blot in Gadsby's escutcheon was his lack of charity to those who differed from him in sentiment; but we fain hope that this arose, as in most cases it does, from ignorance of those whom he condemned.

The charge which is often laid at the door of Gadsby, and of those who agree with him in sentiment, is that of Antinomianism; in other words, that the elect may disregard the claims of morality with impunity. Nothing can be further from the truth than this charge. There may be in the world men who hold this notion, but Gadsby was not one of them. No one ever exhibited the gospel as a holy law more fully than he did. We have read every word in these two volumes, and we hesitate not to say that no one can read them without perceiving that their writer was a heavenly-minded man, and that he regarded a life of holiness by faith in the Son of God as the invariable and natural consequence of a regenerated heart.

One of Andrew Fuller's propositions was, that the moral law remains the rule of the believer's conduct, although as a covenant of works it has succumbed to the authority of the New Dispensation. This proposition Gadsby sought to demolish. The largest portion of his published works was aimed at this object; indeed, his greatest treatise, "The Perfect Law of Liberty," was written in defence of his favourite thesis. This work is the most perfect of the kind we ever read. When it is considered how defective was Gadsby's education, and the great demands which his evangelistic labours made upon his time and powers, the work before us may be regarded almost as a marvel. While lacking the subtler attributes of rhetoric, which early education, or it may be natural genius, is necessary to produce, it is as an argument severely logical and exhaustively elaborate; the style is clear and chaste, and not deficient in energy, while some passages might be quoted as specimens of no mean eloquence. The reader whose taste is not corrupted by the prevailing literary fashions of the day will have a rich treat in the good Saxon in which Gadsby expresses his thoughts.

It may be asked-What of the argument itself? We regard the war in which those two good men-Fuller and Gadsby-engaged as being like most wars uncalled-for, and, as in most cases in which religious gladiators have fought, arising from the antagonists not thoroughly understanding each other. It seems to us that they differed about words more than about principles. Both these men believed in the necessity of holiness of heart and life in the believer; both regarded holiness as the result of salvation, and not as its cause; and both had the same views of holiness as to its nature, namely, conformity to the Divine image in heart and life. And yet they quarrelled. Fuller contended that the moral law was the believer's rule of obedience-Gadsby that the gospel was. No one

can read the book without seeing that Gadsby conducted the argument with great tact and ability. He was at a loss to see how the law could cease to be a covenant of acceptance, and remain the rule of obedience; or, how the life the believer lives in the flesh can be a life of holiness by faith in the Son of God, and yet be ruled and governed by the servants' law. But here we will let our author speak:-" Holiness is the element in which such a soul (that of an adopted one) lives, and the fountain at which he drinks. If there were no hell this man would love holiness and pursue it; and the more liberty he enjoys, the more he is in love with the beauties of holiness, beauties to which worldlings are total strangers. The practice of holiness is not a slave-trade to such a one. No, Sirs. It is his delight to be found doing the will of the Lord, nor will he ever be completely satisfied until he awake up in God's likeness; for the more he enjoys of God and truth, the more he wants to enjoy. Every fresh glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Christ, which the Lord is pleased to reveal unto him, sharpens his appetite and makes him long for more. The fact is, he finds no real delight in, nor thirst for, creature-goodness, or a spurious holiness, which are one and the same thing. It is true holiness in which he delights; for his liberty is the liberty wherewith Christ has made him free. And till it can be proved that Christ has procured an unholy liberty; that the Holy Ghost reveals an unholy liberty in the words of the elect; that God the Father is delighted with an unholy liberty; that the Gospel and the treasures which it contains are an unholy treasure; that unholiness is the joy and boast of the chosen generation, royal priesthood, holy nation, and peculiar people; and that to live in the practice of ungodliness is the best way of showing forth God's praises; till this, I say, can be proved, we will venture to maintain that the liberty of the Gospel is a holy liberty.”

More than this, we judge, neither Fuller nor any other man, jealous for the purity of the church, could demand. Gadsby saw that Fuller and his coadjutors, in their eager haste to guard the liberty of the Gospel from licentiousness, had overlooked the fact, that the Gospel is a system of precept as well as a declaration of pardon, and that the spirit which testifies of adoption in the believer's heart, constrains him at the same time to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.

Gadsby's ruling passion-a love of the peculiar tenets of his creed-was strong in death. His last will and testament, given in his memoirs, is a declaration of his theological sentiments, and not a disposition of property. Never was a clearer, or more succinct view of the Calvinian scheme penned than this. He who wishes to know what Calvinism is, cannot do better than peruse

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this document. He will see that the entire fabric stands or falis, according to the truth or falsehood of the major proposition, or the first thesis, namely, that God's dear elect were chosen before the foundation of the world, both to grace and glory. This proposition we cannot believe. It is not declared in the New Testament. It is contrary to the Fatherhood of God. If true, it would follow that none but the elect could be saved. It would lead to the conclusion that God is constantly creating immortal intelligences to become vessels of wrath for ever. And how they could be admonished, reproved, and warned, on one hand, and worked and urged to become Christians on the other, as they unquestionably are in holy writ, and yet God remain a just God and gracious, is a problem we cannot solve. Few of those who sincerely believe in the doctrine of election ever attain to assurance of faith and hope; those who do, reach it through thickets of painful experiences. Instead of taking the Bible as God's expression of mercy to a lost world, and rejoicing in the fact therein declared, that Jesus by the grace of God tasted death for every man, and that therefore, now that I am willing to consecrate myself to the Lord, I may go in peace and sin no more, the poor soul which has been trained in the belief of the doctrine of election, turns to himself, anxiously waiting and watching for some emotion, feeling, or impression, which may indicate his election; wonders, when an emotion is felt, whether it is a natural or a gracious one; estimates the degree of electing love by the intensity of the misery which he feels in the quickening process; and spends a life time in reading and studying the Gospel of his own heart his hopes and fears alternating as his frames and feelings become more or less satisfactory to his own judgment. It is both painful and amusing to hear Gadsby, when an old man, and suffering from affliction, relate his experience. We hear him rejoice in the "oozing" up in his heart of the vilest affections, the filthiest passions, and the discovering the utter depravity of his nature. This he relates to his church as a proof of his election. And it is in the same way that others of the class commend themselves to each other, and to their own minds, as the chosen of the Lord. How much better would it have been had he looked for and rejoiced in the possession of the graces of the Spirit.

Happy is the man who his blest with the spirit of adoption before this scheme of theology is understood; for it is ten to one that he ever becomes other than a sincere victim of gloom if creedal knowledge precedes saving faith. Sincerely we pity the child of the higher Calvinist; for his is often a childhood of wretchedness and horrors, instead of being one of joy and love.

The late Jabez Tunnicliffe, of Leeds, had been such a child; and the description of his juvenile experience, which he gave us, is enough to fill the minds of all who read it with the utmost abhorrence of the system which, under the name of sacred truths, produced it. The parent dares not offer his child the adopting love of God till he is satisfied that the quickening process has begun within him, and then he is left to find peace in God's good time and way; and should the one be tedious, and the other horrible, the more satisfactory and pleasing is the restrospection.

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We are grateful that we have been taught a more excellent way. Glad are we that we can say to every man whom we meet and to every child whom we see: "To you is the word of this salvation sent;" "Call upon the name of the Lord, and you shall be saved;" for "now is the accepted time, and now is the day of salvation." And we rejoice that, although some of the most popular and influential preachers of the present day proclaim the views which Mr. Gadsby so tenaciously held, yet they blend these with the wholesome sentiments of the Arminian school, when they boldly and earnestly offer a full, free, and present salvation to all whom they address, assuring them that the ground of their hope is not anything within them, but that Gospel which by the word is preached unto them.

We had intended to have entered more fully into the various works which these volumes contain. But we have exhausted our limits, and it may be, our reader's patience; hence, we conclude by saying, that William Gadsby ended his long and useful life in 1844; his last words being "There is no religion without power:" "King, Immanuel, Redeemer, All-Glorious:" "I shall soon be with him, shouting Victory! Victory! Victory!"

His successor in the pastorate, following the example of Mr. Spurgeon, publishes (or did publish) his Sabbath-morning sermons under the pompous and characteristically exclusive title of "The Manchester Pulpit;" but from what we have seen of them we would respectfully urge his deacons to request him either to discontinue the practice, or to get some one, acquainted with the rules of English composition, to revise them.

J. S.

ART. III.-ELEMENTARY THEOLOGY.

No. III.

INSPIRATION.

THERE is perhaps no subject within the range of theological science engrossing so much thought or awakening so much concern at the present day as that of the inspiration of the Bible. The frequency and earnestness with which this subject is discussed, not only in learned treatises and elaborate reviews, but also in the ordinary ministrations of the Christian pulpit and in the ordinary walks of Christian life, show the profound hold it has taken of thoughtful men. Never was the subject of inspiration so generally or so thoroughly canvassed, sifted, and tested. Every phase, every fibre, every filament of it is scrutinized with microscopic exactness and judicial rigor. Is the Bible a supernaturally inspired composition, or is it in respect to its composition on a level with other books? Did God impart the miraculous aids of his Spirit to the writers of the Bible, or were they in writing it left to the unaided use of their own faculties? If the Bible is divinely inspired, then, to what extent? Is it inspired wholly, or only in part? If wholly inspired, is the inspiration equable throughout the whole, or does it vary in degree, one part being more inspired than another? Is the inspiration verbal, so that every word is of divine dictation, or is it virtual, having respect to the thought only? What is the true theory of Bible inspiration? or is a true theory possible? Questions such as these fill a large space in the theological thinkings and discussions of the present day. And, indeed, the subject of inspiration is of such grave importance, in a practical sense, as fully to account for and justify the concern it awakens. At the same time it behoves us not to invest it with factitious importance, or to be shaken by unmanly fear of consequences. Supposing the worst to happen,-supposing the controversies now agitating the religious world, and in which we presume to take a humble part, should issue in our being compelled to surrender what has hitherto been regarded the orthodox view of inspiration,-what then? Does it follow that the truth of the Bible must of necessity fall to the ground? This disastrous result, so confidently predicted by some of the friends and by many of the enemies of the Christian faith, is a chimera of the imagination, not at all likely to become a fact. There is no logical or necessary connection between the two terms of the prediction. Bible truth is not dependent upon Bible inspiration. The evidence for each is wholly distinct and separate. And were