consequences which are said to flow from the strict doctrine of Election with respect to practical Christianity; for if we can succeed in allaying the fears which are felt by some minds on this point, both parties will be able to proceed more impartially to the consideration of what may remain. (To be Continued.)

ART. X.-PIETY OF THE Seventeenth CENTURY.

The truly great

Have all one age, and from one visible space
Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
Are permanent, and time is not with them,
Save as it worketh for them, they in it.

COLERIDGE.

No period, since the apostolic, has been more admirably marked by a happy developement of the image of Christ in the hearts and lives of his followers, than the time between the reigns of Elizabeth and George the third. It was an age prolific in intellectual and moral greatness. It was an age of vast erudition in literature, law, philosophy, and sound practical theology. Great principles sprang up and ripened into maturity. Intellects of a giant aspect arose, and brooded over the darkness and confusion of those turbulent and eventful times, and infused into the mass conservative principles, the evolution of which has caused the firm and steady strides of civilization and refinement to reach from one extremity of the continent to the other, has transformed the dreary wastes of the new world into the abode of peace, the sciences and the arts, and is now drawing the effeminate millions of Asia within the circle of their almost creative influence.

There are to every period in the history of our race, some great characteristic and distinctive habits of thought and feeling, in religion as well as in politics; while, like specimens of statuary, each may possess much in common with the rest.

To trace out some of those traits that

gave character and

individuality to the period to which allusion has been made, will be our present object.

It was an age of profound psychological research, especially in those departments of the science, in which systematic theology has its foundation. How much some may affect to despise the results of these researches, is not our concern. But we hazard nothing when we affirm, that the leading writers of this period were men trained to severe thought, the keen research, to an iron industry, lucid and masculine reasoning. They delved long in the mine, at the unshapen ore. They analyzed the laws of their own being, and hence obtained their first principles-the ultimate grounds of their conclusions on great and fundamental subjects. The deep stillness of their closets testified to their avidity for the truth. Introversion of mind became a settled habit. Laden almost to oppression with the knowledge of the ancient world, they toiled along the dark paths of mental science; and often the diligent and reflecting student will find concealed, under " a venerable rust," the pure gold of occult truths, enchased by a sound and healthful reasoning. This knowledge was not a heavy and useless massnay, it was pressed into the service of Christ, and made an instrument of promoting his cause in the hearts of his followers, and of suppressing infidelity and apostacy.

The age of which we speak was distinguished for the practical and theological interpretation of Scripture. This, however, was not practised to the exclusion of critical interpretation; on the contrary, there are many well executed specimens of the latter. To bring out into real life the ideal of the Bible, was the end of their ambition; and how far they succeeded is well known by those who are conversant with the character and writings of the holy Leighton, the godly and ardent Baxter, the great and artless Taylor, the profound and meditative Howe, Flavel, Barrow, and others of a kindred spirit. "If," says Leighton," some of you be careful of repeating, yet, rest not on that; if you be able to speak of it afterwards upon occasion, there is somewhat requisite beside and beyond this, to evidence that you are indeed fed by the Word, as the flock of God. As when sheep, you know, or other creatures, are nourished by their pasture, the food they have eaten appears not in the same fashion upon them, not in grass, but in growth of flesh and fleece;

thus the word would truly appear to feed you, not by the bare discoursing of the word over again, but by the temper of your spirits and actions, if in them you really grow more spiritual; if humility, self-denial, charity, and holiness, are increased in you by it; otherwise, whatsoever literal knowledge you attain, it avails nothing. Though you heard many sermons every day, and attained further light by them, and carried a plausible profession of religion, yet, unless by the Gospel you be transformed into the likeness of Christ, and grace indeed growing in you, you are but, as one says of the cypress-tree, fair and tall, but fruitless."

The labours of these men as interpreters, originated in great love and reverence for the mysterious truths of Revelation. This love and reverence for the Bible constitutes another characteristic of the piety of those times.

"They loved the Bible; it was their constant manual; and the only religious philosophy they desired to know, was that which could bear the searching, purifying scrutiny of the Word of God, Were they metaphysicians, then? Yes --but metaphysicians of an "ethereal mould." They studied to discover, and to present to the minds of others, the beautiful connexions, the more than earthly harmony, of those varied dispensations of the moral government of God, which were published successively in Eden, at Mount Sinai, and in the song of the angels to the shepherds in Bethlehem. Did they talk of the soul, and its sublime relations? They did-but it was with profound submission to the revelations of Him who made the soul. They rightly judged, that all minds must be such as they were declared to be by their Creator. Sometimes, perhaps, they launched out into deep waters beyond their soundings; but even then, their ship carried the Master, who could rebuke the surge, and return them in safety to the shore. Reason, with them, amidst all its aspirings and flights, which seemed at times scarcely human, was but the servant of revelation. If, in any instances, they followed the ignis fatuus of a visionary theory, it was perhaps to demonstrate to us the danger of implicit reliance on any other authority than that of the inspired volume, the "entrance" of whose "words giveth life.”

These things, with others, led the way to another characteristic, which gave complexion and distinctiveness to the piety of the seventeenth century. This was an habitual VOL. IV.

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and devout meditation upon the great truths of the Holy Scriptures, in all their mysteriousness and remoteness from

sense.

The advantages, or rather I would say, the absolute necessity of this habit is seen, in some measure, from the effects which flow from it.

And,

The want of this habit of profound and pious meditation upon the truths of the Bible, and consequent reflection upon the laws of our own interiour being, gives the mind a materializing tendency. It places us off from the only just ground of sound philosophical reasoning upon truths, the right apprehension of which demands such reasoning; and it deadens the noblest and purest principles within us. further, it generates pride and an over-estimate of personal power and worth-a contempt for the opinions of others, and a noisy and disgustful turbulence, if our opinions do not at once revolutionize the sacred customs and institutions of antiquity, and give a new complexion to settled habits of thought and feeling.

But let its presence be felt, and we have the antithesis of these intellectual and moral obliquities. Anchored where storms and winds never beat, a man accustomed to this habit, may without peril ride where the waves of the highest popular excitement foam and dash about him. The actions of such a man, on great and trying occasions, are those of moral heroism. He sees not men as trees walking, mountains inverted, and an Utopia in every evanishing cloud; but things in their true aspect; he lays hold on the springs of action; and, from the changelessness of his own principles, labours in the work of reformation with a firm and even hand, not with intermittent fits and moral paroxysms.

This habit of mind and action was beautifully exemplified by the leading divines of the seventeenth century. By this means, a peculiar gracefulness attaches itself to their writings. Each stood for the defence of truth, firm and selfcollected, deeply imbued with a love of it, and a conviction of the certainty of the objects of his faith. The impress of eternity was laid on every moment. In all their religious writings, how much soever of invective they may contain, how dissonant soever their diction, there is an undertone, which falls sweetly and softly on the ear, as it were, the soliloquizing of a youthful seraph in a heart that inshrines the holy Jesus.

Their imaginative powers, by these employments, were enlarged, as they approached the spirit of the higher compositions of Scripture. With a sanctified imagination, restless as the wings of the four beasts the prophet saw in vision, and rich as a golden harvest, wherever they sat down to meditate, there sprang up a well-watered garden, lovely in its own luxuriance, through and around which strayed Arcadian airs. The cross was the centre of their souls. Nursed, like the mountain eagle, amid storms and winds, with a mental nerve rendered consistent by frequent flights around the fastnesses of Calvary, their thoughts wandered through eternity.

Imagination was not the only faculty strengthened by these habits; but the whole inner man was thrust forward towards that high stage of intellectual and moral existence, for which we were designed by our Creator. Dwelling in these trans-Alpine regions of thought, unaffected by the low sympathies of the various multitude, their faith gave a tangibleness to the most removed truths. Thus viewing the Unseen and Infinite, humility and holy artlessness characterized their whole deportment. With intellects ennobled by such an intimacy with infinite excellence, and with their vast acquisitions of all that was valuable in the men of other times, they rose over their congregations as a full cloud, and held them attentive for hours by thought " instinct with spirit."

Profundity in divine and human knowledge, without obscurity-meditation, without asceticism-spirituality, without undue mysticism-pure and simple faith, producing love, humility, and a winning artlessness-these all intermingled, constitute the ideal of a Christian philosopher and divine. And this ideal we see realized in the outlines of the Christian character before us. A holy harmony and an all-subduing mildness, (like evening flute-tones, that

"Over delicious surges sink and rise,"

in the dewy air, athwart the lashed lake, that eddies and nestles itself to rest along the strand), elevate these men to the spiritual life, and imbody themselves in them into a presentiment of the angelic and heavenly.

Theirs, then, is an example worthy of imitation. For, by the same means every servant of the Lord Jesus Christ may become a scribe well instructed into the spiritual kingdom