the generality of Christians. The wellknown passage in the 2d epistle of Paul to Timothy, seeming to present a strong objection to his decision, he professes to examine it with particular attention.The result of his examination is, that the present reading is not genuine.

The arguments upon which this result was formed, are: "the copulative xx, which alone makes for the present reading, is wanting in all the ancient versions except the Ethiopic; also, in some Greek copies still extant. It was not read by Clement of Alexandria, Theodorus of Mopsucsta, nor by the Latin fathers Tertullian, Cassiodorus, and the anonymous authors of two treatises as cribed to Cyprian and Ambruse; all of

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