unite in prayer, that the benevolent and pious principle, from which they emanated, may be gratified, to the utmost extent, in the amelioration of the condition of that abject race, and of all the oppressed and desolate to the ends of the earth.

It is evident from this quotation, that some circumstances attending crucifixion were different among the Romans at this time, to what were practised when our blessed Saviour was crucified but this little affects the general subject. In the judgment of Cicero, crucifixion comprised every thing which imagination could conceive, or words express, of what was degrading, ignominious, and torturing; somewhat far beyond all other kinds of misery; to which the vilest criminals were exposed; and what no one entitled to regard or compassion ought so much as to be exposed to, however great his crimes might be.

This general statement will doubtless lead the attentive reader to recollect the language of the sacred writers, on the sufferings of the Redeemer. "He was obedient to death, even the death of the cross," the most degrading, ignominious, torturing, and miserable death, that hunian or diabolical cruelty had then devised, for the most abject, contemptible, and execrable of the species:-" He endured the cross, and despised the shame." Christ hath redeemed

us

"from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." "He bare our sins in his own body on the tree."

The inexpressible and inconceivable love of the divine and holy Redeemer, to us poor, guilty, depraved, miserable sinners; his condescension, self-abasement, selfdenial, humility, patience, meekness, holy courage, zeal, supe

* About an hundred years intervened.

riority to all regard to what man could inflict, or the disgrace or honour which man could impart, provided the great object of his incarnation, in the salvation of sinners to the glory of God the Father, was accomplished, need no further illustration. His personal and mediatorial dignity, his holiness, wisdom, love; every thing eminent and distinguished; all created and uncreated excellency centring in his person; that he should willingly, for our salvation, thus "humble himself to death, even the death of the cross" this baffles all efforts to illustrate it or celebrate it in a suitable manner: but it most powerfully calls on all his followers, to arm themselves with the same mind;-" Let that mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus;"-"If any one will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." "Let us go forth, therefore, unto him, without the camp, bearing his reproach;" and not be ashamed of him or his words, or fear "the reproach of men, or their revilings;" or any ignominy or suffering which man can inflict: for "if we suffer, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us."

66

"For

But it is further remarkable, that in this case the opinion of inen, especially concerning the wretchedness and infamy of crucifixion, accorded to the judgment of God in his holy law, which the Apostle quoted, in showing that Christ was made a curse for us. he that is hanged, is accursed of God." (Deut. xxi. 22, 23.) Crucifixion, by being fastened either with thongs or nails alive on a cross, was not known among the Jews, nor even strangulation, as far as we know; but after malefactors had been put to death, in some instances, their dead bodies were suspended for a while: and this was a special token of their being accursed of God, or devoted

to utter destruction. Thus Joshua hanged the five kings of the accursed Canaanites, on five trees; and also the other kings of Canaan. Ahithophel, the type (in some sense) of Judas, and Judas also himself, died by suspension. God himself permitted and approved the descendants of Saul, who were devoted to destruction, as an atonement for his sin in murdering the Gibeonites, to be hanged on trees permanently. Absalom, the traitor and parricide, was by special providence suspended on the

tree.

Yet this was the very death which, from the beginning, was appointed for the beloved Son of God, in whom he is well pleased." The serpent lifted on the pole typified this peculiar kind of death (Numb. xxi. 5—9 ; John, iii. 14, 15); and the Psalmist, above a thousand years before the birth of the Saviour, more expressly predicted it, even as it was inflicted by the Greeks and Romans on slaves and captives:-" They pierced my hands and my feet;they stand staring and locking upon me." (Psa. xxii. 16-18.) Had our Lord been put to death as a blasphemer by the Jews, he would have been stoned: but this could not be; he must be delivered into the hand of the Gentiles, and be crucified, as he constantly foretold.

It is not needful to expatiate on the extra contempt, and scorn, and cruelty, which his malignant and cruel persecutors added to the ignominy and torture of the cross itself; and to which no robber, murderer, or slave, was ever exposed. These are topics with which, as historical facts, we are well acquainted; and perhaps, on very account, are seldom

that

duly impressed and affected with

them.

But does it not occur to every reflecting person, to inquire on what account this species of death,

Surely a stronger expression cannot be conceived of the judgment of God, concerning the deserving of that sin for, which the Redeciner thus atoned! concerning the shame and everlasting contempt, the anguish and torture, the unexampled, inexpressible misery, to which sinners were exposed, as under the wrath of God, and the curse of his violated law, and as devoted to utter destruction! The whole of Cicero's oratorical powers seem exhausted in showing how much the infamy and misery of crucifixion exceeds all other punishments; and the very circumstance of the divine Redeemer," the Holy One of God," in whom the Father is well pleased, when "made sin for us," not dying a natural death, but a violent one-not an honourable death, but a most disgraceful one-not a comparatively easy death, but one most excruciating -not the death of a free-man, but of an abject slave and criminalshows us, in the most affecting manner, that the misery and ignominy from which he saves all true believers, and from which he brings them to eternal glory and felicity; the misery and infamy to which all unbelievers are, and ever will be, exposed; baffled all powers of man to describe or conceive! Surely, this is suited to inspire our hearts with abhorrence of sin, as in the sight of God, who is love, needing such an atonement; with enlarged gratitude to the Father, who pro

vided this atonement-to the Son, who made it--and to the Holy Spirit, by whose agency we become interested in it! Surely, it is suited to lead us to enter into the spirit of the Apostle's words: "The love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they who live should not live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again!" (2 Cor. v. 14, 15.) T. S.

To the Editor of the Christian Guardian.

MR. EDITOR,

I HAVE lately read the Bishop of Lincoln's book, entitled "A Refutation of Calvinism," which I thought, when I laid it down, might have better been entitled "Calvinism Traduced." The subject brought to my recollection what I had read in the last Charge of Bishop Horsley. I turned to it, and felt, while I was again perusing it, that as the Bishop of St. Asaph is allowed by all to have been a man of eminence as a theologian and a scholar, his opinions respecting Calvinism might be as sound, and as salutary to the Church, as those of the Bishop of Lincoln; and that the Charge of the one in 1806, might be considered as a concise and general answer (by a very happy anticipation) of the three Charges published together in the Refutation, in 181I. Under that impression I have made some extracts from it, for the perusal of those of your readers who may not have seen the original publication, and have only auded two notes of my own, by way of elucidation.

Yours, - M. B.

"Ir may seem strange to some, that I should have said, that none of the Methodists are dissenters

from the established Church in doctrine; when, at the same time, I have said that they consist of two principal branches, the one Arminian, and the other Calvinistic; since it has been the fashion of late to talk of Arminianism as the system of the church of England, and of Calvinism as something opposite to it,. to which the church is hostile. That I may not be misunderstood in what I have said, or may have occasion further to say upon this subject, I must here declare, that I use the words Arminianism and Calvinism in that restricted sense in which they are now generally taken, to denote the doctrinal part of each system, as unconnected with the principles either of Arminians or Calvinists upon church discipline and church government. This being premised, I assert, what I often have before asserted, and by God's grace I will persist in the assertion of to my dying day, that so far is it from the truth, that the church of England is decidedly Arminian and hostile to Calvinism, that the truth is this,-that upon the principal points in dispute between the Arminians and the Calvinists, upon all the points of doctrine characteristic of the two sects, the church of England maintains an absolute neutrality. Her Articles explicitly assert nothing, but what is believed both by Arminians and by Calvinists. The Calvinists indeed hold some opinions relative to the same points, which the church of England has not gone the length of asserting in her Articles. But neither has she gone the length of explicitly contradicting those opinions; insomuch that there is nothing to hinder the Arminian and the highest supra-lapsarian Calvinist from walking together in the church of England and Ireland, as friends and brothers, if they both approve the discipline of the church, and both are willing to submit to it. Her

discipline has been approved: it has been submitted to: it has, in former times, been most ably and zealously defended by the highest supra-lapsarian Calvinists. Such was the great Usher! Such was Whitgift! Such were many more burning and shining lights of our Church in her early days (when first she shook off the Papal tyranny), long since gone to the resting-place of the spirits of the just!

"The Methodists therefore of the Calvinistic, are not, more than those of the Arminian persuasion, dissenters from the established Church in doctrine. The Calvinists contradict not the avowed dogmata of the Church; nor has the Church, in her dogmata, explicitly condemned or contradicted them.". “Any one may hold all the theological opinions of Calvin, hard and, extravagant as some of them may seem, and yet be a sound member of the church of England and Ireland: certainly a much sounder member than one who, loudly declaiming against those opinions (which, if they be erroneous, are not errors that affect the essence of our common faith), runs into all the nonsense, the impiety, the abominations, of the Arian, the Unitarian, and the Pelagian heresies, denying in effect the Lord who bought him. These are the things against which you should whet your zeal, rather than against opinions which, if erroneous, are not sinful. What the Church has tolerated, her sons are bound to tolerate, and to treat differences of opinion, which may subsist without blame within the pale of the Church itself, with lenity and gentleness.

Indeed, it may seem strange that any one, who has gone deep enough in the subject to be aware of the doubts and difficulties which hang upon both sides of the question (it is hard to say on which side they are the greatest), whichever way his own opinion may incline, CHRIST. GUARD. VOL. IV.

should venture to be confident and peremptory in the condemnation of the opposite. Certainly the greatest fault of the Calvinists has been their want of charity for those who differ from them, It is to be hoped this uncharitable disposition will not take possession of the other side. But, as far as my observation goes, moderation has not prevailed in the controversies with the Methodists, in which some have been of late too forward to engage." "The effectual and sure way to counteract their (the Methodists') attempts against you, is not to attack their religious opinions, but to take heed to the soundness of your own doctrine, and the innocency of your own lives. If you preach a doctrine that goes to the hearts of your 'hearers (and the genuine doctrines of Christianity will always go to the heart of every one who hears them), if you adorn that doctrine by the good example of your own lives; the laity will be attached to you, in spite of all your enemies can say against you. The pure, unsophisticated, unmutilated doctrine of the Gospel will always speak for itself.”. "This is the method of self-defence I would advise you to pursue; to which I must add, that you ought, in your discourses from the pulpit, to instruct the people in the origin, the nature, and the privileges of that society, which is called the Church; and set forth to them how much it is the duty of every member of the Church to hold the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, and the guilt that is incurred by separations of communion."- "From controversy in your sermons, upon what are called the Calvinistic points, I would by all means advise you to abstain. Believe me, they are not the proper subjects for the village pulpit. Mistake me not; it is not my meaning that you are never to preach upon the subjects of faith

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