|| voyage from India, that little chance of escape will remain to them. A description, from the latest surveys, is given of the several naval stations which the Cape affords: Saldanha Bay is greatly preferred by the author, for its superior security; and he thinks the scarcity of water there may easily be obviated. of their monopoly, would use indirect means to have it restored to the implacable enemy of their country, in whose hands it may be made an engine to shake the very foundations of their own wealth and power! Mr. B. proceeds to detail a variety of instances, which clearly shew that the Cape is an excellent station for seasoning troops to endure the climate of India, The commercial advantages to be derived from the and particularly so for forming into soldiers, the young Cape of Good Hope, are the least important to this recruits usually chosen for the East India Company's country. Its exports are at present very trifling, nor service. Its importance as a military station is fur- can they in our author's opinion be greatly encreased. ther enhanced by the readiness with which troops || The propriety of rendering it a depôt of Indian com. may be sent from thence to the coasts of India : or modities may be disputed, although by this means we to the Red Sea, in case of any new attempt of the might retain the whole Indian trade in our own hands. French to penetrate to India by that route. The un- As a station for the Southern Whale Fishery, however, common cheapness of provisions at the Cape, and a its advantages might be great; that whole fishery premium borne there by the bills drawn, for the pay of must of necessity fall into our hands, as we could troops, on the government of Great Britain, also undersell every other nation; whereas at present our render this the cheapest station, where we can main- adventurers in this line are subjected to the greatest tain a part of our forces. As the expence of main- difficulties, owing to our not having a single port in taining a sufficient military establishment at the Cape, that quarter at which they can refit or refresh. was given out by some persons to be enormous, Mr. In the statistical account of the colony, which is B. shews from official documents, that in the whole drawn up with much perspicuity, one is particularly seven years we retained possession of that colony, the struck with the extreme scantiness of the population. military department cost no more than £1,789,181, In a country blest with a most salubrious climate, in or £255,597 on an annual average; and this too in many places possessing a fertile soil, and comprethe time of war, and while we maintained there an army hending an extent of 120,000 square miles, it seems of five thousand men. But as during this period many altogether unaccountable that the whole population, fortifications were erected, Mr. B. calculates, that in freemen and slaves, should, in the long period it has time of peace the contingencies and extraordinaries of been colonized, amount to no more than 61,000 souls ; the army would not amount to above twenty-five or which, as Mr. B. observes, is about one human creathirty thousand pounds, and that this sum, as well ture to every two square miles. The thinness of the as all the demands of the civil department, might by population is almost entirely to be ascribed to the aba prudent management be easily defrayed out of the surd regulations of the Dutch government, who from revenues of the colony. a jealous policy would not allow farm-houses in the After observing on the means afforded by the Cape interior parts to be built within three miles of each at present to the French, in supplying with provisions other. The quantity of waste land arising from this and stores, the isles of France and Mauritius, our and other causes is prodigious; and even those parts author enters into a desultory discussion of the com- which are occupied, are cultivated in the most parative importance of Malta and the Cape to Great || slovenly and careless manner. Britain; his conclusion is, that neither can be given up to France, without endangering the security of our East India possessions. The military defences of the Cape peninsula, and the best modes of attack, with the probability of its falling an easy prey to any British force that may at present appear before it, conclude this chapter. The advantages resulting from the Cape of Good Hope as a naval station, are the shelter it affords to ships so often distressed by violent storms in those latitudes, and the convenience it affords to all vessels for refitting and refreshing. The command it gives of the Indian Seas, by affording a station for ships of war, presents another important benefit; the ships of every nation that trades to India must stop here, as none but the English can attempt such a voyage without refreshing; and our cruizers can with the utmost ease be dispatched to either America or India. At the same time, if the French possess this station, with the isles of France and Mauritius, and the Rio de la Plata, belonging to their tributary Spain, and shall be able to place cruizing squadrons at these, it will be in their power so completely to beset our trading vessels, particularly on their homeward-bound Mr. B. informs us that all ranks of people in the colony, are better fed, and with less labour, than in any part of the world. A beggar is a thing unheard of; and yet the slovenliness, indolence, and bad dispositions of a great part of the colonists render them a most uncomfortable and unhappy race. The inhuman cruelty of the more distant boors to the helpless and peaceable Hottentots, is exemplified in a number of instances that shock human nature; and yet by this means they doom themselves to the most tormenting and perpetual apprehensions of retaliation.--Our author concludes his statistical view by recommending certain improvements, which we trust will not be overlooked by government, if it should be judged advisable to regain possession of this colony to Great Britain. After having given this analysis of the work before us, it will be unnecessary to offer any general criticisms. The language like the arrangement is loose and careless. Yet Mr. Barrow is entitled to much praise: he has given his countrymen a fuller and more accurate account of the Cape of Good Hope than any preceding traveller; and if very strong considerations cannot be brought forward to outweigh the advantages he supposes Great Britain would derive from the possession of this colony, he deserves much praise for having stood forward to awaken the attention of his countrymen to so important a national object. The plates which accompany the work are well executed and valuable on many accounts. The charts of the several bays must be of much importance to our seamen in the event of the Cape being retaken; and the military map of the southern peninsula of the Cape, is so distinctly laid down, as to afford, we should imagine, considerable information to our military men who might be employed in carrying that enterprize into execution. Ω. every other party was so far in the wrong, as to forfeit all claim to be considered part of the church of Christ. Calvinists and Arminians; Episcopalians and Presbyterians; each sect and denomination advanced the exclusive pretension, it alone was the peculiar flock; all others stood without the pale. At the time of which we are speaking, such notions, however unchristian, and pernicious, were not surprising, if we consider the state of knowledge in other subjects not more difficult. As knowledge has advanced, these notions have been gradually altered. Men are not so far conceited with their own ideas, as to suppose that they alone can be right. They are convinced that the points in which Christians agree are the essential matters; and that though one mode of Christianity may be more effectual than another in conveying just senti and virtue; they may be both pious and virtuous, adhering to any form of Christianity; and by conse quence, real Christians. the most important objects; between the doctrine of the atonement, for example, and the peculiar light in which we are to regard the relation in which we stand to the Divine Being. But when disputes come to matters of external form, they are below contempt. When, for example, the whole world is thrown into combustion by contending whether Easter should be celebrated always on one day of the moon, or one day of the week; whether our addresses should be made to the Deity with our faces turned to the east or to any other quarter. Primitive Truth and Order vindicated from modern Misrepresentation; with a Defence of Episcopacy,ments of the divine nature, and training men to piety particularly that of Scotland, against an Attack made on it, by the late Dr. Campbell of Aberdeen; | in his Lectures on Ecclesiastical History: and a concluding Aldress to the Episcopalians of Scotland. The violence with which differences on points of By the Right Rev. John Skinner, in Aberdeen, Senior belief have been maintained has been frequently very Bishop of the Scotch Episcopal Church. 8vo. pp. 545. ridiculous, and very mischievous. But we must conAberdeen, 1803. For Rivingtons, London, &c. fess that we look with a sort of reverence on an earThis book is a proof of what we asserted, when nestness in speculative points; because in general a considering the controversy between the Chancel-connection is discernible between them and some of lor of Ireland, and the Earl Fingal, that the Roman Catholics are not the only set of Christians, who confine the title Church of Christ to those who adopt the same principles and forms with themselves. Here is a person, firmly convinced himself, and who labours with prodigious earnestness to persuade the world, that nothing can be called the church of Christ, which has not one class of teachers of a higher order than two other classes, appointed to a superiority over these two classes by persons who themselves enjoyed it, and to whom it was derived from similar teachers, in an uninterrupted line from the apostles, whose immediate, and only successors these teachers have been. Let any community of persons exist, who have only one class of religious instructors, and let these persons believe the Christian doctrine, and discharge the Christian duties, more perfectly than any community of Christians has ever yet done, and let the teachers be the most wise, virtuous, and faithful, which have ever existed since the days of the apostles, it is all to no purpose; such teachers are no successors of the apostles; nor do they and their adherents form any part of the church of Christ. Why? Because the authority to teach Christianity must come from the apostles, communicated first to one man and then to another, through all ages, in an uninterrupted lineal descent. We had formed so high an opinion of the knowledge diffused in our nation as to believe that this wretched theory could no longer be maintained in the light of day; and that it was consigned to the place of many other ridiculous notions entertained when the human mind had not yet emerged from the darkness of the Gothic ages. At the time when a part of the Christian world dissented from the Romish church, and, as was natural, broke into different parties, each party imagined that it alone had done right; it exaggerated the points of difference; and laboured to prove that Of this wretched class is the dispute maintained with so much vehemence by the poor man who is the author of this performance. It is not any doctrine, or supposed doctrine of Christianity about which he is so much agitated. It is only a matter of church government; it is not the thing taught, but the manner of teaching it. This mode, this form, is according to him, the very essence of Christianity; since a man is no longer a Christian, though right in every thing else, if he be wrong in this cardinal point. If he believe not that there were three orders of Christian pastors-1st. Bishops; 2d. Priests or Presbyters; and 3d, Deacons, appointed by the head of the church; that there has been a regular succession of bishops, down from the apostles, who have communicated to one another, by this lineal descent, the authority which the apostles derived from Jesus Christ; and that it is in this lineal descent alone, and by this communication, that authority to administer the rites of Christianity can be derived; he may be a very good man, a sincere worshipper of God, and believer in the redemption by Christ Jesus, but he is no member of the Church, and can expect none of the privileges and rewards of a Christian. The cause from which this production seems more immediately to have originated is the appearance of a posthumous work of the late Dr. Campbell, the pro found and venerable author of The Dissertation on Miracles, The Philosophy of Rhetoric, and A Trans lation of the Gospels. It was part of Dr. Campbell's duty, as professor of Theology in the University of Aberdeen, to deliver Lectures to the students on Eccle trick, to profess any religion in name, which by their proceedings they appeared to contenn. If by their conduct (the only language that rarely lies) they seemed to regard worid, as a mere invention to keep the vulgar in obedience, the great ruling principle of the moral and the natural the politic purpose they have in view. They would find it they apprehend that by such a conduct they would defeat difficult to make others to believe in a system to which they manifestly gave no credit themselves. The Christian statesmen of this land would indeed first provide for the multitude; because it is the multitude; and is therefore, as such, the first object in the ecclesiastical institution, and in all institutions. They have been taught, that the circumof the great tests of its true mission. They think, therestance of the gospel's being preached to the poor, was one fore, that those do not believe it, who do not take care it should be preached to the poor. But as they know that charity is not confined to any one description, but ought to apply itself to all men who have wants, they are not detresses of the miserable great. They are not repelled through a fastidious delicacy, at the stench of their arrogance and presumption, from a medicinal attention to their mental blotches and running sores. They are sensible, than to any others; from the greatness of the temptation that religious instruction is of more consequence to them to which they are exposed; from the important consequences that attend their faults; from the contagion of their ill example; from the necessity of bowing down the stubborn neck of their pride and ambition to the yoke of moderation and virtue; from a consideration of the fat stupidity and gross ignorance concerning what imports men most to know, which prevails at courts, and at the head of armies, and in senates, as much as at the loom and in the field. siastical History. A part of these, relating to the primitive state of Christianity, were left by him, perfectly prepared for the press; and they were published by his executors some time after his death. On inquiring into the mode in which the first assemblies of the Christians were formed, and their affairs conducted, Dr. Campbell found, as many enlightened and impar- || tial men had done before him, the learned and judicious Mosheim for instance, and the ingenious and diligent author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that a perfect equality existed between the teachers, and that every assembly or congregation formed an independent community, which acknow-prived of a due and anxious sensation of pity to the disledged no authority except that of any eminent teacher, whose advice or reproof it might deem it expedient and profitable to receive. In giving this account Dr. Campbell found it necessary to take notice of the claim which had been put in for the divine right of episcopacy. This claim is founded on the belief that three orders of priests in regular subordination were appointed by Jesus Christ, and intended to continue to the end of the world. This accordingly is directly contrary to the conclusion, which from the examination of the documents come down to us, Dr. Campbell was induced to draw; and he has taken much greater pains to remove every plea which can be made for it, than in our opinion it deserves. The lectures were probably drawn up at an early period of his life, when the absurdity of the claim was not so generally seen as at present. The refutation is conducted with all that extensive learning, and singular acuteness, for which the author was so remarkable; and certainly he often sets the arguments for the Jus Divinum in a very ridiculous light. That great and respectable body, the church of England, the best and purest form of the episcopal polity, has no controversy with Dr. Campbell on this subject. The divine right of episcopacy is now as little taught by her enlightened and liberal sons, as the divine right of kings. They prefer, indeed, the monarchical form of civil government; and the episcopal form of church government; not because they think there is any thing sacred, and inviolable in either; but because they think the one is best adapted for promoting social order, and the other for promoting Christian edification. It is the expediency of the forms, not their divine right for which they value them. Consider that eloquent eulogium on episcopacy penned by Mr. Burke in his reflections on the revolution in France; you will find that every topic of praise, so persuasively urged, is drawn from the utility of the institution; not a word is said of its divine appointment; yet this is not a topic which would have been omitted by so sincere a Christian as Mr. Burke, had he believed it was of any value. The passage is highly worthy of attention: . The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and leading in England, whose wisdom (if they have any) is open and direct, would be ashamed,. as of a silly deceitful consolations of religion are as necessary as its instructions. part from the Ecclesiastical. Our provident constitution has therefore taken care that those who are to instruct presumptuous ignorance, those who are to be censors over insolent vice, should neither incur their contempt, nor live upon their alms; nor will it tempt the rich to a neglect of the true medicine of their minds. For these reasons, whilst we provide first for the poor, and with a parental solicitude, we have not relegated religion (like something we were ashamed to shew) to obscure municipalities or rustic villages. No! We will have her to exalt her mitred front in courts and parliaments. We will have her mixed throughout the whole mass of life, and blended with all the classes of society. The people of England will shew to the haughty potentates of the world, and to their talking sophisters, that a free, a generous, an informed nation, honours the high magistrates of its church; that it will not suffer the insolence of wealth and titles, or any other species of proud pretension, to look down with scorn upon what they look up to with reverence; nor presume to trample on that acquired personal nobility, which they intend always to be, and which often is the fruit, not the reward, (for what can be the reward?) of learning, piety, and virtue. They can see, without pain or grudging, an Archbishop precede a Duke. They can see a Bishop of Durham, or a Bishop of Winchester, in possession of ten thousand pounds a year; and cannot conceive why it is in worse hands than estates to the like amount in the hands of this Earl, or that Squire; although it may be true, that so many dogs and horses are not kept by the former, and fed with the victuals which ought to nourish the children of the people. It is true, the whole church revenue is not always employed, and to every shilling, in charity; nor perhaps ought it; but something is generally so employed. It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist." Thus too Dr. Campbell: a circumstance of which it may be impossible for him to be apprised." "The outward order, however important it may be, affects not the essence of religion in the least. The garments which a man wears, or the house in which he lodges, however necessary for his accommodation and comfortable subsistence, are not as his limbs and members, and still less as the powers and faculties of his mind, a part of his person. Now in this respect there appears a very close analogy. For though in our present situation, clothes and dwelling are requisite for protecting us against the inclemencies of the weather, and other external accidents, we may, nevertheless, have both clothes and dwelling of different forms, yet equally commodious. Nay, one form may be more convenient in certain climates and certain situations which is less convenient in other climates and other situations. The same thing may with equal truth be affirmed concerning the form of church government. Of whatever mode it be, absolute or limited, monarchical or republican, unless it degenerate into tyranny, it is intitled to the obedience of the subject. For the powers that be, 85, are ordained of God.' No criterion is mentioned but established possession. Now I can see no reason why a church may not subsist under different forins as well as a state, and though it must be owned, that one form may be more favourable than another to the spirit and design of the constitution, we cannot always judge with safety from the first of these how much it has retained of the last. Nay, I must acknowledge, that for any thing I could ever discover in the sacred oracles to the contrary, the internal order may properly undergo such alterations, as the ends of edification in different exigencies may require, and prudence may direct. The only thing of real importance is, that nothing be admitted which can in any way subvert the fundamental maxims, or infringe the spiritual nature of the government." "It will be owned likewise, by those who on this subject are capable of examining with coolness, and pronouncing with impartiality, that we have not that information in holy writ, from which we can with certainty form a judge"Permit me to premise in general, that the question so ment concerning the entire model of the apostolic church. much agitated, not only between protestants and papists, What we can learn thence on this subject, we must collect but also between sects of protestants, in regard to the ori- from scattered hints given as it were incidentally, when ginal form of government established by the apostles in the nothing seemed less the intention of the writers than to church, though not a trivial question, is by no means of convey to us a particular account of the plan or the society that consequence which some warm disputants, misled by they had formed. What can we thence conclude, but party prejudices, and that intemperate zeal, into which a that nothing was farther from the view of the inspired struggle long maintained commonly betrays the antagonists writers than to prescribe any rule to us on the subject, or on both sides, would affect to make it. It is said prover- to give us any information which could lead us to imagine, bially by the Apostle, as holding alike of every thing ex- that a particular form of polity was necessary, or even ternal and circumstantial: "The kingdom of God is not more acceptable to God than another? What can we meat and drink, but righteousness and peace, and joy in conclude, but that it was intended by the Holy Spirit thus the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serveth to teach us to distinguish between what is essential to the Christ, is acceptable to God, and approved of men.' Christian religion, the principles to be believed, and the To me nothing is more evident than that the essence of duties to be practised, and which are therefore perpetual Christianity, abstractly considered, consists in the system and unchangeable; and what is comparatively circumstanof doctrines and duties, revealed by our Lord Jesus Christ, tial, regarding external order and discipline, which, as and that the essence of the Christian character consists in matters of expedience, alter with circumstances, and are the belief of the one, and the obedience of the other. therefore left to the adjustment of human prudence!—If And nothing can be conceived more absurd in itself, or the scriptures contain a revelation from God, and consemore contradictory to the declarations of scripture, than to quently be true, we must admit them to be perfect, and to say that a man's belief, and obedience of the gospel, how- want nothing essential to the information of Christians in ever genuine the one, and however sincere the other, are faith and practice. But in this he can never consistently of no significancy, unless he has received his information of acquiesce, who maintains a certain ecclesiastical polity to the gospel, or been initiated into the church by a proper be essential, concerning which the scripture has given us minister. This is placing the essence of religion, not in neither information nor command. This necessarily forces any thing interior and spiritual, not in what Christ and his us into the dilemma of affirming, either that the above apostles placed it, something personal in regard to the dis-doctrine is not only false, but pernicious, in subverting the ciple, and what is emphatically styled in scripture the hidden man of the heart, but in an exterior circumstance, a circumstance which in regard to him is merely accidental, authority of scripture; or that scripture is both false and self-contradictory in asserting the perfection of its own doctrine, whilst it has withholden all intelligence upon an article, without the observance of which, all the other instructions it gives are vain, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins." They for the divine and indefeasible right of kings. These adhered to what they call their old establishment, to their own formularies, and their own articles. Such is the doctrine which by the present perform- maintained the jurisdiction of their own order of ance we are taught to believe is the subversion of pri- || bishops, and receive clergymen ordained by them mitive truth and order. If it be, we are seriously only. This party has gradually dwindled and sunk; afraid primitive truth and order has few friends in this it is at this moment nearly the obscurest and meanest; kingdom. For we dare confidently assert that very and may, with the exception of a very few individuals, few belong, either to the church of England, to the be safely pronounced nearly the most ignorant and bichurch of Scotland, or even to the body of dissenters, goted of all the Scottish sectaries. It must very soon who are not ready to subscribe to these mischievous become extinct, because as any individual belonging opinions. It must afford great consolation however, to it acquires a portion of that liberality which is now to the friends of "primitive truth and order," that so so general, unless he be one of the clergy, he leaves weighty a cause has found so well qualified a sup-this" old established church of Scotland," and joins porter. Things are just as they should be, when a the church of England. ridiculous proposition is maintained by trifling in the shape of argument, misrepresentation of an adversary instead of refutation, and unmannerly, illiberal imputations, instead of any proof of evil consequences connected with the doctrines opposed. Our author is a distinguished member of this party, whose pretensions are so magnificent. He is by consequence a very great man. He is a bishop, and the oldest bishop of the community. He is a direct successor of the apostles; and all those to whom he shall give a commission have a divine authority to preach; though no one receiving a commission from a body of such men as Dr. Blair, Dr. Robertson, and Dr. Campbell has any such authority; nor have they any such authority themselves; nor do they belong to the church of Christ. It is worth while to know a little who the great character is, who has written a book, which in the beginning of the nineteenth century deserves to be held a phenomenon. He is a member of what he himself calls p. 7, "The old established church of Scotland." There is an ambiguity in this expression, of which the author meant to avail himself. It does not mean, according to him, the church formerly established, but which is not the established church now. It means the church established of old in Scotland, and which is the only established church in it still. We know that this is the doctrine of the party. Accordingly it is observable, that throughout the whole of this publication, whenever the author has occasion to speak of the church of Scotland, he calls it the establishment, but never, as far as we remember, the established church. Indeed it would be absurd in him to do so, as Presbyterianism, according to him, can never be a part of what scripture denomi-tical nates the "body of Christ." This old established church of Scotland," the exemplar in that country of "primitive truth and order," which is the established church, without being the establishment, was patronized by the four princes of the house of Stuart; and they endeavoured with the utmost earnestness, and with all the barbarities of a long and obstinate persecution, to impose it upon the unwilling people. The people resisted with the utmost earnestness, and with a steadiness of which there are few examples in history; and at last when freedom became, at the revolution, the system of government, they were gratified by the establishment of their beloved presbyterianism. On this occasion the adherents of Episcopacy who were but a small proportion of the people, were divided into two sorts. Part of them approved of the expulsion of the Stuart family from the throne. These joined the church of England, erected chapels under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, obtained clergymen ordained by the English bishops, have acquired their full share of the improvement and liberality which has been diffused in the nation, and are at present a most respectable, and leading body in the country. Another party were equally zealous for the divine right of episcopacy, and Observe in what terms this modest bishop speaks of the establishment to which these men belonged.-He had been pathetically deploring the effects produced by a late sect in Scotland, which had sent forth missionaries into every part of the country, and laboured with wonderful zeal to gain proselytes. Against these efforts the general assembly of the church of Scotland thought proper to warn the people by a pastoral admonition, directed to be read in all the churches. To this measure our right reverend author alludes in the following words; Attempts have been made, by something like ecclesiasauthority, to stop the progress of this growing evil, and to administer a remedy to those who are infected by this missionary phrensy; a sort of possession more worthy of one who has his dwelling among the tombs,' than of those who reside in the habitations of men! But they, who of the disease, and be able to trace the malady to its proper prescribe the remedy, ought to understand well the nature source. People, who admonish others to beware of falling into any dangerous error in matters of religion, ought themselves to be exempt from the mischief,† against which their admonition is directed. Such warnings come with an ill grace, and therefore with no great probability of doing much good, from those, who, perhaps it will be said, derive their own ministry from the same contempt of a regular apostolic mission, of which they now see such alarining consequences, as have at last produced a wish to prevent their farther increase." What caution, and tenderness of conscience! This successor of the apostles, and by consequence an apostle himself, only states that perhaps it will be said * Modest gentleman! The authority of the church of Scotland, the authority of the church established by law, that church which the King has sworn to maintain, is only something like ecclesiastical authority. It is not ecclesiastical authority really. No, by no means. It is only something like it; something which usurps the appearance of it. The church of Scotland is full of the same mischief which it imputes to that new sect, against which it thinks proper to warn the people.-A very civil remark! |