language in which he writes, to shun the most shameful misapplication of its terms, and infringement of its grammatical rules. His pamphlet consists of garbled extracts from the productions of writers, both in and out of the establishment, whom he has somehow learnt to call Evangelical, thrown together in true chaotic disorder, illustrated by his own annotations, and directed to renew the threadbare scandal, that Evangelical doctrines tend to licentiousness of morals. That a Barrister might be unacquainted with such a subject, it is not difficult to suppose; but that a real member of that respectable body should take so much pains to expose that ignorance of which the slightest degree of self-knowledge would have made him conscious, can hardly be imagined. We will not take to ourselves the responsibility of asserting such an extravagant thing, on vague rumour, but leave the name of the writer in safe obscurity, till he gives it up, in the second part of his \ work, to public contempt.

The learned Barrister after telling the "community" that evangelical doctrine requires them to believe," that God made them originally sinful and depraved," takes for his text-book, in refuting it, the treatise of Dr. Colquhoun on the Police af the Metropolis. For this he gives us the following notable rea

son.

For my part, I do not hesitate to say, that with respect to the origin of that corruption which is so very visible amongst us, I prefer the plain intelligible account, as given by that very worthy and valuable magistrate MR. COLQUHOUN, to all the mysterious jargon and blasphemous nonsense that CALVIN and his followers ever uttered from his days to the present.' p.9.

We are sure the worthy magistrate will hardly give credit to his eyes in seeing himself pitted against the Reformer, as a theorist upon the subject of human depravity. Dr. C. will immediately discover that the advocate for morality is sufficiently versed in the "corruption which is so very visible amongst us," to try to share in his well earned reputation, by making, before the public, a spurious claim to similarity of sentiment, and unity of object. We can safely predict the futility of the trick; for the mass of ignorance and dullness which he has thus appended to better materials, is too heavy to be rendered buoyant by any extraneous support. That we may not seem to pass censures unmerited by facts, we will present to our readers, the Barrister's pious comment on the beautiful lines of Cowper, which his deep reading in Evan, gelical literature leads him to ascribe to Dr. Hawker.

"There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins,
And SINNERS plunged beneath that flood

LOSE ALL THEIR GUILTY STAINS.

The dying Thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day,

And there have I as well as he,

WASHED ALL MY SINS AWAY."

The Psalmist says of the wicked man "that he delighteth in blood;" he will therefore be readily enough persuaded to wash himself clean in the ele ment of his corruption. His reason will not be shocked nor his faith staggered, to find this element consecrated to so extraordinary a purpose.' (!)

Nor is the production less admirable for excellence of style, than it is for propriety of sentiment! The author has indeed the rare talent of uniting, in short passages, all the fine qualities which characterize him as a writer. The following extracts will explain our meaning: "Abolish the moral law, which this new power thus slight and abuse, and what have we left? Take away the moral commandments of God from his gospel, and you have lain the axe to the root." p. 98. "God the priest must stand foremost in all the great works of instaneous conversion," p. 123. In a long note, p. 137, remarkable for its blunders, he takes occasion to display his wit and learning, in correcting the misquotation of the proper name "Apelles" for "Apella," from a passage in Horace, in the Evangelical Magazine. Had he been a little more learned, he would have known, that the difference between the names is of no moment, and not half so offensive to a scholar, as his own ignorant remarks upon it;-not to mention his stupid subtitution of "Judeas," for "Judæus," in citing the line. from the magazine. How far the barrister is qualified to become a critic in the learned languages, may be judged from his proficiency in his native tongue. In the pride of his literary triumph over the Evangelical editor, he exclaims--"The line with which lie meant to sanction his incredibility, (!) he will find in Horace Sat. 5. 1. 100. I refer him to the original, that he may not hereafter corrupt the text of the classics, &c !" He does not tell the Editor in which book of the Satires the passage is to be found, and from the specimen he has given of his learning, it may be reasonably doubted whether he knew that there are more than one. He has the condescension, in the same luminous note, to mention the "ECCLECTIC" Review. We ought perhaps, in common civility, to be proud of the honour he has done us; but we know not how to be pleased or angry with a person who cannot spell the title of our work. Such is the miserable scribbler, who takes upon him to offer to the "Public and the Legislature" his "Hints," not on the "nature and effects of Evangelical preaching," for of these he is absolutely ignorant; but on his own perversions of those terms. If it should be possible for a person of respectable talents to avow his opinion, that

preaching the doctrine of human depravity, and the necessity of the atonement, divine influence, repentance, faith, and spiritual holiness, has a tendency to relax the public morals, we may think it right to refute such an advocate of the notion, notwithstanding its palpable absurdity and falsehood. But we really cannot submit to the humiliation of controverting any opinion with the "Barrister." As he happens to furnish us with an apposite summary of our judgement of his work, we shall, without further comment, take leave of him by quoting it;"

What a contemptible opinion must such writers entertain of the British public, before they can venture to dictate to it in such a strain of unmeaning gibberish; no man that did not count upon finding in every reader a greater fool than himself could risk the publication of such impious trash.' P. 106.

Art. XI. A Vindication of the Hindoos from the Aspersions of the Reverend Claudius Buchanan, M. A. with a Refutation of the Arguments exhibited in his Memoir, on the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India, and the ultimate Civi ization of the Natives, by their Conversion to Christianity. Also, Remarks on an Address from the Missionaries in Bengal, to the Natives of India, condemning their Errors, and inviting them to become Christians. The whole tending to evince the Excellence of the Moral System of the Hindoos, and the Danger of interfering with their Customs or Religion. By a Bengal Officer. 8vo. pp. 171. Price 4s. R. and J. Rodwell. 1808.

NOTWITHSTANDING the laudable pains taken, by some

of the pious people of these times, to engage our respect at least, if not to effect our conversion, to the "religion" of the Brahmins, we cannot profess to have entirely overcome all the difficulties of admitting the doctrine of transmigration. Till very lately we had no doubts whatever on the subject; we could most conscientiously have declared a total disbelief of that doctrine; but it is the privilege or misfortune of candid minds, to be in every stage of their intellectual course susceptible of the impression of every new argument, so that you shall find them, in February, veering toward the belief of what they had deemed utterly absurd in the December preceding. In time, however, they learn to be a little cautious of instantly avowing each new direction of their opinions we therefore do not wish to be just now called upon to express ourselves decidedly, as to our views of this grand tenet of Indian faith; we shall only say that the sole argument which has gone far to change our former views of the subject, arises from the appearance of such an author as the one now before For it would seem rather difficult to believe, that such a piece of entity should have originated in this country of Eng

us.

land, to which, notwithstanding, we are to refer, as far as appears, the commencement of his present stage of mundane existence he does not perhaps distinctly say this, but it is impossible for us to assign such a nativity to the sister island, because we are all apprized of the valuable privilege conferred on that soil by St. Patrick, of never having cause to regret the want of ichneumons. And our partiality for England, though the country produces, we know, many things for which it is never the better, would really make it desirable to hope, that the moral agent before us received its being and acquired its properties in some distant country and age, though it does not say whether it has any dim traces of recollection of having, early in the Káli joog, infested the precincts of some idol's temple in the East, and tasted under theinfernal altar the blood of a human sacrifice. The surmise of an origin not very recent, is suggested by the appearance of something more virulent and inveterate in the quality of the being, than could have grown from inhabiting any small number of malignant substances and forms. Whether this may not have been an instance of a sacrilegious sinner doomed to "pass," according to the Institutes of Menu, (page 352) "a thousand times into the bodies of spiders, of snakes, or mischievous toad-sucking demons," it is not for us to pretend to detern ine. It is also difficult to guess how the last transit was suffered to go into the veritable or apparent shape of a man, if that improvement of condition was in any possible connection with amendment of quality. But yet, on consideration, this may perhaps be partly explained; for as there is in the creature one good quality, this may be come in the place of a bad one: this good property is honesty, as opposed to hypocrisy.

The several preceding remonstrants against the measures for imparting Christian instruction to the Hindoos, while in effect presenting themselves as the abettors of paganism, with all its abominations, were disposed notwithstanding to keep up a certain language of pretended respect for Christianity. Their hypocrisy was indeed clumsily managed, just in proportion to their ignorance of the nature of the sacred cause which was to be mocked by it; but believing no doubt that all the friends of that cause were little better than fools, they thought it might be easy to gull them without much dexterity of phrase, and they imagined, we suppose, some possible advantage to themselves in so doing. While earnestly plotting, therefore, a mortal sacrifice of Christianity, so far as it is any thing more than a local superstition, to be allowed where it already prevails, they adopted a proceeding which was but a very aukward imitation of the smooth treachery of that

most miserable man who is "gone to his own place," a place however not likely to be so lonely as some divines have imagined. But this Bengal Officer justly despises all such shallow and useless policy; and comes forward in the honest avowed character of a soldier of Herod or Pilate, whose rude heathenism laughs at the uncouth grimaces of pretended holiness with which the less courageous conspirators are proceeding to their purpose. He does not cant, in feeble and stupid hyperbole of falsehood, to Mr. Twining's tune of "surrendering life rather than the Christian religion." He `makes none of Major Scott Waring's clumsy pretences of respect for the Holy Scriptures, and "our good old church," or of believing the "truths of our religion," and hoping no one will attribute his reviling of missionaries, and his anger at the "new mania of conversion," 66 to indifference to the eternal welfare of the natives of India." He is content, and perhaps even proud, to provoke the abhorrence of the public by his impious audacity, and, in much consistency with the bravery of his character, leaves undivided to his coadjutors the satisfaction of being rewarded with its contempt for their hypocrisy. We can easily suppose he would address them in some such terms as these: "Where is the use of your pretending what you know, or might know, that not a mortal will believe? Even if any body would believe your sham palaver of liking the church, the bible, and all that, what good would it be? Is one always to be putting on a set of pretended notions, and adjusting them like a parson his pulpit clothes at a vestry looking-glass, before one is to venture out into the world? If one cannot do what one pleases and say what one thinks, but must be canting a parcel of stuff, just because bishops and priests are paid to cant it, it were better to shoot oneself without more ado. I am for a man of spirit showing that he does not care for all the priests and methodists on earth. What the plague should keep us from telling them that we are none of their dupes? You are not afraid, I suppose, of these Christians, and the person they call Christ? If you are, you have made a fine blunder in saying so much as you have already; I wish it may not be too late for you to get reconciled to mother Church; try the first opportunity by all means, I beg of you, and he prodigious penitent, and subscribe to the Bible Society. At any rate, do not go on making pretences of some kind of respect for Christianity, while every body may see that you are insulting and practically disclaiming it, and that you would caper with joy to see all the bibles in the world piled up for a bonfire. For myself, they may call me infidel, or heathen, or atheist, if they please, but they shall never call me hypocrite or coward; and as to you, I should