thinking and condition at present. The seventh and last, by Prof. Jowett, parades the difficulties and misinterpretations of Scripture, and labors vigorously to unsettle our convictions of its supernatural origin, and all faith in it, as it has been commonly interpreted.

It is curiously instructive how the principles of old English Deism first propounded by Lord Herbert, and so ruinous to English morals in the latter part of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, should have been carried to Germany, and having produced their natural fruit there, should return again in the form of the latest results of Rationalism, to be retailed from the chairs of Oxford and the pulpits of the English church. Verily, opinions have their circuits. Old foes revive and come again with new faces. The old battles must all be fought over again, though with weapons and engineering suited to the new style of warfare. But we have no tears nor fears for the strife or its issue. Christianity never yet has suffered from its conflicts; it never can if it be from God. Our only apprehension is that the unwary and superficial, led astray by tones of confidence and accents of candor, shall spring to rash conclusions, and make shipwreck of faith and character.

We regret to find the American editor, in his zeal for "the cause of liberal theology in the Church of England," making some statements respecting the authors of the volume, which the contents of the volume at least, should have made him slow to write. He tells us that "the name of Baden Powell is no less eminent in physical science than in sacred learning." And in enumerating the men by whom "the life of Anglican Theology is now represented," Powell heads the list. We say nothing of Prof. Powell's previous writings, which our readers will bear in mind have already received some attention in these pages; we quote but part of a paragraph from his essay in this volume, and ask that it be read in connection with the sentences above quoted. Thus: "a work has now appeared by a naturalist of the most acknowledged authority -Mr. Darwin's masterly volume on The Origin of Species' by the law of natural selection,'- which now substantiates on undeniable grounds the very principle so long denounced by the first naturalists— the origination of new species by natural causes; a work which must soon bring about an entire revolution of opinion in favor of the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature." We should like to be present when Dr. Hedge should read this paragraph in connection with his eulogistic sentences, to Agassiz or any other of the first naturalists. We forbear quoting the paragraph we should be glad to hear read to

some living theologian of the Anglican church. Most Englishmen would stare slightly at the idea of Baden Powell being the first representative theologian of the Anglican church. Men do sometimes, especially when liberal, make rather extravagant statements respecting the unexpected advocates of their sentiments.

DR. TYLER'S MEMOIR AND LECTURES.*-Dr. Bennet Tyler was a native of Connecticut, and was graduated at Yale College in 1804. Fifteen years he was a pastor at South Britain, Ct.; six years President of Dartmouth College; five years pastor of the church in Portland to which Payson so long ministered; and, finally, twenty-four years at the head of the Theological Institute of Connecticut. It was in the last situation, and as the champion of the orthodox of Connecticut against Dr. Taylor at New Haven, that his reputation was chiefly acquired. Everybody is supposed to know that the Theological Institute at East Windsor was avowedly founded to "check that flood of error which was coming in upon the churches" from the "New Haven Theology," and that Dr. Tyler was the leading spirit in the enterprise.

It was fitting that these Lectures should be given to the public in the same year with those of Dr. Taylor. Associated as were their names in their later lives, it is proper that their published lectures should stand together on the same shelf, and their blended light instruct the generation that follows them.

Dr. Tyler's was a mind of less strength and breadth and self-reliance than Dr. Taylor's, and yet his lectures are clearer in their analysis than Dr. Taylor's, and whether to their praise or not, adhere more closely to traditional interpretations of Scripture, and to the highest New England authorities. Neither of them can be cited as a biblical theologian; both, like most of the older New England divines, sometimes make strange work with proof texts. Dr. Taylor is anxious to cite no man's authority, while Dr. Tyler is always eager to prove himself in the line of the elder Edwards and of the other recognized fathers of the true New England Theology. And every page of his Lectures shows how carefully he formed himself, both in the matter and the manner of his thinking, after his venerated models.

These Lectures treat of only seven subjects, which certainly cannot be all that Dr. Tyler was accustomed to lecture on to his classes, but must

* Lectures on Theology. By REV. BENNETT TYLER, D. D., late President and Professor of Christian Theology in the Theological Institute of Connecticut,— with a Memoir. By REV. NATHAN GALE, D. D. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co.

have been selected as embracing the special questions in dispute between him and Dr. Taylor. They are, Man before the Fall, the Fall and its Consequences, Native Depravity, the Universality of Sin, the Decrees of God, Moral Agency, Regeneration. It was for the New England orthodoxy, it will be remembered, that Dr. Tyler contended against the heterodoxy of New Haven, and not for the orthodoxy of the Westminster Confession. Thus, he maintains that "while by the death threatened to Adam, eternal death was the main thing intended, it may be said to have included spiritual and temporal death"; but "that spiritual death was not the thing intended in the threatening, is evident from the fact that it is sin itself, and cannot properly be regarded as the punishment of sin." "This is the crime threatened with a punishment and not the punishment itself."

According to Dr. Tyler, " Adam was the federal head or representative of the race;" his "apostasy involved not only himself, but all his posterity in ruin;" "in consequence of his apostasy sin and death have passed upon the whole human race." But " Adam and his posterity are distinct agents, individually responsible." "His sin is not so imputed to them as to be of itself the ground of their suffering. Punishment, to be just, must be deserved. Ill desert must be personal as well as moral character." "Adam disobeyed. From that moment his nature became corrupt, and this corrupt nature he imparted to his descendants." "All men are from the commencement of their being morally depraved. They are regarded and treated as sinners. It is as sinners they suffer and die."

By Native Depravity, Dr. Tyler means "a native bias or propensity to sin which man inherits from his ancestors, and which is a consequence of the original apostasy;" "he naturally loves that which is evil, and hates that which is good; the very first emotions of his heart are wrong." "From the moment the soul begins to exist, it must possess, in an incipient degree, a moral character; otherwise it cannot be a moral being."

Now that this native depravity is sinful, and therefore punishable, is implied by Dr. Tyler in maintaining the universal sinfulness of the race. "Sin is coëxtensive with the reign of death." "If we may say of the infant child that it has a rational soul, we may say with equal truth that it has a depraved heart." "That infants suffer and die, is a proof of their depravity."

Dr. Tyler adopts the Westminster definition of decrees. He affirms the "distinction between God's preceptive will and his purpose." "If

there is not [this distinction], then whatever God has commanded to be done, He has purposed, or determined shall be done. Consequently, in every instance in which his law is violated his purpose is frustrated." He utterly rejects the representation that "sin is an evil to which God submits, not an evil which He permits," and agrees with all the older Calvinists in believing that "God permitted sin to exist, because He foresaw that He could so overrule it and counteract its tendencies as to render it condusive to the highest good of the universe."

On the doctrine of moral agency, Dr. Tyler distinguishes between moral agency and free agency. "Every voluntary agent is a free agent; but we can conceive of a voluntary agent who has no sense of right and wrong." He repudiates the statement that "the mind is an efficient cause," and maintains that the mind cannot "act without motives." "The power of choosing implies the existence of motives as well as the existence of a will. And it is no more true that a man can choose without motives, than that he can choose without a will." "The mind can no more choose in opposition to the strongest motive, than it can desire to frustrate its own desire." "Every event must have a cause; and there is no less fixed connection between moral causes and their effects, than there is between natural causes and their effects."

Dr. Tyler adopts the much vaunted distinction (which he claims is preeminently Edwardean) between natural and moral inability. "We are naturally unable to do a thing when we have not sufficient capacity or strength, or when we cannot do it if we will. Moral inability is an inability of natural disinclination." "Natural inability always excuses from blame;" "the inability which consists in disinclination never excuses." "It is plain from the Scriptures, that there is a sense in which sinners are unable to obey the commands of God." “Conditions are proposed in the gospel, and there is nothing to hinder men from complying with them but a perverse inclination." The ability to comply was "lost in the original apostasy."

In strict consistency with the doctrine of moral inability, Dr. Tyler maintained that "the will is controlled by the affections ;" "that God exercises a complete control over the moral universe." Affirming the distinction between regeneration and conversion, he maintains that "God regenerates. Man is regenerated. Consequently regeneration denotes the act of God, and not the act of man." "But if regeneration is the work of God, then the mind is passive in regeneration; not, however, in any such sense as to imply that it ceases to be active."

These Lectures are indispensable to one who would understand the

later history and present stage of what is known as the New England Theology. They contain some statements which we should be slow to adopt, yet their influence, as a whole, in the region and day for which they were designed, cannot but have been wholesome. It is greatly to be regretted that we have not his whole course of Lectures, spécially those on the Atonement. They would have solved many questions suggested, but not answered, by those we have.

THE BENEFIT OF CHRIST'S DEATH.*-It is well known that Luther had many sympathizers in Italy, and the doctrines of the Reformation at its beginning many adherents among the Italians. No clearer evidence of sympathy and adherence need be cited than this little volume of Paleario. It was first published three years before Luther's death, and finally brought its author, when seventy years of age, to the gibbet or the stake. Its doctrines are singularly in harmony with those of the leading Reformers. Its conceptions of sin, of the office of the law, and of justification by faith, are identical with those of Augustine and of the orthodox Protestantism of to-day. It is worthy our attention, not merely as a curiosity, but for its intrinsic merits.

The treatise itself has had a remarkable history. Written in Tuscan, published in 1543, honored from the outset with a popularity which secured to it the sale of forty thousand copies within six years of its first appearance, "eagerly read in every part of Italy," and translated into several other languages of Europe, it was yet proscribed by the Inquisition, and so effectually exterminated that Lord Macaulay pronounced it "as utterly lost as the first decade of Livy." But before the generation of Italians who had so eagerly read the original had passed away, it so happened that a copy of the French translation fell into the hands of an English writer, who turned it into English. The mention of that English translation by McCrie, in his History of the Reformation in Italy, induced a search for it, and finally to the discovery and republication of a copy of the fourth English edition. It is marvellous that a people among whom forty thousand copies of such a work were once circulated and devoutly read, should have patiently submitted to its utter extermination. Of what untold value were that lost original in the hands of the Italians of to-day.

* The Benefit of Christ's Death; or, the Glorious Riches of God's Free Grace, which every true believer receives by Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Originally written in Italian, by AONIO PALEARIO, and now reprinted from an ancient English translation. With an Introduction, by Rev. JOHN AYR, M. A., Minister of St John's Chapel, Hampstead, etc., etc. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

1861.