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'APPEAL FOR THE INJURED AFRICAN.
6 BY J. H. WIFFEN.

'O Thou, to whom the mournful sigh
Of sorrow and despair ascends,-
Who hear'st the ravens when they cry,
The babe, when at Thy feet he bends!-
'More weak than is the raven's brood,
Less pure than infants though we be,
Our silent prayers for Libya's good,
O Father! let them rise to Thee.

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By realms dispeopled, tongues struck dumb
With the brute outrages of years,
In Thy remembrance let them come-
The negro's wrongs, the negro's tears.

< Whate'er of crime, whate'er of woe,
Europe has wrought, or Afric wept,
In his recording volume, lo!

The Angel of Thy court has kept.
'Yet-ere the assessing Spirit stands,
Prepared to sound from shore to shore,
That golden trumpet which commands

The oppressor's scourge to smite no more ;

Ah, stay his vials!-with our prayer

No vengeance breathes; in judgement break
The oppressor's galling chains; but spare
The oppressor for Thy mercy's sake.

'Didst Thou not form, from pole to pole
The various tongues and tribes of earth
Erect, with an immortal soul

Expectant of one holier birth?

'And shall the nations dare to hold

In chains whom Thou hast chartered free?

Or buy, with their accursed gold,

The sinewy arm and servile knee?

No! not for this didst Thou commend
With westering keel, and sails unfurled,
Columbus o'er the waves, to rend
The curtains of that younger world.

And O! 'twas not for this that he
Upreared Thy hallowed ensign there;
Alas, that e'er Thy cross should be
The joyless herald of despair :-

-:

That whom Thy loved One died to save
Man, guilty man must hold subdued,
And plead " prescription" o'er the grave,
When questioned of his brother's blood.
But Thou art righteous; Thou wilt rise
All mighty, as in days of yore,
When Israel sighed as Libya sighs,
Beneath the tasks his children bore.

'Cry not the isles themselves aloud?

Three hundred thralling years are sped,
Since earth by tyranny was ploughed ;-
The vintage of the earth is red!"

'In that great day, when Afric's race
Are from their House of Bondage cast,
O! hide us in some peaceful place,
Till all Thy wrath be overpast!

For dark, except Thy mercy shine,

This later Passover must be!

Our prayers, then, at Thy pardoning shrine,
O Father, let them rise to Thee!

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There yet remains to be noticed, a third volume of the Sacred 'Offering';-a little annual of modest pretensions, unembellished, except by the taste which has presided over it, the purity and piety of the sentiment, and the correct and melodious versification. Those who have the former volumes, will not be less pleased with the present one. We regret that we have not room for extracts. The lines on the immortality of thought are very striking; and the stanzas entitled, The Pestilence that walketh at noon day,' are as beautiful as they are excellent in spirit and sentiment.

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It is altogether a beautiful shew of annuals, indicating the richness of the soil and the high state of cultivation. We hope that the flowers will be duly succeeded by the fruit.

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Art. VII. CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ECLECTIC REVIEW.

SIR,

IN your Review for October, 1832, p. 293, I find the following passage. "The authority claimed (by the Church of England) in controversies of faith, was originally a forged authority, &c.": and by way of confirming this assertion, there occurs in a note, an extract from Lord Kames' "Sketches of the History of Man" to the following effect. "The people of England must have been profoundly ignorant, &c."

Now, as I take it for granted, that your Reviewer has been misled by the authority of Lord Kames, and that the object of your Review is for the development of what you conceive to be truth, I do not anticipate any difficulty in prevailing upon you to reprint the abovequoted passages in your next number, with the following observations upon them.

1. So far were the good people of England from being "profoundly ignorant" of the existence of the Clause in the 20th Article which Lord Kames asserts to have remained unnoticed till the year 1724, that Archbishop Laud, and the other Bishops of his time, were accused of having committed the Forgery on which yonr Reviewer animadverts. It appears, however, that the Puritans were less scrupulous in their assertions respecting the time when "the spurious Editions" appeared "in which the Clause was foisted into the 20th Article," than Lord Kames is; for whilst the latter allows that these "spurious Editions" appeared soon after the year 1571, the Puritans manfully declared that the Clause in question was not to be found in any Editions of the Articles printed prior to the year 1623.

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2. In answer to this accusation, the Archbishop pointed out four several Editions of the Articles all containing the disputed Clause, and all printed before 1628, (one Edition being as early as 1563): he duced an attested Copy of this Clause from the original MS. of the Articles; and maintained that the Clause said to be forged was to be found both in the original Records of the Convocation of 1562; and also in the Articles subscribed by the lower House of Convocation in 1571. As it regards the truth of the Archbishop's assertion respecting the Editions of the Articles printed before 1628, any person who will take the trouble may inform himself; and although the MSS. referred to perished in the Fire of London, and we are now, consequently, unable to verify Laud's appeal to them, yet it is an historical fact, that, at the time, these MSS. were open to the inspection of his accusers; were shortly afterwards in the possession of his enemies, and yet none ever ventured to impugn the validity of his defence.

3. Whilst Lord Kames asserts truly, that "In the Act xiiith of Elizabeth, an. 1571, confirming the 39 Articles, these Articles are not engrossed, but referred to in a printed Book, &c." he yet leaves his readers to suppose that the Book referred to was printed in 1562; whereas, (independently of its being next to certain that no Edition of

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the Articles was printed earlier than 1563,) every body at all conversant with the subject is aware that the Edition referred to by the Act must have been that of 1571.

4. So ill-informed, indeed, does Lord Kames appear to have been respecting the History of the 39 Articles, that one cannot help suspecting him of a design to draw largely on the credulity of his readers when he penned the Note which it has been my object to examine. Any person who considers for a moment, must conclude that it is a thing which beggars probability to suppose that a reputed Forgery such as that which Lord Kames describes to have occurred, could have escaped detection until 1724. Without any certain knowledge of the fact, it might à priori be assumed that it was morally impossible for an Apocryphal Article to have eluded the notice of the Disputants of the 17th Century;-of men who brought to the discussion of the subject of Church Authority much more learning (though perhaps, not much more bitterness) than has unhappily sometimes marked that discussion in more recent times.

Nov. 19. 1832.

One of your Readers.

We have not hesitated to give insertion to the above communication. And upon one point, we agree with our Correspondent; that it was impossible for an apocryphal article to have eluded the notice of the Disputants of the 17th century. Lord Kames was certainly mistaken in supposing that the forgery had passed unnoticed, till Anthony Collins revived the controversy. His "Detection of the Fraud of inserting and continuing that clause, "The Church hath power,'" &c. appeared in 1710; and went through three editions in the same year. The facts do not, however, rest upon his authority. Archdeacon Blackburne, in his Confessional, has a long note which would seem to justify Collins's representation, that the Latin clause was a forgery. A passage which is cited from Hales's Letter to Laud, the Archdeacon represents as equal to a thousand witnesses, that the first clause of the twentieth article, as it now stands in our present editions, was not held, by the most leaaned and judicious divines of those ' days, to be of the least authority whether it was found in Latin or English copies.' (Confessional, pp. 367-372. 1770.) In 1633, the authenticity of the clause was publicly debated in the Divinity Schools at Oxford, upon occasion of Peter Heylin's disputing for his Doctor's degree. Prideaux, the Professor, read the Latin article out of the Corpus Confessionum, published at Geneva, 1612, without the clause. Heylin produced an English edition with the disputed clause, but was unable to verify it by any Latin copy; and a Latin edition of the articles printed at Oxford in 1636, three years after, does not contain the clause.

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After all, Laud's own Speech' supplies us with strong reason for doubting its authenticity. First, he affirms, that the Articles of Edward VI. and those made under Queen Elizabeth, differ very

much.' And those of Edward VI. not being binding,

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' whether ' the clause be in them or out of them, it is not much material.' He then asserts, that he had a copy of the articles in English of the year 1612; and of the year 1605, and of the year 1593, and in Latin, of the year 1563, which was one of the first printed eopies and in all these, the affirmative clause for the Church's power is in. But, in the year 1571,-the very year in which the articles were first confirmed by Act of Parliament (13 Eliz. c. 12,) Laud admits, that the articles were printed both in Latin and English, without the clause, which certainly could not be 'done,' he says, but by the malicious cunning of that opposite faction. And he openly charged upon the Puritans, the foul corruption of falsifying the Articles. We do not, however, find that Laud produced one of the early copies which he said he possessed. And his 'altered copy' was transcribed by his own officer, from records in his own office, not then accessible to his Enemies. That none ever ventured to impugn the validity of his ' defence,' is an unsupported assertion. It was not by evidence, but by authority, that the controversy was cut short. That the Puritans should have falsified the articles, is at least as incredible as that Laud should have interpolated them. At all events, our Correspondent should have shewn, that the Christian Remembrancer (one of Mr. Hanbury's authorities) was mistaken in affirming that the Clause never was composed by, or exhibited in manuscript to a convocation.' Who then could have authority to interpolate it in the article?

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ART. VIII. LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

The concluding volume of Robert Hall's Works, containing the Memoir by Dr. Gregory, and Observations on his Character as a Preacher. By the Rev. John Foster, will be published early in the present month.

In the press, The Epistle to the Hebrews, a new Translation, in Sections, with Marginal References and Notes, and an Introductory Syllabus. Intended to facilitate the devout and profitable perusal of the Epistle, by elucidating its scope and argument. Fcap. 8vo.

The Author of "The Revolt of the Bees," and "The Reproof of Brutus," has in the press," Hampden in the Nineteenth Century, or Colloquies on the Errors and Improvement of Society." In 2 vols. 8vo. With Plates and Diagrams.

Collections from the Greek Anthology, and from the Pastoral, Elegiac, and Dramatic Poets of Greece. By the Rev. Robert Bland, and others. New edition, revised and corrected, with a great number of additional Specimens, the principal part of the former illustration being omitted, and the whole newly arranged in Chronological order under the names of the Authors. With short Prefaces and Notes, critical and explanatory.

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