verse or ignorant adherence to an exploded error in point of fact, it becomes no easy matter to find language in which to express the indignation which such conduct, in a public writer, cannot fail to excite. History, in such hands, so far from being edifying and instructive, is made the means of strengthening the worst passions, and of perpetuating the most hurtful prejudices. Other authors take the trouble to examine into both sides of the question, to weigh probabilities, and to pursue the footsteps of truth through the darkness of remote time, and the intricacy of opposing statements. But Mr. Godwin appears either to have wilfully shut his eyes to the evidence which the labour of his predecessors has produced, or to have resolutely adhered to the determination of drawing all the materials of his book from one class of writers, and from one description of archives. The researches of the learned, and the stores of the antiquary, are of no use to him, unless they confirm his preconceived opinions, and give a colour to his invectives on Charles the First, and on the kingly office and character in all nations.

It is somewhat amusing to find this historian of the English Commonwealth not only loading the king with the foulest imputations in his own person, but likewise ascribing to the influence of his bad example, the faithlessness and hypocrisy of Cromwell, Ireton, and the other leading republicans. Ireton, he assures us, was a man of stern integrity, and Cromwell was remarked for his extraordinary frankness; and yet he admits that, in their conduct towards Charles, "hypocrisy was of the essence of everything they could effect." Both these worthies, he acknowledges, "persuaded themselves that, on the present occasion, a certain degree of reserve, and even of deception, was necessary to accomplish a people's safety and effect the noblest ends." But he accounts for all these aberrations from the straight line of integrity, by observing, that "this is one of the consequences of the constitution of kingship! Frankness and an unalterable sincerity are republican

virtues."

Admiring the steadiness and resolution with which Cromwell and his party pursued their object through falsehood, hypocrisy, and deceit, he bespeaks the approbation of his reader for them in the following terms:-" It is interesting to observe, when men of high talents and energies have determined to engage in any enterprise, how fully they perform the task they have chalked out for themselves. Ireton, a firm and rigid disciple of the republican school, and Cromwell, the undaunted, having once sworn to deceive, the dimensions of their minds enabled them immediately to stand forth accomplished and entire adepts in the school of Machiavel. They were satisfied that the system they adopted

was just; and they felt no jot of humiliation or self-abasement in the systematical pursuit of it!!"

The system which is here so ardently applauded was the policy adopted by Cromwell to prevent the king from acceding to the propositions presented to him by parliament when his majesty was at Newcastle; on the basis of which the royal authority might have been re-established, and the peace of the country completely restored. Afraid lest an accommodation should take place between the sovereign and the two houses, the disciples of the republican school instructed their agent, an honest but simple royalist, to advise "Charles by all means to reject the propositions and throw himself upon the army." A scheme, of which the revival of kingly power formed no part, had already presented itself to the imagination of Cromwell, and the other masters of the army; and to realize that scheme, it was necessary that the war with all its miseries should continue, until both the monarch and the parliament should acknowledge the dominion of the sword, and vail their power before a military despotism.

Mr. Godwin has no anathema to pronounce against his "disciples of the republican school," though they had sworn to deceive, and by their deception to involve the country, a second time, in all the horrors of a civil war. No indignant feeling escapes from his breast, when he narrates the deep delusion and hypocrisy with which Cromwell plied the king, when he laboured to prevent a reconciliation between the royalists and presbyterians, and to obtain possession of his majesty's person. Such nefarious conduct draws forth only the pleasant remark that "it is interesting to observe when men of high talents and energies have determined to engage in any enterprise, how fully they perform the task they have chalked out for themselves!" But, speaking of the judgment pronounced upon the unfortunate Charles, merely because he would not surrender the cardinal principles of the constitution in church and state, this bigotted author declares that it is not easy to imagine a greater criminal than the individual against whom the sentence was awarded. Charles, to a degree which can hardly be exceeded, conspired against the liberty of his country. Conquered and driven out of the field, he did not for a moment lose sight of his object and his resolution. He sought in every quarter for the materials of a new war; and after an interval of twenty months, and from the depths of his prison, he found them. To this must be added, the most consummate insincerity and duplicity. He could never be reconciled; he could never be disarmed; he could never be convinced. His was a war to the death; and therefore had the utmost aggravation that can belong to a war against the liberty of a nation."

The following picture of Cromwell, we must add, is not set forth with the usual colouring which adorns the delineation of the commonwealth-men, in the pages of Mr. Godwin; and we beg the reader's attention to it as a favourable specimen of the author's style and manner. The passage about to be quoted bears a reference to the intrigues which, under the auspices of the future protector and his friend Ireton, prepared the army for taking a part in the melancholy scene which darkened the 30th of January. For this purpose, as is well-known, the soldiers were encouraged to disobey the commands of their officers, and even to intimidate the government, and thereby to afford to the master-demagogues a pretext for breaking faith with the king, and ultimately for bringing him to the block.

"It was a repeated piece of policy with this consummate politician (Cromwell) to seem to be forced to that which he had most a mind to. It cannot reasonably be doubted that Cromwell, and Ireton, and Vane, and St. John, and all the leading men of that party were at this time republicans. They had chosen for a while to appear to court the king, and thus to counteract the intrigues of the presbyterians with the royalists. But this game upon their principle must have an end. It had already answered most important purposes to them, in causing the banishment or expulsion of the eleven members, and in inducing the king to reject the propositions of the parliament. They must at some time change their language towards Charles, and check his pride. But how was this to be done? Cromwell and Ireton especially had been profuse in their expressions of good-will towards him. It is not in our nature to substitute one form of countenance and demeanour for another precisely opposite, without seeking some pretext for doing so. That which they most desired was to be able to say, We should be happy to go on with your majesty, but the soldiery are turbulent and ungovernable, and we are not strong enough to resist them. seems to be the true clue to the events which occurred at this period. Taken in this point of view, nothing can be more worthy of observation than the conduct which these persons at this time held. They seem to have regarded all the parties engaged in the scene as mere puppets, to be moved this way and that, purely at the pleasure of the masters of the exhibition; and they did not for a moment distrust their ability to bring the whole to the desired issue. The king rejected the propositions, for they prompted him to do so; the courtiers for the same reason advised him to that proceeding; the most powerful of the presbyterians left London at a certain moment for the army, for Cromwell and Ireton drove and lured them to that extremity; they, to a certain degree, even made use of and temporized with the members who had sat in parliament during the absence of the speaker; and now Lilburne and the new agents undertook by rude violence and force to compel the superior officers of the army to adopt that line of policy in which these officers of their own accord were most anxious

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to engage. It was, therefore, not without reason that Sir Allen Apsley told Berkeley, when he came over from France to join Charles, upon the invitation of Cromwell and Ireton, 'You will have to do with subtle men, who govern themselves by other maxims than the rest of the world.'

The facts which are contained in the above paragraphs ought to have made Mr. Godwin more sparing of his panegyrics on the disciples of the republic, and more guarded in his strictures upon those who had the misfortune to be opposed to them. What confidence could be placed in men who had sworn to deceive; who preached whole battalions into sedition; and who kindled, by means of long prayers, the spirit of mutiny and revolt among the troops, whose fidelity and services they had secretly pledged to their sovereign. What respect is due to men who, under the pretext of affection to his person and his cause, prevented him from adopting the only means which were left to him for saving both; and who, out of a feigned apprehension for his bodily safety, drove him to a measure which placed his life and fortunes in their hands. Mr. Fox has indeed said that," it is much to be doubted whether the trial and execution of the king have not, as much as any other circumstance, served to raise the character of the English nation in the opinion of Europe in general;" but assuredly, if these events had in them anything grand or striking, they must have derived such properties from another source than the character and motives of the chief individuals by whom they were brought to pass. All that was noble and honourable in the English name shrunk back from the scene of blood and perfidy. true friends of liberty were ashamed and disappointed; and the triumph of hypocrisy and vulgar ambition was completed under the auspices of men, who owed all their eminence to the misfortunes of their country. So strong and universal was the feeling of indignation against the perpetrators of this legal murder, that even Mr. Godwin is compelled to say, "I am afraid, that the day that saw Charles perish on the scaffold rendered the restoration of his family certain."

The

We have not entered into a regular review of this volume, because it brings forward nothing new, either in fact or reasoning, which deserves the smallest notice. It is a jejune, commonplace narrative of events familiar to every reader of English history, embodying all the errors, prejudices, and intemperance that have hitherto appeared in similar works of the revolutionary school. It displays no research, no criticism, and very little care in composition. In short, it is unworthy of the subject, and of the present improved state of literature and historical knowledge.

ART. IV.-1. An Inquiry into the Origin and Intent of Primitive Sacrifice, and the Scripture Evidence respecting it. With Observations on the Opinions of Spencer, Bishop Warburton, Archbishop Magee, and other Writers on the same Subject. And some Reflexions on the Unitarian Controversy. By John Davison, B.D., late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. London, Murray.

2. An Answer to the Rev. John Davison's " Inquiry into the Origin and Intent of Primitive Sacrifice," &c. By the Rev, John Edward Nassau Molesworth, M.A., Curate of Milbrook, Hants, and late of Trinity College, Oxford. London, C. & J. Rivington.

THERE is scarcely any subject in the whole range of theology, of deeper interest in the investigation, or more momentous in its consequences, than the inquiry into the Intent and Origin of Primitive Sacrifice; nor is there any which has been discussed with more consummate learning and ability. The importance of the question, connected as it is with the great doctrine of the Christian atonement, will not permit us to overlook, or to dismiss it with a cursory notice. The sacred records, from which alone any real information can be obtained, are, however, in this respect, so concise, or obscure, that we do not wonder that men of the soundest judgment, and most unsuspected orthodoxy, should herein have arrived at different conclusions; leaving us, at last, in some degree of uncertainty, whether the observance of sacrifice, which, under the Mosaic ritual, so exactly typified the atoning death of Christ, was introduced into the primitive religion of mankind by divine appointment, as a prophetic type and symbolical representation of the expiatory sacrifice of the Redeemer; or whether it was suggested by the mere dictates of unassisted human reason, as a natural and appropriate method of expressing the guilt of the offerer, and his consequent liability to punishment.

In the book of Genesis, which records the first instance of sacrificial worship, nothing is expressly asserted concerning either the origin or intent of that significant rite; and many of the most distinguished of the Jewish rabbis, and earlier fathers of the Christian church, have concurred in attributing to it an origin merely human. But modern divines of no mean reputation are not disposed to allow that, on this subject, the evidence of scripture is inconclusive; and were that evidence weaker than they think it is, such, they contend, is the natural unreasonableness of