which it possesses. Take, for example, the following strong appeal from the sixth and thirty-third sermons, the latter of which occasioned by the dreadful fire in the town of St. John's, Newfoundland, June 1819.

These, my friends, are the duties, the discipline, and the consolations of Christianity; themes which, by the most solemn engagements taken upon us before God and man, we, the ambassadors of Christ Jesus, are bound to press upon your attention, on every opportunity, and by every means in our power. Before my God, I must stand with trembling apprehension to give an account of this my ministry; but before man, before you, I shall always speak with the boldness which truth and the majesty of my cause inspire, and with the warmth which an affectionate solicitude for your best interests excites; on this plea, and on this alone, I claim to be heard with patience, and to be interpreted with candour; and be assured, my brethren, that however languid be the reception which these topics meet in the dull ears and cold hearts of a listless world, revelling in prosperity, the time must come when the neglect of them will be the most painful and appalling of your recollections. pp. 73, 74.

There are those who, not an hour before the terrifying visitation, were in a state of degrading and bestial intemperance, breaking the repose of night by their unhallowed revels, and profaning the holy Sabbath by rioting and drunkenness." To the former of these, what reflections must the scene of devastation have suggested! In what awful language must the devouring element have appealed to their hearts, and taught them the utter worthlessness of the hopes in which they trusted. Their's were but "gods of the vallies, not of the hills "-mammon was their king, and mammon has deceived them-wealth was their idol, and they have lost the means of their idolatry.

The feelings of the latter, the Sabbath-breaker, and the drunkard, on such an occasion, I will not attempt to analyze; but I trust they will afford a memorable lesson, which may long influence their future conduct. My brethren, I am but young among you, young in learning and experience, young in the labours of the vineyard; but this consideration, while it induces me to speak on many subjects of the Christian dispensation with trembling modesty, shall never deter me from deprecating irreligion and immorality, in whatever place or garb I meet it, however sanctioned by custom, and encouraged by infamous example; and I again declare, that the violation of the blessed Sabbath is a crime -a heinous, glaring, and forbidden crime, that will call down Heaven's vengeance on its perpetrators, either in this world or in the next. pp. 352, 353.

We have thus endeavoured to exhibit the excellencies as well as the defects of the volume now under review; -a volume which in so many places differs from itself, that, had we not known to the contrary, we should have thought it to have been written by two distinct persons. And whence arises this discrepancy? We fearlessly answer, from two opposite causes,ignorance of the grand and fundamental doctrine of JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH WITHOUT THE DEEDS OF THE LAW; and the fear of being considered Evangelical by those who are the sworn enemies of such sentiments. The Archdeacon of Bermuda is evidently a man of strong and vigorous mind, and his Sermons afford some fine passages, notwithstanding the affected, and sometimes ridiculous, use of words of Latin derivation.

If, in remarking on those doctrinal points in which we think him utterly wrong, we have used strong, and apparently harsh, language, we beg to assure him that it was through a supreme regard to the infinite importance of "the faith once delivered to the saints." Nor are we without hope that some future volume from the same pen may discover, with equal ability, a greater measure of that Spiritual influence which can alone lead the mind into all truth; and which can enable the ministers of the sanctuary, whether supreme or subordinate, "to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord."

History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy in the Sixteenth Century; including a Sketch of the History of the Reformation in the Grisons. By THOMAS M'CRIE, D. D. Edinburgh: Blackwood. 8vo. pp. 434.

THE history of Modern Italy is full of interest and instruction. Without it the politician would search in vain among the records of other countries for the first principles of his science, and the political phenomena of the last eight hundred years would remain without explanation. Deprived of the light which it throws on the pages of ecclesiastical writers, the theologian would search in vain for the causes which have given stability and energy to the whole system of papal usurpation. In the republics of Italy politics first became a science, and the subtleties of reason a counterbalance to the military force of empires. The elegancies of art, and the splendid refinements which a rich and extensive commerce introduced, were only coeval with the improvements in the sciences of public economy; and the influence which the muses of Italian art had on European taste was more than equalled, by the change which the policy and example of her states effected on the general circumstance of the surrounding countries. There was a period when, with the riches of the East flowing into her ports, with a wealth which brought the proudest of monarchs to solicit her assistance, and with a naval preeminence which her resources might have turned to any purpose: there was a period when, with these advantages, she might have again asserted her universal supremacy, and revived her ancient glories. It is certain, however, that becoming, as she did, by turns, the powerful promoter of enlightened political principles, the nurse of European commerce, and, subse

quently, the richest prize which rival kingdoms contended for, that her history is fraught with information of the most powerful interest. But the sun of Italy is set, nor has it left a gleam to evidence its early brightness. Never was a country so completely subdued or sunken under the power of despotism as this. Never was a people so reduced as her inhabitants, from the loftiest position in which wealth, literature, or policy could place them, to the lowest one of moral or political degradation. What does Florence retain, not of the freedom merely over which the divine Dante wept, but of that splendid independence which the Medicean merchants adorned with their princely wealth? Of Venice, where is her nobility, proud and stern in their aristocratic rule, but great and dignified in the magnificence of their power? Of Ferrara, and the other states whose names are associated with all that is sweet in poetry or the arts, what remains but the visions of our fancy, or the traditionary tales of their unfortunate inhabitants?

But while we contemplate, with the curiosity of a philosophical inquirer, the changes which have taken place in modern Italy, the causes which elevated her, both in freedom and literature, above the rest of European nations, and those which, in subsequent times, levelled her with the dust, our minds revert to the mighty fabric which, in the mean time, was rearing on her shores, and which continued to rise unchecked while the most ancient monarchies were shaken to their foundations. From the ninth to the sixteenth century, the history of Popery is the history of mankind. The intellect, the passions, the pursuits and expectations of the human race were rendered almost uniform by the overwhelming force of a universal superstition. The stream of life was made to flow on in one narrow channel. The varieties of surface which would have diversified its course were levelled, and its whole power and strength converted to the effecting of one grand design. There is certainly nothing which approaches so nearly to a moral miracle as the complete subjection of Christendom to the papal throne; and, were it not for the well-known fact, that, through the long succession of pontiffs, all strove and laboured to the same end, we should almost doubt the possibility of such power having been acquired. It appears, however, to be rather falsely imagined that the universal rule which the popes of Rome possessed, had been obtained solely by their policy, or was entirely the result of their religious frauds. If the history of Europe, during this period, be studied with attention, causes will be found in the condition of men's minds, and in the political circumstances of the different nations, which will greatly remove the wonder with which we regard

the progress of Popery and its attendant evils. Long after Constantine, by his conversion, had made Christianity the religion of the state, paganism retained its influence over the common prejudices of the multitude; nor were the events of succeeding times calculated for the diffusion of a pure and uncorrupted, faith. Neither a government, sinking into decay, nor a state just newly formed, and hardly knowing its power or boundaries, is fitted, humanly speaking, as the nurse of a lately received religion; but such was the condition of nearly every province in which Christianity was now professed. And in the tumultuous scenes which followed the final breaking up of Roman power-in the wild struggle of kingdom with kingdom, and chief with chief, religion was either forgotten or only remembered, when some superstitious feeling invented a new observance, or a new object of adoration. Instead, therefore, of supposing, as we are liable to do, that Popery, in its origin, was the corruption of Christianity purely received and understood, the subverting of a faith in which mankind had been instructed and were living; it is to be regarded as a superstition framed to meet the dark understanding and passions of its subjects; a system perfect in itself, having its own end and working by the terror or attraction of its own punishments or rewards. Corrupt in its origin and nature, it had nothing to do with Christianity except in the association of its name, which it took care to use to obtain the appearance of a Divine sanction.

Another consideration also is, that the darkness which overspread the earth while Popery was completing her system, was the cause rather than the result of its reception among mankind. The human mind had stopped in its career of improvement; learning and philosophy had passed over to the professed enemies of the Cross; and, in the night of moral and intellectual gloom under which the nations were sunk, it is no wonder that superstition was given birth to, or that, cradled as she was by the ambitious genius and policy of successive pontiffs, she should have brought the greater part of mankind beneath her yoke. When the Roman empire was dismembered, it was like the falling of a lofty edifice, with the huge fragments of which many other buildings are raised up. The foundations, however, of the former remained. The name of Rome was still imperial, and men looked to her as if a glory remained over the place of her former greatness. It was on these foundations the powerful bishops of the Christian Church erected their wondrous edifice; and, to render it stable, added to the consistent plea of civic and historic greatness the absurd pretension of an apostolic primacy. When men have set up a god for themselves, it is seldom that

their idolatry is not complete; and never did superstition reign with a more iron sway than when seated on the papal throne. Every thing was made subservient to her dogmas. Reason was not permitted to act, unless the first link in its deductions was a principle in her creed; and nothing was good or worthy in human conduct, unless it tended to the establishment of her reign. Nothing in history since the world began can be compared to the condition of mankind during the prosperous times of papal power. Universal monarchies had been established, and the sovereignty of one man had been repeatedly acknowledged in separate and distant countries; but they had left national manners and sentiments the same: their authority had made little or no alteration in the minds and prejudices of their subjects, and the wealth and homage they received from their foreign provinces came from unwilling and reluctant contributors. But the empire of Papal Rome was complete: it had the spirits of men at its command, and possessed a dominion over them to which every temporal consideration was subordinate. This sceptre of moral rule was not however snatched at once from mankind, and it required a long period of time to complete the plan of ecclesiastical usurpations. It is a circumstance of great wonder that the popes of Rome met with their latest and most obstinate opponents in the Italian churches. We can only account for this by the superior intelligence of their clergy, and the discovery which the people were enabled to make, by their nearness to the scene, of gross imposture and corruption. But in whatever manner we account for the circumstance, certain it is that Popery met with a much less favourable reception in its native country than in the other parts of Europe, and that even during succeeding years the establishment of any of its principles was exceedingly doubtful; for, paradoxical as it may appear, the history of the Court of Rome goes far to make us believe that the Papacy in Italy was never able to exercise the tremendous power which it did in other countries. The very success with which its political inventions were pursued, and its art in holding the balance between one part of its system and another, prove the exercise of a different spirit and a different wisdom in its domestic government from those exercised when curbing the nations of the world into obedience. But while she was thus imperfectly reduced under the power of the popes, she was in a situation the least favourable of all to the reception of pure Christianity. Religion was only known under the form of superstition, and on her there was no veil to conceal her weakness or depravity. It was preached and valued only for the profit it produced on the