The Scripture Testimony to the Messiah. By the Rev. J. PYE SMITH, D.D. 3 vols. 8vo. Second edition, much improved and enlarged. London. 1829.

We are reconciled to not having reviewed the first edition of Dr. Smith's great work, from the circumstance that it allows us to bring it before our readers in its present "much improved and enlarged form;" while it also renders it unnecessary to give a full analysis of the work, which is already familiar to theological students. The publication exhibits long and patient research, varied learning, wide Biblical reading, a mind capable of close analysis and large deduction, and we need not say a truly candid spirit, united with deep piety, and a wish to pour out every mental and moral treasure at the foot of the cross of Christ. For theological students the book is invaluable, both for consecutive perusal and occasional reference: nor will well-informed private Christians, whose object is not connected with professional studies, be disappointed in its perusal; the whole being thrown into as popular a form as the argument would allow ; and many of the incidental disquisitions being valuable and interesting, even dissevered from the direct object of the treatise. The writer remarks, that the work "is humbly designed to assist the researches of serious Christians, who take the Bible as the guide to eternity, and who treat the authority with which it speaks with the reverence due to the Adorable and Infi

nite God."

We must, however, qualify our suffrage by adding, that in this large mass of criticism and discussion there may, and must be, points in which we do not concur in the conclusions of the author; and we must add, that there is occasionally an

abstinence in pressing a legitimate argument, and sometimes also a direct admission, which we could have wished otherwise; and this not only in reference to the individual point, but to the general effect upon the mind of the reader. This overcautiousness may, indeed, be urged as calculated to bespeak the confidence of the objector, as well as to promote the cause of truth; and the concessions which the author is willing to make may be represented as adding greater triumph to his victories. But we fear that the real result will rather be to encourage a hazardous spirit of speculation, the conclusion of which might be very serious. Our author gives up, for instance, the Song of Solomon, as not of Divine inspiration: but the claim of that book to be admitted into the sacred canon rests upon testimony similar to that which applies to various other portions, nay to the whole, of the Sacred Word; and the arguments offered for its rejection, derived from the contents of the book itself, may be plausibly applied by Arians and Socinians against many of those very passages which our author himself urges against their heretical opinions. Why not, for example, give up the chapters which contain the account of the miraculous birth of our Lord, as well as the Song of Solomon? We approve as little as our author of some of the popular expositions of this book; we find to the full as much difficulty in explaining it; nay, we think it was wisely judged by our Church, while fully admitting its Divine inspiration, not to introduce the reading of it into the public service: but the evidence for its being a part of the sacred canon appears to us too strong to set it aside on the ground of internal evidence, without first admitting the very principles on which Neologism and Socinianism

are founded, and which Dr. Smith himself has so powerfully refuted. We have, indeed, no arguments to offer to our learned author in favour of the book, beyond those which are familiar to every student of the inspired canon-and which, after long deliberation, he has rejected;but to our minds these are quite as forcible as those which entrench many other undoubted parts of Divine Revelation, and certainly ought not to be set aside by the force of an arbitrary hypothesis. We think, also, that the introduction of this argument into the present volume, besides being gratuitous, was illjudged; since it was calculated to cause a revulsion in many pious minds towards the whole work, and also to strengthen the Unitarian reader in his favourite habit of rejection upon inference and constructive evidence—that is, often, upon no evidence at all. Our author certainly meant not this: his reasons for rejection are stated with great seriousness, and are evidently joined to a desire to investigate the matter fully, and to follow wherever truth may lead we are therefore far from impeaching his rectitude of intention, but we greatly regret both the result of his decision, and the unnecessary introduction of the topic into the very front of his highly valuable work.

There are some other relinquish ments, as regards the currently received orthodox applications of texts, in which we cannot concur; but these do not affect the general result of his argument, which, after every deduction which he thinks it right or legitimate to make, is ir refragable, being built both upon the plain text of the Divine word, and clear inference from it. We therefore only interpose this general remark, as neither our limits nor the patience of our readers would allow of lengthened minute criticisms; and shall add to it but one other preliminary difference, namely, what appears to us the unnecessary frequency of new translations, where

our current vernacular version is either satisfactory, or at least not improper. The familiarity of a translation to the mind and the memory is of so great value, that, without absolute need, we would not sacrifice it to any new combination of words, and certainly not to the cadences of a Lowth, or Horsley, which, by means of grammatical inversions, and classical instead of pure English words, appear inflated, and scarcely intelligible to the unlettered reader.

We come now to the more agreeable task of extracting a few interesting passages from the work; confining ourselves, in the present Number, to the first volume, and purposing briefly to notice the others at a future opportunity. Our references will be particularly directed to some of the new materials of the second edition, which is, probably, not in the hands of many of our readers. In almost every chapter there are additions and improvements, so as almost to render it a new work.

The reasons which induced our author to add one more to the many books on the divinity and offices of our Lord are stated as follows.

merit, have been published upon this truly Many works, of various character and important subject. Of these not a few are entitled to all the commendations

which are due to ability and learning, to tian temper. sound judgment, fair reasoning, and ChrisIt must, however, be acknowledged that the generality of the earlier works, valuable and useful as on

many accounts they are, were constructed upon a state of the controversy in a considerable degree different from that which it has more lately assumed. Others take up a up a limited view of the subject, and decline the investigation of some points decline the which are necessary to a correct under

standing of the case. Some have sacrificed their utility to their jealousies; and, by the accumulation of weak or dubious arguments, have obscured and enfeebled their better matter: others have sought a miserable assistance from harsh and irritating language, crying down, rather than answering, their opponents: some have assumed principles hostile to the right of free inquiry, personal judgment, and unrestrained profession of what is apprehended to be truth: some have rested

their arguments on the authority and prescriptions of men and, to the injury of a good cause, and the deep grief of many conscientious friends of that cause, the authors of some other works have betrayed their chagrin that the justice of the British legislature has denied to their reasonings the support of penal terrors. In the mean time, the dispute is continued with unquenched ardour; and the claim of victory is made on each side, with apparently equal confidence." pp-4-6. We are not disposed to allow equal weight to all these reasons; and we fear that the Unitarian, who would not be convinced by such treatises as those of Dr. Wardlaw or the Archbishop of Dublin, is not likely to be wrought upon by any minor arrangements in the method of handling the argument, or materially conciliated by any exhibition of candour short of unchristian concession. At the same time, we admit, with our respected author, that some anti Socinian publica tions have been written in a harsh and irritating spirit; others in a tone of assumption, which seemed to give to mere human authority, or the decisions of an established church, more weight than they were entitled to in an argument purely Scriptural and others, in a sort of rapacious, make-weight style, which heaped together argument and no argument, urging every thing and giving up nothing; and thus rendering suspected what was good, from its juxta-position with what was doubtful: all which, clearly, ought to be avoided; as they have been by our author, but, we fear, sometimes by verging towards the opposite error of undue latitude of concession. But the best apology for a new treatise is that which our author himself premises, that the controversy itself has assumed new features, as all controversies are apt to do in the course of years, so that many of the earlier arguments, on both sides, require to be re-modelled to the mental habits of a succeeding age. In the very case, for example, of the necessity for an Established Church, or the claims of our own, we should not ourselves be willing

to meet our present author with the panoply of a Hall or a Hooker. One such writer as a Towgood, a Booth, a Priestley, a Belsham, or a Paine, in their respective depart ments, gives a new popular aspect to certain portions of a discussion, and renders new treatises necessary, not, indeed, to the general argument, but certainly to some of its local peculiarities. Dr. Smith's work is in this respect highly useful to theological students in the present age, who will find in it a reference to various passing topics connected with the question-such, for example, as the spread of Neologism-which they could not meet with in earlier or less elaborate treatises.

Dr. Smith most justly traces up the rash and presumptuous declarations which abound in Unitarian and Neologian writers, and are interwoven with their whole system, to low and degrading thoughts concerning the blessed and holy God, his moral government, and the revelation of his justice and grace. There runs also, throughout them, a levity upon subjects connected with religion, and an irreverence in commenting upon the Sacred Writings, which we cannot conceive consistent with a hearty belief of their being divinely inspired. To go no further than Dr. Priestley, the late Mr. Belsham, and the Translators of the "Improved Version" of the New Testament, what weight can we attach to the theological conclusions of persons who can speak of the writers on whom they comment in such language as the following-We will not pollute our pages with more than a very brief sample.

"St. Paul," says Dr. Priestley, "can hardly be considered as entirely free from blame: he hath had too little regard to the consistency of these representations. This proceeding could not but tend to throw confusion into our views of the end and design of the death of Christ." Again: "This, I am apprehensive, will

appear to be but little satisfactory to any one that wisheth to see Christianity effectually cleared from a charge of licentiousness. At best, it is disappointing his reader, whose expectations he had raised so high by the spirited manner in which he resented the imputation, and begun his answer; by putting him off with a mere allusion, instead of a solid argument. But even the allusion seems to be faulty. It is both arbitrary and defective." "Whether or no St. Paul's undoubted good sense was satisfied with it, it an swered his purpose the best of any method in the world." "The Epistle to the Hebrews," says the Improved Version," contains many important observations, and many wholesome truths, mingled indeed with some far-fetched analogies and inaccurate reasonings." "The writer of this Epistle," says Mr. Belsham in his Calm Inquiry, "having found in Psalm cx. the priesthood of the Messiah compared with that of Melchisedec, strains the similitude to as many points of resemblance as possible." And again: "Jesus, knowing their mean and secular views, resolved to release himself from these selfish and unworthy attendants; and for this purpose he delivers a discourse which they could not comprehend, and the design of which was to shock their prejudices, to disgust their feelings, and to alienate them from his society."

Mr. Belsham's Commentary on St. Paul abounds with passages in this unhallowed strain; and though the author's own remarks are, to say the least, often abundantly irreverent; he seems to delight in strengthening them from Dr. Priestley, as often as he can alight upon something in that unhappy writer more than usually flippant and pro

fane.

Is, then, this the disposition of mind in which any man is likely to seek or to discover Divine truth? Assuredly not; and we are therefore much indebted to our author for

interweaving, in an early part of his treatise, a most interesting chapter on the moral state of the mind and affections, as connected with the present inquiry. This is a subject of great moment to every Christian, and peculiarly to every theological student; yet it has unhappily been too little attended to in the schools and colleges of sacred learning. Barrow has some admirable sermons on it; and we remember an excellent discourse on the same topic, preached before the university of Oxford about twenty years ago, by the Rev. Daniel Wilson, entitled, "Obedience the Path to Religious Knowledge." The present Bishop of Salisbury, also, gave this very subject for one of the St. David's Prize Essays, with an especial view to the Socinian contro. versy. The topic has, in short, employed many pens; for though at first sight it may be thought somewhat invidious, as connected with a theological argument, yet it involuntarily forces itself upon the reader of most heretical and infidel works. He instinctively exclaims, "I feel no confidence in this writer : a man who speaks thus cannot be in earnest on the subject: he is morally unfit for the investigation: he does not seem to understand what the Apostle means when he says that it is with the heart that man believeth unto righteousness; or to feel practically that it is the meek alone that God is pleased to guide in judgment, and to teach his way; or that the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; or that it is those only who are practically inclined to do the will of God, that shall know of the doctrine of Christ."

The whole of Dr. Smith's chapter on this topic deserves serious perusal; and it is a subject on which he is doubtless practically, as well as theoretically, well qualified to judge and write, from his long intercourse, as a theological tutor, with young men pursuing sacred as well as humanity studies. He gives on this subject the following attestation;