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assemblies;-it must be resentment, not as personally felt, but as shared by the impartial spectator. That is, it must be conscience and natural feeling corrected by the public for the public good. Imagination and passion, without taste and judgment, might be considered the sole qualifications for good writing, as reasonably as conscience and resentment supposed to furnish the necessary requisites for good conduct-to be all the securities which can be wanted either in making laws or in obeying them. The motive and the rule of human life must be kept distinct. Whatever power these principles may claim as motives, they never can be appealed to as a rule, except as far as they take the understanding to be their assessor, on whatever subjects man allows himself to remain a reasonable creature. In the same manner as the eye and judgment co-operate in producing the phenomena of vision, (there are intermediate rules which act as glasses in assistance of the naked sight,) so do conscience and the understanding co-operate in our insight into, and direction of, human conduct; and the last has no test but that of utility to appeal to. It is the same, indeed stronger, with resentment. Smith calls in the impartial spectator. Why is that necessary? How is he made a better judge than one's self in a cause, with whose results and bearings we must be more intimately acquainted than a stranger? Simply, in order to get rid of the exaggeration of self-love, and reduce the feeling within reasonable bounds. The arbitration of reason, in such a case, acts, by bringing about an approximation in a particular instance, with those effects which the happiness of society requires. As much reference to the elements of conscience and resentment is thus preserved, as it can be desirable should be ultimately allowed.

It is not pretended that the principle of Utility, or any other, can provide us with a complete security-such as shall prevent all errors in its administration, and all crime by its result. There is no such elixir in the materia medica, out of whose limited resources a remedy is to be sought for the diseases of society. A panacea of this kind is too inconsistent with the ignorance and infirmity of human nature for the boldest charlatan to advertise it. But the principle of utility is simple: it is intelligible to, and, as far as it goes, is comparatively manageable by all capacities, under the guidance of those general rules which represent the condensed experience of ages; it is specifically adapted to the complaint; lastly, it contains in itself no unknown element which may, in careless hands, or in certain constitutions, produce more evil than it is intended to remove. Unlike resentment, it raises no cry for victims; but sensible of the delicate ground over which it moves, and of all the unseen circumstances which may morally extenuate an offence, (when externally the most inju

rious,) it is touched with a human compassion even for the criminals, whose condemnation is imperatively required by the severe necessity of public order. Unlike expiation, it shrinks from the infliction of evil on the score of evil. It knows that crimes carry with them their own punishments as necessarily as the form its shadow; and that the criminal has really done a much deeper injury to himself in his own nature, than it was within his possible power to do to society. Accordingly it must feel, that the terms of this supposed equation, (as far as it can presume to guess on so mysterious a subject,) are already amply and fearfully settled the other way. But though human justice decline to be personified by the Eumenides of Mythology, with snakes coiled around its brow, or by a confessor in his cell, who settles cases of conscience as a debt, and clears off moral guilt by the short balance of so much evil done by the per contra of so much evil to be suffered, it has a nobler and easier duty to perform in the preservation of the public peace.

Justice, identified with the happiness of the millions whom it governs, listens to no individual feeling-pursues no partial interest. It would abdicate its whole charge and dignity, were it to fall back from its public duty upon these comparatively private considerations. It cannot stoop to seek the gratification of malignant passion-nor waste its time and strength in hunting after a mystical proportion for the mere purpose of adding pain to pain. Its rational office is that of calmly watching over and advancing the happiness of mankind. It remembers that society is a great insurance company; the duty of which is to provide, as far as possible, individual redress for every member; and in such injuries as by their nature are likely to be repeated, to prevent them for the future. Accordingly, its punishments are directed, not with the view of doing evil to the party who has committed the injury, but of doing good to the party or community which has sustained it. Restitution, reparation, reformation, and example, are the real debts which it is its object to teach the criminal that he owes society. Aware, painfully aware, how little the best society has steadily attempted even, and how much less it has effected, towards the reduction of human offences to the lowest average which our nature and condition are likely to admit, by a preference of virtue to revenue, by measures of gentle but salutary precaution, by an interposition against the fluctuations and pressure of extreme want, by the light of education, by a humanizing and superintending intercourse between the different classes of society, which would bespeak a common interest in the recognition of a common nature -aware of all this, and of a great deal more, justice may well feel the deep responsibility of mercy, to which she is also conse

crated by her office. Whilst, therefore, the only direct communication which, on the part of society, she has to make to that unfortunate class, out of which criminals for the most part are recruited, is one of rebuke and menace, solemnly will she take heed that the wellbeing of the great body of the people is the only consideration which she puts into her equal scales; and that the words of her mouth are-what alone in such a case become the representative of society-the words of humanity and reason.

ART. X.-1. The State of Protestantism in Germany, being the
Substance of Four Discourses preached before the University of
Cambridge. By the Rev. HUGH JAMES ROSE, B.D. Second
edition, enlarged. 8vo. London, 1829.

2. An Historical Enquiry into the probable Causes of the Ra-
tionalist Character, lately predominant in the Theology of Ger-
many. By E. B. PUSEY, M.A. Regius Professor of Hebrew
in the University of Oxford. 8vo. 1828.

3. An Historical Enquiry, &c. Part the Second; containing an Explanation of the Views misconceived by Mr Rose, and further Illustrations. By E. B. PUSEY. 1830.

4. Six Sermons on the Study of the Holy Scriptures, preached before the University of Cambridge in the years 1827 and 1828; to which are annexed Two Dissertations; the first on the Reasonableness of the Orthodox Views of Christianity, as opposed to the Rationalism of Germany; the second on Prophecy, with an original Exposition of the Book of Revelation, showing that the whole of that remarkable Prophecy has long ago been fulfilled. By the Rev. S. LEE, B.D. D.D. Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. 8vo. 1830.

IT is, we think, high time for the well-paid champions of Orthodoxy in this country, to awake from the dignified slumbers in which it is their delight to indulge, and to take some notice of those incursions into their sacred territory, which the theologians of Germany have been so long permitted, without any repulse, to make. We are assured by Shakspeare, that dainty bits

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nor could we ask a much more pregnant proof of this fact, than the striking contrast which exists between the poor, active, studious, and inquisitive theologians of Germany, and the sleek, somnolent, and satisfied divines of the Church of England. The priests of Egypt, we are told, abstained from drinking the water of the Nile, because they found it too fattening;-the Pactolus

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of the Church also fattens, but it is not abstained from; and the consequence is, that our portly sentinels slumber on their posts, while the lean theologues of Halle and Gottingen carry away all the glory of the field.

Among the lower ranks, indeed, of the English clergy, that sharpener of the wits, poverty, is not wanting. But so strict is the watch kept over their orthodoxy by their superiors, and so promptly does the episcopal eye, awake only to innovation,mark out for reproof and punishment every movement of free enquiry by which the general compromise of belief throughout the church may be disturbed, that the few among those lower expectants of patronage, who have either learning or leisure for theological disquisitions, think it most prudent not to enter into them; and accordingly, on all the great questions agitated by the German Rationalists, a sacred silence,' like that which Basil and others of the Fathers tell us was maintained, respecting her dogmas, by the Primitive Church, reigns with almost equal profoundness throughout that hallowed domain which reposes within the fence of the Thirty-nine Articles.

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It is the opinion, indeed, of the Rev. Mr Rose, whose work on Rationalism is now before us, that to the want of a regular Episcopacy, like that of the English Church, as well as to the absence of those curbs upon the restiveness of private judgment, which a compulsory subscription of certain Articles of Faith imposes, the very erratic course into which German Theology has extravagated, is, in a great measure, to be attributed. In this respect, he says, there is a marked difference between our 'Church and these Prostestant Churches.' We are inclined to doubt, however, whether that implicit acquiescence in a common symbol of faith which diffuses so halcyon a calm over the surface of our Church Establishment, has not been brought about by appeals to far more worldly feelings than Mr Rose would willingly admit to exist in his reverend brotherhood; and we find ourselves strengthened not a little in this view of the matter, by having observed that, in proportion as the Church has become more rich and powerful, less of the old leaven of 'innovations' has mixed perceptibly with the mass; so that, by a result which sounds more miraculous than it really is, our establishment has gone on improving in Unity, in proportion as it has more and more abounded in Pluralities.

With respect to the efficacy of Confessions of Faith in producing uniformity of belief, it may safely be asserted, that no formula of this nature has ever been constructed, out of which easy and pliant consciences could not find some plausible loophole of escape. Among the Germans themselves subscription has, we believe, been always required, to what they call the Sym

bolic Books in the Lutheran Church, and to the Heidelburg Catechism in the Reformed Churches. In the former of these two professions of faith, an opening was indeed left, of which the free-thinking divines of Germany have most abundantly availed themselves, and to which Mr Rose imputes the blame of having been one of the main inlets through which the flood of heresy, that has, if we may so say, unchristianized their Church, found admission. Their Symbolic Books, hes ays, were subscribed only in as far as they agree with Scripture—a quali'fication, which obviously bestows on the ministry the most 'perfect liberty of believing and teaching whatever their own fancy may suggest.' In attributing, however, to this elastic 'quatenus' in the creed of the Lutherans, so much of that perilous matter which has been introduced into their Church, the reverend gentleman must, we think, have forgotten the Sixth Article of those he himself has subscribed; sanctioning virtually, as it appears to us, the same latitude of interpretation and dissent: Holy Scripture,' says this article, contains all things necessary to salvation; so that whatever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man to be believed as an article of faith, or to be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.'

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It was, indeed, under the shelter of this commodious clause, that the Jortins, Claytons, Blackburnes, &c. of other times, when the Church of England was perhaps less afraid of the consequences of dissent, and certainly less furnished with the means of purchasing conformity, were left unmolested in their bishoprics, prebends, and rectories, to indulge in their own heterodox notions, and enjoy at once the comforts of preferment and luxuries of dissent.* Times are, however, in this respect much altered. We should like to see the actually existing Rector of St Dunstan in the East, who would so far risk his chance of a stall as to venture upon Jortin's rash avowal, that there are Proposi❝tions contained in our Liturgy and Articles, which no man of 'common sense among us believes.' Even that enigmatic production, (the work, it is said, of one Vigilius, a contentious bishop of Tapsus,) which passed under the name of the Athana

It is thought that Jortin had somewhat more than a leaning towards Arianism. (See a Letter addressed to Gilbert Wakefield, inserted in his Memoirs, I. 376.) That he was, at all events, not orthodox on this subject, may be seen from a passage in his Tracts, where he goes so far as to declare, that they who uphold the orthodox doctrine respecting the Trinity, must be prepared to assert, that Jesus Christ is his own Father and his own Son. The consequence will be so,' he adds, whether they like it, or whether they like it not.'

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