attention may be powerfully awakened, and a healthy excitement sustained, without disturbing those fires of discord, out of which "cometh the viper." There is obvious truth in such assertions, though there is often great want of discrimination in them. We have no expectation of witnessing, nor are we clear in desiring, a period of absolute cessation from all that can be called religious controversy. But a period of rest from some kinds of controversy, we confess, we do desire. A truce to some of the hostilities into which we have of late been drawn, or rather driven, we do pray for. We cannot doubt, that the great effort at this time should be, to direct attention to things practical rather than doctrinal; to the history and truth, the ordinances and precepts, of our religion; to those principles, which are held in common by all Christians and rejected in gross by all unbelievers, instead of those in which unbelief itself exults and grows bold.

It was with this feeling, and therefore with something of regret, that we received the volume whose title is prefixed to these remarks. In the little that we have to say of it, we would speak honestly, and if we speak in some censure or doubt, that which we say in approbation will be taken, we trust, not as of course or of party, but as of sincerity. The author of these Lectures must have anticipated objections of the kind we have suggested; especially as he writes on a spot, where we had almost the first, and have since had some of the ablest controversial writings of our day. It was natural to think, that there at least enough had been said and thought on these vexed and vexing topics. We had seen also the difficulty with which all large works of this character, even from the ablest minds, have found their way into the reading community, or returned so much as a pecuniary compensation to their authors. But all these are considerations apart from the character of the work itself. They are considerations too in which we are all liable to err, when we attempt to judge and decide for others. There may have been good reason for the "deviation" from what, as Mr. Burnap tells us in his Introduction, has been his usual course of public instruction. He has "abstained almost entirely from the introduction of subjects of a purely controversial nature," and now gives these Lectures to meet the wants of the rising generation, who justly demand to know the reason of the faith of their fathers." To give the young, as they come forward, sufficient instruc

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tion on these subjects to save them from error, and at the same time to keep before them the paramount importance of a pure heart and a pure life," is one of the most obvious and arduous duties to which the Christian minister is called. It may be that we take too much for granted, when we suppose that our young people, or those of any age, will obtain sufficient knowledge of doctrines, from the common instructions of the pulpit or their incidental reading. It is certain that our own, if no other people, will receive from our lips or our pages, through a mistaken, perhaps, but blessed partiality, instruction on subjects, which otherwise would have had little interest for them.

The subjects discussed in this volume need not be enumerated. They include, as the title indicates, all the common doctrines in dispute between Unitarians and others, beside several on the character of Christianity, the character of a Christian, and the origin and nature of Creeds. These topics cover much ground, and we think it no small merit to have brought them all, with sufficient notice of all important features, within a moderate volume. It has been done, and done ably. There are marks throughout the book of a clear and strong mind. There is much of just discrimination, and severe, sound logic. Even among those who may think it was less called for than books of a different kind, there will be but one opinion, we apprehend, as to its ability. It is by no means a repetition of other men's words or even thoughts, though on subjects so old, and, as some would say, exhausted. Mr. Burnap has succeeded to an uncommon degree in finding new arguments for old truths, and drawing from familiar commonplaces fresh and valuable considerations. This we consider the prominent feature of the volume. There is comparatively very little use of those views, those modes of defending and opposing, which almost all other writers have used. The most important controverted passages of Scripture are treated, it is true, and they always must be, in essentially the same way in which they have been before. But these are much less dwelt upon than usual, while other passages, that have not commonly been brought into the argument and perhaps would not have been thought by common readers to have any bearing upon it, are happily introduced and turned to good ac

count.

Thus, on the subject of the Trinity, Mr. Burnap shows, in

regard to those passages in which limited knowledge and power are ascribed to the Son, (as in Mark xiii. 32, John v. 19,) that, beside the obvious force of the declarations themselves, the very word "Son" contains an unanswerable argument, and deprives Trinitarians of the common subterfuge of an inferior nature, in which these things are supposed to be said. For "Son is the highest name or character he assumes, the very character and name he assumes, in the Trinity, 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost,' and must include, if any epithet can be supposed to include, his highest nature." Many arguments for the Trinity depend on that very word 'Son.' And yet as it does not always and of itself include divinity, no argument raised upon it can be trusted; "the term 'Son' and Son of God,' as proving any thing concerning Christ's nature, must be for ever abandoned."

A similar use is made of another class of familiar passages, as may be seen in a short extract, though it contains but a part of the whole argument on this point.

"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom.' Here God and Father are also used as synonymous, and that Being is the God of Jesus Christ. One of the persons of the Trinity certainly cannot be God to another. It can mean nothing else, then, than that Father is coëxtensive with God, takes in the whole Deity, and that whole Deity is the God of Christ. Of consequence Christ can make no part of his own God. To escape this conculsion it may be alleged that this is said of his inferior or human nature. Then it will follow that the title Lord' is applied to his inferior or human nature, for it is said, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ'; and the title Lord,' as proving a superior nature in him, can never again be used."-pp. 27, 28.

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A like argument is drawn from our Saviour's own declaration, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me." No aid can be derived here from the convenient supposition of the double nature, because the assertion relates to Christ as a teacher, not as a man. To say that he taught in an inferior human nature, is to strike at the authority of his instructions and the divinity of his message. "He taught, if he did any thing, as Christ, in his highest person or nature." It has always seemed to us marvellous, that those holding the view of Scripture which Trinitarians profess to hold, should yet be willing to make a distinction between what Christ taught as God and

what he taught as man, without one word from him or the Evangelists to tell us when or where the distinction is to be observed. It subjects revelation to carnal reason, and leaves it at the mercy of every mind, more completely than any system of which we have knowledge.

The instances adduced above may give some idea of the manner in which Mr. Burnap treats the doctrine of the Trinity. He devotes to it three Lectures, making nearly a fourth part of the volume. And when we first saw that, we feared a surfeit, if nothing worse, and had great distrust of our fortitude to encounter so much on a doctrine, which begins, in our view, to lie among things that were. It is rare to meet with a modern treatise or a modern Christian, who gives to the Trinity any explanation that separates it far from a nominal, Sabellian, and therefore really Unitarian scheme.* It seems to us therefore to be saying enough, though we could honestly say more, to assert that we actually read every page and line of these Lectures, and felt glad we had read them. We were rewarded.

Two of the ablest discourses in this volume are those on Original Sin and Total Depravity. We could quote profitably many pages, but have room for one only, and that taken simply for a specimen of the author's mode of handling these antiquated errors.

"God creates us as really through our parents, as he did Adam without parents. And we have just the constitution and nature that God designed, as much as he had. If sin be the only, the necessary, the natural action of our constitution, or that combination of powers which God has given us, then sin is the natural use and exercise of all our faculties, and must be presumed to be the end for which they were made. Sin is then the natural use, not the perversion, of our powers. Sin then is no longer sin. Virtue would be a perversion, would be sin. The very essence of sin is, that it is a perversion of our nature and powers from the end and use for which they were designed, to something else. The end of

*To our surprise and shame, we find in a late book from a Boston clergyman, an attempt to prove the Trinity from Scripture, by altering the text without authority, to meet the necessity. Because the Greek particle translated and sometimes means even, this writer renders it so wherever he needs it; as in Titus, ii. 13; 2 Tim. iv. 1; 2 Peter, i. 1. -And then boldly says "Christ is declared in the above scriptures to be the 'GREAT GOD,' the 'TRUE GOD,' 'SUPREME GOD."― Winslow's Discourses on the Trinity, p. 41. We hope to hear no more about Unitarians altering the translation to suit their purposes. VOL. XIX. 3D S. VOL. I. NO. I. 15

a thing cannot possibly be other than the only end which it is made capable of attaining. Then if sin be the only thing which man by his natural powers can do, sin is the end for which he is made. Virtue cannot be the end for which man is made, if he is made naturally, utterly incapable of virtue. So this system, in its zeal to break man down and humble him under a sense of his sin, overshoots its mark, proves too much, defeats its own object, and makes man no sinner at all. For the power to do right is necessary to the guilt of doing wrong. The power to obey is indispensable to the moral turpitude of disobedience. All guilt supposes choice of evil when good was in our power. If good is not within our choice, then the very condition is taken away which constitutes any act sin. Accountability and power, according to the eternal laws of justice and the nature of things, must be always precisely commensurate with each other. To suppose that God made man for virtue, and gave him such a constitution that its natural, spontaneous, and necessary fruit and action is vice, is a contradiction in terms." - pp. 139, 140.

It is worthy of passing remark, that while these Lectures are issuing from the press, and some are saying or thinking they were not needed, and many more would probably say that such a sentiment as that of the extract just given, though here very well expressed, is too obvious and indisputable to call for the labor, - at this very moment, the sound of a fierce controversy reaches us from the West, a controversy waged in the bosom of the Presbyterian church, turning chiefly on this very point, using indeed almost the identical language of Mr. Burnap, which one Orthodox Doctor has ventured to adopt, and which another Orthodox Doctor arraigns as rank heresy. Dr. Beecher is actually charged with teaching, "that man is rendered capable by his Maker of obedience; that ability to obey is indispensable to moral obligation, to demerit, and to punishment for disobedience, &c., all which is contrary to the standards." The standards! It is verily enormous, that, six thousand years after man was created in the image of God, and in the nineteenth century of such a religion as that of Christ, there should stand up a Christian minister, sustained by some twenty other Christian ministers, to bring a sober public charge against a brother minister, grounded upon these two alleged misdemeanors. First, "he declares that no action can be either holy or unholy, unless there is understanding, conscience, and a choice. The other proposition is, that no just law ever condemns or criminates a man for not doing that