MEMBERS INTO CHURCH-FELLOWSHIP. for baptizing, in the name of the Divine THREE, all who profess to have received the heavenly message. The simple question, then, on this part of our subject is on what ground was baptism administered by the primitive preachers of the Gospel-And here we are at no loss for examples, numerous and striking, of the manner in which they executed their important charge. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached that admirable sermon to his countrymen, in which he proves by a reference to prophecies long since uttered, but only now fulfilled, that Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had so recently put to death, was indeed the true Messiah; and, that in destroying him, they were guilty of murdering the Prince of life and glory. But, under the accumulated load of their guilt, when many of them cried out, "Men and brethren what shall we do," Peter nevertheless called them to repentance, or to change their minds respecting the character of Him, whom they had so impiously rejected and crucified, to admit his divine claims in all their extent, and to own him "both Lord and Christ." "Then, they that gladly received his word," we are in formed, 66 were baptized," Acts ii. What an intelligible exposition have we here of the meaning of our Lord's commission! and whether multitudes, or individuals were addressed, we find the same plain, unambiguous line of conduct pursued. The Gospel was preached, and when men came forward and voluntarily professed their belief in the "good tidings" it conveyed, they were at once, without any prerequisite, baptized as disciples of the Lord Jesus. The baptism of the Samaritans, Simon the sorcerer, the Ethiopian eunuch, Saul of Tarsus, Lydia, the Philippian jailor, &c. goes to shew, and undeniably proves, that it was administered on their first personal confession of the faith of Christ; and surely we must admit, that those who did it, acted under the immediate countenance and authority of their divine Lord. If time, to prove the sincerity of those who professed repentance and faith in Christ, had been a prerequisite to baptism, how plausibly might it have been urged in almost all the recorded cases in the New Testament. Peter might have said to the Jews on the day of Pentecost "I do, indeed, perceive that many of you have gladly received my 107 testimonies to the Messiahship of the crucified Jesus; but inasmuch as you so recently manifested the most inveterate hatred against him and his cause, so that you would be satisfied with nothing less than putting him to an ignominious death, I cannot admit you to the sacred ordinance of baptism, until I have had 'time' to prove the sincerity of your repentance." For the same reason Philip also, when he went down to Samaria, to preach Christ in that city, might have refused to baptize Simon the sorcerer. How easy might he have said, "Simon, you do certainly appear to be much taken with the miracles which are here performed in the name of Jesus, and now openly profess your faith in him; but seeing you have for so long a time been practising upon the public, evidently with a view to promote your own interest, and to procure for yourself a great name, I cannot consistently with the honour of the church, and the regard I owe to my own character, baptize you as yet; I must have 'time' to be convinced that you are a proper subject of baptism; I must have full proof of the genuineness of your repentance; I must have undeniable evidence of the sincerity and uprightness of your motives, and the morality of your conduct; and ultimately, I must have a minute detail of your 'experience,' or of the work of grace upon your heart,' before I can accede to your request, in baptizing you as a disciple of Jesus Christ." It is palpable, however, that nothing. of this kind was required, either by the Apostles or Evangelists, as the ground of Christian baptism. Nothing more was requisite in that age of purity, than a simple confession of faith in the Redeemer, to entitle an individual to that sacred ordinance; and who would have the hardihood to accuse the ambassors of Christ of want of prudence, in administering it on that plain and simple ground? What I have stated, appears to me to be a scriptural view of the conduct of the Apostles, relative to this part of the subject, which brings us to consider, 2nd. "Is their conduct binding upon us?" To a person who admits the Scriptures to be the word of God, and therefore imperishable and eternal truth, one thinks little need be said in reply to this question. For, if I admit that the Bible gives a faithful representation of God's will; that in the New Testament, especially the preaching, the precepts, and the conduct of the Apostles, form a perfect exposition of the mind of Christ, relative to the affairs of his kingdom; then, as a necessary consequence, 1 must, to be consistent, admit also, that done, but I trust the importance of the Preston, March 3, 1824. SIVE WAR. MR. EDITOR, D. There is a query in your last month's Magazine-" "Whether war be lawful in any case for Christians? I would answer it by proposing another : viz. "Had the Querist been present in Gill's-hill-lane, when Thurtell pursued Weare, who was endeavouring to escape from him, would it have been improper for him to have interposed between the murderer and his victim; and if the former had persevered in his attempt, to have resisted him even to blood?" Now, may not what is lawful in the case of an individual, be lawful in the case of a hundred or a thousand, or any greater number? If so, defensive war (and that alone) is lawful. I am bound to receive the truth as they ON THE LAWFULNESS OF DEFENhave stated it, and to follow them as they followed Christ. If this be the case, then the conduct of the Apostles as to the ground on which they administered Christian baptism, is binding upon every one of his disciples. To deviate from it, is an impeachment of his wisdom, and on whose immediate authority they acted. To require more than was required by them, would be to make the Christian's burden heavy, which he pronounced to be light; and to cast stumbling blocks in the way of many of his "little ones," at the very threshold of his kingdom. Inattention to the conduct of the Apostles as a “rule" to the churches of Christ, has been, and still remains, one prolific source of error of almost every kind and degree; and let us all rest assured, that it is only when professing Christians begin to think and act for themselves, determined by the blessing of God to find out the truth, and follow it up in all its consequences, that we can form any reasonable expectation of genuine success to the cause of Zion. But I know there is a great difficulty in laying aside opinions and practices of long standing; many things that are inimical to the truth exist in most of our dissenting churches; we are familiarized with them from our infancy; they grow with our growth, and strengthen with our strength; until we are ready to treat every one as an enemy, who presumes to call in question our favourite dogmas, though he may have Scripture and reason at his back! This, however, is not the way to grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To do this we must be ready to "prove all things," and have firmness enough to "hold fast that which is good," regardless alike both of the smiles of friends, and the frowns of enemies, if so be that at last we may be graciously numbered amongst those, who with significant propriety are designated the "followers of the Lamb." I fear I have taken up more of your valuable pages than I ought to have I am as heartily desirous of the abolition of wars, as the querist can be; but this argument appears to me deci sive. Let it be our aim to propagate the peaceful doctrines and precepts of the Gospel; and they, by the appointment of God and the energy of his Spirit will abolish wars. For, then and then only shall men learn war no more, when the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea. C. ! J, D. ON BEAUTY. Noon may shine in vesture bright; Happy he to whom 'tis giv'n; T. S. A. Theological Review. Private Correspondence of William Cowper, Esq. (Continued from page 88.) MODERN times have produced few characters in which the public have taken a deeper interest, than that of COWPER. Considered simply in the light of a poet, his claims to regard may be much inferior to several of the choice spirits of our own day-the Scotts and Wordsworths, the Southeys, and especially Lord Byron, the mention of whose name reminds us of a spirited pamphlet which has just made its appearance among us, and in which a comparison is drawn between Cowper and his lordship. As our readers cannot but be pleased with the sketch, which they will perceive discovers the hand of a master, we shall present them with it in this place. But that they may enter more fully into the pertinency of the remarks, it is proper to premise, that some of Lord Byron's admirers have observed, that he is the only poet, Cowper alone excepted, that has drawn his own portrait, and mixed himself up with the unfading verdure of his works. On this the writer, who takes the signature of CATO, pertinently remarks : : "The charm which attaches us to Cowper, we find no resemblance of in your lordship. Indeed the very foundation of our approval of his mixing himself with his poetry, is a reason for condemning the like identification in yourself. It is his kind and overflowing benevolence; the tender and domestic turn of his mind, connecting itself with domestic enjoyments, with the happiness of the brute creation, with sweet retired scenery, with frequent moral reflection, with all that man believes to be virtuous, and feels to be grateful, that makes us pleased to see him in every successive page of his works. He joins us on the road only to heighten the relish of our prospects, and to increase the gratification of our pleasure. As we journey on together, we become better acquainted, and uneasy at the thoughts of separation. He has no reserves, no concealments. He shews us his heart, its errors and its goodness, and its goodness extenuating, and nearly cancelling its errors. "But your lordship's self-exhibitions are of an entirely different cast. You, it is true, like Cowper, expose to us your heart. But alas! what a heart! filled with a pride, as insolent as it is weak, alone with one overwhelming passion; scorning all established notions; all that time has sanctified; all that experience has stamped with utility; all that profound and collective wisdom has pronounced venerable; treating with a narrow and unmanly contempt his contemporaries, his place of education, his country, his very kind; and delivering over to a low and course derision every person and object around him, which are considered as deserving of respect. Wherever Cowper appears upon the stage of his works, he proper resentment of feelings that are brings with him virtuous feelings, and a not virtuous. Wherever your lordship is pleased to figure among your heroes, and to amalgamate the soul of your sentiments with theirs, virtuous feelings are a dead lumber presently swept behind the scenes. He evermore introduces us into good company; you into company that we are glad to get rid of as speedily as we can. He joins virtue with genius, and by the instruction of the one increases the fully dissolve the connection, and leave enchantment of the other; you disdainyour genius naked and exposed. All the grounds of comparison between you will, in fact, be found to be violated, and Cowper must, by intermixing himself up with his poetry, as an actual living man expressing his own sentiments, thoughts, hopes and fears,' continue to delight; while the same conduct on your part, covered by no very thick disguise,' must inevitably disgust. Though, therefore, Cowper may be in your estimation no poet-his great and original work will be considered, probably, as giving a flat contradiction to your assertion. The Task' is no evanescent labour. It will live-and to the congenial feelings and just admiration of posterity will endear the genius of Cowper, when Harold for his pride, Cain for his blasphemy, and Juan for his licentiousness, shall have scattered the laurels of Lord Byron, and consigned his poetry to an early and a loathed grave." But it is now time for us to return to * Cato to Lord Byron, on the Immorality of his Writings, p. 107–110, ́ nishes us with a concise biographical sketch of the Poet's life, and may therefore be properly introduced in this place, as a companion to his Portrait. March 3, 1788. don. At that place I had not resided long, when I was led to an intimate connexion with a family of the name of Unwin. I soon quitted my lodging, and took up my abode with them. I had not lived long under their roof, when Mr. Unwin, as he I owe you many acknowledgments, was riding one Sunday morning to his dear Madam, for that unreserved commucure at Gravely, was thrown from his nication both of your history and of your win having the same views of the gospel horse; of which fall he died. Mrs. Unsentiments, with which you favoured me in your last. It gives ine great pleasure to as myself, and being desirous of attending learn that you are a purer ministration of it than was to be so happily circumstanced, both in respect of situation and found at Huntingdon, removed to Olney, frame of mind. With your view of religi- where Mr. Newton was at that time the ous subjects, you could not indeed, speak- preacher, and I with her. There we coning properly, be pronounced unhappy in tinued till Mr. Newton, whose family was any circumstances; but to have received the only one in the place with which we from above not only that faith which recould have a connexion, and with whom conciles the heart to affliction, but many we lived always on the most intimate outward comforts also, and especially that terms, left it. After his departure, findgreatest of all earthly comforts, a comfort-ing the situation no longer desirable, and able home, is happiness indeed. May you long enjoy it! As to health or sickness, you have learned already their true value, and know well that the former is no bless ing, unless it be sanctified, and that the latter is one of the greatest we can receive, when we are enabled to make a pro per use of it. There is nothing in my story that can possibly be worth your knowledge; yet, lest I should seem to treat you with a reserve which, at your hands, I have not experienced, such as it is, I will relate it. -I was bred to the law; a profession to which I was never much inclined, and in which I engaged rather because I was desirous to gratify a most indulgent father, than because I had any hope of success in it, myself. I spent twelve years in the Temple, where I made no progress in that science, to cultivate which I was sent thither. During this time my father died. Not long after him, died my mother-in-law, and at the expiration of it, a melancholy seized me, which obliged me to quit London, and consequently to renounce the bar. I lived some time at St. Albans. After having suffered in that place long and extreme affliction, the storm was suddenly dispelled, and the same dayspring from on high which has arisen upon you, arose on me also. I spent eight years in the enjoyment of it, and have ever since the expiration of those eight years, been occasionally the prey of the same melancholy as at first. In the depths of it I wrote the Task, and the volume which preceded it; and in the same deeps I am now translating Homer. But to return to St. Albans. I abode there a year and a half. Thence I went to Cambridge, where I spent a short time with my brother, in whose neighbourhood I determined, if possible, to pass the remainder of my days. He soon found a lodging for me at Hunting our house threatening to fall upon our heads, we removed hither. Here we have a good house in a beautiful village, and, for the greatest part of the year, a most agreeable neighbourhood. Like you, Madam, I stay much at home, and have not its environs, more than once these twenty travelled twenty miles from this place and years. gularity of the matter, as you will perceive, All this I have written, not for the sinbut partly for the reason which I gave at the outset, and partly that, seeing we are become correspondents, we may know as much of each other as we can, and that as soon as possible. I beg, Madam, that you will present my best respects to Mr. King, whom together with yourself, should you at any time hereafter take wing for a longer flight than usual, we shall be happy to receive at Weston, and believe me, dear Madam, his and your obliged and affectionate, W.C. The following Letter, to the same lady, being a continuation of his own history, has a claim to insertion. DEAR MADAM, April 11, 1788, The melancholy that I have mentioned, and concerning which you are so kind as to enquire, is of a kind, so far as I know, peculiar to myself. It does not at all affect the operations of my mind on any subject to which I can attach it, whether serious or ludicrous, or whatsoever it may be; for which reason I am almost always employed either in reading or writing when I am not engaged in conversation. A vacant hour is my abhorrence; because, when I am not occupied, I suffer under the whole influence of my unhappy temperament. I thank you for your recommendation of a medicine from which you have received PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF WM. COWPER, ESQ. 111 benefit yourself; but there is hardly any thing that I have not proved, however beneficial it may have been found by others, in my own case utterly useless. I have, therefore, long since bid adieu to all hope from human means,-the means excepted of perpetual employment. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. MY DEAR FRIEND, April 19, 1788. I thank you for your last, and for the verses in particular, therein contained; in which there is not only rhime but reaI will not say that we shall never meet, son. And yet I fear that neither you nor because it is not for a creature, who knows I, with all our reasoning and rhiming, shall not what shall be to-morrow, to assert any effect much good in this matter. So far as thing positively concerning the future. I can learn, and I have had intelligence Things more unlikely I have yet seen from a quarter within the reach of such as brought to pass, and things which, if I had is respectable, our Governors are not aniexpressed myself of them at all, I should mated altogether with such heroic ardour have said were impossible. But being reas the occasion might inspire. They conspectively circumstanced as we are, there sult frequently, indeed, in the Cabinet seems no present probability of it. You about it; but the frequency of their conspeak of insuperable hindrances; and I sultations in a case so plain as this would also have hindrances that would be equally be, (did not what Shakspeare calls comdifficult to surmount. One is, that I never modity, and what we call political experide, that I am not able to perform a jour-diency, cast a cloud over it,) rather beney on foot, and that chaises do not roll speaks a desire to save appearances, than within the sphere of that economy which to interpose to purpose. Laws will, I supmy circumstances oblige me to observe. pose, be enacted for the more humane If this were not of itself sufficient to ex- treatment of the negroes; but who shall cuse me, when I decline so obliging an insee to the execution of them? The plantvitation as yours, I could mention yet ers will not, and the negroes cannot. In other obstacles. But to what end? One fact we know, that laws of this tendency impracticability makes as effectual a bar- have not been wanting, enacted even rier as a thousand. It will be otherwise amongst themselves; but there has been in other worlds. Either we shall not bear always a want of prosecutors, or righteous about us a body, or it will be more easily judges; deficiencies, which will not be transportable than this. In the mean time, very easily supplied. The newspapers by the help of the post, strangers to each have lately told us, that these merciful other may cease to be such, as you and I masters have, on this occasion, been occuhave already begun to experience. pied in passing ordinances, by which the lives and limbs of their slaves are to be secured from wanton cruelty hereafter. But who does not immediately detect the artifice, or can give them a moment's credit for any thing more than a design, by this show of lenity, to avert the storm which they think hangs over them. On the whole, I fear there is reason to wish, for the honour of England, that the nuisance had never been troubled; lest we eventually make ourselves justly chargeable with the whole offence by not removing it. The enormity cannot be palliated; we can no longer plead that we were not aware of it, or that our attention was otherwise engaged; and shall be inexcusable, therefore, ourselves, if we leave the least part of it unredressed. Such arguments as Pharaoh might have used, to justify his destruction of the Israelites, substituting sugar for bricks, may lie ready for our use also; but I think we can find no better. It is indeed, Madam, as you say, a foolish world, and likely to continue such till the Great Teacher shall himself vouchsafe to make it wiser. I am persuaded that time alone will never mend it. But there is doubtless a day appointed when there shall be a more general manifestation of the beauty of holiness than mankind have ever yet beheld. When that period shall arrive, there will be an end of profane representations, whether of Heaven or Hell, on the stage-the great realities will supersede them. I have just discovered that I have written to you on paper so transparent, that it will hardly keep the contents a secret. Excuse the mistake, and believe me, dear Madam, with my respects to Mr. King, Affectionately yours, W.C. In the following Letter, we have the sentiments of Cowper on the subject of the Slave Trade, which it seems, at that time became a topic of general interest. As it is now once more reviving amongst us, and we hope likely to lead to some important practical results, the letter deserves attention. We are tolerably well, and shall rejoice to hear that, as the year rises, Mrs. Newton's health keeps pace with it. Believe me, my dear friend, Affectionately and truly yours, The following extract from a letter to |