lows: for after having informed us that a considerable number of persons who have been vaccinated four years, and others who have been vaccinated five years and upwards, have hitherto resisted, and still continue to resist, the infection of the smallpox in this metropolis, and other parts of the kingdom,' he states that he is prepared to adduce evidence of a nature still more convincing, in order to confound the enemies of vaccination, and to convince those who are open to conviction.' This more convincing evidence is the inoculation, with smallpox matter, of several patients who had cow-pox at a very early period of the practice. Three of them were children of Mr. Henry Jenner, vaccinated five years ago; and two others were patients who were vaccinated by Dr. Jenner, the one of them more than six, the other more than eight years since.

The author adduces what he considers as an unanswerable proof of Mr. Goldson's want of candour, in the title which the latter gives to his publication; asserting that Mr. G. prejudges the question, by terming it cases of small-pox subsequent to vaccination,' instead of supposed cases of smallpox after vaccination,' or, cases of small-pox after supposed vaccination.' This objection appears to us unworthy of the gravity and importance of the discussion. If Mr. Goldson actually had any doubts on the nature of the cases which he lays before the public, it would have been highly blameable to have given a decided opinion of their nature in his title page. He appeared before the public, however, not that he might be assisted in making up his mind on the nature of the cases which he relates, but for the purpose of procuring an investigation of the truth of what he considered to be a probable deduction from them. He was convinced that they were cases of small-pox occurring after successful vaccination: but, conceiving himself justified in regarding it as a probable inference that cowpox was only a temporary preventive of small-pox, he thought it right to state this opinion, in order that its validity might be examined where it might be discussed with effect. The result of this inquiry will not affect the particular cases related. They may be genuine instances of what they are stated to be, and in this event they will continue so, whether the doctrine built on them be true or false:-should it prove unfounded, the only inference deducible from them will be, that, in some very rare instances, cow-pox is not a preservative against small-pox; and this, as we before observed, is saying no more than may be said of the latter disease itself, which does not always destroy the susceptibility to a second attack.

Mr. Ring is very anxious, in the observations before us, to prove that, in none of the cases related by Mr. Goldson,

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cow-pox actually succeeded; and that therefore it could afford no matter of wonder that small-pox should occur under such circumstances. On one of the cases, he observes that we have no proof, that the child had been effectually vaccinated,' and that it is not evident that her case was not one of those cases of imperfect vaccination, which the soil of Portsmouth seems to have produced in great abundance: but does Mr. Ring really state these doubts as arguments? Has he proved the charge of mala fides, which he so often insinuates against Mr. Goldson, in such a way as to make it reasonable to infer, that what he has actually reported to be cow-pox was in truth not that disease? Such a charge appears to us to be highly illiberal and unwarrantable. If it were Mr. Ring's opinion that small-pox had never been known a second time, and that, when such an occurrence had been reported, it ought to be concluded (with one of his correspondents) that the first infection had been imperfect, he might then derive some aid from analogy, and boldly deny the possibility of small-pox ever manifesting itself after cow-pox: but with the analogy, as it now stands, of the second occurrence of small-pox in some very rare cases, it will be difficult to support such a conclusion; and we are therefore required to believe, unless the charge of ignorance or mala fides be satisfactorily proved, (which by Mr. Ring it certainly is not) that, whatever our opinions may be with regard to the appearances reported in the cases in question, cow-pox had actually preceded them.

On the whole, we conceive the present pamphlet to be by no means creditable to the author, whether we consider the spirit which pervades it, or the nature of the reasoning which it contains. We have at all times been happy to admit that vaccination has owed much to Mr. Ring's zeal; and we are sorry that he has thought it right, in the present instance, to condemn so unequivocally, and, we would add, with so little reason and consistency, a farther examination of the preventive powers of inoculated' cow-pox, without which it is impossible that the public can rely on it with confidence.

The author adverts to that part of Mr. Goldson's publication, in which it is remarked that there is a difference between the appearance of the vaccine vesicle in the cow, and in the human subject; and that hence it may be conceived, with perfect propriety, that though the matter taken immediately. from the cow has a completely preventive effect, which Mr. Goldson allows, yet a change which is unfavourable to those powers may be produced in passing through the human body. Mr. Ring endeavours to remove any force which this argument may be supposed to possess, by stating, from his own observa

tion and that of Dr. Jenner and Dr. Woodville, that the blue appearance, considered by Mr. Goldson as characteristic of the vesicle in the cow, not unfrequently occurs in the human subject.

Some other pamphlets on the question of cow-pox will be noticed in the Catalogue part of this number.

ART. V. On Christ's Descent into Hell, and the intermediate State A Sermon on 1 Peter iii. 18, 19, 20. By Samuel, Lord Bishop of St. Asaph. 4to. 1s. 6d. Hatchard. 1804.

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Yell.

HE object of this discourse, as clearly stated by the Right Rev. preacher, is to shew that the assertion in the Apostles' Creed, that "our Lord descended into Hell," is to be taken as a plain matter of fact in the literal meaning of the words; to shew what proofs we have of this fact in holy writ; and to shew the great use and importance of the fact as a point of christian doctrine.'

As this learned prelate is known to be a profound reasoner, it may be supposed that he supports this hypothesis with all possible strength of argument: but it is one of those subjects in which, if difficulties are removed on the one hand, they rise up on the other. It is evident that the compilers of the Creed and the 3d article meant, by Christ's descent into Hell, something more than that he died and was buried;" for otherwise the passage in debate is entirely pleonastic or redundant: but divines have differed in their interpretation of the word which is translated Hell. The Bishop of St. Asaph rejects the idea of its meaning the place of torment, and contends for its being understood as the place or region under ground,' destined for the reception of spirits separated by death from the body; where all souls, their nature being similar, are placed together in the same element;' i. e. the disengaged spirits of the righteous and of the wicked pass to different subterraneous receptacles. Hence it is argued that the human soul of Christ, in the interval between his death and the resurrection of his body, occupied its appropriate receptacle among the good spirits; and that this region is the Paradise to which he alludes in his promise to the penitent thief on the cross: for the Bishop is persuaded that the doctrine of the creed is also the doctrine of scripture. It may be first objected to this account, that it makes a threefold division of the one Christ at his death; by which his body is in one place, his human soul in another, and his Deity in a third; unless we say with this learned prelate, that to exist without relation to place is one of the

incommunicable perfections of the Divine Being;' and if we admit this, it will be difficult to conceive how the Divine Nature could be united to the body of Christ more than to any other body; or how it could be united to the human soul of Christ, and descend with it to its temporary "local habitation.”— Secondly, we never read of an under-ground Paradise; nor of prison or place of safe custody, as synonimous with Paradise.— Thirdly, if the descent into Hell be so plain an article of scripture, how came it to be omitted in the Nicene creed?-Fourthly, how does this doctrine agree with the phrase, 2 Cor. v. 8., absent from the body and present with the Lord; for if Christ has now left this prison-house to which the disengaged souls of saints are sent previously to the resurrection, the dismission from the body is not immediately followed by an introduction into the presence of Christ.-Lastly, how strange is it, on the supposition of this safe place of custody in the bowels of the earth for disembodied spirits between death and the resurrection, that no hint is given of the surrender which this place is to make previously to the last judgment; when, in the preparation for this solemn event, both the earth and the sea are represented as yielding up the dead that are in them? We confess that in our view the doctrine is encumbered with difficul ties, in spite of the Bishop's masterly efforts to illustrate it: but, if it be a doctrine of scripture, we must acquiesce, and hope that what we see now as in a glass darkly we shall know better hereafter.

To prove the doctrine of Christ's actual descent into Hell, or the place of safe keeping (the word substituted in this sermon for prison), this Right Rev. preacher adduces three texts, in addition to the promise of our Lord to the penitent thief. The first is the text of the Psalmist (Ps. xvi. 10.), quoted by St. Peter in his sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts ii. 29-31.); which gives an opportunity for this logical argumentation: If the soul of Christ were not left in hell at his resurrection; then, it was in hell before his resurrection. But it was not there either before his death, or after his resurrection; for that never was imagined. Therefore it descended into hell after his death, and before his resurrection.' The second text is Eph. iv. 7-10., on which it is remarked that, whatever ambiguity ome may suppose to exist in the phrase "the lower parts of the earth," it is in the Greek language a periphrasis for "Hell," and is so much a name for the central parts of the globe, as distinguished from the surface, or the outside, on which we live; that had the apostle intended by this phrase to denote the inhabited surface of the earth, as lower than the heavens; we may confidently say, his Greek converts at Ephesus would not easily

have guessed his meaning.' Here, however, it is proper to recollect that the quotation from the Psalmist by the Apostle respects only the ascent of Christ from the surface of the earth to the heavens; and that the parenthesis in the 9th and 10th verses has all the appearance of being a note written in the margin of a copy of this epistle, and, by the carelessness or design of some subsequent transcribers, amalgamated with the original text. The passage reads better without these two verses than with them; since the parenthesis, which they form, seems to force itself in most unnecessarily.

The third illustration is that which is placed at the head of this discourse, 1 Peter iii. 18, 19, 20. As the phrase, “spirits in prison," does not, as we have remarked, very well harmonize with the notion of a Paradise, some critical pains are taken to set this matter in a better point of view:

As a place of confinement, though not of punishment, it may well be called a prison. The original word, however, in this text of the apostle, imports not of necessity so much as this; but merely a place of safe-keeping: for so this passage might be rendered with great exactness. "He went and preached to the spirits in safe keeping." And the invisible mansion of departed souls is to the righte ous a place of safe keeping, where they are preserved under the shadow of God's right hand, as their condition sometimes is described in scripture, till the season shall arrive for their advancement to their future glory; as the souls of the wicked, on the other hand, are reserved, in the other division of the same place, unto the judg ment of the great day. Now if Christ went and preached to souls of men thus in prison, or in safe-keeping; surely he went to the prison of those souls, or to the place of their custody.'

If it be asked what could be the end of Christ's preaching to those whose state could not be affected by repentance and faith, and especially to the souls of antediluvians? the Bishop is prepared with an answer: He went to preach or to proclaim to them that the sacrifice of their redemption had been actually offered.' He subjoins,

It does not at all startle me, to find antediluvian souls in safekeeping for final salvation. On the contrary, I should find it very difficult to believe (unless I were to read it somewhere in the Bible) that of the millions that perished in the general deluge, all died hardened in impenitence and unbelief; insomuch that not one of that race could be an object of future mercy, side the eight persons who were miraculously saved in the ark, for the purpose of repeopling the depopulated earth. Nothing in the general plan of God's dealings with mankind, as revealed in Scripture, makes it necessary to suppose, that of the antediluvian race, who might repent upon Noah's preaching, more would be saved from the temporal judgment, than the purpose of a gradual repopulation of the world demanded, or to suppose, on the other hand, that all, who perished in the flood,

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