consideration on account of their supposed intellectual attainments, "professing themselves to be wise they became fools," these pages were at the first written ;-to expose the folly and to counteract the evil devices of the atheists of was their pri

mary purpose.

An anxious complaint made by one who openly avowed atheistical principles, of the want of all kindly feeling towards such as himself, and of the little care ever manifested for his instruction, by those who, professionally at least, are thoroughly furnished thereto, is offered as an apology for the more extended circulation of a Discourse, which otherwise might claim no right to seek such publicity.

With regard to the application of the term 'atheist,' as it is here used, to denote more than an unbeliever or doubter, namely, a disbeliever, or one that denies the existence of a God, it may be necessary to explain that the term is so applied, only for want of a better. The most exact word for such a purpose would be, undoubtedly, that lately propounded by Dr. Chalmers, one which the critical reader will readily hail and adopt, viz. antitheist ;' but this, perhaps, would not be as acceptable to the popular ear and, therefore, though it may not be considered by some as describing in precisely philosophical terms, the character of which we speak, yet

as being often taken popularly in that signification, the present word has been adopted in preference to that which might be more correct, but would be more

uncommon.

Gladly would we have hoped, that, thus failing to find in our language a suitable expression for it, such an anomalous sin were indeed unknown; but though it be a sin as it were without a name, though it be in contradiction to common sense, 66 a glaring contravention to all the principles of the experimental philosophy," we have known it, alas! in real and active existence.

With permission from the author above referred to, I am enabled to reward the pains of my readers, and to stamp a real value upon their studies, by subjoining in a quotation from one of his latest works, the subject-matter of the following argument, arrayed in the appropriate language of that pious and talented writer 1.

1 See Appendix.

A

SERMON,

&c.

PSALM xiv. 1.

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

Of many of the Psalms, we may say, we are able to give an account of them; the circumstances under which they were written are well known, so that we are at no loss to make a right application of these to ourselves when similarly situated: of some also, it is put upon record, that they were written in commemoration of certain events, as the 3d, 7th, 51st, 56th, 57th, 63d, and 90th. Again, we can trace a marked correspondence between others and portions of the Sacred History, and so may give to these a somewhat definite interpretation; or, lastly, in the historical books we may find sometimes the Psalm itself, in whole or in part, as in the second book of Samuel, twenty-second chapter, where it is written, "David spake unto the Lord the words of this song, in the day that the Lord had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul;" and thereafter follow the words of the eighteenth Psalm.

But of this fourteenth Psalm, I know of no such a guide to assist us in determining its origin; there is one thing somewhat remarkable, that we find it again almost word for word as the fifty-third Psalm, that is to say, in the Hebrew copies, and in our authorized Bible; in many copies of the Septuagint, however, and in our Prayer-book's version of the Psalm, there are three additional verses, marked as the fifth, sixth, and seventh, which are altogether omitted in the fiftythird of the same copies and versions, and also both in the fourteenth and fifty-third of the Hebrew and its versions1. Without attempting to show the reasons of this difference, or enlarging at all upon the matter, it may be enough to say, that these Septuagint readings are of excellent authority. That they are genuine words of Scripture there is no doubt; we find them quoted as such by St. Paul, in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, from the thirteenth to the eighteenth verses inclusive: and, seeing that they are placed by the Apostle in immediate connexion with

1 In Walton's Polyglott, the additional verses are found in the Septuagint (Rom. edit.), the Vulgate, the Æthiopic, and the Arabic. The framers of our Liturgy retained the Psalms as they stood in the Great Bible,' or 'Cranmer's,' which was little more than a correction of Matthew's' Bible, as was this again from 'Coverdale's' and 'Tyndale's.' Bishop Coverdale has the verses alluded to in the fourteenth Psalm, with a note, that they are not in the original copy which he consulted: it seems, however, that he had only a Hebrew copy for reference, and followed a Dutch and other versions. Tyndale translated from the Septuagint and thus it happens, that our Prayer-Book's version neither agrees altogether with the Hebrew nor with the Septuagint.