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    To this decision we cannot subscribe . In our own judgment , lectures may be advantageously delivered on a wider range , and a yet superior class , of subjects . But whatever be thought of lectures on other spots , and from other persons , we cheerfully acknowledge that within academical precincts , and in the hands of competent professors , they may be signally beneficial . Well framed , well conducted , and accompanied by the assistance of college , if not of private , tutors , of specific exercises and regulations , of preparatory and of collateral studies , of the very genius and atmosphere of the scene , *

    and of easy access to books and conversation , they will materially advance the progress of every assiduous hearer , and place many topics before him in a stronger and a more familiar light than books alone are capable of affording . Nor can we be astonished that works at once hi g hly popular and intrinsically valuable—works , indeed , of surpassing merit in their respective departments , —have been lectures delivered officially within some one of the universities of the united kingdom . We are purposely silent concerning

    publications of this sort , which are extremely creditable to certain living au ~ thors . Of Blackstone ' s Commentaries * and of LowtlVs Prelections , we may be permitted to say , that time cannnot impair their deserved reputation . The intelligent and able , though too casuistical , lectures of the late Professor Hey , are worthy of being diligently perused by every theological student ; while , among our contemporaries , Bishop Marsh honourably signalizes himself by those which he lays before his university and the world .

    We have welcomed and noticed the several parts of his Lectures , as they have successively appeared . To their specific excellencies , in point of style , arrangement , intelligence , and reasoning , we have not been insensible : and we have marked , firmly , yet , we hope , with becoming candour , what we deem their omissions and their blemishes . Altogether , we consider them as meriting no scanty commendation : we regard their author as one of the most accomplished theologians of his age ; and we , in proportion , hail the two supplementary Lectures and the Appendix , which are now to pass under our review .

    They take their fit place after the lectures on the principles of biblical interpretation : f " The principles of biblical interpretation , " says his Lordship , et having been explained in the ten preceding lectures , it now remains that , agreeably to the plan proposed in the first Preliminary Lecture , we take an historical view of biblical interpretation , according to the different modes which prevailed in the different ages of Christianity . In describing the criticisms of the Bible , the historical view preceded the rules of criticism , because a historyof criticism is a history of facts , and the rules of criticism are founded on those facts . But a history of interpretation is a history of opinions , which may properly follow the principles of interpretation . " \

    From the Jews , " the earliest interpreters of Scripture , " we here learn what to avoid rather than what to imitate ; they perpetuall y sought for remote and mystical meanings in their sacred books , nor , in their expositions of them , were governed by rules applicable to other writings . Philo ' s

    at-• Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses , &c , No . I ., and Lowth ' s Letter to Warburton , p . 65 . t Parts HI . and IV . 1 P . 3 . It will be remembered that by " a history of criticism , " Bishop Marsh means " a history of whatever regards the text of Scripture .

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    246 Bishop Marsh ' s Lectures .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1829, page 246, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2571/page/22/