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overmastered her strength, seized upon the organs of her senses, so that she could neither speak, see, nor hear, to the apprehension of any about her. She could not move but as she was borne by others: and much of this time her teeth were so closed that she was not capable of receiving food, only some liquid matter they dropped in at a broken tooth, and this very little, she putting it out as fast as it was given her. Thus she lay divers months an object of sorrow to her parents, and of astonishment to all others, capable only of their pity, not of their help." In the succeeding parts of the book we are presented with a sad relation of great sufferings continued from April to December. The principal symptom was a rigid state of the whole frame, with the single exception of the organs subservient to speech. She lay in these fits for hours, and even days, insensible to every thing that passed around her, but astonishing every one by the piety and supposed wisdom of the sentences which she unconsciously and involuntarily uttered. The expression of her countenance is described as having been in general unusually serene and pleasing, though sometimes a cloud would pass over her. Once she was thought to be actually dead, and her sorrowing parents abandoned her to those who were to perform for her the last rites. But mingled with these fits, in which she lay motionless, she was also at other times seen to throw her arms violently about, to suffer from risings in the throat, and to be subject to fits of immoderate laughter, and especially violent weeping. During the whole period of her disorder, she never spoke but when she was in the state of rigidity and unconsciousness, and then she uttered in an incoherent manner, sentence after sentence, some in the language of prayer, some of exhortation indicative of the strong feeling of religion which had taken possession of her mind, and that her whole soul was absorbed in the contemplation of heavenly things.

These holy texts, and holy sentences, proceeding from a figure fixed in a death-like trance, and more like marble than a being composed as we are, were heard with wonder and amazement. The disease awakened attention, the speeches more. Instead of looking to the previous education of the child, and observing how the being trained in such a family, where the religious exercises occupied probably nearly half the waking hours of its members, and through every action there was diffused a tincture of devotion, must necessarily have produced a powerful and lasting effect upon the mind of a susceptible child, and that the ideas with which her mind was replete, would present themselves when volition was suspended; she was regarded as a minister of heaven, as one specially ordained to warn an unrepentant world, speaking according to the promptings of a divine spirit. Many resorted to Laughton to hear this extraordinary preacher. Among them were persons of the first quality; two sons of Sir Edward Rodes, besides the numerous family connexions of the unfortunate patient. After a short time it was thought that such precious discourses ought not to be lost, and the two Mr. Rodes's and others, employed themselves in writing down the sentences as they fell from her lips. They were afterwards collected together, and are published in the volume which relates to this singular case.

They are plainly reminiscences of what she had read in

the Scriptures, or in books with which she must have been familiar in her father's house, or of the devotional addresses and pious exhortations of the Puritan Ministers of the time, to whom Mr. Hatfield's doors were always open.

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After continuing with her about eight months, the disease left her, no one knew how for the family had long ceased to have recourse to any of the usual means of relieving her. A postscript to the third edition speaks of her, as then, in the fourth year after her recovery, affectionate, pious, and amiable as she had been before her disorder assumed so violent and strange a character. Indeed, wherever we can collect anything of the spirit and disposition of Miss Hatfield, she appears, young as she was, to have manifested better judgment and better feeling than those into whose hands she had fallen.

The title of the volume, from which Hunter relates his case, before which is a portraiture of Miss Hatfield as she appeared in one of her fits, is: "The wise Virgin, or a wonderful narrative of the various dispensations of God towards a child of eleven years of age: wherein as his severity hath appeared in afflicting, so also his goodness, both in enabling her, (when stricken dumb, deaf, and blind, through the prevalence of her disease,) at several times to utter many glorious truths, concerning Christ, faith, and other subjects, and also in recovering her without the use of any external means, lest the glory should be given to any other, to the wonderment of many that came far and near to see and hear her. With some observations in the fourth year after her recovery. She is the daughter of Mr. Anthony Hatfield, gentleman, in Laughton, in Yorkshire. Her name is Martha Hatfield. By James Fisher, a servant of CHRIST, and minister of the Gospel in Sheffield.”— London, 1656: 12mo.

So remarkable did this case appear, that Caryl, when he affixed his imprimatur to the book, added an expression of his hope that "those who are engaged in this work dare not commit such an iniquity as to gull the world with a piece of forgery." Now we have learned from many instances that our nature is subject to the disease thus described. Minds of a certain kind are liable, beyond question, to be excited by religious impressions, to a degree beyond what we can predict, or they can themselves control. And the conclusion which seems forced upon us, is, that it is the duty of the Church to provide homes for such of her children, where they may receive proper spiritual treatment, and where they may be protected from contact with a rude unsympathizing world; even in those extreme cases, in which, by judicious discipline, applied at an early stage, she cannot direct their religious aspirations into a safe and wholesome channel.

SOCINIANISM AND PANTHEISM-"THE CATHOLIC

SERIES."

The Nature of the Scholar and its Manifestations, by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Translated from the German, with a Memoir of the Author. By WILLIAM SMITH. (Catholic Series.) London: John Chapman, 121, Newgate Street. 1845.

MUCH has been written upon the tendency of various forms of error to reproduce themselves in different ages. "The thing which hath been, it is that which shall be: and that which is done, is that which shall be done and there is no new thing under the sun," seems peculiarly applicable to all false teaching. The object of the following remarks is to call attention to a revival of certain systems which appear in the present day to be peculiarly captivating and dangerous.

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"The Catholic Series!"-"a fresh attack from Rome to follow up whatever advantage has been gained of late," perhaps exclaims the reader. "Or is it an Anglo-Catholic set of publications?"

No, neither of these. "Possibly, then, there is some connexion with the Greek Church, or we have before us the fruit of the Ronge movement?" The truth is still hidden; although the last surmise may be a little nearer the real state of the case. This Series is "to consist of Works of a liberal and comprehensive character, (we quote from the Publisher's Prospectus,) judiciously selected, and embracing various departments of literature. An attempt has been made by the Church of Rome to realize the idea of Catholicism—at least in form—and with but a partial success; an attempt will now be made to restore the word Catholic to its primitive significance, in its application to this Series, and to realize the idea of Catholicism in spirit.'" The document proceeds to add, that since "the many-sided and impartial, or truly Catholic man, has ever been the rare exception to his race, Catholicity may be expected in the Series, not in every volume composing it." Further, the authors of those books "of a philosophical character, will probably possess little in common, except a love of intellectual freedom and a faith in human progress; they will be united by sympathy of spirit, not by agreement of speculation.'

We have now obtained some insight into the character and object of this Series. The solemn epithet which is embodied in our Creeds and Liturgy as the inalienable title of CHRIST'S Church from age to age, receives anew a homage from the Church's foes in these their attempts at appropriation. The Catholicity here intended is a wide and vague latitudinarianism. Yet "the sympathy of spirit" which is claimed for them is not altogether fictitious: there exists (so far as we have had opportunity of observing) a bond of union among the chief writers of these works, in that they advocate substantially the self-same deadly heresies. These leading authors (some are no more) appear to be Mr. James Martineau (brother, we believe, to the lady political economist); the American writers, Emerson and Channing; and several distinguished

Germans, now for the first time in an English dress. The two most prominent points in their teaching will be found, if we mistake not, to be Socinianism and Pantheism.

It would afford matter for deep and interesting inquiry, how it has arisen that the heresy of Socinus, after failing to win its way as the religion of mere reason, and cold freezing morality, is now coming forth under a new aspect and claiming to be the only truly spiritual faith.* This, however, is not our present purpose, and we shall not enter further into the question than is rendered necessary to prove the existence of the views here imputed to these publications, and point out the connection of (so-called) Unitarian tenets with that less palpable and subtler form of falsehood, which we now propose briefly to consider.

Pantheism, in its fullest development, reduces the ALMIGHTY CREATOR to a mere abstraction, a pervading soul of the universe, of which every thing animate or inanimate shares some part (av, Oêtov) : an intellect of which every intellect is portion, as the water in the smallest vessel may be part of the mighty Ganges. But to this conclusion there are several steps. Firstly, there is that mental conformation which regards the works of external nature as rather emanations from the Deity, than the operations of His hands. And thus much, which may possibly be innocent and merely a different mode of looking at the same truths, is said to find place among even Christians in the East. But danger lurks even here; there is in such a creed a tendency towards confounding the Creator and the created, from an assumed similarity of essence: men may proceed to speak of nature as of a selfsustaining, self-renovating power, while they gradually and almost unconsciously lose sight of its Sovereign Ruler; until at length they reach that depth of error which if consistently believed and acted on, would rob us of all the especial blessings which revelation has conferred, and leave us at perhaps a lower point than it found the pupils of the wisest philosophers of Heathendom.

Our meaning will become more apparent if we take some survey of a few epochs in the history of Pantheism. The Oriental mind, at once contemplative and imaginative, has been ever prone to this belief and does not shrink from carrying out the doctrine to its legitimate consequences. The Persian practice as related by Herodotus (I. 131) of ridiculing those who with the Greeks believed the gods to be of a nature like the human, (av@pwovéas) and in their opposition to anthropomorphic errors, sacrificing to sun and moon and the elements, and calling the firmament by the Divine name (τὸν κύκλον πάντα τοῦ ovpavov Aia kaλéovтes) was, to say the least, a step in this direction. The practical Atheism to which such ideas may lead had been, ages previously, asserted by the pen of inspiration. "If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge, for I should have denied the God that is above.--(Job xxxi, 26, 28.)

To this day the elaborate and metaphysical speculations of the Hindus, * The periodical organ of this tone of feeling we understand to be the Prospective Review, which is written with extraordinary power and ability.

which form so great a barrier to the reception of the Gospel, are redolent of Pantheism. It is held that men's souls are capable of union with the Supreme, of such kind that at the end of the life of Brahma they will be absorbed into him and become identified with him—that existence is pain, and absorption-i.e. annihilation of individual existence -the only true happiness.* Further, that from the doctrine that Siva (the Almighty) is all things, flows this also that the distinction between right and wrong is a deception, however necessary it may be for our guidance in this life.+

Nowhere perhaps have these dogmas been so fully and consistently worked out, but abundant evidence of systems founded on a similar basis may be discovered in the early career of Greek philosophy. Its most ancient school, commonly known as the Ionic, resolved all nature into some one principle, whether water with Thales, air with Anaximenes, or some fluid like fire with the Ephesian Heraclitus. Mind was by these philosophers resolved into matter, and even the Eleatic teachers who at first sight look like antipodes to their brethren of Asia Minor, (since they began where their predecessors ended, with the admission of a Supreme Intelligence,) yet by regarding all things as in GOD avoided indeed the gross materialism of their opponents, but only by the substitution of a more refined and spiritual Pantheism. A century later Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ made a vast stride towards emerging from these errors, and attacking this confusion of matter with mind taught the doctrine of a Supreme Intelligence. But as he denied to this vous free agency and represented it as acting by necessity, there still remained a wide interval between his doctrines and the truth. But in coming to the name of Socrates (who was, indirectly at least, the pupil of Anaxagoras) and of Plato, whether considered with respect to his own theories, or those of his great master, which he has handed down to posterity, we may trust that we are speaking of philosophers who fell neither into Pantheism on the one hand, nor the gross and degrading conceptions of a popular mythology on the other,§ and who must be regarded as the divinest teachers who ever lived, not being directly inspired or within the Jewish or the Christian Church. Yet the wonderful genius who succeeded Plato cannot be thus entirely acquitted, and his Pantheistic tendencies are the more remarkable, because it is usual and not unnatural to suppose that such a creed can only co-exist with a very imaginative temperament. We do not deny that the passages which we are about to cite from Aristotle's works may possibly admit of a better interpretation, but an unprejudiced judge can hardly, we think, decide it in their favour. Herein indeed consists the great subtility of Pantheism in all ages, that just as the Arian heretics employed Catholic phrases, but *Morris's Prize Essay towards the conversion of learned and philosophical Hindus. -Page 285.

† Id.-Page 334.

Vid. Aristotle's Metaphysics (1.3-5), and Bishop Thirlwall's History of Greece, Vol. iii. Chap. 12.

§ See especially Xenophon, Memorabilia, iv. 3, 13, (quoted by Bishop Thirlwall, Vol. iv. page 269,) and Plato de Republ. Lib. ii. Cap. 17–21.

For pointing out some of these, as well as for a portion of our remarks, we are indebted to a very able article in the British Critic, (Vol. xxxi., page 308,) entitled

'Pantheistic Tendencies.'

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