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tion of the body of Jesus; as it had been the object chosen to union with the Son of God, the power which was then used in a wise and just way to give subsistence to what became necessary as the result of the divine will, for the redemption of Zion. The blood of our Lord's person was precious in the moment of his taking it in the womb of his mother, for had it not been pure at that time it would not afterward, by any physical act done by him, attained such a quality.' Will Minimus weigh in an impartial balance his own remarks, with the above statement ? Cannot God, and did he not do it, separate every thing sinful from that nature which his dear Son assumed? We forbear entering into any physical statement, or it would not be a difficult thing to prove that blood is a substance, and that there is life in it.

We are not satisfied with the idea that Adam is the head of Christ, for good and valid reasons, stated in the essay before written; the arguments used on that occasion remain untouched by Minimus, and all his reasonings from natures to persons in that nature, does not affect us at all. There is not an idea in our essay that will allow a just conclusion to be drawn from it that we suppose the humanity of the Son of God to be a human person; we do most sincerely wish that Minimus had gone on to the end of that paragraph, which he says is not understood by him; we must give that part of it entire to our readers. "He who was born not of father and mother, but of a Virgin, was not under guilt and condemnation; for he only received from his mother what was prepared by God, that thence the Son_of God might take to himself the materials for building a temple. For though what belongs to the sinner is, on account of the sinner to whom it belongs, under the same condemnation with the sinner himself, yet that which is so contained in the substance of the sinner, as that it cannot be a part of his substance, but prepared by God for an extraordinary generation, is not under condemnation, solely because the Redeemer and the redeemed partake of flesh in common; and therefore it is rightly said to be sanctified, that is, preserved from the common condemnation of the sons of Adam. For the word sanctified cannot in that sense signify purified, or delivered from impurity, as it signifies when applied to the sons of Adam.”

All that Minimus has said about the fathers does not prove the fact for which it is quoted. It does demonstratively prove that Christ is the Messiah promised, and that he has taken flesh in the way which God ordained he should. Sin is not a substance, but the pollution of that which existed before the law of God was violated. Adam was a man before he sinned against God; his sinful conduct was the destruction of his moral perfection; but God in his eternal mind had taken the church into union in the person of his Son before, and had by so doing provided a head for his family, who afterwards, in the fulness of time became their Redeemer.

EDITOR.

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REVIEW.

The Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine of our Lord's Human Nature set forth in Four Parts, by the Rev. Edward Irving, A. M. 12mo. p.p. 155. Baldwin and Cradock.

It is indeed a painful duty whenever we are compelled to expose as erroneous the works of any man, but more especially when such errors are promulgated and industriously circulated by a person for whom we should otherwise cherish the most cordial affection.

Mr. Irving has been long noticed by us, and we had indulged a hope that the great Head of the church had raised up one to bear testimony to God's truth, in opposition to all the modern divinity with which the present day of great profession but awful departure from the grand and distinguishing doctrines of sovereign grace seemed pre-eminently to require. His splendid talents- undaunted courage -capacious mind-ardent zeal-deep research-inflexible steadfastness and undeviating devotedness to what he believes to be the truth-directed our minds to him as such an one; but while we feel ourselves called on fearlessly to oppose error by whomsoever advanced, we would premise that our opposition is to the sentiments and not the person; for on his behalf we would still besiege the throne of grace that he may be brought out of the snare of the wicked one, and become valiant for that truth which he is now (though unintentionally) attempting to overthrow.

Mr. Irving, with his characteristic candour, boldly states in the beginning of his pamphlet what are his sentiments concerning that human nature which the Second Person in the adorable Trinity took into union with his divine essence; and we are indeed pained at the awful blasphemies which he has advanced on page 2. İle says

"I believe that my Lord did come down, and toil, and sweat, and travail, in exceeding great sorrow, in this mass of temptation with which I and every sinful man are oppressed; did bring his Divine person into deathpossessed humanity, into the one substance of manhood created in Adam, and by the fall brought into a state of resistance to and alienation from God, of condemnation and proclivity to evil, of subjection to the devil; and bearing it all upon his shoulders, in that very state into which God put it after Adam had sinned, did suffer its sorrows, and pains, and swimming anguish, its darkness, wasteness, disconsolateness, and hiddenness from the countenance of God: and by his faith and patience did earn for himself the name of "the man of sorrows," and the "author and finisher of our faith.""

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This quotation is most unscriptural, and tends only by its incongruity to perplex the mind of the enquirer after truth. goes on to inform us, that that humanity which our Lord assumed was 66 sinful substance"But Mr. I. and inclined unto evil"-" that the Son of Man was assailable on the "that his soul and body were obnoxious, side of his flesh or human nature, with every temptation, with every infirmity, to which I, or any one, is obnoxious"compressed every variety of human error, every variety of human wickedness which hath ever been realized, inherent in the humanity" -"that in him

"that his soul descended into hell, proved it to be a fallen soul; that it came forth thence proved it to be holy"-" His (Christ's) flesh is the fit medium between the powers of darkness and the powers of light. And why fit? Because it is linked unto all material things devil-possessed." And after commenting on some portions extracted from the Psalms, our author observes—

"Much meditating then upon such expressions, I have come to the conclusion that they import that load of all sins which in taking our nature he took along with it. Manhood in Adam was sinless, set up in righteousness and true holiness by the Creator. With this state of it the holy scripture hath little to do; manhood after the fall broke out into sins of every name and aggravation; corrupt to the very heart's core, and from the centre of its inmost will sending out streams black as hell. This is the human nature which every man is clothed upon withal, which the Son of Man was clothed upon withal, bristling thick and strong with sin, like the hairs upon the porcupine. These sins are in manhood, the manhood of the child unborn, of the babe of days and months, all the same as in the manhood of the hoary wretch grown grey with sin. This poisonous coat, not of flesh merely, but of flesh and heart, covering, and insphering, and grasping, and oppressing every person, and dragging him down out of light, into hell's nethermost pit of darkness, is the condition of the creature, which wanteth to be sanctified, and redeemed, and presented spotless in the presence of God; and this Christ did with it, this he did for it. I stand forth and say, that the teeming fountain of the heart's vileness was opened on him; and the Augæan stable of human wickedness was given him to cleanse, and the furious wild beasts of human passions were appointed him to tame.”

We forbear any further extracts; indeed we think the above sufficient to evince the awful errors which this preacher has uttered from the pulpit and issued from the press, relative to the human nature of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Our readers will, perhaps, recollect that some time since* we noticed in our review department, a tract written by an independent minister in the county of Sussex, who asserted that the body of Christ was mortal. Some replies to the above statement were then published, shewing that if the body of Christ was mortal, it must of necessity be corruptible and sinful, as there was no mortality in our world prior to the introduction of sin. "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." We had hoped that such degrading notions of our adorable Lord would not have extended any further, but to our extreme regret the sketch given by the Sussex minister has been filled in by Mr. Irving, and he is now awfully defending one of the most Goddishonouring, Christ-debasing, and soul-destroying errors that has infested the church since the days of Arius.

We are quite unable, notwithstanding all the preacher's labor in redundancy of words, to see how his statements can comport with Christ's "humanity" being holy, for if he took "a sinful substance," it surely could not be as the scriptures declare it was, "that holy thing" which should be born of the Virgin. Nor can we discover the necessity that all the sacrifices under the Mosaic dispensation should be (as it was expressly commanded by God himself they should be) without spot or blemish, for if they were typical of that one sacrifice

* See Spiritual Magazine, Vol. III. p. p. 188-190, 251-2, and 316-317.

which was to be offered in the fulness of time, and which, according to Mr. Irving's theology, was a sinful substance, surely the express command of Jehovah must, to say the least, be unnecessary. But we assert, they did prefigure that holy Lamb of God, which did appear in aftes ages to take away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and who is expressly declared by the apostle to be "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners." Christ himself declares, "the Prince of this world cometh, but he hath nothing in me." But this Mr. Irving boldly denies, and tell us that he was " devil-possessed"- -" that his soul and body were inclined unto evil." The doctrine of imputation is that which we most strenuously advocate, but this divine tells us, that imputation of sin to Christ as the surety of his people is not enough for him, although the bible teaches, that "He who bore our sins in his own body on the tree," and was made "sin for us," himself" knew no sin," for from its being necessary that he should himself take a sinful nature, we do decidedly assert that if the nature of our Lord was sinful, he could not in any way make atonement for sin; for notwithstanding all Mr. Irving's sophistry he would have needed an atonement for himself-we speak it with reverence - but the whole tenor of scripture will bear us out. And when we say, that he took a sinless nature, we do not in any way deny his real humanity; but this extraordinary preacher supposes all who plead for the sinlessness of Christ's human nature, as denying that "Christ is come in the flesh." But will Mr. I. deny that Adam was a man before he sinned? Sin does not form a necessary part of a man, for scripture tells us, "that God made man upright." God was not the author of man's sin. Mr. Irving says, that Adam unfallen differeth from him as much as he shall differ from what he now is in the resurrection of the just. Whatever would have been that life which Adam might have enjoyed in paradise had he never fell we stop not to enquire, but certainly our Lord provided for Adam in Eden before the fall an "help-meet for him ;" and in the resurrection, our Lord says, "they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God." We, therefore, reject his position altogether. Mr. Irving dwells much on the sympathy of Christ as our high priest, resulting from his participating in our sinful nature, but we consider his arguments quite nugatory; for surely he can best sympathise with his afflicted, tried people, whose holy nature rendered sin more heinous than we can conceive, whose eyes cannot behold the least iniquity but with abhorrence.

Our author advocates universal redemption, but the whole scriptures so fully contradict such an assertion that we shall not detain our readers with a recital. Many other errors are blended in the pamphlet before us; but we hope that this intrepid defender of what he believes, may be brought to renounce his errors: and as he now advances many things which he formerly denounced, we will conclude our remarks by praying that the ever-blessed God may in his infinite mercy convince Mr. I. of his errors, and lay him low in self-abasement at the footstool of sovereign grace, and then we shall see him

not amusing his hearers with novelty, but advocating the doctrines of the gospel as revealed in the scriptures of truth.

Practical Sermons on the Epistles to the Seven Churches—the Millenium and the Church Triumphant-and on the CXXXth Psalm. By the late Rev. Joseph Milner, M.A. Vicar of the Holy Trinity Church, Kingston-upon-Hull. With Prefatory Remarks, by the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, Minister of Sir George Wheeler's Chapel. 8vo. pp. 392. Seeley.

THE volume of Sermons before us forms a fourth, with those previously published; and when we view them in connexion with the valuable History of the Church of Christ, we feel no common attachment to the name of Joseph Milner; and would join with the worthy clergyman who has edited this volume, in acknowledging he was no

common man.'

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These Sermons, twenty-two in number, are all entitled practical; and while we certainly should not ourselves adopt the precise phraseology of the author, yet, upon the whole, they contain a statement of gospel truth, in a plain and unsophisticated style. The first fifteen discourses, on the Apocalypse, contain many practical deductions, which display the well-intended zeal of the author; and to each is appended a short historical sketch of the condition in which the seven churches now are. In discoursing on the church of Sardis, the state of those who have a name to live, but are dead, is thus described.

"Now, in setting forth the state of a declining christian, there is no need to suppose him to have fallen into any grievous crime. He still holds the same truths, is connected with the same people of God, attends still the same ordinances and means of grace; neither has he materially grown worse in any external duties. Nevertheless, a decline there is; and it may be difficult for any but himself to know it. He gradually ceased to watch, and Satan gained advantage on his slothful security. Because he still went through the same round of duties as formerly, he did not lay it to heart, though he did not perform them at all with that unction and fire of love that he once did. Thus did he grow careless in some measure; not careless altogether, but careless compared with what he was before. There is grace, indeed, in him, but the oil burns dim; he moves heavily to prayer and spiritual ordinances. Through the fear of the Lord, he attends them; but they comfort him not: nor is he suitably affected, that they do not comfort him. Once, when he was lively, an evil imagination, a barrenness of soul, though it might be under one single sermon, would have led him to inquire the cause, would have sensibly afflicted him; nor would he have rested, till, with wrestling Jacob, he obtained the renewed blessing of the Lord. But now he can hear sermon after sermon without pleasure or profit; and, though not without some grief on the account, yet the grief is not abiding. A passionate motion of soul now and then, in the ardent breathings of prayer, testifies that life is in him; but, perhaps, next moment he forgets what he was praying for his spirit has too strong a tendency toward this world. On recollection, he finds he has not that fear of, and aversion to, its company and customs, that he once had. He finds, at times, the powerful return of those pleasing murderous lusts which once seemed entirely subdued. He can in some measure understand this to be his case, and perhaps has understood it to be so for some time; and yet, so much has a lazy spirit obtained the ascendant, he feels he is but very little affected with that which he sees, and at times wishes he was exceedingly affected with. Lively, earnest meditation and spiritual feeling he can find now and then, as I said, for a few moments; but

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