* Rome.

+ Geneva.

Hulsean Lectures for 1820. Twenty Discourses preached before the University of Cambridge in the Year 1820, at the Lecture found ed by the Rev. John Hulse. By the Rev. C. Benson, M.A. late of Trinity College, and now Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. 8vo. 447 pp. Baldwin & Co.

THE Rev. John Hulse, of Elworth, in the county and diocese of Chester, and formerly of St. John's College in the University of Cambridge, was born in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and took the degree of B. A. in the year 1728.

Of the moral habits or literary acquirements of his early years nothing is known, and the sequestered tenour of his future life would probably have passed without notice, if the record, and nature, and extent of his bequests to the University, had not distinguished him REMEMBRANCER, No. 41.

among the wise, and good, and pious of the earth, and excited a just curiosity concerning the history of a public benefactor:

"Under this obscurity we can only, and we may surely be permitted to, conjecture, that he, who in his latter years expressed so fervent a solicitude for the

interests of religion and virtue, must have been early habituated to serious thoughts; and that he who so well remembered his

Creator in the last act of his life, could

scarce have been unmindful of him even in

the proudest days of his youth.

"After having fulfilled the common and preparatory exercises of education, Mr. Hulse entered into holy orders in the English Church, and commenced the la

bours of his ministerial functions, upon a small curacy in the country, where it was his lot' to spend many years of a life which, as I think,' he observes, that no man did ever envy, so I bless God that no man could ever reproach.' Upon the death of his father he appears to have quitted this situation, and to have passed the remainder

of his days in singleness, in retirement, and in piety, upon the land of his paternal

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inheritance in Cheshire, enjoying with moderation its fruits, and distributing of its abundance in charity to men. There was the usual place of his sojourning upon earth: there did he endure, with submission, meekness, and resignation to the will of heaven, the most acute and extreme pain' of a lingering disease, soothing himself in the intervals of suffering with the charms of music; and there, in the year 1789, did he yield up his peaceful and patient spirit to the God who gave it, and dropped into the grave in the age and reverence of more than seventy years.". P. 11.

The bequests of Mr. Hulse to the University of Cambridge are of considerable value, and are all appropriated to one and the same purpose; the advancement of religious learning, and the counteraction of infidelity. This purpose was naturally suggested by the circumstances of the times in which he lived and in which he died, of which the former was the age of Toland, and the latter of Paine. The method in which

he has sought the accomplishment of his important purpose is three fold: 1. An annual premium of forty pounds is proposed to the writer of the best Dissertation on some subject connected with the Evidences of Christianity; and as the candidate may not have taken, nor be of standing to take the degree of M. A., it is evident that this premium is chiefly intended to excite the attention of young men to the study of theology, to fix their principles, and enable them to fix the principles of others. 2. The duty of the Christian advocate, the second institution of Mr. Hulse, is to obviate by annual or more frequent answers, such popular objections against natural and revealed Religion, as may from time to time arise, and to be ready in a more private manner, to satisfy the doubts and scruples of the honest and candid inquirer after truth. 3. The office of the Christian preacher, is to deliver in every year twenty Sermons, of which the subjects are thus prescribed in the founder's will;

"To show, the evidence for revealed religion, and to demonstrate in the most convincing and persuasive manner the truth and excellence of Christianity, so as to include not only the prophecies and miracles, general and particular, but also any other proper or useful arguments, whether the same be direct or collateral proofs of the Christian religion, which he may think fittest to discourse upon either in general or particular, especially the collateral arguments, or else any particular article or branch thereof; and chiefly against notorious infidels, whether atheists or deists, not descending to any particular sects or controversies, so much to be

lamented amongst Christians themselves; except some new or dangerous error, either of superstition or enthusiasm, as of Popery or Methodism, shall arise, in which case only it may be necessary for that time to write and preach against the same.'Such are the liberal and comprehensive terms in which the founder has described one portion of the duties of the Christian preacher. With regard to the other he is equally judicious, and directs that he 'shall take for his subject some of the most difficult texts, or obscure parts of Holy Scrip

ture, such, I mean, as may appear to be more generally useful, or necessary to be explained, and which may best admit of such a comment or explanation, without presuming to pry too far into the profound secrets or awful mysteries of the Almighty."" P. 26.

"It were impossible that Mr. Hulse could better have concluded his statement

of the duties of the Christian preacher, than by enjoining that in which, the said

twenty sermons, such practical observations shall be made, and such useful conclusions added, as may best instruct and edify mankind." P. 39.

The purpose of the founder is unquestionably good; but the plan will require much revision, before it can be permanently carried into execution. It will probably be asked, why a long interval of thirty years, an interval distinguished by sceptical infatuation, has been suffered to elapse before the delivery of the Lectures thus endowed. The answer is, that the proceeds of the estate were not sufficient to defray the expence of printing, and that even now the Preacher's chief remuneration arises, not from the emoluments of his office, but from the conscious.

in

ness of labouring in an honourable and holy cause. But will men always be found ready, without hope of secular recompence, to bring to the office of the Hulsean Lecturer, such a measure of talent and research, as is requisite to fix the attention of the younger and the older members of the University? If the same Preacher, according to the license of the founder, shall be elected again for six or seven years succession, to deliver in each year a course of twenty Sermons on the same topic, is there no danger, that the congregation at Great St. Mary's will be wearied of the same tone and manner, however eloquent and accomplished, and be impatient at the continued exclusion of other preachers, and other discourses? May not the preacher himself be tempted into attenuation and prolixity of argument, or into enlarged digressions on the practical application, because the demonstration of the truth, or the illustration of the difficult text, is exhausted? Will it be possible to prosecute the argument, through a series of Discourses, as copious as Manton's Sermons on the several verses of Psalm CXIX, without exhausting the patience of the humblest inquirer, and repelling, instead of attracting, the attention of the ordinary sceptic? Or, lastly, when the distended volumes of the Hulsean Lecturer are committed to the press, will it be possible, by any exertion, to force them into sale and circulation? Mr. Benson is sensible of these difficulties, and adverts to three different methods of modifying the provisions of Mr. Hulse's will:

"There appears to be three different methods of modifying the provisions of Mr. Hulse. First, it may be done by absoIntely reducing the number of sermons to be both preached and printed from twenty down to twelve or ten; in which case the lecturer would be able to devote a greater portion of his time and attention to their composition, and by labour in writing and condensation of thought be enabled to render his ideas at once more clear and

A second method which sug forcible. gests itself is, that of leaving the number of sermons to be preached unaltered, and making a change only in the provision which relates to printing, which change may be effected either by stipulating some number less than twenty, which shall always be committed to the press, or by leaving the matter entirely at the option of the trustees, or of the lecturer himself. The third method is that of reducing the number to be preached, and removing the necessity of printing altogether. But in

this there would be so great and manifest a violation of the founder's intentions, that no one, I apprehend, would venture to recommend it as either judicious or just.”

P. 48.

Mr. Benson also submits the expedience of altering the time of delivering the autumnal course of Hulseau Lectures, so as properly to bring them within the period in which the University is full: and, again, he recommends that one-half of the Sermons to be delivered by the Hulsean Lecturer shall assume the form of Lectures in Divinity, to be read in the Midsummer term, when the Norrisian Professor does not deliver Lectures.

We have no doubt, that it will eventually be necessary to reduce the number of Sermons, and that such reduction, by allowing more time for preparation and revision, and by requiring a more compressed and finished mode of argument, will be an act of justice to the reader,` the hearer, the preacher, and the principal subject. If, however, the specific number of twenty Dis courses shall be required, we would recommend Mr. Benson's last suggestion to the most serious consideration of the trustees, with this alteration, that if the oral delivery and subsequent publication of ten or twelve Sermons on the Evidences of Christianity shall be required, the founder's intention may be satisfied with the publication without any public recitation of eight or ten brief dissertations on difficult texts of Scripture. By such an arrangement, the University pulpit would be less occupied, and the same mea

sure of instruction would be provided.

The proposition for reducing the number of Sermons, may seem to derive some advantage and authority from the precedent established in the present publication, of which the two first Discourses consist of preliminary Remarks on the Character and Schemes of the Founder; and of which the seven last Discourses are confessedly practical, and without any reference to the Evidences of Christianity, which occupy no more than the eleven intermediate Discourses. In these, it is the object of the author "to systematize what we may call the Evangelical demonstration, and to arrange its parts so as to give them their proper application and their greatest force." The connected chain of positive evidences, is contained in the third, fifth, seventh, and in the concluding part of the ninth, Discourses. The remaining Discourses are employed in meeting objections, and in considering some of the collateral arguments in favour of Christianity.

The principal purport of these Lectures is to lay before the reader,

"Such an impartial and connected view of the evidences of the Gospel as may serve to distinguish the relative value of each particular branch, and to point ont the respective place which the miracles and the prophecies, the life and doctrine of our Saviour possess, in contributing to the final result."

The point from which the Preacher takes this view is the narrative of the Baptist's message to our Lord, inquiring, whether he were or were not the expected Messiah: and he is supposed, according to the old interpretation of Justin Martyr, to have made this inquiry for his own satisfaction, when he had heard by report of the works of Jesus, but was not in possession of authentic evidence to confirm that report. In his conduct upon this occasion, our Lord is shewn to have adverted to the external evidence of miracles

and prophecy in connexion with the internal evidence of his doctrines. The discussion of the miraculous evidence is introduced by proof of the credibility of the Evangelists, as mere human witnesses and uninspired historians. In this capacity, it is proved, not only that they had no interest in imposing upon the world, but every secular motive conspired to dispose them to retract the truth which they taught, and in attestation of which they displayed the deepest and most unexampled sin. cerity. Some of the miracles, of which they were witnesses, were of the grandest and most stupendous kind, but they were not of a nature to produce an improper bias upon their senses and faculties, or to disqualify them to bear their testimony to other miracles of a more ordinary description, and the force of which any plain man was capable of apprehending:

miracles of Jesus which were of a more "If by arguments deduced from those

common and less confounding nature,if by inferences drawn from those wonders, where mercy, unmingled with awfulness, prevailed, and where there was no splendid terrors to drive reason from her

seat, and where there was nothing, therefore, that could impeach the credibility of the witnesses,-if, by the testimony of the Evangelists to simple facts, we can once fairly establish the divine authority of the Gospel, the certainty of every other wonder it records, however awfully glorious or sublimely obscure, must follow in the train of its various consequences. We may not, perhaps, be authorized to reckon the Transfiguration or the Ascension amongst the number of those premises from which the truth of Christianity itself is, in the first instance, or solely to be, drawn; but, when once that truth has been ascertained by any other means, the truth of these wonders becomes a necessary and irresistible conclusion, because they form a part of what has already been proved to be true. It is requisite to mark and to remember this distinction between the different kinds of our Saviour's miracles, because it is by exclusively directing his efforts against those which are more singular in their nature that the Deist would disturb the repose of the Christian_upon the credibility of the Evangelists." P.77.