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points in his own Calvinistic creed, and when he ventures to state those points in all the naked impotence of bare assertion?

Mr. Melvill's second sermon, entitled, "Christ the Minister of the Church," is on Hebrews viii. 2: "A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." Here again, we have a specimen of the love of display, which everywhere marks these discourses; for not content with proving our blessed Redeemer to be the Head of the Church, "from which all the body, by joints and bands, having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God;" (Col. ii. 19.)—not satisfied with shewing how in this sense Christ ascended up on high, that he might receive gifts for men, and so minister to their necessities; in proof of which comfortable doctrine it would be easy to quote many plain texts of holy writ; a conclusion must be violently extracted by some ingenious process of ratiocination from a text, where no ordinary theologian would be able to find it. To a common reader of the Scriptures it would be obvious that the apostle, in Hebrews viii. 2, was contrasting the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ with those of the Mosaical law, and that one chief point, wherein the priesthood of Christ excelled that of his types under the Jewish dispensation, consisted in his session at the right hand of God in heaven, there to intercede for his followers, on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." Hence our Redeemer is styled a minister of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." This, we contend, is the literal and plain and obvious sense of the apostle's words. This we hold to be the tenor of his argument. But this obvious and plain interpretation does not please the taste of Mr. Melvill. His auditors must have 66 something new." Accordingly, he would fain "battle strenuously" for the interpretation, which would define "the humanity of the Saviour as a tabernacle not made with hands." (P. 37.) But this flight is too daring even for Mr. Melvill; and he contents himself with telling us that "the whole company of the faithful constitute that tabernacle, of which Christ is asserted to be the minister!" "born again of the Spirit and renewed after God's image, they constitute a sanctuary, which shews a nobler than mortal workmanship!" Pp. 39, 42.

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True, very true; believers are said to be Christ's " workmanship," (Eph. ii. 10.); they are called "the temples of the Holy Ghost," (1 Cor. vi. 19.); the Spirit of God is said to "dwell" in them, (Rom. viii. 9.); and their risen Lord, "made higher than the heavens," is described as interceding for them by the potency of his "unchangeable priesthood." So true is it that Christ is the Minister of his Church. But this ministry is not to be gathered, as Mr. Melvill would gather it, from Hebrews viii. 2; and we beg leave to enter our protest against this perversion of the apostle's words.

Christ is, indeed, the Minister of the Church on earth, as well as of that in heaven; and is truly present with her in her ordinances by "his actual and energizing presence." Yes

If Christ remain always the minister of his church, Christ is to be looked at through his ministering servant, whoever shall visibly officiate. . . . The grand evil is, that men ordinarily lose the chief minister in the inferior, and determine beforehand that they cannot be advantaged unless the inferior is modelled exactly to their own pattern. They regard the speaker simply as a man, and not at all as a messenger. Yet the ordained preacher is a messenger from the God of the whole earth. His mental capacity may be weak, that is nothing. His speech may be contemptible, that is nothing. His knowledge may be circumscribed, we say not, that is nothing. But we say that, whatever the man's qualifications, he should rest upon his office. And we hold it the business of a congregation, if they hope to find profit in the public duties of the Sabbath, to cast away those personal considerations, which may have to do with the officiating individual, and to fix stedfastly their thoughts on the office itself. Whoever preaches, a congregation would be profited, if they sat down in the temper of Cornelius and his friends,-"Now therefore we are all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God."-Pp. 45, 46.

"O! si sic omnia!" But

All this is really excellent and sound. there seems an untowardness about our author; and he is too fond of extremes to be thus orthodox and sensible for many periods in succession. We have no sooner regaled our palates with the delightful extract just quoted, than we are displeased with such fallacies as the following:-

If, wheresoever the minister is himself deficient and untaught, so that his sermons exhibit a wrong system of doctrine, you will not allow that Christ's church may be profited by the ordinance of preaching; you clearly argue that Christ has given up his office, and that he can no longer be styled "the minister of the true tabernacle.". When everything seems against the true followers of Christ, so that, on a carnal calculation, you would suppose the services of the church stripped of all efficacy, then, by acting faith-(what a phrase !)— on the Head of the ministry, they are instructed and nourished; though, in the main, the given lesson be FALSEHOOD, and the proffered sustenance little better than POISON!!!

Well, after all, we need not pity Mr. Melvill's hearers, it seems. They may read truth in falsehood, and live by poison!! Happy souls, they can gather figs of thorns,-grapes of a bramble! What signify the preacher and his doctrine? He is an ambassador of Christ,--therefore WHATEVER he says, is Christ's message, and whoever denies this, dethrones his Saviour, and deserves the severest anathema!!

Our preacher very properly insists upon the intercession of our "advocate with the Father," as proving him to be "the minister of the true tabernacle." But even here our judgment is, we must confess, not a little outraged, when this intercession is described as follows:

Christ intercedes with justice. But the intercession is the throwing down his cross on the crystal floor of heaven, and thus proffering his atonement to satisfy demand. Oh, it is not the intercession of burning tears, nor of half

choked utterance, nor of thrilling speech. It is the intercession of a broken body, and of gushing blood; of death, of passion, of obedience. It is the intercession of a giant leaping into the gap, and filling it with his colossal stature, and covering, as with a rampart of flesh, the defenceless camp of the outcasts! So that not by the touching words and gestures of supplication, but by the resistless deeds and victories of Calvary, the Captain of our salvation intercedes, pleading, not as a petitioner, who would move compassion, but rather as a conqueror, who would claim his trophies Pp. 50, 51.

This is mere declamation; pardonable, perhaps, in a prize essay, but assuredly unbecoming the sobriety which ought to characterise a written sermon, delivered from the pulpit by a grave divine. And the same remark may serve for our author's fanciful lucubrations touching the ministerial offices discharged by Christ towards the saints in glory. God has thought fit to hide these things from our eyes. Why pry into forbidden mysteries? The peroration of this sermon is very good; but, when we there read the truth, that "preaching is valued, not as Christ's mode of ministering to his people, and, therefore, always to be prized; but as an oratorical display, whose worth, like that of a pleading at the bar, is to be judged by the skill of the argument and the power of the language" (p. 63); we cannot help thinking, that the error is mainly attributable to the preachers themselves! If they will clothe themselves in the gaudy colours of an actor, is it matter of surprise that their hearers sit in judgment upon their sermons, as they would " tragedy?"

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We assure Mr. Melvill that he would receive almost unqualified praise at our hands, had all his sermons been faultless as the third on "the impossibility of creature-merit." We have nothing to object to his doctrine in this respect, and as little, with the exception of one or two gaudy passages, to his style. We would fain quote the sensible exordium to the fourth sermon, in the handling of which our author acknowledges himself much indebted to Bishop Sherlock. Doubtless, our readers are familiar with Sherlock's masterly discourse on Phil. ii. 8, &c. Our author treads in his steps; we are bound to add, “haud passibus æquis ;" and we may be permitted to wonder, we think, that he has not imbibed more of the cogency of argument, the strength and perspicuity of style, the lucid arrangement,—and the sobriety of judgment everywhere conspicuous in the writings of that able prelate!

The exordium of Sermon V., occupying pages 126-129, is taken from Bishop Horsely's Sermon on John xi. 25, 26. Our author has neglected to make acknowledgment of this debt to the learned Bishop of St. Asaph. But why? Horsely is a profound writer, from whom the wisest may be glad to borrow instruction, and to whom the proudest might condescend to pay a debt of gratitude! Would that our author had confined himself to Horsely's argument! We, in that case, had been spared the pain of reviewing the crude, and unintelligible notions

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which disfigure the sermon on which we are sitting in official judgment. We, in that case, had been spared the mortification of listening to Papal logic from the lips of a Protestant preacher! "This is my body; "I am the bread of life;" is exactly as strong a proof, when used by a Papist, of the doctrine of transubstantiation, as 'I am the resurrection and the life," when adduced by Mr. Melvill, is of the dogma that Christ was literally the resurrection itself." Pp. 132, 134. Perhaps our readers may expect us to explain this dogma: we confess ourselves totally unable to guess even at the meaning of it: but our author shall speak for himself. We would only premise that the two objects of his discourse are—" to shew briefly the accuracy with which Christ may be designated the resurrection;'"-and then to prove that the resurrection of the body is a great element in the demonstration of the life, the immortality of the soul." His statement is this

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His resurrection was the resurrection of the nature; and the resurrection of the nature was the resurrection of all men.....Christ is more than the efficient cause of the resurrection. He is the resurrection.....The proving Christ the cause or the author of the resurrection is not the proving him that resurrection itself..... Christ took our nature into union with his own; and in all his obedience, and in all his sufferings, occupied this nature in the character, and with the properties, of a head. When he obeyed, it was the nature, and not a human person, which obeyed. When he suffered, it was the nature, and not a human person which suffered. So that when he died, he died as our Head; and when he rose, he rose also as our Head..... Human nature having been crucified, and buried, and raised in Jesus, all who partake of this nature, partake of it in the state into which it has been brought by a Mediator, a state of rescue from the power of the grave, and not of continuance in its dark dishonours. The nature had most literally died in Adam, and this nature did as literally revive in Christ.....It would be quite inconsistent with the resurrection of the nature, and this it is, you observe, which makes Christ "the Resurrection," that any individual, partaking that nature, should continue for ever cased up in the sepulchre.-Pp. 132–136.

In this abstract we have endeavoured to comprise the sum and pith of our author's statement touching the point before us, viz. that Christ is " literally the resurrection," and not merely its efficient cause. This, surely, is not the language of the apostles; but the apostles were not metaphysicians. "HUMAN NATURE having been raised in Jesus," &c.! What, then, is "human nature?" Did the abstract idea conveyed by those terms, rise in Jesus? Is it something distinct from the flesh and soul, which constituted "the man Christ Jesus?" We take "human nature to be the constitution given by God to human creatures in their bodily and mental powers. And though it may be allowed to poets to speak of human nature in the abstract, and to attribute actions thereto; in sober prose such liberties are altogether forbidden, and totally at variance with the discreet phraseology that becometh the expounders of God's word! Human nature is a merely abstract term, and can no more suffer, or rise again, that it can talk. "It would be just as wise, and

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just as intelligible to say that human nature might be punished,―might be hanged, or transported to Botany-Bay, or be whipped at the cart's tail."* Oh! how delightful is it to consult the pages of such divines as the immortal Pearson on these topics, thus so obscured! "The resurrection of Christ," so writes the incomparable prelate, in his glorious work on the Creed, p. 267, "is the cause of our resurrection by a double causality, as an efficient, and as an exemplary cause. As an efficient cause, in regard our Saviour by and upon his resurrection hath obtained power and right to raise all the dead. As an exemplary cause, in regard that all the saints of God shall rise after the similitude and in conformity to the resurrection of Christ. . . . This is the great hope of a Christian, that Christ rising from the dead hath obtained the power, and is become the pattern of his resurrection."

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Of our author's sixth sermon, upon Gal. vi. 7., we are prepared to give a favourable report. The power of wickedness and righteousness to reproduce themselves" is very ably illustrated, and most impressively applied, both to our present scene of probation, and to our future scene of recompense.

We would here indulge our readers with a favourable sample of the style of our author, by extracting a passage, in which he describes the fact that the sinner, sowing wickedness here, shall reap anguish hereafter, as Bishop Butler has taught us. (Anal. Part II. c. v. p. 231.) For this, however, we have not space; still, in justice to Mr. Melvill, in justification of ourselves (for his capacity to write well has provoked our censure,) we will adorn our pages with another extract from his volume. He is discoursing upon "the power of religion to strengthen the human intellect," and cautioning parents against the prevalent folly of giving children knowledge without endeavouring at the same time to add knowledge to godliness, which, he says, is "throwing the momentum of the giant into the arm of the idiot;" he then admonishes them in the following strain-

We give it you as a truth made known to us by God, and, at the same time demonstrable by reason, that, in going through the courses of Bible-instruction there is better mental discipline, whether for a child or an adult, than in any of the cleverly-devised methods for opening and strengthening the faculties... Scriptural study should be at once the ground-work and companion of every other; and the mind will advance with the firmest and most dominant step into the various departments of knowledge, when familiarized with the truths of revelation, and accustomed to walk their unlimited spreadings. If parents had no higher ambition than to make their children intellectual, they would act most shrewdly by acting as though desirous to make them religious. We require of you to bear away to your homes as an undeniable fact, that to care for the soul is to cultivate the mind. We will not yield the culture of the understanding to earthly husbandmen. There are heavenly ministers who

VOL. XVI. NO. V.

* Ludlam's Essays, Vol. II. p. 377.

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