Dissent. How few are there who leave the church for the meeting-house or the superintendent's office! Compared with the aggregate of marriages in the country, how very small is that select number of persons who refuse to be married as their fathers had been before them! It may be proper to remark, in connection with this subject, that the Dissenting ministers appear ambitious of having it thought that they stand on the same ground in this matter with the clergy of the Church of England. We sometimes, for instance, read in the public papers the announcement of a marriage celebrated by the Rev. Mr. So and So, a Dissenting minister; an announcement which is palpably false, since no Dissenting minister is authorised to marry. He may be present at the ceremony if he pleases; but his presence is not required to render the contract valid. No marriage can take place out of the Church, except in the presence of the Register of the union in which the parties may reside. It is true that the marriage may be celebrated in a chapel; but not by the minister. He has no more to do with the business than the Pope. The important person, whose presence the law renders necessary to the validity of the contract, is the aforesaid Register. Such is the case with all marriages not celebrated in the Church of England; and yet some Dissenting preachers can put forth the glaring falsehood that certain parties are married by them. As it respects the clergy, the law remains unaltered. They can still, as heretofore, perform the marriage ceremony,

and without the intervention of the officer from the Poor-law union. The returns prove that the old English feeling on this subject is as strong as ever, and that none but the rigid Dissenters are disposed to depart from the practice of our forefathers.

Cromwell is a greater favourite with Dr. Price than Charles I. Most of his measures are accordingly lauded. Much has been said about the Triers who were appointed by Cromwell to choose persons for the ministry in the churches. Many Presbyterian writers have spoken of them with great severity; but with Dissenting writers they uniformly find much favour. Dr. Price adduces the case of Pococke to prove that, generally speaking, they acted with fairness, the influence of the least qualified being "tempered by the better spirit and more enlightened views of their associates." How he can adduce this case to prove that they generally acted fairly we cannot conceive, since it was one of the worst acts of the body. It is true that Pococke was spared; but it is also true that he was saved with difficulty. Nor ought the Triers to have the credit of the act, when it is notorious that Pococke was saved from ejection only by the strong representations of Owen to Secretary Thurloe.

The number ejected by the Triers, according to Dr. Price, was "very small." It would indeed have been strange if many had been removed by this singular body. Let the circumstances of the country be for one moment considered. Ever since the commencement of the war, committees for scandalous ministers had been labouring to expel from the churches every clergyman who regarded the royal cause with favour. Almost every parish had been visited by these committees. How then was it possible for any suspected clergyman to escape? If, therefore, the Triers did little work, it was because their predecessors in the same line had left them little to do. The business had been already completed; and the Triers could only go over the same ground, seeking after those who might have escaped the vigilance of the sequestrating committees. Still the iniquity of the measure is not the least diminished by the smallness of the numbers who were actually ejected. Dr. Price tells us, with unblushing impudence, that

"They carried forward the reforms achieved by the Long Parliament, and, on retiring from their vocation, left the benefices of the Church in the possession of men unsurpassed for religious zeal and ministerial diligence." p. 541.

We have already stated that Cromwell is a greater favourite with Dr. Price than Charles I. Our readers have seen how he speaks of that monarch's last hours: let them contrast his observations on Charles with the following remarks on Cromwell's death: "One thing is evident, he died with composure, in the solemn recognition of his responsibility, and in the utterance of fervent prayer for his people." p. 626. How different is this language from that adopted by our author in speaking of the death of Charles I. ! Yet can there be a question respecting the comparative guilt of the two individuals? Hypocrite as Cromwell undoubtedly was, yet we do not find that he is censured by Dr. Price: and then, because he cannot evade the force of the evidence relative to the guilt of the Protector, he uses the language which we have just quoted, insinuating that he was not only free from hypocrisy, but that he enjoyed composure of mind, and was a man of fervent prayer. Disgraceful as are many portions of this volume, none are more so than those which relate to Charles I., and the Protector Cromwell. The man

The Doctor does not speak in this strain of Charles, who was a legitimate sovereign. No; He does not speak of the people as the king's people! But in describing Cromwell's last hours, he speaks of his prayer for his people, as though he had been their lawful governor, and not an ambitious usurper. How inconsistent are some men!

who could write with such an utter disregard to the truth of history, is undeserving of credit in any statement involving opinions at variance with those which he has himself adopted.

We shall close our remarks on this volume with some allusion to Congregationalism or Independency, as described by Dr. Price.

"The tendency of Congregationalism to isolate its members from each other, and thus to check the flow of Christian sympathy, and to diminish the moral force of the Church universal, has been frequently adduced by opponents in proof of its unfitness to become the instrument of the conversion of the world."

One would imagine that no man, in his sober senses, could make himself so ridiculous as to hazard such an assertion.

The voluntary principle to become the instrumeut of the conversion of the world! Prodigious! What a discovery! So there is no chance of the world's conversion till this glorious principle has free scope for action, by the removal of all impediments in the shape of a state religion or an established church. Ye legislators of England, how can ye continue to prevent the conversion of the world by interposing in favor of the Church of England! It is truly astonishing to find men penning such nonsense on such a subject.

It is a fact that many Independents possessed churches and received tithes during the Commonwealth; and this fact could not be passed over by our author.

"The fact (says he) is notorious, and cannot be reconciled with the principles of the parties in question. Independency is founded on the voluntary character of religion. This is the element in which it lives and moves and has its being. It is its universal and all pervading attribute, the simple but majestic doctrine which is lisped in its infancy, and the distinct enunciation of which constitutes the glory of its manhood. Is it therefore matter of surprise that any Congregationalists should so far have forgotten what was due to their own consistency as to have received the constrained support of their people." p. 639.

We know not what period Dr. Price would assign for the infancy of Independency; but from his observations in this passage we imagine that the time of the Commonwealth is intended. At all events, the system is not older than the period of the Brownists, who were the first Independents. Dr. Price, therefore, virtually acknowledges that Independency is a very different thing from Christianity. What other meaning can his words convey? He speaks of the infancy of Independency some 200 years since; whereas Christianity is more than 1800 years old: consequently, according to his own admission, his much lauded system is quite a new thing in the world, and therefore not the system

introduced by Christ and his apostles. The system is now in its prime, as the Doctor asserts: and we tell him that it will arrive at old age, and decay, before it has achieved the conversion of the world. In England the voluntary principle has ample scope; and yet what has it accomplished amidst our overgrown population? As an auxiliary it may be useful; but as the only system of religious instruction it would be lamentably defective. Were we, as a nation, left to the operations of Independency, we should soon sink into Popery, Socinianism, and Infidelity. It cannot be disputed that, from whatever cause, there is such a tendency in Dissent. This tendency, in our opinion, arises from the fact that, having neither articles, nor creeds, nor formularies, there is nothing to check the minister or people from going astray from the principles of the Gospel. The present state of Dissent corroborates our assertions. For are not the Dissenters more mindful of politics than of religion? Are they not more occupied with the creeds of visionary demagogues, than with the principles of the sacred volume? This is a fearful state of things; yet the picture is not overcharged. Our assertions rest on facts which cannot be disputed.

But we tell Dr. Price that his system, which has at length arrived at manhood, is novel and unscriptural. It is like the creed of Pope Pius IV., of very recent date; and to impose it upon. the country, or, which is the same thing, to determine by legislative enactments that no other system should exist, would be an act of as great guilt as is the imposition of that creed on the Church of Rome. We have no faith in modern discoveries in religion. Had the system been destined to effect the conversion of the world, it would not have continued unknown during so many ages. According to the advocates of Independency, the world has been in error on the subject of religion from the times of the Apostles. It is, however, destitute of any foundation in scripture. It is surely a proof of the most consummate vanity in any man to come forward and proclaim to the world that a system which, according to his own confession, originated about the time of the civil wars, or a little before, is the one which is sanctioned by the sacred volume, as well as by apostolic practice, and is destined to effect the conversion of the world. From the days of St.Paul down to the present moment, the Church has been, according to Dr. Price, in error on the subject of church government: yet Independency was never heard of in the world before the seventeenth century! If any religious system is destitute of scripture foundation, it is that of Independency or Congregationalism. Its tendencies are towards disorder, confusion,

schism, heresy, and all those evils to which the Church of Christ has frequently been exposed: and we know that the Lord our God is not the author of confusion, but the God of order and of peace-of peace which is a consequence of order, since where disorder reigns peace can never be found.

ART. IV. Gleanings in Natural History. By EDWArd Jesse, Esq., F.L.S., Surveyor of Her Majesty's Parks, Palaces, &c. New Edition, 12mo., 2 vols. London: Murray. 1838.

IT is delightful to turn aside for a brief space from the heat of political strife, and the perpetual round of change in which it seems to be the pleasure of certain parties in this country to involve not only themselves, but all around them, and to study the contents of these beautiful and instructive volumes. It is almost as refreshing to the moral sense, as the green oasis of the desert, which travellers describe in such brilliant colours, is to the physical sight. We are sure that no one can rise up from their perusal without feeling a wiser and a better man. It has long been our intention to devote a few pages of this journal to some considerations upon country life and country matters in general, and we hail with pleasure the appearance of a new edition of Mr. Jesse's work, that we may take an opportunity of placing it at the head of our article. Let not our readers imagine that we are going to write an essay upon natural history; far from it. Mr. Jesse's work, notwithstanding its title, has a much higher object in view than that would lead us to conceive. The anecdotes which he relates are brought forward not merely for the amusement of his readers, but as proofs of the goodness, benevolence, and wisdom of the Deity, and to impress upon their minds the absolute necessity and duty of exercising humanity and kindness towards the brute creation. But this is not all. His pages are occasionally enriched with illustrations drawn from holy writ, which are introduced in the most appropriate and unostentatious manner. Mr. Jesse has also given us, at the conclusion of his work, one or two chapters on the condition of the peasantry, and country life in general, which are filled with sound and excellent reflections. Indeed, both these and the whole of his work are full of that good old English feeling which, in other and more prosperous days, contributed to make England what it was before the dull realities, the cold calculations, of a reforming age had driven away true patriotism, and given, in its place, a