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lute, is never enjoyed by one man without the participation of a few who carry on his administration and form his court. It is in reference to this circumstance, that in most tongues, a king, though numerically one, is described as if he were many; and in our own country, the use of the pronouns we and our, in the sense of self, is an exclusive prerogative of royalty. Analogy is sufficiently clear to warrant its application to the Almighty, in the relation of a Sovereign. Jehovah himself, indeed, is absolutely one, uncompounded in nature, indivisible into parts or persons; but he is nevertheless considered as surrounded with those spiritual beings called angels, who constitute his celestial court, and execute his will through boundless space. The term Elohim, therefore, is not improperly used to mean God; but we should remember, that Moses uses it not to express his essence as an infinite being, but his sovereignty, as the creator and governor of the universe; the term, therefore, which comes nearest to the original is Almighty."

The term Elohim only is used in the first chapter, and if the above statement be just, the propriety of it consists in holding forth the Almighty, not only as the Creator, but as Sovereign of the world, presiding over it by his providence, and giving effect to its stated laws by his power and authority. When, in the next chapter, the heavens and the earth are said to be finished, the historian calls God Jehovah Elohim. Now, Jehovah means a being that is self-existent, eternal and immutable; a being that will be to-morrow what he is to-day, and what he was yesterday. A reader of the Mosaic history, arguing from effects to their causes, might suppose that the Creator then only began to exist when he began to create, or, at least, that some change took place in his being and character, corresponding to the change produced in the new order of things. When the world was destroyed by the deluge, the early Pagan philosophers seemed to have thought that the God who presided over it was himself involved in the universal ruin; and this is the origin of the fable, that Saturn was supplanted by his son Jupiter in the government of the universe. In oppo

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sition to some conclusions like these, Moses introduced the term Jehovah, and intimates, by the use of it, that though the heavens and the earth began to exist, their great Author was then what he had been from all eternity.

In the third chapter, Moses takes up the history of Cain and his descendants, and it is observable, that he dropped altogether the title of Elohim, designating God by that of Jehovah. The omission must have been the effect of design, because it is uniform from beginning to end, and the meaning of Elohim as Sovereign or Governor, unfolds the intention of the historian. Cain, by his wicked conduct, became an alien from God, and Moses, by suppressing the term Elohim, intimates that God was no longer related to Cain as Lawgiver and King. When again he resumes the narrative of Adam, he resumes also the title of Elohim, shewing by this means that God and Adam sustained towards each other the relation of a monarch and his subject.

These observations will throw some light upon various parts of the Jewish Scriptures, and among the number upon the following: "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, 'I am Jehovah, and I revealed myself unto Abraham and unto Isaac and unto Jacob as an Almighty Sovereign; but my name, Jehovah, I did not make known to them."" Exod. iv. 3. The patriarchs might well know Jehovah to be a title of God, and, indeed, must have known it, because they knew him to be an eternal, unchangeable Being, and because he was so designated in regard to Cain. The meaning of this passage then must be, that God did not reveal, did not designate, himself as their God under that denomination. To them he revealed himself as a sovereign, whose laws they obeyed, whose protection they enjoyed, and to whose promise they looked forward with hope and joy. If we generalize the words, they imply, that the Almighty holds the relation of a moral Governor only towards those who keep his commandments, while to the sinners who break his laws he is but Jehovah in other words, that he is related to such men merely as the Author of their being, the cause of their existence; the very relation, and

that only which he bears to inert matter; that as such he will suffer them, as he did Cain and his posterity, to end in destruction and mingle for ever with the mass of inanimate nature.

SIR,

A

BEN DAVID.

(To be continued.)

Manchester, December 31, 1821. CONTROVERSY is now carried on in this town between the Catholics and orthodox Protestants, which was begun by the Catholic Priest of one of our Catholic chapels, in (as appears to me) a weak and impolitic attack upon the Bible Society. My view in this communication is not to give an account of the combat or the combatants, but to direct the notice of your readers to the following passage, extracted from the priest's second piece in the controversy, concerning Unitarianism.

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For my own part, I have ever considered Unitarians, if not the best, at least the most consistent Protestants; and my reason for considering them so, is, because they adhere more closely than those of any other denomination to the principle of private judgment. Rejecting the authority of catechisms and creeds, the Unitarian takes the sacred volume into his hands, and, before he opens it, thus argues with himself: This book is given to me by the Almighty; from it, by the means of my own judgment and understanding, I am to gather the truths of salvation. Now I know and feel, that, unlike the animals of the brute creation, I possess within myself a rational soul, which is the very principle of judgment and understanding, and, consequently, I must practise nothing, I must believe nothing, that is not completely conformable to the reason which my Creator has given me. He then opens the sacred pages, and, reading them with the full persuasion that they contain nothing above the standard of his reason, if he meet with any thing that wears the appearance of a mystery, he very justly reduces it to that standard, by adapting it to a sense that is not at variance with his understanding and his judgment. Such is the mode of reasoning which the Unitarian adopts; and such ought to be that of every consistent Protestant."

Though the Catholic Priest intends

the above remarks as a manifest reductio-ad-absurdum of the Protestant principle, with which, in its bearing upon the Unitarian, his evangelical opponents will readily acquiesce, yet, upon the whole, the picture is not drawn with an unfriendly hand, nor much caricatured: and it is a curious circumstance, with which many of your readers may be unacquainted, that not only in the Church of England and Scotland, but also in the Roman Church, there are many disguised Unitarians. From a French geographical work of merit, I extract the following passage:

"The principal Christian sects are: The Unitarians, Socinians, or Antitrinitarians, whose opinions are protected in Transylvania and in Russian Poland: a very great number of Catholics, of Lutherans and Calvinists, are secretly attached to this system." Malte-Brun, Geography, I. 579.

The number of adherents affords no presumption in favour of a system. Motives of interest will always sway a fearful proportion of mankind. The great mass of the unlettered and ignorant are deluded by the arts of zealots and enthusiasts-many of them, no doubt, hypocrites. And, perhaps, a still greater proportion of men are indifferent to all systems, and readily embrace, as far as they can be said to embrace, that which is nearest at hand. Numbers, therefore, are no criterion of truth. Yet, if there be an instance in which a sect has risen and spread on all sides, without much activity in its partisans, without much party spirit, with scarcely any union and co-operation among its adherents, the members of which cannot possibly be actuated by interested motives, and its chief promoters have been men generally of a studious, retired and unobstrusive character, there exists, I imagine, a strong presumption in its favour. Unitarianism has the advantage of such a powerful presumption.

SIR,

CRITO.

Clapton, January 1, 1822. REQUEST your acceptance of the following remarks which occurred to me on reading the last portion of Mr. Fox's MSS.

Vol. XVI. p. 697, col. 2. Mr. Chandler "just on the brink of ma

trimony." Neither of his biographers, whom I formerly mentioned, has recorded the family name of Chandler's wife. Three daughters by this marriage survived their father. One becaine the wife of Dr. Harwood, and another died a few years since, having, with equal justice and gratitude, been supported in old age and under strait circumstances by an annuity specially voted, on the recommendation of the venerable Dr. Rees, at the Annual Meetings of the Society for the relief of Dissenting Ministers' Widows, which had owed its origin, in 1748, almost entirely to Dr. Chandler, whose daughter thus happily proved how

"The father's virtues shall befriend

his child."

Dr. Towers relates (B. Brit. III. 430) that Dr. Chandler "by the fatal South-Sea scheme, in 1720, lost the whole fortune which he had received with his wife. His income as a minister being inadequate to his expenses, he engaged in the trade of a bookseller, still continuing to discharge the duties of the pastoral office." I have now before me "The True Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion in opposition to the False Ones set forth in a late Book, entitled The Grounds and Reasons, &c. London, printed for S. Chandler, at the Cross Keys in the Poultry, 1725." The publication was anonymous, but probably acknowledged by Chandler when he presented a copy to Archbishop Wake. That Prelate, in a letter from "Lambeth House, Feb. 14, 1725," says, "I cannot but own myself to be surprised, to see so much good learning and just reasoning in a person of your profession; and do think it a pity you should not rather spend your time in writing books than in selling them." (Ibid. 431.) The Archbishop was probably further surprised to find, at the end of the pamphlet, among "books printed for, and sold by S. Chandler-Cassiodorii Senatoris Complexiones-Editio altera. Opera et cura Samuelis Chandleri." It was, however, while a bookseller, that Chandler preached those Lectures, first in concert with Lardner, and afterwards alone, the substance of which formed the principal parts of his pieces against the Deistical Writers. About 1726, on becoming minister at

the Old Jewry, he appears to have resigned his trade; for, the " Vindication of Daniel," published with his name, in 1728, is "printed for John Gray, at the Cross Keys in the Poultry," probably his immediate successor.

P. 697, col. 2. "Dear King George that good and great man. He looked well and smiled upon his people;" on whom he could scarcely have been so ungrateful as to have frowned. On the same day, July 7, this " good and great man," just before he smiled upon his people," had " signed the dead warrant against twenty-five of the Preston prisoners in Newgate." Yet sedition was not then so severely punished as we have seen, more recently, in the annals of "the illustrious House;" for a person" convicted of drinking the Pretender's health, and calling King George a Turnip-hougher," was only "sentenced to pay a fine of forty marks, to be imprisoned for a year, and find sureties for his behaviour for three years." (Salmon's Chron. Hist. II. 66.)

It is said, I think, by Young, that he "knew a man who lived upon a smile, and well it fed him." This "dear King George" appears to have now left his people to exist on the grateful recollection of a royal smile, without the personal presence of a King, during the next six months, while he was astonishing his Germans with the splendours of a British monarch, in all the gloss of novelty; for as we read (ibid. 69), it was not till

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January 18" following, that "King George arrived at Margate from Holland," the Parliament having been, in the mean time, prorogued five times, seemingly to accommodate the royal pleasure.

P. 698. You have said all which an editor could say to counteract an unavoidable impression to the prejudice of the letter-writer. The letter, indeed, singly considered, by no means involves his integrity, for it ought to be conceded that a truly ingenuous inquirer after truth might find himself, during his progress, in the painful situation which Chandler has described. Nor can it be fairly disputed, that between September 13, the date of this letter, and December 19, the day of his ordination according to Secker, (XVI. 572,) Chandler's religious in

quiries might have issued in reasonable satisfaction. But how one who, as it appears, (XVI. 570 compared with 572,) had for some time accepted the office of a Christian minister, could continue the regular exercise of that office while, respecting both the Jewish and Christian Revelations, and even what is called Natural Religion, he had become a sceptic, on the utmost verge towards unbelief, or, as he expresses himself, "in a perfect wandering and maze," scarcely knowing "what to believe or disbelieve," is, I confess, to me, inexplicable. I wish any of your correspondents could do more than I am able to effect, towards rescuing the memory of such a man as Chandler, from the imputation which this letter, connected with Secker's letters to Mr Fox, to which I have referred, and Chandler's recorded occupations at Peckham, appears to fix on him. I am, indeed, ready to wonder that his friend and correspondent, on a final arrangement of these papers, had not committed this letter to the protection of that purifying element which Sir Henry Wotton not unaptly entitles optimus secreta

riorum.

I hasten to a more agreeable subject, by sending you a letter, which I know you will readily preserve. I found it only a few days since, on examining some papers connected with the publication of Mr. Wakefield's Memoirs, in 1804, or it would have been offered to the last volume, to follow your notices of the excellent writer. The "two Sermons" which accompanied the Letter, Mr. Howe entitled "The Millenium." (See XV. 722.) My friend, whom he describes as of Billericay," and with whose arduous trial of Christian consistency, in that situation, I became, from local circumstances, intimately acquainted, will, I trust, excuse me that I have gratified myself by not withholding his name.

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To the information contained in a "Letter from London," and which Dr. Toulmin communicated, no doubt most correctly, to Mr. Howe, it is not very easy to give credence. January 11, 1801, Mr. Pitt resigned his appointments, chiefly because the inveterate prejudices of the crown interfered with his project of Catholic Emancipation, by the assurance of

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Your letter is so condescending, kind and friendly, that I cannot refrain from expressing to you my sincere thanks. If I lived in Dorchester I should request the favour of you to permit me to visit you at least two or three times a week, and this I should esteem a greater honour, though within the walls of a prison, than an invitation to court. I congratulate you on the near approach of your release from confinement: I wish it could with propriety be said, restoration to perfect liberty. But if the same system be pursued, on which our rulers have acted for some years past, English liberty, prosperity and happiness are vox et præterea nihil. In the present melancholy state of the nation, however, and under the apprehension of greater calamities than we have yet experienced, it is consoling to look with the eye of Christian faith, to that gracious Providence, which is continually bringing light out of darkness, order out of apparent confusion, and good out of evil. Inspired prophecy teaches us to hope for a better state of things for mankind even in this world, and though it be the lot of the present generation to share in the evils which are introductory to it, benevolence rejoices in the prospect of the happiness which awaits future generations. I sometimes direct the views of my people to the age of truth, peace, liberty and righteousness, as a motive for animation to duty, and support under any afflictive scenes to which Christian integrity may expose us. This I did on the 5th of November and the beginning of this year. The candour of my kind and affectionate friends dictated the

request, which has produced the publication of these two sermons. The subjects of them are certainly important and interesting, and I have only to regret my not having done more justice to them.

You know the character of Mr. Fry of Billericay, and the noble sacrifice he made to his convictions of Chris

tian truth. He made us a visit in October last, and preached at Bridport two or three times with great acceptance. Some of my friends requested him to publish the sermon which I have inclosed, a parcel of which I did not receive till yesterday. You will perceive that he understands the subject of religious liberty; and I wish every one who may be disposed to censure him for the change of his sentiments from Calvinism to Unitarianism, and his open avowal of this change, would read this discourse with attention. He would have done himself the pleasure of paying his personal respects to you, had he returned through Dorchester.

It seems as if there was a scheme in agitation among our great men, to emancipate the Catholics, without granting any relief to the Protestant Dissenters. This I conclude from a letter I received last week from our good friend Dr. Toulmin. The following is an extract:

"A letter from London this week informs me, that endeavours are using by those in power, to prevail with British Dissenters to let the Catholic emancipation take place, without putting in their claims to equal freedom from the disabilities they are under, by the Corporation and Test Acts. Some classes who have been applied to, are said to have promised to be as quiet as government wishes them to be."

Who these tame Dissenters are, the Rev. Mr. Marten I suppose, and the other receivers and distributers of the regium donum money, could inform us. Surely they can be none who have any thing of the spirit of the Old Noncons. What shall we live to see in this age of wonders!

I beg your pardon for intruding so much on your time. I intended to have written but a few lines when I begun, but have been carried on insensibly from one thing to another. Mrs. Wakefield and the family are I hope

well. Mr. Fawcett joins in kind remembrance to you and them, with Dear Sir, Yours most respectfully, THOS. HOWE.

The Rev. G. Wakefield.

SIR,

HERE has just fallen into my

THE

hands, "The Book of Common Prayer, &c., by the Hon. Sir John Bayley, Knight, one of the Judges of his Majesty's Court of King's Bench," a handsome 8vo. volume, printed in the year 1816; and I have been much pleased at the piety which the learned Judge displays, but astonished at the ultra-orthodox doctrines which he lays down, as if from the Bench. His comment upon the first verse of the Book of Genesis, is as follows, p. 483: "The word here and in other parts of this chapter translated God' is a plural noun and yet is followed by a verb singular; so that Moses probably understood, that under the term 'God,' more than one Existence or Being was included, and yet that those Existences or Beings were so united, that they might properly be considered as only One. God is a Spirit, John iv. 24, without flesh, or blood, or body, or any thing tangible (see 1st of 39 articles), of infinite wisdom and goodness, always knowing what is best and always willing what is best. And as men only disagree when, from the imperfection of their nature, they are not wise enough to know what is best, or not good enough to will it; so, from the perfection of the Divine nature, the Beings or Existences which partake of it, from always knowing what is best and always willing it, must necessarily in all instances be unanimous, or of one mind. Though each is capable of thinking for himself, judging for himself, and acting for himself, yet each must, from the consummate perfection of their natures, come to the same conclusion with the others; and upon every point on which there can be deliberation or judgment, they must inevitably be one in mind. The doctrine, then, of our church, that the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and yet that they are not three Gods but one God,' may easily be understood. Each is a distinct Existence or Being; each capable of thinking, judging and acting

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