endeavoured to defend the personal reputation of such a hero, for example, as Luther; as though his private life-which, by the way, needed no apology-were the measure by which we are to estimate the soundness of his opinions. If the Reformation were to depend upon a criterion of this kind, it would alternately rise and fall with the cruelty of Henry and the gentleness of Melancthon; with the constancy of Ridley and the relapse of Pendleton. It is time to have done with this ambi-dextrous weapon, and to allow truth to stand upon its own basis; and to own at once, that even Leo the Tenth might be sometimes right, and the Saxon sometimes wrong.

With these very obvious truisms, I beg leave to offer for insertion, two illustrations of the non-sequitur connected with the argument which has so long astonished me. The first is a letter (if my readers think it apocryphal I cannot help it) from a monk, addressed to the mitred abbot of his monastry, in the early period of the English Reformation; complaining of the novelty and error contained in that useful series of truths which are now generally received under the name of the multiplication table; and which this subtle doctor thus satisfactorily refutes : "It may please your L'dship to be advertyzed, that the Kynge, his grace, has, in your absence, sent notyce to this house, to have certain strange things to be learned in the cloisterre; one whereof, as your L'ship will ryght well judge, must be part of the new learnynge; and touching whych I noways doubt but that it is one of the foolishe gaudes invented by the heretyckes; and, as some say, come from beyond sea, in the partes of Germanie; where the man Luther hath performed many such outlandish tricks. Your L'ship doth well knowe, that our cellarer's accounts are here kept, according to auncient usage, and the custom, as I must thereto add, of holie

churche, by the score and the tally, and all is done well: whereas we have now a quaint device called the table of multiplication; and I would faine be advertyzed what commoditie it can, in any possibilitie, bring unto us. I have taken solemn counsel on this noveltie, from a great doctor (the same, my good Lord, who did wryte against Master Wyclyffe his heresies), and who saith, that he is confident that no such table is to be found in the fathers, neither in the heretycke's own book, to wit, their boasted New Testament (and verily they may honestlie call it new); but I pass by alle this; for there no needs to say more, than to telle your L'ship, that the very inventor of this odde conceit is (and I am thankful to our Ladie, and to the blessed saints, especiallie to St. Stultus and St. Stultitia, to whom our noble house is dedicated

thankful, I say, to have just tracked the foxe to his hole,) a dounryght follower of the same Wyclyffe, and, indeede, of sundrie gounsmen, who now-a-days are poysonnynge the kynge's highness with their Lutheranne nonsense, and their own. His grace, I hope, will see his waye out of such folishnesse; and order the maker of this table to some safe prison, where he may coole his heeles full leisurely, and teache his multiplication to the rats and myce. Shortly, my good lord, you will now see how impossi ble it is for the house to entertain a thing contryved by such a knave. For I hold it be a well settled rule of faith, to trye all doctryne by the man who doth broache it; and so farewell to this new fancie. I must, however, tell your L'ship of a pleasaunt passage; namely, that when I shewed this table to my kinsmanne, Master Thomas Phoole, he merrilie called it the multiplication fable, such was his readie wit. He did also aske, where I gotte my new chess-board, and what was become of all the blacke squares; for your L'ship must know that there is such a likenesse between the twain

as myghte justifie many a like say ing; and I have a good mynde to shew the thing to his Majesty's jester, whose cappe will then shake, and whose belles will jingle all the livelong daye, tynkle, tynkle, tynkle. So, I remain, this first of Aprylle, your L'ship's poor beadsman, "T. F."

If any doubt should be raised as to the genuineness of this exposure of the fallacies of arithmetic, I shall not pause to defend it; but shall leave both this and the following to their own internal evidences. The date of the following might be A.D. 96, about the time when St. John wrote the Apocalypse.

"C. Vafer Astutus to the Emperor Domitian, wishes health and hap. piness.

"In my voyage from Pergamos in Mysia to Italy, I directed the shipmaster to touch at Patmos; to which remote island your imperial wisdom banished a partisan of the Christian faction. I visited this person, who appears to be of a mild and benevolent disposition; unless he assumed such a character with a view to interest me in his favour; and, by my representations to you, sir, to have the rigours of his exile softened. He is said to be sometimes absorbed in mystic raptures; and one result of these have been certain epistles, addressed to what are called the seven churches of Asia. Pergamos is one of the number; and here the immoral and degraded character of the sect is freely acknowledged by the exile himself, as will appear from the parchments accompanying this letter*, Indeed, sir, I know not how sufficiently to admire your sagacity, in detecting the mischievous tendency of this superstition; and I doubt not you have been led, among other causes, to condemn the new doctrines, on account of the notorious depravity of certain among their principal supporters. I have

Rev. ii. 14-16.

myself lately examined the sacred books of the faction, particularly such portions of them as are written by the impostor Saul or Paul (for his name is differently pronounced

a circumstance, in itself, very suspicious, and indicating craft); whom I find actually owning his own versatility and wickedness. He acknowledges that he was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious; and although he makes apologies for passing over to a new party, it is obvious that they betray the weakness of a cause, which must ultimately fall by its own inefficiency. It is, however, curious to observe, how this Saul palliates, while he confesses, the vices of the Corinthian and Galatian churches. He could not avoid noticing such blazing evidences of profligacy; and then professes to weep over them, as though he were really grieved by the triumph of vice. I farther observe, in the narrative portions of the sacred books, how completely the historian subverts his own doctrine, by describing the rampant treachery of the Jewish conspirator who actually betrayed his Master for thirty shekels of silver -the inconceivable audacity of another, who cursed and swore as he denied him-and, I may add, the general flight of a certain chosen set of familiars in the moment of danger. It has always, sir, been an established maxim with me, not less than with yourself, to value all opinions by the conduct of their supporters; and it must afford high satisfaction to your imperial mind, to be convinced of the danger of exercising any degree of clemency towards a faction confuted by its own avowed wickedness. Your candour, I am still aware, will concede the beauty of some portions of this yet hateful system; as, for example, in certain moral precepts which are dispersed over the accredited writings. But as they are decidedly at variance with the con

1 Tim. i, 13.

duct of the writers, and meant to

ARY.

Tothe EditoroftheChristian Observer.

To these letters I shall merely add a mathematical illustration of the general subject. If verity depends upon character, all the power of geometrical truth must evidently perish. Now it was asserted both by Priestley and Horsley, that a triangle has three sides. Had Horsley alone said this, I should have readily believed the position; but as the Socinian advanced a similar declaration, I own that I am exceedingly doubtful; and have yet to learn whether a triangle be not, to a considerable degree, circular.

But to be serious: the object of my paper is to shew the absurdity, and indeed iniquity, so much practised among mankind, of receiving or rejecting the most solemn verities merely because they are, or are not, advanced by persons of their own party. My illustrations are from a monk and a heathen, each in his proper costume. The presumed address from the Roman officer to his emperor may be objected to, on account of the Pagan manner in which he speaks of Christianity, but he only says what Pliny and Tacitus said before him. Milton has put even blasphemous language into the mouths of certain among the characters in the Paradise Lost and Regained; and the Scriptures themselves record rebellious and profane speeches, as uttered by various enemies of religion. My object was to shew, that if character is to be made the test of truth, the most undoubted verities of Christianity might be excepted against by a heathen, on account of the real or supposed faults of its professors.

ANTI-EUCLID.

I TOOK the liberty, in your Number for last February, of inviting the attention of the members of the Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews to the strange opinions said to be promulgated by Mr. Wolfe, their missionary, particularly his notions about prophetic chronology and geography, and the Son of Man's coming again in the year 1847 to dwell in the literal city of Jerusalem, where and when the Temple is to be built, and Mr. Wolfe is to walk with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the streets of that city, with I know not how many other fancies. my observations, a correspondent, under the signature of CANDIDUS, replied in your next Number, stating, first, that Mr. Wolfe had done no more than Lactantius and many other persons have done before him; and secondly, that the Society would doubtless admonish him not to publish any thing in future respecting his mission without their previous knowledge and sanction; which Candidus considered was "all the correction that is called for."

Το

Both these heads of the reply of Candidus appeared to me unsatisfactory: the first, because though Lactantius or a thousand other good men may have had their whims, that is no reason for sober-minded Christians to send out and support missionaries to inculcate them, to the no small danger of making infidels of nominal Christians, and confirming Jews, Turks, and infidels in their delusions by the recoil of these rash predictions; the second, because Candidus did not urge that the Society should tell Mr. Wolfe that they could not retain missionaries who mixed up their own inventions with the word of God, but only that they should admonish him not to publish such matters to the world without their permission: so that, upon this

plan, he might continue to preach what he pleased, so that we in England did not hear of it, and were content with such a fraction of the truth" as the society could sanction."

But though both of these arguments appeared to me unsatisfactory, I did not reply to Candidus, being informed privately, but, as I understood, upon official authority, that the statements about Mr. Wolfe's preaching were only floating rumours, and that the Society had directed him to repair home, or that he was about to do so, with a view to a full investigation of his conduct. Thus the matter rested, till, taking up the last Number of the Society's official publication, The Jewish Expositor, I find it avowed that Mr. Wolfe, instead of "determining to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified," is actually latitudinarianizing in the manner above mentioned about the year 1847; nor do I learn that there is any intention of either recalling him or confining him to sober Christian doctrine. It is, however, to the honour of the Society, that they have fairly told us his errors,-not keeping them back, as Candidus seems to have thought would have been the better plan.

Under these circumstances, I renew my call upon the members of that excellent and valuable institution to clear themselves in this matter. I see in its lists the names of persons who ought not to give their sanction, direct or indirect, to these strange and unscriptural speculations. Had Mr. Wolfe continued "Mr. Drummond's mission

ary," he might be naturally expected to promulgate the notions of what is called the Albury School;" but the Jews' Society ought not to expend the sacred funds of their work of Christian mercy, for which they are now making a solemn appeal for new aid, in patronizing erratic teachers, who have yet to learn their own ignorance of what God has not been pleased to reveal, but has wrapt up in the obscurity of prophetic vision, till the times and seasons be fulfilled. I write in all good will to this most useful and interesting Society, only wishing that they would look strictly to the sobriety of their agents, and also take their standing upon ground common to pious persons, and not connected with any particular school of prophetic interpretation. A clergyman, some time since, was about to preach or speak for the Society, on the general principle of its being a missionary institution, having, however, very peculiar and powerful claims of its own; but was told that this was lowering the Society's ground, for that the conductors did not much value the aid of any but those who take up Mr. Faber's views about the Jews being the intended missionaries to the Gentiles, the dependence of the Gentiles upon them, their literal return to Jerusalem, and other points, which the clergyman, not being convinced of, was prevented rendering that assistance which he wished to the Society's cause. Might not the friends of the Society be more cosmopolitan without endangering its peculiar objections?

A COMMITTEE MAN.

REVIEW OF WORKS ON THE EVIdences of CHRISTIANITY.

(Continued from p. 770.) MR. Wilson's seventeenth lecture is on "The Pre-eminent Character

and Conduct of our Lord;" and the object of it is to shew that it is impossible for a person to sustain such opposite and apparently conflicting claims as those by him assumed, without being really what he pro