CHAPTER II.

THEOLOGY

AND

ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS.

SUCH of our readers as take any interest in theological enquiries, will be no less pleased than surprised to learn, that amidst all the agitation of renewed warfare, and all the alarms excited by the peculiar circumstances of our country, this branch of literature has not been neglected. The list of theological publication is nearly as large as usual; and many of the works which it contains are important and valuable.

I. The entrance upon this part of our labours is auspicious. Dr. Stock, the Learned bishop of Killala, with zeal and industry worthy of the cause of sacred literature, has enriched the catalogue of biblical versions, by publishing "The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, in Hebrew and English." His chief object, indeed, has been to exhibit the original text in a metrical arrangement; but in the progress of his work he has produced a new translation of this sublime prophecy, generally distinguished by correctness and taste. Mr. J. M. Good has employed his learning and talents in a similar useful service. He has selected a book usually esteemed sacred, and certainly not undeserving of all the aid and embellishment which can be derived from his extensive knowledge and cultivated taste; and the Song of Songs is now presented to the English reader, in a state which must afford him pleasure, though it may not, with all the accompanying notes, appear quite to harmonise with the pure word of God.

Mr. Warner has published an English Diatessaron, which, we doubt not, will prove an acceptable present to those whose knowledge of the scriptures is confined within the limits of their native language.

A third edition of Dr. Willan's United Gospel has appeared, enriched with many useful additional notes.

II. The works which compose the second class in our department, are for the most part valuable. The three volumes of Notes on the Bible, by the late Rev. C. Bulkley, edited by Dr. Toulmin, will be found a very important acquisition to the Student in Divinity. Of Mr. Bryant, in his Observations upon some Passages in Scripture, some may think-" Arma trementibus ævo circumdat nequicquam humeris." These observations are founded upon the principles to which he is well known to be attached, and discover a zeal for the interests of religion, which years cannot lessen. The very learned translator of Michaelis having been again attacked by his "Anonymous Adversary," has ably illustrated The Hypothesis proposed in the Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our Three first Canonical Gospels. Dr. Findlay, in answer to a passage in Dr. Geddes' preface to the second volume of

his Translation of the Bible, has published a little tract of considerable merit, upon The Divine Inspiration of the Jewish Scriptures, asserted by St. Paul, 2 Tim. iii. 16. Another Scottish divine, of the name of M'Conochie, has ventured upon a new hypothesis, which he has stated in "A Dissertation concerning the Writer of the Fourth Gospel" and Mr. Granville Sharp has met with an able but no courteous opponent to his system concerning "The Use of the Article in the Greek Testament," in a writer who stiles himself not inaptly, Gregory Blunt.

III. Upon the evidences of natural and revealed religion, the publications of the last year are neither numerous nor important. The Rev. T. Robinson's Enquiry into the Necessity, Nature, and Evidences of Revealed Religion," may be considered as a useful compilation. The French Translation, by M. Chirol, of the Bishop of London's Abridgment of the principal Proofs, &c. is deserving of commendation. An anonymous essay on The Mild Tenor of Christianity, will be read with pleasure and advantage. Mr. Crighton's Enquiry into the Origin of True Religion; and Dr. Priestley's Tract, entitled, Socrates and Jesus compared, claim a place in the list of those publications which are designed to promote the cause of revelation.

IV. Though necessarily of a mixed nature, yet Dr. Hill's Theological Institutes will be most properly referred to the class of controversial or dogmatical Divinity, and takes the lead among the works of this kind, which have issued, during the last year, from the press. Mr. Vidler in his Letters to Mr. Fuller on the Universal Restoration, has shewn himself an able disputant upon an important article of christian doctrine. Dr. Hales has very successfully opposed the fanaticism and the ignorance of some self-constituted teachers, in a pamphlet entitled Methodism Inspected; and a more serious attack has been made upon the same denomination of christians, by Mr. Nott, in his Bampton Lectures. A writer among the Quakers, who signs himself Verex, and who has already signalized himself as a champion against orthodoxy, has published, in reply to his antagonist Vindex, A Vindication of Scriptural Unitarianism, and some other primitive Christian Doctrines.

V. The Sermons of the last year are uncommonly numerous. Not fewer than ten volumes have fallen under our notice. The authors are Dr. Brown of Aberdeen, Dr. Gleig of Stirling, Dr. Shepherd, the Rev. Messrs. Gilpin, Nares, St. John, Warner, Buddo, Tayler, and a Layman.

Many patriotic effusions have passed from the pulpit to the press, in the form of Single Sermons. Among these are, Broadhurst's Sermon at Bath, Bulmer's at Thorpe, Overton's at York, &c.

The Fast-Day also, as might have been expected, has furnished us with excellent discourses, from the pens of Parr, Belsham, Rees, Butler, Disney, Glasse, Madan, Jervis, Corrie, &c. &c.

Besides these, Sermons upon miscellaneous subjects have been published by Wrangham, Kentish, and Skurray.

From the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the public have received An Address, setting forth the Utility and Necessity of such an Institution. Mr. Fellowes has printed A Supplement to a Picture of Christian Philosophy; and Mr. Eaton has in A Familiar Conversation, endeavoured to inculcate the Christian Virtues of Moderatien, Candour, and Liberality.

VI. No works of devotion have appeared during the last year.

VII. The controversy which has been excited by those who call themselves "The True Churchmen," is still going on; and its conclusion is, we apprehend, yet at a great distance. Mr. Daubeny has, during the past year, added himself to the list of Mr. Overton's opponents; and endeavoured to repel from the articles of the church, the charge of Calvinism, in a work entitled Vindicia Ecclesia Anglicana. Dr. Prettyman also has more briefly attempted the same, in A Charge delivered to the Clergy of his Diocese; and the editors of the Churchman's Remembrancer have republished, in the same cause, Dr. Winchester's Dissertation on the xvith Article of the Church of England. Mr. Myles has published a chronological History of the Westleian Me hodists, which furnishes much information respecting the rise and progress, and internal government of this formidable sect.

It was not to be expected that Mr. Hook's Anguis in Herba, noticed in our last volume, would pass without animadversion, from those who consider Pluralities and Non-Residence incapable of being defended; A Reply has accordingly appeared, written by A Member of the Established Church.

These, with a few of less note, constitute the works in Theology, which have been published since we closed our former volume, and of which we now proceed to give a fuller account.

THE SCRIPTURES.

ART. 1. The Book of the Prophet Isaiah: in Hebrew and English. The Hebrew Text metrically arranged: the Translation altered from that of Bishop Lowth. With Notes critical and explanatory. By JOSEPH STOCK, D. D. Bishop of Killala, M. R. I. A. and formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. 4to. pp. 185.

NO part of literature promises to be productive of more valuable consequences, than that which embraces the important objects of restoring the purity of the original scriptures, and of presenting them to the unlearned reader, in versions more free from error than those which are now in his hands. And it is one of the pleasing features of the present age, that men, high in rank and in renown for learning, devote their talents and their time to this excellent pursuit. Our shelves groan under the massy folios of learned and laborious interpreters; our libraries overflow with erudite researches into the meaning of passages, many of which owe all their difficulty to the error or the ignorance of a transcriber; and become plain and intelligible by a different reading, supported by the authority of an ancient copy; or suggested by skill, acquired in an habitual attention to sacred philo. logy. The industrious commentators of former times are not to be contemned: their learning and their zeal have illuminated many an obscurity, and unra

velled many an intricacy in our holy books: but the labours of Wetstein, Mill, and Kennicott have encouraged a more useful race of biblical critics, whose elucidations are more attractive to persons of genius and of taste, and adapted to become more speedily and more generally beneficial. In this distinguished and meritorious service, our own country has already earned the highest praise; and scarcely a year passes which does not add another name to the honoured list of those, who, by labouring to recover the original text, and to render perfect our already valu able English version, perform the most acceptable service which criticism can render to the world, and prove themselves the real friends and benefactors of mankind. To the revered names of Newcome, Lowth, Blaney, Chandler, Dodson, Geddes, Campbell, Wakefield, &c. we have now to add that of Stock, an Irish prelate, haud parvi nomin's. From the editing of Greek and Roman classics, he has very laudably turned his talents to sacred criticism. To this he was

incited by his friend and relation, the late archbishop Newcome; and the lei sure that was necessary, he found during the late troubles in Ireland, which

drove him from the active duties of his station, and compelled him to seek a retirement favourable to the pursuit of sacred literature.

In the space of one year," he observes, "I had read over the greatest part of the Old Testament in Hebrew; and, during my progress, my ear became so accustomed to a certain rhythm, or metre, seeming to pervade the whole of that sacred volume, that I rested at last in a conviction that not the Psalms and the prophecies only, but the historical parts also, commonly supposed to be written in prose, are in fact composed in verse, with no other difference from the rest but that they want the ornaments and bolder features of poetry.”

Like the right reverend translator, we are "not fond of controversy, especially in questions of no great importance, and confessedly difficult of solution;" but it is our duty to offer some observations which have occurred to us upon that which constitutes the leading fea

ture of his work.

His Lordship thus states what appears to him to be fact, with respect to ilebrew metre. Preface p. viii.

The manner of chaunting the psalms in our cathedrals, which has flowed, without interruption, into the Christian church from the Jewish, affords, in my apprehension, the easiest and clearest answer to the ques tion, What is Hebrew metre? The psalms, we know, are divided into verses; verses into two parts, responsively sung by the choir; and of these parts each is distributed into musteal bars of the length of four crotchets, which is called common time; all words included within the same bar, be they many or few, are pronounced by the choir in the same time; the many rapidly, the few by a lengthened utterance, without regard to quantity, or the importance of the respective words in the sentence. Bars of this description measure the length of the Hebrew verses, at least of far the greatest part of them; so that to the four crotchets in the bar the car discerns four rests, or feet, corresponding in the verse, and the measure becomes exactly similar to that of our English verses of eight syllables, as in the hundreth psalın,

With one consent, let all the earth

To God their cheerful voices raise, &c. The exceptions to this general rule are. that sometimes in a stanza a line of the common length is succeeded by one of three feet or six syllables, as in Lam.

ch. iii. throughout: and frequently a stanza is made to begin or end with a hemistich, instead of a whole line, of which the very first line of David's psalms presents an example."

That the nature of Hebrew metre is such as is here represented, we shall not -pretend either to deny or assert. The subject appears to us, after much deliberation, involved in impenetrable obthe mode of reading which there has scurity. Of a language, concerning been so much dispute, and ever will be so much real difficulty, we think it vain to expect to discover the proper rhythm. No doubt it was capable of poetic numbers, and a great part of the books of the Old Testament was composed in a manner which adapted them to the purpose of recitation to musical instruments; but no attempt to reduce them to their original measures, we are fully per suaded, can now be successful. Of the scheme of bishop Hare, we may venture decidedly to speak as fanciful and erroneous; and the more simple systems of Newcome, Lowth, and Stock, are open to objections, which their own la bours furnish. The bishop of Killala, indeed, goes far beyond all his prede cessors, when he converts prose into verse, and imparts to a genealogical table the dignified march of a religious ode. That one of the earliest methods by which the descendants of the patriarch Abraham conveyed the knowledge of past events to their posterity, was by giving them a poetical form, may be inferred from the uniform practice of remote antiquity; but that in the more advanced state of the Jewish people, in the days of Ezra, or even of David, their history was metrical, is a position which will not be easily proved, or readily admitted. Hebrew scholars will, in general, perceive some greater difference than the mere want of ornament, between the song of Moses after the passage through the Red Sea, and his directions concerning the formation of the tabernacle; and conceive that something more than the absence of the bolder features of poetry, distinguishes the book of Nehemiah from the love song of Solomon.

Whatever may be thought of the bishop of Killala's system, and of the extent to which he applies it, his zeal and diligence will meet the highest praise.