LOOK BEYOND, LUTHER, (Continued).... "YE ALSO AS LIVELY STONES." 1 Pet. ii. 5... CHARGE OF THE LORD BISHOP OF LEIGHLIN & FERNS.-APPENDIX to Do. 53 NOTICE OF BOOKS-Life of the blessed Angelo, FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE FRANCE.-Lyons, Synod of the Clergy.-Amiens, Revival of Protestant pla- DOMESTIC RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE Dublin, Metropolitan Reformation Society.-Kilkenny, Bible Society.-Wa- ECCLESIASTICAL Intelligence- Appointments-Ordinations-New Church ..... The favors of our friends in Bath and Edinburgh have been received, and shall be inserted next month. We would have given a place to the former in the present Number, had the whole of it arrived in time. A Correspondent" PHILO," makes the following enquiry relative to the almost total neglect of the optative mood by writers of the New Testament :— "In dependent sentences, after conjunctions, they never use it,—the subjunctive being invariably employed by them in those cases. And in independent sentences its occurrence is so very rare; that I do not think the optative is to be met with more than about ten, or at most, fifteen times in the whole Greek Testament. In these instances, too, it is only employed in the expression of a wish, or in indirect questions. The writer of this article will be thankful to any of your learned correspondents for remarks upon this subject, being at a loss to account for the absence of the optative form in the other common usages, except on the supposition of its being intended, in order to render the Scriptures of the New Testament intelligible to unlearned readers. Whatever may have been the reason, it must be admitted to have this effect by those who know how difficult it is to ascertain the precise meaning of many passages of the ancients, from not knowing the various nice distinctions in the use of the mood in question-distinctions which are not even touched by the common grammars, and notwithstanding the laborious researches of the most learned and acute grammarians, are still a desideratum in Greek Philology.” r "W. C. T." "The Butterfly," and "Thoughts on Feeling," have been received; also "Missionary Hymn," by “Cornelius,” "F. L. H," is referred to the Training Schools of the Association for Discountenancing Vice. We hope to be able to insert the communication relative to the School for Hebrew Children at Pinne, in our next number and shall be happy to receive the "Intelligence from the Continent," promised by our correspondent. *The Reviewer of the Charge of the Bishop of Ferns, wishes to add the following note at the end of the Review-We regret that it did not arrive in time for insertion in its proper place: "Our readers will see that we have not deemed it necessary to animadvert on the contradictions and absurdities that pervade the Doctor's statements on the trite subjects of supremacy and infallibility.-The Bishop has set Dr. Doyle against Dr. Slevin very effectually.-The quotations too, adduced by Dr. Doyle from Burke, Locke, and Paley, prove nothing but the slender resources of his reading-Locke disapproves of children reading the Bible through straight-forward, and in us he has no opponent-Paley points out the wisdom of having an appointed ministry.— What Protestant would oppose his statement? Burke is arguing on the propriety of having articles for subscription.by ministers of the Establishment, in opposition to the Feathers Tavern Association, and in the course of his reasoning shews how indefinite the signature on the Scriptures would be, as many individuals might even differ about what is Scripture: his reasoning relates solely to an establishment, and the necessity from its very constitution of having a pledge from its ministers, but we challenge Dr. Doyle, who indeed seems aware of the weakness of his quotations, to produce a single passage in which one of these writers acknowledge a power to prevent the circulation of the Scriptures." The Commissioners of Education have completed their task, and presented to the public the final result of their labours. They have affixed their seal to the recognition of the grasping intolerance of the Church of Rome, and have confessed that nothing less than spiritual dominion will satisfy that ambitious body. They have proved that no degree of concession, scarcely any compromise of principle, will be met with a conciliatory feeling by that Church, but that either a wall must be raised to bar the intercourse between Protestants and Roman Catholics, or both must be submitted to the controul of the Roman Catholic clergy. When we look back for a short period, and recollect how different were the language and manner of that body, and how readily even Bible schools were filled by crowds of Roman Catholics, without an expression of disapprobation from their clergy; and when we contrast such facts with the anathemas and denunciations that now ring in our ears, and desecrate the service of the temple, we are almost in doubt as to the existence or origin of the change. Some portion of it is, we are inclined to think, to be ascribed to the political circumstances of the times, and the anxious, but dubious expectation of awing the Protestant population of the empire into a fear of a numerous and a hostile people; part of it is assuredly owing to the conviction that liberty of thought, exertion of intellect, and Bible religion, are apt to be engendered by contact with Protestants; and we believe much of it to the hope of terrifying or deceiving the Commissioners into a recognition of their peculiar assumptions and claims. Deeply as we deprecate the existence of such a spirit, we rejoice that since it exists, it has been provoked to manifest itself, that we should not be contending without knowing the enemies who were opposed to us, or lose our force and waste our strength in toiling against an under current, that might counteract our exertions; and we are grateful to Providence that there were men on the Commission, acute enough to perceive, and firm enough to oppose the insidious attempts of the interested enemies of religious education. Rome now stands even in the pages of the Commission she first wished for, and then calumniated, branded in the ninteenth as in the thirteenth century with the awful character, that with her, "ignorance" of the Book of God is "the parent of devotion!" If this assistance in the developement of Popery, were the only advantage we had obtained from the Commission, it would have been an important one; but it is far from standing alone. The Commissioners have left to us, the recorded confession of their ineffectual exertions to establish a general system of education. But the Commission has done more-it has amassed a vast quantity of facts, which now belong to history, and may form the materials for future specuations; it has permitted the public to see more of the moral and ecclesiastical machinery operating to depress the peasantry of this country, than the keenest observation had discovered, or the most sagacious understanding had conjectured; and amidst much crudeness of speculation and much precipitancy of judgment, they have laid down, and illustrated many of the most important principles connected with general education. As attached to Protestantism, and members of the Established Church, we feel grateful for the good that has been done, and we can perceive, that even in their errors, there has arisen much of a counteracting, and a beneficial tendency. The storm that terrifies for the moment, and even injures the hopes of the husbandman, ultimately tends to benefit by dissipating in their developement these noxious atmospheric meteors that would be permanently destructive. The Eighth Report is, perhaps, the one that was most dreaded, and most longed for by all parties. To Maynooth, Protestants looked with a degree of terror and suspicion, increased by their ignorance of the system of instruction pursued there, and knowing it only by the hostile array which it annually sends forth; and Roman Catholics scarcely better pleased with the priesthood that it sanctioned, feared that a developement of its principles and its practice would injure the character of the religion that seemed to be identified with its prosperity. Expectations and fears have alike been disappointed; the public were almost as well acquainted with the real character of Maynooth before the investigation, as since; the exoteric system is the only one that has been penetrated. and this establishment while it marks most conspicuously the character of the Church with which it is connected, forms, even by the impenetrable veil in which it has with much success sought to shroud its operations a very instructive chapter in the philosophy of the Church of Rome. Little did they know of Popery who supposed that a sytem which is the result of the labours of 1200 years could be unmasked in a moment, or that those whose personal interest, and whose mistaken views of duty equally concur in preserving the evasive and mysterious character which is its power, would yield to the exertions however strenuous of our Commission. Though little however in the way of discovery has been made to gratify the curiosity of our readers, enough has been displayed to prove the spirit of the system; and for our own parts, we feel exceedingly obliged to the Commissioners, not for the report, for it is most meagre and unsatisfactory, but for the evidence they have published, and the obvious pains which some among them were at, to procure information on the important subjects that were laid before them. Our limits will not allow us to go very minutely into a volume of nearly 500 folio pages; the mass of materials is such that it would require a volume to arrange and to compare and to confront and to detect, and we would recommend the work most strenuously to the able Digesters of the Parliamentary evidence; Ireland owes them much for their invaluable observations on those Committees, and the Maynooth Report would form an admirable appendix to that skilful and timely work. Our object is merely to lay a very brief view before our readers of the state of the establishment in question, and to make a few observations on the spirit of that religion which is developed in the course of the examination. Maynooth was established in the year 1795, for the avowed purpose of giving to the Roman Catholic population of Ireland, a Clergy who, educated at home, would not be subject to the republican excitement existing at that period on the Continent of Europe. We can easily understand and excuse the Anti-jacobinical feeling that sought refuge from immediate danger in such an expedient, but assuredly the politicians who planned it, never took into account the nature and tendencies of those domestic feelings which were forming so large a proportion of the materials for thought in Ireland, and consolidated by the exclusive and anti-heretical nature of the Maynooth Education, send out the Clergy, far better fitted* to join in the fury of political party than to allay its violence. The Act of Parliament which established the seminary, appointed as trustees, the Chancellor, the law lords, and others, persons professionally unfit for superintending or enquiring into the education given in the institution. There are at present (2d June, 1827) 391 Students in the College; 250 on the establishment, supported by the Parliamentary grant; 110 are pensioners who support themselves; 20 are Bursers, who have exhibitions, and endowments for that purpose, and 11 are on the Dunboyne Class supported by a portion of Lord Dunboyne's property left for that purpose to the Seminary, and divided between them and the heir at law. All, both pensioners and free pupils are appointed by the respective Bishops of the dioceses in Ireland, and are removeable by them. The Dunboyne Students are chosen from the other classes. The full course of study lasts for seven years. The first year is allotted to Humanity, Greek, Latin, Composition and Catechetical instruction; the second to Rhetoric; the third to Logic, and is employed about a treatise called the Philosophia Lugdunensis with references to Thomas Aquinas, Bossuet's Universal History, Clarke, Malbranche, Locke, Beattie, Reid, * See some admirable observations on this subject in the Digest of the Evidence Vol. 1. p. 119–124. |