"Thy five dear wounds torn wide for me, "Think on thy Son's so bitter death, "We thank him, weeping at his pierced feet, There, where the spear his side did bore, Without doubt this scenic exhibition of the sufferings of Christ, simply as sufferings, may have had an effect upon the barbarous and uncultivated minds of the Heathens, all whose associations were sensual, whose spiritual nature had hitherto received no development. But it excites our wonder that the Brethren should have thought it adapted to promote pious affections and the growth of a devout spirit in all stages of intellectual culture. To say nothing of the unhappy consequences of diverting the attention from the manner and spirit in which Christ endured his trials, and from the end for which they were endured the reconciliation of the soul to God, every one must see how easily this exclusive reference to the "bloody righteousness" of the Saviour might be perverted to the grossest blasphemy. An unsanctified imagination converts the holiest topics into occasions of raillery and ridicule; and the purest affections of the Christian heart are wounded by the application of the loftiest themes of our religion to base and sensual subjects. The Moravians soon had occasion to notice the unfavorable influences of their peculiar theology upon those who were disposed to censure and ridicule, - influences which reacted upon the communities, and occasioned disorders among themselves and deterred many from joining them. An excessive attachment both to the literal and to the metaphorical language of Scripture led them into many practical difficulties, and gave rise to a variety of abuses and excesses in words and actions. A higher intellectual culture and a more scientific development of their religious ideas might have saved them from this evil, and at the same time increased the practical influence of their preaching. Undoubtedly the effect of the missionaries' preaching was greatly increased by the power of their own character, -by their meekness, integrity, self-denial and untiring devotion to the temporal and spiritual interests of their hearers. They were the friends, guides and instructors of the converted; and by their prudent and economical management often saved, many of them from starvation. So many acts of kindness, so frequently multiplied, attached the Greenlanders to them as with bands of steel. Our object in reviving the memories of the Brethren who have fallen asleep, was not to censure their faults or to magnify their success in a new and perilous undertaking; but to hold them up to our self-seeking age as illustrious examples of self-sacrificing benevolence. It is their purity of motive, that we admire in the Brethren. It is their child-like simplicity, their burning zeal, their desire, at any sacrifice, to preach Christ in the power of his sufferings and death, that has so endeared them to our affections. It is easy to call them enthusiasts and fanatics, but such fanaticism as theirs, if it do not command our profoundest reverence, should rebuke our indifference. With more extensive means than they, how little have we of their spirit! What facilities and opportunities are multiplied around us, Never was a louder call, or a wider field for missionary enterprise. Never were more important interests suspended on human determinations. Shall countless multitudes of our countrymen be unaffected by the truths, unsolaced by the consolations of the Gospel? Or shall the truth in its purity sanctify the affections, enlighten the minds, and bless the lives of the millions of the American people? Let others civilize and evangelize the foreign Heathen. It is a glorious, a godlike work. It is ours to evangelize heathens at home; to preach the Gospel to hearts grown callous amid the vices of civilized life; to break up the crust of indifference, which has grown over the souls of those who have been baptized into the name of Jesus; to overcome the latent skepticism engendered by unremitting devotion to wealth, ambition and sensuality. Those who shall consecrate themselves to this enterprise in the spirit of the Moravian Brethren, will erect for themselves an imperishable memorial in the gratitude of mankind. Nay, their names will be written in heaven, their record will be on high. 23* J. M. M. NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. A Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers in the Decision of THIS is one of the old works, of great merit, called forth by the reaction in favor of Catholicism and High-Church principles in the early part of the seventeenth century. Its recent republication has been caused, if not by a similar reaction, yet by the extraordinary assumptions of the Oxford Party in the English Church, which have brought the question of the authority of the Fathers again before the public. Before the end of the sixteenth century, the controversy between the Protestants and Catholics began to change its character. The appeal to Scripture and reason became less frequent, and the combatants shifted their weapons. Luther and his contemporaries had appealed to a few simple and great truths, to common sense, to arguments which addressed themselves to the individual conscience and reason, and above all to the Bible; and hence the great success of the Protestants. In an argument conducted in this way, they manifestly had the advantage. Of this, none were more fully aware than the Catholics themselves, and they sought therefore to change the ground of the controversy, and instead of the appeal to the Bible and to reason, to introduce the appeal to authority and to the voice of Christian antiquity. This change in the mode of warfare, which commenced in the sixteenth century, became more marked and decisive in the former part of the seventeenth. At this time the controversy was almost exclusively historical. The great watchwords were, Tradition and the Fathers. What, it was asked, do they teach? In the controversy thus conducted it often happened, that the Catholics, from their greater familiarity with the writings of Christian antiquity, or greater skill in the use of weapons drawn from the armory of the Fathers, had the advantage. Already there had been alarming defections from the Protestant ranks, and some of the greatest minds appeared to be wavering. Within the English Church there had grown up a strong party leaning to the side of ecclesiastical power, and attributing much more importance to tradition and the opinions of the Fathers, than had been ascribed to them by the founders and early defenders of the Anglican Church. These, it is well known, were moderate Episcopalians. They did not claim the Divine right in favor of Episcopacy, nor insist on the necessity of Apostolic succession, nor the exclusive right of Bishops to ordain. On some, or all these points, Archbishop Usher, Cranmer, Jewel, and other leading divines, held moderate views. The growth of the Ecclesiastical party, may be called, from its leaning to the Fathers and to tradition, and its high notions of the power of the Bishops, as well as its fondness for a pompous ritual, however, was favored by the rise of the Puritans, opposition to them leading to the assertion of High-Church principles. as it Such was the state of parties in the earlier part of the seventeenth century. Many had gone back to Rome, and among the Reformed there was a powerful party, which, relying on the authority of tradition and on antiquity, (or, as they falsely called it, primitive usage,) appeared to have abandoned the great principles on which the Protestant movement had proceeded. And really, amid the obscurity, the ambiguity, the inconsistency, and frequent contradictions of that "shoal of writers," as Milton calls them, "which the great drag-net of time hath enclosed, and brought down to us under the name of Fathers," it was not difficult to prove anything, or everything, if their authority was allowed. As yet this authority, though it had been questioned, had not undergone any very thorough discussion, and was generally considered as entitled to some degree of respect. At this period Daillé stepped forth, with his "Treatise on the Right Use of the Fathers." The reputation of the Fathers received a shock from the Treatise, from which it has never recovered. Reverence for their authority immediately sank, and no little sensation was produced in the ranks of their admirers. Daillé, says Hallam, "himself one of the most learned in this patristic erudition, whom the French Reformed Church possessed, was the first who boldly attacked the new school of historical theology in their own strong-hold, not only occupying their fortress, but razing it to the ground." The effect of the book, as Bishop Warburton, in his Introduction to Julian, (quoted by the Editor) describes it, was to bring the Fathers from the bench to the table; degrading them from the rank of Judges into the class of simple evidence; in which, too, they were not to speak, like Irish evidence, in every case where they were wanted, but only to such matters as were agreed to be within their knowledge." He adds, "but what it (the book) has chiefly to boast of is, that it gave birth to the two best defences ever written on the two best subjects, religion and liberty; I mean Mr. Chillingworth's 'Religion of Protestants,' and Dr. Jeremy Taylor's 'Liberty of Prophesying.' In a word, it may be truly said to be the store house from whence all who have since written popularly on the character of the Fathers have derived their materials." It is not surprising that the recent state of opinion and parties in the English Church, so analagous, in many respects, to what it was in the former part of the seventeenth century, should have caused its republication. It is exactly the book for the times. It has as intimate a bearing on present controversies as it had on those of the age in which it originated, so strangely has the same set of opinions, after the interval of two centuries, revived, and the same tendencies manifested themselves. The original treatise ("Du Vrai Emploi des Péres") appeared in 1631, and the republication bears date, 1841. It was translated into English by Thomas Smith, of Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1651. The translation has been revised by the present Editor, and the language changed where it was obscure, or had "become too antiquated and obsolete for modern times." The notes have been re-arranged, and the typography modernized. Daillé was born at Chatelleraut, in Poitou, in 1594. At the age of eighteen he was received into the family of Du Plessis Mornay, whose two grandsons he accompanied on a tour to Italy. He travelled also through Switzerland, Germany, Flanders, and Holland, and returned to France, through England, in 1621. He appears, however, to have entertained no very high opinion of the benefits of foreign travel; and regretted to the end of his life the time he had spent in it, thinking it might have been better employed in his study. The only fruit he derived from his travels, in Italy, he says, was the acquaintance he formed with Father Paul Sarpi, at Venice. On his return he entered the ministry and established himself at Saumur, from which, in 1626, he was transferred to a church in Paris, where he officiated till his death in 1670. His writings were numerous, but the best known of them, at least that now most frequently referred to, is the Treatise on the Use of the Fathers. L. 1. Exposition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans; with Extracts from Exegetical Works of the Fathers and Reformers. Translated from the original German of Dr. FRED. Aug. GOTTTREU THOLUCK, Professor of Theology in the Royal University of Halle, by the Rev. ROBERT MENZIES. First American, from the Second Revised and Corrected Edinburgh Edition. Philadelphia. 1844. 8vo. pp. 432. 2. Commentar zum Briefe Pauli an die Romer, von Dr. A. THOLUCK. Neue Ausarbeitung. Halle. 1842. THE book, first named above, is a republication of a work translated from the German about ten years ago, and published |