If these are just conclusions, Mr. Hume's reasonings carry with them more weight than has been hitherto attributed to them. But, in spite of Mr. Hume's subtleties, mankind will continue to reason with confidence from the relation of cause and effect. They will also assume to themselves the privilege of generalizing their ideas, and from similarity in different effects will infer similarity in their causes. And unless it shall be shewn by some solid argument, that an organized universe is not an effect, they will think that they cannot err in ascribing it to an intelligent though invisible Cause.

But it may, perhaps, be said, that we may as well rest in a self-existent universe as ascend beyond it to a self-existent God. Were the universe a mass of matter, without any indication of design, it might, for any thing that I am able to allege, be self-existent. But the marks of design, which it every where exhibits, stamps upon it the character of an effect which could be produced only by a designing cause. Between a harmonized universe and the idea of self-existence there is a repugnance, a repugnance founded on the experience which we have had of the connexion between contrivance and a contriver, between effects which indicate an adaptation of means to ends, and an intelligent agent by whom this adaptation was devised. But between the notion of intelligence and selfexistence there is no repugnance, and, for any thing that either experience or reason suggests to the contrary, intellect may exist uncreated. Something uncreated there must be; but as analogy forbids us to suppose that this something is an organized system, which seems to testify the operation of an intelligent contriver; it consequently leads us to conclude that this something is that incomprehensible Being whom we call God. I will conclude with the sentiment of the poet, in which even an Atheist will not refuse to join,

And if a God there is, that God how great!

SIR,

E. COGAN.

the strict unity of God than our Lord's answer to the Scribe, respecting the first commandment of all, Mark xii. 29, Κύριος ὁ Θεὸς ἡμῶν Κύριος εις εςι, yet the opinions of learned men by no means agree as to the just translation of these important words, and I must confess myself not quite satisfied with any comments I have been able to consult. I am, therefore, induced to offer, with diffidence, to your readers the observations which have occurred to me upon it. The rendering of our authorized Version is, "The Lord our God is one Lord." The Improved Version, after Vitringa, Dr. Campbell and others, translates thus: "The Lord is our God: the Lord is one." A difference, the discussion of which has chiefly occupied commentators on the passage, yet it may, perhaps, be a question of still greater interest, and which involves in it the other, what is the most suitable translation of the word &ç in this connexion. Our Lord answers the Scribe in a quotation from Deut. vi. 4, and in relating the discourse, the Evangelist Mark, according to the general custom of the New-Testament writers, employs the exact words of the Alexandrian Greek Version, which may be considered as having been, from its universal use, in a manner, an authorized version of their Scriptures, among all the Jews who spoke the Greek language at that period. The precise words spoken by Jesus himself, we cannot know: it is not unlikely they were taken from a Targum, somewhat resembling the later Chaldee one, which we now possess; but however this may be, Mark has done what is commonly done amongst us in translating religious books, he has copied the texts of Scripture in the translation generally known and valued by his readers.

As our best chance for obtaining satisfaction respecting the real meaning of the words under our consideration, we will revert to the original Hebrew of Deuteronomy, of which they are the

; יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד-translation

where the substantive verb being omitted, it must be determined by the sense whether the words make one clause or two, which seems to me whether 8, one, is immediately to depend entirely on the question,

Exeter,
January 8, 1822.
HERE is no text more commonly
to as a connected with

Mr. Hincks on Mark xii. 29.

King William no Friend to Religious Liberty.

Probably, according to a recent instance of royal abundance, he had a Dutch, an English, a Scottish, if not an Irish heart. Then, after detailing the ceremony of tendering the coronation oath, as described by Smollett, the Almanack thus proceeds:

"But when the Earl came to this part of the said oath, And we shall be careful to root out all heretics and enemies of the true worship of God, that shall be convicted by the true Kirk of God, of the aforesaid crimes, out of our lands and empire of Scotland,' the King declared that he did not mean by these words that he was under any obligation to become a persecutor. To which the Commissioners, being authorized by the States of Scotland,

made answer, that neither the meaning of the oath, or the law of Scotland, did import it, since by the said law no man was to be persecuted for his private opinion, and that even obstinate and convicted heretics were only to be denounced rebels or out-lawed, whereby their moveable estates were confiscated. Whereupon the King declared again, that he took the oath in that sense, and called for witnesses, the Commissioners and others present."

In a "Preface to the third edition" of his Pastoral Care, written (1713) in his 70th year, Burnet remarks that "the breaches on a man's liberty or goods, are as really persecution, as that which strikes at his person. They may be, in some instances, more uneasy; as a single death is not so formidable, as to be forced to live under great necessities, perhaps with a numerous family." He adds, that, "if we judge of this matter by our Saviour's rule, of doing to others what we would have others do to us, our consciences would soon decide the question; if we will but honestly ask ourselves how we would have those of another religion deal with us, if we were living in countries where we must depart from the legal establishment, if we do truly follow the dictates of our conscience."

I beg leave to recommend these last thoughts of one who had witnessed so much pretended liberality and real injustice, to any of your readers, if one can yet be found among them, who would leave to the magistrate a cure of souls, or who can contemplate such wrongs as those legally and judicially inflicted on the Carlile family, without blushing for the ignorance or the

71

hypocrisy, the heads or the hearts, of our State-Christians. Yet, according to King William's definition of persecution, which forms a fine illustration, by contrast, of an Apostle's "royal law, according to the Scripture," though he engaged, by the solemnity of an oath, to denounce, as rebels, all whom the Kirk should declare to be heretics; to expatriate them by an outlawry, and to beggar them, with their families, by a confiscation; yet, after inflicting these sufferings, he was not to "become a persecutor" unless he had persecuted a man "for his private opinion." Such a folly, whatever a crowned head might expect to accomplish, an Inquisitor, I am persuaded, never attempted; convinced, however reluctantly, that the wary possessor of a private opinion might fearlessly defy him to "take vengeance on the mind."

Beheld on the homely page of the inere annalist, and not as adorned by an historian's flattering pencil, William III. was little more than a soldier of fortune, till he received, from a grateful nation, the crown of England, a munificent reward for having driven away his justly despised and deserted father-in-law. A passage of an earlier date in "the Royal Almanack," discovers, that, like other soldiers, he could employ the argument of force in other places besides the field of battle, and that he had landed in England sufficiently prepared to "become a persecutor." At the same time it is mortifying to see, in the author of the Pastoral Care, a political priest, or rather an avant-courier of military outrage; while the extraordinary scene, as I had occasion to remark in another place, exhibits the distressing dilemma of an established clergy placed between a royal authority, to which they had vowed obedience, and the law of the sword which answered their just plea of conscience with the old conclusive argument va victis. "The Royal Almanack,' after relating, "Nov. 8, 1688," that "the Prince of Orange made a very splendid entry into Exeter with his army," thus displays (p. 254) the "little triumphs" which immediately succeeded:

"Nov. 9, 1688, Dr. Burnet was sent to the Cathedral of Exeter to order the priest and vicars not to pray for the pretended Prince of Wales; and the same day his Highness went to the said Cathe

dral, and was present at the singing Te Deum, after which his declaration was publicly read to the people; but I must observe that the ministers rushed out of the Church by a very surprising piece of policy."

Such then was my excellent friend's "great prince," and Dr. Watts's “man of wondrous soul;" or, rather, the grateful Nonconformist poet's auspi cious numen; or, at least, "the Monarch" that could "be shewn

Under no shape but angels' or his own,

Gabriel, or William, on the British throne;"

War,

Thus "the hero William" opened the campaign of 1688, by routing "the priest and vicars" of the cathedral of Exeter, "white, black and grey, with all their trumpery," the Bishop a bathos, which reminds me of and the Dean having fled, as "the hireling fleeth," the day before. Yet whatever might be the judgment of a priest, a prince and a soldier, here was surely a gross instance of persecution, according to the common opinions and feelings of mankind, and such a man as Burnet appears poorly employed He well knew on such a mission. that James, though now trembling on a precarious throne, was still as legally king as any of his predecessors; and that all "priests and vicars," including himself, yet owed him, according to their most solemn engagements, an unreserved obedience, as Supreme Head of the Church of England; and were bound to pray, according to the Liturgy, that God would be the defender and keeper of King James, and give him victory over all his enemies." He knew too, that these "priests and vicars" were under peremptory orders to of Wales, without being allowed to interpose a question as to his legiti

"Dalhousie, the great God of

Lieutenant-Colonel to the Earl of Marr.”

macy.

pray

for the Prince

The legitimacy of James III. has, indeed, long ceased to be a question with any impartial inquirer; yet it should be allowed to Burnet, that he implicitly believed the revolution tales which he has collected in his History. I observe, also, in a "Memorial to the Princess Sophia," printed in 1815, from his MS. in 1703, that he expresses the same confidence in the now exploded political fable. Thus having related the imprisonment of the seven Bishops, he adds, (p. 57,) "The Queen in the mean time was, as was pretended, delivered of a son at St. James's, the Princess Ann being sent industriously out of the way, to bathe. We had, I remember, a song upon it at the time, that

The Bishops were sent to the Tow'r,

The Princess went down to the bath, And the Queen she cried out in an hour."

It might almost be suspected, that our orthodox Protestant grandsires were disposed to restore the hero-worship of Paganism, in honour of any king who would persecute only Pa pists and heretical Nonconformists. Thus they appear to have been "lost in wonder, love and praise," whenever they contemplated the condescension of a Dutch Stadtholder, in accepting a British crown. Their descendants, under the tuition of passing events, and the advantages of a more liberal political education, have learned to distinguish between the real merits of the man, and the national advantages acquired, though by no means cheaply from the successful enterprise of the petty prince and valiant soldier, in whom the ambition would be easily excited, to possess the splendid regalities and to wield the military energies of a powerful kingdom. And, indeed, whatever constitutional policy may dictate towards the living, it is no part of historical justice to the dead, to incur the charge of folly, brought even by a courtly poet, against those who

"drop the man in their account, And vote the mantle into Majesty.”

Mr. Lindsey, in the passage which produced these observations, has referred to Mr. Emlyn's Works (IL 374). There, in Remarks on "The four London Ministers," authors of "The Doctrine of the blessed Trinity stated and defended," they are reminded that "King William was not willing to be made a persecutor, though the Dissenters lay hard at him, in their address by Dr. Bates, to stop the press, anno 1697." It is probably to this attempt, which Calamy, I perceive, in his additions to