pean connexion! Nor does it appear from anything that occurs in these volumes, that they were repaid for their sufferings by the communication of genuine religious instruction. They had tendered to them rites and ceremonies in abundance; deference to sacerdotal authority was sufficiently inculcated; but the simplicity of Divine truth, whatever Mr. Southey may think on the subject, was little likely to be taught by the injured' and notorious followers of St. Francis Xavier.

Art, VIII. An easy Method of acquiring the Reading of Hebrew with the Vowel-points, according to the ancient Practice. By an experienced Teacher. Price Is. 6d. London, 1822.

THIS easy method' is comprised in a very neatly and distinctly printed table, including three lessons; the first containing the Alphabet, with the collateral addition of the Rabbinical and German Hebrew characters; the second, the vowel points, with a few useful rules; the third, a sort of praxis on the letters and points. A useful chart is thus provided for constant reference; but we regret that it has not been extended to the inclusion of the nominal and verbal paradigms. Some years ago, Israel Lyons compiled a very convenient short grammar of the Hebrew language, which is not now to be procured, and which we think that Mr. Borrenstein would have done well to republish.

Mr. B. has prepared expositions of the Syriac and Arabic alphabets on a similar plan; and they are stated to be in course of publication. We have felt some surprise at the non-adoption of this scheme in application to all the Eastern languages, comprehending the leading grammatical formule. Few persons push their investigations of these dialects to any considerable advance; but a general acquaintance with their character is important in many respects; and this would be much facilitated by the aid of tabular arrangements.

Art. IX. Two Letters on the Subject of the French Bible, published by the British and Foreign Bible Society: with a Postscript, containing Remarks on the concluding Observations of the Editor of the Christian Remembrancer, on the Whole Correspondence. By the Rev. John Owen. A.M. One of the Secretaries of the B. & P. Society, &c. 8vo. Price 1s. London. 1822.

THIS last attack upon the British and Foreign Bible So

ciety, while it shews that the virus of opposition has lost none of its malignity, is the most contemptible in kind; that has hitherto been made, and has proved to the assailant party the most signally mortifying in its issue. A Dr. Luscombe, who

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distinguished himself some years ago by his opposition to the formation of the Hertford Auxiliary Bible Society, has charged the Committee of the Parent Society, with having sent forth to the world, a corrupted translation of the Bible. This broad charge, when explained, amounts to this; that in one of the editions of the French Bible circulated by the Society, the language of St. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 19, is not rendered, as Dr. Lus combe thinks it ought to have been," Dieu étoit en Christ ré conciliant le monde avec lui-même," but, " Dieu a réconcilié le "monde avec soi-même, par Christ," a rendering supported by high authorities. This is actually the substance of the charge, and silly enough it is. But the inquiry to which it has given rise, has brought out the fact, that the venerable and immaculate Society for promoting Christian Knowledge has actually been circulating for ten or twelve years past, a French Testament containing the most palpable corruptions of the text, in passages of the greatest doctrinal importance! This fact was known to the Conductors of the Magazine in which the charge was vented; and was dishonestly concealed at the very time they were bringing an indictment against the Bible Society. And now it is discovered, the Editor has the impudence to confess that he knew it; but that he did not think there appeared any necessity for bringing it before the public uncalled for!! He moreover affirms, that the venerable Society did not publish the Socinianized version: they only circulated it ! And for more than a fortnight after the appearance of the Editor's Letter in the New Times, copies were on sale as usual.

Mr. Owen's Letters do the highest credit to his candour and Christian temper. In nothing has the Bible Society been more fortunate, than in the admirable qualifications of head and heart which distinguish its Secretaries, unless it be in the fatuity of its adversaries. This same Editor who has backed Dr. Lus combe in his attack, concludes his explanatory observations with suggesting one remedy for the evils inseparable from the system of the British and Foreign Bible Society. rods nl bold bre

The evil,' he says, admits but of one remedy: contract the sphere of the Society's operations; sacrifice a little magnificence and a great, deal of declamation to practical and permanent utility; publish a few correct translations; and those who disapprove of the Bible Society, will then be ready to admit that some benefits may result from its operation.

Insolence and bigotry can go no further than this! Hitherto, no benefits, it seems, have resulted from the Bible Society's operations! But if they will but contract their issues of Bibles, suspend some of the Translations of the Scriptures which are going forward in almost every language under heaven,

copy the Bartlett's Buildings Committee in the venerable slowness of their movements, leave, like them, their Bookseller to choose the editions to be circulated, and lay out the surplus of their income in the purchase of stock and exchequer bills,if, in a word, they will but consent to do less good, to raise less money, and give away fewer Bibles,-they whose highest wish on earth it is to see the Society on the decline, will, in consideration of such concession, bestow on the Committee the meed of their approbation.

Art. X. Dissertation on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper: or a Refutation of the Hoadlyan Scheme of it. By Henry Card, M.A. F.R.S. &c. Third Edition. 8vo. pp. xxx, 206. London, 1821.

THE HE former editions of this work, which never fell under our notice, bore the title of an Essay on the Eucharist, which is now abandoned for the more popular and comprehensible one' of a Dissertation on the Lord's Supper. It has for its object to maintain that view of the Eucharist, which was first insisted on and illustrated at large by Cudworth, and afterwards by Warburton; namely, that its true character is, a feast after a sacrifice,' St. Paul's reasonings, 1 Cor. x. 16, &c. are considered by these Writers as implying something more than an analogy; as asserting a close resemblance between the Lord's Supper and the feasts which, among heathens as well as Jews, followed after sacrifices. When this view of the rite is insisted upon for the purpose of excluding what enters not less essentially into its character, its design as a commemoration of the death of Christ, it becomes erroneous, since it is to substitute the figurative for the literal import. There can be otherwise no objection to the representation. It is one with which Protestant. Dissenters are very familiar. Henry's Exposition speaks on this point the habitual language of their ministers. In short, the Lord's-supper is a feast on the sacrificed body ⚫ and blood of our Lord: epulum ex oblatis. And to eat of the feast is to partake of the sacrifice, and so to be his guests to whom the sacrifice was offered; and this in token of friendship with him.'* To all who believe in the doctrine of the Atonement, this idea is necessarily included in the rite, even when viewed as purely commemorative:' since what is commemorated is, the death of Christ as a sacrifice, as " the propitiation for our sins." What, indeed, was the passover but, a rite purely commemorative? What discrepancy, then, can

Henry's Exposition, Vol. V. 1 Cor. x.
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VOL. XVII. N. S.

there be between the notion that the Lord's Supper is a memorial -in opposition to the Romish and semi-Romish notions, a bare "memorial,'—and the belief that the event of which it is a memorial, was the offering of Christ as a sin-offering to take away our sins. This belief Zwingle undoubtedly held, and as undoubtedly he taught that the elements are bare signs or symbols of the body offered and the blood shed for us. Mr. Card has confounded together two things essentially different, the notions entertained by Zwingle and advocated by Hoadley as to the nature of the rite, and the Socinian view of the death of Christ. That there is no necessary connexion between what he terms the low notion of the rite, and low notions of the event it is designed to commemorate, he must himself admit; since, in charging upon the Anabaptists,' a violent attachment to Zwingle's views of the rite, he would not wish to be understood as falsely imputing to them a denial of the Atonement.

This indistinctness or confusion of ideas vitiates the whole of, Mr. Card's reasonings on the subject. If it was his design to oppose the Socinian notion, (which, if we understand him right, is gaining ground among those who call themselves sincere, members of the Establishment,') the direct method would have been, to point out the design and nature of our Lord's death, and the views of his sufferings which are essential to a due commemoration of them. This would have been, we beg leave to submit, much more adapted to turn the people to a ⚫ better way of thinking,' than a revival of the Hoadleian controversy in all its disgraceful bitterness. It is, indeed, a most unhappy method of handling a practical subject, to mix it up, with splenetic invectives against a prelate whose real offence. was, his honestly deprecating the great scandal of his own Church, the prostitution of the Lord's Supper consequent on the Test-act. What were Bishop Hoadley's theological opinions on other points, we are not concerned to inquire. They were probably far from orthodox. But, such as they were, he might have held them with perfect impunity, had he not avowed him

Mr. Card 6 says. Bishop Hoadley, by stripping the Sacrament of all efficacious grace even to the worthy receiver, and thus destroying all idea of atonement, satisfaction, or propitiation, (since what are the benefits of these things, if Christ's death be not a real sacrifice?) has in effect proclaimed his disbelief of the Divinity of Christ.' This is either singularly weak arguing, or it is most unwarrantable assertion. As well might the Papist contend, that by rejecting the oblation of the host, Protestants in effect deny all idea of atonement or sacrifice. Between the Bishop's views of the sacrament, and a denial of the virtue of Christ's death as a real sacrifice, there is at least no necessary con

nexion.

self, in his political writings, what our Author is pleased to term of the lowest order of Whiggism.' But how pernicious must be the tendency of that ecclesiastical system which leads a clergyman like Mr. Card thus to mix up religious with political ideas, and to preface a dissertation on the Lord's Supper with an angry diatribe against the Republican Bishop and Whiggism. Is a renunciation of Whig principles part of the preparation he would enjoin on his parishioners previously to their partaking of the ordinance? Putting aside the bad taste and rancorous party feeling which are displayed in this strange association, where is the candour, the integrity of heaping all sorts of invective on the head of Bishop Hoadley for his bold and mischievous hypothesis' respecting the Eucharist as a bare memorial; while the Author is forced to admit, that the opinion numbers among its advocates, men of commanding powers and polemical acuteness,' whom it would be the height of injustice, of blind delusion,' to regard as otherwise than zealously affected to the best interests of the Church?" Why the Bishop of Bangor should be alone vilified for asserting an opinion held alike by Archbishops Herring and Tillotson and by Bishop Lowth, it remains for Mr. Card to explain.

We are far from altogether coinciding with Bishop Hoadley in his view of the Lord's Supper, but every sound Protestant must regard as far more dangerous the notions of those who were his most furious opponents; the abettors of a sacramental grace dispensed by a mediatorial priesthood. This notion is well known to have been maintained by Law, who went the length of declaring, that Christian priests are left us in Christ's stead to carry on his great design of saving us; and in his Second Letter to the Bishop of Bangor, that when the bishop ⚫or priest intercedes for the congregation, and pronounces the Apostolic benedictions upon them, this is not barely an act ⚫ of charity and humanity of one Christian praying for another, but is the work of a person commissioned by God to bless in his name, and be effectually ministerial in the conveying of graces. It was because he exposed impious pretensions like these, that Hoadley was accused by that famous non-juror,' of exposing the validity of the sacraments, rallying on the uninterrupted succession of priests, and pulling down every pillar in the Church of Christ. Why,' says Dr. Barrow, is the opus operatum in sacraments taught to confer grace, but to breed a high opinion of the priest and all that he ⚫ doth ?'

Mr. Card is far from going these lengths. We meet in his volume with none of these mad assumptions on behalf of the clergy, and he reasons sometimes piously and temperately.