392 Opinions of the Early Quakers. every satisfaction in my power, but I am not aware that I ought to trouble him or any of your readers further on the disagreeable subject which has been very unexpectedly forced on my attention. I still think that it was my duty to guard the memories of such men as Watts and Doddridge from the imputation of an unqualified approbation of Count Zinzendorf. A nobleman exchanging the luxury of a court for the labours of a missionary, whatever be his creed or his ritual, presents an interesting character. Yet if the Count really made the representations attributed to his Hymns and Sermons, I know not how to discover in that character the sober-mindedness becoming a Christian, or a disposition to seek after "virtue and praise" in the manner recommended by an apostle. If, on the other hand, the Count has been wronged, as J. F. B. supposes, by forgeries and mis-translations, no man ever left behind him in the world friends and followers more strangely regardless of his just reputation. I remain Sir, Your's, J. T. RUTT. P. S. I take this opportunity of requesting any of your readers who design to encourage the publication of Priestley's Theological Works by their subscriptions, to subscribe direcily, as from present appearances the publication must be delayed much longer than I wished or intended, or the early promoters of the design had reason to expect. Opinions of the Early Quakers. IN N looking over the "Athenian Oracle," a work published above a century ago, I was struck with a curious passage relating to the Quakers, which may serve to shew what idea prevailed at that time respecting their religious sentiments, and will in part confirm the observations of several of your correspondents that their original opinions were pretty far removed from modern orthodoxy.-In answer to the question "may not a Quaker expect happiness after this life?" it is said "we are sure that many, or most of them, have held very dangerous and detestable opinions. They generally speak contemptibly of the Bible, and will by no means allow it to be God's word: they have turned it into an odd sort ofa jejune allegory, even the highest and most sacred truths therein con tained, and have spoken not very honourably of our Saviour, and almost generally deny the trinity, and many, if not all, embrace the other Socinian dream of the soul's sleeping till the resurrection. Besides they use neither of the sacraments, and if our most authentic accounts don't impose upon us, were at their first appearance in England commonly actuated by a worse spirit than that they pretend to. These 'tis hard to hope well of, nor can we see how with any manner of propriety they can be called Christians. But if there be any of them who have left their first principles, and are degene rated into Christianity (we ask pardon for the harshness of the expression) and growu more religious, as well as more mannerly, there may be more hopes of them." In the same work the following question is asked, and to my mind not satisfactorily answered: should any of your correspondents think proper to give an opinion on the subject, I shall feel highly gratified, conceiving it to be one well worthy of the serious attention of professing Christians, and a fit subject for discussion in the Monthly Repository. The question is as follows," Our jurers that try in cases of life and death are obliged to be (or at least to tell the court that they are) all of one mind, before they can give or the court receive their verdict; and it being but reasonable to suppose that it may so happen that one or more of the twelve may dissent from the major part, as being of deeper judgment, &c. or by building upon false notions, which yet he believes, and cannot be persuaded otherwise, but that they are the truth, &c. In short we'll suppose him to act according to his conscience, whether otherwise he be in the right or no, and then query, how must such a man act, so as to keep a good conscience towards God and man, so as not to be guilty of the blood of the prisoner, as well as of perjury, if he bring him in guilty and he is not," &c. &c. I shall feel obliged by your insertion of the above, And remain, Sir, P. S. It will greatly oblige several of your readers, if Mr. Rees will inform them through the medium of the Repository what progress he has made in his proposed "History of Foreign Learned Ministers.-Assembly of Divines. Unitarians" (see M. Repos. Vol. VI. p. 105,) or whether he has abandoned it altogether; also, whether the Racovian Catechism, which he was sometime ago said to be preparing for the press, has been published or not, as I do not recollect seeing it advertised.* Unitarian Baptists in the City of York. SIR, WE beg leave through the medium of your valuable Miscellany to lay before our Unitarian brethren the case of the Unitarian Baptists in the city of York, confident of their disposition to assist us in the laudable undertaking of propagating primitive Christianity, and removing those misconceptions which originated in the dark ages of heathen and popish superstition. We have laboured upwards of thirty years, under considerable disadvantage, in this great cause for want of suitable accomodation and a central situation; we have at length met with the object of our wishes. A chapel in the centre of York now occupied by the Independents was to be disposed of by public auction; we made an offer for it, the was it became ours for the sum of three hundred pounds, one hundred of which was paid on the 2nd February last as a deposit, which we borrowed upon interest, the remaining two hundred pounds are to be paid on the 2nd November next, at which The time possession will be given. chapel is well fitted up with pews and consequence gallery, and will seat upwards of four hundred people. The sum we are able to raise amongst our own friends is sixty pounds; we hope our Unitarian brethren will not think the sum too small, considering our pecuniary circumstances, as we are all labouring people, so that with the sum of sixty pounds already subscribed, and twenty pounds which the Committee of the Unitarian Fund has been pleased to bestow upon us, making a total of eighty pounds, there will remain a debt of two hundred and twenty pounds upon the chapel, besides other necessary expences incident to the purchase of such property: this debt will be felt by us as a great incun • For an answer to the latter question, our correspondent is referred to the notice in our last No. p. 369. 393 SIR, June 25, 1816. Ato the Unitarian Academy 1 nnderstood with much satisfaction that the provision for communicating classical knowledge to the students was likely to be extended. I hope these students when they become ministers will attend to a duty now much neglected, and occupy that talent by which they may be distinguished from the unlearned. The latter respectable and highly useful class of Christian teachers would well employ any leisure they could command, in comparing different English translations, and thus forming one which appeared to them to give the best connected sense of scripture. But as to learned minis ters, by their general practice of adopting King James's Bible, do they not contribute, in a high degree, from the pulpit and the press, to preserve and increase a superstitious re gard for that version which is the T the late meeting of the friends 394 The Writer of the Obituary of Dr. Powell in Reply to J. unavoidable effect of early associations? "A bad effect, but from a noble cause." They also deprive their hearers or readers of opportunities, which would otherwise frequently occur, of distinguishing the true sense from the customary sound of a difficult passage, by attending to it in a new phraseology. their own. Yet when learned ministers determine to act up to their proper character, I hope they will not content them selves with the use of any version of the Scriptures, however improved, but What lecturer on Cicero or Demosthenes, who claimed or received credit for having spent years in acquiring the languages of those orators, and ascertaining the force and beauty of their expressions, would be endured; or rather, what would be thought of his pretensions to learning or of his application, if he always quoted the translations of Duncan or of Leland? Here I am reminded of learned ministers in earlier times, who neglecting, like the moderns, to use their learning on a proper occasion, were justly reproved by a profoundly learned layman. The story is thus told by Whitelock. "Divers members of both houses, whereof I was one, were members of the assembly of divines, and had the same liberty with the divines to sit and debate, and give their votes in any matter which was in consideration amongst them. In which debate Mr. Selden spake admirably, and confuted divers of them in their own learning. And, sometimes, when they cited a text of Scripture, to prove their assertion, he would tell them, perhaps in your little pocket Bibles, with gilt leaves, (which they would often pull out and read,) the translation may be thus; but the Greek or the Hebrew signifies thus or thus; and so would totally silence them." Mem. (1732) p. 71. Notwithstanding this passage, I am persuaded neither Whitelock nor Selden regarded the Assembly of Divines as illi terate or unworthy of respect. It was reserved for the bigotry of Lord Clarendon to disgrace his History by thus describing that Assembly (I. 530). "Some of them infamous in their lives and conversations, and most of them of very mean parts: in learning, if not of scandalous ignoratice and of no other reputation than of malice to the church of England."* The late Dr. Zouch, one of the prependaries of Durham, in a note to his edition of Walton's Lives, quoted the passage from Whitelock and appears to have given it con amore. In a later work, his "Life of Sir P. Sid ney," he attempted to degrade as low as possible the literature of the Puritans, though they had long ceased to interfere with Durham's golden prebends. From his want of knowledge on this subject I suspect that Dr. Zouch was too much like the clergyman censured by Bishop Watson in the preface to his Theological, Tracts, who "never read Dissenting Divinity." LAICUS. SIR, Chichester, July 3, 1816. ALTHOUGH the greater part of your readers and correspondents, as well as yourself, are of quiet and pacific dispositions and habits, far re On this passage Dr. Calamy well remarks in his "Life of Baxter," &c. (I. 82): "Who can give credit to him as an historian, that shall represent such men as Dr. Twiss, Mr. Gataker, Bishop Reynolds, Dr. Arrowsmith, Dr. Tuckney, Dr. Lightfoot, &c. as men of scandalous' ignorance or mean parts? Or who runs down such men as Dr. Gouge, Mr. Oliver Bowles, Mr. Vines, Mr. Herle, Dr. Spurstow, Mr. Newcomen, Mr. Coleman, &c. as persons of no other reputa tion than of malice to the church of England?" Calamy in his Continuation (I. 14) also thus refers to Whitelock's story which, it seems, other writers had been fond of repeating. "It is easy to observe how the generality of our historians take plea sure in representing Mr. Selden as insulting the members of that assembly, when he sat among them, about their little English Bibles with gilt leaves, and at tacking them with Greek and Hebrew; as to which there were many among them that were both able and ready enough to answer him. But, methinks, they should not, as, upon this occasion, they seem willing, forget that the same learned man, in his History of Tithes where he deals with the gentlemen of the hierarchy, freely reproaches them with ignorance and lasiness, and upbraids them with having nothing to keep up their credit but beard, title and habit, intimating that their studies reached no farther than the Bre viary, the Postil, and the Polyanthea.”..... Policy of Cromwell, with Regard to the Protestants of France. moved from the follies and crimes of fashionable life, and calmly though strenuously employed in the investigation and diffusion of useful knowledge, neither they nor you are ignorant that when, either in fictitious history, or in real life, Sir X. Y. de mands of Lord Z. an explanation, the inevitable result is a combat, and sometimes a mortal one. He who requires the explanation is desirous of nothing less than that it should be given, and he, from whom it is required, finds in the requisition itself the strongest possible reason for not complying with it. Very different from any thing like this are the feelings and situation of the ingenious writer, whose letter in your last number [pp. 335, 336,] is subscribed with the signature J. and myself. He courteously asks an explanation, because he sincerely desires it; and if I decline doing as he desires, this arises from the apprehension that the giving and not the withholding the explanation may lead to a combat, in which 1 may receive a mortal wound; a mischance, this, ill compensated by any reputation I may thus obtain for rash and adventurous valour. After all, I am so much gratified by the approbation expressed by your correspondent of the scrap of biogra phy which you honoured with a place in your Obituary for May last, that I would willingly oblige him with the more detailed statement he wishes for, could I flatter myself that such an explanation would tend either to confirm in his mind correct notions, or to rectify erroneous ones in my own. .. Referring to the supposed political opinions of the late lamented Dr. POWELL, I hazarded one or two positions of an import so general, and of a tendency (as I hoped) so conciliatory, as to afford no possible ground for debate or offence. The questions relative to a reform in the present constitution of the lower house of parliament, to the supposed superiority of a limited monarchy to a republic, or of both to an aristocratical form of government, &c. &c. are no more involved in these general positions than any particular and subordinate theorem must be included in the universal and superior one; and of theoreins of this latter kind the application to individual cases is a matter far too 395 difficult to be profitably discussed by a politician so rude and uninstructed as myself. I must therefore respectfully decline the polite invitation of J. to state in any explicit form my sentiments on “the beneficial influence of the people expressed through a constitutional representation," as well as on the manifest liability of " courts or congresses" to the pernicious infection which he specifies, and will only venture to mention the inseparable concomitants and not unfrequent result of a popular election of a representative in parliament, as one of the most remarkable examples of the triumph of wisdom and virtue over vice and folly. About eight years ago I was indulged by the admission into your respectable Miscellany [M. Repos. III. p. 584,] of a paper in which (under® a different signature) I endeavoured to shew that political right is founded in power, and that it has no other solid foundation. If your able cor respondent J. would have the goodness to take that paper in hand, and point out the mistakes of the writer, he would confer a much greater favour than he could possibly receive from the happiest efforts at explanation of his and your much obliged and obedient Servant, 396 Editions of the Bible, in Spain and Portugal. Essays on the Balance of Power, &c. 8vo. 1701. The last piece consists of "Secret Articles agreed upon between Cromwell and Cardinal Mazarin," in addition to their "Public Treaty," which "bears date the 3d of November, 1655." The following are the concluding articles. ART. VI. "Qu'en toutes les villes et bourgs de ee royaume, ou il y aura des havres, et des ports, la nation Angloise y aura commerce, et y pourra faire bastir des temples pour l'exercise de la religion, et sera permis aux Francois de la religion, qui y seront aux environs, d'y faire prescher en Francois." That, in all the cities and towns of the kingdom where there are harbours and ports, the English nation shall carry on their commerce, and may erect temples for the exercise of the [Protestant] religion, and that the French of the religion residing in the neighbourhood may have preaching there in French. ART. VII. with France rather than with Spain. Had these censurers read the public treaty, as it is given in A General Col· lection, 1732, (III. 149) translated, probably, from Milton's Latin, they must, I think, have at least described it as displaying a manly style, neither haughty nor submissive, providing for the fair reciprocations of commerce, and, if not preventing war, designing to shelter the people on both sides from being immediately overwhelmed by its horrors. And if such historians and biographers had sought till they found these Secret Articles, which, I apprehend, because secret, were. allowed to be originally, in French, they could scarcely have denied their commendation to the Protector.Nor is the praise inconsiderable of having placed his nation singularly eminent on the page of history, among those whose power has been exerted to succour the oppressed. SIR, HISTORICUS." Hackney, July 6, 1816. "T has often been ignorantly stated "Que les edits de Janvier et de dignorantly believed, that the Nantes seront executez selon leurs formes et teneurs et toute la nation Angloise demeurera caution pour l'execution des dits edits." That the edicts of January and of Nantes shall be executed according to their full import, and that the whole English nation shall be a perpetual guarantee for the execution of those edicts. I am at a loss to know what was the edict of January. That description is not singular, for Sully (I. 99) names the edict in 1585, in favour of the League," the famous edict of July." The edict of January might be the same, as "the edict of 63 Articles" in 1576, by which, according to a note in Sully, (1. 49) "Chambers of justice, composed equally of Protestants and Catholics, were granted in the principal parliaments." The edict of Nantes was finally verified in 1599. The memory of Cromwell has been treated with no small injustice respecting that transaction of the Protectorate, of which these quoted articles form a part. Historians and biographers, so far as I have been able to observe, have been content to follow, in a train, censuring the Protector for a supposed sacrifice of the permanent interests of England and Europe to the temporary security of his own power, by uniting governments of the Peninsula have always made it a part of their policy to prevent the circulation of the Scriptures. The assertion has been repeated in a singular letter from one of your correspondents, (p. 336) who is marvellously fond of expatiating. I beg leave to state a few facts connected with this subject, merely premising that general error prevails as to the biblical literature of Spain and Portugal. Before the early part of the 13th century, many copies of the Scriptures. must have existed in the vulgar tongue, for we find King Jayme of Arragon, in 1233, prohibiting their circulation. In 1260, Alfonso the Wise ordered a translation of the Bible to be made into Castilian (Spanish) and the original MS. yet exists in the Escurial;-and about the same period King Denir, of Portugal, caused the sacred books to be rendered into Portugueze, of which work, too, a copy is still preserved. In the following century John I. engaged the most learned men of his time to translate the Gospels, the Acts of the Apos tles, and the Epistles of Paul, and himself translated the Psalms into the language of his country. Near this time. two other versions of the Old Testament were made, besides translations of the Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse of the |