"Dodwell gave the rise to this conceit; he was a very learned man, and led a strict life. He seemed to hunt after paradoxes in all his writings, and broached not a few. He thought none could be saved but those who, by the sacraments, had a federal right to it, and that these were the seals of the covenant,- -so that he left all who died without the sacraments to the uncovenanted mercies of God. And to this he added, that none had a right to give the sacraments but those who were commissioned to it, and after them bishops and priests ordained by them. It followed upon this, that sacraments administered by others were of no value. He pursued those notions so far, that he asserted that the souls of men were naturally mortal, but that the immortalizing virtue was conveyed by baptism given by persons episcopally ordained; and yet, after all this, which carried the episcopal function so high, he did not lay the original of that government on any instruction or warrant in the Scripture, but thought it was set up in the beginning of the second century, after the apostles were all dead. He wrote very doubtfully of the time in which the canon of the New Testament was settled. He thought it was not before the second century, and that an extraordinary inspiration was continued in the churches to that very time to which he ascribed the original of episcopacy. This strange and precarious system was in great credit among us; and the necessity of the sacrament, and the invalidity of ecclesiastical functions, when performed by persons who were not episcopally ordained, were entertained by many with great applause. This made the dissenters pass for no Christians, and put all thought of reconciling them to us far out of view; and several little books were spread about the nation, to prove the necessity of rebaptizing them, and that they were in a state of damnation till that was done. But few were, by these arguments, prevailed upon to be rebaptized. This struck even at the baptism of midwives in the church of Rome, which was practised and connived at here, in England, till it was objected to in the conference held at Hampton Court, soon after King James I.'s accession to the crown; and baptism was not till then limited to persons in orders. Nothing of this kind was so much as mentioned in the year 1660, when a great part of the nation had been baptized by dissenters; but it was now promoted with great heat.

"The bishops thought it necessary to put a stop to this new and extravagant doctrine,- -so a declaration was agreed to, first against the irregularity of all baptisms by persons who were not in holy orders; but that yet, according to the practice of the primitive church, and the constant usage of the church of England, no baptism (in or by water, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) ought to be reiterated."

Such, then, were the dangerous divisions which the intrigues of Rome had excited in the very bosom of the church of England; and if our readers can perceive any parallel for those divisions in our present times, we are sure that with us they will feel that popery has lost nothing of the consummate policy which has ever characterized her counsels; and that they-we care not who they are-who cause divisions amongst us, are but the

veriest tools, though doubtless unintentionally, of the church of Rome.

It was shortly after the Revolution that Bishop Burnet published his Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles. It was, as he says himself, a natural consequence of his history of the Reformation, but he adds, likewise, another motive, which we desire to give in his own words:

"Upon the peace of Ryswick, a great swarm of priests came over to England, not only those whom the Revolution had frighted away, but many more new men, who appeared in many places with great insolence; and it was said that they boasted of the favour and protection of which they were assured. Some enemies of the government began to give out that the favouring that religion was a secret article of the peace; and so absurd is malice and calumny, that the Jacobites began to say, that the king (William III.) was either of that religion, or at least a favourer of it. Complaints of the avowed practices and insolence of the priests were brought from several places, during the last session of parliament; and those were maliciously aggravated by some who cast all the blame of all on the king."

The Exposition, in fact, was written not only to develop and elucidate generally the doctrines and discipline of the church of England, and to supply such a work as would supersede those various bodies of divinity which had been previously in circulation, but especially to explain-which he has done with surpassing ability-those Articles which illustrate the protests of the church of England against the church of Rome.

The present day, so similar in many respects, seemed to call for the more general circulation and study of this incomparable work. The swarms of popish priests who have migrated from France, and the multitudes who have arrived from Spain and Portugal, and the many who have come from Ireland, and all of whom have been locating themselves in the length and breadth of England, full of zeal and activity, restless and aspiring and energetic, require the clergy of the church of England to prepare themselves for a conflict of no ordinary kind. We know of no work in our language more calculated than Burnet's Exposition to lay the ground-work for a thorough knowledge of this all-important controversy with Rome; and we therefore hail with peculiar satisfaction this new edition, which contains a body of new and additional matter of the most valuable kind.

The publishers have shown much judgment in the selection of their editor; for, while he has preserved the original text, he has given in his notes, not his own sentiments, but the sentiments of our Homilies, our Stillingfleets, our Taylors, our Barrows, and our Hookers. He has presented us with all the canons of Rome which it was necessary the student should possess. He has

appended the Confession of Augsburgh and other valuable documents; and, while the Rev. James R. Page has thus given to our clergy and our students in theology an edition of this work which must necessarily supersede every other, we feel he deserves well at the hands of the church of England, which he has so materially served.

ART. VII.-1. The Poetical Works of James Montgomery. 3 vols. London: Longman. 1836.

2. The Poetical Works of the Rev. Thomas Dale. London: Tilt. 1837.

3. The Descent into Hell. By JOHN A. HERAUD. Second Edition. London: Fraser. 1835.

4. The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell. Moxon. 1836. 5. The Poetical Works of Samuel Rogers. Moxon. 1836.

IN delineating the Character and tracing the Progress of Religious Poetry, our researches have been confined to the works of men whose earthly pilgrimage is ended, whose harps are silent, and whose vessels, after all the buffetings and storms of life, are anchored, we may hope, within the crystal ports of a tranquil and a blessed eternity. Their names have assumed the sanctity of the past; the heart of the sternest criticism is softened by the memory of their virtues; and even the bitter spirits of envy and controversy are dispossessed by the music of their strains. There is something delightful in building up, in an affectionate, yet discriminating eulogy, the tombs of these departed singers; in protecting their intellectual remains from the ravages of time, or the wanton insults of the proud, in shrines beautified with the offerings of love and veneration. These humble rites of affection seem to possess a particular interest at the present moment. We are standing, undoubtedly, upon the threshold of a great and wonderful revolution in habit, feeling, and education. Imagination retreats before reality; fiction before truth; poetry before science. Old things are passing away; all things are becoming new. A modern giant, of whom the hundred-handed Titan of antiquity was a faint image, is putting forth its colossal strength, and compassing, as it were, the opposite poles in its embrace. The steam-engine is at once civilizing and corrupting the world. Who shall calculate, in all its ramifications, the energies of this silent intelligence, this mightiest creature of man's creation? The mention of it here is only incidental, as connected with that wonderful activity and speculativeness of mind for which the world is now remarkable. The Fairy Queen is abandoned for Maculloch's Dictionary. Nor is the tumult of political

agitation, divested as it is of all romantic or picturesque embellishments, less injurious to the nurture or development of poetic genius. Never more will an Eschylus blaze at Salamis; or a Cervantes gather deathless laurels at Lepanto; or the lyre and sword of Spain be united on the plains of South America. The knighthood and the chivalry of poetry are no more; it has taken a lower rank among the aristocracy of intellect. The vast and agitated sea of modern innovation, if we may employ a metaphor not inappropriate, is rapidly undermining the shore of old Romance, upon which the poets of other days delighted to rear their beautiful and fantastic architecture; the little wave of each returning hour washes away fragment after fragment; and already the time seems not far distant when the billows shall sweep it into the ocean for ever. Even the volumes which we have placed at the commencement of the present article lend an ominous testimony to our assertion; some of them are the collected productions of their respective authors,-their legacies to the present and to the future. We appear to have taken leave of them, and to have received their benediction; but unto whom have they bequeathed their mantles? Nor let it be said that we have drawn too unfavourable a picture. To what quarter of the horizon shall we look for the faintest indication of another star? There was ingenuity as well as truth in Goldsmith's comparison of the body of the learned to a Persian army, in which are many pioneers, women, children,—but few soldiers. A poem, strictly deserving the title, is never heard of; the shower of rhymes falls without intermission,-it is the only series to which there is no limit. Day after day, hour after hour, consigns some new freight of folly or impertinence to oblivion and the trunk-makers; yet the epidemical conspiracy for the destruction of paper, as the Adventurer wittily called it, still continues. Among the swarm of insects, one may occasionally outshine its gay companions in the gilding of its wings and the brilliancy of its colouring; but it has nothing of beauty but the paint. We turn it over in our hand, or hold it up to the sun for a moment, and then throw it into the grass again.* We have no wish to excite a crusade, nor to mar the murmuring of creatures so ill able to defend themselves; while they manifest no venomous propensities, the critic's wheel may be otherwise employed. Even Johnson thought it cruel to crush an insect which provoked him only by buzzing in his ear. Some discouragements lie, we confess, in the poet's path: the most fruitful and attractive districts about Parnassus have been already appropriated; the most precious mines of thought have been diligently explored; the most delicious flowers of the soil woven into garlands for other brows. Coleridge thought the destruction of Jerusalem the only subject now remaining for an

* Landor.

epic poem; possessing a rare combination of grandeur and splendour. Here, he said, there would be the completion of the prophecy-the termination of the first revealed natural religion under the violent assault of Paganism; varied and illustrated with the characters of the Roman and the Jew, in all their pride and magnificence. He himself had schemed it at twentyfive.* He admitted, however, upon another occasion, one important defect inherent in the subject-the absolute impossibility of preventing the interest for the individual from being swallowed up and lost in the interest for the event. Undoubtedly the destruction of a city, hallowed by so many associations, would afford a foundation for a noble superstructure; but how far it would realise Mr. Coleridge's idea by enlisting the sympathies of the Christian world, like the "Paradise Lost," or the Grecian world, like the Homeric war,-may fairly admit of a question. The other subject, the Mediterranean, was suggested by Johnson; and here we think the poet would find ampler scope in having the history of the four great nations who went forth from its shores. The conquest of India by Bacchus, Coleridge also thought a subject capable of affording opportunities for a brilliant exercise of the fancy and the understanding. Southey would write it better than any living poet; but no genius could vanquish its want of national or universal interest. In this respect it is far inferior to the "Adventures of Arthur," which are known to have occupied the youthful dreams of Milton. Mr. Coleridge asks, What have we to do with him? But the question might be demanded, with at least equal propriety, What have we to do with Bacchus ? Such a work might captivate the scholar by its learning, and the enthusiast by the richness of its pictures, and the glow and warmth of its colouring; but it would never take hold of the public mind. This has been the fate of the laureate's eastern romances. What destiny may be reserved for the children of song we pretend not to foresee; the bees may, even while we write, be clustering about some cradle watched over by the Graces; settling upon some lips hereafter to be touched with fire, and upon whose accents generations are to hang enamoured,-one before whom the Muse will pitch her radiant tent, breathing upon his cheek the purple light of celestial youth, and bathing his garments in the dews of fancy; another "Bower of Beauty" may even now be growing up for another Spenser; another Pandemonium rising to the sound of dulcimers, before the eyes of another Milton; and the Magic Horn recalling into life the gorgeous mysteries of enchantment in the dreams of another Ariosto! Let us not disperse this delicious and golden vision: the sky can well bear so brief an illumination! Would that any word of ours might take root in some generous and

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