THE BRITISH CRITIC, FOR JUNE, 1815. ART. I. Nine Sermons on the Nature of the Evidence of which the Fact of our Lord's Resurrection is established; and on various other Subjects. To which is prefixed a Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Messiah dispersed among_the Gentiles. By Samuel Horsley, LLD. F.R.S. F.A.S. Late Lord Bishop of St. Asaph. 8vo. 9s. Rivingtons. 1815. IF, in announcing to our readers a publication which bears the name of Bishop Horsley, our preliminary observations on the literary character of that eminent prelate should be brief, it is because the delineation has been so often attempted, that nothing is left for us to supply. We have only to repeat those sentiments of veneration, which every member of the Church of England must feel, for a man to whom the cause of orthodoxy is so highly indebted; we have only to join in those expressions of respect, which all sects and parties are now willing to bestow on a man who has contributed such important accessions to theological learning. During his life, his abilities, were too formidable not to incur the resentment of those who were opposed to him, and hence he was accused of credulity, of dogmatism, and of illiberality. But if even his controversial tracts be impartially perused, it must be acknowledged that although he wrote with a conviction of the importance of his cause and with a consciousness of his powers to defend it, yet he displays a candour and forbearance which those who refuse to admit would do well to imitate. The present article leads us to a particular consideration of the merits of his Sermons, and here again, the testimony which we have already borne to their excellence, will preclude a long introduction to the contents of the volume before us. The sagacity of this able divine in explaining the duvanta of the sacred vo lume, his skill in eliciting some striking observation from plain VOL. III. JUNE, 1815. 1815. and and familiar passages, and above all the vein of animated piety which insinuates itself throughout the body of his argument are too well known to need our commendation. When we cannot assent to his interpretations, we are notwithstanding pleased with their ingenuity. Our judgment of the discourses now in our hands, cannot be expressed more forcibly or truly, than in the words of the editor. That although they are arranged from scattered and mutilated manuscripts, "Now that they are arranged they display the same vigour of thought, and the same masterly powers of expounding Scripture as characterize his father's other theological works."' The duty remaining for us to perform, is to give a brief account of the subjects discussed by the learned prelate, and to select a few passages which have most strongly impressed us either by the novelty of their matter or by the energy of their style. The dissertation which precedes the other discourses, but which was originally intended for the pulpit, was written in connexion with the three discourses on the faith of the Samaritans, published in the second volume of Bishop Horsley's Sermons. In the first of these three Discourses, the Bishop intimates his intention of entering, on a future occasion, into the general question concerning the grounds of the general expectation entertained by the Gentiles of the appearance of a Messiah. This Dissertation may therefore be considered as the completion of his plan. The position here defended that the expectation of an extraordinary personage was almost if not altogether universal at the time of our Saviour's birth is notorious. To adopt the language of this eminent prelate : " It may be assumed as a principle which even an infidel of candour would be ashamed to deny, or if any one would deny it, I would decline all dispute with such an adversary as too ignorant to receive conviction or too disingenuous to acknowledge what he must secretly admit." When the Bishop penned this sentence, he probably recollected that a truth so generally received, was denied not by an unbeliever, but by one of those who boast that pure and rational christianity is to be found only among themselves. In return to a question of the Bishop : "Have you forgotten, have you never known, or would you deny, what is not denied by candid infidels, that the expectation of a great deliverer or benefactor of mankind, was universal even in the Gentile world, about the time of our Lord's appearance?" His celebrated Socinian antagonist Priestley answers: "This I do very much question, and I should be glad to know the names of the candid infidels, who have acknowledged it." We are unable to decide whether this assertion be more conspicuous for its effrontery or ignorance, and well might Horsley disdain to offer a reply. If the name of a candid infidel infidel may not immediately occur to us, we can produce the authority of an infidel whom Priestley, we suppose, would refuse to honour with that epithet, inasmuch as he declined to enter into a discussion with himself on the historical evidence of Christianity: we allude to Gibbon. Some of our readers may perhaps remember the handsome encomium which that historian passes on Lowth, occasioned by a passage in one of his Prælections on the fourth Eclogue of Virgil. In the present Dissertation the learned prelate divides his argument into two parts: he first shews from historical evidence that the Gentile world even in the darkest ages possessed written prophecies concerning Christ; and secondly that these written prophecies were the remains of divine oracles of the earliest ages. On the much disputed question of the authority of the Sibylline oracles we hear the Bishop with pleasure. After stating that the charge of forgery has been too indiscriminately admitted with respect to the Sibylline prophecies quoted by the Christian fathers, he passes on to the testimony of heathen writers. In these, there are indeed no quotations from the Sibylline text, because the publication of these writings was prohibited under pain of death, but from the general argument of these sacred books it is clear, that they both announced a general deliverer, who should reform the manners of mankind, and also that they foretold the downfall of idolatrous superstition. The manner in which the Bishop cites the evidence of Cicero as to the latter point is too impressive to be given in any language but his own. The pas sage refers to an attempt of Julius Cæsar to attain from the senate the title of king, by producing a prophecy from the Cumean Sibyl of a universal monarch then expected to arise, and by ap plying this prophecy to himself. "The republican party took the alarm. Tully was at that time its chief support, and his great abilities were called forth to oppose this stratagem of the dictator's faction. In his opposition to it he brings no charge of falsification against those who alleged this prophecy. He denies not that a prophecy to this effect was actually contained in the Sibylline books, to which as a member of the Augural College he had free access, and when he allowed the existence of the prophecy he was a better politician than to make the application of it to Cæsar the point of controversy, and to risk the suc cess of his opposition to the schemes of Cæsar's party upon the precarious success of that particular question. Confessing the prophecy he knew it to be impolitic to attempt to apply it to any but a Roman, and applying it to a Roman it had been difficult to draw it away from Cæsar. He therefore takes another ground.-Having granted that the prophecy was fairly alleged by the oppo 002 site : site party from the Sibylline books, he attempts to overthrow the credit of the prophecy by a general attack on the credit of the books in which it was found. He affirms that these Sibylline oracles were no prophecies. His argument is, that in the writings of the Sibyl no marks are to be found of phrenzy or disorder which the heathens conceived to be the necessary state of every prophet's mind while he prophesied because the prophets of their oracular temples affected it. But these books, he says, carried such evident marks of art and study, particularly in the regular structure of the verse as proved that it was the work of a writer who had the full possession of his faculties. This statement of Tully's may be correct, but his conclusion is erroneous, at least it must appear so to us who take our notions of prophetic style from the specimens which the Bible furnishes for the true prophets were never impeded or disturbed in the natural use and possession of their faculties by the divine impulse. Their faculties were not disturbed but excited and invigorated; and in the most animated of the sacred prophecies we find what might be the natural character of the prophetic style, force, elevation and sudden transition, we find beside, an exquisite art of composition and a wonderful regularity of versification. However the Roman critic having proved, as he imagined, from that circumstance that these Sibylline oracles were no prophecies, concludes his whole argument with this edifying remark: Let us then,' says he, adhere to the prudent practice of our ancestors, let us keep the Sibyl in religious privacy: these writings are indeed rather calculated to extinguish than to propagate superstition.' This testi mony is above all exception. Tully, as an augur, had free access to the book in question. It cannot be doubted that he would improve his opportunities; for he was a man of exquisite taste, of much learned curiosity, and with these endowments of a very religious turn of mind. It is certain therefore that he speaks upon the best information, and he is the more to be credited as this frank confes sion fell from him in the heat of a political debate, in which he took an interested part." P. 15. We should have cited some extracts from the Bishop's explanation of the celebrated Eclogue of Virgil, if the subject of that poem had not so frequently been discussed. Though on the supposition that it refers to the oracles of the Cumean Sibyl respecting the Messiah it may be obscure; yet on any other supposition it is unintelligible. In order to illustrate the second division of his argument that the prophecies current in the Gentile world were fragments of prophecies delivered in the patriarchal ages, the Bishop enters into an examination of the actual state of religion between the first appearance of idolatry and the institution of the Jewish Church by Moses. He shews that the progress of idolatry was gradual, and that prophetic illumination might be vouchsafed to particular individuals in the Gentile world after idolatrous worship had had gained ground. Of this fact he produces two instances the one in Job, the other in Balaam. "That Job was a prophet is so universally confessed that it is needless to dwell upon the proof of it. He was a prophet in the declining age of the patriarchal Church, in the interval between Esau, from whom he was descended, and Moses whom he preceded, and he prophesied in a country where the sun and moon were worshipped. In this idolatrous country he prophesied of the Redeemer, and it is a circumstance that deserves particular attention, that he prophecies of the Redeemer not without manifest allusion to the divinity of his nature, and express mention of the resurrection as the effect of his redemption; two articles of our creed which we are told with great confidence are modern innovations, whereas we find them not only in the Jewish prophets, but in far more ancient prophets of a more ancient Church." P. 71. In his remarks on the character of Balaam, Bishop Horsley maintains a principle, which he always defended with success, that supernatural gifts any more than ordinary attainments are not bestowed in proportion to the moral worth of the individual. We have only to express our regret that the Essay was not completed, since much interesting matter would have suggested itself to the learned author if he had entered into a minute discussion of the patriarchal traditions current in the Eastern world. Of the Sermons which accompany this Dissertation, four are on the evidence of the fact of the resurrection. On a subject so thoroughly sifted we might expect nothing of originality, but it was Bishop Horsley's talent to say common things in a manner peculiar to himself. Among the many disquisitions on this fundamental article of the Christian's faith, there is a Sermon by Dr. Priestley in which the evidence is stated with great perspicuity. But nothing will shew the superiority of the orthodox faith over the tenets of the Materialist and the Socinian, than a comparison of that Discourse with those of Horsley. We cannot resist the pleasure of presenting our readers with the Bishop's introduction: for the warmth of its piety it is worthy of a Father of the primitive Church it is inferior only to the animated reasoning of the great Apostle to the Gentiles. : "The prop and pillar of the Christian's hope (which being once removed the whole building would give way) is the great event which we at this season commemorate, the resurrection of our Lord; insomuch that the evidence of the fact may properly be considered as the seal of his pretensions, and of the expectation of his followers. If notwithstanding the pure and holy life which Jesus led, the sublimity of the doctrines which he taught, and the natural excellence of the duties which he enjoined; if after all the miracles which he performed he was at last forsaken of that God to whose |