Scripture. And why must not exhortations to repentance, faith, and holiness be addressed to unconverted sinners? Certainly not because holy Scripture forbids such exhortations, or gives us no example which countenances them. No: it is still not a matter of sub. mission to scriptural authority, but of reasoning. Scripture teaches us, that fallen man is incapable of obeying such exhortations, without the aids of Divine grace: it would be " strange and unreasonable," therefore, to call upon those who are yet strangers to that grace to yield such obedience! This appears to be, throughout, the way in which the conclusions in question are arrived at.—Thus, in both one case and the other, certain principles are assumed, (grant them to be ever so scriptural, this will not affect the argument), and systems are drawn from them, by way of consequence, which contradict the current language and practice of those who "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." But the inference, the consequence must be adhered to, for it is rational, it necessarily follows that is, it appears to poor, blind, weak, erring man to do so, though God has not sanctioned it, but quite the contrary. Is not all this " leaning to our own understanding?" Is it not refusing to speak as the oracles of God?" Is it not failing "to receive the kingdom of heaven as little children?" This studious attempt to be more consistent than the Scriptures APPEAR to be, seems to me to pervade every page of the publication on which I am remarking. Scarcely a sentence can be trusted out of the writer's hands without some distinct allusion to the doctrine of Election. To say no more, how different a proportion does the subject bear in the Bible Magazine" to what it does in the Bible itself! If such a passage as Rom. ii. 10, is to be alluded to, it must be in the terms 66 glory, honour, and peace to the preserved and called," (p. 565); not in such legal language as that of the Apostle himself, "Glory, honour, and peace to every man that worketh good," &c.-All this appears to me very deplorable: and I heartily pray God to preserve all men, and especially all good and pious men, from such narrowing, curtailing, or perverting of his word! I will only add, that it is pleasant to see error inconsistent with itself, and those who have embraced it deviating from their own principles towards truth and right, whether it is allowable to say, victi naturæ bonitate, or not: consequently, after reading the above coudemnation of exhortations to unconverted sinners, I perused with pleasure the following passage (p. 573):—“ All we can say in these cases," (cases of persons living in known sin, and thus affording very great reason to fear that they are NOT converted,) " is, Escape for your life; tarry not in all the plain; flee to Jesus for pardon and grace, that the door of hope be not shut against you." J.S-.H. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. IN looking through the stereotype edition of the Cambridge Small-pica Bible, I was much surprised to observe the seventh and eighth verses of the fifth chapter of the First Epistle General of John printed as follows: "For there are three that bare [instead of bear] record in heaven," &c. "8 And there are three that bare [instead of bear] witness in earth," &c. The alteration is evidently a purely typographic error: my only object, therefore, in mentioning the subject, is to excite the attention of some person, who may be enabled to prevent any more copies being struck off before it is corrected. T. B. H. To the Editor of the Christian Observer. You will permit me, I trust, to offer a few explanatory remarks to a correspondent in your Number for September, who expresses himself dissatisfied with my estimate of certain writers, characterized, in a former communication, as the secondaries of the moral school. The most direct way of explaining myself will be by opposing names to names; and, accordingly, I shall place on one side, Blair, Jenyns, Lyttleton, Johnson, and Paley; on the other, Leighton and Milnertwo, among many, of the primaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The six moralists deserve the gratitude of mankind for their illustrations of the evidences and civilizing tendencies of Christianity, their exposure of libertinism and fashionable folly, and for their not-unsuccessful endeavours to elevate, in many instances, hu man opinion, by appeals to the preceptive parts of the New Testament. So far they have done greatly; and may be read with the highest advantage, even by those who, on subjects purely spiritual, have attached themselves to a superior class of instructors. But let not the primaries and secondaries be confounded. The popularity of Blair, in that extensive portion of the reading, and of the gay world too, which would shrink from the closet companionship of Leighton, gives us, as I think, with tolerable accuracy, the weight and measure of his divinity. Had that divinity been of firmer texture, the amateurs in pulpit eloquence would surely long since have inserted the author's name in the index expurgatorius of their own exclusive communion. Soame Jenyns's short treatise, on the internal evidences of the Gospel, professes to shew why Christianity ought to receive the homage and obedience of mankind; yet leaves out all, or nearly all, by which that religion is distinguished from others, as a remeCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 192. Lord Lyttleton's Essay on the Con dial dispensation for the guilty. version of St. Paul, deservedly ranks high among performances of its own order; but neither touches, nor professes to touch, the Apostle's doctrine. Of Paley I would always speak with profound admiration, as of a man who thought, and expressed his thoughts, with transparent clearness; and had the art, as Lord Verulam says, of "making men wax wiser than themselves," by communicating to his readers a certain consciousness of possessing, for the time at least, a community of mind with their teacher. As such, he appears to be unrivalled; and he employed his sagacious and discriminating intellect to the highest of all purposes, short of that of fully explaining by what method men may be justified before God. Here he is defective to a degree for which none of the allowed excellencies of his writings afford any compensation. His posthumous sermons, which were intended by himself to be limited in their circulation by the bounds of a single parish, are certainly of a more exalted character than the previous publications of this writer; but serious as they are, (and occasionally they are very serious in the near contemplations of eternity, and in reference to the actual period and nature of the conversion of the soul, and accordingly, in their degree, well calculated to awaken the dreamers of the world to the realities which concern their salvation,) yet he who would earnestly strive to discover and tread the narrow way leading to eternal life, must certainly resort to a wiser teacher than the individual in question. To deliver only les sons not inconsistent with certain selected practical tenets of the Gospel, is to occupy but a minor office in the Christian church. Much * In vindication of the above, I might, in part, appeal to the Review of Paley's Sermons in your vol, for 1809, p. 235, et seq. that is coincident with revealed mentary on the First Epistle of St. Peter; and if he then continue to be dissatisfied with my estimate, I must leave the matter to the decision of a third party. EXCUBITOR, To the Editor of the Christian Observer. "Seduxerunt populum meum in men daciis suis et in miraculis suis." IT is a favourite opinion, very prevalent at the present moment, that during the lapse of years which have passed since the Reformation, Popery has lost most of its distinctive properties, so as almost to have become bland and innoxious. How far this sentiment is well founded may be inferred from a pamphlet entitled, "Authentic Documents relative to the miraculous Cure of Winifred White, at St. Winifred's Well, by the R. R. J. M., D. D. V. A.” who, from a plain signature with the sign of the Cross, we afterwards find' is no other than John Milner, D. D. Vicar Apostolical. This pamphlet was published in the year 1806, and had then passed to a third edition; and such is the imposing, and, it may be conceded, ingenious manner in which it is drawn up, that ere this time it may possibly, for any thing I know to the contrary, have gone through twice as many more. Irequest, therefore, through the medium of your publication, to offer a few remarks upon these "authentic documents;" - documents respecting a miracle said to be wrought no longer ago than June 28, 1806-a miracle sanctioned, as well as published, by a Roman-Catholic bi shop and vicar apostolical. It perhaps may surprise your readers to hear of a miracle being sanctioned by a bishop: ignorant Protestants, especially amongst the laity, might naturally imagine, that a miracle, being an extraordinary and Divine interposition, a suspension or al teration of the natural course of things, must necessarily be mani fest to all; and that men need not wait for the decision of a bishop to know whether it were entitled to credit or not. But the Council of Trent, having taken the wonders of the invisible world, as well as the faith, morals, and ceremonies of the visible church, under its especial cognizance and protection, has de. creed that no new miracle is to be admitted without the knowledge and approbation of the bishop. "Statuit sancta Synodus nulla admittenda esse nova miracula uisi recognoscente et approbante episcopo;"-a decree of admirable utility, when a bishop who sides with the Dominicans has to judge of the truth of a Franciscan miracle; or when a bishop, who takes part with the Jesuits, has to determine on the authority of signs and wonders exhibited by the Jansenists. The "authentic documents," respecting this miracle, are prefaced by a short but highly significant advertisement; in which the author states, that he has the satisfaction of declaring, that he has not met with or heard of a reader who has controverted either the facts or the reasonings contained in the work; and that the publication has met with the approbation of his right reverend brethren. Should any other person object to this publication, he replies, that the facts are highly curious to the naturalist, instructive to the theologian, and important to the Christian; and adds, that they decide that weighty question which was so long and so warmly contested amongst the learned half a century ago; clearly pointing out that body of Christians, amongst the rival communions, which the Divine Founder of Christianity himself sanctions. "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not." (John x. 37.) So that, as Dr. Milner, a Roman Catholic bishop, acting according to the decree of the Council of Trent, has sanctioned a miracle, and published it to the world, that miracle points out the Church of Rome as the true church; and consequently the Church of England, as well as all other Protestant communions, as schismatical and heretical.-Q. E. D. But, sir, we Protestants must be forgiven by the vicar apostolical if we pause a little, and do not so very readily accept as undeniable the inference with which he has favoured us in the advertisement. We must first examine this wonder; and then, joining issue with the bishop, in his appeal to the verse just quoted, must take leave to consider whether it is quite as certain that the truth of a miracle has been established against Protestants, as that the pretence of a miracle has been sanctioned and approved by Papists. The facts are briefly these: A young woman, named Winifred White, who is represented as sensible, modest, moral, and pious, was afflicted with a disorder for above three years, by which she was incapacitated from doing her work as servant in the family of a Mrs. Withenberry, of Wolverhampton. Her state during this period was variable — sometimes she was unable to move herself at all, at others she could walk with the help of a stick, and at others she could even walk without it. Concerning the nature of her disorder, her medical attendants express themselves with considerable doubt, and are able to affix no distinct name to it. Mr. Stubbs, a surgeon at Wolverhampton, says, that fatal symptoms of an internal complaint, brought on an enlargement of the vertebræ, accompanied by paralysis of the left side; and that he thought her dissolution to be near. Dr. Underhill, physician of Manchester, differing in some degree from Mr. Stubbs, states, that he considered her complaint as belonging to the nervous class; and that the paralytic affection arose from a diseased spine. He thought also her pulse seldom in dicated dissolution to be near: the discordancy of which last assertion with that of Mr. Stubbs has discomposed the vicar apostolical, who assures us, in a note, that the physician once said, "that he supposed there was no occasion of inquiring after poor Winifred White." However, Dr. Milner may tranquillize himself: the contrariety between the surgeon and physician is not, perhaps, very material; but one thing it is material to observe, (for bad the fact been otherwise, Dr. Mil. ner himself would, doubtless, have stated it triumphantly), that both the physician and surgeon were Papists; so that those who judged of the complaint were of the same religion with him who pronounced upon the miracle. Under these circumstances, labouring under this nervous complaint, having this enlargement of the vertebræ, attended by paraly. sis of the left side, Winifred White received no benefit either from the prescriptions of Dr. Underhill or the operations of Mr. Stubbs; and they, exhausting their efforts upon her in vain, deemed, her complaint incurable, a state of things by no means and leading to an inference by no means unnatural. rents. uncommon, Happily, however, for this af. flicted patient, she had been chris. tened Winifred White a fact which argues something of an almost prophetical spirit in her paBut whether that be so or not, those who gave her this name in baptism, taught her no doubt to chaunt with lisping accents those inimitably beautiful verses, preserved by Ranulphus Higden, Monk of St. Werburgs, in the fourteenth century, who finishes his account de Mirabilibus Terræ Wallia with the following description of St. Winifred's Well: Ad Basingwick fons oritur, Tam magnum flumen procreat Winifred White, therefore, of 'Wolverhampton, had the very natural desire, given over as she was. by her medical attendants, to seek for supernatural relief at St. Winifred's well. so careful is Before, however, she undertook this course, it was thought needful that she should consult her spiritual guides the Church of Rome to direct her children aright, and to preserve them from error! The priest is to say, where miraculous help should be sought; and the bishop is to declare both the law and fact, which in this case are one and the same, and to decide whether a miraculous cure has been performed. After having been fortified thus in her resolution by two priests, who approved of her motives, but discouraged at the same time by Mrs. Withenberry, who had not so much faith as her servant and the priests, Winifred commenced her pilgrimage to Holywell; and early on the morning of the 28th of June, having performed her special acts of devotion, consisting, it may be supposed, of a novena to St. Winifred, and, above all, not forgetting the virgin Mary-who, as "regina cœli," queen of heaven, must be queen of the earth and of all things under the earth — she left her lodging, and, together with three other ladies who were all seeking for cures, as piously, no doubt, as Winifred, crawled down to the well-a well of which the stones (we are told) are streaked with blood, and the moss is odoriferous; and which (as it is somewhat more to the purpose to notice), is “remarkable for the astonishing force and quantity of water which it constantly - |