preaching, followed by significant glances among a portion of the hearers, with chilling prayers, with a communion service, which he cannot conceive can be approached by a Unitarian except with unpleasant feelings or a heart seared against the love of Christ, with total indifference or a heart full of agony; and occupied, lastly, with an inconstant and unsuccessful struggle against the stupefaction of worldliness, and a reckless disregard respecting meetness for heaven. Such was this writer's Unitarianism, and such the grounds on which he claims to have experienced the inward influence of a system which he never embraced, and which it seems to have been one of the greatest trials of his life to have heard preached so long. This it is that enables him to say, "We have ourselves proved the inability of this system to bless the soul," and to judge by experience between one man's religious feelings and another's. We need not say how much force we attribute to an argument against our belief, founded on such experience as this.

No

We should not have dwelt so long upon the foregoing topic, if this species of attack had been original with our author, or peculiar to the book under review. We should not have been apprehensive that the reading public would have ascribed undue weight to it. But this judging from pretended experience is the common and favorite mode of argument, frequently resorted to, and much relied on. sooner does a man of education or notoriety, awaken from indifference, or become dissatisfied with a life of irreligion, or throw off the mask of hypocrisy, and enter upon a Christian course of life, than, if in this change he chance to embrace an Orthodox creed, he publishes to the world that he is converted from the death-like chills and horrors, the sentimental fancies, the soothing appliances, and the scholastic subtilties of Unitarianism. As his present piety and zeal are identified with Orthodoxy, so his former indifference and sinfulness are identified with "the opposite system." The difference between his former and present character is asserted to be just the difference between the two systems. Deism, atheism, abandonment to sin, a total disregard to all religion, any thing, in short, that is not acknowledged as Orthodoxy, is all, with great convenience and satisfaction, declared to have been Unitarianism, the true spirit, the genuine fruits, the legitimate profession of Unitarianism.

And such a convert is entitled to judge conclusively, from the infallible test of personal experience, between the merits of the two systems. He knows Unitarianism, he knows from weary and bitter but sure experience, that its disciples have no piety, or devotion, or Christian virtue, and that their system furnishes nothing to bless the soul. It is as if a thorough atheist should enter a Christian temple, and hear and see the congregation worshipping a God in whom he did not believe, and then should go away and declare that Christians had no devotional feeling, for he had been amongst them and knew all about pretended Christian emotions from experience. We are heartily sick of this solemn jugglery. We hope, for the honor of human logic, modesty, discernment, and fairness, and of the cause of religion in general, that this kind of argument has finished its run, and spent its force, and will be given up. We should have more respect for a cause whose advocates would be content to take the fair and manly ground of Scriptural interpretation and substantial discussion, and leave off this searching of hearts, confounding of distinctions, and miscalling of names.

We are sorry that this book should have been published. We regret it upon principle. We think it is calculated to injure the cause of religion in general. We think our author's zeal for truth and holiness has been misdirected and worse than lost. His review is a severe and unprovoked attack upon an exclusively practical book, a book in which no disputed doctrines are discussed, no vexed questions started, no sect aggrieved; but which is intended merely as a guide and help to those inquirers who could find no better one to direct and assist them. Now we are not so hostile as some of our friends are to all religious controversy. All other subjects, which afford matter for difference, are discussed. It is the way to elicit truth, and we see not why religious differences of doctrine should not be discussed also. It cannot be otherwise, and we do not wish it to be otherwise. We believe that when the storm of debate has subsided, controversy will be found to dissipate error, bring out the truth, and draw men nearer together in the Christian faith. We are willing, therefore, to have our doctrines fairly and fully canvassed, and tried ever so closely by Scripture and reason. Neither have we so great a horror as some, of sectarian divisions in the church. Such is the constitution of

the human mind, and the character of the Christian revelation, that we should expect and quietly submit to them, rather than aggravate a division into a quarrel, by deprecating it and vainly attempting to heal it. It is perfectly proper and expedient, certainly in cities and large villages, that persons holding particular doctrines should associate and worship together. They ought of course to choose a minister who agrees with them, and it is folly rather than charity to force upon them, by way of exchanges, preachers who are disagreeable and cannot edify them. There need not on this account be any rupture of Christian harmony and brotherly love. Paul was evidently the fittest Apostle for the Gentile ministry, and Peter for that of the Jews, and they divided their work accordingly. For conscience' sake, for the love of peace, and the better edification of Christians, let it be so now. All this is well. Controversy and peace

able division we do not object to. Let sects exist as they must. The evil is not in that; but in their so treating each other as to make the word sect significant of malice, envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness. Let sects exist, and let discussion go on. But this denying and disparaging of the personal religion of individuals or classes, this laboring to beget in the minds of a sect a distrust and disaffection towards those preachers and writers in whom they are accustomed to feel confidence, and to whom they look for religious aid and edification, this harsh and exterminating warfare against unpretending and inoffensive books, designed for the religious improvement and direction of persons who have embraced the system of faith on which the books are known to be based, - this miserable and petty skirmishing we utterly deprecate. The review we have been examining is a specimen of what we mean and object to. We cannot see any good end it can accomplish, either for Christianity in general, or the interests of Orthodoxy in particular. Its author undoubtedly saw, that, according to his doctrinal views, there were great deficiencies in Mr. Ware's book. He could not in consistency be quite satisfied with it; it was not to be expected. But then if it exhibits the practical excellency of our system, as he says, better than any other book, why should he labor so earnestly to destroy it? Why should he be so extremely unwilling that our system should exert upon its adherents whatever religious or moral influence it is

capable of exerting? He knows that a large portion of this community are satisfied, and are likely to be satisfied, with the Liberal system; why then should he be so anxious to deprive them of a book, which he acknowledges must be, with their views, one of the most profitable volumes they can read? Does he prefer that men should renounce all religious faith, rather than be Unitarians, and deny or disregard all moral duties and graces, rather than practise them under the guidance and incitement of a Unitarian book? We are unwilling to believe this, and are accordingly at a loss for the motives with which the review was printed and reprinted. When our author saw that Mr. Ware's volume was not such as would meet the wants of Orthodox Christians, he should have remembered that it was not designed for them, and that the writer's name on the title-page would be a sufficient guaranty against its undue circulation and influence among them; and we are confident that he would have spent his time more profitably by leaving that work to its quiet and limited sphere, and employing his ready pen in preparing a practical work, the demand for which he perceives to be great, a work that would meet the religious necessities of those to whom Mr. Ware's could not be useful.

We intended to have noticed the chapters on the Communion, but the ample discussion of that subject in our last number but one, renders it unnecessary.

ART. VII.1. Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions. By S. T. COLERIDGE, Esq. New York. 1817.

2. The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, including the Tragedies, Remorse, Zapolya, and Wallenstein. 3 vols. 12mo. London. 1829.

3. Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, on the several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion. Illustrated by Select Passages from our Elder Divines, especially from Archbishop Leighton. By S. T. COLEridge. First American, from the First London Edition; with an Appendix, and Illustrations

from other Works of the same Author; together with a Preliminary Essay, and Additional Notes. By James MARSH, President of the University of Vermont. Burlington. 1829. 8vo. pp. 469.

4. The Friend: A series of Essays, to aid in the Formation of fixed Principles in Politics, Morals, and Religion, with Literary Amusements interspersed. By S. T. COLERIDGE, Esq. First American, from the Second London Edition. Complete in one volume. Burlington. Chauncey Goodrich. 1831. 8vo. pp. 510.

THERE is no writer of our times whose literary rank appears so ill-defined as that of Mr. Coleridge. Perhaps there is no one whose true standing in the literary world it is so difficult to determine. For ourselves we know not a more doubtful problem in criticism than this author and hist works present. If it were lawful to judge men by what they are, rather than by what they have done, by the evidence they give of what they might accomplish, rather than by the value of that which they have accomplished, few would stand higher than Mr. Coleridge. His talents and acquirements, the original powers, and the exceeding rich cultivation of his mind, place him among the foremost of this generation. But this method of estimating a man's merit will hardly be thought righteous judgment in an age which is peculiarly prone to try every man by his works. Tried by his works, Mr. Coleridge, we fear, must ultimately fall, not only below the rank which nature and education had fitted him to maintain, but even below that which he now actually holds in the estimation of literary men.

As a prose-writer he has never been popular, though skilled beyond most men in the use of language, and writing on subjects of the deepest interest. As a poet, though gifted in no common degree with the essentials of the poetic character, he has not been successful. As a philosopher, though at once both subtile and profound, and deeply versed in all the mysteries of the inner man, he has gained little else than smiles of compassion and ominous shaking of heads by his metaphysical speculations. For a reconciliation of these several antitheses we must have recourse to the history of the man. In the "Biographia Literaria," by far the most entertaining, and in our opinion the most instructive of