such must be the meaning of the apostle is evident from the context, in which he is contrasting the wisdom of God, as made known by the Gospel, with the wisdom of man, as independent of it; and declaring that the knowledge of spiritual things can only be obtained by the study of that revelation, which the Holy Spirit has made. Here then we see nothing to justify the positions of Mr. Faber instead of asserting that "no description of spiritual things however just can communicate a clear conception of them to the natural understanding of man," or that in a state of nature he has no faculties capable in themselves of embracing spiritual truths; St. Paul attributes man's ignorance to his unwillingness to receive the "description of spiritual made to him in the Scriptures; in a word, to the defect of his will, not of his understanding. God certainly proposes the evidences of Christianity to our reason; it is by "a description of spiritual things," in the Scriptures, "offered to our understanding," that he has chosen to communicate the knowledge of them to us. Shall we then suppose that natural reason and understanding are, after all, to be of no use; or that the aids which they require, are ever withheld from those, to whom he offers the evidences of his Gospel, and from whom he exacts in consequence belief and obedience ! Mr. Faber attempts to prove too much. Doubtless the understanding of them since the fall is in a debased state; and he who proudly determines that he will believe and accept nothing, which his own faculties will not enable him to discover and prove, will probably never arrive at religious knowledge; because he rejects divine assistance, and chuses to employ reason only in a task, to which its unassisted powers are incompetent. But this is very different from that gross and necessary blindness of which Mr. Faber speaks; a state in which idiots only are naturally placed, to which no man can be reduced but by a wilful rejection of the counsel of God. Wherever the word of God is preached by his ministers, it is accompanied by a grant of power to receive their instructions; for this is the medium, through which God has been pleased ordinarily to open unto man the mysteries of Christianity, not by any sensible communications or inspirations of his Spirit. That Spirit always attends upon his Word, and will infallibly lead those, who hear that Word, to the knowledge of the truth; and it was because our venerable reformers were well assured of this, that they have introduced into the Homily for Rogation week that exhortation, which is quoted by Mr. Faber (p. 12.) with a view of strengthening a position, which they never entertained.

Mr. Faber seems to imagine that Cicero's treatise de Natura Deorum affords satisfactory evidence of his position, nay even that "it has been providentially handed down to us," as if for this very purpose. (p. 12.)

We

We conceive that it proves no more than this; that no human wisdom, of itself, can arrive at the knowledge of divine things. This we believe to be "the scriptural doctrine of the ignorance of man," and on this it certainly affords a striking comment. But where Mr. Faber deviates from this doctrine, Cicero's treatise gives him no support. It shews that the wisest Heathens were actually ignorant of all religious truth; but it does not shew that they would have been incapable of comprehending it, had a clear description of it, such as is contained in the Scriptures, been placed before them. They might indeed have rejected the authority of Holy Writ, and refused to consider its testimony; but this, as we have before observed, would have been a fault of the will, not of the understanding.*

Mr. Faber next examines the effect of original sin upon the will. On this part of the chapter we have little to observe; but that here also it would have given clearness and precision to his statement, had he carefully drawn the distinction between the natural man and the Christian. It is of the former only that the tenth article speaks, when it says that "the condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling upon God." The Liturgy of our Church is framed for the use of the latter only; and the sins, form the bondage of which we are therein directed to pray that "the pitifulness of God's great mercy may loose us," are actual sins. The language of the petition was certainly not intended to imply, that man labours under the same incapacity after grace received, to which he was subject before he was made a partaker of christian privileges; but that every Christian is so far from being perfect, that he has need of the mercy of God to pardon his sins, and the assistance of God to enable him to forsake them. The two forms contemplate two classes of persons, whose cases bear no analogy to each other; and they are framed with reference to two different doctrines: to attempt therefore to illustrate the former by the latter is to open a door to endless confusion, by representing the state of the Christian in language which can apply only to those, who are not partakers of the covenant.

* Mr. Faber's classical knowledge is not to be lightly questioned; but he seems to have overlooked the design of the treatise de Natura Deorum, when he makes Cicero chargeable with all the ignorance and errors to be found in it. His object was to deliver fully and fairly the opinions of contending sects on the question before him; and the sentiment which he puts into the mouth of Ballus, the advocate of the Stoics, is surely not imputable to him an avowed academic. Rev.

The

The same objection lies against the quotation made by Mr. Faber (p. 17) from the Homily of the misery of man. The object of this Homily is to give us such a scriptural representation of the wretched situation of man by nature, as may teach us to set a proper vane upon that great salvation wrought out for us by Jesus Christ: by making extracts from it therefore, to illustrate our condition as members of Christ's Church, and heirs of that Salvation, he has wholly perverted its meaning.

From the influence of original sin upon the understanding; and the will, Mr. Faber goes on to state its operations upon the heart and the affections. He tells us, that,

"After our first parents had yielded to the temptations of Satan, an almost total inversion of the former affections of the heart took place. Man then began to hate that which he ought to love, and to love what he ought to hate. The pure and holy law of God, which thwarts his vicious inclinations, became the object of his fiercest aversion; while, on the contrary, wickedness became his pleasure and delight." (p. 20.)

He seems indeed to be aware, that such statements as these will not be readily admitted; and that it is necessary to support them by something more than assertion.

"This doctrine however," says he, "is not unfrequently denied even on the ground of personal experience; and those, who urge it, are thought to paint human nature in much blacker colours than she really deserves. It may perhaps be allowed, that we have frailties, venial frailties; but our nature is asserted to be in the main ever favourable to virtue, and averse to vice." (p. 21.)

Such an objection as this might have been easily refuted; for to say, that our nature in the main is ever favourable to virtue, and averse to vice, is to fall into the opposite extreme. To virtue, in the abstract, our natural reason will generally be favourable; but reason itself is often the slave of passion, and then the practice of man contradicts his theory, and he does that which he does not allow. Nature therefore is chargeable with more that mere venial frailty, and cannot be truly said to be in the main always practically favourable to virtue. Still however this does not ex'culpate those from having painted human nature in blacker colours than she deserves, who assert, that man by nature hates what he ought to love, and loves what he ought to hate; who declare that the pure and holy law of God is the object of his fiercest aversion, and that wickedness becomes his pleasure and delight. This is rash language, which ill befits the character of a sober, discriminating theologian; and affords one instance among many, that this production of the author's juvenile studies should

not

not have been committed to the press without more alteration, than he has chosen to give it.

For farther proof of what he calls "the bitter animosity of the heart against God," (p. 31.) he refers to the partial manner, in which men perform their duties. He tells us that "each individual selects the duty, which best suits his inclination, and seems to forget that any others are in existence," (p. 25.) and that" in the discharge of this duty, he perceives not the enmity of a corrupt heart against God, because from mere physical reasons he feels no repugnance to it :" (p. 26) but that still, if he be called upon to perform other, more difficult duties, then "he may possibly find, that he contains the same evil disposition in embryo," and that, as one instance of this, we too frequently behold those, who are foremost in every active duty, shrink with disgust from the resignation of worldly pleasure." (p. 27). Having filled several pages in this manner, he concludes that," what has been said is amply sufficient to prove, that "the carnal mind is enmity with God;" (p. 31.) a position which no Christian will require Mr. Faber to prove, because it stands already upon an authority, to which he will readily bow. But if Mr. Faber imagines, that when St. Paul asserted, that "the carnal mind is enmity with God," he meant, that the heart of every man, whether living in a state of nature, or grace, whether Christian, or Heathen, "entertains a bitter animosity against God" we conceive, that he is far from understanding the apostle's language. If this be not his interpretation of Rom. viii. 7. we cannot divine his reason for bringing it forward; or his meaning, in concluding the subject with the following personal appeal." If any person still doubt it," namely, that the carual mind is enmity with God, "let him but ignorantly apply himself to those allowed duties which are most irksome to him, and he will quickly find an argument in his own breast, infinitely stronger than any that have been here adduced." (p. 31.)

From" the bitter animosity against God," which he attributes to the human heart, he deduces its "extreme depravity;" which he conceives to be "connected with it in the way of cause and effect." (p. 31.) This opinion he endeavours to support by a quotation from the works of the author of the Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity; in which the truth is expressed in language, at once luminous, and forcible. It is however to be observed, that Mr. Jones is distinctly speaking, in this passage, not of Christians, but of the natural man,' or as he himself explains the term, "the man remaining in that state wherein the fall left him." As Mr. Faber is discussing the case of Christians, those with whom the Christian preacher is now conversant, (vide pp. 28,29,30.) the reader must perceive, that he employs Mr. Jones's

language

language to defend a position, which that excellent divine never intended to maintain. But this is his method throughout the chapter all which he finds in the Homilies, and articles of our Church, and in the writings of her ablest divines, descriptive of man in a state of nature, he applies without scruple to the buptized Christian; and never considering the change which takes place in the heart at baptism; or making any allowance for the influence of that new principle of holiness, then implanted in it by the Holy Spirit; he attributes to it fierce animosity against God, utter depravity, insensibility, stupidity, and all the odious qualities, with which a strained and exaggerated interpretation of texts of scripture wholly inapplicable to the subject, can furnish him. For this purpose he hesitates not to force into his service Ephes. iv. 19, expressly applied by St. Paul himself to the unconverted Gentiles; and 1 Tim. iv. 2, a passage descriptive of those, who should" in the latter times depart from the faith, and give heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils." Had this proceeded from an ignorant fanatic, it would not have surprised us; but when a man of learning, a clergyman of our own Church, condescends to support his peculiar opinions by such a perversion of Scripture, our astonishment is only exceeded by our regret.

Our observations on the concluding paragraphs of this chapter, with which Mr. Faber closes his view of the effects of original sin, must necessarily be short. If his remarks are intended to illustrate the natural state of man, they are wholly irrelevant; for he has continually addressed himself throughout the chapter to Christians, and has repeatedly given his readers to understand, that he is describing men as he now finds them, the men, withwhom a Christian minister, in a Christian church, is officially connected. If the state of the natural man was not in his contemplation, we hesitate not to affirm, that neither the doctrine of our church, nor that of the Scriptures, of which she is the faithful interpreter, will allow of his describing the situation of Christians in such language as the following passage contains.

"Man being thus depraved in the understanding, the will, and the affections, it is almost superfluous to observe that he must in consequence have lost all power of serving God. Unable to discover his will, hating it when it is discovered to him, and so polluted by sin that he is utterly unable to cleanse himself, how can he perform in his own strength any acceptable service? He may indeed in the pride of his high speculations, imagine himself to be rich, and to have need of nothing; but the word of God will inform him, that he is wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” (p. 34.)

And