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pointed out. If it be treated with ridicule, merely because it is uncommon, I am willing to take my share of the indignity." P. 434.

As to the offices in which he is employed, the subject of the third enquiry, it is easily answered by these rational Christians. Truly, he is busy, invisibly, in " acquiring or improving those qualifications which may be requisite for sustaining the high and honourable office which is assigned to him," viz. that of being the Judge of the whole world; and indeed, as he is thus employed, in improving his qualifications for the Judge's office, we cannot wonder that Mr. Belsham, in the same page, should pronounce him to be, in no manner an object of prayer or worship!

We are really tired of all these absurdities, and must bring our review to a conclusion. Mr. Belsham is now, as he tells us in his preface, incapacitated by age and infirmities from public service. We do not wish to disturb his repose, and we are far from wishing to question his sincerity. But of his theological talents we have a very mean opinion; of his liberality and courtesy, the book before us has given us no very favourable impression; and as to his system of Christianity, so long as we are able to see and to read the Greek Testament for ourselves, we shall assuredly not resort to Mr. Belsham, or any of his Essexstreet disciples, to help us to interpret it. We had more things to notice, but it is quite time to conclude. We are glad that we have seen the book, because it tends to confirm all that we had previously thought of the perfect shallowness of the Unitarian system. They may well make their appeal to Philosophy; for as to Divinity, there is nothing of it in their whole system. God is God, it is true; but scarcely the God of man. The latter being so much his own child, as to be sure of all possible indulgence, and so much his assured heir to the riches of heaven, without Christ, as to be perfectly incapable of disinheritance. Alas! alas! that such things should really be suffered to pass for Christianity !

Mr. Belsham's last sermon, or rather discourse, for sermon it can scarcely be called, is entitled, " A Comparison between the preceding and the present Age, with respect to the Encouragement given to Theological Enquiry;" that is, in fact, Theological Free-thinking : for enquiry does not satisfy Mr. Belsham's party. Of this, we have a remarkable instance in the use which they make of Griesbach's edition of the New Testament, on which they seem willing to rest their prospects of a speedy end to the Trinitarians and their doctrines, because they now have such high authority for rejecting certain passages, which before stood grievously in their way: and there their enquiries seem to stop. But true and faithful enquirers would endeavour to know what

effect the alteration or rejection of these passages had on Griesbach himself, and then they would find, that upon detection of these false readings, interpolations, &c. as they are pleased to call them, he was pleased to enter a solemn protest on his own part, against the very conclusions which they draw from his curious researches solemnly declaring his own opinion to be, that, after all, there remain so many and glaring evidences in Scripture, of the reality of Christ's divinity, as to defy all the efforts of critics and commentators to invalidate them. And another instance still we have of their treatment of Griesbach as a theological enquirer, in the case of the first chapters of Matthew and Luke which, in their new and improved version, as they style it, they mark as of doubtful authority, though Griesbach admits them as to be found in all existing MSS. or versions, without one exception. Now, such facts as these must not be adduced as instances of theological enquiry, but of bold and audacious free-thinking ; and if the present age be more favourable to such unruly attempts upon the Scriptures, than preceding ages, we are far from hailing it, as Mr. Belsham does, as the harbinger of good things.

One remark more, and we have done with Mr. Belsham; perhaps for ever. To prove that, though we are advancing to a state of perfect liberty as to all possible interpretations of the written word of God, we are not yet very near to the consummation of this great blessing, Mr. Belsham asks, among other enquiries to the same purpose"And are there not some, who, to the astonishment of the world, publicly resist the circulation of the Bible, at least without the antidote of the Common Prayer Book?". A pretty question indeed for Mr. Belsham to put, who, by his improved version, has so plainly evinced his desire, and that of most of his party, to prepare such an antidote, against the pernicious effects of the received Text, as shall set the latter totally aside, as a condemned book, exploded by the Index Expurgatorius of modern Unitarians, and the prohibitory Bull of their great Essex-street Pontiff!

When will these rational Christians condescend to become reasonable?

Remains of the late Rev. Charles Wolfe, B.A., Curate of Donoughmore,

in the Diocese of Armagh; with a brief Memoir of his Life. ́By the REV. J. A. RUSSELL, M.A. Second Edition. pp. 474. 12s. London. Hamilton. 1826.

THE Volume before us contains the biography of a late young Irish clergyman; with a selection, made from his papers by his friend and biographer, of his poems, miscellaneous thoughts, and sermons.

It does not belong to our province to enter upon a critical examination of the merits of Mr. Wolfe's poetry; our business is with his clerical life: but it seems to be now authenticated, and it will prepare many of our readers for finding traces of no common ability in his remains, that he was the writer of the admired monody, on the burial of Sir John Moore, beginning

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,

As his corse to the rampart we hurried.

It is remarkable, that he should have been content to remain the unknown author of this popular specimen of his powers, whilst the applause which it received was producing various imitations by writers who wished to obtain from the public the credit due to himself.*

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From the account given of his life we learn, that he was brought to England at an early age, and had the advantage of passing three years under Mr. Richards, at Hyde Abbey,

As we do not find, in this collection, the lines on the late king's burial, we presume they are, henceforward, to be considered as falsely ascribed to the author of the Monody on Sir J. Moore.

Its taste is not uniformly correct, yet the following stanzas are much in his style.

I saw him on the terrace proud
Walking in health and gladness,

Begirt with his court, and in all the crowd
Not a single look of sadness.

I have heard the earth on his coffin pour
To the muffled drum's deep rolling,
While the minute gun, with its solemn roar,
Drown'd the death-bell's tolling.

The time since he walked in his glory thus,
To the grave till I saw him carried,
Was an age of the mightiest change to us;
But to him a night unvaried.

Winchester; whose establishment the editor, however, seems to have confounded with William of Wykeham's noble founda tion, Winchester school and college.

Before he had finished his seventeenth year, he entered the university of Dublin, in 1809; where he is represented as gaining the affection and respect of his companions. His classical knowledge may be supposed to have facilitated his gaining considerable distinctions, in the outset of his collegiate career? but his exertions in the new pursuits, to which his attention was now summoned, are satisfactorily attested, by his afterwards carrying off an academic honour at an examination in which "the severer sciences formed the leading subjects."

In 1814 he took his Bachelor's degree; and began to prepare himself for the arduous struggle imposed on all aspirants to a Dublin fellowship. The fellows, however, by a regulation new in the Dublin College, not being permitted to marry, Mr. Wolfe, from some attachment, abandoned the pursuit, and took orders.

The next important step in Mr. Wolfe's short life, was:

"His removal from society which he loved, from the centre of science and literature, to which he was so much devoted, to an obscure and remote country curacy in the north of Ireland, where he could not hope to meet one individual to enter into his feelings, or to hold communion with him upon the accustomed subjects of his former pursuits."

His biographer states, rather romantically, that he felt this as if he had been transplanted into a totally new world ;" and that he shuddered at the sacrifice which he was about to make, as no less than is required from "a missionary abandoning home, and friends, and cherished habits, for the awful and important work to which he has solemnly devoted himself."

For the encouragement of the numbers, who are summoned from the bosom of our universities to situations, which they may be tempted at first to view with feelings resembling the above, we have to say, that Mr. Wolfe appears soon to have found real happiness in his parochial employments; though, in addition to the evils which they contemplate, he withdrew from the capital, recently deprived by death of an intimate friend; disappointed in his affections; and that he came to wretched apartments at Ballyclog, Tyrone, whose scattered population were to be sought out amidst bogs and wastes; and that, of such Protestants as he found within his cure, the majority were prepared to view him as an unsound guide. But his conduct made warm friends, where he had found the jealousy

of dissent; and as he himself advanced in the love of God, and zeal for the souls of men, he discovered, that, whilst the simplest of his parishioners could speak of those things, they could enter into, what had happily become his most anxious feelings, and could hold communion with him upon the subjects of his daily pursuits.

They who have felt the difficulty of combining any efficient endeavours, to instruct the poor, with a faithful and undisguised adherence to such opinions as the persons addressed are prejudiced against, will be glad to have as many details as can be given them, respecting any successful instances. Mr. Wolfe's biographer thus speaks of his manner, and success with the dissenters.

Amongst his constant hearers were many of the Presbyterians, who seemed much attracted by the earnestness of his devotion in reading the Liturgy-the energy of his appeals, and the general simplicity of his life; and such was the respect they began to feel towards him, that they frequently sent for him to administer spiritual comfort and support to them in the trying hour of sickness, and at the approach of death.

"A large portion of the Protestants in his parish were of that denomination; and no small number were of the class of Wesleyan Methodists. Though differing on many points from these two bodies of Christians, he however maintained with them the most friendly intercourse, and entered familiarly into discussion on the subjects upon which they were at issue with him.

"There was nothing in the course of his duties as a clergyman (as he himself declared) which he found more difficult and trying at first, . than how to discover and pursue the best mode of dealing with the numerous conscientious Dissenters in his parish, and especially with the Wesleyan Methodists, who claim connexion with the Church of England. While he lamented their errors, he revered their piety; and at length succeeded beyond his hopes in softening their prejudices, and conciliating their good will. This he effected by taking care, in his visits amongst them, to dwell particularly upon the grand and vital truths in which he mainly agreed with them, and, above all, by a patience of contradiction (yet without a surrender or compromise of opinion) on the points upon which they differed. It is a curious fact, that some of the Methodists, on a few occasions, sought to put his Christian character to the test by purposely using harsh and humiliating expressions towards him, in their conversations upon the nature of religion. This strange mode of inquisition he was enabled to bear with the meekness of a child; and some of them afterwards assured him, that they considered the temper with which such a trial is endured as a leading criterion of true conversion, and were happy to find in him so unequivocal a proof of a regenerate spirit.

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They soon learned to value his instructions as a Christian minis