I feel thankful that this was not the case,, for it was not till after I had consulted Mr. Clyne that I felt any alarm about it; nor had I, before, any idea of its being of a formidable kind. My mind, all the summer, had been much in the state it has been in for years past, that is, unable to apply the offer of the gospel to myself, and all confusion and perplexity when I attempted to do so. One evening, (about three weeks before going to London for advice,) while alone in my room, and thinking on the subject, I saw, by an instantaneous light, that God would, for Christ's sake, forgive my sins. The effect was so powerful, that I was almost dissolved by it. I was unspeakably happy; I believed, that had I died that moment, I should have been safe. Though the strength of the emotion soon abated, the effect in a great degree remained. A fortnight afterwards, I told

Isaac what had taken place, and he urged me to be proposed immediately to the church. It was in this state I went to London; and when I heard what was to me wholly unex

pected, I could not but consider the change

in my feelings as a most kind and timely preparation for what, but a few weeks before,

would have overwhelmed me with consterna

tion and distress. As it was, I heard it with great composure, and my spirits did not at all sink till after I returned home. Since then, I have had many desponding hours, from the fear of death. The happiness I enjoyed for a short time, has given place to a hope which, though faint, secures me from distress."--Vol. i. p. 164.

During all this, while the seeds of disease were making rapid progress in a frame naturally delicate, she was much affected by the death of her uncles, the Rev. James Hinton, of Oxford, and Mr. Charles Taylor, of London; and thought within herself that these heavy strokes had not come alone. Her anticipations were but too correct; for in a few months after the death of her uncle in London, she was herself conveyed to her long home. She bore her afflictions, though of the most excruciating kind, with most exemplary fortitude and patience :

“Though she had, at this time, become incapable of long-continued religious exercises, yet, to the last day of her life, her stated times of retirement were observed by her

usually in the evening. By her request, her brother read to her some portion of Scripture, and a few pages of Bennett's Christian Oratory-a book she highly valued. On these

occasions her conversation, though not elevated by the language of unclouded hope, frequently contained expressions of a humble and growing trust in the power and grace of the Saviour."---Vol. i. p. 187.

In her last moments one of her brothers arrived from London. Το him she spoke with the most emphatic earnestness, professing, very distinctly, the ground of her hope, and the deep sense she then had of the reality and importance of eternal things. Her voice was now deep and hollow, her eyes glazed, and the dews of death were on her features but her recollection was perfect, and her soul full of feeling. While thus sitting up, and surrounded by her family, in a loud but interrupted voice, she said, “ through the valley of the shadow of Though I walk death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."

Soon afterwards she repeated, with the same emphasis, the verses of Dr. Watts:

"Jesus, to thy dear faithful hand
My naked soul I trust;

And my flesh waits for thy sommand
To drop into the dust."

Repeating with intense fervour the words,

"Jesus, to thee my naked soul--

My naked soul I trust."

Calm and tranquil to the last, she breathed her redeemed and happy spirit into the bosom of her exalted and compassionate Saviour. Thus lived, and thus died, one of the sweetest of writers, and one of the most interesting of Christians.

We would again recommend the admirable "Memoirs of Miss Taylor," just published by her brother, from which we have gleaned the preceding sketch. We can assure our readers that the work is written in the first

style of biography, and does equal honor to the head and heart of the esteemed writer.

ON MILTON'S TREATISE

ON

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.

ESSAY 1.

The Doctrine concerning Christ and the Holy Spirit.

IT was reasonable and fit that the discovery of this long-lost work of one of the brightest glories of our nation, should excite eager anticipation, and that its publication, in the Latin original and in Dr. Sumner's well-executed translation, should draw universal attention. This present to the world reflects much honour on the liberal (spirit and the munificence of his Majesty. It is, indeed, a most interesting work. It exhibits the nobleness -and grandeur of the illustrious mind whence it sprung: we venture also to say that it contains proofs that such a mind had its infirmities, and those very serious ones. It is no dishonour to any Christian sect, to affirm that there is not one of them which would not exult in finding within its tents the author of the Areopagitica and of Paradise Lost. But the disappointment, which some may have felt, suggests an admonition to all," to know no man after the flesh," and to cling more closely to the great principle of Scripture-authority, sole and unrivalled. To this paramount axiom in Theology the great poet was conscientiously attached: and hence he possesses the strongest claim on our admiration and love, however we may deplore that human infirmity has marked his application of the principle with very important deviations from the line of revealed truth.

The writer of this Essay did, indeed, anticipate more alarming departures from that line than have in fact been disclosed. There were many circumstances in the genius and fortunes of MILTON, the recollection of which may shew them to have been very likely to warp his mind from the sentiments, which to us appear most consonant with the sacred word. The high imaginativé faculty, which made him the prince of poets, was, probably, incapaple of being associated with the humble talent of patient and laborious investigation. It would be apt to fly to a conclusion, before it had sufficiently

explored the path and traced its proper termination. We appeal to those who are most versed in Milton's prose writings, whether the magnificent passages which are ever arising, do not affect us more by their intuitive truth, or their single overpowering majesty, than by the soundness of the argumentation that has professedly produced them.

The conduct of the Presbyterian party after the civil war, their harassment of those who would not bow to their yoke, their licensing of the press, and their hostility to the grand ideas of equal rights and universal freedom, which ever, in the fond visions of this admirable man, were, in all probability, the too powerful means of repelling his indignant mind from the religious system which those illiberal men maintained. His generous sympathy with the oppressed, would dispose him to the most favourable feelings for the Socinians of Poland and the Remonstrants of Holland; especially when he found that they entertained views of religious liberty, and the right of private judgment, vastly superior to those entertained by the generality of their opponents. Such impressions could scarcely fail of producing a predisposition, increasing by slow degrees, to doctrinal views which enjoyed, after all, no more necessary connexion, than Calvinism had with enlarged sentiments of freedom. There are indications, in different parts of the Treatise, that the author's mind had received a tincture from the writings of the Fratres Poloni and those of the Arminian divines. As there is reason to suppose that Milton's conjugal infelicity, gave him a strong, yet unconscious, bias to his doctrine of the dissolubleness of the marriage bond, for causes of disagreeableness or antipathy, and from the lordly will of the husband; and as, by a further extension of the unhappily associated ideas, the opinion of arbitrary divorce became united with the horrid notion of polygamy; so, we may allowably conjecture that the obliquities of this great man's theology were, in a considerable measure, occasioned by the sinister influences to which we have adverted.

The design of this paper is to offer some remarks upón Milton's doctrine concerning the Person of the SAVIOUR and of the HOLY SPIRIT. We state with grief that this doctrine is Arianism; not from a childish horror at a

name, but because we view it as being inconsistent with the Holy Scriptures. Of the Saviour, the author teaches that he is an inferior God, a God relatively, produced by the will and power of the Father of his own substante, before all other created things, called God by grant and office, God, not in essence, but by proximity and love; that his nature is, indeed, divine, but distinct from, and clearly inferior to the nature, of the Father; and that, as the Father has given him his being and life, so he has conferred upon him the Divine Attributes, not absolutely, but in a derivative and modified manner. The Holy Spirit he declares to be a minister of God; created, or produced, of the substance of God, not by a natural necessity, but by the free will of the Agent, probably before the foundations of the world were laid, but later than the Son, and far inferior to him. We have collected the very expressions; but our limits make it impracticable to transcribe the entire passages.

This is the scheme which was advanced in the fourth century by Arius, which fills so large a space in the Ecclesiastical History of that and the following century, which has been embraced by many Protestants within the last two hundred years, and which has every where shown its tendency to sink gradually lower, till it has merged in Socinianism, or proper Unitarianism. Milton's Arianism, however, was high above the lower parts of the slippery steep. He maintains, for instance, in clear and strong terms, Redemption, by the satisfaction of the Saviour's "humiliation, in which, under his character of God-man, he voluntarily submitted himself to the divine justice, as well in life as in death;"-" Calling,whereby God the Father, according to his purpose in Christ, invites fallen man to a knowledge of the way in which HE is to be propitiated and served; insomuch that believers, through his gratuitous kindness, are called to salvation, and such as refuse to believe are left without excuse."-" Regeneration,that change operated by the Word and the Spirit, whereby the old man being destroyed, the inward man is regenerated by God after his own image, in all the faculties of his mind, insomuch that he becomes as it were a new creature, and the whole man is sanctified in both body and soul, for the service

of God and the performance of good works."—" Justification,---the gratuitous purpose of God, whereby those who are regenerated and implanted in Christ are absolved from sin and death through his most perfect satisfaction, and accounted righteous in the sight of God, not by the works of the law but through faith." In treating on these and many other important points of Christian truth and duty, the author appears to great advantage; though we should be compelled in numerous places to object, on what we believe to be scriptural grounds, to his positions and reasonings.

It is also proper to add that, in another respect, the opinions of the great poet on this subject differed from those of both the ancient and the modern Arians. They held, that the Son and the Holy Spirit were produced by the Almighty will of the Father, out of nothing, or, as they used to express it, out of non-existences. ( UK OYTOY.) But Milton maintained, that these created deities were by the Father, "made of his own substance." If we inquire what he meaned by this expression, we may gain an answer, though one which will increase rather than diminish our difficulty, by observing his assertion, that God created or derived the originàl matter of the universe "from no other source than from the fountain of every substance---out of Himself;" so that it is "an efflux of the Deity."

It would be impossible in a few pages, or even in a less space than a considerable volume, to discuss the particular arguments by which the author endeavours to establish his Arian opinions on the Son and the Spirit of God; or to examine, in the requisite manner, the numerous texts upon the interpretation of which the controversy must turn. For both these purposes, we think that the studious inquirer would find sufficient aid and satisfaction in the following or similar works: Waterland's Sermons and Defences; Wynpersse on the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; Simpson (of Macclesfield) on the same subject; Huntingford's Thoughts on the Trinity; Wardlaw on the Socinian Controversy; and Grinfield on the Attributes of Jesus Christ.

We shall only submit to the serious consideration of our readers some General Observations, which we think go

his conscientious regard to the UNITY of God. A holy and honourable motive! But has he not stumbled and fallen in his management of it? Is not this great principle violated by his admission of One Supreme God and two inferior ones? The Trinitarian feels himself equally bound to this sacred first principle: and, if he conceived, that the belief of Three Divine Persons invalidated the doctrine of the Divine Unity, he would no longer hold that belief. But he is conscious of the contrary. He says, "I find the characteristics of the Deity, attributed in the Scriptures, to the Father, and to the Messiah, and to the Holy Spirit: I find also that Jehovah is the One and Only God. I join these propositions, and I conclude that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, are not three Gods, but ONE GOD. I see the attributives of subordination, but not those of inferiority; personality, but not division. Metaphysical difficulties are not strong. enough to overthrow my faith in the testimony of heaven. It appears to me not only most rational, but absolutely necessary, to regard the mode of the existence of the Deity as an object infinitely too high for the comprehension of a mortal, or even of the highest finite intelligence. Here I find rest and satisfaction: my reason and my faith unite. The word of our God shall stand for ever. Let God be reverenced as TRUE, if the greatest of men should be found in error."

The writer of these cursory remarks is happy to borrow their conclusion from that of the great author's Address to his readers.---" Brethren, cultivate truth with brotherly love. Judge of my present undertaking according to the admonishing of the Spirit of God: and neither adopt my sentiments nor reject them, unless every doubt has been removed from your belief, by the clear testimony of revelation. Finally, live in the faith of our Lord and Saviour. Farewell."

EXPOSITION OF A COMMON SAYING.

IT might be curious to see accurately marked, the different acceptations of terms, as used in the circle of fashion, of politics, or of business; but my present object is to notice the varying im

port of a phrase which has obtained wide currency in the religious, world.

I can do nothing. The sense of this short and oft-repeated sentence, can be known only by an acquaintance with those who use it. In the mouth of a man whose possessions are large, and whose soul is narrow and selfish, it means, "I will not draw my purse strings." A stranger applies to him for pecuniary aid to some suffering family, or some useful institution; but the answer he gives is, "I can do nothing." The applicant is perhaps startled and puzzled by the utterance of these words, so little accordant with the proofs of affluence which strike his eyes. He urges his suit, and tries to touch some string of humanity or benevolence, but in vain. The looks and replies of the Curmudgeon begin at length to discover his ruling passion. His character, once known, farnishes a key to open the paradox in his speech. We turn indignantly away, and cry, "Poor wretch! what ability canst thou have for any good, while loaded with the oppressive chains of mam

mon ?"

I can do nothing, in the mouth of a trembling time-server, or thoroughpaced party-man, means, I dare not offend my superiors, or displease my associates." His conscience is not in his own keeping; or rather, as a dignified clergyman once said, "he cannot afford to keep a conscience." Before any thing can be done by him, he must consult some Diotrophes, or sound the minds and movements of those with whom he has agreed to act an under part. Interest and prejudice have robbed him of independence, and left him but a narrow scope for choice.

I can do nothing, in the lips of an Antinomian, is self-justification, or indolence. He has a small measure of knowledge, but a large stock of conceit; he deals out strange startling language, and condemns without reserve all who differ from him; his chief aim is to spread mischief, and cause divisions. It were well, indeed, if, in reference to these things, his favourite expression were literally true, that he could do nothing. Let him have his own high doctrines, and he discards duties. Let who will visit and relieve the poor, instruct the children of ignorance, send the gospel, to benighted heathen, he can do nothing. Let zealous ministers employ