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a translation of any part of his works, or even hearing of his name, many minds must, at the present moment, be moved by his opinions. No theologian, we should presume, is likely to make pretensions to the learning which adorns the sacred profession, before he has given more than a superficial attention to the writings of this Prince of Theologians.

We trust it will not be imagined that we are blind to the weak points of Augustine. He was naturally haughty and impetuous; his sensual propensities were remarkably strong, in a climate suited to their early and full development. The indulgences of his youth were accompanied with falsehood and dishonesty. His imagination, at the time of his conversion, and ever afterwards, indeed, had much to do with his belief, and with his habits. He was too disputatious, we think. He had too much of the spirit of knighthood-the valorous, chivalrous, and somewhat swaggering, ostentation of his prowess, and of his trophies. Though not without tenderness, humility, forbearance, those gentler human virtues which Christianity always improves, and whose absence she often supplies by her own peculiar graces, he was not a little fond of having his own way. He very much liked being a bishop. He was, pre-eminently, a ruler. Calm as he was on principle, and by habit, he was not incapable of being in a tempestuous passion. No man ever took severer views of truth, or applied harsher rules of action; and if he had few scars, he gave many wounds. While every competent judge admits that he was not cruel nor inexorable, he was far from being prepared to be a confessor in the cause of mercy, towards the heretics for whose lives he pleaded.-It is with us a very serious, nay, gloomy, reflection, that Augustine may have done as much harm by his polemical heroism, and by his ascetic principles, as he certainly did good by his zealous orthodoxy, and by his blameless life. His credulity respecting reputed miracles can now provoke only a smile in some; in others it calls for a sigh; in all, it ought to engender caution.

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Had he lived in a later age, he might have been a Hildebrand. We do not think he would, in any age, have been a Luther. As he was, we are not unwilling to adopt, with such modifications as we will leave our readers to suppose, the elegant eulogy of Erasmus-in an epistle which we have already quoted-and from which we have room for only one quotation more: Amabat vehementer quod docebat, docebat argute quod amabat; ' utrumque gignit in eo, qui Scriptis illius propius intendit · animum.**

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Ep. Erasm. ad arch. Tolet. (1529.)

ART. IX. Education. By THOMAS BINNEY. 8vo, pp. 72. Jackson and Walford. 1847.

THIS publication consists of two parts-of addresses delivered at the Protestant Dissenters' Grammar School, Mill Hill, and of an appendix, bearing upon the late education controversy. The first of the addresses was delivered at Mill Hill some years since, but was not, strictly speaking, published at the time; the second was delivered recently, on the appointment of an esteemed minister to the vacant chaplaincy of that institution. Both addresses are fraught with pregnant observations on education generally, which we cannot too strongly commend to the attention of educators and parents. But, in an oration delivered to the constituents of a dissenters' grammar school,' we naturally expect that something will be said about dissent. The following passage sets forth the manner in which dissent has always contributed to affect the thinking—that is, the education of the public mind:

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'In itself, dissent is an evil. It would be better, if no differences, religious or political, existed in a nation. To oppose or dissent from any ancient or established institution, is, for its own sake, by no means to be approved or desired. The grounds and reasons for such procedure should be very weighty; it should be forced upon us, as our last and only honourable alternative, as the exclusive way in which we can retain our self-respect, by in our estimation, retaining our loyalty to truth and God, and embodying our devotion to liberty and religion. Justifiable dissent has always been this. It has been a thing to which men have been driven, driven always against their wills, equally against their interests. The tendency in human affairs is, for might to take the place of right. Secular governments would rule by power rather than reason, or by force rather than law; and churches, sinking into error and corrupting religion, would stand upon authority rather than truth. In such circumstances, the principle of dissent first appears in the secret dissatisfaction of superior minds with things as they are-in the effort to produce a change for the betterand in the wish to identify the outward and actual, with the ideal forms of opinion and procedure, which arise in enlarged and truthloving souls, from their earnest meditations on the nature of men and the will of God. It is not till after this, often long after, and as the result of internal struggles with themselves, that positive dissent makes its appearance; it never does so without sacrifices on the part of the seceders, and never, it may be added, without benefit to society at large. Realms of thought are wrested from usurpers-rights and liberties gain acknowledgment; ancient institutions may continue to

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exist, but they exist shorn of some of their pretensions-expressly or silently they modify their actions, or abjure their errors, and the result is, a step onward in the progress of society. Such things occurred long prior to the Protestant Reformation, and such have been constantly occurring since.

'The infidel historian, it is well known, attributes the achievement of the civil liberties in which Englishmen justly boast, to the fervid longings and irrepressible enthusiasm of our Puritan ancestors; and Hallam, in his "History of the Middle Ages," has the following statement: "The tendencies of religious dissent, in the four centuries preceding the Reformation, appear to have generally conduced towards the moral improvement of mankind. Facts of this nature," he continues, "occupy a far greater space, in a philosophic view of society, during this period, than we might at first imagine."

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The fact is, that dissent always originates with some earnest, honest, deep-thinking soul, sent into the world by the great God, to see things in their true light, and to call things by their right names. Such a man has rough energy, a face like a flint, a stout heart, and a strong arm. He is necessarily the Elijah, the John the Baptist, the Knox, the Luther of his day. He dares to take up truth when trampled upon in the streets, and to say to all men, "This is a holy and divine thing; foully as it has been treated, it is worthy of worship, and I am resolved henceforth to worship it." A splendid falsehood may be riding by, in purple and gold, with all the world prostrate before it; but when it says to this man, "Fall down and worship me, and say that I am the truth"-he straightway answers, "I will not worship thee, nor call thee the truth; for thou art a lie." The Protestant Reformers were such men-such men were the Puritans after them—and such were the fathers of Nonconformity. The principles they have left us are sufficient to produce such men still.'

The next paragraph touches on the pains that were taken in high places in this country, little more than a century since, to extinguish English dissent, and especially to put an end to its action as an educator. It may be edifying, at this juncture, to cast a glance at the past, in its comparison in this respect with the present. It will be seen that the interval between 1715 and 1847, though it has often appeared to be quiescent, and even torpid, has not been without progress.

'When the world was reduced to intellectual and religious vassal age, by the dominant spirit and usurpations of the papacy, the liberties of mankind, and the royalties of truth, had to be again recovered, and re-asserted, by intellectual battle and war. None could be admitted to such service, at least as resolute and trustworthy men, but such as dissented from things as they were, and were resolved on improvement, whatever it might cost, of reputation or ease, possessions or life. Age after age the contest continued; successive victories discovering new occasions for combat, and every generation furnishing men worthy

of their fathers. To such men we are indebted for our meeting this day, to them we owe the character and existence of this institution. We have reason to congratulate ourselves and each other, on the happy circumstances in which we assemble, when we consider what might have been our lot, if the spirit of intolerance had never been met, by the active resistance or passive suffering of those who preceded us. I shall say nothing of what that spirit, which yet survives, would wish still to impose or execute if it could; but the period, comparatively, is not distant, when it had it in its heart to crush by persecution the learned and amiable Dr. Doddridge, for daring to keep an academy for youth; and, at an earlier period in the last century, a bill, you should know, actually passed both Houses of Parliament, and received likewise the royal assent, forbidding any one, on the pain of imprisonment, to keep any public or private school, or seminary; or to teach or instruct youth, as tutor or schoolmaster, unless he was a conformist to the established liturgy-obtained a license from dignified ecclesiastics -and promised to teach the Christian religion only as it was set forth in the Church Catechism! This bill passed, and became law in 1715. The Dissenters of the day petitioned against itthey petitioned in vain. It was moved, in their behalf, at the last reading, that they might be allowed to have schools for the instruction of their own children; but this was denied them. They did, however, obtain one favour, that of being permitted to have school-mistresses to teach their children to read! We may smile at these things now. But, when such an enactment could be passed in the British parliament two hundred years after the Reformation, and not half that period previous to the formation of this establishment, we may ask, with feelings too serious for laughter,-not only how this institution ever could have been,—but what would have been the character of all institutions-what the condition of the whole empire, if there had not been, in bygone times, noble, truth-loving, earnest men, who, under the name of dissenters, resisted ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, and secured, by their personal sacrifices and sufferings, the freedom and blessings which we now enjoy? It is not right that the inheritance they purchased should be taken by any without acknowledgment, or enjoyed without gratitude. It is certainly appropriate, in this place and on this day, to express at once our admiration and our thanks. The least we can do is to commemorate a virtue, which few, perhaps, now, have either the ambition or the magnanimity to imitate.'

The advance made by nonconformists since the bad times to which this passage refers, may, no doubt, be traced in great part to that resolute conscientiousness of which Mr. Binney has so well spoken; but we must be permitted to add that, in our view, this result followed from the moderation of our forefathers, quite as much as from their decision and earnestness. Mr. Hallam, who has spoken as Mr. Binney has stated, has also said, that we

Englishmen are disposed to boast of our liberties as bought with the blood of our ancestors, but that it would be quite as true, if not quite so eloquent, to speak of the said liberties as bought with the money of our glorious progenitors; the old custom of negotiating in favour of better laws, as preliminary to granting new subsidies, having been the great secret of our progress. In general, the demands of our patriots have been strictly within the limits of the reasonable. They have not been wont to swell and fume, after the French fashion, amidst a world of abstractions, and to deem such glowing fancies abundant warrant for attempting the mightiest revolutions. They have looked to the immediate exigency, to the pressing evil, and have succeeded by safe, though slow degrees, in ameliorating the bad and in improving the good. If we except the short interval during which the sword became the arbiter of our differences, this has been eminently the character of our history as a free people. Our great men have suc ceeded by knowing where to stop,-by knowing how to forbear in wisdom, no less than how to act in a spirit of self-sacrifice. In this respect, the course of our patriots has been that of our nonconformists. The claim of the latter has not been that their system should be forced upon other men, nor that all other systems should be thrust aside to make space for their own, but simply that they should themselves be left in full liberty to act in accordance with their convictions. Such was the plea of the early Brownists, of the later Independents, and of their contemporaries the Puritans; and the claims of the Nonconformists subsequent to 1660, and of the Dissenters subsequent to 1688, did not extend beyond those limits. All these parties dwelt upon the errors or superstitions of the established church, but it was as stating the ground on which they were themselves compelled to become separatists from that church, and on which as separatists they claimed freedom of worship. Thus their policy, with scarcely any exception, was a defensive policy. Their com plaints were weighty from being clearly the complaints of the injured. By giving a steady utterance to their sense of wrong they succeeded, step by step, in so far abating the amount of that wrong. We say not that this merely defensive policy must be characteristic of nonconformity in all time to come, because it has been characteristic of it in the time past; nor that it would not require all the calm courage and settled hardihood of which Mr. Binney speaks, to enable men to acquit themselves, as not a few of our forefathers did, even in such a course. To suffer, indeed, is often more difficult than to dare. But from the appeals frequently made to the example of our ancestors, it has appeared to us that the material fact now mentioned has not been suffi

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