the Banyan flourish-while we sleep in dust, waiting for Him who is the resurrection and the life.

"I am now digesting a plan for reading publicly the Scriptures. The Church Mission Society will aid this object. Next to the silent operation of the Bible Society, I expect the greatest good (if it please God to prosper the work of our hands) from this undertaking.

"The time is short,' at least my time, and I wish to see the word of God, and the word of God alone, sent forth and circulated, and even heard, under, as it were, every green tree."

He observes in another letter, addressed to a member of the Committee of the Church Missionary Society-" "Next to the reading of the Scriptures, the hearing of them read must be the greatest benefit and blessing to mankind. The Bible Society has provided for the one, and yours has begun to provide for the other. They send forth the Scriptures, and you make them vocal, in all lands. Both will accomplish a glorious work, and contribute above all other means (except the conversion of the Jews) towards filling the earth with the knowledge of the Lord. May the Lord of heaven and earth prosper your Society, and give his blessing to the operations of both in the East!" Early in 1812, he was attacked by the severe illness which terminated his eminently useful life on the 14th of June in that year, and in the 49th year of his age. "To increasing bodily weakness he gave no other heed, than to make it a spur to him to labour the more exceedingly." It pleased God" that the crowning labour of his life in the Christian ministry should be the publication of the First Report of the Calcutta Auxiliary Bible Society." During the whole course of his illness, his holy habit of unreserved submission to the will of God, as marked by his provi'dences, shone forth. He never

uttered a repining sound, that his reluctant and painful effort," an attempted voyage to sea, "had been made in vain; but sincerely thought and declared that all was well: as much as if the plan had succeeded, according to the wishes and expectations of his anxious friends, for the restoration of his health and usefulness.

"His last morning was particularly calm, collected, and resigned; and his last breath spoke thankfulness for the merciful consolation showered down upon him, and the great kindnesses that had been shown him on every hand, and his confidence in the gracious purposes of his God.

"While in the act of thus expressing his humble gratitude to God and man, he closed his eyes, and raised his feeble hands, and still moved his lips in inward worship-but his voice was heard no more!

“A funeral sermon was preached at each of the churches; and the mission church was hung in black on the mournful occasion, in honour of his revered memory, and in respectful deference to the deep feeling of sorrow in the congregation on their lamented bereavement.

"The reverence in which the character and memory of Mr. Brown were held, in the community among which he had so long ministered, was testified in some touching and uncommon instances, which ought to be recorded to their mutual honour."

These the limits I have assigned to myself will not permit me to transcribe, although they are singularly gratifying, and reflect credit in a high degree, not only on the character of Mr. Brown, but on that of the community among whom he had so long laboured. I must refer the reader for them to the work itself, which is replete with interesting details and most important instruction. My object, indeed, in extracting from a work

of 500 pages so brief and imperfect a sketch of the life and labours of this distinguished minister of Christ, is to draw the public attention to a volume which deserves and will abundantly reward their attention,. and which his surviving fellow labourers in the vineyard of Christ will find well calculated to kindle their zeal and animate their exertions.

The twelve Sermons which close this volume, are valuable specimens of that plain, practical, unassuming, and yet influential style of preaching, which, in the case of Mr. Brown, God was pleased to honour by making it the means of gradually and silently producing such remarkable effects on his congregation.

I cannot better conclude this sketch, than by quoting a part of the closing passage of Mrs. Brown's excellent Memoir.

"It will probably surprise the attentive reader in England, to have placed before him sketches of a pious and conscientious ministry at Calcutta, which has been in lively exercise throughout a period of twenty-six years.

"The silence of Mr. Brown and his associates, on the diligence and success of their ministerial labours, was accordant to their own humble views of themselves; which inclined them to lay their hand on their mouth, and their mouth in the dust, rather than speak with boastful lips. It would have been doing violence to themselves to utter more than, We are unprofitable servants."

"But as there is a time to keep silence, so is there a time to speak; and that which is secret shall be made known. The long glimmering light seems spreading high and wide on the Indian horizon; the grain has sprung up, and even here and there a spot is found white already to harvest. It may therefore be acknowledged unto the Church of England, now these labourers have been called to their rest, that her ministers, Brown,

Buchanan, and Martyn, faithfully cultivated her eastern field: silent and unobserved they laboured, and others have entered into their labours.

"It remains to pray, that God may abundantly give the increase; and that the great Lord of the harvest may be pleased to send forth more labourers into his vineyard of Asia; and when he giveth the word, that great may be the company of the preachers, and the number of them that hear be multiplied." S.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer. "THE Appendix to Mr. Jebb's Sermons," though quite uncontroversial in its purpose, has already provoked the animadversions of two writers in the Christian Observer. To the former of those writers, your pages contain a reply, bearing the signature of AMICUS, which, in my judgment, completely frees me from the necessity of making a single observation upon the strictures of N-. In remarking on the letter of my second opponent, I am well aware how much ought to be done. ALBIUS is indeed no ordinary writer: but that very circumstance renders it the more imperious duty to discard all selfish timidity, in defending a cause thus powerfully opposed; and indeed, in these days of fierce polemical contention, (plus quam civilia bella,) there is something refreshing in the very attitude of friendly discussion with a writer who almost wins us to forget, what he eminently possesses, the skill, and power of a subtle disputant, in the courtesy of a gentleman, and the charity of a Christian.

ALBIUS divides the subject of discussion into two parts: the one, referring to the great body of Protestant Churches; the other, to the Church of England. In his letter, he confines himself to the former topic: in his postscript, he gives some faint hopes that he may here

after discuss the latter. As, how ever, his animadversions have been for some months before the public, and as the completion of his original plan may be still very remote, I think it right, with your permission, to offer some reply to what has been already said; confining myself for the present, after the example of ALBIUS, to the subject of continental Protestantism."

ALBIUS commences his strictures with an examination and defence of the principle maintained in the celebrated PROTEST of Spires: namely, that Scripture is to be interpreted by Scripture alone; the obscurer parts of Scripture, by those which are more clear; and, in the first place, he supposes, that "Mr. Jebb would not object to this rule, if it were confined within narrow bounds, and employed only as one among other maxims of explication." The supposition would be strictly just, were not the limitation somewhat equivocal. I not only do not object to the rule, when properly understood; I most cordially embrace it. But I go further still and to the utmost power of a very private and humble individual, I would resist the confinement of this rule within closer bounds, or its association with other maxims, than those which our church has unequivocally sanctioned, and our best and wisest churchmen have zealously maintained.

Still, however, I must avow my self unsatisfied with the principle of self-interpretation, as maintain ed in the Protest of Spires. License there is claimed, for each individual teacher, and, by obvious implication, for each individual learner, to deduce, for himself, the doctrine of the Divine word, from the Divine word alone, without any regard had to the doctrine of the church. And berein, to my apprehension, consists the grand distinction between Church-of-England Catholicity, and Foreign Protestantism. Our church, indeed,

asserts the interpretation of Scripture, primarily deduced from Scrip- : ture itself, respecting the great Catholic verities: but she asserts it, as deduced by the consent of the Catholic Church, especially in the first four councils. To this interpretation she adheres; and while she encourages all her capable members to study the Scriptures for themselves, explaining Scripture by Scripture, it is always under the express provision, that they never so interpret that Scripture, as, in matters of faith, to contradict this ancient and established inter pretation drawn from Catholic consent. And if it be said, that, in their subsequent confessions, (subsequent, I mean, to the Protest of Spires,) the Foreign Churches profess a certain qualified respect for that consent, it must be observed, that such professions are strongly at variance both with the letter and the spirit of that Protest; and it may as well be intimated here, that, in my next letter, the value of those professions will be called in question. Nor can greater weight be allowed to the probable argument, that the Protestant Churches claimed and exercised the power of defining articles of faith, and prescribing terms of communion. Ecc clesiastical history, and living facts, which will one day become the subi ject of ecclesiastical history, afford but too melancholy, though, at the same time,most instructive evidence, how possible it is to infringe such articles of faith, and evade such terms of communion; a natural consequence indeed, where the churches began the inquiry de novo for themselves; and where individuals were taught to institute a similar inquiry, according to the doctrine of the Protest, not only without consulting the sense of antiquity, but, as it would seem, at the very least, in contradistinction to the duty or the usefulness of any such consultation.

The objection surged in the Appendix against the rule, as walimić.

edly maintained in the Protest of Spires, ALBIUS resolves into two heads-1. It leaves individuals to their own guidance, in the interpretation of Scripture, unassisted by the results of antecedent investigation. 2. By making plainer passages a standard of construction for the more obscure, it would despoil Revelation of all its specific richness, and leave it nothing beyond its simpler and ordinary elements. I accept this abridged form, as very competently expressive of my meaning; and, on each of these heads, I will endeavour to meet the observations of your able correspondent.

"to

must be traced, not to any prophylactic virtue in the rule itself, but to a provision in the constitution, both of human nature and human society, which renders the strict and exclusive observance of such a rule absolutely impossible. No man ever did, or ever could, come to the study of Scripture, without previous notions, imbibed from external sources; which previous notions, more or less palpably, must become to him principles of interpretation: and no man deliberately perseveres in the study of Scripture, unmoved by impulses more or less consciously received from a system of external agency; from the society in which he lives, from the books which he reads, from the religious teacher whom he hears, or from the religious community to which he belongs. And hence, it is tolerably clear, that, in the course of individual study, Scripture never can be strictly and exclusively interpreted by Scripture alone. This moral impracticability, however, of close adherence to the rule of naked self-interpretation, does not preclude us from examining the natural consequences of that rule, could it be carried into effect:*

ALBIUS Conceives, that the rule neither is, nor can be, liable to the first objection; inasmuch as, make room for this objection, every individual must not only study Scripture for himself, comparing one part of it with another, but he must work purely alone, discarding all commentary, all exposition, all annotation, all discourse, either written or spoken, ancient or modern." It is most willingly conceded, that, to make room for the cited objection against naked selfinterpretation, not as a principle, but as a practice, this monstrous practical absurdity would be an indispensable prerequisite. It will be recollected, however, that, in the Appendix, the objection is brought, not against the practice, but against the principle. The words there employed are the following: "Supposing it once established, that holy Scripture is to be interpreted exclusively from itself, what, in the nature of things, is to follow, but that the inquirer of the nineteenth century is to begin and end, where the inquirer of the first century began and ended? This I did mean to represent; and this I am still obliged to think would be the necessary consequence, if each individual were immediately to derive his religion

from the Bible alone. And that this consequence has not followed, CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 182.

* To combat an impracticable rule, may seem akin to fencing with a shadow. Let it, however, be remembered, that the attempt to carry this rule into practice has been fraught with the most deadly consequences. In the kingdom of Grace, we are exhorted to aim con-tinually after unattainable perfection; Be ye therefore perfect, EVEN AS your Father which is in heaven is perfect. It might be worth considering, whether, in the antagonist empire, there may not also be a continual reaching after unattainable perversity. SocINUS once boasted, that, in a particular controversy, "he had no teacher but God, and the Scriptures;" Deum tantummodo præceptorem habui, Sacrasque Literas. He would then willingly have added, that,

in the universal range of theology," he had "no master whatever," nullum universa ipsa divinarum rerum scientia,

prorsus magistrum. But truth wrenches from him the mortifying avowal, that he L

and the fact, that its legitimate consequences are practically unattainable, might furnish its opponent with an additional argument, not widely differing from the argumentum ad absurdum.

It is, most truly, not in a spirit either of subtlety or trifling, that I have advanced these last observations. Two paths lay before the writer of the Appendix: either to deny the possibility of exclusive self-interpretation; or, for discussion sake, admitting the possibility, to expose its mischievous effects: the latter path was preferred, as well because it leads him who chooses to grapple with the subject, more completely into its moral fastnesses, as because it seemed most likely to bring rigid selfinterpretationists within full view of the deformity of their own system.

The remaining matter connected with the first objection to naked self-interpretation, may be disposed of in a very few words. ALBIUS, quoting, by way of sanction, the authorities of the Confession of Wirtemberg, and of Bishop Jewell,*

had a master; that he had profited, both by the oral instruction and the written commentaries of his uncle LELIUS. See his Epistle to M. Squarcialupus; Oper. tom. i. p. 362. It is curious to observe, how elaborately, and yet how unsuccessfully, Doctor Toulmine, in his Life of Socinus, pp. 156, 157, endeavours to diminish the theological obligations of the nephew to the uncle. He is abundantly careful to keep out of view the decisive quotation just referred to.

* I will confess myself unable to discover that either of these authorities are much to ALBIUS's purpose. In the Confession of Wirtemberg, students are directed, not to commentators at large, but to those who excited by the Divine Spirit, interpret Scripture by Scripture." A vague direction, how ever, in despite of its studious limitation for what student may presume to decide, that the commentator to whom he applies was really excited by the Divine Spirit?-unless, indeed, it be

contends, that, "considering this as the chief, or even as the cardinal, rule of scriptural interpretation, that Scripture is to be explained by Scripture, still we may and should employ all the helps from human intellect that we can find." The passage thus abridged, it is hoped, with all fairness to your correspondent's meaning, demands a little weighed reflection. To the

:

taken for granted, that ALL who profess to interpret Scripture by Scripture are so excited in which case, it is obvious, preting the same Scripture-passages, we shall have the Divine Spirit internot only in different senses, but in senses diametrically opposite. The passage of Bishop Jewell seems still less in point. It is by no means to all the helps from human intellect that we can find, it is certainly not to an indefinite extent, that the good Bishop would have us wander for instruction. He directs us, on the contrary, to "THE DISCRETION AND WISDOM OF LEARNED FATHERS." And who these wise, discreet, and learn

ed fathers are, we learn from his context, in the very chapter and division to which ALBIUs refers. "You know right well, we despise not the authority of the holy fathers, but rather, in this selfe-same place, have alleged together S. Augustine, S. Hierome, and S. Ambrose, three of the most ancient and approved fathers; and throughout the whole discourse of this apology, in the defence of the catholike truth of our religion next unto God's holy word have used no proof or authority so much, as the expositions and judgements of the holy fathers. We despise them not therefore, but rather give God thankes in their behalfe, for that it hath pleased him to provide so worthy instruments for his church, and therefore we justly reprove you [the Papists] for that so unadvisedly, and without cause, ye have forsaken the steps of so holy fathers." Shortly after follows the passage cited by ALBIUS. Much more might be adduced from this very chapter and division, as well as from subsequent divisions of the same chapter, to show, that throughout this whole context, Bishop Jewell had no other kind of exposition in view, than the writings of the fathers of the church. See Def: of Apol. part. I. ch. ix. div. 1, &c. Whe- * ther such a context be favourable to the doctrine of ALBIUS, or to the doctrine of the APPENDIX, it remains for candid readers to determine.