by punishments and penalties for the one, or rewards and distinctions in favor of the other.

The consequence is, that parties are formed among the subjects of a state, with regard to their religious sentiments. So long, however, as the minor party is exceedingly small, and with little influence or wealth or physical power, or is too ignorant to understand very fully the nature of its rights, or is too indifferent to contend for them, the machinery of the state is not disturbed, and the power of the oppressor, like multitudes of other evils which there are no means to redress, must be borne in silence. But there is a light beaming in darkness. There is a power above the artificial contrivances of human society, which speaks to the hearts of men. There is a growing and animating intelligence, which is extending and improving the mind, and instructing it in its duties and its rights. This principle is abroad in the world, and we have an example of its incipient power among the people of England.

The Catholics are probably not so numerous at present, as they were in the earlier years of the present dynasty. They have not now more eminent or influential men to lead them. The injustice they were lately suffering was not greater than they had formerly suffered, and their complaints and resistance and menaces, though constantly carried to the foot of the throne, were not more formidable than when they were spurned at with contempt. The power of the government was the same as it ever had been, and in the opinion of the late monarch, and by the declaration of a late probable successor to the crown, was, by all the solemnity of a coronation oath, to be exerted against any relaxation of its claims. Nevertheless the fundamental provisions of the laws have been changed. A new and unheard of liberality has been exerted. The Catholic has not only gained, in some degree, what he demanded, but the Protestant has yielded readily and generously to his views. The impolicy of the general doctrine of a national religion, has been so far admitted as to give some hope that the doctrine itself may one day be abandoned, and that which is now, with some profusion of gratitude, called emancipation, may become so in fact.

We confess our gratification on this subject is quite as much founded on the hopes it encourages, as in the results that have been already accomplished. There are other classes of Christians, struggling under the embarrassments of opposition to the

VOL. VII.-N. S. VOL. II. NO. III.

39

established hierarchy, and anticipating the future benefit of this magnanimous precedent, with whom our sympathies are naturally stronger than they can be with the Catholics. The Dissenters, whether Baptists, Methodists, or Unitarians, are severely pressed by the operation of laws quite as burdensome to them as any under which the Catholics were sufferers. They are in the Lord's keeping, and we trust that in progress of time the bonds which hold them will be broken, and that they will enjoy the same liberty of conscience which is secured to their fellow Christians in the United States.

If the melioration of the laws in regard to Catholics, had sprung from a principle of religious duty, and a prevailing sense of the injustice of exercising civil powers over the consciences of men, entire freedom would have been extended to all sects of Dissenters. If these Dissenters had now the same concentration of power and influence, which the Catholics had, their claims would be equally respected; but having only the eternal law of justice and equity, they cannot prevail at a tribunal, which merely regards policy and expediency, and the maintenance of civil power, and the supremacy of the

crown.

In the evils of past times, and in the remedy of the present, which is a manifest encroachment on the fundamental principles of the church establishment, we have an admonitory lesson of the danger of connecting the religious institutions of a people with the authority of government. A recent traveller in our country, fails to gather this lesson as the fruit of experience among us, and has left on record his deliberate expression of dissatisfaction that there is no connexion here between church and state. Few Americans join in such a sentiment, but it' may be inquired, with some anxiety, how far the spirit of secular authority is seen in the conduct of any of our religious partisans. The power of our government is in the people and the institutions established by them; and to excite the passions of the people against any religious community, or to exasperate the people against ancient institutions for nonconformity of doctrine, what is it but the manifestation of a spirit, which wants only the sword of the magistrate to exercise as stern a severity? A spirit of exclusiveness, of denunciation, a denial of the christian name and the christian character to whole classes of men who profess to be believers in the gospel of salvation, what is this but carrying to its extremest bounds, all the existing power

of a party, and giving evidence, that, if more could be obtained, it would all be unsparingly exercised? If in the halls of legislation political measures are decided in reference to religious faith; if in elections to places of political trust peculiarities of doctrine and abstract opinions in theology, are publicly set up as qualifications for suffrage; if intolerance is carried into the common relations of society, and men are to be dealt with in their several trades, occupations, or professions, not according to their capacity or honesty, but according to the sect to which they belong and the forms under which they worship, what is wanting, in point of will, towards incorporating the civil and ecclesiastical power, and giving a death blow to religious liberty? Is it not done, as far as it may be done under our free Constitutions? Is it not to be discountenanced and reprobated by every one who feels a pride in the institutions of the Republic, and wishes them to be secure and permanent?

ART. III.-Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin Martyr. By JOHN, Bishop of Lincoln, and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge. Cambridge and London. 1829. 8vo. pp. 219.

In some observations on Justin, in a preceding number, we pointed out what we conceive to be his principal defects as a writer; defects, however, which, as we intimated, are chargeable chiefly on the times. Of his opinions we treated only incidentally, for the purpose of illustrating his intellectual character and habits. We now proceed to state his sentiments respecting some important points of theology; and first, with regard to the logos, or divine nature of Christ, as it is called. On this subject he has expressed himself much at length, and though he is occasionally somewhat obscure and mystical, a careful examination of the several terms and illustrations he employs, leaves little doubt as to his real meaning. His system presents one or two great and prominent features, about which we can hardly be mistaken, and which will serve as the basis of our future reasonings. Before we proceed to our citations, however, we must request our readers to bear in mind, that both Jews and Heathens constantly alleged the humble ori

gin and ignominious death of Jesus as a reproach on Christianity. Other sects borrowed lustre from the names of their founders. But the new superstition,' as it was called, which now began widely to diffuse itself, was derived, as it was urged, from an obscure individual, who perished as a malefactor, with every mark of dishonor. This reproach the Christians. of Justin's time, unlike Paul, who gloried in what was to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness,' began to be desirous of wiping off. It was with acknowledged reference to such a state of feeling, on the part of Christians, and the objections urged by their adversaries, that Justin expresses himself, in substance, as follows.

In the beginning, before all creatures, God begat of himself a certain rational power, which by the Holy Spirit is sometimes called the glory of the Lord, now Son, now wisdom, now angel, now God, now Lord, and logos (reason, wisdom, or speech); for he has all these appellations, because he ministers to the will of the Father, and by the will of the Father was begotten. To explain this process of generation, Justin takes the examples of human speech and of fire. For in uttering speech (logos), he says, we beget speech; yet not by abscission, nor so that the speech (logos), that is in us, or power of speech, or reason whence speech proceeds, is by this act diminished. So, too, one torch is lighted from another, without diminishing that from which it is lighted, but the latter remaining unaltered, that which is lighted from it exists and appears, without lessening that whence it was lighted. These are intended to be illustrations of the mode in which the Son is produced from the Father. In confirmation of his views, Justin quotes, from the Septuagint Version, the passage in Proverbs, in which wisdom, by which he supposes is meant the Son, is represented as saying, The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways to his works,-before the ages he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, or the abyss,-before the hills, he begat me.' This wisdom Justin regarded as God's offspring, produced as above described, and him, this first of his productions, he supposes God to address, when he says, Gen. i. 26, 'Let us make man in our own image.' +

Language, corresponding to the above, occurs in the first Apology, with an additional observation worthy of notice.

* Prov. viii. 21-36.

+ Dial. 158, 159. Thirlb. 266, 268.

Christ is the first-born of God, and that reason (logos), of which the whole human race partakes; and those who have lived according to reason are Christians, though esteemed Atheists. Such among the Greeks were Socrates and Heraclitus, and among the barbarians, Abraham, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, and Elias, and many others.* So, in the second Apology, we àre told that Socrates acknowledged Christ, in part; for he is that reason (logos), which is in all, † and which, together with the writings of the Hebrew prophets, also inspired by it, suggested to the Gentile philosophers whatever correct views they entertained concerning the Deity. He calls it the 'insown' or 'implanted' logos, or reason, of the seed of which all possess some portion. These, and other equivalent expressions, occur more than once. They seem intended to refer to a principle different from the ordinary faculty of reason in man; that is, to a peculiarly existing logos, or reason, which has in its nature something divine, being derived immediately from God by emanation. This logos was Christ, who afterwards became flesh; it guided Abraham and the patriarchs, inspired the prophets; and the seed of it being implanted, as just said, in every mind, all, as well illiterate as philosophers, who in former ages obeyed its impulse, were partakers of Christ, the Son of God, and might therefore be called Christians, and as such were entitled to salvation.

That Justin believed this divine principle of reason to be converted into a real being, the following passage, among numerous others, plainly and expressly shows. There are some, he says, who suppose that the Son is only a virtue or energy of the Father, emitted as occasion requires and then again recalled, as for example, when it comes to announce the commands of the Father, and is therefore called a messenger, or when it bears the Father's discourse to men, and is then called logos. They, as he observes, think that the Son is inseparable from the Father, as the light of the sun on the earth is inseparable from the sun, which is in the heavens, and is withdrawn with it at its setting. But from these, he tells us, he differs. Angels have a separate and permanent existence; so this virtue, which the prophetic spirit calls God and angel, is not, as the light of the sun, to be distinguished from the Father in name only, but is something numerically different; that is, it is not See Brucker, T. III. pp. 374, 375.

*

p. 71.

† p. 95.