to the filly ravings, of an empty fool, and raife in the weak fome fufpicions of fuch ftrong reafons on that fide, as no reafon on the other can answer: fome, our author tells us, have looked upon it as a piece of prudence in magiftrates, where there is no manifeft danger of the fpreading of fuch opinions, -to let them alone to the common fenfe of mankind to be confuted and despised: giving no truft to fuch men as renounce sall bonds of confcience, but only punishing when the principles are discovered by wicked actions. And indeed this appears to be the most prudent and reasonable conduct the magiftrate can obferve in fuch circumftances, as the odium of punishment is hereby avoided, and no bad consequences to be apprehended from forbearing to punish.

In regard to various forms of external worship, and the different schemes of religion, which yet retain the grand moral principles of duty towards God and our fellow-creatures, as there is no hope that ever mankind, with their strangely different degrees of fagacity, and different opportunities and prejudices of education, will agree about them; perfecution on these accounts, he thinks, is not only the most horrid iniquity and cruelty, but the greatest folly, as it may often deprive a country of its moft ufeful hands, upon which its wealth and ftrength depend.

He goes on to fhew what virtues are neceflary in a ftate, and what are the propereft methods of promoting them: he - confiders likewife the fanctions of laws, and what taxes or tributes are most eligible, and then enquires briefly into the laws of peace and war; but to enlarge any further would carry us beyond the bounds we muft affign to this article. We shall conclude, therefore, with laying before our readers those pertinent and judicious reflections with which he clofes his work.

From thefe general principles of the public law of nations,' fays he, as from thofe of the private law, refpecting individuals, we must difcern the wonderful footsteps of divine wisdom in the conftitution of our fpecies. Since it is by following the very principles of our nature, the affections ⚫ and feelings of our hearts, in that regular fubordination of ⚫ the more limited to the more extensive, which our inward moral fentiments recommend, and by the delightful exercife of the powers of reafon, which we are naturally prone to, that we obtain and fecure to ourselves and others both the nobleft internal enjoyments, and the greatest external advantages and pleafures, which the unftable condition of terreftrial affairs will admit.

• But

But that we may not deceive ourselves with falfe hopes, imagining a more stable external happiness to be attainable by individuals or ftates than nature will allow, and thus difa place our fouls from the only folid foundation of rest, tranquillity, and joy, in the ftable perfuafion of a good provi dence, governing all well, and fecuring true happiness to every worthy foul; in refignation and truft in it, and in the confcioufness of our own conformity of difpofitions to this fupreme excellence; it must be of confequence to attend well to the tranfitory, changeable, and perishing nature of every thing external.

⚫ States themselves have within them the feeds of death and deftruction; what in the temerity, imprudence, or superstition of the firft contrivers; what in the felfish, ambitious, or other meaner paffions of the governors, and their subjects; jarring with each other and among themselves; what in the oppofitions of those seeming interefts which fuch paffions purè fue; what in the weaknefs and inconftancy of human vir tues; and in the proneness of men to luxury and present pleafures, without attention to the confequences. Thefe feeds, along with external force, and jarring national inte refts, have always occafioned the diffolution and death of every body politic, and will occafion it as certainly as the internal weakness of the animal body, and external causes, will at laft bring it to its fatal period. Good men, indeed, ftudy, by all the art they are mafters of, to ward off and delay thefe catastrophes, as long as they can, from their friends or their country; fuch kind offices are the most hơnourable and delightful employments they can have while they live. But he muft little think of the order of nature, who fees not that all our efforts will be defeated at last, whe ther for the preservation of individuals, or of the body • politic.

Nineveh, Babylon, Ctesiphon, Perfepolis, the Egyptian Thebes, Carthage, once the feats of grand unwieldy empires, are now but obfcure antiquated names: Athens, Spar ta, Crete, Syracufe, the feats of ingenious arts and policy, are now the almost defolate feats of barbarians. Here we have no continuing cities. Compare the fhort periods of their fubfiftence with the immenfe tide of duration, whieh paffed before they were known, or with that other boundless infinitude to enfue after they are gone and forgotten, and the most potent durable empires will appear tranfitory, and

but for a day.

REVIEW, Sept. 1755

Confider all external things and enjoyments. We are fpirits, carrying about with us frail, decaying, putrifying carcaffes; that as yesterday were embryos, and fhall in a few days be earth and bones. Our fenfual pleasures are mean, paffing in a moment, and often fhameful. Our grandeur and wealth are imposture, played upon ourselves and others; an oftentation of happiness and fecurity, while we have no ⚫ other avenues to pleasure than the vulgar, and remain ex* pofed along with them to all the fame great calamities of life; to the ficknesses and death of fuch as are deareft to us, and their worse corruptions by ignorance, ingratitude, and other ⚫ mean difpofitions of foul; to all the fame pain and weaknefs both of body and mind; and, fooner or later, to that uncertain period, which may furprize us every moment, when we must quit all our earthly poffeffions, return into that filence we were in before we exifted, and our places fhall know us no more. If we are remembered for a few years, it is but in a little corner of the world; to the rest of it we are as nothing: and, in a few more, both we and those who remembered us fhall be forgotten for ever. Grant we were always remembered; what is that to us who know it not?

• Nimrod, Ninus, Cyrus, Alexander, Cafar, Charlemain, Gengifcan, what fense of suffering have they now, when many repute them odious monsters, the fcourges, the plagues of mankind? What joy have they in being called by others heroes and demi-gods? These most obvious and certain reflections, frequently recalled, must abate those keen paffions about worldly interefts, which spur on the ambitious to all oppreffions, and raise those wretched contentions which disturb, and at last destroy, the best human polities.

They must have an effect yet better on an attentive mind. An omnipotent and good God governs the world. By the whole ftructure of our nature we feel his approbation of virtue, his engagement on its fide. He has at the fame time formed our fpecies capable of those obvious reflections and extensive views into infinitude, which fhew the meanness, the vanity, the emptiness of all worldly enjoyments; he has implanted in our hearts natural defires, nay, ardent affections, towards a more noble and lafting happiness, both for our⚫ felves and our fellows, and that in the most extenfive fyftem; • and recommended these affections to us, and all beneficent actions flowing from them, as our greateft dignity and perfection, while yet this world cannot gratify these defires. -Our advancing in this perfection which he recommends

• makes

makes a future everlafting ftate after death appear as a part in his adminiftration neceffary to make our hearts approve it; and neceffary too to all generous folid joy of a rational creature, who has natural affections towards its kind. His *providence has fo ordered, that this hope, this defire is not ⚫ peculiar to the wife, the learned, the civilized; but has ever been diffused among all mankind. Need we then diftruft that omnipotent and bountiful hand, which fatisfies the defires ⚫ of every thing that liveth? No: let us trust in him, and be doing good after his example: and as we fee that all states and cities upon earth are unstable, tottering, and presently to fall into ruins, LET US LOOK FOR ONE THAT HATH A SOLID FOUNDATION, ETERNAL, IN THE HEAVENS; WHOSE BUILDER AND MAKER IS GOD.'

R

ART. XIX. A Scripture Account of Sacrifices. Shewing, that the true notion of them, thofe efpecially of the expiatory kind, is generally greatly mi apprehended, to the prejudice of the Chriftian doctrine of mens redemption through the facrifice of Chrift. Whereas it is here fhewn, that the atonement rifes from the very notion of facrifice, rightly stated, both on fcripture evidence, and on principles of nature and reajon. By a Clergyman of the diocese of London. 8vo. 5s. Bathurit.

TH

HE author of this piece is of opinion, that the doctrine of the facrifice and fatisfaction of Chrift, according to the ufual explication of it, is not defenfible upon principles of reafon, and is placed (to ufe his own words) upon a wrong bottom. This proceeds, we are told, from a mifapprehenfion of the true nature of facrifices, which, accordingly, he endeavours to clear up; and the account he gives of the matter, he imagines, will remove all difficulties, and probably rescue the doctrine of man's redemption through the facrifice of Christ, from the cavils of infidels. Whether his expectations in this refpect are likely to be anfwered or not, we may conjecture, but shall not take upon us to pronounce.

He divides his work into four parts; in the first of which he endeavours to prove the reality and neceffity of the propitiation made by Chrift, as the foundation of his enquiry. In the fecond he confiders the nature of facrifices; endeavouring to fhew, firft, that they were only offerings, or facred gifts, of things received firft from God, and prefented back to him for an external expreffion of gratitude, acknowlegement, faith, N 2 and

and every pious fentiment; fecondly, that their fuccefs depend ed wholly on the fuitableness of the minifter, or prieft; thirdly, that where facrifice was offered for others, the minifter, or pricft, acted the part of a mediator, or patron, with God, on their behalf; and, fourthly, that this fuppofed fome conjunction of nature or affections between them.

In the third part he proceeds to apply what was laid down in the fecond to the facrifice and mediation of Chrift; and here he obferves, that the facrifice of Chrift is the antitype of the former facrifices, which implies its ftanding upon its own ground, independently of all foregoing figures and types. He tells us further, that we muft undoubtedly affign to the divine wifdom a scheme founded, in the nature of things, independently of all religious rites or types going before; for God, he fays, in forming his fcheme, had no regard to the types; but, in ordaining the latter, had the former in view, to which the types were to be ministerial: fo that these must needs be the copy, not the model, whatever they are in point of time.

I think it more agreeable to nature and reafon,' fays he, frft to ftate the nature of the antitype and model, as first in God's view; and when we come to compare facrifices, and the language about them, with the fuppofed divine scheme, it will be found, that the firft are very agreeable, and the latter very applicable, to the fame: and if there had never been any facrifice offered before that of Chrift, the fame language in the main might have been very properly devised to illuftrate the part Chrift bore in this fcheme, together with the effects of his death; fo that the facrificial expreffions are, by all means, to be retained, as fhewing befides the con⚫nection between the legal and Chriftian economies.'

Chrift, we are told by this author, did not offer his facri fice immediately for others, after the manner of the Levitical priests, but for himself; that is, not to render others directly, and without any other medium, acceptable; but to render himself the more acceptable, and thereby his defires and interceffion for men, his kindred and race, the more effectual. He talks of God's vindictive juftice, and tells us, that Chrifl's facrifice contained (thefe are his own words) a natural induccment with God to be reconciled to his finful creatures. He tells us befides, that neither revelation itself, nor human precedents and practices, intimate to us any poffible method for reconciling ourselves with either God or man, after we have grievously offended, and, in vain, tried every other means in our power, but that of the intereft, mediation, or interceffion of tome perfon more agreeable than ourselves.

The