to the filly ravings of an empty fool, and raise in the weak some fufpicions of such strong reasons on that fide, as no reason 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 manifest danger of the fpreading of fuch opinions, to let them alone to the common sense of mankind to be confuted and despised: giving no truft to such men as renounce all 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 observe in such circumstances, 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; persecution 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 most useful hands, upon which its wealth and strength depend. He goes on to shew what virtues are necessary in a state, and what are the propereft methods of promoting them: he confiders likewise the sanctions of laws, and what taxes or tri- butes 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 must assign to this article. We shall conclude, therefore, with laying before our readers those pertinent and judicious reflections with which he closes his work. • From these general principles of the public law of nations,' says he, as from those of the private law, respecting individuals, we must discern the wonderful footsteps of * divine wisdom in the constitution of our species. 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 sentiments recommend, and by the delightful exer• cise of the powers of reason, which we are naturally prone to, that we obtain and secure to ourselves and others both • the nobleft internal enjoyments, and the greatest external advantages and pleasures, which the unstable condition of • terreftrial affairs will admit. < But But that we may not deceive ourselves with false hopes, imagining a more stable external happiness to be attainable ⚫ by individuals or states than nature will allow, and thus dif * place our fouls from the only folid foundation of rest, tran quillity, and joy, in the stable perfuafion of a good provi * dence, governing all well, and fecuring true happiness to * every w rthy foul; in resignation and trust in it, and in the confciousness of our own conformity of dispositions 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 * destruction; what in the temerity, imprudence, or superstition of the first contrivers; what in the selfish, ambitious, or * other meaner passions of the governors, and their subjects, jarring with each other and among themselves; what in the oppofitions of those seeming interests which such paffions pur * sue; what in the weakness and inconstancy of human virtues; and in the proneness of men to luxury and present pleasures, without attention to the consequences. These * feeds, along with external force, and jarring national interefts, have always occafioned the dissolution 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 last bring it to its fatal period. Good men, indeed, ، ، study, by all the art they are masters of, to ward off and delay these catastrophes, as long as they can, from their * friends or their country; such kind offices are the most honourable and delightful employments they can have while • they live. But he must 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, Persepolis, the Egyptian Thebes, Carthage, once the feats of grand unwieldy em• pires, are now but obscure antiquated names: Athens, Spar ta, Crete, Syracuse, the feats of ingenious arts and policy, * are now the almost defolate feats of barbarians. Here we have no continuing cities. Compare the short periods of their fubfiftence with the immenfe tide of duration, which paffed before they were known, or with that other boundless * infinitude to ensue 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 spirits, carrying about with us frail, decaying, putrifying carcaffes; that as yesterday were embryos, and shall in a few < days be earth and bones. Our sensual pleasures are mean, paffing in a moment, and often shameful. 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 same great calamities of life: to the ficknesses and death of such as are dearest to us, and ' their worse corruptions by ignorance, ingratitude, and other mean dispositions of foul; to all the same pain and weakness both of body and mind; and, sooner or later, to that uncertain period, which may surprize us every moment, when we must quit all our earthly possessions, return into that filence we were in before we existed, and our places shall 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 shall be forgotten for ever. Grant we were always remembered; what is that to us who know it not? 'Nimrod, Ninus, Cyrus, Alexander, Cæfar, Charlemain, Gengiscan, what sense of suffering have they now, when many repute them odious monsters, the scourges, 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 passions about worldly interests, 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 species capable of those obvious reflections and extensive views into infinitude, which shew 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 lasting happiness, both for our• selves and our fellows, and that in the most extensive system; and recommended these affections to us, and all beneficent actions flowing from them, as our greatest dignity and perfection, while yet this world cannot gratify these defires. -Our advancing in this perfection which he recommends makes 1 • makes a future everlasting state after death appear as a part R ART. XIX. A Scripture Account of Sacrifices. Shewing, that the true notion of them, those especially of the expiatory kind, is generally greatly misapprehended, to the prejudice of the Chriftian doctrine of mens redemption through the facrifice of Christ. Whereas it is here shewn, that the atonement rifes from the very notion of facrifice, rightly stated, both on fcripture evidence, and on principles of nature and reason. By a Clergyman of the diocese of London. 8vo. 5s. Bathurst. T HE author of this piece is of opinion, that the doctrine of the facrifice and fatisfaction of Christ, according to the usual explication of it, is not defensible upon principles of reason, and is placed (to use his own words) upon a wrong bottom. This proceeds, we are told, from a misapprehenfion 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 respect are likely to be answered 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 necessity of the propitiation made by Christ, as the foundation of his enquiry. In the fecond he confiders the nature of facrifices; endeavouring to shew, first, that they were only offerings, or facred gifts, of things received first from God, and presented back to him for an external expression of gratitude, acknowlegement, faith, and every pious sentiment; secondly, that their success depend ed wholly on the suitableness of the minifter, or priest; thirdly, that where facrifice was offered for others, the minister, or prieft, acted the part of a mediator, or patron, with God, on their behalf; and, fourthly, that this supposed some conjunction of nature or affections between them. 4 In the third part he proceeds to apply what was laid down in the second to the facrifice and mediation of Christ; and here he observes, that the sacrifice of Christ is the antitype of the former facrifices, which implies its standing upon its own ground, independently of all foregoing figures and types. He tells us further, that we must undoubtedly affign to the divine wisdom a scheme founded, in the nature of things, independently of all religious rites or types going before; for God, he fays, in forming his scheme, had no regard to the types; but, in ordaining the latter, had the former in view, to which the types were to be ministerial: so 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 reason, says he, forst 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 supposed divine scheme, it will be found, that the first are very agreeable, and the ⚫ latter very applicable, to the fame: and if there had never been any facrifice offered before that of Christ, the fame language in the main might have been very properly devised to illustrate the part Chrift bore in this scheme, together with the effects of his death; so that the sacrificial expressions are, by all means, to be retained, as shewing besides the con'nection between the legal and Christian economies.' ८ Chrift, we are told by this author, did not offer his facrifice 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 justice, and tells us, that Chrift's facrifice contained (these are his own words) a natural inducement 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 interest, mediation, or interceffion of tome person more agreeable than ourselves. The ( |